Unlike the commoners, their senses had registered the true nature of the night's cataclysm. They had felt the astronomical, terrifying influx of essence tearing through the clearing like an unstoppable wave of beasts.
They had felt for the first time ever, the rules of the world groan, and they had felt an aura so impossibly powerful, so utterly sovereign, that their own spirit beasts were still shivering inside their cores like beaten low life.
Near the front of the platform stood the remaining clan elders… men and women leaning on polished wooden canes, their faces carved with deep, furious scowls.
"It came from the Warchief's private pond!" an elder standing a bit distance from the others, hissed in a cracked, agitated whisper to his peers. "The ambient essence was sucked dry! The spirits of the forest are screaming! If the Warchief has meddled with forbidden, ancient curses to secure our victory, the ancestors will strike down the entire clan!"
