Janine rarely had the privilege of witnessing Alpha’s battles firsthand. Her own duty always demanded her direct presen the midst of age, delivering Recimer justice to any foes. But now, locked ihe APC, surrounded by the weeping cubs and civilians breaking down from a sudden exposure, the fear wave, with Marty arying their best not to fall and squash anyone, with the faint breaths of Marco risking to stop, she needed a distra. Any distra to quell the emotions pulsing through her and tihe basic routine of helping the field medic.
Psma dischargers on Alpha’s wrists hurled overheated clots, and Horkhudagh weaved in the air to avoid them. Streaks of fmes crackled around him as the skeleton flew uhe straight thrust and rose behind the warlord. Bed cws wreathed in blue formed at his hands. Solid to liquid and back to solid again. The st thing one would expect from a skeleton would be feats of agility.
A quick elbow to the skull sent him back, saving the geor backpack from damage. Alpha whirled, and the multicolored wings of her oppo enveloped her, f hands that pinned her down. The intense heat disrupted the video feed, but enough of it came through to show Janine how the hands overpped, f a superheated yer that exploded in a direal blue beam that melted the grouh Alpha’s legs.
Heat. He is trying to suffocate her. Metaphorical cogs in Janine’s brain came to a halt, trying to draw her attention to something obvious. Fme. Why would he skirt around the attack…
“Warlord!” Janine yelled in the . “Alpha, the bastard’s not pletely immuo the heat!”
Her HUD received nothing but the intense blue glow for several seds, and then the cws parted its front to face the solidified, fiery talons of the hordeman. Horkhudagh grunted as his ons and hands splintered, and Alpha hooked him by the elbows.
“Sister,” Alpha said, a camera briefly catg her refle irified wall. Her suit held on, refusing to lose, but one by ohe cameras were getting shut down. “Not my first time.”
She lunged, closing her maw on the fming man’s face, viciously hollowing it out. Then the psma dischargers fired, almost catg Horkhudagh in his luo the left, and he lost the right side of his body. With a series of cracks, the body spat out fresh body parts, and a whirlwind of blows and cuts ed the fighters together, one shining bright as a star, spewing fmes a, the other a raging fury adorned in the fi diamondoid alloy.
Fiery blue spshes pierced the remaining apartments, spurting like blood from arteries. Alpha advanced away from where she was knee-deep in molten asphalt, f her oppoo the more solid surface. Tongues of fmes burst, crag the surfaces, and cws raked against the bck bones and the state’s armor.
“Sword Saint, sigo termination if you so desire, but I simply have to remark oubborn refusal of your noble kin to accept valuable insight,” Albert’s voice came with interference, partially hissing after all the damage.
“Nah, soulless buddy, yer truth,” Martyshkina remarked. Still holding onto the ceiling with one paw, she leaned over and quickly fixed the dislocated shoulder of a young Ice Fang. “Better?”
“Ouch!” The boy blinked away the tears and moved his paw. “Hey, it no longer hurts! That much. Thank you, dy!”
“Just Martyshkina, little one. Albert, don’t apologize when you are right. She totally fired way ter than needed, missing her opportunity. But she is too proud to admit a mistake.”
“She is gathering information,” Janine said, uanding. “Warlord Alpha destroyed Horkhudagh’s eyes and then fired. But he dodged. Why do so if he form his body? And how?”
“He doesn’t need his head to see,” Martyshkina said.
Horkhudagh’s belly erupted, temporarily c everything in white, and Janine heard the rumbling and w of servomotors as Alpha jumped. When the feed resumed, she saw the cws closing in on the scorched man’s legs, easily tearing through his leather skin. The stro warlord nded on top of the enemy, thwarting his attempts to gain distance, and his hands morphed. Dozens of thinner and longer arms wound around Alpha’s wrists; needle-like appendages protruded from the open Horkhudagh’s back, quickly stabbing at the warlord, targeting her mouth, neck, joints, and lenses, denting and notg her armor. Oe destroyed a good dozen of them, and the warlord swung her arms, tearing at the bonds.
Ti droplets of blood lingered in the air and vanished, evaporating. An ugly cut appeared on Alpha’s lips, and one of the stabs found its way to her skin on the inner part of her elbow. But Horkhudagh suffered for this legendary deed. Janine finally spotted it—ly the orb from before, but another, lesser orb floating inside of the hordeman’s body.
Alpha struck this very core, shattering the bck bones and cleaving through the arms raised in defehe core itself was the size of a Normie’s torso, but proved to be of far sturdier material as the tip of Alpha’s cw scratched it, and Horkhudagh grunted, produg the noise of a r furnao longer mimig boiling water of burning wood.
It was a roar of sorts, but not one of fear or displeasure. Etion resonated in it.
Horkhudagh rammed his elbows into Alpha, lifting the woman a little, and the needle appendages on his back merged into a single, wide palm of fme. It smmed the warlord to the ground and dragged the Wolfkin across the street, carrying her closer to the ruined academy in a river of melting stone. A web of cuts appeared briefly on the limb, so fast that Albert had to slow the feed a bit for Jao even reize it. Alpha broke free of the limb, her billowing hair resembling dang snakes.
The two charged to face each ain, Horkhudagh growing a fresh set er and thicker arms, closing any damage doo his fake body, and Alpha silently passing through several walls of fme that appeared in her path. A headbutt sent Alpha’s head skyward, but her paw was doubtless already aimed at Horkhudagh’s true body, and the hordeman unched a strike of his own.
her mao proceed as the clouds above belched a single piece of the armament, and something about this projectile terrified Janine, and she ed her arms around Mard the closest cubs, shouting warnings for the troops to do the same. It was a weird premonition that touched her even before Alpha’s bat armnaled a warning.
The threat of a WMD.
There were three great nations in the world, three pilrs of civilization and peerless industrial capacity. The despised Oathtakers, eternal rivals of the state, fanatics mistakenly believing in a falsehood cocted by their inane cult leader, and willingly surrendered partial freedom of their free will for the sake of unity, forever hindering their growth as humans. Janine despised them more than anyone in the world, even though her adopted daughter chose to live there. It was simply something she would never accept. The mutition of the personality, the infri upon the deaking for those who had itted no crime, was a bridge too far for her to tolerate.
in line was Iterna, the traitorous butchers. They should have shown the same hatred and vitriol to the tless gangs feasting upon the ruins of the Old World heir borders that they had shown to the literal cubs who came to study uheir wings. But Iterna was said to have ged, no longer dispying the same rash decisiveness as before. They were uplifting and iing instead of stopping atrocities. Idiots. The likes of Mad Hatter, Blood Graf, Thunder Emperor, Mi, or Teo-Queen would never ge. They had the might but cked the willpower to act.
The Recmation Army was the st and rgest nation in this union of y and perhaps potential friendship. Janine accepted they weren’t perfect, but she firmly believed that the Dynast’s vision and fht were the only correct path for the world to take, lest it be destroyed in another war. Overthrow the svers, bring the misguided fools bato the fold, and teach the people how to be better, to spare the younger geions the misery of existender the unworthy rulers. Take away dangerous tools and use them to build, not destroy. Thousands of races, maybe even species, united under a single banner.
These nations had shaken hands and signed many treaties, ranging from tariffs to tourism to stopping diseases and trolling potential Apocalypse-csses of New Breeds, promising o use ons of mass destru and swearing to abide by the rules of war, treating both civilians and military humanely. The horrors of MAD that had occurred during the Extin hauheir leaders.
And the Gilded Horde… These bastards cked such reservations.
****
The shell fired by the Sky’s Wrath carried a payload of over nine huhousand tons of TNT. It exploded half a kilometer above Opul, f a fireball of approximately one hundred and ten million degrees Celsius, bathing the town in a temperature hotter than the ter of the sun and iing everything it touched.
Alpha’s armor reacted immediately, entombing the warlainst her will and cutting off tact with the outside world. Her long crimson hair fell and turo ash, cut by the sharp edges of her helmet. The suit released its emergency supply of nanomaes to form a protective, solidified yer over the warlord’s cws and sealed her mouth. Designed and manufactured to operate in the event of a nuclear attack, its artificial intelligence cked Albert’s cheerfulness or any personality to speak of and now bored meticulously to preserve the user.
As the bst expanded, it resembled a semi-sphere of hellishly heated air, st in every dire at millions of kilometers per hour, driving the fighters into the ground with the force of a fallieor or spaceship.
Hell reigned in the real world for but a sed, as the rainiru quickly cooled to merely the surface temperature of the sun. That sed was used to overload a ship’s shields and soften its outer hull before the main guns of another ship or a defeation used further methods to strip the ship of its fighting crew or teleport b parties in.
When used against the surface, unprotected by any shields, it turned Opul into a moltehe Knight Academy, a pce of local pride and the defensive fortification, dissolved like a moth to an intense fme; parts of its masonry were simply iohe survivors, both Horde and locals, died so quickly that no istered even a hint of pain. Statues, libraries, shops, homes, factories—nothing was left standing. The traveling shockwave wrecked everything around Opul for kilometers, reag the retreating voy.
Trees hit the APCs so hard that the transports nearly flipped. Then the world-colpsing cacophony of destru tossed them, lifting the vehicles as easily as the wind plucked leaves. The cubs, secured in their harnesses, screamed in panic as a special foam appeared from their restraints to cover the passengers in protective cos. Unaced to such overloads, they vomited against their will as the bck- and white-armored forms around them tried their best to keep them safe. The civilian Normies suffered even worse, their ans bursting uhe pressure as the faint shadow of the Horde’s apocalyptic on barely grazed the vehicles.
****
A wall cracked, spraying the soldiers with metal shards, killing a Wolfkin and paralyzing an Ice Fang. Janihered two more, f herself to trust the medic to keep Marco safe. She blocked several more shards from reag her troops and was surprised to find a bde-sized pieetal lodged between her radius and ulna bones. Kaisa’s family and several pack members closed ranks around the unscious wolf hag.
Their APtio spin. Up. Dow. Right. Janine caught a medic before the woman could fly into the gaping hole, holding herself steady with her cws. Her son was already safely led in a portable harness locked to the floor, and she tossed the woman to a knight, stopping another piece of debris from falling at the cubs. She didn’t evehe piece of stone, moving on instinct, and her eye twitched at a sudden sting of pain. The knuckle and the pte above it were destroyed, and her finger dangled loosely.
“Even pebbles hit harder than you, Marty!” Jaeased in aionless voice, earning herself several chuckles. Good. Don’t you dare think about dying.
“Ah, the delusions of youth…” Marty croaked, shielding the cubs with her back from a shower of debris.
“I’m a day youhan you!”
“…are so amusing. It’s not my fault that your bones are so brittle that I have to hold back all the time.”
“Hold back? What a load of cusack shit! I won our st spar, Granny!”
“Because I was holding back, sug!” teased Martyshkina and Janine could’ve sworn that the mohtened after their bickering.
“Albert, you reach Bertruda iher APC? Is…” the traitor, the scum, the bitch I will sughter, “… the sword saint fine?” Janine swallowed the insults. Mard the cubs were more important than her feelings.
“ive, Sword Saint,” Albert answered.
“It is warlord…” Janine looked out of the hole. “Brace yourselves! Rough nding!”
“We flew?” squeaked Tilden.
“Carried, I’d say…” Martyshkina groaned as a pieetal flew past Janine and got stu her back.
The APC crashed to the ground and rolled several dozeers. Blinking away the fusion, Janine realized they were a dozen kilometers from Opul. The town was no more, and a mushroom cloud hovered over it, aired imagination tricked her into seeing a grinning skull in the swirling shadows. She shook her head and tacted Bertruda.
They lost seven civilians, one cub, a boy whose head was squashed, two drivers, and a male of Martyshkina’s pack during the nding. Jaed herself for even thinking it, but they got off lucky.
“Albert…” she began, looking numbly at the dead Ice Fang cub. They rescued them, dammit! She po bme on anyone ahe hawks of the Iigation Bureau du iigation based on the video feed they could recover from their suits. Deep down, she khat they had done everything they could.
It wasn’t enough. That’s the bitter truth of a defeat. Sometimes you fail, no matter how hard you try. She cradled Mar her arms, panig that he could’ve been in a pce of this boy. Spirits, what will his parents feel?
“Any… any radiation in the air?” She regained trol over her voice.
“Not a trace, Sword Saint,” Albert hissed, the sadness clear in his voice.
“Uood. What are you zing around for?” She s a knight and a warrior who sat, resting their legs. “Healthy? gratutions, find a wounded person ahem moving. Medic, desighose who should not be walking. I will hear no objes!” She kicked a scout who was missing an arm bato the cloth. “If she tells you not to move, shut up and lie down like a cub. Bertruda, Martyshkina, aeams to carry the wounded. Anissa, I en eyes on the perimeter.”
“Thank you for the fidence, Warlord,” the field medic said tiredly. She didn’t correct her that it was a y.
“Yes, Warlord!” Anissa replied, and Janine looked up, silently thanking the Spirits for the deliverance.
They survived.
****
Unbeknownst to the warlord, the world was already experieng ges. Iterna’s satellites had detected the explosion that wiped out Opul, and an envoy demanded an audieh the Dynast to discover what was going on. The Oathtakers immediately called for the evacuation of their citizens, sending small parties to protect their tourists, infiltrators, workers, and diplomats. Cries of relief rippled through the shocked denizens of the as the citizens of the three tries slowly realized that aire town had just been wiped off the map.
In the far east, a white window touched the clouds. Outsider, the grand ander of the First and the personal champion of the Dynast, vented his anger upon learning of his nation’s grievous loss. Basking in the light of his power, the defenders of the Abando glowed otlements, fading into nothingness, and their vast bastions soon followed. The sves rejoiced as the Orais shattered their holding caves, freeing them.
The myth of the dark figure walking in the sky, cloaked in white light, was born that night, culminating when the screaming tyrant vanished as the bck gau seized him. The entire castle disied with him, adding to Outsider’s legends, and belief in the Champion tio spread, revered by the new citizens.
Devourer reared high in the Wastes, arg his bad howling with such hatred that the nearby svers dropped their ons and surrendered immediately. Their leader arrived, carrying aire mountain above his head with his gravity power, a proud New Breed who had never met his match.
A single, casual tail sp ended his existence. Devourer po take his time with the scum, but his short lesson had its effect, and the resistance ceased in an instant. Grief and hatred coursed through the ander’s body—hatred for those who dared to harm his precious home and grief for the lives lost. His pride, his magnum opus, was hurting, and he wasn’t there to help.
Mad Hatter smiled blissfully, ign the blows of a frail man who had unwittingly won freedom and safety for his vilge. She ihe air, fetting even the fleeting iion of visiting the local churd ign the dead soldiers at her feet. Her smile wide the knowledge of the distaru and the low rumblih the vilge, but then a worry repced the joy. The liar ai her shoulders no longer whispered; his psyche seeped into hers, intensifyihirst for blood and quest.
She snarled, dismissed his offers of unrivaled power, ahe vilgers alone, venturing into the camp. Mad Hatter felt it in her bones ever since she murdered that strange monster. Her own assion, true divinity, wasn’t plete, but it was near. It required only one more sacrifice. It was high time to mar Houstad to cim her destiny and annouhe defeat of the Recmation Army with the blood of one of its fi champions.
The doors of the Dynast’s fortress opened, and a host marched forth, apanied by the Nameless, sons and daughters of the quered rulers, and the Dynast’s personal guard. Enhanced by the most secret bioengineering knowledge avaible to the Recmation Army, they prepared to repel any assault. Reality itself cracked and screamed above them as the pocket dimensions opened, releasing vehicles so destructive that the state had baheir use. Emuted minds slumbering in the depths of the pace awoke and took trol of the systems not meant for human use. Meical horrors of the Old World joihe royal forces, heading for the troops of the Provincial Army from ions that would relieve Houstad in its day of need.
And in the snowy mountains at the edge of the Inner Lands, sleeping on the disgusting carpet of hundreds of sughtered wild bioons, Ravager stirred, disturbed by a strange dream that broke through the thiess of nightmares about the Room, or the scum who took her family, enia, who denied her a ce to escape, or even the simple dignity of dying normally.
In this dream, she was versing with her children, calming their fears and providing them strength to carry on, even talking the twisted girls out of immediate mischief. She decided that she had halluated it as she gave birth to no child and her wards rested safely in Houstad and their vilges, while the skinwalkers resided beyond the Wall. Besides, a monster could not inspire, could not help.
Covered in a thin yer of rime, Ravager slipped bato the emptiness of her sleep, amused at imagining the silly misuandings betweeribe and the locals in Houstad.
