Virginia and Annie stepped inside the arena. Their slave collars were left behind as usual. Today's arena was a simple place, one of steel. No hills, no places to hide. Almost boring. And yet the crowd was ecstatic. Ultis looked down on the arena, with both hands behind her back. Hilda stood up, stomping toward the edge of her balcony. Her helmet slid aside, and she raised her arms, sending lightnings in the air above her.
"A welcome to our rising stars!" Hilda said, her upper lips twitching in a smile, while she looked down with a heavy gaze. The crowd booed the wolf hags, but several people cheered them on. Ultis simply smirked, reaching for the terminal, "Will they keep on moving in the world or will they crash and burn today? Only gods could now, we in the meantime will enjoy the show. Unleash our special guest!"
The gates on the other side of the arena slid open, allowing something massive to enter. Creating tremors on the floor with each step a thing of horror stepped pushed itself inside the arena. It stood on the four legs, towering over the wolfkins. Its skin had been covered by scales that looked more like armored plates. The long tail, with a bone blade running by the sides of the tail all the way down to the tip, slid across the floor with a thunderous noise. Two hands carried bone axes. The creature could not physically lose its weapons, for the shafts of the axes were merged with the fists the size of a car. Thick and meaty eyelids protected a set of beady eyes, the four eyes of the creature were looking at the wolfkins with barely held rage, tracing their every move. Fangs the size of a man’s torso, were coming from the maw of the beast. It breathed heavily, inhaling air like an asthmatic. Around its neck, the creature wore a collar with a set of syringes half-buried in its neck.
The blonde woman looked at Hilda and gave a nod. Palatine sat at the edge of the balcony with a notebook and a pen in his hands. His third arm held an orange, which the creature bit at times. Hilda reached for the terminal installed in her vambrace and pushed a button. One of the syringes slid deeper into the massive creature’s flesh, injecting something into the bloodstream. The pupils dilated and the creature inhaled easily, rocking the shoulders. It looked at the wolfkins with hunger now, instead of rage.
And then it charged into a gallop, crossing the distance between the opponents at an alarming speed, causing even guests in the balconies to fear the tremor. Ultis quickly typed something in the terminal before grabbing the edge of the balcony to hold herself steady. Doctor said a word, and Palatine quickly wrote something in the notebook. The beast swung its axe hand for a downward strike. The axe created a long tear in the arena’s floor upon contact, sending countless shards of stone into all directions. Virginia jumped aside before the thing could bisect her in two. Annie charged forward, circling the creature to the left, aiming for the back legs. The bone axe crushed into the ground near her, sending an explosion of stone shards. Annie deflected fifteen shards with her paws, catching them in midflight and throwing them aside before they could have scratched her skin. Virginia was the first to reach the left back leg of the creature, while it was turning to face Annie. The rust-colored wolfkin cursed, jumping away from the beast when its tail nearly cut her at the knees. The bone axe missed Annie by the hair, and she hit with her claws at the armored scale on the enemy’s chest, hoping to enrage the beast some more.
The bone scale exploded, sending an explosion forward and throwing Annie into the wall of the arena. A bright light stole her eyesight for a moment, and all she could hear were the thunderous steps of the beast. The crowd cheered on for her demise, of course, but these steps, coming close with each second, were all that mattered. She closed her temporary useless eyes and listened to the sounds. There is a cracking of muscles within the giant arm. The air was tearing as the bone axe had been sent into a deadly arc. Downward or upward? From which side? Her ears twitched, intaking the information. She felt fear across her body. If she makes a single mistake, she will feel how the bone axe first slices her skin, then the muscles, and finally the bones. All her life, gone in a flash. If she makes a mistake.
Everyone makes mistakes. Calm down, remember your trainings and face whatever comes to the best of your abilities. The teacher’s words came into her mind, and Annie followed the advice, deducing the most possible attack arc based on the sounds that she could hear. Her body moved aside and the ground beneath her legs shook when the axe landed on the ground. She charged forward, listening to the stomping and slithering sounds, running beneath the massive balk of the foe on all four, dodging the tail, relying only on the skills that the army, Dragena, and the teacher taught her, and coming safe on the other side.
Annie opened her eyes despite the pain that the overly bright colors of the world caused her. Palatine was clapping along to the wolfkins, stopping only when Doctor said something. Virginia was on the back of the creature. The creature itself was slowly turning toward Annie, the scales on its back exploded one after another, almost as if they were reactive armor, at the merest touch of Virginia’s legs, causing the wolf hag to jump from one scale to another.
"Annie! His eyes, now!" Virginia screamed, and Annie leaped up. Virginia wasn’t half as stupid as she thought she was! Annie’s paw landed on Virginia’s paw, and the rust-colored wolfkin threw her fellow up, while jumping away from the back of the creature to evade another explosion. Annie made a feint, as if trying to reach the collar, before smashing both her legs into the collar with syringes. The moment her legs pierced the metal circle around the creature’s thick neck, all of the substances within the syringes were injected into the bloodstream of the beast with a soft click of something within the device.
The roar of the creature became the tornado. The stream of air coming from its mouth was strong enough to fling Annie like a fly away from its body. She expected to be crashed against the stone floor, but Virginia caught Annie mid-fall, slowing down her fall and allowing both wolf hags to land safely. Meanwhile, the creature raged. The bone scales exploded one after the other, and the arms grew larger as the muscles within bulged the flesh. The eyes rolled in the eye sockets like billiard balls. Doctor looked at Hilda and the arena owner returned the glance.
"I will punish whoever made this collar." Hilda replied calmly to Doctor, while Palatine was laughing, writing something down in the notebook.
With a horrible wet click, all four eyes of the creature locked at the wolf hags. It charged into a gallop once more, covering the distance between the fighters far faster than before. The drool that fell from its mouth was melting the floor. Following the instructions that they had received from Ron, the wolf hags led the maddened beast after them, dodging at the last moment and allowing the beast to strike the ground in the northwest part of the arena. The stone floor cracked, and Annie felt like she was falling down.
"Why are the blast doors open!?" Hilda shouted.
Annie and Virginia fell into the darkness, landing on their feet. The steel corridor around them was slightly lit by the light that was coming above. The wolf hags had to smash several falling stones while they were busy trying to determine which was north and which was south. Their target lay to the north. Finally, spinning and uncertainty receded, by taking a moment to think and by thinking about the way they fell, both wolf hags charged to the north. They heard guards ahead and a massive fall of something enormous in the corridor behind them. The first guard who met them was bisected by Annie’s claws, his fingers never even managed to press the trigger as the weapon fall apart in his hands. His pitch-black uniform was stained with blood pouring from his body, and his visor came apart along with his head. The wolf hags only killed the guards who were in their way, leaving behind four dead bodies. The rest of the fourteen guards screamed when the raging beast pushed its bulk from the darkness, closing their jaws on them. Annie could hear the sounds of gunfire, broken bones, and exploding scales for some time, before the movement of the being resumed.
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"Time to get away from here!" Annie shouted and Virginia nodded, playing their assigned roles for the cameras in the corridor. They came to a fork, three paths were leading into different directions. Annie angrily snarled, burying her paw into a nearby terminal on a wall in a gesture of anger, hearing how their pursuer was coming closer, bending the very walls of the corridor with its bulk, "Dammit all! Which way?" She felt something strange was leaving her paw, running down her skin and entering the broken machine. Annie could only pray that they were far enough.
"Just charge ahead already!" Virginia shouted, running past Annie. Annie ran right after her the moment the ugly and ginormous head of the beast appeared from the darkness behind them. The beast pushed one bone axe forward, ruining the corridor and trying to reach the wolfkins. Turrets came from the ceiling, aiming at the wolfkins, from within openings in the walls, a series of combat bots on tracked legs came, preparing to fire rapid cannons at the wolfkins. Annie and Virginia charged past all of them, allowing the beast to deal with them.
The wolf hags saw a door ahead, leading into a room to the left. Worried about facing more robots, they knocked on the door, jumping away from the corridor, looking for some way out. Taking down the beast behind them in melee was out of the question, annoyed exploding scales would do them far more harm than it was worth. It was better to let the slavers deal with their creation themselves.
Someone charged across the corridor into the beast, pushing it back the way it came. Neither Annie nor Virginia saw this mysterious being, only a blur made of white and black, smelling of blood and pus. Explosions rang out across the corridor, causing the entire place to shake. Some titanic battle was going on there.
"That…" Virginia said, looking across the room. They saw parts of the people taken apart, left side of the room was covered by a white cloth, now covered in blood. A chair, dark from all the blood that had been spilled on it, stood before a piece of filming equipment. The body of a member of the Insectoid Commune, missing its guts and arms, sat in the chair in front of the countless pieces of filming equipment. The whole place reeked with pain and despair, "…That’s evil. They don’t just harvest the organs. They are making the blasted snuff films here."
"Snuff films?" Annie asked, unsure of what it was. She heard this before, she was sure of it, but could not remember what it meant.
"A torture porn." Virginia spat on the floor.
Who would even pay for something like this? Annie wondered, coming close to a dead person on a chair. Fights in the arena, she could understand, the surge of the adrenaline that you feel when you see several fighters struggling for their lives could lit the dark hearts of the perverts. Even sex slavery, disgusting as it was, was something that Annie could understand. There are freaks in the world who need this kind of drug. But this? The person's legs were swollen, and his or her skin was torn as a result of broken bones piercing it. Chitin plates on a person's chest were crudely torn away by some instrument. She felt a tremor underneath her legs, almost as if an earthquake was about to happen. A glass with eyes fell from a shelf of a cabinet within a room, breaking against the floor.
"Who is there?!" A door on the other side of the room opened, allowing several guards to step inside, accompanied by the man in the clothes of a butcher, wearing an apron of crimson. The tremors ended before the last one of them came inside. The man in butcher clothes looked at the wolfkins, "Escapees? Shoot them in the knees, we will use them as a warmup."
Before the guards managed to raise their weapons, the wolfkins were on them. Annie noticed complacency in the enemy’s movements, they were far too used to prey that didn’t fight back. Due to the fact that almost all slaves here wore slave collars, the guards were relaxed, too complacent.
And now that they were faced with a raging tide that were the wolfkins, it cost them their lives. Bullets hit the wall behind Annie, but she was already on the ceiling, jumping between two guards, slashing across their throats and tearing out their necks. Virginia punched through a guard in front of her, leaving a dying person twitching and gasping for air behind her while she moved on. In a panic, one of the guards shot his fellow, trying to hit Annie. The man in the apron first stepped back and then ran after he witnessed how six more guards were dead. Annie crushed a woman’s skull against the wall, turning around to see that Virginia was killing the last two guards. They said no word to each, tearing off the metal door and running down the corridor after the man. Their goal was to surrender… But right now, they wanted to cause as much destruction in this place as possible. The man ran across the corridor, barely managing to close another door behind himself, when claws pierced the surface of the door, causing him to scream in panic on the other side. Annie tore the chunk of metal from the door, pushing herself into the gap in metal and looking at the horrified man, who stood with his back to the wall, looking in fear at Annie.
She made a step toward him, hearing how Virginia pushed through the door. And then they heard a chomping sound to their left. The man before them smiled nervously when the wolfkins turned to see the source of the sound. The wolfkins were standing in another fork, with a way to the north being blocked by a wall. This place was brightly lit, allowing everyone to see dried up blood on the floor. A giant of a man was sitting with his back to the wall, right in the middle of a fork that connected three corridors. He wore a cocked hat on his head, a simple shirt, stained with red, and brown pants served as clothes. Next to him lay a bowl filled with human remains. The man lazily reached out with his hand, picking up the leg of a woman. He sniffed it briefly, before taking a bite. His pale-looking eyes looked at the wolfkins with boredom. A massive sword spear, within the man’s reach, was pressed to the wall.
"Doggies," The giant said, looking at the man in an apron, "You brought them for me to hunt them?" His voice was deep and slow.
The man wildly smiled, almost falling on his knees from relief, "Yes! Oh, yes, sir Huntsman! These are your new…"
"They broke into my place," Annie tensed upon hearing the familiar voice behind herself, a voice accompanied by the sound of steps and dragging something heavy across the floor, "They broke my things. They brought filth with them. And you ask my guest to deal with them instead of guarding my home?!"
Hecktricktsen came into view from the corridor behind the wolfkin, dragging the head of the beast behind himself. His dog's features were frowned in anger, his eyes were burning with a desire to kill and maim. He wore a white apron, stained with the blood of the killed beast, and rubber gloves. Annie felt fear run down her spine, ducking low to charge at this man. Neither she, not Virginia had any plans to surrender to… him. There was something in his face that was telling them that he will accept no surrender, he will give no quarter.
Hecktricktsen refused to change his walking pace when the wolfkins jumped at him. He looked straight at his minion, treating the claws that were aimed at his neck as an afterthought. One hand still on the head of the beast, he slapped with his free hand, knocking aside the clawed paws of Annie and Virginia and striking anew, giving each wolfkin a slap in the face, as if they were less than children to him. His hand was of normal size, he was barely taller than a male wolfkin, and yet his slap sent both of the wolf hags back with contemptuous ease. Annie made a pirouette in the air, landing on her paws and then on her arms, ready to charge again. Virginia landed on her feet, leaving prints on the floor. Both felt pain and light dizziness from his movement. Both failed to even react to him.
"Zenith." Hecktricktsen said, extending his free arm to them. Pain flooded over them, dropping the wolfkins on their knees. Annie felt a bite of Ygrite before. She felt the poisonous touch of the Chosen Prince's minions. But never, ever had she felt how every nerve in her body screamed from pain. It felt as if a fire was burning inside her, only the fire would eventually burn the person, while she felt the peak of pain again and again, without end. With but a gesture, their foe removed their ability to do anything but breathe in pain.
The man in the crimson apron screamed as well, when pale, mist-like jaws appeared around him. Whatever sort of power Hecktricktsen was using, the wolfkins felt only a tiny part of it. The nexus was the failed servant. The ghostly jaws closed on the man, and he gave a tiny scream, blood vessels exploding in his eyes, blood pouring from his nose. He felt like a bag, his heart stopped from the amount of pain inflicted upon him by a gesture.