The shield station was positioned in the western mountain range. Engineers from the state shaved the top of the mountain range, creating a smooth surface and a hastily assembled shield station. From an outsider's point of view, this was a rectangular building surrounded by stone walls. Several trenches and bunkers were positioned to the north of the mountain range. The air in the distance trembled as a result of the shield generator being active all the time. From the gates leading inside the facility, Aranea could see the cliffs to the north. On the mountain's rim, several patrol towers were built, projectors are currently turned off.
As the transport approached the shield station's entrance, several drones flew from the walls, scanning machines before massive gates were opened. Aranea and her pack jumped above and were greeted by two men. Sergeant Alek, now back in action. The man was dressed in a camouflage uniform of sand color, below it was a lighter model of power armor, one that was meant to be used for recon operations. Steel still covered the left side of his face, but now there were no longer any signs of rejection of metal on the skin, his remaining natural skin was as smooth as it possibly could be. He was without a helmet, sweating profoundly. Lieutenant Marveni Ursico, dressed in a black carapace pilot suit, stood nearby. A strange, transparent substance covered his entire face and neck, black wires ran from underneath his suit to his temples, disappearing under the skin. Not a single drop of sweat was on his face, yet his skin looked paler than usual. Aranea was worried about the man for a second before he smiled and saluted her.
"Wolf hag, glad to see you're still alive." He bared his neck, and Aranea came to attention, putting her helmet on and saluting both men by putting her paw to her head. At this gesture, Alek tried to bare his throat as well.
"Don’t mock our traditions," The shaman strictly looked at the badly made gesture of the sergeant, "Ask yourself, how am I supposed to bite you when your head is this low? Put your head higher. No, not like this, do you want to twist your head or something?" She shook her head, "Barbarian."
"I'm sure he means well," Aranea said in an amiable tone and the shaman deeply bowed to the man in apology, "Lieutenant Ursico, wolf hag Aranea here to…"
"At ease, wolf hag." Ursico shifted his weight and stood more casually, "There was a... promotion of sorts for you at the request of a certain someone," He glanced at Leila briefly, "You now have the same authority as me. Congratulation on your promotion."
Wolfkins of the Wolf Tribe were required by state law to be at the bottom of the totem pole of the state's command structure. This law was made by the blessed mother herself. Even the warlords were merely equal to the captains and strategists of the army. For a wolf hag to be equal to a lieutenant… Such things were unheard of.
"I am thanking you for such good news," Aranea responded, taking off her helmet, her brows furrowed in doubt, "Yet I have no formal military training. I have no idea how to command non-wolfkin soldiers, how to place defenses, or how to assemble logistical lines. I would like you to remain in charge, if possible. Of course, all credit will go to you."
"Never was the one to care about promotions," Ursico simply shrugged his shoulders, his carapace made a small metal sound upon him moving, "Let’s go inside, before the sergeant boils out here like an egg." He gestured with his hand, beckoning the group to follow him.
A large oval mechanic suit was standing behind the front gates, nearby stood two more such suits. Their pilots were standing at attention, but the lieutenant waved them through, allowing them to relax. Two large vehicles capable of releasing UAVs were standing inside, their hulls open, revealing countless drones inside, waiting to be unleashed. The place was staffed with people, at each step, Aranea saw soldiers in power armor and engineers in exoskeletons, accompanied by mechanical drones. A group of workers were busy installing anti-air guns in the ground before the shield station.
"Pardon the mess." Ursico nodded at the suits, "With so many abnormals showing up among Resistance members, command gave the order for us to change from tanks to X-015 suits. It takes quite a while to adjust to them. The lieutenant pointed at the wires in his temples, refusing to elaborate further.
"We call them deliverers." The sergeant whispered, "Cause when you see them working in tight spaces… Boy do they pack a punch."
"The male will remain silent while the leaders speak. Show some respect to your superior," The shaman said with a growl in her voice.
"We will need to find a way to loosen you up…" The shaman disappeared from the place, suddenly walking side by side with Alek, who was five steps ahead of her. Even though Aranea only saw the Scarred One's blurred movement, for normal people, it must have looked like a strange teleportation; "Hey, the offer still stands," With brazen disobedience, the sergeant responded, lifting his hands up in peace, "Drinks on me tonight. You want to show me how tough you are, let’s test you."
"Barbarian." Scarred One looked down at the man, planning to bite him.
"Shaman. Will you put shame on our pack by backing away from this challenge?" The wolf hag asked, trying to stop the fight from happening.
"My apologies, wolf hag," The shaman suddenly became embarassed, "I can’t in good conscience accept the challenge. While I am certain of my inevitable victory, it is a custom among normies that the loser pays for both contestants," Aranea briefly wondered just how the shaman knew about this, "Shamans do not receive tokens for our services. If I lose, I'll have nothing to pay with."
"Sergeant. If you're in such good spirits, you'll stay until the evening, showing the shaman around our positions, including where we've planted ambushes and mines. I expect you to cover the entire perimeter by evening," Ursico smiled with a pleasant smile, "And you will also represent the honor of our regiment during your evening challenge. This means that you will pay for them both in any case. I wish you the best of luck and have full confidence in your abilities." He slapped the man across his back, "Also, the name for our mechanical suits is X-015. I am sure that you will remember it after cleaning all the toilets in the shield station tomorrow."
Ursico showed Aranea where the wolfkins would be staying. On the east side of the building, large barracks were made for them. They will be sharing this place with a few normies, members of Alek’s recon team, and a few soldiers. But engineers put some space between both normies and new breeds, trying to keep them separate from each other as much as possible. While the pack was settling down, the shaman and sergeant left to check up on the surrounding area around the shield station, while the lieutenant took Aranea away to show her the thing they must protect.
It was located right in the center of the facility. A large mechanism was placed in a three-story-tall room. To Aranea, it looked like a metallic flower. At the base of it was a thick metal pillar, four meters in width. On top of the pillar was an enormously large round antenna that covered most of the upper part of the room. The device was slowly humming, singing its 'song' while it created a forcefield around Chokepoint A.
"This is it," Ursico said, pointing to the massive device inside the room. "The engineers assured me that the shield station will only provide the necessary coverage from this location. Build it any lower and the mountains will prevent the spread of the shield."
"Have there been any attacks on our positions here?" Aranea asked, walking around the device. Stairs led to the round metal platform built around the middle of a metal pillar, glowing terminals were placed on the platform.
"Just some minor artillery fire. It stopped soon enough after the Resistance saw that they had caused us zero problems. Enemy forces apparently do not dare to face us head on, even our scout parties face no resistance going north so far." The lieutenant explained, standing in the middle of the room with his hands behind his back. On the second floor of the room, there were metallic walkways that ran across the wall of the room. The guards were standing there, looking like unmoving statues, watching over the shield generator. "Anyway, one last thing that you should know. Make sure that none of your people will smoke here," Ursico pointed at the small dots on the ceiling of the room, "The engineers, in their wisdom, decided not to use the regular water fire extinguishing system to combat fire but instead installed a powder type fire extinguishing system. One of my idiots already tried to smoke here, now he and two others are in the hospital with minerals in their lungs. The damn thing stops fire dead, but spirits save you if you inhale it. With this, I am finishing our tour, with your permission, I must leave to carry on my own training."
Aranea thanked the man and went to her own pack. For the rest of the day, she was busy assigning tasks to her new pack and forming patrol teams around the area. They were horribly undermanned here, while nearly three thousand soldiers protected the western mountain range, all of them were normies. The only new breeds here were Aranea and her pack. Sonya spent her daytime finding training areas for the pack. She finally decided on a small canyon near the eastern mountain range. The wolfkins of Martyshkina were using it, so it was good enough for Janine’s troops as well. Leila went down to the hospital to aid the wounded. Aranea felt guilty, but deep down she was glad that the half-wyrm was gone. She was afraid of her. Twice in her life, Aranea suffered when someone got into her head. She never wanted to experience such a thing again.
When night came and the sun set, Aranea retreated to one of the empty rooms. She put on her helmet, calling Kate and Kaleb. The image came to life, revealing a sleeping Kaleb on his bed. The man tried to curl, but pain in the remains of his leg stopped him. Instead, he was stopped halfway. What surprised Aranea were the headphones on his ears, her enhanced hearing told her that they were playing some calming music. The wolf hag smiled and wanted to disconnect when something turned the camera to Kate, and Aranea blinked.
"Surprise! I bet you did not expect to see this," Kate said in an unusually cheerful and happy voice. Her body, still without her natural hands and legs, was lying on her bed. She still had popped veins in her eyes, likely the result of nightmares. And yet she had a new set of arms. From behind her back came four thin metal legs, reminding Aranea of the legs of insectoids. They were of an orange color, connected to a weird metallic jacket that was put on Kate’s body.
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"How?" Aranea asked, surprised.
It's all thanks to Sly! Can you imagine, he came with the reports that I asked for today and also brought this!" Kate almost shouted from happiness, but then threw a glance at the sleeping Kaleb and began to whisper, "They connect to my spine via a set of needles. Sly said that it was a prototype of something. Poor boy, he spent quite a time putting this on me, but now I can do stuff like this!"
The metal legs to the left of Kate’s body moved toward the nearby table. Glasses and plates stood on it, along with a faintly frosted water pitcher. Metal legs slide from two sides of the water pitcher, lifting it into the air, turning it around, and pouring water into one of the glasses. Kate stuck out her tongue in effort; sweat appeared on her brow as she carefully picked up the glass, slowly reaching it to her snout, opening her jaws, and drinking from it. Then she put it back.
"Pretty cool, eh?" The scout asked in excitement, "I no longer need anyone to help me drink. I can even eat with them, though my blankets get dirty when I drop food, so I still have to rely on Kaleb for this."
Kate looked at the remains of food on the table with barely contained hunger. One of the metal legs twitched, but the scout forced herself to be still, shaking her head. One of the metal legs reached for a few photos on the floor.
"Kate if you want to eat, wake up Kaleb. Or shout to the doctors…" Aranea spoke in a worried tone, but she was cut off by the scout's guilty expression.
"No. You have no idea how tired he gets watching over me each day. I am always hungry nowadays. Doctors say that my body is growing. Again. I am not sure what is happening, but somehow, I do not freak out this time," She smiled, her voice becoming a soft whisper, "I have decided. If he still wants to be with me, I will stay with him this time. Someone needs to watch over him and… I will remove my scars, I will change, I will become a better person. Not just for him, but for all of us."
Kate worked with her metal hands, picking up papers that were scattered around her bed, lifting them up on the bed. The halfbreed smiled looking at this picture. Kate still looked bad, but there was something new about her. Some new dedication, some weird determination, was now in the eyes of the scout. Her friend finally decided to accept herself for who she is and live on.
Maybe if she can do it, so can you. The familiar voice whispered gently inside Aranea’s head, and she felt a tingle of fear. It was impossible. No way it could be her. Aranea was hallucinating again, that’s all.
"Anyway, here is the deal," The metal hands of Kate rose up, lifting the photos. They showed the faces of mostly familiar people to Aranea. Yasen. Blaguna, Kate's hand trembled slightly as she lifted her photo, she tried to look tough, yet a hint of panic ran behind her eyes. Next came Chort. Then the woman with the scythe and the metallic man, "First is Yasen. He wields the power of kinetic manipulation. By this, I mean he can send off blasts of kinetic force from his body and even create barriers of them before himself. He thinks himself hot shit, but I think we can all agree that there is something off about him. Intelligence believes that he is a coward. He only engages against someone he can beat into submission or when he is surrounded by his allies. After him, Blaguna. She has the ability to emit mist that consumes matter... And she is mad. Really, really mad. Kill her from afar the moment you get the chance, do not speak with her. After her comes Chort. This one is weird. We usually know the true name of our enemy, but he is a mystery, despite his fame…"
"Fame?" Aranea raised her ears. Until she met him in battle over the convoy, she had never heard a single thing about him.
"Yes," Kate blinked, pushing away her fear and tossing the photo of Blaguna aside, "He is a well-known mercenary in the Ravaged Lands." When he kills someone, he always makes sure to leave a mark indicating that it was his doing. He is obsessed with making a legacy for himself, he has killed wolfkins, normies, abnormals of every kind… The only ones whom he has never had the chance to kill so far are wyrms and skinwalkers, of course. Despite all of this, we still have no idea what his power is. Some people claim that he can become a monster. Other than that, he just punches really hard. And others say that he can summon monsters. Reports are not conclusive. This leaves us with Jekaterina Glawish, leader of the Soultakers. This will take a while."
Kate put photos on the bed and reached for the water pitcher, pouring herself another glass before drinking. Then she continued:
"The Soultakers tribe was originally built on the belief that there are two kinds of people. Worthy ones and unworthy ones. The worthy ones are citizens. They are allowed to serve in the military and rule. The unworthy ones are slaves. Almost all their upper class, priests, and government are made of women, they distrust males for some reasons," Kate chuckled and looked at sleeping Kaleb with gentle eyes, "Sorta like us, I guess. Strangely, whenever our scouts captured a high-ranking female enemy, she simply died. Her heart just stops when she understands that she is captured. Intelligence speculates that this is because of some mental block or training. So far, no such thing with their males, prisoners among their ranks are healthy, but we only captured grunts."
"Anyway, back to Jekaterina. She was born as one of the unworthy ones. When she was six years old, priests took her away in order to sacrifice her to the gods. Three times they removed all organs from her, three times she regrew her insides, screaming in pain. In confusion, they send her off to work in the mines, where she and her brother spend the next twelve years, until one day she and her fellow slaves stumble upon a long-lost bunker from the old world. It is there that she found her scythe, known as the Reaper of Lies. With weapons and gear inside, the slaves run off, starting a mercenary group. The leader of the group was apparently getting worried that Jekaterina might usurp power from him and contacted the priests of the Soultakers. Together they lay an ambush… But this did not end as they expected. By the end of the day, Jekaterina was sitting atop piles of her assailants' bodies. At the end of the second day, she marched to the capital of the Soultakers and usurped power. Everybody expected that she would kill the families of those who wronged her, but she merely imprisoned priests and allowed their families to live. Then she abolished the worthy and unworthy system. Since then, Jekaterina has been in power for thirty years, trying to remove barriers between males and females. But she is not very good at this, her talent lies in war. She is an extremely dangerous opponent, her forces are competent, and Jekaterina herself can often be found on the front lines. If you see her, run or surrender. She can’t be killed, not by us anyway, and she is easily standing at a warlord’s level."
"And the last one?" Aranea asked about the mechanical man.
"No idea. The Bento tribe is weird and too distant for our scouts so far. We have too little information about him, only his name is known, Tlaltzin Bento," Kate responded in a sorry voice, "I will try to dig up some information on him, but no luck so far. Now I need you to do me a solid."
"Hm?"
"Call the wyrm spawn here. I need to have a chit-chat with her."
"Why? Kate, after what she did to you…"
"This is exactly why I need to talk to her!" Kate’s voice rose in anger before she calmed herself, "Listen, I want to know her. For years, I lived in fear of using my secondary power, because I believed it to be a curse. She uses her power on others left and right. Someone needs to explain to her why messing with the heads of others is bad."
Aranea wanted to argue, wanted to point out that Leila was older than either of them. But then she simply nodded. Leila’s power scared the wolf hag, it scared her to death. Kate was right, someone needed to reign in the half-wyrm.
She left the connection on and walked around the barracks, but Leila was nowhere to be found. Several members of her pack were already snoring, but the rest were still outside, either on patrol or... Aranea had an epiphany and dashed to a small area to the north of the building. This place was given for officers to wind up and relax, but since no one in their right mind would go down during the night, regular soldiers were also present here, drinking and eating. Even though over a hundred people were present here, the place was surprisingly clean. Ten tables were woefully insufficient for such a large gathering, so some bright mind dragged a few couches from somewhere. This time, soldiers, engineers, a few members of the Aranea's pack, and even officers, were keeping their distance from the center of the room. There was a drinking contest in the middle of the room, and sergeant Alek tried his hardest to outdrink Scarred One as the crowd cheered them on. Most soldiers cheered for Alek, but to Aranea's surprise, the pilots of the mechanical suits and engineers were vehemently pro-shaman.
Tiny and Gin were sitting on the couch near the corner of the room, arguing with three members of the work team who shared seats with them. Gin was adamant that it was the best beer he had ever tasted in his life, while the work team tried to persuade him that local beer tasted like piss. The owner of this place looked at this scene with disapproval and called one of his helpers, sending a man into the back room with free glasses of beer. Tiny clenched her fists, looking at the contest between the shaman and the soldier. Tiny was the only member of the pack not currently dressed in armor. Instead, she was dressed in a black t-shirt and brown pants.
As the shaman and sergeant picked up the pace, the number of empty glasses gradually increased. Neither of them bothered with the bread on the table, each contestant was fully concentrated on seeing the opposition fall first.
Aranea noticed Leila sitting on a chair near the bar, drinking orange juice. The half-wyrm was still wearing her new armor, her helmet was fastened around her waist, and both of her wings were tightly pressed against her shoulders to make room for others. Aranea pushed through a group of people and put her hand on Leila’s shoulder, making her turn around.
"Greetings, wolf hag. Care to join me?" She pointed at a near-empty glass near her. People cheered as the pair in the center finished another round, sound made Leila smile, "The sergeant is cheating. There is something with his stomach—something that allows him to drink alcohol without getting drunk. The problem is, he is up against someone who has a stomach twice his own size. If the shaman can hold out...
The helper returned from the back door, bringing three glasses to members of the work team near Gin. Instead of drinking, they gifted all three glasses to Gin, making the owner grab his head in a weird gesture of desperation.
"I need you to follow me." Aranea quickly explained the situation, and Leila nodded, changing her expression briefly. The half-wyrm dropped tokens for juice just as Gin started coughing, allowing Tiny to lead him away as well. Instead of following the wolf hag to the barracks, Gin and Tiny left together for the cliffs to watch the night sky. Gin quietly whispered that he thought that the work team was right about local beer.
Aranea made sure that Leila got into the room and connected her own helmet to Kate’s communication device before leaving. Out of curiosity, the wolf hag put on her own helmet to listen to the discussion between the two.
"Umh… Hi there, Kate. You look like a spider today," The half-wyrm said shyly, "what are we going to talk about tonight?"
"No idea, this whole 'talking things out' is a bit new to me. Let us start from the very beginning," Kate offered in a somewhat relaxed voice, amused at the comparison to the spider, "I will tell you about my childhood, you will tell me about yours. Then we will see where we can go from here. I was born to…"
Aranea quickly turned off communication in order not to listen to Kate’s secrets. She walked to her bed and laid down.
"Tilden, Blaguna, Yasen. Academician." Aranea whispered, trying to sleep. However, dreams refused to come.
Mom, dad, she thought, not bothering to remove her armor, Sorry for not speaking to you for so long. I am fine. To be honest, I am a bit scared, but I will be fine.
She tried to close her eyes, but a strange feeling kept her awake. It was as if she should have said something but refused to. The halfbreed took a deep breath and continued to speak in her mind:
I just don’t see how I can change my new tribe. I am afraid that more members of my pack will die. I am afraid that I will lose all my friends and be left alone again. I am afraid that someone will mess with my mind again. I am afraid that I will hurt members of my pack. Mom, dad… Are you happy where you are right now? Can you forgive me for what I have done to you? There was no answer, but then again, she never expected one. Some things just can’t be fixed.
Aranea turned to the other side. She can only take one step after another and hope that one day she will be able to atone for her sin. She curled into a ball and fell asleep.