Upon growing up, Aranea always tried to learn anything she could about her parents. By accessing the Net, she learned about her Dad’s childhood and even saw some family pictures of him smiling happily on lady Camelia’s lap during his time as a cub. He appeared frail in comparison to how she remembered him.
Dad’s life was pretty amazing. He won fourth place in the national singing festival when he was fourteen; he enrolled in UNU when he was sixteen; and he won the right to be tutored in the arts of a blade by First Sunblade himself when he was seventeen. At age twenty-four, he was carried off the battlefield by knight captain Tilden Summerspring.
After she learned about Tilden’s death, Aranea finally found the courage to research what happened to her father’s body. It warmed her heart that he was cleared of all charges postmortem, his body exhumed from the Pile of Betrayers, and buried with all due honors in Wintersong’s private resting chambers. His tombstone was made in the form of a statue, portraying him and Kalaisa holding their paws together. White and black, together at last.
From the shamans and warlord Zero, Aranea learned about Kalaisa, looking through some videos about her missions that involved her mother. Kalaisa was born in a litter made up of two females and three males, all perfectly healthy. In her youth, she showed her furious temper, dominating her own siblings and other cubs without a hint of mercy, leaving merely scraps for them in the pits.
Mom had four recorded losses. The first one was from Ashbringer, a fight started over bickering that Kalaisa was treating her males' lives too carelessly, and that challenge ended with a single headbutt that left Kalaisa with a fractured skull. From what Aranea was able to gather from the records, this loss put a check on Kalaisa's character, making her more tolerable and less cruel to others. Although the records simply stated that Kalaisa became more cowardly and showed weakness by apologizing to her brothers and sister.
The second defeat came against Janine; after an eight-hour fight, Kalaisa collapsed from exhaustion and blood loss, unable to outlast the warlord's indomitable endurance. Janine soon collapsed from blood loss. Kalaisa later fiercely argued that this was not a loss but a tie since Janine fell too. Her objections were dismissed by the shamans. Kalaisa took the entire matter to the state’s court, the only warlord to do so, losing the case.
The third loss was against Valerye Red Streak, a loss by a single punch that left Kalaisa with a shattered chest. And finally, the last loss was once more against Red Streak, during Valerye’s challenge. Cause of loss: Gave up at the start of the fight, cheering up the fellow warlord to win.
Kalaisa never challenged either Alpha or Zero, preferring to compete with Dragena, Janine, Martyshkina, Ygrite, and occasionally Ashbringer, often throwing joint parties for the packs, earning Ashbringer’s ire. During her time as a warlord, she knew her place.
This was no longer the case. Turning into the skinwalker gave her all the strength, speed, and agility she needed to match Alpha.
The skinwalker slithered away from the claws that pierced her side, her left arm grabbed Alpha’s right arm and stopped the thrust dead, not allowing Alpha to slice off the jaw. Kalaisa struck with her legs, burying her claws in Alpha’s belly, and jumped back, using the prime like a springboard.
Alpha groaned slightly, breaking the hold on her arm. The massive claws struck forward, closing around Kalaisa’s legs. Aranea saw how Alpha’s eyes narrowed in annoyance upon seeing that she couldn’t slice off the legs of her foe. The warlord instead threw the skinwalker over herself, sending her down like a comet into the concrete.
Everything shook. The force with which Kalaisa connected to the ground surpassed even the explosion of a bunker bomb. Cracks run around the street, swallowing entire houses. An explosion of dust and sand came up into Alpha’s face. Kalaisa arose from the explosion, almost leaning against Alpha.
The warlord made her next move, hitting a rising Kalaisa with a knee to the jaw, sending the skinwalker back into the range of her claws. The strike that was meant to slice away Kalaisa's head was met by the skinwalker’s claws, and the two opponents stopped, weaving a deadly net of cuts and slashes between themselves.
Aranea saw the reason behind Alpha’s actions. Even now, she was slightly bigger than Kalaisa, her arms and legs were longer. But the warlord’s own frame restricted her, her claws were like blades, they were unable to compete in agility with proper fingers. She had to keep Kalaisa at a distance to unleash the full potential of her deadly might.
Kalaisa had no such limitation, wielding her own claws like indestructible daggers. The skinwalker was healing even now, albeit slower than the skinwalker taken down by Eugenia. Her jaw was covered in flesh, and her eyes were filled with rage and happiness. Stubbornly and almost cheerfully, she tried to close in on Alpha, approaching the territory where the warlord would be helpless.
Whereas Alpha's every move was methodical, with a plan for follow-up, Kalaisa was madly flipping, spinning, and slashing with her claws. Upon concentrating, Aranea understood that none of her moves were done pointlessly. Kalaisa moved almost surgically; every movement, no matter how extreme, left cut after cut on Alpha's skin, bringing Kalaisa ever closer to her opponent.
And finally, allowing Alpha’s claws to tear off meat from her shoulder, the skinwalker charged in.
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Alpha stomped on the ground, creating a new crack that swallowed Kalaisa's left leg to the knee, bringing the skinwalker down. The warlord’s massive jaws opened, biting into the monster’s collarbone, and Kalaisa responded in kind, wresting her claws against Alpha’s and closing her jaws on Alpha’s left breast. The warlord shook with rage and struck with her knee.
The knee never connected. Kalaisa blocked the hit, stepping with her own right foot on Alpha’s left foot, wrapping her elongated fingers around the place where Alpha’s claws connected with her flesh. Still wrestling with the warlord, Kalaisa made a low kick with her free leg, throwing Alpha off balance, letting go of her leg and spun her in the air. Both Alpha and her foe tore chunks of flesh from each other, creating circles of blood in the air. In a flash of movement, Kalaisa’s right elbow ended up buried in Alpha’s belly, right into the wound, sending the warlord landing before Aranea, her left breast missing.
Kalaisa bent her knees and disappeared, darting forth like a flash of lightning. Aranea recognized this move. Back in her time with the Tribe, her mother was known as the Darling. She got this nickname after she dominated warlord Ygrite without any weapons, simply disappearing before the woman and reappearing behind her, arms spread. None saw what exactly happened, but Ygrite’s tendons were sliced clean, her arms and legs were covered in countless cuts. Instead of letting the warlord fall, Kalaisa caught the wounded woman, hugging her gently.
This was the move that Kalaisa attempted to pull here. She was known neither for her mastery with ranged weapons or skills with melee weapons nor for her incredible durability. No, Kalaisa always relied on her natural claws and her speed, outpacing any and all foes.
Until today.
Kalaisa came crashing against Alpha like a bullet fired from an anti-matter sniper rifle coming against a near-indestructible crawler’s armor. The sonic boom created by two fighters threw Aranea and the redhorn against the wall, robbing them of all mobility. Blood vessels popped in Aranea's eyes from the sheer strain that the wind hit her with.
Finally, the howling wind and blinding flash between the two opponents stopped, showing Alpha holding Kalaisa with the left paw, burying her claws deep into the enemy’s flesh. The warlord’s arms and legs were covered by shallow slashes, almost all attacks from her foe were either blocked or deflected. Kalaisa paws missed Alpha’s head by a hair, tearing through the left and right ears. Alpha’s head moved, and Kalaisa weaved to the side, twisting her neck impossibly to evade the headbutt.
"Ha-ha! It won’t work anymore! Die, Ferret!!! I mean Alpha!" Kalaisa giggled madly, trying to close her own claws at Alpha’s neck.
"I won’t let you hurt the sister. Bare the neck or be devoured." Alpha said simply, sending Kalaisa flying with one arm.
The skinwalker’s eyes widened in shock. Her body cartwheeled through the air, leaving craters in the ground each time her head connected to it with the force of an explosion. Her body speared through the five houses, stopping in the sixth and becoming buried under rubble.
"I guess it's my turn now," The soultaker stood up, energy running across his horn. "Jonathan Redhorn, at your service, ladies. Let’s put our differences aside and kill this creature before it kills our people."
"Idiot!" Alpha snarled, standing up. Her coat was destroyed, the blood was running down her body, streaks of white smoke were rising from the edges of her grievous wounds. An intestine fell from the wound on her belly, and the warlord casually pushed it back inside. "You attack her, and she will be focused on you. Contact the rabble you call fighters and demand a ceasefire, I will deal with her myself. No one else is getting anywhere close to her, am I understood temporary military commander Aranea?"
"Crystal clear!" Aranea saluted her, allowing the helmet to close around her head. She checked on her troops. Kaleb led the defense of the safehouse, allowing Kate to lead civilians to safety. Leila seemed to have everything under control in her own base. Tiny and Gin used heavy ordinance to collapse soultakers' tunnels, and now they were doing something with Alpha’s power armor. There was no sign of Jekaterina, but Sonya's group was still alive and well. They reported that they lost sight of the enemy.
Kalaisa broke from the rubble, raising her head to the skies. A leer of pure happiness came upon the monstrous face, while she was looking for something. Her chest expanded, pushed way beyond anything natural by her lungs, forcing the ribs to push the skin to the point of tearing. The skinwalker made two deliberately slow breaths. In a moment, a figure came down from the skies, bringing the scythe’s blade down upon the enemy’s head.
The skinwalker roared. Her roar turned a nearby wall into dust, spreading the wave of destruction even further, cracking concrete on the ground and reducing houses to pieces of rubble. There was a mix of ancient rage, almost animal glee, and terrifying horror in her wordless roar. And this mighty roar stopped Jekaterina in the air, creating a dome of protection around the skinwalker. The soultaker slid across this dome, leaping across the destruction to stand next to the warlord.
"Hostis humani generis is in the town. All fighting is to cease immediately. K… A skinwalker is here. All forces are to protect civilians, do not, I repeat, do not point the weapons at this skinwalker. Warlord Alpha’s orders."
"All soldiers are to immediately stop engaging the foes and join forces with the reclaimers," Jekaterina said coldly, one of her lenses destroyed, revealing an eye beneath. "We have detected a skinwalker, the ceasefire is in effect until the beast is dead and buried.”
The scythe in the Soultaker’s arms moved, aiming to slice a piece of rubble that Kalaisa threw at Aranea. Alpha moved faster, evaporating the rock with a single thrust.
"You again?" Jekaterina glanced at Aranea. "I recognize this voice anywhere by now. It seems fate has cursed me to save your life again and again. You've grown up a little since we last met. Are you a kid or something?"
"No." Aranea replied coolly, remembering her dead soldiers felled by this woman.
"Who is saving who, flea?" Alpha sniffed the air. "Stand back and let me work."
"Let me work, this is what you should have said, flesh mountain. I culled some of their kind before," Jekaterina raised her scythe, looking at the skinwalker. "Dragena fell by my hand. Will this be a problem?"
"No. To both. You've never faced anyone like her before, and Dragena succumbed to a proper challenge. There is no blood debt between you and us. For your sake, stand back and guard the people." Alpha replied to the Soultaker.
"More toys to knock around!" Kalaisa clapped her paws, happy like a cub, the horrible injury around her collarbone had already started to heal. "First I play, then I feed!"
"Reclaimers and soultakers, stand back. For the crimes of daring to set foot in my town, daring to desecrate the flesh of my people, daring to kill my people, I, Jekaterina Soultaker, sentence you to death. I will take the beast's head and mount it atop my throne." Jekaterina pointed her scythe at the foe.