Janine ran across the rooftops, not so much jumping from one to the next as stepping on the next roof and hearing the stone crack beneath her legs. Martyshkina stopped behind, saving another family from a burning apartment. Janine’s heart strained from the fear of losing her sons, but she refused to fault her friend for this decision. Normies had a right to expect their protection. They can’t just let them die.
As she got closer to the pillar of smoke ahead, she started hearing the barking of machineguns and the roars of her kin. Janine rushed to the final roof before herself, looking down on the street.
The reclaimers were pinned. Cristobo and Jacomie probably returned in the middle of a three-car convoy when the attack hit them. The first car in the convoy had its driver’s seat riddled with armor-piercing bullets. Following that, the rear car started moving back when something cleaved its trunk and passenger seat in two. Judging by the flames coming from the car, the foe also threw a grenade in, finishing whoever remained. The car carrying the captain was now smashed into a wall; its side bore a huge dent, and the passenger door was torn wide open.
Janine stopped trying to piece together the puzzle of the attack and only focused on the situation at hand. Bogdan and Marco hid themselves behind the car. Bogdan was firing shots from a pistol into the enemies on the street, and Marco tried desperately to stop the flow of blood from Cristobo’s missing leg. Whoever sliced the captain, he cleanly took everything below the knee. Jacomie sat on the ground next to them, hyperventilating, her shaking hand clutching a pistol, and another hand pressing against a bandaged wound in her side.
And the street itself turned into a battlefield. Several soldiers lay gunned down, with many more civilians either rolling at the sidewalks from grievous wounds or lying limp on the stones with pools of red forming beneath them. Several police officers and four Ice Fangs joined the ranks of the deceased, and Kalaisa along with Anji were doing their best not to die against a duo of lean clowns, aided by three new breeds, looking strikingly like the one Janine killed back in the north.
Four insectoid legs in place of humanoid legs. Arms, with impressive muscles, and scarred chitin plates covering parts of the body at random, growing like cancerous growths in place of skin. There were differences among them, however. The three were undeniably kin, but each of them had their own eye color, and one had skin of a coal color. This cleared it; they were not a tribe, not fully.
Interesting, but irrelevant for now. It had only taken Janine a second to observe the field before bloodlust drove her into combat.
The Warlord jumped, keeping track of the foes with whom Anji and Kalaisa were fighting. Both women were strong; she half-admitted them being stronger than Anissa and Impatient One. Even without their PAs, they could have depopulated a small settlement through sheer speed alone. Yet now their foes weaved around them like threads of silk, almost sliding off cruel thrusts meant to disembowel them. Both foes were dressed in brightly colored skintight suits with white masks, one smiling and the other frowning, hiding their faces.
Janine landed on the new breed, who fired a machine gun at the convoy car. Her legs came down upon the woman’s shoulders, the claws pierced the skin and muscles and splintered bones, leaving the attacker to shriek in a high-pitched voice. Janine’s massive weight had carried her momentum even further, fully tearing half of her foe’s shoulders before her legs finally slammed into the stone, scarring the woman’s body with two red lines.
Screaming from pain, her weapon fell from her limp arm, the attacker skittered back, and Janine grabbed her by the back of the head, looking into her pleading and crying face. With just her legs remaining, she was probably not a threat… The people. My sons. You threatened them. Hurt them. Janine’s jaws opened wide, ignoring the begging in the broken Common. The woman gave one last muffled shriek of pain and shuddered, her skull pulverized by the mighty chompers.
“Death. Death!” Janine roared, letting the flesh down her throat and leaving her faceless body to fall to the ground, legs twitching.
She rushed forward, evading a burst of fire from a pulse rifle that riddled the corpse behind her with new holes. In the battle's aftermath for the settlement, the engineers have made quite a bit of progress in understanding the technology behind enemy weapons. Most of them were using standard armor-piercing rifles, but their riders used energy weapons.
The principle behind its use was simple. A single energy particle was sped up all the way to Mach 10 and released at the enemy through the barrel. The weapon itself looked like a normal rifle, but in reality, it had a small energy generator above the trigger. The weapon could easily overheat from prolonged use, and it needed to use expensive energy cells for reloading. In return, the pulse rifle has provided excellent accuracy due to a lack of recoil and enough punching force to pierce through power armor with relative ease.
For all her speed, Janine wasn’t even close to being able to dodge these fast-moving energy projectiles, but her eyes were locked on the weapon in the attacker’s hands. To hit her, he first needed to catch her in his aim. And Janine refused to allow him this courtesy, circling around the man.
He cursed, jerking his finger away from the trigger when heat struck, and a new growl left Janine’s lips. Propelling herself with all fours, she tacked the attacker, beating him off his legs. They flew three meters and slammed into a wall, leaving just rubble in their wake. Legs ending up with sharp hoods tried to position themselves to pierce her sides. Janine grabbed all four of his legs at their joins, two legs in each paw, and squeezed.
What left the man’s lips wasn’t exactly a squeal of pain but rather a strained rasp. His knees snapped like straws, leaving him bleeding from four stumps. In one last desperate attempt, the new breed has reached for a sword on his belt, crawling away from Janine. Standing up on one arm, the man made one desperate slash at the Warlord.
Janine kicked. The claws of her foot broke the golden-coated metal and went forth, finding his neck. Blue eyes widened in shock, but not a word left the attacker’s wide-open mouth as his head toppled down.
“Shit steel.” Janine spat on the dead body.
She came outside to see the scene of carnage. The two ridiculous-looking fools had actually pressed Kalaisa and Anji. Where the Wolfkins acted recklessly, each eager to claim a kill for herself, only blocking grazing blows intended for the ally out of habit, their opponents turned the battle into a dance. Each step betrayed inhuman fluidity; rather than block the incoming attack, the weird fighters took the claws on their daggers, allowing their arms to be pushed back almost to the point of snapping, before whipping them back into position with a sudden burst of movement.
The clowns moved on their toes, spinning and dodging shots from the Ice Fangs. A knight captain holstered his emptied gun and rushed to aid the Wolf Hags, beating aside the dagger aimed for Anji’s neck. Immediately, the laughing clown spun around, the tip of her leg barely touching the knight captain’s forearm. And it was enough to leave a dent and make him release his round shield. Laughing, the clown turned to Kalaisa, who struck at the figure from behind, exposing her back to the strike from behind.
And the Ice Fang fell for it. He drove the clown into Kalaisa’s reach, missing his own swing by the hair, and in the process exposed himself by leaning forward. In a single graceful movement, the figure in the laughing mask leaned back, evading the horizontal kick of Kalaisa’s claws, only to bury the curved daggers into a space between the rubbered neck protection and gorget, reaching all the way to the foundation of his neck. His body still stood, not believing in its own demise, and the clown made a graceful somersault back, mounting the dying man and kicking him into Kalaisa.
The frowning clown jumped back from Anji, gracefully stopping just out of reach of her claws. With blinding speed, the twin daggers rose and blocked a sudden thrust aimed at the neck, sending the figure from the middle of the road to the sidewalks. Right amidst Wolfkins and Ice Fangs.
Janine cried out a warning, but it was too late. The clown rolled on the ground like a rag, faking taking damage. Appearing amidst the angry crowd, the figure spun on its back, slicing legs all around it and leaving the soldiers howling from pain as they fell to the ground. This wasn’t a mad lashing; rather, each strike was made with chirurgical accuracy. The daggers cut open the veins of the Wolfkins, who wore no power armor, and struck at the joints of the ice fangs, easily slicing through their weakened bones and leaving cripples behind.
My soldiers. Janine felt a vein pop in her eye at the sight of a dagger coming through the snout of one of her scouts. The woman took a leave for today. And now she was dead. My cousins.
“I’ll murder you and devour your guts for dinner!” Anji shouted, jumping after her foe.
Janine rushed after her, knowing full well that the stubborn girl had made a mistake. She got baited. As cruel as it was, this particular massacre was intended to enrage the fighters. The clowns quickly made the assessment that it would take too long to overcome their opponents in a fair way and purposely allowed the involvement of the others. Where Kalaisa had thrown the dead ice fang away from her, coming after her foe with cold determination, Anji gave in to rage.
And it blinded her. Still in the air, she had no opportunity to evade or block an attack when the frowning clown jumped off the concrete, sending itself up with just its back. The lean and nimble body easily evaded incoming claws, leaving deep cuts on Anji’s left leg and arm. The Wolf Hag landed on the stones; her legs gave in, and drool mixed with blood came from her mouth as her opponent positioned itself behind her for a last strike.
And turned its torso around, taking Janine’s claws onto the daggers. The Warlord calmly closed her claws around the enemy’s weapons, remembering the opponent’s style. She whipped a low kick with her right leg, beating the footing off the enemy, and slammed the clown into the stone, creating a small explosion of sand and dust around them. Before she could capitalize on the advantage, a blinding streak pierced the dust cloud, forcing her to block it.
A dagger smacked against her claws, distracting Janine. The frowning clown, who had writhed itself free during this brief respite, beat the weapon back into the laughing clown’s hand after Janine smacked it aside. At Janine’s gesture, Kalaisa rushed to Anji’s side, leaving Janine alone against two foes, who had toyed with some of the strongest Wolf Hags in the Tribe.
“Anji!” Kalaisa tore off her shirt, making crude tourniquets to halt the bleeding.
“Fucking poison, Kali.” Anji raised a trembling paw, trying to focus her vision. “Kali? Are you here? Can’t see. Can barely hear. Fainting. Tell the Warlord…”
“I know,” Janine said, glaring at the two unmoving foes. “Rest, soldier.”
“Have we ever hunted a Warlord, Adonis?” The laughing clown sang gently; her feminine voice sounded like the murmur of a running river.
“No, dear Heika. This one is the first,” purred the frowning clown, sending his daggers into a spin. His voice reminded Janine of the rustle of a silk dress she had seen on a market once.
“An offering worthy of the Khan of Khans’ attention.” Heika bent her knees, spreading her arms wide. “Let’s make it beautiful.”
Janine made a stomp. The impact from her step had made the car’s wreckage shake and caused the wounded to rise slightly in the air, groaning from pain. The clowns merely jumped back, laughing melodically at this futile show of force.
The concrete around her legs trembled like water; cracks ruined the stone surface, spitting out rubble. With one paw Janine slapped the flying rubble straight into Heika’s face and charged ahead, taking Adonis’ daggers on her claws. She heard the chittering metal behind her as Heika blocked the rain of stones and ignored it, ending up in a blindingly fast contest of cuts and slashes.
She could see it now. A green sludge, almost invisible to the naked eye, coating the very edge of her enemy’s blade. A poison potent enough to drop Anji in several cuts. Janine went back and forth with the killer, getting increasingly annoyed. The foe refused to stand and fight, dancing just outside of her reach and using her own strength to move himself away from the range. Spying Heika behind herself, Janine relaxed.
Fine then. Slow way. A growl left her lips, commanding nearby Wolfkins to care for the wounded. A dagger flew on her back, and Janine blocked it, relying only on her instincts and ears rather than her skills. Her oversized and big arms could still help her paws reach all the way to the middle of her back. Her speed was superior to that of her opponent.
Heika and Adonis grew frustrated, no longer charging at her at once but coming together from front and back, only to dart back when their weapons were broken. Janine knew their type: youngsters with incredible potential; their blood ran hot in their veins. These clowns wanted to turn the battle into a dance, spinning and evading bullets, tricking the soldiers into shooting each other, and keeping Janine angry as their blades fell on her.
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Only she held her ground. Unmovable. Indominable. Refusing to give them satisfaction and thrills. Making the battle dull by repeating the same defense over and over. And seeing frustration in the slits of their masks, Janine allowed herself a smile, angering them further.
There were many ways to win a battle. Throwing your foe off their game, ruining their rhythm, and driving them into frustration was one of the most basic ones. Anything from simple insults to attacking a foe’s allies could work in this favor. Kalaisa and Anji lost because they played the clowns’ game, forgetting who the hunter was. It mattered not how long the hunt went as long as you brought home the body. Oh well, it’ll come to them with experience; don’t be so hard on them, Janine.
Janine eased a bit, seeing how Kalaisa stepped away from Anji. Rather than rushing back into a fight, the stupid girl, for one, made the right decision and helped save the lives of the other wounded, currently performing CPR on a civilian. This widened Janine’s smile even more, and in this second, the clowns lost their composure.
They came as before; the male aiming for Janine’s legs and the female aiming for her spine. Their daggers were met by the claws, producing ringing sounds. Only this time the fools chose not to retreat. Heika jumped over Janine, and Adonis tried to slide underneath her on his legs. A smashing knee kick into the face sent the male cartwheeling into a car, shattering his mask and, for once, giving the bastard a full impact. Heika screamed, no longer melodical, her shoulder ended up being sliced wide open by Janine’s claws.
“Beautiful enough?” Janine asked them, enjoying the sight of anger flushing in Adonis’ blue eyes.
The man stood up, legs trembling, left hand pressed to the ruined face, his nose caved in. “Sister.”
“Brother,” Heika responded, dropping the dagger from her right hand.
“We are being underestimated.”
“Humiliated.”
“The punishment…”
“Is death.”
A noise distracted Janine, and that almost cost her life. With the stone exploding beneath their legs, Heika and Adonis disappeared out of sight, turning into a whirlwind around the Warlord. Left, right, a strike aimed at her right knee, immediately after one aimed at the back of her left knee. This time, Janine had to move, walking back across the street in an attempt to break free from this maddening whirlwind of steel and rage. Their speed, the accuracy with which these two were striking, and their sheer endurance to maintain this assault without slowing down were sublime.
This was a dance and one in which they took the lead. Their blurred forms almost merged together; the non-stop onslaught of constant dashes, cuts, strikes, and graceful evasion was mind-blowing. Even in her power armor, Janine would’ve struggled to match this speed. Without it, worried about the safety of her sons, plagued by the thoughts of dead and dying around her, she became afraid.
And fear turned into power, releasing adrenaline into her bloodstream. There were many in the Tribe who viewed fear as something to be shunned, an unworthy behavior. Not her. Fear is a natural human emotion—at least it’s honest. She was outmatched, yet she needed to win. And by accepting fear, Janine felt her senses sharpen. By relying on her skills, honed by years and years of combat, she knew when to defend and when to push back. And now it was time to defend.
Janine frowned, seeing how the last of the four-legged freaks skittered at the building on the other side of the street, preparing to fire at the captain’s car. This was the sound that distracted her earlier. Thankfully, she wasn’t the only one to notice him. An Ice Fang jumped forth. The woman left her sword behind her back, wielding her shield with both paws and aiming to shield Marco and the people behind her.
“Reckless, like the rest of your kind,” Bogdan laughed, jerking the woman back just in time to save her life.
The shield endured only four initial projectiles. Janine herself saw how these things helped knights survive a tank’s shell, but the four projectiles, fired in rapid succession with no recoil to shift the arc of fire, struck in the center, and the fifth came straight through it, causing the knight to cry out. Her left leg gave in, going limp when the projectile burned its way through the knee and set her blue cloak on fire.
The first of her son’s shots hit the attacker in the chitin plate protecting the forearm. The second shot bounced off a chitin plate on the chest. But the third shot has found its mark, taking the man’s left eye and leaving him shrieking in an all-too-human voice from pain, just as Martyshkina jumped from above, slamming the poor fool into the concrete. He howled like a cornered animal, thrashing from the pain of having his spine slowly torn out.
The knight muttered, “Thank you, sirrah,” but Bogdan backhanded her back on the ground when she tried to stand up.
Weak though she may be when compared to the Wolf Tribe’s natural recovery, their cousin still had a genuine divine heritage of the Twins coursing through her veins. Janine had no need to see the woman in person to know the woman’s blood started clotting, forming a dried-up crust to halt the hemorrhage. It will take her months, but eventually the woman will fully heal the ruined knee.
“Knock it out, cousin, I am married!” Bogdan laughed. “The battle is over for you, treat your injury and help my brother with the wounded. Also, thank you for saving our hides!”
“I would’ve never dared to imply,” the knight mumbled, slapping her cloak to stop the flame, and tearing it to use as bandages.
“What, is he not good enough for you?” Martyshkina, covered in blood from head to toe, inquired cheerfully. The Warlord leaned over, grabbing something off the embarrassed knight’s belt.
Time to win this. Janine beamed, unbothered by her worries any longer, and made another stomp. Caught in their fierce assault, both clowns stumbled for a moment, their blurry forms blinking back into singular shapes. Janine made a thrust aimed at Heika’s mask, fully intending to see the upper part of the woman’s head fly away.
A loud crack to her left announced the arrival of a new foe. Janine’s own claws, her pride and joy, left her left paw, falling on the ground. Looking at the remaining stumps, Janine slashed with her right. Janine moved back, trying to gain distance, only for Adonis to reappear behind her.
“I don’t recall asking for help, Phaser.” Adonis spat from behind Janine.
The newcomer only laughed. A figure stood with spread arms before the Warlord. Thin as a scarecrow, his ribs were threatening to break the paper-thin blue leather skin. His eyes were sunken deep into a skull, the nose sucked air like a dog, and the mouth grinned, showing needle teeth within. Elongated claws painted circles in the air, shattering the very space with every move. Air, smoke, and even pieces of rubble were all shattering into nothingness upon meeting these claws, and where they trailed a path in the air, only cruel, torn wounds were left, showing glimpses of faraway lands.
A tear wide enough for a person to step through was behind Phaser, showing sewers and piled-up corpses of Ice Fangs, their pristine power armor sliced and shattered, a beast of muscle and bone sitting upon the corpses, chewing on the remains. Sounds of gunfire, roars, and mocking laughter filled the tunnels.
“The deed is done,” Phaser said, his screeching voice tearing at Janine’s ears. The man wore only simple pants, leaving the rest of his skin naked. Black tattoos, like snakes, encircled his arms, merging with void claws. His eyes looked at Janine. “We might as well add another to the toll.”
They advanced upon Janine, with Phaser waltzing in casually, almost inviting Janine to try her claws on him, and the clowns circling around like a unit of hungry insectoids, tracing her every move. Janine let her arms hang loose, pretending to be shocked at the loss of her claws.
Phaser’s smile turned to a scowl of pain when a skin on his shoulder exploded and something ricocheted off the bone. Janine faced him, evading the claws that opened a path into a realm of ice with an upward strike and allowing the remaining claws to drink deep and full of his belly. Adonis and Heika cursed, stepping back as their strikes were blocked.
“By the Sky, what was it?” Adonis cursed.
“Bullets, brothers.” Heika recovered first, striking once to block a bullet aimed at her brother’s face. She pointed at the approaching Wolfkin. “She did it.”
“Janine, you are so greedy!” Martyshkina let out a booming laugh, coming closer. Bullets danced between her fingers, ready to be unleashed by her big thumbs at the enemy. “How about a team-up? Two against three sounds fun, right?” The amber eyes found Phaser. “Minor space manipulator. Your claws ignore any and all material, am I right? Must be scary to sleep at night. Don’t worry, I know how to deal with your kind.”
“Adorable,” Phaser replied drily, stumbling toward the open tear. Janine and Martyshkina came after him, but the man made two large swings in the air, opening a path to a desert before Janine and a portal to a misty mountain that swallowed bullets aimed at his face. “We bled you enough for a day.”
He stepped into the cut behind him, and the tear in reality disappeared, leaving Adonis and Heika to leap away from the warlords, slithering into spaces between the sidewalk and the street meant to collect the rainwater.
“Janine here.” The warlord pressed a terminal to her ear, raising one fist above her head. “We met a new breed capable of hopping between places by slicing tears in reality. One such tear showed us dead knights of the Ice Fang order.”
The fist came down. Punching through the street. Stone slabs rose to her left and right when Janine herself fell down, followed by Martyshkina, landing in shallow water of underground sewers. Hearing wet steps, Janine’s eyes focused on two running forms taking a turn ahead, and she rushed after them, using three paws and still holding one paw to her ear.
“Tancred has ignored my order and kept pursuing the murderer,” Dragena replied calmly. “I saw your battle through the lenses of our allies. Assist our rash cousin, Warlords; his last known location is in the tunnels to your north. Alpha is coming. The Sword Saint’s and your own survival take priority above all.”
“Got it.” Janine forced herself to abandon the hunt and looked at the terminal, locating the closest route to their target. Noticing how long it would take them to make a detour, the Warlord cursed and tackled the wall before herself with a shoulder, breaking into another tunnel, accompanied by Martyshkina’s laughter. The laughter was cut short by the sound of gunfire ahead.
The Ice Fangs were fighting each other in a half-flooded tunnel. Standing to their chests in murky waters, knight captains roared, bringing down their swords and maces on the covering soldiers. A single sage spun his glaive around himself, almost taking a head from a nearby soldier. The man got saved by Martyshkina; a bullet fired by her fingers topped the knight back into the water, leaving him with a dent on the battleplate but alive.
Discipline and dignity of the order were abandoned; their soldiers still came at each other with drilled skills, but gone was the teamwork or restraint, they fired pistols and machineguns into the walls, clashing swords against each other in some sort of animalistic blood lust.
And worse still, the moment Janine stepped closer, she felt a body beneath her legs. No. Not a body. Bodies. Her cousins went mad, struck by the madness that has affected the people outside and took lives. How many? To see their cousins, the ideal of dignity and duty reduced to this has filled Janine with irresistible rage.
“Enough!” Janine roared, her voice echoing against the walls, and a few soldiers stopped, but the sage turned to her, his helmet missing.
Screeching from rage, the sage lunged forward, bringing the glaive in for an overhead strike. Janine sidestepped the attack that exploded the water behind her and tackled the male into a wall with enough force to leave cracks, struggling not to bite his snout off. The sage showed no such restraint, thrashing in her embrace and trying to push her away with the shaft of his weapon. His feeble fangs snapped, leaving a blood trail and a fang stuck in Janine’s flesh.
A male dared to bare his fangs at her. Janine’s nostrils inhaled air, and a red mist started covering her eyes. She wanted to tear off his lower jaw and reach all the way to the brains, biting the tongue and feasting on the still-warm stomach. He dares! No male ever dared to show such disrespect to her; no male ever dared to bite her and stay in one piece!
Her claws came from her fingers, ready to be plunged into crimson eyes and damn the consequences. Here and now, she will teach the Ice Fang order the meaning of disrespecting a Warlord! For too long had she endured the humiliation and…
“Restraint,” a voice whispered, and familiar dim and dead eyes looked at Janine from the cracks in the wall, halting her enough for Martyshkina to grab her arm.
Janine closed her eyes and roared, giving her everything in a wordless shout of anger leaving her lungs. A trick. This rage is not her own. Someone toys with her mind, tugging at her frustration and fears to guide her toward a more unfavorable choice. I refuse. My rage is too precious a thing for someone else to wield. It is mine, and mine alone. I, all my flaws and all my might, am me. Janine of the Wolf Tribe.
The sage before her gasped. His head slammed back into the wall by the roar that reverberated in his ears and shocked his brain. He gasped, and Janine had to help him stand when all aggression washed away from his body, leaving just confusion behind.
“My lady…” the man gasped.
“Janine,” she said.
“He tricked us. The bastard called noble Tancred to an honorable duel, and when sire agreed, a flash of anger struck our brains. The liege was the only one mostly unaffected, but the fiend stuck a knight, breaking the rules of a duel, and used him as a hostage to spit acid into our master’s eyes, blinding him. Pray, stay wary around this underhanded fiend.” The sage shook his head, trying to regain composure.
“Where is he?” Janine demanded to know. “Where is Sword Saint Ironwill?”
“Here.”
The waters to her right parted, and a sword came up, nearly taking away Janine’s arm. It was Marty who saved her. Be it by the grace of the Spirits or maybe she had some sort of innate power, Martyshkina always boasted that only her friends could sneak up on her. And she would always, without fault, prove it. The sword went up, sending a gust of air and water into Janine’s eyes.
Six massive, segmented legs, each the length of a knight and thick as an oak, came from the waters, crushing down a knight and knight captain beneath the waters. Her poor cousins never had a chance; the immense weight and sheer physical might behind each leg simply crumpled the power armor, pushing organs from the ice fangs like food from a can. A body with bulging muscles came next; everything below the waist was covered in the toughest chitin, and the body above was that of a human, with tanned skin and a deceptively chubby build.
A human hand held the curved blade long enough to slice a tank’s tower in one go. Golden medallions and coins belonging to various countries and tribes were melted into flesh, serving as crude armor. From beneath the armpits came a second set of arms, each ending with a cruel pincer. Gold jewelry and bracelets covered the muscled arms, a long mustache reached the chest and was soaked in dirty waters; and keen brown eyes looked mockingly at Janine and Martyshkina as the unknown rose to full height, nearly scratching the ceiling with his bald head.
“Greetings.” He made a courtesy bow to the Warlords, his voice soft and pleasant, kind even. “Janine, is that right? You have taken something of mine. For that, I will take everything from you. I am Brood Lord, the Breaker of Nations, the Despoiler of Women, the Father of Thousands, the Merciless Blade of Mad Hatter, and the Master of the Northern Plains. Your sons I will see eradicated; your daughters, if you have any, will whore themselves to my whims; and you yourself, blinded, armless, and legless, will wail in despair, ruing the day you stood in the path of the Gilded Horde. And when I am done with you, not even a trace of your bloodline will be left in this world or any other. So I decided, and so it shall be.”
Brood Lord’s pincer arm rose high, showing the severed head of Tancred, Sword Saint of the Ice Fang order and the man who once served as cupbearer to the Twins. A tongue dangled weakly from the Sword Saint’s mouth; the once crimson eyes were eaten away, leaving just empty holes. And Brood Lord’s body bore no sign of injury or bruise.
“Pass me your glaive, Sage,” Janine commanded, extending her paw. “I have a crustacean to cook.”