Janine reached the edge of the minefield first, kicking up whole swaths of ground in the air. She stepped undaunted, checking if the ID codes transmitted by her power armor were enough to allow them to cross. The mines were already primed, but unlike the simple and crude acidic traps used by the Wolf Tribe, the gear of the Provincial Army was far more sophisticated. It has to be because, as the mayor and lieutenant explained to her, local cubs have a nasty tendency of sticking their necks into danger.
The Provincial Guard’s mines were a prime example of advanced technology because they could read small radio signals and activated with a single button press, allowing cars to pass without incident in times of need.
No explosion harmed Janine’s armor, and the Warlord ran on, leading the pack after herself. They moved on all fours, crossing the distance to the field hospital fast enough to evade getting hit by either artillery or gunfire. Some soldiers were thrown off their feet by the shells, but their armor held up, and their comrades helped them stand again.
The field hospital was a rough building made of slabs of reinforced stone. The place was resilient to both natural disasters and enemy attacks; Janine saw only a few cracks in the dark gray walls. She didn’t waste time allowing the electronic device to scan her armor, sending meter-thick armor doors flying with a single kick. She stepped inside, seeing white corridors devoid of people, and sniffed.
Recycled air filled the corridors, preventing any poisoning from outside. She tasted potent smells of blood, pus, and medicines in the air. A few bodies covered by sheets lay in the corridor. Stepping closer, Janine confirmed that these were deceased. The gauntlet on her paw shifted, allowing her fingers to touch the deceased. Two were cold. One still had a faint warmth on her neck. Most of the woman’s wounds were bad—a lung pierced, her knee shattered, several more gunshots—but nothing life-threatening. A dagger wound swiftly and mostly painlessly ended her life.
Janine’s communicators spot a surge of static coming from both Eled and Martyshkina. She tapped on the device, but not a single word came out of it. Standing to her full height, Janine loudly inhaled.
“Where are the doctors?” Eled demanded to know, storming inside.
Her eyes moved toward the deceased bodies, quickly coming to the same conclusion as Janine.
“Fucking Ice Fangs,” Janine said. There was no smell of fresh sweat or panic inside. There were no hushed voices or footsteps deeper within the hospital. The place had already been evacuated long before they even got here. “Everyone, inside!” Janine roared, hearing the sounds of missiles and artillery shells flying.
With no option for retreating, the pack charged straight into the trap laid for the Gilded Horde.
And outside, a fiery hell surrounded the hospital. Hundreds of artillery shells came down on the place, rocketing up its walls and exploding the minefield. The building’s very foundation shook, and lights flickered before going off and leaving the Wolfkins in the darkness. Cracks started covering the walls, while outside, whole small hills of ground were kicked high into the air.
The Gilded Horde bore the full brunt of their fury against the Warlords, firing everything they could at the hospital, collapsing section after section, and making way for their forces. With no other option remaining, Janine has led the troops deeper within the complex, breaking through the rubble. Her heart raced like mad at the thought of Ignacy or Bogdan dying here.
The Ice Fangs. Always the Ice Fangs. Favored by the Blessed Mother, kept in the rear, pampered and protected, gifted the best gear… They betrayed them. There could be no better word for what has happened here. Janine has forgiven their initial charge into the enemy lines, Abyss; she would’ve done so herself if cubs of her Tribe were on the line!
But this? No. She let an icy rage fill her veins. Never again would she be fooled by whatever so-called nobility the Blessed Mother and others see in the white-furred bastards. Storming inside the vast area for treatment, Janine witnessed the full scope of the Ice Boys’ betrayal.
Explosives. In the middle of the room, there were enough explosives to level the entire facility and the surrounding area. Locked in steel crates, the ticking of detonators and trembling of the walls were the only sounds filling the room once Janine raised her paws, stopping the pack. Summoning her HUD, she tried to connect to the detonators and turn them off, or at least extend the time limit.
Access denied. Command codes are not accepted. The answer came.
We saved your leader. We bled for you in every battle, and this is how you repay us?! Janine wanted to roar, rage, and tear. The detonators showed eight minutes and thirty-eight seconds remaining. She snapped out of this, turning to Ignacy.
“Can you disarm the detonators?” Janine asked, stepping aside to allow Ignacy, Bogdan, and a few other males to rush to the explosives. “Spread around the hall! We will make our last stand here!”
Either the explosives kill us or the enemy will. She wanted to laugh but showed no hint of nervousness, standing guard near one exit while Eled and Predaig covered the two others. She will not disgrace her soldiers by throwing a tantrum. Instead, she weighed her options.
The Ice Fangs purposely left the facility essentially wide open, hoping to bait the enemies into expending their lives first across the minefield, then meeting their demise within, exploding the place along with enemy hordes. For this reason, they let the call for aid come on the open frequency, ensuring that the enemy would pick up the call and be lured in.
Potentially, this tactic could have worked. Yet the refusal to cooperate between the two groups ensured that the state’s forces fell into the trap meant for the enemy. And now Janine was faced with two choices. She could either try to lead her pack outside of this place, facing their end beneath the artillery fire and shockwave from the explosion, indirectly saving the enemy forces from stepping in. Or she could stay in and see her pack perish in the explosion, luring the enemy in and try to…
“Ignacy, Bogdan,” Janine said on the private channel. “I am sorry for how it ends. I love you.”
“This isn’t over until it’s over!” Ignacy replied quickly, tearing a panel off the detonator. “Dammit, dammit, dammit! Just a little more time! I won’t let it end like this!”
“Brother,” Bogdan said calmly, putting his paw on Ignacy’s shoulder, but the smaller Wolfkin only shook it off.
“Fuck you! I won’t allow my nephews and nieces to grow without a father!” A piece of rubble fell from the ceiling, and Ignacy backhanded it away from Bogdan’s head. Her voice dropped, becoming weak and broken. “I know I wasn’t a good son…”
“This is a lie,” Janine cut him off. “You are a joy in my life. All of you.”
“Finally!” Predaig let the helmet come off her head, smiling at the soldiers. For the first time in years, Janine had seen the incredibly charismatic and energized Warlord, eager for both battle and tricks alike. Her shoulders spread wide, and even her fur seemingly gained a bit of former darkness. “Ready yourself, for we will meet our loved ones soon enough.”
“Anni, Elzada, Yennifer, Marco, Dad, Mom…” Ignacy started recycling names, reloading his flamethrower.
“It’s our go time, bro,” Bogdan said.
“Yeah. Guess so. Think Dad is keeping the place warm for us?” Ignacy hugged his brother.
“Warm? By now, he is probably setting up a whole pyre to welcome us!”
“Sorry, dears, mommy won’t be bringing a souvenir.” Eled pushed the helmet back onto Predaig’s head and swung her scythe around. “Sisters! Brothers! Every life taken here is one more moth drawn. Die raging, die scared, die regretful, but kill the enemy! Dare not make it easy! Ask for no quarter and give none in return! Collect the toll!”
Standing tall, Janine looked at the fifty soldiers under her command. “My kin. Because of my foolishness, I have led you into a mortal trap. On this day, our lives will be over. Face the incoming demise not with grief or fear, but with rage! Rage against the impossible odds, rage at the enemies closing on us, and rage at me for failing you!”
Explosions shook the building, and she heard voices. Shells stopped falling, and in their place, the raiders charged in, breaking through the freshly collapsed tunnels, looking for them. It was just a matter of time. And the detonators still showed five minutes and forty seconds left.
The pack howled, drowning their worries and fears in the rage, inviting the foes to battle.
Janine raised her voice, shouting over the howls. “Soldiers of the state! Proud warriors of the Reclamation Army! Soon we will meet again in the Great Beyond, and who knows, maybe there we will know peace. But here and now, I ask only one thing from you. Rage one last time and draw the blood of your enemies! Protect this place! Duty is our life!”
“Duty to the end!” Everyone roared; Eled’s and Predaig’s voices joined the soldiers’.
“Let the slaughter begin!” Janine roared, turning just in time to see shadows racing across the corridor. A searing beam met them, illuminating four-legged bodies and burning straight through one. The next one screamed, becoming a pillar of fire as Ignacy shot from the center of the room, unbothered by conserving the ammunition anymore.
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Shardguns spoke, downing the raiders and the four-legged malformed as they tried to push through the corridors. None expected to survive today, so no one cared about holding back. Acid grenades and a full burst of shardguns tore the already dead bodies into tatters, never once slowing down the intensity of firing. A raider, almost as big as a Warlord, broke through the ceiling, only to have his head sliced by Eled in a single fluid motion. Swinging her scythe back, the warlord took another life, stopping the raider from entering the hall.
Predaig raised her right fist, filling the corridor with bursts of automatic fire from the custom-made rotary auto-cannon, a weapon more fit to be placed atop a battle tank than on a human body. Linked to the massive backpack behind the Warlord, its eight barrels spun non-stop, sending forth 30mm bullets at a rate of seven thousand shots per minute. Predaig carried enough ammunition for a sustained twenty minutes of engagement, and now she unleashed Abyss upon the enemy ranks, leveling both human lives and stone walls.
A bullet hit Bogdan on the brow when a malformed with swords for arms broke through a wall. The armor endured, but the malformed and two more raiders were on Janine’s son in an instant. A searing flame and eight bursts of shardguns from Ignacy and three warriors ended them before the bastards could come down on Bogdan.
They suffered losses. The Wolf Tribe always looked down on the Ice Fangs, considering them slow and weird in combat. But there was one area in which the Ice Fangs were undeniably better. Defense. Many people confused the Wolf Tribe’s view on patrol routes and defense. A defensive tactic implies planting your foot down and grinding down the foe, one after another. A sort of positioning warfare, something Janine was a fan of using in duels. However, the patrol routes of the packs around the Outer Lands and the villages were anything but that.
They planted mines around villages and places under the Tribe’s protection, true. Mines were useful to spread discord among the foes, alerting everyone around. Packs would then descend upon the foe from all sides, never stopping in one place, ever moving and shifting, biting, firing, and slashing. Such was the way of the Wolf Tribe—mobility above all. Even on the defensive mission, they would turn a need to protect into an opportunity for offense.
Locked and confined in a small place, it felt suffocating for the warriors. Bothered by a need to protect and lure the enemies to the explosives, the pack could not bring about their true potential, standing their ground and becoming a target practice for lucky raiders. Weapons on both sides had equally good punching potential for breaking through armor, and so the Wolfkins suffered.
Three males died from pulse rifles. Two warriors got turned into donuts when automatic fire hit them dead center. Another warrior died as a gigantic steel figure came crashing through a wall, wielding a two-handed axe. Smashing the warrior’s head with a butt of his weapon, the warrior boomed his laughter through the dynamics of his round helmet. Two oversized pulse rifles mounted on his shoulders spat energy, injuring and killing more. The fire of the defenders barely made dents in his thick armor plates.
Janine was on him this instant, meeting his axe with Taleteller. Her armor groaned, surprised at the sudden strength beneath the enemy’s blow, but his steel was found lacking. Taleteller cleaved through the blade of the raider’s axe, taking away one of his turrets. The Warlord grabbed the bastard by his shoulder and dragged him closer.
She cratered his helmet with her forehead, hearing his bones break. Not stopping at this, Janine kicked him in the knee, pinning the fool long enough to bring her axe to his right shoulder. In a torrent of sparks and blood, the shoulder came off, along with his arm. Wires, bones, and torn veins showed from the wound, all entangled with each other. The man roared in pain, punching Janine with enough force to send her a step back, tearing the stone with her greaves. With his wound exposed, the strange metal man failed to take a single step further; grenades thrown by Bogdan and others landed against his exposed shoulder. Explosions and roaring sounds of gunfire silenced the mercifully quick shrieking of pain as acid ate its way toward the insides.
Janine swung her axe, splitting another raider who jumped from the ceiling, aiming his blade at Ignacy’s back. Her backhanded strike propelled a wall of air toward a crack in the wall, toppling two more foes. She was on them in the next second, cleaving and stomping, working like a butcher. There were no more words to say or orders to give. Just kill and be killed; this is all.
My pure condition. Janine opened her mouth, biting away the face of a screaming woman along with her helmet. Meat merged with steel and moved down her throat, and she caught herself no longer caring. Our killing ground.
“From blood we come with screams and rage,” she roared to the enemies. “Filled with rage, we will leave it. Come now, weaklings, and see how the warriors of the Wolf Tribe meet their doom! Relish this sight and become the offerings of our passing! We will not hide or cover, so come and die!” A beam from her rifle left a hole in the raider’s head, and Janine turned back, letting enemies come after her. Straight into the line of fire. Rich will be the harvest to honor the Spirits today.
“Warlord Janine!” An unknown voice broke her concentration. She recognized this voice. It belonged to a stunningly beautiful white-furred Sword Saint Leonidas. The one who battled against Alpha and survived to show the scars afterwards.
“Traitor,” Janine hissed, annoyed at the need to hear a white-furred of all people in the wake of her demise. She ordered her HUD to block him.
“Warlord!” Ignacy shouted, pointing at the explosives. She followed his paw and saw the lights dying, one after another. The detonators went offline.
She felt her heart stop. Their plan, this whole massacre to lure the enemy closer, their dedication to laying down their lives—all of this ended up being for naught. Is there a limit to the Ice Fangs’ treachery? Why do they hate them so much? Had the Sword Saint tried to contact her just to gloat?
“Janine, I know you are pissed.” Martyshkina joined the communication; the revolvers’ shots accompanied her words. “And trust me, so do I. But you have to listen to me now. I can’t come to your aid; there are too many enemies in the settlement, and I have civilians…”
“Marty,” Janine said softly, splitting another raider in two. She spoke quickly, too afraid that the Ice Fangs might cut off communications. “It’s ok. You are not at fault. Leave Defiance and save civilians. Don’t ever trust the Ice Boys. They betrayed us. Please watch over my pack and my family for me, and forgive me for drinking all the vodka on your birthday…”
“So it was you who did it, bitch! I mean, shut up, you big buffoon!” Martyshkina roared. “Yes, our cousins fucked us over! But they are trying to help us now! Leonidas and Macarius both left the front line, teaming up to help you! Help is on the way; hold…”
She saw it. Through the eyes of a male, she saw a reality cracking above her head. First, a thin blue line, fast as a laser beam, made an ugly cut in the air. Fast like the flash of a flashbang, the line spread into an oval shape, letting the tip of a gigantic sword come through, aimed at her neck.
“Sleeping on the job, mutant?” A voice hissed from above, and Janine spun around.
She parried the strike with her rifle, slowing the weapon just long enough to bring up her own axe at the cost of losing the rifle’s barrel. Her opponent came from the opening in reality right above the Warlord, his massive and familiar body covered in both armor and jewelry. Six thick insectoid legs slipped from the portal, while Brood Lord used Janine for a foothold before biting into the stone ceiling.
In a span of a second, the two of them exchanged eight blows, bludgeoning each other with very little grace and all of their might behind their blows. Brood Lord furrowed, noticing a tiny piece of steel leaving his blade and Eled approaching him from the left. Wordlessly, he jumped back, evading Janine’s slash.
Another portal opened in front of Eled, spitting out the clowns involved in Houstad’s butchery. Laughing like mad, both bastards came upon the Warlord, aiming their weapons at the joints in her armor. Eled met their onslaught, using the length of her own weapon to block the incoming strikes and reserving the use of her blade. Wielding her scythe like a pole, she and her foes turned into a blur, becoming almost invisible even to Janine’s eyes.
With calm and deadly composure, Eled gave a single command, and the nearby Wolfkins opened fire, shredding the sturdy steel of the Warlord with armor-piercing shards. But where Eled herself remained unharmed, her opponents spat out curses, laughing no longer, and darted aside, bleeding like cusacks. Eled ignored their attempts to lure her outside of the room and continued her passage across the ruined walls. Her scythe teared through the air, collecting its grim harvest and filling the cracks with corpses.
“Don’t run away this time,” Janine asked Brood Lord, raising her axe. “We do have a score to settle.”
His brows rose, and a pleasant smile came upon his face. Jumping off the ceiling, he blocked an incoming shot with a careless swing of his blade.
“Janine! Is that you hiding in this ugly scrap? A surprise, but a welcomed one.” One of his eyes, hidden behind a purple ocular, shot a glance at the explosives, and Janine saw a flicker of HUD coming to life in the lens. “Is this your contingency? To use yourself as a suicide bomber… Truth be told, I am a bit disappointed.” He snapped his fingers, and a line came into reality beneath the explosives. The crates fell, disappearing from sight. “And now we’ve robbed you even of this.”
Brood Lord jumped, bringing the full brunt of his body against Janine. She pushed him back, letting go of her broken rifle, only for him to dart to the side, cleaving a male in two. Letting out a chuckle, Brood Lord kept charging across the hall, oblivious to the fire coming against his bulk. His skittering legs were coming down as pillars, mowing any Wolfkin in his path down, bulging the steel in, and popping organs. Janine charged after him, maneuvering around her own allies in order not to throw them off their feet.
Her opponent had no such limitations. He jumped up, breaking from the ceiling, only to come down in another place, five steps away from Janine. The cruel blade pierced a warrior’s back, lifting the dying woman and using her as a shield against Janine’s axe. She didn’t hesitate. Taleteller’s blade has cleaved through the brave soul, ending her suffering, and clashed against the blade, allowing the remains to slide on the floor. Brood Lord, and she grasped their weapons with both hands, pushing each other with their full might.
Brood Lord’s power armor gave out the sound of gears smashing a stone beneath them. A flicker of energy ran down the sleeves of his adorned armor, and streaks of white smoke came from between joints in the shoulder. The stone cracked beneath their legs, separating them by a small line. No longer hindered by poison and strengthened by her armor, Janine found herself equal to Brood Lord’s might. And her armor was of superior quality, too. If she can just last long enough to overload his gear, the victory is hers.
“Your worst-case scenario is here,” the khan said, looking past her.
Janine did not turn. She linked her vision to that of her pack, seeing Bogdan, two warriors, and a male being held in Drozna’s embrace. The bastard stepped out of the tear in reality, grabbing them and bringing them to his chest, mocking Predaig into trying to fire at him. The massive beast of bone and muscle beckoned the Warlord with one finger, crushing another warrior beneath his feet and ignoring the flame of Ignacy’s flamethrower hitting his back.
“Let Bogdan… Order your beast to let my soldiers go,” Janine pushed the blade away. Drool came from her jaws. “Or your death won’t be a pleasant one.”
“Bogdan… Bogdan…” Brood Lord clicked his tongue, tilting his head to look at the captured Wolfkins. “Four… two females, and Bogdan sounds like a male name. Which one is he? Who is he? Is he your husband? Lover? A son, maybe? Specify, Janine. You don’t want me to make a mistake, right?” He laughed at her silence. “Oh well, it doesn’t really matter. I’m sure I will find out who exactly this Bogdan is and how you two are related when I will skin them alive!”
His lips formed an ‘O’ and Janine darted to the right, breaking their clench and diving under the split. She made an uppercut with her right, aiming her claws at his jaw, only for Brood Lord to jump at the ruined ceiling. He touched a slight cut on his chin, looking down at her mockingly.
“Let’s play a game, Janine. For every cut I receive, this Bogdan of yours will lose a limb. Speaking of. Drozna!” He roared, and all pleasantries were gone from his voice.