Iron Lord stumbled out of the portal, wheezing and struggling for every breath. Internal systems were screaming warnings, one after another. A risk of stroke. A vein popped in his brain. Eyes hemorrhage. Extensive damage to the body. The khan shut them all down, enjoying a familiar calmness descending upon his mind.

Still not there. Even after all these years and after extensive operations performed on his body, merging the flesh with the blessed might of a machine, an emotion manipulator had nearly done him in. But nearly won’t cut it.

He threw Brood Lord like a sack of shit, uncaring if the khan survived or not. Followed by the remains of his bodyguards, Iron Lord marched toward the technicians, spreading his arms wide and allowing the lesser men to treat the damage done to his steel as his own armor was busy tending to his wounds. And all above them towered the Sky’s Wrath.

An engine like no other in the Horde, the supermassive cannon mounted on tracks the size of hills cast a shadow of a mountain on everyone assembled before it, hiding the very sun behind the blackened barrel. Fired only a dozen times in the past decades, the mere sight and rumors of its might were enough to drive the assembled forces into a state of panic. Slaves were being herded into trucks, thunder bulls were given sedatives, and raiders were hastily putting on their helmets, for when the Wrath spoke, everything trembled.

The superweapon had been dragged across the forests, flattening everything in its path and leaving a trail of destruction behind, allowing hundreds of vehicles to follow comfortably. Its sheer weight pushed the tracks into the ground, bulging out whole swaths of soil at the sight. If not for a few additional engines dragging the cannon with chains the size of buildings, it could scarcely move. Rows upon rows of deadly turrets decorated every curvature and every turn of this weapon, spewing fire at any fool daring to challenge the beast of the apocalypse.

Within the massive bulk were installed shield generators, far superior to the crude things used by Iron Lord and even by the Horde’s vehicles. These were products of the Old World; even the cannon’s own fire was a child’s toy for them. Twice in this invasion had the Wrath come under attack, and twice had it rendered the foes to dust, leaving not even smoking residues behind and arrogantly ignoring all fire concentrated against its skill. Up until now, only lesser guns were talking; the time for the main gun to say a word has come at last.

“Connect me,” Iron Lord commanded, establishing a link to the great weapon and checking every calculation, running predictions about the trajectory and the approximate landing site in under a minute. Perfection. Such clarity! The weapon was meant to fire at orbital targets, but being repurposed for land targets greatly hindered its range. And even so, the genius of the Old World provided the Horde with the means. “Fire.”

A single word. He didn’t need to say it because the less sophisticated systems translated his thoughts into binary language and carried out the command. And in reality, none has heard him anyway, for the cannon spoke. But the coming awe demanded a proper ritual.

Imagine a hurricane born in a second. Imagine an earthquake tearing the land out of your things. One can imagine all these things and still fall short of what has transpired around Iron Lord. The forests disappeared for kilometers around; the unleashed shockwave did not just bend the trees, not it uprooted them. The shockwave tore them asunder, turning even smaller splinters into mere wooden dust.

The greenery evaporated, leaving just loosened ground covered in a few pieces of broken stone. Heavy vehicles shook; even thunder bulls roared, struggling to keep steady. A few raiders were plucked like cloth and carried dozens of meters away. Iron Lord and his technicians kept their footing only because of an energy shield produced by his armor. Some of his sons and bodyguards fell, being dragged meters away by the ground.

It scarcely mattered. The Wrath has sent its load.

****

Janine rarely enjoyed witnessing Alpha’s fight firsthand. Mostly because she would be amidst the carnage too, delivering the Reclaimers’ justice to its foes. But now, locked in the APC, treating Marco’s wounds with calm and steady paws, she found herself in need of distraction. Any distraction suitable enough not to give in to emotions and continue the routine she learned from medics.

Alpha and Horkhudagh came at each other like beams, one of fire and heat and another of speed and metal. Rather than ending up being intangible, Horkhudagh met Alpha’s advance as a solid being, facing her claws with his own. Flames spilled from all sides, like blood pouring from a torn artery. Fiery splashes of blue had left holes in nearby houses, melting their way through everything, and a wall of flame rose from the ground, interfering with the video feed of Alpha’s camera.

Horkhudagh only grunted as he watched the enormous claws stop his hands. His molten claws had fallen apart, allowing the great claws to penetrate all the way to his elbows. Any other foe would be greatly injured. But this raider wasn’t normal.

The wings closed around Alpha, creating a super-heated ball of blue flames and exploding it afterwards with enough force to evaporate a tank. The Strongest Warlord and her foe both broke from this explosion, jumping high in the air, the crimson-haired beast hunting down a fiery devil who tried to gain distance. Beams of heat struck Horkhudagh’s body and were met by twin plasma balls fired by the weapons mounted on Alpha’s wrists, unleashing yet another explosion.

When the dust had settled, both fighters were closing on the ground, the raider’s hands morphed into dozens of elongated, smaller hands, meeting Alpha’s unrelenting assault of thrusts, weaving around the incoming hail of death and striking the Wolfkin in her mouth, neck, joints, and across the lenses, denting the armor and drawing trickles of blood. In return, Horkhudagh suffered too. Janine had finally seen it—some sort of core within the flames, sprouting black limbs serving as his body.

And in this very core, Alpha struck, shattering the black bones and bisecting the flaming arms. Once separated from the core, the flame stopped burning around a limb, and it disappeared across the air like ash. The core itself proved sturdier stuff, and when a claw’s tip finally reached it, Horkhudagh grunted, loud enough to be heard through explosions and the cracking of flames.

Another limb, this time much bigger than Alpha herself, rose from the flaming man, opening into a palm. The limb slammed into the warlord, splattering her across the stone, and dragged the Wolfkin across the streets, leaving molted stone and burning its way through buildings. Horkhudagh aimed to crash his opponent against the Academy’s walls, but a net of cuts left the palm in tatters, and Alpha rose from the flames, the crimson hair billowing like snakes’ heads. She ran across the limb, ignoring the blue flames and bisecting it as she went. In response, Horkhudagh grew another set of arms, mimicking the mighty claws.

The two fighters barely met each other in the air when the skies parted once more, delivering a single armament onto the field. And this armament made Janine feel fear, wrapping her paws around Anissa, Impatient One, and Marco in a desperate attempt to shield them from the apocalypse unleashed by the weapon of old.

There are three great nations in the world. The despised Oathtakers, eternal enemies of the state, a nation deludingly believing in a lie, whose people willingly gave up some personal freedom for the sake of unity. And not some sort of metaphysical freedom, but very real freedom of mind, allowing the accursed Oath to take hold in their brains. Next are Iterna, the foolish rivals who believe in ideals of unity and cooperation, trying, often in vain, to change the hearts of the vilest scum through negotiations. And finally, the Reclamation Army, led by the Dynast. The true inheritors of humanity ascended, whose noble goal is to reunite everyone and grant the world salvation and peace eternal.

All three had shaken hands and signed a treaty, promising never to use weapons of mass destruction, remembering and even witnessing all too well just what such weapons had done to the Old World. And the Horde… These fools had no such reservations.

The shell unleased by the Wrath carried a loadout of over nine hundred thousand tons of TNT. It exploded half a mile above the settlement, creating a fireball of roughly one hundred and ten million degrees Celsius, basking the center of the settlement with a temperature hotter than the center of the sun and turning everything it touched into cinders.

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Alpha’s armor responded immediately, locking the warlord inside itself against her wishes. Her crimson hair fell off, cut by the sharp edges of her helmet; the mouth became closed; and even her claws became encased in a quickly solidified surface made of nanomachines. Made to endure nuclear strikes, the armor sealed the warlord shut, aiming to preserve her life.

Expanding, the explosion had formed a ball of hellishly heated air, billowing in all directions at millions of kilometers per hour and ramming both fighters into the ground with a force worthy of a falling meteor or a spaceship entering the atmosphere.

Hell reigned in the real world for but a second, rapidly cooling down to match the surface of the sun. In the Old World, this second was used to overload a ship’s shields and burn the outer hull before pouring in licking tongues of flame, each rivaling in hotness the surfaces of the sun. Such an attack was meant to depopulate the ship, damaging everything it could before the arrival of the second projectile could finish the job.

Used against the surface, it turned the settlement into a crater of molten stone. The Knight Academy, a place that withstood the Horde’s attack, disappeared like paper in front of a plasma ball; parts of its impressive masonry simply ionized. The shockwave propelled by the explosion has ravaged land for kilometers in every direction, making even the convoy feel the destruction when trees assail it like an artillery barrage.

The APCs were caught in this world-shattering madness, lifted like leaves on a wind. Janine barely had enough time to shout an order for soldiers to protect the cubs when everything went upside down. The cubs shouted in panic, even though they were secured by harnesses and protected by special foam emitted by their seats to keep the normal passengers safe, the little one felt it. Their heads, not yet trained to fight in such an environment, spun, making most of them vomit against their will, as black and white armored forms pressed themselves against the cocoons, piercing the steel with their claws to get a grip.

A wall broke, sending spikes of metal into soldiers, killing a Wolfkin and paralyzing an Ice Fang by bisecting her spine. Janine blocked two more with her own paw to save her troops and found two blade-sized pieces of metal stuck between her radius and ulna bones. Kalaisa’s family and some of their pack closed around their leader, desperately trying to protect the unconscious Wolf Hag with their own bodies.

When the chaos ended, the group found themselves kilometers away from the settlement. Helping the wounded, the group found five more dead soldiers, including one cub and both drivers, who were flattened by either the shockwave or collision with the ground. They made the rest of the trip to the convoy on foot, carrying little ones, wounded and dead in their paws. Holding Marco tightly to her chest, Janine looked up, praying to the Spirits for deliverance.

****

Unbeknownst to the warlord, changes were happening in the world. Iterna has spotted the explosion from one of their satellites, sending an envoy to the Dynast to learn the meaning of it. The Oathtakers immediately called for the return of all their citizens, sending a small party to protect the tourists.

Outsider, the grand commander of the First, had let his rage known upon learning of the grievous losses back in the Core Lands. Where before he tried to restrain himself, sparing the lives of those who served the tyrant of the Abandonment, now his light shone in full, smashing aside great bastions to free his hands faster.

In the Wastelands, Devourer rose to the sky, arching his back and unleashing a howl of hatred potent enough to make nearby slavers drop their weapons and surrender in mass at the sight of this horror. Hatred and grief coursed through the Commander’s body—hatred at those daring to harm his precious home and grief at ordering Ravager to rest. He mishandled the situation, and his own people are now paying the price. When the slaver’s leader showed up to challenge him, Devourer eagerly accepted the challenge, desiring to both vent his anger and end the grim business to return as swiftly as possible.

Mad Hatter ignored a hit landed on her by a civilian, who unknowingly earned his and his village’s salvation this way. Standing amidst hundreds of butchered soldiers of the Reclaimers, she inhaled the air, smiling at the distant destruction. The pleasure soon turned into a worry when the so-called God tried to fill her psyche with pleasure, prompting her to accept him and promising eternal might in exchange. Snarling in anger, Mad Hatter left the people alone, venturing forth.

And at the edge of the Inner Lands, hidden deep within misty mountains, Ravager stirred in her sleep, troubled by something she could not put a finger on. The bothersome feeling disappeared a moment ago, and Ravager slumbered back into the dreamless void.

****

Alpha has been busy burrowing her way out of the molten rock. Even her armor, a custom-made marvel by Till Ingo, had barely endured the chaos ravaging above. In a way, being pushed so deeply beneath the ground has preserved her life. Nothing but darkness surrounded her; not a single air pocket filled these depths, but Alpha was calm. The armor was still recycling the air, producing tiny quantities of breathable oxygen, and she could exist without O₂ for hours. A gift of sorts, granted to her by the creators. Right now, the most important thing is not to mistake up for down. A sigh left her lips—a momentary regret at losing her hair. It took decades to grow it this long.

It took time, and the stones around did their best to try to collapse once more, but eventually Alpha had “swam” through the stone sea, breaking into the pleasant and kind rays of sunlight. The woman breathed out, sitting tiredly and observing the molten rock spreading for kilometers. Most of the systems of her power armor went off and were now busy reactivating one after another, recharged at last. A report came in, showing that the connection with Janine’s group was lost. A pity. Alpha had wanted to know if Marco was fine. And why in the Abyss did her named sister wear this ugly-ass armor?

No radiation was detected in the air; thank the Spirits for this small mercy. But… Years and years of terraforming went down the drain. All because of Ravager’s softness.

With a grunt, she stood up. Damn the feelings. Damn the past grievances. This was something Alpha could never understand. Spirits her witnesses; she had done unspeakable evil, but what is the point of dwelling on it, drinking yourself down at either misery or some slight dealt against you? Now and here mattered. Ravager taught her this. So why can’t the Blessed Mother tough it out and stay with them, like her bloody duty demands to? Why must Ravager be so fallible, so… human?

They were nothing more than tools. Tools made for wanton slaughter, but who gained sentience and decided to save lives instead. Living was just not for them. Jani, Marty, Abyss, even Ashbringer—all of them could live and be happy. But not Alpha or Ravager.

No matter. The state will fix this. The state fixes everything.

A crack of stone broke her brooding. Tongues of flame spat out, widening the crack, invigorated by the fresh oxygen. Blackened fingers followed suit, and with a thunderous crack, a black skeleton dug himself out of the stone, laughing like mad and standing to face her. The inanity of the situation was almost physically insulting. Two demigods stood in a world of cinders, one a man-made butcher and another an accidental freak. And both of them were incapable of doing anything else but be driven to try to kill each other.

“Enough with it,” Alpha spat on the ground.

“Indeed.” Horkhudagh struggled to contain his genuine happiness. “What a thrill it was! Ready for round two? Worry not; I am not into killing children or anything, lands or no. They are free to leave.”

“Why serve the Horde, then?” Alpha asked, tilting her head. “The state pays better. How about joining?”

“I must reject the kind offer.” The skeleton waved a black finger, creating a coat of flame around himself. “Loyalty is its own reward, and I have sworn mine to Iron Lord and, by extension, Mad Hatter. My future, and that of my people, is linked to theirs.”

“Then you have no future,” Alpha told him plainly.

Horkhudagh only smiled with the lipless grin of a skeleton as flame engulfed him in full, creating blades of blue fire in each fist. Like some sort of demonic knight, with burning wings of flame, he descended on her.

Alpha made no move, sensing the traitor’s arrival. Drawn by the explosion, the gallant fool met Horkhudagh head-on, the Sunblade flashing with the heat of a newborn star. With two flicks of his wrists, the Ice Fang took away Horkhudagh’s arms and head, driving the shocked man back. The Sunblade, a gift of the Twins, illuminated the area, making Alpha switch to the lenses to keep herself from frowning.

First was standing in front of her, emulating his noble parents perfectly. The two-handed blade was held in one hand and raised high, his exquisite armor reflecting the light, and his purple cloak flapping in the wind unharmed by the sweltering heat. Horkhudagh spent no second wondering why he was hurt and created a pillar of flame around himself, shooting upward to hide in the safety of encroaching clouds.

“Tsch. Coward.” First turned off the Sunblade, sheathing the deadly weapon. He turned to meet her, removing the helmet from a smiling snout. “Lady Alpha, my pardons for being this late…”

“Drop the chit-chat, traitor,” Alpha barged into him, swallowing the urge to attack the bastard straight away. And to think that she once viewed him as a comrade! What fools all of them were, not listening to the shamans’ warnings. “We are heading to the convoy. Keep up the pace and make sure not to run off this time.”

“I understand your anger, Warlord, and fully accept the reproach.” First ran next to her. “I assure you, the fault lies only with Sword Saints, me included; our people, meanwhile, are grateful beyond all…”

“Shut up,” Alpha snapped. “Just shut up with your lies, First. We have a war on our paws. People, our people among them, are dying. Act your rank and tell me where your damned forces are and how soon they can reach Houstad?”