Decimated. The Taleteller rose, ripping out another life. Janine whirled around, clawing at the fools who approached her position. Four bodies fell, and the warlord moved on, trampling the wounded and breaking the bones of the dead. On this day, restrained rage ruled her mind.
Mariam. Lake. Tylem. Forthbom. Alina. Helly. Mandy. Woebasher. Jake. These were just the latest casualties of the never-ending onslaught. Her pack thinned to a mere handful, leaving Janine with five warriors - one male and two scouts. Of the three hundred who had come here with her, only nine were still alive and able to fight, plus five wounded, one of whom had died on the operating table. And of the thousands assigned to her command, only four hundred and eighty-five remained standing. The rest were either wounded or dead. Decimated. Her Tribe, her pack, and the troops entrusted to her command.
The males spent their lives like coins, throwing themselves to give the females a chance to retreat and regroup. This cruel practice had preserved the strongest fighters to the last, but Janine’s heart ached at the sight of her soldiers dying. They had come so far. They had witnessed the return of the Blessed Mother. Only to die now.
Janine had no bad words to say about the volunteers. As she waded through the enemy ranks, maiming and killing, reducing the tanks to piles of rubble, these brave men and women held the gate like expert killers. The assassin had truly atoned for his crimes. The man remained stubbornly at the front until the end, picking off the enemy one by one. Janine assumed him dead. His life sign went dark during an assault.
The eldest Oakster had given his life dragging the wounded to safety. Thanks to his efforts, three of their pack had survived and were now being taken to the underground medical center. Even after losing an arm and having his body filled with gaping craters of torn flesh, the farmer carried a wounded scout on his shoulders before succumbing to his wounds. The scout he had rescued had lost everything below her waist and was determined to die the Old Way. Janine refused, reminding the woman of the man’s sacrifice.
Another volunteer wielded an energy mace, cracking heads with each blow. Along with Jacomie, his words inspired the defenders, shaking off the sense of impending doom. His songs lifted hearts and gave hope to those in despair. A shot from the smoke threw his lifeless body against a piece of railing.
Nearly all the cannons on the wall had been silenced, exploded by the precision artillery fire of the enemy war machines. The operators did their duty to the end, turning the plain in front of the city into a lunar surface. Craters from artillery shells and rockets replaced the once smooth surface, and every trace of greenery was obliterated. Dead, dying, and clouds of smoke filled the view. And out of that smoke came grenades, shells, rockets, hoverbikes, tanks and soldiers.
A grenade fell under Janine’s legs, and she grabbed a nearby raider, dragging the struggling bastard close. The explosion illuminated them all, the sharp shrapnel carving caverns into the man’s body, killing him instantly. And the warlord stood unharmed, safely protected by the thick armor plating.
Four hours. Only two hundred and forty minutes ago, the majority of her troops were alive. Wolfkins weren’t built for defense; every instinct in their bodies screamed to march forward, to sink their fangs into into their enemies’ necks and retreat just as quickly as they appeared. Forced to fight in the confined zone had hindered their abilities.
She made peace with whatever fate awaited her and concentrated on killing. A Malformed lost both of the bone blades that served him for arms. The man howled a plea for mercy, and she shut him up by ramming the knob through his mouth. Janine was done with showing mercy. Want to live? Stay off the bridge. Her new power armor was covered in scratches, dents, and small cracks. But it held; every system in the armor still worked.
“Ambush,” Janine snapped, tearing the shrieking raider into four parts. She kicked her axe back into her paw, slashing out just in time to finish off a lowly khan trying to sneak up on her.
The surviving Wolfkins started slithering beneath the rubble, waiting to be unleashed yet again, and the volunteers led by Jacomie retreated further to the gate, abandoning the ruined position for the relative safety of freshly made trenches. Jacomie ended up being not half bad. The woman complemented Janine’s rage with cold competence, directing the soldiers to the hardest fronts and orchestrating retreats when the situation became dire. If by some miracle they survived, the warlord had every intention of offering the woman a place in the Third.
“Those who don’t value their lives,” Janine’s laugh rose above the graveyard. A single cut had halved four bodies, and Janine spread her arms, drenched in red. “Step forward! I’ll send you all to the Abyss!”
Fear. She used fear. The thought of it was actually funny. All her life she had tried to be professional and become the opposite of Terrific. Never tormenting others. Go easy on the males. Winning through skills. And look at her now! Most of her pack died, she herself became a figure of horror, covered in blood and gore. The raging flames stripped the layer of filth from her armor, only to have it reappear immediately as she continued the slaughter. And the raiders trembled; the fear of her finally broke their spirits. She had killed thousands.
And tens of thousands turned back. There was no unified command, but Malformed, Purebloods and Normies alike retreated, slipping and falling on the bloodied ground, pushing each other to safety. Janine’s mocking laughter followed them, but she herself stood on the bridge, ready to fight forever if necessary.
She sighed, taking the opportunity to rest, and called up the video feed to check on the other warlords and her daughters.
Impatient One and Anissa were still lying in ambush, growing increasingly annoyed at being cut off from the battle for so long. The Anissa Pack had slaughtered a few raiders who had tried to approach the facility, but that was all. Janine smiled in relief. It was so good to see that a good part of her pack was still alive. Happy hunting and stay safe. She thought.
Ygrite stood upon the broken Heika’s. Both of the woman’s legs were missing, her hands twitched, desperately trying to reach for the two daggers lying on the floor. A single stomp cratered a hand, drawing a pitching scream from the clown’s lips. The room around them had descended into chaos. Steel walls bulged from Heika’s jumps. Most of the mines on the floor exploded, destroying the furniture and filling the air with a thick smog and acrid smell.
The warlord’s armor was a mess. Fangs the size of a human hand protruded from beneath the metal plates, denting and breaking them. The outer parts of Ygrite’s entire forearms were covered with an additional protective layer of sharp bone, ready to be wielded as a shield and, as the lacerations on Heika’s body attested, as a sword.
“H-how?” Heika gasped. “I stepped where you stepped! How could I...”
“Who said I primed all the mines at once, silly girl?” Ygrite lifted the woman by the broken hand, opening her jaws in full.
A line ran down Ygrite’s lower jaw, across her neck, and finally to her chest. That line spread wide, and Janine saw true horror in Heika’s eyes. Her sister was a mutant. One of the first generation, her body was fighting a mutation that caused the sporadic growth of bone fangs all over her body. When she concentrated, the woman could control them, but never stop them completely.
But her throat was different. Due to a botched job by her creators, Ygrite’s true jaws took up the entirety of her neck. These jaws did not expand as much as they had opened wide. The throat itself was part of the warlord’s jaws. She had upper, left, and right jaws, along with a series of countless fangs growing out of her chest. Fully opened, hundreds of wet fangs greeted the shocked woman.
“Mercy!” Heika screamed, struggling in Ygrite’s grip. The jaws, large enough to swallow the woman whole, began to close. “Mercy, please! I surrender, I surrender; please, please, I beg you, anything but this!”
Ygrite breathed in, no longer sucking in the air but inhaling it freely. With a soft snap, the jaws closed and the warlord coughed, his tongue returning to its place through the tormenting rows of fangs.
“Mercy? Fine. But on one condition.” The Wolfkin hugged the wounded woman, looking into the tearing eyes. “Your life belongs to the Wolf Tribe now. Even if the state lets you go free, we own you. From now until the rest of your days, you are ours. Try to escape, cheat, or lie, and your fate will be tenfold worse than a quick death now. Do you accept?” Heika quickly nodded.
The paws tightly closed around Heika’s shoulders, drawing blood in the places where fangs hooked the skin, and Ygrite pressed her hold, cracking the ribs and spine. The assassin threw her head back, shouting in pain, but the warlord continued, dislocating shoulders and cracking bones. But only cracking, Ygrite refrained from breaking the spine completely, opting only for temporary immobilization. Still holding the raider’s body, Ygrite took the good hand and began to break fingers, one by one, drawing whimpers from the terrified Heika.
The assassin’s mask and clothing were removed, exposing her flesh, which was beginning to swell. After sniffing the woman several times, Ygrite removed several poisonous needles from behind the woman’s ears. With a single flick of her thumbs, she cracked the assassin’s collarbones.
“Your loyalty is accepted.” Ygrite rubbed a prisoner’s scent mark into the assassin’s forehead and leaned her against the wall.
“Wait...” Heika whispered as Ygrite passed her. “My wounds...”
“You are a new breed, girl! I can see the blood clotting already. Close your eyes and pass out. Someone will pick you up after the battle should you survive.” With a push of a button, Ygrite turned off the mines and walked out of the facility, leaving the broken assassin trapped inside the secured complex.
Inside the crawler, Dragena dropped Phaser’s remains off her knives The warlord took no chances. At her command, several troops armed with flamethrowers closed in. The cold amber eyes observed how the deceased body turned into ash. Assured that no regeneration was possible at this point, Dragena left the command center to join the secondary defense lines.
Alpha and Horkhudagh raged against each other on the wall. Horkhudagh spun Alpha around with dozens of arms, throwing the warlord with enough force to send her body flying through two bunker-sized turrets. The flaming new breed jumped right after her, planting his feet in the solid concrete and missing Alpha by a hair. The stone beneath his feet overheated, then exploded upward in the molten torrent. Alpha used the brief respite to get to her feet and dodge the arm coming from the pillar of flame. A single cut from the giant claws sliced the limb in half.
The strongest warlord charged in, breaking through the pillar of fire. She and Horkhudagh came from the other side, Alpha’s claws aimed at something dark inside the fiery body.
Lacerated One left a pile of bodies in the command center. She stood guard, shielding the operators from any harm. Hearing footsteps outside, the supreme shaman left the command center and came face to face with Drozna. The huge new breed had a fresh set of healed scars across his body; behind him, he dragged Slaughterer’s head, wielding the deceased’s Malformed like a battling ram.
“Step aside, mutant,” Drozna breathed out.
“Can you hear them?” Lacerated One inquired, stepping toward him. She raised one paw in a brief gesture of prayer, imploring the spirits to show mercy to Slaughterer.
“What are you talking about, whore?” Drozna raised the Malformed’s head before himself.
“The ghosts of all whom you killed. I can see them right behind you.” The Supreme Shaman approached him without raising her paws, walking almost relaxed. She spoke to Drozna as if she were addressing a member of her own flock or a mischievous cub. “My kin, soldiers of the state, civilians living in our lands. Tortured and murdered at the behest of your misbegotten master. Can you hear their wailing? Do you remember the pleas that fell on deaf ears as you slaughtered them? Can you feel the cold touch of the inevitable vengeance catching up to you?”
“You speak gibberish!” Drozna snapped.
He got distracted. Only for a breath, but it was enough. Lacerated One kicked from a relaxed position, creating a sonic boom with the sheer force behind her movement. Her kick speared through the Malformed’s head, sending Drozna’s back a good five steps across the solid metal floor. The man caught her by the ankle, dragging the woman after him, only to take another kick to the jaw. His head was thrown back, but Drozna managed to counterattack, catching Lacerated One’s thrust aimed at his exposed throat with his own hand. Closing the distance, the raider headbutted the supreme shaman, still holding her by the ankle.
“You flinched. You can hear them too.” Lacerated One licked the blood coming from a nostril. Drozna let go of her leg, locking the claws with her.
“Stop your buzzing,” Drozna growled. “You’re making shit up.”
“Cubs of other gods, be at peace,” the shaman said in a kind voice, and her helmet slid off her head. Like always, Lacerated One’s head was covered with deep, torn wounds, but through the cameras within the corridor, Janine saw a flame of devotion her eyes. Dead certainty and fiery faith in the amber eyes. The shaman had truly seen someone, real or not. “The Spirits are already beside you. Follow them. They will safeguard your journey to your masters or lead you toward a new life if you have none. I shall see to the retribution myself.”
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“Shut up! Shut up! There are no ghosts! There are no gods! And no gods will help you!”
“Help me?” The shaman laughed, ignoring the raider’s slobber falling on her snout. “Foolish child, they just left. Only humans are in this corridor, and humans are fallible, often unable to forgive, unlike gods. You showed no mercy. Expect none in return.”
“I’ll shut you up!” Drozna tried to push the shaman onto the floor.
Drozna and Lacerated One pressed against each other, splitting the metal floor beneath their legs. The shaman turned off her power armor, matching her opponent with her sheer physical strength. Even Dragena’s command failed to bring the woman to her senses. Hindered by tons of steel armor, the wolfkin should have been at a disadvantage. Her faith sustained her, a perfect complement to a berserker’s rage.
They bit each other. Drozna’s square fangs shattered the iron on the shaman’s neck and tore through the rubber protection. Lacerated One responded in kind; her own fangs broke through the bone growths on Drozna’s neck.
Martyshkina held the second line of defense, organizing the arrayed forces. Angled shields rose from the ground, shielding the soldiers. Bunkers, pillboxes, and APCs provided additional cover and weapons for the defenders. Engineers installed a series of anti-infantry turrets across the battle line.
Attackers entering through the breaches in the wall found themselves directly in the killing field. Sniper teams, mobile artillery, mortars, plasma launchers - the defenders unleashed their fury. Martyshkina denied her troops the opportunity to engage the enemy in close combat, relying entirely on the Third’s soldiers and their assault tanks to keep the enemy at bay. Without the opportunity to bring in their own heavy weapons, the Horde rabble found themselves in a bind. Mobility was denied to them; minefields littered the ground behind the wall, cutting off their vectors of advance.
A regal priest emerged from the Horde ranks. The man walked boldly toward the defenders, unharmed by the bullets that flew around him. Spreading traces of white smoke, a rocket missile had been fired by a defender, and the priest gestured, veering the projectile off its course and straight into a nearby building. At the snap of his fingers, three soldiers were lifted into the air.
Martyshkina fired. Once. Her bullet flew across the battlefield, carving a new line in the concrete. The priest had no time to gesture or try to defend himself; the telekinetic shield around him burst like a soap bubble, sending two bloodied legs toppling.
Iron Lord led his elite troops around Martyshkina’s center, breaking through a weakened flank. Ignoring an opportunity to attack the enemy in the rear, leaving it to the lesser khans, the khan moved deeper into the city. His goal was to destroy the artillery batteries near the airport. Take them out, take out the crawler, and the Third Army’s ability to resist will be greatly diminished.
Everyone understood that much. Police, reserves, riot squads, mercenaries, and even a few gangs had tried to stop the stampede. None of them succeeded; the mounted weapons on the shoulders of Iron Lord and his guards opened fire, the thunder bulls smashed through the defenders, and glaives and halberds killed those who tried to step aside.
The charge came to an abrupt halt in the great square. Once bustling with thousands of citizens and tourists hurrying to shopping malls or a bus stop, the only two figures to greet the approaching troops were Warlord Onyxia and Wolf Hag Anji. Behind them were the bodies of the infiltrators - two dozen men and women - all impaled on the statues of great heroes of the Reclamation Army. The warlord removed the eyes of the dead raiders to preserve the sanctity of the place.
A single great line divided the square. Marked by Onyxia’s claws, it separated three-quarters of the square from the rest. Iron Lord looked around, raised his hand in a silent command for his troops to wait, and kicked his thunder bull in the sides, moving forward. Onyxia walked forward to meet him, while Janine observed the situation through Anji’s lenses. Her sister was hardly the tallest member of the Wolf Tribe, standing only slightly taller than a normal shaman, and the width of her shoulders often gave the false impression of a wolf hag in training. But there was something undeniable about her.
Born of the first generation, forged in the biotech labs of the Old World, Onyxia was a splinter of the Blessed Mother, cut and grown from her own flesh. Streaks of darkness fought in the air, seeping through the sealed joints of her power armor, bypassing the solid metal and giving the false impression that the warlord was being boiled alive by the shadows clinging to her skin. Onyxia had a dry charisma, and as a commander her skills were often lacking, leaving her only ahead in terms of leadership ability to the belligerent Ygrite. But when it came to instilling pure terror in the enemy, she surpassed even Terrific, and all without a single intentional torture.
One by one, she had taken those foolish enough to be her opponents. In the darkness of a night, under the blazing sun of a day, there was no salvation from the hungry claws reaching out of a shadow. Soldiers standing in orderly ranks would find a comrade next to them being taken away. All in complete silence. Then they would look to their left and right and find the situation repeating itself. A base commander would disappear after her bodyguards blinked. Blink and your childhood friend would end up with a cut throat. Blink and you would miss the strongest champion falling with his spine severed.
Entire armies often broke under such mental torture, earning Onyxia the most fearsome reputation of all the Wolf Tribe. Even the Iternian military grew wary of the woman after their sensors failed to detect her all too often. Machines capable of detecting tiny spatial anomalies, traces of gas in the air, or signs of living beings had proven useless against the woman, and she had taken a rich toll on the enemies of the state, driving the opposition to such despair that they would rather surrender.
And now the stealth killer had come out into the open, unafraid to face the approaching mountain of steel. Except for Anji, her entire pack had moved to remain under Martyshkina’s command.
“Your lenses relay our position to the crawler. Once we get behind the line, the artillery will come down on us, am I right?” Iron Lord asked.
“Perhaps,” Onyxia replied.
“I’ll call your bluff.” Iron Lord moved through the line. He looked around and spread his arms when no artillery shell fell on him.
The khan recoiled in his seat, his movement followed by a screech of metal and a loud explosion of stone where Onyxia had just stood. The warlord appeared behind him, shadows almost completely enveloping her form. In one paw she held the torn shoulder cannon of her enemy, and with the other she left deep gashes in the side of Iron Lord’s armor.
Iron Lord struck back with his glaive, his sharp shoe cutting through the veil of darkness. Onyxia reached out and grabbed Iron Lord’s shoulder, only to have the force field to come to life around him, throwing the woman to the ground. Spinning his weapon in hand, he made a single cut, aiming to slice the falling warlord.
Janine fought against the man. She knew firstpaw how strong and precise the man’s movements were. Onyxia should have grouped her body already. She should have tried to block the blow with her claws and weave under the weapon before the thunder bull stomped on her. The warlord did none of that, fighting against her natural instincts.
The blade struck the ground, slicing through the stone and sending a small ripple along the concrete, creating cracks. Onyxia herself was once again behind Iron Lord, her claws trailing along his helmet, nearly tearing a pauldron clean.
“You blinked,” she whispered.
Blink. The name the warlord had given to her annoying fighting style. When people looked at her, they assumed some kind of power, based on the shadows that surrounded her. And indeed, the woman did have a power. But it had nothing to do with the darkness emanating from her fur and pores. That was a side effect of an experiment in the laboratory, a failed attempt to combine two powers. Onyxia had an unnatural ability to read both people and even machines.
Regular fighters could predict an opponent’s movements just by reading the muscles’ twitch. Onyxia’s gift went even further; she could see through the power armor itself, knowing exactly when a split-second distraction would occur, or when someone would blink. And right now, she bounced off the ground with her backpack, weaving past the blade and slashing at Iron Lord.
Janine remembered how hated Onyxia was in the tribal rankings. When you focused on the woman, she wasn’t exactly hard to take down within the confines of the arena. But if you started to blink, she would go straight for the jugular, slowly bleeding you out and dancing just out of reach, teasing the opponent. Even when she lost, the victor often spent days in the emergency room, and what kind of victory was that? Onyxia was either easily trampled or put up a hell of a fight; there was no in-between with her.
Iron Lord grunted, failing to activate his shield after sunk her claws into his backpack, leaping aside just in time to avoid a thrust and a shower of sparks. Iron Lord stood up on his thunder bull and slashed back, forcing Onyxia to lean all the way back, holding on only to her ankles and feet to dodge the attack. Onyxia nimbly regained her footing, retreating away from the blindingly fast cuts and thrusts following her. To Janine’s eyes, a wall of blurry dead had appeared before the warlord.
For Onyxia, it was only a matter of timing. The Wolfkin, who had several tons of iron on her, overloaded the optical zoom once more, disappearing from the cameras’ view and leaving two bloody footprints on the thunder bull’s hide. Laughing, the warlord rolled on the ground, beckoning Iron Lord with a bloodied claw.
The khan looked down. Onyxia struck in the exact same place that she weakened with her first attack, cutting through the weakened metal to reach the body beneath.
“Blinked again. Tsk, tsk. Are you really the one who defeated the Dark Blade?” Onyxia grinned. “I will tease that rusty old ass forever.”
“I am the grand commander of the Gilded Horde.” Iron Lord pressed the hand holding the glaive against the wound. His other hand was raised, his fingers moving as if to envelop the sun. “The one who saw countless nations trampled beneath the Horde’s might. The one who defeated your miserable armies times and times again. And you are…” Onyxia disappeared. “…A fool.”
Onyxia’s claws barely touched Iron Lord when both of them came under fire. The khan’s bodyguards, all of them, opened fire, following the commands given by their leader’s fingers. Where Iron Lord’s armor was thick enough to withstand the hail of death, Onyxia’s armor cracked in several places, and her backpack spewed fire as the warlord was flung upon the ground.
“Did you seriously think I would believe that you had enough artillery to spare at this point of battle? If you had any, I would’ve already been under fire!” Iron Lord’s mocking voice thundered through the fire. “Fool! While I was toying with you, we had already finished searching for buried explosives. And discovered them in the nearby streets. Your plan to divert our advance straight into a minefield had failed, grunt. Now learn. Learn the difference between a commander and a brute.”
Onyxia landed on all fours and ran away as the ground behind the warlord exploded. The thunder of dozens of legs followed the warlord when the Iron Lord’s elite force began their charge. One by one, they crossed the line. Anji remained standing, her arms folded, the lenses of her armor marking each rider. The wolf hag waited patiently for the entire group to cross the line, and only then sent a message to Dragena.
The Third Army had some of the most unrivaled artillery crews. Its regular troops were seldom in action, as the Wolf Tribe tended to the hottest spots on the battlefield. But the thunder from above was something every warlord revered. The ability to level or weaken fortifications within the enemy base-what’s not to love? And the Normies gave their own in training, proud of the opportunity to contribute to the war effort. Captain Cristobo once joked that his troops could easily land a shell in the eye of a flying insectoid.
Today, that test has been passed with flying colors. One by one, the crawler’s light artillery batteries diverted their attention and pelted the riders with what passed for point-blank fire. Even power armor could do little against the onslaught; metal bent, limbs snapped, skulls cracked under the barrage. Only Iron Lord remained relatively unscathed, standing too close to Onyxia for the artillerymen to fire at him. The rain of death did not last long; the artillery had to be redirected back to the main field, but the damage it left in its wake was immense.
Iron Lord’s bodyguards were either killed, incapacitated, or in hasty retreat. Only a few thunder bulls had been killed; these towering beasts were tough enough to serve as the Horde’s battle tanks. But with no hunters to guide them, the beasts also stopped advancing and turned back in search of safety.
“Of course, I didn’t give the order when you stepped into the line of fire. Think about it; we would’ve only gotten you that way. Now we’ve got the whole litter.” Onyxia smiled fiercely. “Who do you think is hunting whom, Iron Fool?”
“You dare? You dare think this will change anything? I alone am enough to change the situation.” Iron Lord asked softly, leaning forward. He placed a hand on the flat head of his steed. “Keep her in your sight at all times.” A pat accompanied his words. With a kick, the khan sent his beast into a gallop. His armor unfurled, releasing a series of autocannons.
“Anji! Time to shine!” Onyxia called out.
“I thought you’d never ask, Warlord!” Anji laughed.
And hurled a flash bang. It exploded in front of Iron Lord’s face, blinding him and his steed. The oculars of his armor caught the flash, protecting his eyes from permanent damage. But the white flash had done its job, hiding the warlord from view. And she had used that moment to kick a piece of rubble to the left and dash to the right. The Iron Lord’s glaive sliced through the stone when it connected with the ground, opening him up long enough for Onyxia to cut an artery in the thunder bull’s leg.
Anji arrived moments later, firing her shardgun at Iron Lord and distracting the khan long enough for the warlord to get out of harm’s way. The enraged beast stomped at the square, bulging pieces of concrete out of the ground, but this merely created more places for the two women to hide behind. Anji jumped from one such cover, slashing at a long ammunition thread. She quickly bounced off the thunder bull, ducking behind a rock as a hail of explosive rounds was unleashed from the multitude of automatic weapons. Onyxia timed the distraction with her own leap.
The hunt was on.
And Janine smiled, shrugging off the fatigue in her own limbs. She heard it—the pounding of legs against the ruined surface. Fire flowers sprang to life on the walls, eliminating the last of the turrets. A few missiles pierced the smoke, and she intercepted four with the last energy cell of her laser rifle. Others crashed into the wall, but two fell behind Janine, hitting the volunteers and soldiers. She saw Jacomie, the captain, tossed into the air like a doll. The armor saved the woman’s life, but as she fell to the ground, one hand was torn from its socket by the explosion.
Death. The warlord inhaled the smoke and let go of her worries about her girls. This was her time. The Blessed Mother still fought, there would be no miraculous salvations anymore. Hold the gate. Do your mission. Her nose smelled the familiar scent, and her lips parted to form a grimace of ugly joy and savage hatred.
“Jacomie. You’re still with us?” Janine asked.
“Like hell you’ll get rid of me this easily, warlord,” the captain grumbled, allowing two volunteers to help her with the wound.
“Atta girl. Take the charge and get everyone to leg it to the second line. The rest is up to me,” Janine said, never once looking away from the smoke.
“You’re going to die out here alone, Janine. We started this together and...” Jacomie began. A few fools even cheered her on, intending to hold on here to the last.
“And nothing!” Janine snapped, rammed her axe into the ground and threw the laser rifle back. “You have a duty to your pack, so shove your emotions up your ass, Captain. This is an order: take my pack; take any survivors. Retreat to Martyshkina. We have achieved our objective.”
“Lure them out, sisters,” Dragena had said during the war council.
The goal was never to stop the Horde’s advance. They simply lacked the numbers to achieve such a feat. The Horde would have broken through; it was only a matter of time. But time was what they had to buy. Dragena had concluded that the Horde had relied too heavily on its great commanders. Without them to steer the course of the war, it became a shambling mess of Khans vying for supremacy, and its military potential crumbled to a halt.
Mad Hatter is engaged in battle. Iron Lord is busy. And the final piece of the puzzle has finally arrived.
Your superweapon is left all alone. Your crew must be feeling very lonely right now. Not to worry, the hosts are on their way to entertain the Horde rear. And when they are done, the Ice Fangs will move toward Houstad like a sword through ligaments, cutting the fat from the Horde.
“Come,” she said. Brood Lord’s legs stepped from the smoke, kicking aside a ruined wreck. The khan walked in all his glory, his battleplate unblemished by war. His elite guard appeared through the smoke, pushing the last of the cowards forward. The khan carried three impaled deserters on his sword, and the barrels of his guards’ cannons still spewed smoke. Janine greeted them all, spreading her arms wide. “Let us finish this.”
For her sons. For every soldier who had died in this war and for every civilian they had failed to save. The time has come to set things right.