Janine stomped mercilessly, crushing the Wolfkin’s convulsing and spasming body against the pavement. She increased the pressure, straining her own muscles as the smaller body under her paw twitched and the woman’s features distorted. A series of snaps accompanied the rapid elongating and contraction of fingers; the rib cage fused and separated, unnerving even the warlord with the gruesome sight of bones freely traversing through the body.

But the worst thing was that Janine applied enough force to kill or incapacitate a normal wolf hag. The poor girl didn’t even spill blood.

“Marty,” Janine said, struggling to hold the wolf hag down. “We don’t have much time.”

The exertion had soaked her bandages in red. Soulless One almost shoved a nutritious ration prepared by Bogdan into the warlord’s mouth and made her drink sugared water before giving Janine a simple leather jacket and baggy pants, an appropriate outfit not to irritate her inflated implants any further. Gravity had really taken a toll on her, and whether or not Janine liked it, a visit to the cybernetic doctor was now mandatory, as a chord connecting her to the power armor exploded upon disconnecting.

“I know,” said Martyshkina, the only warlord of the four still clad in full combat gear. She knelt and took the wolf hag’s head, pressed it to her chest, and sang a bedtime song. The first rays of sunlight shone from above, dancing on the dented armor and reflecting in the tears.

The smaller Wolfkin gulped, regaining some sanity. Janine could see their similarity despite the wolf hag’s profuse sweating and contorting features. Where Martyshkina’s amber eyes burned like shrouded lamps, the Wolfkin’s eyes had smoldering lights in them, burning brighter with every passing second and threatening to surpass her mother’s.

If only it would be so. The wolf hag’s mouth widened to her temples. The crack didn’t tear its path through flesh and bone, but rather the material shifted aside to form a greater maw. She grabbed her the snout and held it shut, placing a trembling paw on the warlord’s shoulder and jerking it away as claws too large to fit in her fingers pushed out.

Martyshkina ignored the danger, smiled at the younger woman, and continued singing. For someone as huge as her, her voice sounded soft and gentle, a tone she used to soothe her sons after a particularly bad defeat in the pits. The usually cheerful song, meant to inspire a cub for the days to come, now sounded solemn, more like a last sad melody to encourage a mortally wounded comrade.

Janine decided it wasn’t that off-the-mark. The Wolfkin was getting bigger and bigger; a moan of pain escaped her lips as her spine splintered and protruded to accommodate a new, gigantic body. Her magnificent fur started falling off her body, and the woman wept again, grieving the ruination of her body. Her chest bulged, straining Janine’s muscles.

“What is the meaning of this?” Lacerated One asked in a guttural tone, approaching the group and accompanied by Impatient One and Marco.

“Liberation,” Janine answered.

Lacerated One vanished, moving too fast for normal eyes to follow. Janine tasted the sudden shift from calmness to rage; her eyes saw the glint of the supreme shaman’s claws as the woman tried to throw her off the future divine beast. Lacerated One crashed into the crossed in the silent threat weapons of Warlords Eled and Predaig.

Eled, a second-generation wolfkin, was missing half of her snout, exposing part of her nasal cavity to the air and giving her an ever-ugly grin. A great scythe forged from the remains of a destroyed crawler served as her weapon. Many Wolfkins in the tribe thought Eled to be weird, but none dared say it to her face.

In a war, she was a hurricane of violent fury, harvesting the lives of everyone before her, often losing herself in the same maddened haze as Ravager, ending up drenched in blood and guts and laughing bombastically for all to hear. In peace, she led a quiet life, taking great care to remove parasites from her fur and introducing her girls to the wonders of civilization, ordering actual dresses for the family and cakes for her boys. She also bought a harp and tried her paw at being a musician. The Tribe viewed this behavior as a weakness, but the last shaman who dared to chastise the warlord ended up having her legs broken before Eled plucked the woman’s fangs, one after another, and wore them as a necklace for a year before Zero convinced her to make peace with the shamans. Eled dragged the mutilated shaman to a doctor, paid to replace what she had taken, and subsequently invited the shaman to be her bodyguard, settling the blood feud. Her eyes had the dimmest light, second even to Onyxia’s lighters.

Predaig, a sister of the first generation, had a gorgeous black mane around her neck, a sign of mutation. It had long since turned gray, and wrinkles covered the woman’s skin beneath. She willingly defied both Ravager’s will and the state’s order by refusing to enter the rejuvenation chambers. The first-generation Wolfkins often acted differently than their offspring; for one thing, they had a single soulmate and took his death so seriously that they often refused to mate ever again.

Legends told of Predaig going berserk after a marauder killed her soulmate, ordering her pack to stand back and ending a thousand lives in a single night as a final offering to her beloved. Janine had no idea if there was any truth to these stories. Packs liked to exaggerate the exploits of their own warlords, but while Predaig’s movements lost their former grace, her precision remained unmatched. Her weapon of choice was a long, double-bladed, curved sword. Predaig once cleaved a slave trader who had a weapon pressed against the head of a normie cub. Those who witnessed the feat swore they saw the blur slash through both the cub and the slaver, but only the man ended up in two pieces, and Predaig placed the cub on her shoulder and marched him back to his parents.

Predaig’s loyalty to the cause had earned her the right to die of old age. Her eyes shone like suns, matching Ravager’s eyes in intensity despite her age. Like Ygrite, Zero, Alpha, Lacerated One, Onyxia, and Dragena, Predaig was privy to being on Ravager’s personal council.

These two always had a good relationship with Janine and Martyshkina, accepting them as sisters, right after Alpha. Their packs followed their lead, supporting each other in good times and bad, and exchanging and delivering supplies between the villages entrusted to their protection.

“I am sorry,’ the wolf hag whined, struggling to keep her sanity. “I failed…”

“Shhhh…” Martyshkina licked away the tears, baring her neck to her daughter in a gesture of ultimate trust. “You have made no mistake. You were as splendid as ever. I am proud of you, Linny.”

“I don’t want to lose myself,” Linny growled, her tongue growing fat and its sharp edge pushed in-between lips, trying to strike at the exposed neck. “Please, m… warlord. In the old way. Dignity.”

“Of course. We will go to the other side together.” Martyshkina reached for the revolver. “The madness won’t take you.”

“Idiocy!” Lacerated One hit the weapons, but kept her distance, wary of challenging four warlords at once. “She is to ascend, not to lose herself! Stop it! Don’t deprive our tribe of a sacred champion…”

“It’s not for you to decide, sister,” Janine told her, putting a paw on Marty’s shoulder and wishing she could be able to shoulder her friend’s sorrow and pain.

No mother should outlive her offspring. Male, female, who cares? A mother and father always want to see their cubs thrive and be happy when they start a family of their own.

The wolf hag made one last twitch; the reknotting and reforming of her muscles into something stronger and faster sounded like a burst of gunfire. Rage and aggression filled the amber eyes. She threw her head high, no longer holding the jaws, and everyone saw two rows of fangs inside. Martyshkina’s revolver stifled the incipient howl, and a shot disappeared from the back of her head, creating a new crater.

This wasn’t the end. Not even close. Linny wasn’t in the realm of normality anymore; she transcended even the limits of the Trolls as the new gray matter began forming—a writhing, worm-like mass. New wet orbs appeared in place of the amber eyes destroyed by the shot’s shockwave, paws closed and opened, trying to find a grip on Martyshkina, and the warlord used the barrel of her weapon, not allowing the brain to fully rebuild itself.

If they made even a single mistake, this… thing could well end their lives. Janine faced off against them; who didn’t, among those who lived in the wild lands of the New World? Blood Graf and Tecno-Queen gave her a taste of helplessness, but these creatures taught her horror.

“Two out of twenty-one.” Martyshkina closed her eyes for a moment, taking a breath to calm herself at the sight of a reanimated body. “Janny, what’cha think? Am I cursed?”

“This is no curse, moron!” Lacerated One folded her paws in divine reverence. “You are blessed. Step aside everyone; I shall push her away from the civilians. Let us welcome…”

“No Marty. It’s… it just happens.” Janine ignored Lacerated One and placed both paws on her friend’s shoulders. “If you want to, I can…”

“No. I must do it myself.” The warlord’s jaws snapped, biting into the newly formed brain. She tore and bit, devouring the body faster than it could regenerate itself, licking the blood off the pavement, and feasting on the remains of her cub.

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Janine let her be. Soon enough, even the skinwalker’s regeneration will give up. She gave the shocked Lacerated One an encouraging pat. It must have been difficult for her. In the past, hundreds of females had embraced this accused divinity, forever losing themselves. In the darkest times for both the state and the tribe, these aberrations had come, stemming a wave of destruction. But never without a price. Skinwalkers do not care who they kill or hurt, as long as they have fun.

Nowadays, even the most devout refuse to become beasts. The Reclaimers were conquerors. But they also wanted to build a world worth living in, not another crazy Thunderdome. Marco stopped, horrified by the scene. A snap of Janine’s fingers brought him standing at attention, and the cub reached for a small terminal on his waist. Janine led him and Impatient One away, trusting Predaig and Eled to help Marty.

“Ma’am! I mean, warlord.” Her glance calmed him. Marco shouldn’t be here, true. However, the Wolfkins were in a state of agitation after the battle. Any female could’ve dominated him out of a force of habit. Best to keep him near his sisters. “Our… I mean yours! The pack lost twenty-four soldiers, eighteen brothers, and six sisters. And thirty-five wounded, but all of them will survive!” Marco saluted her.

“Don’t salute!” Impatient One hit him across the head—a mix between a pat and a light slap. “If you don’t have a headgear, you must straighten up! If you have one, then you can salute.”

“I… I forgot! Sorry, si..” Impatient One’s growl silenced Marco. The shaman sighed and took a black beret out of her pocket.

“Here.” She put it on his head. “Now you can salute. And I am not your sister. I am a shaman! We have no family except the tribe; remember that once and for all!”

“So you are like family for everyone!” Marco grinned. “That means it is okay if I call you sister!”

“You little smartass punk!” Impatient One grabbed Marco by the nape, raising him up in the air and snapping her jaws next to his ear.

“Punk? Think a mohawk would suit me?” Marco inquired, examining his hair and ignoring the fangs next to his nose.

“I meant it as an insult, dolt! Stop picking up strange meanings for words from Normies!”

Too many losses. Janine pondered about what this meant for her pack. The fresh recruits will go to the stronger warlords first. She’ll be lucky if she gets at least one or two high-quality females in the next batch. Even if she gets them, they still require proper training and raising to avoid being a hindrance.

The situation was deteriorating by the day. Each warlord was supposed to have about eight shamans to safeguard her, to solve spiritual problems in the pack, and to learn and bring new knowledge to the tribe. Now, after years of wars? Janine only had Soulless One and Impatient One by her side, and her daughter was still in training.

Young shamans were supposed to begin their duties in the villages, overseeing civilian affairs, learning from their elders, and maturing through distancing themselves from their families and steeling their hearts; aiding in life giving and never forgetting that their existence was to serve the tribe. Impatient One helped Janine give life to the last litter, so at least she passed some tests. But she was far from being a true shaman.

Martyshkina no longer had any shamans; her bodyguards perished in battles. Other warlords had at best one or two. And not only did they have trouble with spiritual leaders, but the tribe also experienced an urgent need for junior personnel! Janine herself had few true wolf hags left; instead of cold-eyed women like Melina and Anissa, she had to rely on the greenhorn scouts, promoted by merit after the death of their superiors, rather than by right of dominance. This led to a lack of experience in the pack.

Even in the best of days, the Wolfkins distrusted doctors and technology because of Ravager’s bias. Wolf hags had to bully the lesser ranks to keep up with the times, freeing the load off the warlords’ shoulders. With so many veterans gone, new wolf hags shared stupid superstitions about losing their souls to power armor. The few remaining shamans were busy allaying these fears, often struggling to find time for a private conversation.

No matter how dire the situation, Janine embraced it and welcomed the opportunity to learn. To live is to improvise, to change in body and mind. She will face this crisis and emerge a more knowledgeable and worthy leader for her pack.

Melina’s scout and Elzada. That’s minus two experienced scouts for a while. Sucks to suck. Or…

“Marco?” The two stopped arguing at Janine’s question. “How’s Melina’s girl? Able to join the front anytime soon?”

“Negative, warlord!” Her helpful boy replied. “She caught some kind of infection that caused a serious inflammation.”

“Because, of course, she is,” Janine muttered.

“The medics put her on a strict diet and petitioned you again to stop the cruelty in your pack.”

“Because, of course, they are,” Janine sighed. She didn’t hold it against the Normies. These men and women were doing their jobs. It wasn’t easy to keep a Wolfkin from dying, but they excelled at it. “Life givers?”

“Four litters!” Marco checked his terminal. “It’s said seventeen cubs are alive and healthy. Three more warriors should give life soon. Medics complain that a crawler is no nursery.”

“They won’t have to tolerate them for long,” Janine grinned, wondering who she could spare to escort the future generation to the safety of the villages. “Good job, Marco. Thank you. At ease.”

The evacuation of the city was in full swing. Onyxia’s scouts assisted black-clothed members of the Investigation Bureau in uncovering hidden hangars where engineers worked, unaware of their ruler’s defeat. First picked several officers from Techno-Queen’s former army and put them in charge of coordinating the forces willing to obey the Reclaimers. Those soldiers who refused to serve had turned in their weapons and reunited with their families.

Trucks moved in and out of the city, filling the bellies of army transports with families taken from civilian homes. Captain Cristobo didn’t linger; once filled, the transports raced across the Wastes to unload at the nearest border town, where the local army forces would disperse the people into many refugee camps. In time, these people will settle in proper villages, where they can breathe fresh air with no fear and walk unburden by hazmat suits. As the vultures of the New World, slavers and raiders, appeared on the horizon, the Voidrunner and Summerspring households took it upon themselves to escort the refugees.

Not all citizens still believed in the truth revealed by the royal guards and the collared engineers about Tecno-Queen’s cruelty and madness. Dragena let a few raise their voices and silenced them by broadcasting the tyrant’s own words throughout the city and adding pictures of her victims, thus settling that part of the dispute. But Janine sensed resentment even through the suits of the evacuees. How could it not be? They had invaded and murdered the locals. For years to come, the Wolfkins would be a symbol of horror to the former inhabitants.

That, too, was the way of the New World, a way the Dynast planned to change. Kill a few to save many. What a joke. Janine looked at the tall communication tower, wondering if the medics could truly save those cubs.

Please, Spirits. Help my cubs find happiness, be by Marty’s side in her darkest moment, and let these poor souls have a chance—a simple chance at life. Is it so much? I have given you so much of my blood and will keep giving, but have mercy on the others.

“Shaman, why did the warlords kill the sister?” Marco asked.

Impatient One put him down, giving him a light kick for speed that nearly sent him rolling. The shaman slowed down as she followed the warlord to the main square. A member of the Investigation Bureau briefly stopped them, investigating Janine’s and Marco’s fangs for the presence of human flesh. The man tiredly waved his hand at Impatient One’s admission of guilt and hurried off to help evacuate a local hospital.

“You remember the skinwalker’s visit a year ago?” the shaman asked.

“Yep! Onyxia and Mo… Warlord sliced her arms after she ate three cubs and the beast ran away, Ye…” Janine stopped, knowing exactly what would happen.

Marco never finished speaking; a clawed paw struck him across the left chin, slicing through it. The punishment did not end there; Impatient One’s paw closed around Marco’s head, pushing him face down on the pavement and breaking his nose. The shaman dragged her brother against the ground and lifted him by the neck, growling into the frightened snout.

Janine had to force herself from caving her daughter’s head in. Marco’s sufferings were not Impatient One’s fault. The shaman had shown immense leniency, finding alternative ways to punish her brother for mischief by making him work. She never even bit him. Janine was the one who let him down. She had taken him out of the pits to save his life, but had she taught him the ways of the tribe? No, she coddled him over and over again, and his brothers and sisters did the same. The boy grew too bold. The day will come when he’ll be on his own, and who will protect him then?

It was because of this that she took some measures to secure his future. If only her boy would let her.

“Never. Never dare address me by this name, Marco.” The cub shuddered, throwing a worried glance at Janine. The warlord calmly waited, ignoring the fear. Any other male acting so frivolously in a shaman’s presence risked having his neck broken. For his sake, Marco needs to understand his place in the tribe. “Questions are fine. Fear is fine. Even doubt is fine. But never, never use a name that a shaman has discarded to address her. It’s true that some names are repeated in our tribe. So it is okay to use that name when addressing someone else. But when we become shamans, we abandon our names, for our goal is to serve the tribe and not our blood. I am Impatient One, and I am not your sister anymore.” Impatient One grabbed her own muzzle to keep her jaws from biting. She calmed herself and released her brother. “The lesson is over; you are forgiven. As for your question, sometimes a sister can ascend.”

“Ascend?” Marco asked, touching his cut chin. Blood had already darkened his fangs. The bleeding would not last; even though he was a male, Marco was a full Wolfkin. Impatient One cleaned his chin and pressed a medical patch over the wound, showing her brother what he should do in such situations.

“Yes, ascend.” Impatient One pressed a claw to her jaw. “You would be better off asking a shaman in charge of raising the cubs than me… But in short, the Spirit of Rage covets us all. When we fight too hard and win too much, it draws its gaze upon us. It is no disgrace; no one knows what exactly might attract this spirit. But after receiving this wicked attention, a sister has a feeling of wrongness, almost like a…”

“Like a period?” Marco suggested, and his sister chuckled.

“No, nothing like that, you silly boy. A premonition of the coming horror, as she turns into a shell for a new life.” Impatient One picked up a stone and placed it in Marco’s paws. Before she broke the stone, she used her paws to tighten his grip so that he could hear the cracks. “See? The stone is still a stone, but it has taken on a new shape. Eventually a sister’s shell breaks after she wins a battle, and something new, beautiful, and terrible comes out. Some foolishly choose to die rather than change.”

“A skinwalker,” Janine said, breaking her silence. “A skinwalker is a being born from a fallen sister. It can become a copy of you in both body and mind just by eating a scrap of your flesh. It is insidious, capable of guessing your darkest secrets at a whim or driving you mad with words. Skinwalkers are utterly insane and unpredictable, and worst of all, they kill civilians. Nobody in their right mind aspires to become it, Marco. And don’t look so scared; a male can never become a skinwalker. Anything else to report?”

“Chak is really furious about the state of your power armor, warlord.” Marco clenched his beret in his paws. “Um… Warlord? Shaman? You won’t turn into skinwalkers, right?”

“Fret not!” Janine put her paw on his shoulder. “We’ve reached our prime. Such fate is not for us. As for the chief-quartermaster…” Janine heard legs currying over rooftops. “I’ll have a talk with him. Shaman, could you…”

“Yes, warlord. Come, Marco, let’s visit a doctor and have your nose fixed before it heals improperly. And don’t bleed on the terminal! Such toys are expensive.” Impatient One seated the boy on her shoulder and jumped, climbing over a building.