Research wins wars. Decided Iron Lord, raising the skewered Dirtyblood and ignoring the blood running down his glaive. His rival relied on prediction, improvisation, and other silly, unreliable schemes, which helped entice gullible masses. Folly, as Houstad’s failure had proven. Only hard data mattered, and its proper application led to the establishment of a stable society. Research was hardly limited to technological advances, and sociology and psychology were the respected and valuable sciences.
Barely audible gasps escaped the Dirtyblood’s mouth; her body convulsed and spasmed, arms desperately trying to lift the body from the blade, oblivious to the fact that her lung was no more. Vermin always tried to save themselves, rather than reaching for a gun on their belt and firing at the assailant. This moron was paying with her life for disobeying a simple order and demanding immediate assistance from Iron Lord. Irritated by his oversight, the khan turned off the disruption field, forcing the fool to suffer the consequences.
Both should have known better. But there was a lesson in every failure, and Iron Lord intended to learn it, accepting his partially impaired mental state.
Theoretical. How do you defeat a nation? In ages past, vast armies marched on. To avoid the terrible casualties of urban warfare, economic blockades were set up to starve the opposition into submission. New fates were forged during clever negotiations in high cabinets, while propagandists sowed seeds of discontent among the general populace. Net, news, pocket politicians, strategy, discipline, will, numbers, technology, flexibility—through these currencies, a nation purchased its future and manifested its destiny.
Nowadays, the validity of such notions was questionable at best. Starve the Horde, murder every last one of their minions, and what have you accomplished? Mad Hatter will still exist, and through her might alone, she’ll rebuild and conquer, forming another Gilded Horde. Demigods roamed the lands, smashing hundreds, casting doubt on the former ways of war by disregarding numbers and overcoming strategy through brute force. They were the countries in themselves, and any nations that formed today were unions of such individuals, with the less fortunate rallying around them.
Humans didn’t matter. To survive and preserve those they care about, they had to ensure the victory of their demigod, even if that person wasn’t a paragon of virtue. It was a bitter irony. Iron Lord cared about the Merchants and his wives, and for their sake, he planned to ensure that his people would learn how to create soulless gods obedient to their commands.
Practical. How to conquer a nation? Take down such individuals, cull them, shatter the false illusion of security, and essentially disarm your foe before lowering the curtain by sending the elite to swoop in. A simple plan, but how to create an opportunity to massacre a demigod? That was where research chimed in. Once a demigod’s thought process and habits were known, setting a trap was trivial. And the Reclaimers… they cared for their young.
His idea clear, Iron Lord had contacted the traitor, wrested the tool from the clutches of his rival, and obtained the study sites of the white-furred Purebloods. After carefully calculating their future advance, Iron Lord had chosen one, a perfect spot to deprive the Reclamation Army of one of its best assets. And the Horde had gained a target.
Not everything went as he had expected, but such was the price of working alongside the incompetent. He cast the dying woman on the floor and let his thunder bull feast. Iron Lord and his elite guards hid themselves in an industrial warehouse of this settlement. Built around the Knight Academy, Opul thrived on the Order’s generous donations. Located deep within the Reclamation Army’s territory, it lacked even a simple palisade.
That morning, hoverbikes had streaked through the streets, disrupting the morning silence with the hiss of pulse rifles. The infantry charged in after them, lobbing explosive munition into the tall complex glistening in the sunlight. Its reinforced stone blocks endured the searing heat, darkening and melting as the hordemen surrounded the place, ensuring that no victim would be able to escape. Against his strict instructions, the khan in charge of the rabble led her soldiers in a headlong assault and was bloodied by the defenders. Iron Lord didn’t care about the casualties; the majority of the degenerates belonged to Brood Lord, and any of his own troops had richly earned themselves death.
He wasn’t waging war on children, not when Mad Hatter wasn’t around to order him to stage another massacre. The white-furred were supposed to undergo brainwashing and join his khaganate.
Phaser had opened a portal and endured an agonizing experience to let a large group into Opul in exchange for forgiveness for his involvement in the would-be assassination. Iron Lord had refused to explain anything to the khan and simply admired the place. Most of the buildings were built in a ‘block’ style to house large families, but closer to the academy were proper houses and mansions, owned by both the locals and the white-furred. Unfortunately, they had been ransacked.
About a hundred citizens stayed in Opul out of concern for the children, while the rest fled into the forest, for all the good it might have done them. The mayor, a heavily augmented and tanned individual, hurried to Iron Lord, imploring him to spare the kids. Iron Lord let the mayor run his mouth, in case he had something important to say, and observed the events through the visors of his troops. Unmoving, unbreathing, sustained by the life-support systems. Like a true machine.
Enraged by her losses, the khan had bombarded the complex of white stone and chrome, destroying its magnificent statues and royal imagery, reducing many facilities to smoking heaps of collapsed rubble. Ravenous beams burned away barred balconies, and flashes from rocket explosions sent an avalanche of rocks and marble tumbling down. Doors bore traces of dents and notches. A dome housing an observatory had been breached, and a small inferno was now pouring out of it. Vaulted passages between the complex’s facilities stood no longer.
Inside the complex, the hordemen battled against the instructors clad in outdated power armors. Iron Lord admired the ingenuity of his opponents, who had managed to separate the invaders by locking the doors, as well as their dedication and efficiency. Silver and white figures almost danced on the walls, elegantly bypassing their opponents’ crude shield walls, slashing at joints and cutting sinews, even hacking through bones. In the end, their sacrifice meant little. One after another, they died under a hail of bullets, and their wards were meeting the same fate from the enraged soldiers breaking into classrooms.
The barbarity unleashed touched Opul, introducing its inhabitants to the harsh truth of their shared world. And there was something else, a veneer of another horror touching souls, ever intensifying…
Iron Lord opened his tired biological eyes, stirred by the howls of aggression filling the streets. An axe, bigger than a man’s body, flew out of the forest, spinning, slicing through three bondsmen and burying itself in a hoverbike, exploding it and setting nearby soldiers aflame. Their armor saved them from burns and injuries, but they never stood up as two orbs of plasma—the orbs that speared through a dozen trees—finished them off by burning their way through their bodies.
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Two massive, super-heavy vehicles stormed into Opul, oversized parodies of the Provincial Army’s APCs. Parts of buildings in their path shattered, and an unlucky rider got splattered into a mix of broken steel and innards by their wheels.
Huge figures entered the fray, seemingly blinking into existence with their superior speed. One carried a long spear, and a flick of her wrist sent its blade through several necks as the sword saint, in shining armor, stepped ahead, making sure not a drop of blood stained her cloak. Another Wolfkin walked across the rooftops, firing her revolvers. A single shot sent a web of cracks snaking behind a hordewoman, who looked at the gaping emptiness in her chest in disbelief before collapsing. The bullet itself ricocheted off the ground, killing another soldier before ricocheting off the blade of the spear and slaying the third. Even the sword saint seemed to be startled for a tenth of a second, and then she became a whirlwind of strikes. Smaller copies of their leaders sneaked through the rubble, firing their ugly versions of shotguns or slashing those near them.
The street shook as the third giant leapt. His weight left a crater in the pavement and tossed several hordemen and the large axe into the air. A hand closed around the axe, and the Pureblood spun, bisecting the bodies. Another hand grasped a retreating raider by his helmet and drew him nearer, as if the sword saint wanted to bite him, but at the last second he ripped the man’s face off and then struck, cracking the cranium. Legs, looking too short, stomped, bursting bellies of the soldiers.
Not him. She. The escapee. The one who hurt my son… and spared my daughter. His lips parted in predatory glee. Janine wore a false insignia, but her battle style of carving a bloody path formed of mutilated bodies betrayed her undeniably as a black-furred. Not a hint of mercy and all the aggression a mind could hold.
What luck! Two warlords, a sword saint, and the main course had not yet arrived. He had time to partake in the storm of madness.
“Prepare to fire Sky’s Wrath at Opul!” Iron Lord said to the behemoth’s crew and opened a direct line to another great khan. “Brood Lord! Keep Phaser ready. His ass…” Why am I cursing? What is going on here? “… is to open a space rift on my command. Use the video feed of our troops to deduce the coordinates of our location.”
“Some of us have a war to wage.” Brood Lord yawned. “What are you up to, Rust Lord?”
“Correcting your mistakes, imbecile,” Iron Lord answered, energized and frightened in equal measure. His implants kicked in, filling the bloodstream with chemicals, and it wasn’t enough. His emotions joined in a maddening carnival, filling him with desires. “Gilded Horde!” He raised Patience. “To conquest and wealth! Devour the world!”
“Devour the world!” the bodyguard roared back.
The thunder bull trotted on, past the open-mouthed mayor, accelerated, and shattered the entrance, sending a rain of pebbles and iron beams harmlessly crashing into the Iron Lord’s bulk. A field of disruption formed around the glaive’s edge, ready to bring carnage.
They advanced like a flood, leveling everything in their path. Calming himself, Iron Lord paid attention to a coded message Brood Lord sent to one of the panicked lesser khans on the field. There was always the risk of betrayal, but he had taken precautions to ensure a positive outcome.
“Horkhudagh.” Iron Lord contacted the Flame Whip. “Stay close for support.”
****
Divide! The Taleteller came down, splitting a man into two unequal halves. Pierce. Her armored fingers struck, shattering a gorget and crumbling a trachea. Her jaws tried to open to catch the coughed blood and drink the vitae like water. Disgusted, Albert caught her desire and unsealed the helmet. Tear. Her head swung, closing her fangs on a fleeing raider, breaking his spine. She stepped on the paralyzed fool and heard the bones crack. Divide. Split. Divide!
“Isn’t that why you came, morsels?!” she thundered. “Then come and face me, instead of scurrying away! I haven’t even sent all of you into the Abyss!”
Janine broke the law. The understanding of the simple fact that she was feasting on the living and the dead did not even bother her, as the cold fury unleashed by the sight of yet another plundered sanctuary drove her to abandon any pretense of civility. She was a beast, a monster in the service of the state! Every move killed or maimed, and the warlord reveled in the terrified screams, embracing the savage nature of the Wolf Tribe.
Roars and howls reigned on the streets, choking the whispers and pleas of the dying and fear-struck. Impatient One tore a khan’s limbs one by one, as if she were a cub toying with an insectoid. Then her claws plunged into the wide-open eyes. Anissa and her pack emerged from the smoke, denying a retreat to the enemy.
The Ice Fangs’ shock was almost palpable; the warlord sensed that much. Bertruda joined the slaughter, but her occasional hesitation after hearing a scream of surrender betrayed that everything in her revolted against this way of waging war. The Twins and the Blessed Mother had established rules, adjusting them as the state grew. But now, at the zenith of the grievous strike aimed at civilization, its soldiers abandoned normality and snarled, participating in a brutality that surpassed even that of their enemies.
Janine didn’t howl, too busy killing.
“You came to our lands as monsters!” Janine snarled, swatting away bullets with the Taleteller. A beam of her laser rifle toppled an enemy soldier. “Bringing woe to our families! Ruins to our dens!” A raider tried to ram her, only to find the butt of the axe tearing off a sizeable chunk of his throat and head. The blade slashed, severing the legs of three raiders at their knees. She kicked a Pureblood in the chest, denting his armor, but the fat underneath softened the blow and absorbed some of the impact. Still, his visor was suddenly covered in red from the inside.
“Please!” he pleaded as Janine turned her kick into a stomp, splattering the man against the ground. His armor held, but she saw the bastard’s body balloon, the flesh pressing hard against the breastplate. “Mercy!” He yelled in desperation, trying to lift her leg. “I beg…”
“He is no longer a threat,” Albert said.
“And monsters you have met.” The body exploded under increased pressure. “Rip apart, Reclaimers!” Janine roared, sending an order for Kalaisa to eliminate the hordemen near the entrance doors. “There are no humans here! Retaliate and let them taste our righteous fury!” Anissa obeyed another command and halted their ambush, forming two firing lines that mowed down riders trying to get to the APCs.
The defenders slammed their shields into the ground, blocking the incoming grenades and shielding the precious transports. With a grunt of approval and no intention of staying put, the Wolfkins rode the blast and scattered. The knights raised their blades and unleashed ranged hell on the grenadiers.
Plasma from Bertruda’s wrists immolated several brave hordemen trying to mount a defensive line. Martyshkina jumped down from the building, her cloak flapping in the gust of wind propelled by explosions. Two shots eliminated the last riders, and the last to arrive at the Academy’s entrance was Janine, covered in blood and gore, her blue visor shining like a newborn star, and her leg kicked a head into the hordemen’s ranks. That sight, and something about her, broke whatever morale the raiders had left, and they tried to scurry away and disappear into the streets of the town.
No respite was given to them. Shardguns pronounced their verdict, joined by the banshee screams of the APCs’ rotating cannons, which sheared off entire body parts. Several civilians unsteadily poked their heads out of the ruins, shrieking in terror as black-clad paws unceremoniously grabbed them and shoved them into the transports.
“That was… intense,” Albert mused.
“Wolf Tribe’s way,” Janine admitted. “See? Told you, no need to tarnish the Order with my shit.”
“Let us not argue about it now, Sword Saint and Warlord. You talked about the minefield, but there is none. If…”
“No ifs! It is a trap,” she interrupted him and pointed at the Academy. “Inside!”
The packs and knights charged toward the entrance and found it sealed shut by the tons of rubble merged. Albert helpfully informed the rescuers of a ventilation shaft, but unfortunately it was too narrow for any of them to enter, and sending a civilian inside might have been suicide. Janine waved the troops aside and brought the Taleteller high. She’ll shatter the damn stones if…
“Prey!” Martyshkina cried out, and a moment later, the ground shook.