“Well, this lead led to nowhere!” Zero said as they left the canyon.

There was no more need for hiding, and the two Wolfkins walked in the open, steering clear of the traps. Zero carried the crate containing smuggling goods in the crook of her arm. When the smuggler’s complex was left behind, she motioned Tancred to stop among the broken columns of the buried buildings and checked her vambraces, then began a meticulous inspection of his armor.

“Lead?” he asked, spreading his arms and trusting her judgment.

“The agents identified Darazdast’s men among the fallen in the settlement; so, ya know, I thought he knew something. Clear!” Zero slapped Tancred on the shoulder and opened the crate, rummaging through its contents in search of any tracking devices. “Now, I never believed in Darazdi’s betrayal, but the man does like tokens a bit much.”

“He is scum,” Tancred said.

“Aw, come on, he ain’t that bad.”

“That thing exploits people suffering from diseases. He preys on the weak and vulnerable.” Tancred spat. “There can be no honor in permitting crimes to exist.”

“Honor has no place on the battlefield, Tancred.” Zero stopped investigating the crate and turned her helmet to him. “Fight honorably, fight honestly, and you’ll die, and your friends will be sad. Me including. Don’t be mistaken; we are waging war even during peace. A war to civilize society, to build a nation where slavery will be forgotten and tyrants will be crushed under the Dynast’s heel.”

“And how does criminality further the pursuit of this goal?” Tancred asked, sitting beside Zero.

“Easy! We’ve turned an unrestricted, disorganized crime into a controllable, organized crime. When a girl goes missing from a settlement, Darazdast points us to the nearest slavers’ camp on a border or buys her freedom himself, and we compensate him for it. And torch the camp later, just for fun and to return our tokens. Can’t go into deficit!” She elbowed him. “Know about the blood price for killing a Wolfkin, right?” Zero asked, and Tancred nodded.

The blood price extended not just to the Wolfkins of the tribe. Two months ago, an Ironwill had been gutted on a routine mission to deliver care packages to a plague-stricken village. Later, the mercenaries responsible for the attack fluttered from the gates of the nearest settlement; cruel claws had eviscerated the bodies, and the corpses resembled more unfurled, bloody rags. Be it a Wolfkin, an Ice Fang, or a friend to the tribe, the Wolkins never failed to collect a life from the culprit. A life for a life. A limb for a limb.

“We like to pretend as if we are aware of everything occurring in the Wastes or the Ravaged Lands because it frightens potential bad guys into compliance, but in reality, we need agents to pull it off. Darazdast helps by gathering rumors, so we don’t have to spend weeks searching for a murderer. Unlike the previous psychos, his gang does not resort to violence, murder, or kidnapping in order to collect debts; they provide us with information about potential criminal organizations, such as the Cartel, which is making its first attempt to establish itself to the far east of Pearl. But since those morons ended up falling apart due to feuds three times already, I think Darazdi and Ivar are being paranoid as usual. This Cartel idea will never get off the ground.”

“His gang sells art, Lady Zero,” Tancred said quietly. “I overheard them. There is so little left of the Old World, and it is agonizing to imagine a precious picture hoarded in a private collection somewhere.”

“Fuck the art,” Zero said sharply. She put a paw on his shoulder. “Listen, I know it like, sucks, to lose a statue or a painting or a sculpture, but you know what we get in exchange? Terminals. Journals. Information about actual people who lived in the Old World or who met the Extinction. Their dreams, their hopes, their fears, their lives... This is what fucking matters. They don’t deserve to be forgotten. Big Sis told me that no artist would value their work over the life of an outsider, and even if there were some who would, do we really need their art?”

“How is he not dead?” Tancred asked, unconvinced by the equivalence of handing over a magnificent masterpiece for a short video of a panicked man recording his final moments in the Extinction.

The latter was superfluous, the former an eternal source of inspiration for future generations. The breathtaking sight of the statue of the Lady of Mercy in the capital’s Church of the Planet has helped many depressed souls cling to the light during the hardest times of their lives. Inspirational stories of valorous retainers down through the ages helped shape generations of incorruptible officers. Art transcended mere aesthetics: it served as a catalyst for the betterment of both the individual and society.

“I admit my inexperience in the matter, as the criminals tend to die on my blade, but I imagine it’s challenging to conceal his occasional involvement with the regional Reclamation Army’s forces.”

“Remember the controlled part?” Zero said. “Ivar keeps him in a perpetually trapped state. Everyone knows Darazdi runs this area; if anyone were to muscle in, his head would roll. He’s also too entrenched with us to form an alliance with another criminal. He’s pissed off too many people. In order to survive, he has to thwart potential rivals, which he does by keeping us informed about pesky maggots too big for him to stamp out. So we do the pest control. Not for free, of course. Case in point: Iterna.” Her voice trailed off, and Tancred heard the notes of pure animal hatred and longing in it. “They often cry about how some technology is too dangerous to be sold, the greedy bastards. But thanks to our friend, we often receive interesting samples through… shall we say, non-warranty channels. It is a win-win situation and helps us keep up with the times.”

“And in return, it exposes us to Iterna’s infiltration,” Tancred said, examining the lunar disk above. There was a flash on it. It was barely visible, but it happened. Iterna’s influence had reached the satellite, but no one knew what they were doing on the white surface. The most popular theory was the weapons testing facility.

“Noticed her, did you!” Zero laughed.

“A sonic gun, prying eyes, while the rest of the rabble trembled in their boots…” Tancred glanced at the warlord. “Have I missed something?”

“Sweat.” Zero tapped her helmet. “Can’t be in the desert and not drop some. Her fake tan doesn’t fool me; her hide is way too dry. Eh, they never learn… Not to worry. If there is something an explorator wants to get their grubby hands on, we can live without it. We have no need for nuclear codes or life-wiping plagues. We need to learn how to cooperate and cohabit.” Zero softened her tone. “No matter the desire for revenge, no matter the grudges of the past that keep us awake at night. Oh, that is cute!” she said, fiddling with something in the crate.

“If it is drugs, dispose of them immediately.”

“Nope, just porn magazines. Never knew Wolfkins were into Orais and Normies.”

“We share the same blood, and yet the decadence of the Wolf Tribe never ceases to amaze me, Lady Zero,” Tancred sighed.

“If you say so, but we better deliver these to their recipients in the Ice Fang Order…”

“What? Warlord, I demand to know what psychotic, ungrateful simpletons have dared to tarnish the noble name of the hallowed Order by ordering these disgusting pamphlets full of sin and debauchery…” Tancred stood, but Zero raised her paw.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

“Don’t dream of it, Sword Saint,” Zero said. “Let’s not bother kiddies, none of us is a saint… Well, you get my drift, right? So…”

She stopped, looking up, and Tancred followed, forgetting the contraband and the disrespectful soldiers at once. There was an unfamiliar noise in the night—a loud, soft flapping of leather, barely audible but undoubtedly increasing in intensity as something approached. His lenses caught a dot that flickered for a split second against the white of the moon, and he sent it to Zero, who nodded, noticing the target as well. The thing flew in their direction, lowering its altitude.

“A predator?” Tancred took the Judge in both paws.

“What predator ignores a fatty insectoid queen or cusacks in favor of two hunks of steel?” Zero asked. Her paw found a rifle underneath her cloak, and she aimed its long barrel at the distant target. “Five clicks. Closing fast.”

“No chances. Bring it down,” Tancred said. Zero was right. Their battleplates prevented any smell or heat from escaping. The creature should be unaware of their presence.

He heard a series of faint snaps and the sound of breaking bones. It didn’t come from the ground, but from the sky, from this large dark shape flapping its wings as it hurried toward them. Zero pulled the trigger, sending a lance of pure void streaking toward its target. In response, the flying monster unleashed a concentrated gust of wind, much like a hurricane, at the Wolfkins. The antimatter beam pierced the focused air, drawing a loud screech, and the unleashed air bomb was about to slam into them.

Tancred shoved Zero aside, not caring for his own safety. He tried to dive to safety, but the strange projectile hit him, pushing him into the ground with enough force to make it shake. Rocks and shards of metal flew from the tops of the ruined buildings; massive cracks appeared in their walls; Tancred’s ears rang; the impact reached his body despite his plate. It confused him; the HUD confirmed the full integrity of his armor, but the impact hurt; it bypassed every system designed to protect the soldier from concussion.

Above, the thing spewed streams of pale liquid from its back and drew closer. It had a bulbous appearance—a leather ball connected to two rectangular wings. A second later, legs and arms sprouted from the body’s pitch-black surface. Intense cracking accompanied the transformation, forming sinews and bones in a flash as the creature sped toward Tancred with the speed of a missile, propelled by its peculiar biological jets.

He rolled to the side, and the ground shook as the thing landed like an artillery shell, sending an eruption of sand and stone skyward. The impact’s force pushed a large slab of rock up and panicked insects and spiders scurried to escape the catastrophe. The veil of destruction shrouded the attacker, but the royal blood of the Twins, albeit running thin in someone like him, gifted the sword saint with the ability to spot motion. The grains of sand slowed to a crawl, the veil of stone dust stopped moving, and the black figure appeared on the other side. Small fountains sprang up on the sand wall, and he raised the Judge.

Black tendrils shot out, whipping against his weapon. The tips of the black tendrils were white, but the throbbing, clammy surface of the creature’s skin clung to the shaft of his weapon. Tancred had to jerk it free. He brought the bardiche blade down on the tendrils, and it bounced off the bones. The creature inside the veil chirped, angered at the edge cutting its skin, and retracted his tendrils. These biological whips arched, and white cilia grew on the pitch-black surface, expanding and thickening until a forest of bone scythes met the sword saint.

He didn’t panic. Such emotion was drilled out of him by thousands of hours of muscle-racking training and the careful conditioning of his psyche by his superiors. He was an Ice Fang, a champion of the Twins, and he wielded a weapon gifted by the Order’s best artisans, his very progenitors. Failure was impossible, unthinkable when he had a cousin’s life to protect. The scythes came at him, and the sword saint parried, blocked, and deflected the incoming rain of slashes. Cuts and gashes appeared on his armor; a blow from the bone scythe had cleaved through a boulder, but Tancred still refused to retreat.

It wasn’t out of pride. His blade clanked, unable to break these strange bones; the camouflage cloak was torn asunder; a long tear appeared in the side of his helmet; his vision was still blurred; and his breathing was uneasy from the initial damage. Dozens of biological weapons tried to cut him at the joints of his legs and arms, where the armor was thinner. Several scythes even splintered into three during the attack, seeking to catch him off guard. Tancred waited patiently, defending himself. The calm and stubborn resistance infuriated the creature, and the scythes converged on a single point, closing in on him like jaws. Only now did he take a step back and press the activation button on the shaft of his weapon.

The Judge was no mere sharp blade. His cousins wielded weapons found in ancient laboratories or created by the state. The Ice Fangs were not much different, and the sword saints also carried the ultimate tools to face unparalleled opposition. The sword saints inherited the legendary relics forged by the Twins, two intellects second only to the Blessed Mother. While one forged the unbreakable foundation in the smithy, the other toiled in the laboratory, envisioning intricate engineering marvels for a weapon. If First possessed a piece of the sun itself, then Tancred wielded the polar opposite.

As he raised the bardiche for an overhead strike, a blue field flashed to life around the blade’s edge. Midway through his swing, that cooling field could turn water to ice with a touch. And as the Judge sentenced the bone forest of scythes, its blade became a breath of winter itself, an absolute stillness that robbed molecules and atoms of their energy and set them adrift, rendering them to be the slaves to their original course and the natural forces.

The absolute zero struck unopposed, shattering the scythes, and the fiend howled, experiencing the excruciating cold coursing through its veins, feeling the touch of the cosmos itself against its flesh, and losing his twisting appendages. They fell, writhing and steaming in the sand, disappearing into nothingness. Tancred stepped through the sand and faced his opponent at last.

It had a roughly humanoid appearance, standing as tall as a warlord. An unhealed hole left by Zero’s beam still smoked in its shoulder. The creature’s skin resembled viscous oil, and before his surprised eyes, it shot up a head from the smooth surface of its torso. Thunderous cracks of broken and rearranged bones accompanied the transformation. There were no longer any wings; they got broken down into the tendrils that had assailed him before. Milky white eyes encircled the torso, keeping track of everything. The creature turned its eyeless head toward Tancred and opened a small mouth, exposing the pure, almost shining whiteness of its insides. It smiled, and the sword saint lunged.

He had been had. The creature stood stooped, its arms pressed to the ground like a sprinter preparing for a marathon. The creature’s dark flesh flowed freely from its legs and arms, forming a soft foot more suited to a slime than a humanoid. Despite the cold, the edges of the wounds left by his blade tried to reach each other, and new, sharp points appeared on the shortened tendrils. Tancred lifted his weapon over his head, and another leg slipped from a ribcage. Multi-jointed, twisting and contracting at impossible angles, it had a long, hooked bone talon at the end. Blindingly fast, it struck the sword saint across the elbow, cartwheeling him into the vast slab of falling stone that had bulged from the creature’s landing. He crashed into it and lost his footing, buried under tons of debris.

That thing never chased him. It was not unhinged, nor did it lash out blindly. The eyes followed Warlord Zero, whose foot was stuck in an open crack. Zero tried to reach for her rifle, and the creature spat another ball of air. It exploded near the rifle, sending it far away. The torso slurped up the tendrils and remains of the broken scythes, growing in size.

The creature moved so quickly that even Tancred’s eyes could not keep up. It was as if time itself skipped several moments; the creature simply disappeared from one place, leaving the rapidly widening crater in its wake, and reappeared in another, zigzagging toward Zero. Panicked, the warlord reached for her belt and hurled several knives at the looming threat, but they merely sailed past the afterimages as the creature closed the distance, its back opening to reveal semi-transparent membrane wings, its surface decorated with blood vessels. The skin and bones of the flesh opened outward, forming a bony cage ready to swallow the warlord. The creature pushed its arms free from the fat, pulsing foot and raised a fist for a brutal blow as Zero shielded her head with her own arm.

Terror for his cousin’s life gripped Tancred’s heart, and he pushed the stones away, rushing to the scene. Too slow. He could never reach his ally in time to rescue her…

The fist punched Zero under the armpit, and suddenly it came apart. Tancred blinked, seeing three glittering threads wrapped around Zero’s wrist and the ankle of her pinned leg. She rode the blow to escape the trap, but the threads cut deep into the alien flesh, easily separating the sinews and bones inside. The creature chirped and mewed. It used its remaining hand to grab Zero by the throat, and the chirping turned into a crescendo of pain as another thread woven into the collar of Zero’s cloak severed the fingers.

“You’re not very bright, eh, bitch?” Zero laughed brightly and happily. She spread her arms wide, as if to welcome the flap of wings that would push her into the open cage of bone and muscle. “Hunt me down? Who do you take me for?”