The wings flapped, hitting the ground and missing the warlord. Zero moved far faster than a bullet, a blurred streak circling the beast. She willingly approached the bone cage, ignoring the pulsing organs and tendrils reaching out to grab her. Two paws slammed into the creature’s sides, and the warlord’s vambraces glowed, unleashing plasma explosions, fired from the concealed launchers. Two newborn suns shone in the desert, burning holes in the thing’s hide, turning ribs to ash and sand to glass. The wings ignited, and the creature began to reform its legs into separate limbs, trying to free them from the molten glass. Standing in this hellfire. Standing in this hellfire, Zero’s cloak and armor endured, and she was far from done.
Two objects shot up from her belt and quickly lengthened into full-sized rods, similar in shape to the stun batons used by the police. The warlord caught them and stabbed, the tips landing in the open mouth, and the creature thrashed, convulsing madly as a surge of electricity went through it, bursting its eyes and rocking its brain. It lashed out clumsily because of the unhealed hands, elbowing Zero twice with enough force to draw pathways in the glass with her heels. Ignoring the deep, sparkling dents in her breastplate and helmet, the warlord slashed, her rods landing on the closing wounds on the creature’s side.
High voltage discharges were a tried-and-true method against regenerators. Not only did they cause burns, a bane of many self-healing New Breeds, but even against a being capable of healing through the scorched flesh, like this creature, the side effect of an electric current circulating through your system caused intense shaking, often liquidating organs, as some regenerators who could heal by absorbing energy learned to their peril. The discharge itself damaged cells throughout the body.
The chirping of pain reached a crescendo, and the creature arched back, snapping its spine. This was not a sign of agony, however, but rather a deliberate attempt to flee. Its body shed broken bones and spat the burned organs into Zero’s face, enveloping her in the viscous gore that restricted her movements. The creature’s body went limp and jumped away, ignoring the rods’ burning edges. It resembled a stream of water splashing against the sand some distance away, but then it gathered itself, glancing with newly formed eyes at the ruined hands and the gaping wound in the shoulder. Mewing a curse or a threat, it turned and ran.
“Fleeing the combat?” Tancred asked, hurrying to Zero. The bardiche blade narrowly missed the creature’s belly as it twisted, and the ice field split the skin on its hip. Ignoring his challenge, it charged past him. “Cowardly fiend! Stand and perish!”
“He isn’t trying to run, Tancred!” Zero huffed, breaking free of the biological bonds. “Spiders! Watch the spiders!”
What?! Tancred struggled to understand his cousin’s meaning. The creature trampled the fleeing insect, reducing its body to mush. And the carcass clung to the sticky surface of the black leg, slowly disappearing beneath the skin. The eyeless head bit at the ruined hands, chewing on the broken bones, and claws grew from the bloody stumps. It didn’t retreat. The damned fiend sought to recover nutrients and rebuild for round two!
The sword saint abandoned thoughts of Zero and pursued the escapee. His bardiche swung through the air, slicing the creature near its reconstructed spine, driving it away from the largest gathering of insects. Though the edge of his weapon hadn’t reached the bone, the cold field had, causing it to snap back into two smaller spines. The creature hissed in anger. Tendrils broke from the scorched remains of its wings and whipped at Tancred, attempting to trip him.
He withstood the piercing stabs of bone daggers that found cracks in his armor. A knight never shrinks from his duty, a sage never wavers in his principles, and a sword saint never lets an ally down. Tancred lived by these simple rules. He simply gritted his fangs, pushing closer to the beast to deliver a mortal blow. It searched for them; it hungered for Zero’s flesh, and as her cousin, he would not tolerate the creature’s existence. Tonight it dies, by his paws or Zero’s.
Cut off from its food source, the thing still refused to turn and face him in battle. Its tendrils rooted into the ground, pushing up slabs of stone, trying to bury him once more beneath the rubble. The sword saint broke through the slabs, fully in control of his footing this time. The artificial muscles of his armor gave him the strength and speed, and the metal shell preserved him from the jagged rocks. The creature dove to the side, evading the absolute zero field and a dark beam.
Even though they’d crossed a dune, and despite the destruction wrought by the lashing tendrils, Zero’s shot would have pierced its midsection had the creature not dodged. Tancred silently praised his cousin’s skills, even if she used his lenses to see the target. It wasn’t simply a natural talent; it took extensive knowledge and practice to perfectly adjust her aim and time a shot so that it wouldn’t accidentally wound him in that chaos of flying debris and floating veils of sand.
The creature covered meters in a single leap, but Tancred was always on its heels, cutting at the tendrils, slowly withering it away layer by layer, and wondering where it could be moving. A realization came to him as the bullets rattled against his armor.
This was no chase after a desperate, doomed animal. The creature had already determined the exact location from which it could escape Tancred’s pursuit and replenish its lost energy to continue the battle. And it quickened its pace, pushing itself beyond the limits to reach the contrabandists’ hideout. The black hide slurped bullets and spat them at Tancred. Energy beams licked harmlessly at the thing’s body, doing no damage. It galloped across the minefield on all fours, setting off chain explosions, and Tancred’s armor systems struggled to keep track of such erratic movements.
But he knew its destination and its intention to leap off the canyon’s side and disappear into the complicated cavern system. Explosions and missing dark beams kept Tancred aware of the opponent’s location.
“We can’t let it get away,” Zero’s voice said in his helmet. She climbed a ruined building and fired from a distance. “The DM radiation and poison will soon be filtered from the bastard’s body. If it gets to the smugglers...”
“It won’t,” Tancred vowed. “Warlord, I’ll open the way. At your discretion.”
“No problem. Just don’t do anything crazy.”
There was a commotion ahead. The smugglers were gathering, hastily donning their battle gear, breaking open crates of weapons as a line of explosions approached. It would be in vain; the creature was too fast for the untrained Normies to use their numbers to bring it down. But the sword saint had no intention of letting things go to this point. He leapt and hooked the creature on the Judge as it was about to bounce off the edge of the canyon and wrap the terrified humans in its tentacles. Tancred used the absolute zero field to ensure that the bardiche’s blade would deeply enter the body, and he turned it off, dragging the struggling beast back and ripping its insides apart. Two tendrils were stopped mere centimeters from snatching Darazdast’s right-hand man and a trader.
It chirped at the top of its lungs, turning its eyeless head like an owl. The jaws opened to the chest, the white inside gathered on the tip of the tongue, and the creature moved its head, lining the tongue to point at Zero. Tancred rammed a shoulder into the beast, knocking it to the ground. He tried to roll away as the beast roared, unleashing a concentrated stream of glittering venom at him instead of Zero.
He never experienced anything like it. The stream pierced his armor plates with sheer pressure, and when it hit his thigh, a sense of emptiness washed over him. His mind was stripped bare, thoughts fading, desires vanishing from his body. Tancred’s drowsiness overcame him, the confusion relaxing his muscles and wiping out any dreams or desire to fight. The toxin didn’t just knock him into a coma; it stole the very desire of resistance, rendering him a helpless wreck.
The creature turned at the edge, bringing its claws to his gorget, and the sword saint understood he didn’t care. What was there to fight for? If not today, he’ll die tomorrow or a day after and there won’t be any difference. Best to end it here, cleanly, and face the Twins’ judgment...
A beam of darkness left a hole in the creature’s chest, and another appeared next to it, and then another. It toppled over the sword saint. Before unconsciousness claimed him, the last thing he heard was the hiss of the creature’s body melting into caustic water.
****
“A thousand thanks I lay at your feet, oh, most benevolent of lords.” Darazdast gestured to a scantily dressed woman to refill the sword saint’s glass. “If there is anything in my power that I can do to repay such a daring rescue, such noble boldness…”
“Stop selling anti-cancer treatments.” Tancred, his wounded leg braced, shifted to sit more comfortably on a rug-covered bed.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
What the ‘local medical enthusiasts’ lacked in knowledge, they compensated for with the unusually advanced medical equipment at hand. His immune system and anti-venoms flushed out the poison, but the process left him feeble and his skin dry. A tube connected his arm to an intravenous drip, and the sword saint followed the prescriptions and drank as much wine as his stomach could handle. The weakness of his body caused the sword saint to envy his cousins. Unlike him, they developed a partial immunity to any poison they had ever experienced, and he longed never to feel the effects of this filth again. The Judge stood beside the headboard.
“I said if it was within my power, my crimson-eyed friend.” Darazdast smiled.
“How can you do it?” Tancred asked. The smuggler raised a brow, and the sword saint clarified. “The life of crime: why pursue it?”
Darazdast snapped his finger, and the servants left the room. The smuggler sat in a chair, groaning from a cramp in his strained back.
“Not everyone can change immediately, Sword Saint Tancred,” Darazdast said plainly. “I remember you; you were the one who stopped the blood sacrifice to the Dynast thirty-five years ago and saved those kids. There wasn’t a week without an accident like that in the west.”
Tancred nodded. Some tribes regarded the Dynast as a god and tried to make human sacrifices to appease and show respect to the distant deity. His Excellency would not tolerate such games, and the army troops were often called upon to prevent tragedy.
“How often have you had to do this in recent years?”
“Less and less. I see your point.” Tancred’s lips formed a flat line. “It is not a valid reason. Clearly, you yourself are not bound by superstition and are capable of change. The Reclamation Army has opened free training courses in every major settlement to teach people a new trade. The Ironwill household is among those who pay taxes so the nation can hire willing educators.”
“And where will live those who are not as flexible as I?” Darazdast poured wine for himself and Tancred. “I do not besmirch the Reclamation Army; I am its citizen, Sword Saint. But let us see the truth. It costs tokens to stay in a hotel. The former gang members, the broken slavers, the retired mercenaries, the bodyguards of fallen oppressors... They often fall on hard times. There are never enough jobs for mechanics, even when they learn the craft; the mines are dangerous, and traveling through the desert is perilous.”
“Is this your excuse for permeating crime?”
“Do I seem to be looking for excuses? I am explaining the situation, Tancred! You can’t expect people to give up their old ways so easily. They don’t want to serve and die in the army; what else can they do? Even if they initially have tokens to live by, they can’t instantly absorb knowledge, can they? Free education only helps so much. Why do you think I own brothels?” Darazdast waved a hand in the air. “I don’t just employ people who have nowhere to go; there are legitimate former sex slaves who don’t envision any other way of life and who might be mistreated under another employer.” He pointed a finger at the Ice Fang. “But every year, dozens of them leave, and members of my crew settle down, having either saved enough tokens, been rehabilitated by contact with civilization, or simply found an opportunity for a new life in a settlement. I see myself as someone who helps build society. I can’t exactly grab a rifle and hop across the dunes, but as someone who was led astray, who harmed and enslaved, I can at least do my part to prevent future tragedies. Abyss, I myself plan to retire and become an honest mayor one day. We are on the same side, Tancred. We just can’t change immediately. There isn’t enough place for everyone,” the smuggler added quietly.
“Not yet, Darazdast,” the sword saint sighed, agreeing. “But one day it will be, and if I’m still alive then, I’ll hold you to your promise. A fifth.”
“Beg your pardon?”
“Don’t play coy; I read your ledger and saw the prices. You are ripping people off.” Tancred burrowed his gaze into Darazdast’s face. “Our vehicles do not cost as much as you charge for them. Reduce your prices by twenty percent. It should still make you a profit and ease the burden on the commoners.”
“And increase their interest in buying Ironwills goods.” The smuggler smiled. “My, one could take you for a shrewd seller interested in expanding your market…”
Darazdast rose and withdrew under Tancred’s heavy gaze, never once breaking his smile. Once the room was empty, Tancred admired the wine in the dirty glass. Even all the roughness of the Wastes and the transportation here had not robbed it of its pleasant taste. Necessary evil… Not many sword saints listened to the Blessed Mother’s sermons, but he always agreed with her on one point. There is no gradation of evil; when one begins to do it, it becomes tempting to ally oneself with the least.
But what was the alternative? Just a few decades ago, hundreds of guides escorted individual traders across the treacherous terrain, delivering messages between settlements. But as the nation established stable trade routes, the profession slowly died out. The guides themselves, however, lived on. The Dynast in his infinite wisdom, was aware of the problems and even rebellions that modernization could cause. He laid the groundwork for universal education for both young and old, forcing the corporations and wealthy of the state to fund it. If universal health care could not be implemented in the Outer Lands, he brought another gift. Tancred thought it would be enough.
Was he wrong? Was it truly right to permit certain liberties and turn a blind eye to the violation of the law if it saved lives? Tancred freely admitted his ignorance in various areas. He consistently advocated the outlawing of brothels throughout the Reclamation Army, a stance that even his own sons and daughters found peculiar. Tancred was once a sage, not the one charged with raising the young. He traveled alone to the ruins, carefully unpicking locks and disarming traps, traversing the narrow passages in solitude to locate a precious cache of knowledge or a lost artifact. For him, the duty of a sword saint and the worries of common folk were difficult to understand.
There was much for him to ponder, and when he returned to the Core Lands and sealed his union by marrying a noble lady of the Voidrunner household, he intended to consider ways to improve local society. Cheap, free housing, perhaps?
“How are you, champ?” asked Zero. She stepped inside in her battle armor and unpinned her cloak, taking a seat next to the sword saint. “Teamwork isn’t my forte, but you weren’t half bad. I rate you as Dragena’s two-thirds. High praise, by the way.”
“I am well, and the honor of victory goes to you, Lady Zero.” Tancred raised a toast. “What was it?”
“No idea.” Zero shrugged. “A bioweapon, and the one that targeted us. It’s up to the investigators to find out what hole it crawled from. They’ll be here in an hour to pick us up. All I know for sure is that it’s going to fuel Big Sis’ paranoia.”
“What do you mean by it?”
“Remember Brur?” Zero asked, and Tancred nodded. Brur was the first known Apocalypse Class, the first New Breed, who forced the Great Nation to set aside their arms and discuss the Containment Act. “There were a bunch of bastards who tried to murder both Iterna and Janine’s forces on that mission. Typical stuff, the same as with Techno-Queen, some lunatics looking for a weapon of mass destruction. Ever since Ravager slaughtered her, she has been plagued by paranoia about some Weavers in the Dark, as she calls them. She believes that there are creeps scheming in the shadows.”
“Does the Commander have any proof?”
“Of course not! I love my sister.” Zero put a paw over the dent in her armor. “Truly. Will give my life for her any day of the week. But she is such a psychotic, wolfish sibling of a cusack sometimes! Gah! She claims she heard a wicked offering about humanity’s destruction in exchange for sanity. One problem. I was with her all day; it was the day Outsider knocked the meteor out of the sky. If some weirdo had spoken to her, I would’ve known, I think. Ivar investigated. The Dynast and Devourer investigated. No proof. Zero!” she giggled. “Just random, unconnected murders and kidnappings—a common occurrence—but because of them, Big Sis reorganized the tribe so that intruders would have to fight an entire village to steal our cubs. She’s weird, I’ll tell you, and both Outsider and Dominator believe in her fairy tales. Great, I’ve been trying to get her interested in something for years, hoping to help her get over the trauma, and what has she done? Organized a conspiracy club!”
Infuriated, Zero reached for her helmet and pressed a series of buttons on its side. White streaks emerged from the opened seals, and the helmet gathered itself into the warlord’s gorget. She grabbed a bottle of wine, ignoring the stunned Tancred, and drank it in two gulps, then reached for another, ignoring the food. Tancred’s eyes widened.
It wasn’t because of the tasteless manners. Light—pure, yellow light—filled the room. She styled her hair into an elegant crimson crest and trimmed the hair at her temples. The perfection of her features, the shape of her eyes and snout, the famous white fangs, and the lush, soft fur of the darkest color…
“Blessed Mother,” Tancred whispered. He fell to one knee. “I wasn’t aware; forgive any insult I have said in your presence; forgive any disrespect I may have unwittingly caused…”
Ravager stopped drinking and looked at him, surprised. She tasted the wine more carefully, and something clicked in her eyes, and she pressed the buttons of her neck guard, returning the helmet to cover the top of her head.
“Always!” she roared, hefting Tancred back onto the bed. “Always the same! I am Zero! Ravy is Ravy, and Zero is Zero!” She pushed her armored paws to his eyes. “See? I wear a battle suit, I wear clothes, I use weapons, I dye my hair, and I know how to sing and play guitar and ball in my spare time. I am not her; I am me, dammit! My own person!”
“I am sorry,” said the shocked Tancred.
Yet now, when the helmet was partially hiding her, he could see the differences. Zero walked comfortably on two feet, and was smaller, more elegant in her movements, though she had a ruder vocabulary and manners. She was also smaller in size. But there was something in her eyes—a divine spark that was so similar to the Twins.
Tancred smiled. The Wolf Tribe has Twins of their own! He imagined his progenitors also had their own outbursts of annoyance at being addressed as a singular being.
“I’ve made a mistake and insulted you, Lady Zero.”
“Eh, beat it; everyone does it. It’s why I wear the bucket all the time.” Zero laughed and belched ungracefully. “It’s just… It’s raking my soul, okay? I’ve done bad things and hurt my sisters in the past, but I’m really trying to be good, to be a sister worthy of Ravy’s respect and a loyal kin and defender of the tribe. I learn and study, work as hard as I can, and people deny me my identity by taking me for Big Sis. Hate it.”
“I still feel guilty for mistaking your radiant beauty for another person. Would you happen to give me a chance to make amends? I am about to remarry, and a celebratory ceremony is planned to mark the occasion.” He spotted a shift in her posture. “There will be dances and songs aplenty. And Zero is welcomed in my house for saving my life.”
“A party, huh?” Zero grinned.
“A party full of passionate young scions who had never met the Blessed Mother in person,” Tancred tempted.
“Tell me more.”