Massive bastions separated the Core Lands from the Outer Lands. Manned by Provincial Army soldiers and led by retired veterans, these vast, sprawling rivers of reinforced concrete and steel housed every weapon imaginable. Surface-to-air missiles, concealed artillery installations, sniper positions, and even chemical launchers slumbered within the titanic wall.
Not a single scorched mark marred the proud surface. Troops in bunkers scattered across the rocky terrain before the wall repelled any occasional assault. Recon teams regularly ventured into the wildness to alert the defenders should arrays of radars and sensors be fooled. Seismic stations worked tirelessly inside the wall, tracking sand reapers’ migrations.
The dividing line between the two regions jarred Janine as the crawler approached the ancient gates, which opened, inviting the troops into the heartland. Bleached sand and rock stretched northward, and a weary traveler would have to find shelter in the shadow of great mountains or have an advanced anti-heat suit to survive more than a day. The rare settlements were built near the mines to reduce the area that the local defense force had to protect.
Ruins of the Old World could be found throughout the Wastes: skyscrapers leaned against mountains, debris from spaceships and space stations was buried underground, and abandoned cities, stripped of everything of value, created an eerie atmosphere for anyone traveling through their wrecked streets and collapsed buildings.
Merchants led long caravans through shortcuts, finding respite in occasional oases where, in the shadows, trees touched by radiation or the glow stubbornly fought to survive. Priests and shamans of many faiths often built their sanctuaries there, safeguarding the new life with words and shotguns.
Villagers often earned tokens by working on farms, places that no longer grew vegetables but produced far more valuable resources. Meat, milk, and hides. Each farm had hundreds of smelly and docile cusacks kept safely within its walls. Cusacks, animals created in the laboratory of the Old World, were omnivorous beasts; their immune systems easily fought off diseases carried by parasites; their tough hides made excellent heat-resistant clothing, and these hides were one of the primary materials used to make survival suits. They bred fast, gave milk in abundance, and survived even severe wounds. When an occasional natural disaster temporarily cut off a part of the Wastes, its inhabitants relied on the farms to survive.
Years of peace softened the population, and the wounded trader or lost traveler no longer faced the shut doors of a settlement. But perils still lurked in these lands. A careless press of a palm against a heated stone or metal resulted in a burn. At night, skinwalkers, the Wolfkins claimed by the Spirit of Rage, prowled the lands, bringing woe to anyone who attracted the attention of these superhuman psychopaths. They often spoke in eloquent languages, only to break into gibberish to surprise their playthings. Driven by pure desires, they could save and damn in equal measure.
Janine once visited a village that worshipped such a fallen sister. The skinwalker fixed a water supply system, unearthed an ancient laboratory, and developed a cure for diseases that plagued the locals. Despite Janine’s warnings, the foolish Normies and mutants refused to believe her and worshipped their savior, allowing her to play with her young. A week later, the skinwalker grew tired of playing the benevolent role and nearly massacred the entire village in less than a minute, only to be stopped by the warlord’s late intervention. The two fought for hours, but Janine never won this battle; the transformed scout had her fill of brawling and left, regrowing the missing parts of her head.
Madmen, insectoids, predators, monsters, and slave traders’ crews hunted in the sands, often attacking settlements or engaging in fierce combat against the state’s troops. Quicksand, radiation fields, anomalies, and the Old World’s automated defenses waited to claim their share of lives. Sandstorms hurled boulders the size of a full-grown Normie that could spear a house from kilometers away, and occasionally toppled tall buildings that had survived the Extinction. Every little one in villages learned how to treat wounds, stay safe from the sun, and wield a firearm before learning how to write or speak properly. In settlements, the cubs received their first handgun at fourteen.
Every day, long lines of trucks streamed out of the gates, bringing water, prosthetics, fresh soldiers, and medicine to the Outer Lands. And from the Outer Lands, similar caravans moved in, delivering ore and relics found by highly protected excavation facilities, looming citadels that provided the highest paying jobs in the region. The army also escorted doctors from the Core Lands when the need arose.
Such was the Wastes, the most civilized region in the Outer Lands. Further north was the Ravaged Lands, a cesspool of constant infighting and war amongst myriad countries and tribes. The Blood Court warred against the Malformed; hundreds were burned alive monthly to satisfy cruel deities in the lands of the slave nation known as the Soultakers, and rumors abounded of Iron Men, aberrations who willingly shed their bodies to search for the wonders of old under the cover of the fiercest sandstorms. The Dynast’s heel had yet to grind these maniacs underneath, and the Reclamation Army focused on subduing the rest of the Wastes and securing the ancient stronghold in the Ravaged Lands.
To the east of the Ravaged Lands lay the borders of Pearl, a fast-growing city-state that thrived under the energetic and cunning leadership of its council, which sold armaments into the Ravaged Lands. Iterna’s lands were far to the northwest of the war-torn region, and these mysterious people expanded at a snail’s pace. The region known as the Desolation was in the distant north, and somewhere there was the facility from which the Dynast had rescued the tribe.
The Land of the Oath was to the west of the Wastes and the Ravaged Lands, behind an enormously long mountain range. Several heavily fortified mountain passes connected the regions. The Oathtakers and the Reclaimers reluctantly accepted the reality that they could not triumph by the force of arms. Lyudochka, the adopted daughter of Martyshkina and Janine, had foolishly chosen to live there. The two warlords wrote old-fashioned letters to this unique woman, inquiring about her well-being and offering advice.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
And beyond the gates, there was another world. Fields of green grass, heavily modified to survive the harsh climate, rolled over the hills to the horizon to the south. Well-maintained paved roads were like blood vessels, teeming with civilian vehicles, unafraid of the monsters lurking behind the wall. Police officers formed a cordon to keep gapers away, but Janine and Marco spotted rare Insectones, mutants, Normies and even Orais in the field, none of them carrying a weapon. These people lived in the town closest to the border, and yet their skins lacked the usual tan.
Night drew close and heavy clouds swirled overhead, and as Janine and Marco jumped from the crawler into the soft grass, they experienced the greatest change. Air. Its breeze didn’t carry sand and rock; it was cool, even gentle, so unlike the overheated, lung-choking air of the north. Mother and son crossed the field on all fours, shocked at the lack of parasites amidst the green.
“Mom!” Marco hushed, and Janine stopped. He pointed to drops of water on the stems. “Did someone spill a bucket…”
“No, Marco. Here, water is plentiful.” She ruffled his hair and sniffed the air. “Look! There, on a tree!”
“What is it?” Marco asked eagerly, releasing his claws. A small body waved its fluffy tail, attempting to blend in with the tall branches. “A rat?”
“A squirrel, I think,” Janine replied, trying to remember what she had learned from the educational materials.
“It has such tiny claws and is so loud, Mom!” Marco laughed incredulously as the squirrel climbed up. “I can hear its breathing from here! How did it survive for so long?”
“The Terraformation Institute had recreated many creatures and released them into the wild,” Janine explained. She and Marco walked over to the tree, and with her permission, he placed a paw on its bark, opening his eyes wide as he examined unknown things. “Visual similarities and behavior aside, these animals have little in common with their extinct relatives.” Janine raised her arm and caught the leaping animal, ignoring its furious chirping and scratching of feeble paws against her fur. She showed the animal to Marco and threw it back into the tree. “Their muscles are tougher, and their immune system is better, so they won’t keel over when a passing wind brings radiation from beyond the wall. The grass and trees have undergone similar changes. Iterna wants to return the world to its original state, but that is no longer possible.”
“Why is that, Mom?” Marco asked, touching a flower with a claw and putting the tip in his mouth to taste the dew and scents.
“Marco, you have seen the sand reapers,” she laughed and patted him. “There is no return to normalcy after it. The Reclamation Army has embraced the inevitable change, and brave women and men with ingenious minds have improved upon the outdated designs to bring the animals of the Old World to the New. Should the folly of mankind... Our folly cause another extinction; they may yet survive instead of dying out again.”
“Why are we here?” Marco asked. “The scenery is awesome, honest! But it is cold here…”
“Endure,” Janine ordered him, sniffing the air, taking in countless foreign scents, discarding the unimportant in seconds and concentrating on the serious matter at paw. “Dangers exist even in these parts. And it is your duty to put an end to what threatens tonight.”
On the ridge of a large hill, a trio of Normies prepared their equipment to film the passing crawler. Two more approached the Normies from the south. And in the crevices behind the hill, something stirred—something that had burrowed its way from the Outer Lands.
Five bodies appeared in the open, shaking off the rocks and sand from their carapaces and leaving drops of slime to navigate their way back. These were insectoid drones—creatures that stood on six stork legs. Their limbs were deceptively thin, but their sharp points splintered rock; a bullet could ricochet off the chitin covering their bodies, and protruding mandibles could bite off the arm of even a female Wolfkin. The drones reached a meter in length.
Back in the pits, the drones served as practice targets for the cubs. Under the supervision of warriors and shamans, the little black-furred rascals hunted down the drones, scoring their first kill and earning a blessed reward from the power. The exercise served more than a simple show of strength; the weak and the feeble learned to work together, and the strong learned to be shields.
Janine played the role of a protector tonight. She wore simple cargo pants and was shivering from the cold of the Core Lands. Marco crept to the edge of a canyon, donned in the pantlegs of a basic suit that completely encased his legs and extended up to his waist. Bundles of artificial muscles tightly overlapped the fur on his legs, like a second skin. Janine had no luck finding gear so small in the armory, so she visited Sword Saint Camelia for help, who gladly obliged by calling the girl Marco often played with, who had a similar physique. Parts of Cordelia’s initiate suit adorned Marco’s legs.
Janine rarely had to treat wounds herself. She knew the basics, of course: how to stop bleeding and clean a stomach from poison, what medicine to use against venom, and how to set a dislocated bone. She no longer trusted herself to operate on a wounded or sick person unless the situation demanded it. It wasn’t just a lack of practice. When her fingers grew so big enough that she risked accidentally tearing her daughters’ mouths apart during the removal of a bad fang… She understood she should shut up, swallow her pride, and ask for help.
But Janine still browsed medical tutorials and learned about how mechanical exoskeletons provided relief in cases involving broken or brittle bones. Unfortunately, the constant over-reliance on the machines will cause Marco’s condition to deteriorate gradually, but she hadn’t planned on forcing him to wear the metal for months. When set to power save mode, the pantlegs did not give Marco an unfair advantage, but kept his knees and joints from bothering him too much.
“Five,” Marco gulped nervously, grasping the knives’ handles, and Janine nodded in approval. Male Wolfkins had weaker claws and fangs, so they were permitted to use weapons during the Rite of Passage. Many forgot or were too ashamed to use this privilege, earning themselves pain and humiliation. Marco was wiser. “Isn’t it a bit too much?”
“If you fail, the people on the ridge will die,” Janine said cruelly, holding both paws behind her back. “You can do it. Marco,” she reassured him calmly as he nervously stepped to the edge. “Take a deep breath. You have plenty of time; this is not a race. Your opponents are insects; they have a rudimentary intelligence, but in the end they are ruled by instinct. They are prey, lacking creativity, and you are a hunter, trained since birth. Start with a distraction. Plan for what you are going to do afterwards. There are many tools around us, ready to be wielded by our bodies. Aim your blows at their vulnerable parts.” Janine smiled when she saw a flash of understanding in Marco’s eyes. She avoided giving him any direct hints about the upcoming hunt to preserve his pride. Spirits were her witnesses; her and Marty’s process had been a messy one, but they had learned to be better over the years. “Good. Believe in yourself and stay cautious. Now feast to save the vulnerable, male of the Wolf Tribe.”