The ground erupted, sending the warlord back. Something the size of a battle tank rose from the depths, covered in toxic waste. Its body was a gruesome jumble of bronze and iron plates, tawny in color. The beast lunged from the hole on four great legs, its hooves destroying man-sized chunks of stone at a touch. The warlord recoiled, regaining her footing. Her Taleteller faced the mighty horns, drawing sparks, and the fiend’s might threw her back into the ranks of her soldiers.
“Scatter!” Janine roared, illuminated by the purple light of the creature’s lenses.
From stylized nostrils came a surge of superheated air that turned Janine’s armor red and murdered a warrior who tackled a male and a scout to safety. The woman had miscalculated; she had thought her armor would endure a normal flame, but the air assaulting her had overwhelmed the safety measures. Despite the suit’s automatic self-sealing to ward off the heat, the death persisted, boiling the proud Wolfkin alive.
Janine used one arm to push against the robot and elbowed back, cracking a scout’s chest and cannoning the woman back. The soldier showed exemplary judgment and grabbed other Wolfkins, dragging them away from hell. Burns won’t kill them. In her youth as a scout, Janine once had her entire left leg engulfed in chemical flames, losing most of her skin and fur on the limb. She walked it off just fine in a few months. But the superheated air could rupture her soldiers’ lungs, ruin their eyes, and destroy their internal organs. She nearly slipped as the pavement melted.
Finally, she got a better look at her attacker. When she was a cub, her adoptive dad often read them from a coloring book containing images of long-extinct animals. To this day, that book was one of her most treasured possessions, even after the reinvention of the Net.
And what stood before her now, down to the muscles and a tail raking deep gouges in a building wall with a whip-like touch, was undeniably a bull. A steel bull, artistically crafted, standing taller than a bunker. Brass skin covered every inch of its body; lighter armor plates shielded joints where gears bigger than a man moved, supported by fiber muscles made from an unknown material. Its steel lips thundered a challenging roar of such intensity that it smashed one steel minion against the ground, ruptured a guard’s eardrum, and cracked Janine’s lens.
The steel bull reared up and brought its hooves down on the struggling Janine. Stuck in the molten mire, the warlord’s footing slipped, and the multi-ton limbs came crashing down, pinning Janine to the ground. Tough. Janine groaned, receiving flashing reports of dents and gashes in her armor. The Wolfkins opened fire, but their shards merely scratched the brass skin.
“This isn’t normal bronze, Wolf Hag!” Ignacy shouted.
“Aim for the joints!” Anissa commanded.
The pack fired at the exposed parts to no avail, as energy bubbles burst, shielding the mechanisms. The bull’s head swayed, looking at the insects daring to interfere with its battle. Its lights glowed even brighter, birthing stars, and Impatient One grabbed several soldiers, dragging them away on instinct.
Anissa failed to do the same. Pure beams of light left the beast’s eyes instantly after a long build-up of seconds. But Anissa did not notice Ignacy to her left, did not see him in time because of her missing eye. The Wolf Hag stopped for a moment, and that was all it took for her brother to suffer. The beam ate away Ignacy’s right arm, vaporizing it to the shoulder, and moved past her boy, slicing through two warriors and a male standing behind him, killing them instantly.
No. Janine felt rage boiling down inside her—rage she had last felt during her ranking match for the Warlord title. This tin-can killed her soldiers; it dared to turn her boy into a Crippled! The world stopped. Janine’s body went numb, and the crushing weight disappeared. Reddish dots filled her vision, and she bared her fangs. Destruction. Nothing short of total elimination would suffice; there will be no mercy, no forgiveness for this insult. She will eliminate this toy and its creator from this planet!
“Sister…” She froze as she heard the voice of a long-dead woman.
Behind the frozen Wolfkins’ backs, a figure passed. As tall as Janine, the newcomer’s head hung to the side, a vertebra piercing the neck, dried blood and white decaying muscle covering the protruding piece of bone. The lifeless eyes found Janine, and the corners of her torn and ragged lips moved, showing far too many tiny fangs in the mouth. Janine remembered her, remembered the dent she had left on the woman’s head, the dent that was still leaking brain matter. The woman had the visage of a starvation victim, her thin body’s ribcage threatening to break free from the embrace of flesh. Her many jointed fingers, far too long for a normal Wolfkin, beckoned to Janine.
“Restraint…” Warlord Terrific gurgled, bringing the world back to life. The Wolfkins fought against the minions, dodging incoming stabs and firing back, punching holes in their opponents. There was no sign of her adopted mother’s ghost.
Janine swallowed, banishing the fantasies. There was no Terrific here; the venerable warlord had died years ago because of Janine’s immature mistake. She pushed the bull’s hoof up, hearing the servomotors of her power armor scream with the effort. The bull above her shuddered, one of its eyes exploded, and a roar of indignation escaped its lips. The machine staggered back as jets of oil poured from the broken eye, along with a thin object.
Janine used this opportunity to roll out from under its hooves and look at the battlefield through her soldiers’ lenses. Bertruda and her personal guard moved much closer than the orders allowed. The sword saint had cast her personal spear into the beast’s eye. Her knights fired, thinning the minions and supporting the pack. The Ice Fangs had infringed on Janine’s personal battlefield, but she couldn’t care less about it. Let the shamans and wolf hags grumble. Her sister, from a different tribe and mother, was awesome!
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The bull’s second eye came to life, charging its energy to fire at the Ice Fangs. Janine jumped, meeting the incoming beam with the blade of her axe. Tonight, a weapon forged by ordinary men from a bygone era tested the abomination cobbled together by a madwoman and found it wanting.
Janine’s armor automatically activated the defensive mode, sealing her head and leaving no paws or legs exposed. The armor vibrated, absorbing the incoming energy as Janine blocked the beam meant for her rival. The systems in her helmet sent warnings of rapid overheating. One by one, the internal cooling systems went offline, unable to cool the beam of energy heating the outer layer. Burns appeared on her skin. The warlord held on, refusing to entertain the thought of defeat.
The Taleteller cleaved its way through the energy and bit deep into the bull’s eye. Her sturdy arms empowered the axe enough to shatter the purple window and send the beam projector straight into the mechanical bowels. A clamor akin to a train derailment accompanied the projector’s submersion. Gears broke. The furnace generator spewed plasma as the weapon continued to fire, causing a chain reaction of eruptions, and the steel servant’s legs buckled, unable to adjust as the immense weight displaced its intricate systems out of alignment. Fuel lines exploded, sending sparks from joints no longer shielded by the force fields.
Janine grabbed the servant’s head and climbed on top of it as it wailed its farewell roar. Mercilessly, she brought her weapon first to its forehead, breaking whatever processors and acoustic devices were still working beneath the brass surface, and the roar fell silent. She walked across the bull’s back, splitting it and creating openings to release the hellfire flames that engulfed her. Nothing mattered compared to the beam, and the cooling systems restarted, soothing the damaged areas of her hide. The warlord jumped from the spasmodic machine, dropping it on the minions, and picked up Bertruda’s spear from a burning pool of oil, lifting and admiring the pristine weapon.
Ignacy… She stifled her concern for her son. Bogdan tended to his brother’s wound. Back in her time, females often culled the wounded males, and if they spotted a warlord showing familiarity to a male over them, they often drove the poor sod to suicide through constant dominations. Marty claimed those days were long gone; Lacerated One herself had deemed those practices unworthy of the Wolfkins, and Alpha had enforced her will. But the risk was too great. Many packs still allowed the brutal beating of males as entertainment, their warlords claiming it made their males tougher. She remembered the friends she had failed to save.
The scout of Ignacy and Bogdan’s pack lost her leg to the knee, and a steel minion opened up the side of her body, ruining the ribs. Despite her injuries, the woman forced herself to snarl commands, placing another warrior in charge and ordering her to tend to the wounds of her packmates. This sight inspired Janine. A good and dutiful girl.
A warlord has no right to show weakness. She must always be a pillar available for others to cling to, and she must always know what to say and do. No one forced Janine to reach her rank, and now she had a duty to uphold it. The banter, the fake bravery—all of it was part of an image.
“Thanks, Bertruda!” Janine waved the weapon above her and threw it to the sword saint, who caught it gracefully. “You ain’t a total bitch after all! That was a cool toss!”
“I despise everything about you!” came a screeching answer.
“What are our orders, Dragena?” Janine asked overly cheerfully. She walked over to the wounded scout and put a paw on her shoulder. “Rest,” she ordered, speaking loud enough to be heard by Ignacy. From a male to a warrior, from a warrior to a scout, from a scout to a wolf hag, and from a wolf hag to a warlord. Her boy had already pushed the boundaries of tradition, and even though Janine tried to force the girls in her pack not to abuse males aside from instilling a lesson, she would not risk his wellbeing. “Don’t talk. The pain shall pass. Conserve your oxygen. Endure for the tribe.”
Images flooded her damaged lenses, informing her that another servant, resembling an oversized scorpion, had attacked Marty. Its pincers failed to catch the warlord; a stream of acid from its stinger melted three wolfkins alive before Martyshkina’s revolvers fired, breaking the stinger and bathing the thing in its own acid.
Ashbringer formed an aura of white flame around herself and lunged at the gorilla-shaped robot, dodging the servant’s blow. She grabbed its wrist and elbow and threw it over herself. Nimbly, the robot landed on her palm and swung its lower body, trying to slam Ashbringer into a wall. The warlord caught its leg and pushed a paw through the metal scutes that shielded where his patellofemoral compartment should have been. Her flamethrowers began scorching the machine from within.
A pterodactyl-inspired flying steel servant emerged from the city, skillfully maneuvering around the anti-aircraft fire. The thing dove toward the crawler, its energy-covered legs aimed at a control tower. Before the machine could reach it, a figure leaped into the air, covering dozens of meters in a single bound. The uncrowned leader of the Ice Fang Order, First Sunblade, reached for his blade, and it flashed the light of a sun across the battlefield. His first cut sliced the servant’s head open; the following cuts took away its wings, and the foe fell to the ground before the Inevitable.
“The coordinators reported that our sensors picked up an energy spike leaving the spire shortly before the servants’ attack,” Dragena replied. “Janine, you are the closest to it. Capture or kill, at your discretion.”
“By your command!” Janine roared and charged to the tower, stomping on the minions trying to halt her.
Anissa, Impatient One, and Anissa’s scouts joined her. Truth be told, it would be best for the wolf hag to stay behind; she was the third strongest in the pack. But Janine remembered how emotionally compromised she was by the death of her firstborn. It had nearly ruined her mission. No doubt Anissa harbors feelings of shame and guilt for allowing her brother to sustain injuries. It’ll pass; the boy was sturdy enough to survive this flesh wound, and in time, they’ll all laugh about this incident years from now. But for now, she must pile task upon task on Anissa, not allowing the young woman to dwell on sadness or fear that her mother may no longer trust her.
Necessary cruelty. A heart-to-heart can resolve the situation better, and Janine had every intention of sitting down with her daughter after the battle. None of them is without sin; there is no warlord alive who hasn’t made mistakes that have led to deaths. One even forced cubs to die to save the tribe, only to lose her skin to Alpha’s claws. This woman suffered more than just physical loss; the records erased her name, and the ever-silent wolf hag joined Alpha in her quest for redemption through servitude.
But there was no time to talk now. And as Terrific taught Janine, there was more than one way to skin a problem. Where the state banned physical torture, her warlord resorted to physiological torment, and Martyshkina and Janine often had to stand up to her to prevent the most heinous crimes. While she would never do the crimes her foster mother did, the foundation for finding alternative ways to solve a problem was solid. Actions will serve to prove to Anissa that she hasn’t lost her mother’s trust.
She only hoped that her dear Bogdan and precious Annissa would find the heart to forgive the utter betrayal their mother will be forced to commit.