They advanced upon Janine, with Phaser casually waltzing in, almost inviting Janine to try her claws on him, and the clowns circling like a unit of hungry insectoids, tracking her every move. Janine’s arms hung loose as she pretended to be shocked at the loss of her claws, intensely observing them. Wolfkins claws’ toughness exceeded even their bones, their incredible density kept them safe from splintering even when raking at power armor. As a Wolfkin received gifts of power, their instruments of destruction thickened and sharpened, to the point where Janine could pierce an armor plate with a simple tap.
And a light touch of these elongated, thin fingers cut her claws away. There was no resistance, no struggle; the ability to scratch space surpassed any durability the warlord’s body had built over her lifetime, and she let out a low whine, and Phaser’s lips parted in a smile. Portals floated in the air around him as he approached her, his hands weaving a pattern in the air, creating immovable shields to protect himself. He was too sure of his victory.
Wolfkins’ range of vocalization covered a wide range of sounds. Most served as simple expressions of dominance or submission, but there were hidden meanings behind certain patterns: warnings, a demand to follow, an urgent halt, and many others. This was what Janine had used to request immediate aid. The ground around Phaser exploded; little shapes ricocheted off each other, finding their paths around and in-between the hovering windows. Phaser’s smile changed to a scowl. The man grabbed his torn shoulder and Janine closed the distance, ignoring the awkward slash that left long gashes in reality. She slashed above that line, lacerating his stomach, and Phaser recoiled, screeching, not understanding why his allies retreated too, instead of slashing at the warlord’s sides.
“By the Sky, what was it?” Adonis cursed, evading passing projectiles.
“Bullets, brother.” Heika recovered first, striking once to block a bullet aimed at the teleporter’s eye. She pointed at the approaching Wolfkin. “She did it.”
“Janine, you are so greedy!” Martyshkina chuckled. Bullets danced between her fingers, and at a Phaser’s move, her thumbs snapped two of them, sending them flying and bouncing off the ground next to Phaser’s legs. If not for his allies, the teleporter would’ve had his knees pierced. “How about a team-up? Two against three sounds fun, right?” The amber eyes found Phaser. “Minor space manipulator, capable of cutting through most materials. Wow! Must be scary to sleep at night. What if the power activates and you find your dong cut off by accident in the morning, am I right? Eh, don’t worry, I know how to handle your kind.”
“Adorable,” Phaser replied dryly, retreating to the open crack. Janine and Martyshkina went after him, but the man swung his arms, opening a path to a desert in front of Janine and a portal to a misty mountain that swallowed bullets aimed at his face. “We’ve bled you enough for one day.”
He stepped into the cut behind him, and the tear in reality disappeared, abandoning Adonis and Heika. The clowns leapt away from the firing bullets and slithered into narrow recesses between the sidewalk and the street, designed to collect rainwater.
“Janine here.” The warlord pressed a terminal to her ear, raising a fist above her head, while Martyshkina collected her cut claws. “We encountered a New Breed capable of hopping between places by opening portals. One such rift showed us dead knights of the Ice Fang Order. Request immediate medical assistance at our location. Pursuing escaping prey.”
The fist came down, smashing through the street. Stone slabs rose to the left and right, opening a gap wide enough for Janine and Martyshkina to fall, landing in the shallow waters of the underground sewers. Sniffing the blood of the fleeing clowns and hearing wet footsteps, the warlords stomped after them, splashing garbage against the walls.
“Sword Saint Tancred has ignored my order, likely under the influence of emotional manipulation,” Dragena informed calmly. “I saw your battle through the lenses of our allies. Assist our reckless cousin, sisters; his last known location is in the tunnels to your north. Alpha is coming. The survival of the sword saint and your own comes before all else.”
“Understood.” Forcing herself to give up the hunt, Janine consulted the terminal, pulling up a map to see the closest route to their destination. Noticing how long a detour would take, the warlord cursed and shoulder tackled a wall in front of her, breaking into another tunnel, accompanied by Martyshkina’s laughter. The laughter died instantly at the sound of gunfire.
The Ice Fangs fought each other in a half-flooded tunnel. Knight-captains stood upright in the murky water, roaring, bringing swords and maces down on their own lesser kin, cutting through shields and taking shots in return. One sage spun his glaive around, nearly decapitating a nearby defender. Martyshkina saved the endangered woman; a bullet flung from her fingers knocked the defender back into the water, and the glaive sheared metal from her helmet.
Discipline, kinship, cohesion, and even the famous dignity had been abandoned. Soldiers used their weapons not only against allies, but had forgotten their fabled skill and here and there clawed and tried to bite the opposition. Holes from rifles and pistols covered the walls; the clanking of the weapon added to the bestial growls filling the tunnel. There was heat. The heat was not the pleasant, comforting warmth of her home, but a ferocious heat of furnaces that permeated even her mind. Whatever was causing the raging violence was close by, affecting the troops unhindered by Alpha’s fear wave.
And worse still, the moment Janine stepped closer, her fingers touched a submerged body. No. Not a body. Bodies. How many? To see their cousins, the ideal of dignity and duty reduced to this, has filled Janine with irresistible rage.
“Enough!” she roared, shaking random stones, and a few soldiers stopped, but the sage turned to her, his helmet missing.
Howling and spitting drool, the sage lunged forward, bringing the glaive down in an overhead strike. Janine dodged the attack, which exploded the water, and slammed the man into a wall with enough force to crack it, struggling not to bite his snout off. The sage showed no such restraint, thrashing in her embrace and trying to push her away with the shaft of his weapon. His feeble fangs snapped, stuck in the rough warlord’s skin.
A male dared to bare his fangs on a female, and not during a marriage ritual. Janine’s nostrils inhaled loudly and a red mist covered her eyes. She wanted to rip off his lower jaw and strike up to his brain, eat his tongue and then feast on the still warm stomach. He dares! No male had ever disrespected her so! Every instinct called for his death, and something ancient resonated. A pale memory of a dark place, of groping fingers touching the helpless body, surfaced. It was an unknown experience, and she wasn’t even sure if it was hers, but it fueled the urge to mutilate even more.
Her claws came from her fingers, ready to plunge into the crimson eyes and damn the consequences. Here and now, she will teach the Ice Fang Order the meaning of disrespecting a warlord! Too long had she endured the humiliation and…
“Restraint,” a voice whispered, and familiar dim and dead eyes looked at Janine from the cracks in the wall, halting her long enough to realize the gravity of what she was about to do.
Janine closed her eyes and roared, giving everything in a wordless howl of frustration that escaped her lungs. A trick. This rage is not her own. Someone toyed with their minds, tugging at their emotions and guiding them toward the most unfavorable choices. I refuse. My anger is too precious a thing for anyone else to wield. It is mine, and mine alone. I, with all my faults and all my might, am I. Janine of the Wolf Tribe.
The sage gasped in her hold. His head was knocked back against the wall by the roar that reverberated in his ears and shocked his brain. He gasped, and Janine had to help him stand when all the aggression washed out of his body, filling him with confusion as his mind cleared.
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“Warlord…” the man gasped.
“Janine,” she said.
Their kinship strengthened. It was shamans’ duty to guide young cubs through their first violent urges, passed on to them by the Blessed Mother. There were claims of seeing great beasts in their dreams, but as the cubs grew older, they themselves doubted their visions. It was hard, mastering rage, but necessary, for if they experienced it elsewhere for the first time, they risked endangering the Normies. Her cousins had no such training, but in a way, it was pleasing to see that they shared the same trait.
She just wished the price wasn’t so high. “Report.” Around them, the battle stopped, although Martyshkina had to slap several knights to bring them back to their senses.
“He tricked us. The bastard lured us here and challenged the noble Tancred to an honorable duel, and when the lord agreed, a flash of anger struck our brains. We weren’t ourselves. The liege was the only one mostly unaffected, but the coward struck a knight in the middle of the duel, breaking the rules, and used him as a hostage to spit acid into our master’s eyes, blinding him. Pray, be on your guard against this insidious fiend.” The sage shook his head, trying to regain composure.
“Where is he?” Janine demanded. “Where is Sword Saint Ironwill?”
“Jani!” Martyshkina’s paw grabbed her, pulling the warlord aside.
Waters swirled as a dark shadow passed underneath them. A blade sliced through the surface, bleeding Janine’s neck, but Martyshkina’s timely intervention saved her life. Her friend often boasted that no one but friends could ever sneak up on her, and by the Spirits she had proven herself true in full measure! The blade struck the wall, and a shower of stones rattled against a rising figure cloaked in heavy armor.
“Here.”
Six massive, segmented legs, each the length of a knight and as thick as an oak, raised a massive torso above the water, puzzling the warlord as to how someone so massive could hide so well. The green armor was covered in occasional gashes and cracks, revealing tanned skin and a deceptively chubby build. Several wires hissed the visor no longer glowed, so a metal hand opened it. Golden medallions and jewelry were wrapped around arms. The unknown madman had two human arms. One held the long, curved blade, and a set of insectoid limbs extended from under the armpits, ending in pincers covered in chitin rather than steel. Golden, diamond-encrusted bracelets, stained with soot and blood, covered each wrist. The man’s bald head nearly scratched the ceiling; the ends of his long mustache slipped from his helmet and touched his chest, and coins from unknown lands glittered in the skin of his forehead. Sharp brown eyes scrutinized the warlords mockingly.
“Greetings, sweet madams.” He bowed courteously to the warlords, his voice soft and pleasant, kind even. “Janine, is that correct? You have taken something of mine. In return, I will take everything from you. I am Brood Lord, the Breaker of Nations, the Despoiler of Women, the Father of Thousands, the Merciless Blade of Mad Hatter, and the Master of the Northern Plains. Your sons I will see eradicated; your daughters, if you have any, will whore themselves to my whims; and you yourself, blinded, armless, and legless, will wail in despair, cursing the day you stood in the way of the Gilded Horde. And when I finish amusing myself with you, not a trace of your bloodline will remain in this world or any other. So I have decided, and so it shall be.”
Brood Lord’s pincer arm rose high, displaying Tancred’s severed head for all to see. A tongue dangled weakly from the sword saint’s mouth; dark holes replaced the once bright red eyes.
“Glaive, Sage,” Janine commanded, extending her paw. “I have a crustacean to cook.”
****
“Wake up, sir!” he yawned, surprised by a powerful tug as sweet Najwa, very unladylike, pulled him out from under the warm water.
“Hello there, dear.” He clung to her, breathing in the scent of her stunning golden locks. She smelled of apples and roses. “No more ‘sir’, please. Call me however you like.”
Najwa’s slender brown body was already dry, and she threw a black bathrobe over her shoulders. The worry in her gracious blue eyes concerned him. Had he insulted her in any way? Technically, her job was to protect him, but he preferred a more intimate relationship with members of the fairer sex, and so he treated the surprised bodyguard like a queen. It didn’t take long for her to join in the evening orgies, although as of right now, he hadn’t yet known if the beautiful agent was doing it out of obligation or pleasure, and the mystery was intoxicating!
The rest of his girls were relaxing on the white edges of the large pool, still dreaming after a long, passionate night. What were they taking? He remembered cocaine, enough to kill a normal person ten times over; then there was liquid hot mind, a highly addictive drug bringing about every hidden desire inside a human. Biological enhancements to their bodies gave them all the benefits of tasting these forbidden fruits and protected them from any negative effects. Alcohol, that’s a given, food… Oranges? He raised his black eyebrows. Probably ordered by the insectoid agent, the shy girl had peculiar tastes, making her all the more precious to his heart. No, there wasn’t anything out of the ordinary, and if he’d learn that he’d dared to say so much as a dirty word to his sweethearts, he’d whip himself.
“You need to see it, sir!” Najwa insisted, dragging him to the window.
“Sure-sure, just let me get dressed.” The last time he walked naked to a window of his penthouse, he ended up being at every yellow newspaper in Houstad and on more sites than he had wished. His girl tossed his clothes atop a statue whose bronze surface almost matched the color and perfection of his perfect skin.
“No time!” Najwa shoved him to the window and his eyes widened.
Houstad was burning. Black smoke now covered the streets of his city, his base of operations. His perception sharpened as he saw waves of dark-clad bodies swatting away armored figures trying to gun down civilians. There was no mercy. The jaws of the Third’s mutants were closing in on necks and arteries, biting off chunks of skin, their ugly guns barked, drilling holes in the oversized bodies.
The destruction was horrific. A skyscraper fell, bringing destruction to Houstad as if a giant dagger had been stuck into the city and then drawn a line across it; cars burned; there were explosions that destroyed parts of the streets as pipes carrying gas exploded and drove into the cracks. There were even several pools of overheated water, and even he didn’t want to think about the last moments of those who died there. Rescue teams, like busy bees, tried to save lives, but there was too much chaos, and many lost their lives, trampled to death.
“Who… who dare?” He whispered and a halo of light briefly flashed into reality around his body, accentuating well-built muscles and black hair. Why didn’t the alarm go off?!
He restrained himself, obeying the order to conceal his presence. Even through the bulletproof windows, he heard the scream of a family trapped in an elevator on the outside of the skyscraper. An empty elevator above them broke free of its shaft and was about to crush the family. He was about to let them die, noticing an ugly goat-headed freak among the people, but there were normal humans there, too. And they fought for the liberation of humanity. A flash of light, traveling at the speed of light, vaporized the falling elevator, leaving only steam rising to the surprise of the terrified civilians.
There was no force in the world capable of withstanding his wrath. This senseless massacre could be stopped in minutes, but he was constrained by his rank. Win or lose, Houstad would have to fend for itself. Still, there was fire coming from the floors below, and at the very least some help and evacuation of his adorable bodyguards to safety was in order.
“Wakey-wakey, ladies!” He clapped his hands; they snapped out of their dreams and grabbed weapons, ready to fight. So cute! But whether or not they realized it, he was the one responsible for their protection, even if some of them were mutants. Otherwise, what kind of man was he? “The city is under attack, but let us not panic and evacuate in an orderly fashion. Permission to rescue anyone is given and…”
A heavy bang on the window stopped him. There was a crack, and a black-furred arm of a gigantic beast broke into the apartment.
“Not an enemy!” roared the thing, stopping the bodyguards from firing and pushing her body inside and widening the hole. “Evacuation team. Do not fear…” There was a mane around the creature’s neck. It sniffed the air loudly, and he understood it was a warlord. “Degenerates,” it said, and he raised a hand, commanding his girls to obey. As far as he knew, the warlords were females, and it would not do to harm a woman. A few visits to the beauty parlor, a rejuvenation procedure, several operations to remove scars... He clicked his tongue. Yes, do it, and she might be pretty enough to invite for dinner. And where there was dinner, there was also the possibility of extending such an exquisite encounter into a night of carnal pleasure... “Great,” the warlord grumbled, looking down at him. “This one is too high to understand.”
“Wait, it isn’t what…” he tried to explain, to dispel the wrong first impression, understanding that she had caught the scent of narcotics.
“You. Are. Being. Rescued. Relax,” she interrupted him, speaking slowly and scooping the people into her embrace, jumping back into the broken window where another enormous, black-furred woman was saving people trapped in the elevator.
Elder Spaniad of the Organization rolled his eyes, placed a hand on Najwa’s shoulder to show he was not angry at being disrespected, and tried to enjoy the sudden attraction of being saved in such a unique and unorthodox manner.
I need to find and burn whoever has caused chaos in my city. Spaniad thought.