Hulking machines stepped forward, crushing concrete and the APCs wreckage beneath their column legs with every step. Six-legged, they were open harnesses carrying heavy laser cannons at their top. Arrays and metal plates formed cages around the operator under the walkers’ underbellies. Pincers swung into view, collapsing a building and burying several knights in rubble. A hunter above faltered, caught in the tremors of his part of the roof. The man did not scream as he slipped into the eager pincers but shot his grappling hook and arced away from the danger, firing once at an operator.
The man inside the cabin hissed in anger; his voice reached the sword saint’s ears through the chaos of battle. His machine thudded far ahead, flattening a knight trying to get away. A brilliant ray of energy left his cannon, catching the hunter in mid-flight. The shadowy silhouette of her soldier glimpsed briefly in the yellow beam, then disappeared, and two burnt feet fell to the ground.
“Shine, Elegance!” Bertruda roared, closing the helmet, and raised her weapon.
Her spear was a sacred weapon passed down onto her house by the Twins. Forged from an alloy harder than the hulls of spacecrafts, intricate designs of a long-forgotten and not-yet-rediscovered archeotech filled its shaft, ready to imbue the blade with energy superior to that of the surface of a sun. At a press of her finger, the edge banished every darkness in sight, vaporizing bullets aimed at her.
The spider construct tried to clumsily catch her in the pincers, and a single slice of fully powered Elegance parted an arm in two, not cutting, not melting, but changing into steam whatever it touched. This was the true reason why her helmet had to be close and why she didn’t unseal Elegance earlier. To fight or stay close to its star-hot edge meant to inhale fumes capable of burning even a Wolfkin’s respiratory system.
It was madness to risk using it near civilians. But alone, in the killing field, Bertruda Mountaintop was unchained. Elegance spun, drinking deep from a lesser beam of energy streaming from a cannon, using it to power itself up. A stab followed during the brief pause as the laser cannon’s cooling shut it down. The deadly streak of light forced the raised pincer to disappear along with a section of a hastily put forward leg and landed at the cage, killing the bastard far too quickly. The construct erupted, ungracefully throwing the sword saint backward. She landed on her back, drawing a long line across the concrete, while Elegance hungrily devoured it before she turned it off and stood in the clouds of steam.
“Is this how you plan to stop us?” She laughed, throwing her head up. Hordemen closed in from every side, but the Mountain Guard opened fire, freeing her paws from dealing with the small fry. “Suicide bombing me? That’s novel, morsels, I won’t lie.”
A group of knights charged from the nearby alley, aptly taking advantage of the overextended enemy line, and the chaos ensued by the destruction of the walker. Civilians were at their backs, several children guided by a Troll of all people. The Oathtaker used his own body to shield the little ones, shuddering as two fist-sized holes appeared in the gray skin, tearing through his overalls.
True to his name, the Troll survived. Bertruda had fought against this tribe once, but she remembered vividly how these dispassionate people calmly picked up severed limbs and pressed the mangled edges back into their stumps. Their regeneration did the rest, mending flesh first, then veins, muscles, and bones. In mere minutes, Trolls were able to walk after losing a limb. This person here wore a half-ruined tourist badge on his shoulder, and his movements betrayed his complete lack of combat experience. What he lacked in knowledge, the noble soul made up for in devotion, throwing himself like a shield before the children.
A tall figure clad in steel and gold pushed his way out of the enemy ranks, a two-handed sword in his arm, the blade scraping against the street. Bareheaded, the handsome young man barely paid attention to a bullet that landed against his temple. The raider glanced up, showing his tongue to the hunters on the roof. Double shots came in response, and the man stumbled, laughing. The armor-piercing bullets bounced harmlessly off his brown eyes, crumbling into useless pieces of metal.
Still laughing, the raider ran at the knights, taking swords to his chest and arms. With disgusting ease, he swung his own weapon, cleaving through a knight’s shoulder, slashing through the pauldron, and stopping his blade in the chest. Then he tackled another off his feet, casually motioning for the constructs to aim at him as the knights converged on him, hacking at his neck, ribs, and arms. Swords bounced, unable to even scratch the man, and three energy beams washed over the hordeman’s back, burning holes in the attacking knights and claiming the life of their captain. The invulnerable youth grabbed the falling captain by his head, severed it, and hoisted it high to the guttural cheers of his troops.
In a blink of an eye, the seeds of uncertainty Bertruda had sown were undone, and she was again beset by the enemies, and the Mountain Guard hurried to her aid. Missiles flew down from the sky, hidden by the veil of smoke, and exploded around her. A Mountain Guard was caught between a series of explosions; her body was thrown like a rag doll, and her armor finally gave way. The generator blew up, and the shockwaves alone killed the trusted servant.
“Devil?!” The voice of the young hordeman rang through the chaos. His speech was thick and accented. “Excellent! On this day, I shall be known as the devil-slayer! For the Khatun, onto glory and curse death!”
The hordeman roared, echoing their leader in their native language.
“Lead the civilians to the encampment! Mountain Guard with me! Our stand!” Bertruda roared, disemboweling a hordeman's belly. She hesitated but added a kick, ending the woman’s suffering. And removed a potential threat.
So be it. If this was where fate claimed her, Bertruda could live with it. The world stopped around her, brought to a crawl by her heightened senses, and the sword saint weaved away from the construct’s line of fire. Her movements were light and precise, guided not just by necessity but by cold calculation. The beams speared through the side of a building and their own allies, missing her own troops.
Elegance’s point detached from the shaft, stretching out on the long chain. Bertruda swung, sending the blade on the chain through the enemy ranks and straight into another eager walker. Even without heat, the blade pierced the cage and hooked the operator in the chest. No mercy had been shown, and no mercy would be shown. Bertruda pushed back and dragged the weakly gasping woman through the narrow opening of the cabin. A sickening crunching sound accompanied the folding of limbs. An indignant twist of her paw sent the gruesome remains flying.
Fixated on her target, Bertruda began making her way through the sea of screaming faces, sidestepping shots. Elegance was a blur in her paws, its chain wrapped around necks, snapping them; the blade flickered in the air, cutting through helmets; and the heavy end of her spear was breaking sternums. Wary of her murderous reach, the walkers retreated, exposing their allies to being butchered by the Mountain Guard.
This close, everything worked in their favor. Her elite troops evaded shots, navigating themselves through the shared vision; they battered away bodies with the massive tower shields, fired, and hacked. Missed beams, shots, and explosions furthered the death toll, harming the Horde more than they hindered Bertruda and her desperate charge. Her armor trembled and screamed, her servomotors whined, but the top-of-the-line machinery kept her safe in its unyielding embrace.
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The sword saint understood Janine now. It was the time of cruel and routine butchering, and Bertruda embraced gifts of her rage at long last. There were things that could not be tolerated, and for that, they had to be strong and merciless, readily sacrificing their lives. Teasing, competition, brawls served to build bonds, test the character, and improve the body. They weren’t insults; Janine had genuinely seen her as a cousin before the betrayal.
I am sorry, my sister by another mother. It was my arrogance that broke that trust.
The laughing whoreson raised his blade, striking in an overhead arc at the troll. The strike would’ve cut through the clavicle and then severed the spinal column, coming out of the back with enough force to end an Ice Fang student holding a Normie girl in his paws.
Bertruda’s eyes flashed crimson from anger; the exhaustion drained from her body as emotions and adrenaline helped her cross the threshold of the possible. She growled, half-shocked, half-elated at the unexpected aggression worthy of a Wolfkin, and Elegance was thrust forward like a ray of light, reassembling into a single form. Twins guide my arm. Blessed Mother, bestow upon me your wrath. Two raiders were skewered at the tip of her spear, and she rammed them through the enemy ranks, reaching the hordeman just in time to block his blade. The youth spun to her, eagerly slashing at the haft of her spear, clearing it of the remains.
“Came at last, devil?” He giggled, drunk on mirth. “Name’s Amal, son of Mungke Khan. Hundreds have died by my hand. And I am one soul you won’t be collecting…”
Elegance kissed him. Its blade stabbed into his chest, below kneepads, and then right into the area around the heart, piercing that pathetic excuse for a chest plate.
Her strikes knocked him back, slamming the man’s back against the building and covering him in the rubble of a broken wall. The man’s body felt like an impregnable slab of iron, but Bertruda knew that Elegance’s molecular blade could cut through even the thickest steel. Only special alloys, like those of Janine’s axe or the weapons of her fellow Sword Saints, were capable of withstanding the ancient blade at the end of Elegance. It had failed to harm an enemy for the first time in its existence after the Twins discovered it in ancient ruins and forged a shaft and energy generators worthy of its potency.
Amal burst free, sending rocks everywhere, laughing and coughing dust in equal measure. A knight blocked a hail of bullets aimed at her, surprising Bertruda. If this bastard was an enemy leader, his minions sure cared very little about not hitting him. The sword saint spun her blade, economically collecting projectiles from the air and sending them at the hordemen.
The answer came to her a moment later. Bullets from his own allies ricocheted off Amal’s body. His blade landed heavily on the Elegance’s shaft, and Bertruda calmly headbutted the grinning face. Her HUD flashed, and a lens cracked as she took a dent, while Amal was merely pushed back again. Angrily, Bertruda slashed at his chest, sending Amal sprawling to the ground.
“Is that the best you can do?” he taunted, reaching for the blade. “Pathetic devil, you…”
Bertruda fired the plasma discharges, engulfing him in crackling flames. This seemed to break his composure a bit, and with a strained roar, he charged out of the fiery hell, swinging his half-molten sword. Elegance rose to meet him, gracefully and casually brushing the blade aside before delivering a crushing blow to his neck. The impact sent the youth cartwheeling to the side, his head drawing a line in the road.
“You were saying?” Bertruda asked coldly, trying to come up with an idea of how to kill that thing. The kid was a New Breed. She had faced those who were stronger than her, like Janine, and even those who could regenerate a limb, like a skinwalker. But never had she faced an opponent who simply never got wounded, no matter what.
A beam of light was spotted by a Mountain Guard and the sword saint retreated, her back pressed against the Troll’s and facing a burning hole in the pavement ahead. Amal rose to his feet, his body free of bruises; not even a tiny scratch marred his impeccable black skin; not a single hair was torn. He rocked his neck mockingly and ripped an axe from a nearby hordeman.
“I said that I am immortal, bitch.” He grabbed a pistol from his belt. “And you are not.”
He shot. Bertruda blocked the bullet intended for one of the kids behind her, the spear spinning in her arms fast enough to become a shield. Sensing her unspoken command, the Mountain Guard broke through the enemy's flanks to shield the civilians so their mistress could face her opponent head-on.
Sparks flew in the air as the spear collided with the axe, biting away chunks of it. The sword saint fought methodically, first breaking Amal’s pistol and driving him back. In four moves, she threw the fool completely off balance. A strike in the leg, followed by a sweeping blow with the butt of her spear against his jaw, an effortless swing to beat aside the ugly axe, and, finally, a masterstroke to end it all. A stab with Elegance broke the flat of the axe and found its way into the laughing mouth. Noticing something akin to panic, Bertruda jammed the blade’s tip into the upper palate.
The portable flash of destruction shone for the second time in the battle, releasing the temperature of 30 000 Celsius on the foe. What Elegance could not break, it melted.
If Amal screamed, Bertruda did not hear him. Light poured from his nostrils, mouth, and ears. His eyes turned into light bulbs. An explosion followed, shaking his body violently, and dark smoke billowed from every orifice of the man. Bertruda pushed her weapon deeper, lifting the body for his rabble to see.
A sword saint had died. Noble Tancred had been entrusted with the safekeeping of Houstad, and foul foes had found a way to harm it, regardless. Worse still, his fair warriors had failed to exact justice and had to be rescued by the Wolf Tribe. An utter failure of all oaths.
Keep them safe. These were the last words the Twins spoke to the sword saint before they disappeared. They were the first to see nobility in the Wolf Tribe, the first to bow to Ravager to avert the coming slaughter for dominance. The Twins worked tirelessly, introducing sword saints to warlords, talking to Wolfkins, counseling them, trying to civilize them, praising them for correct moral decisions.
Bertruda, to her eternal shame, had at first seen nothing in her cousins worthy of respect, thinking them little more than stinking butchers, but that had changed. The Wolf Tribe and Ravager kept the Ice Fangs safe, willingly dying in droves to preserve the Order and people’s lives. Misguided, maybe. Yet the Wolf Tribe had always had true nobility. A trait in them she had arrogantly rejected at first.
The realization came when Tancred and Camelia forced Bertruda to confront what she was becoming. Even an idiot could have seen that Janine was injured after the battle, but her proud eyes blindly ignored the facts. Because she had to win to be proven right. Bertruda wanted to believe that Janine was inferior; she needed to be sure that the Wolf Tribe were inferior creatures, unworthy of the Twins’ love, when in fact the living gods embraced both groups.
A fortress was under construction in the Core Lands. A home fit for them. The Order worked in secret, knowing full well how their cousins would react to such a gift. They hated to be perceived as being in debt, their silly cousins who still hadn’t learned to accept being taken care of. What debts could there be between relatives? But once completed, the Wolf Tribe would have no further need for the villages; their cubs would be safe and sound, growing up side by side with the children of the Order. It was for this reason that the Ice Fangs initially pursued profit and formed corporations. To gain the material wealth necessary to finally drag their cousins into the light.
Her heart ached at the need to refuse the calls of her allies. But what choice did they have? The Wolf Tribe had always kept them in the rear; now, with the Knight Academies in danger, could they really trust their rough kin to prosecute this war? Warlords, even Janine, cared too much about vengeance, but now was the time to save lives. When the lives of their own children were at stake, the Ice Fang Order had to act. If necessary, Bertruda was willing to pay a price in blood later.
A light from above distracted Bertruda’s thoughts. A bird of steel swooped down from the smoke, its six engines roaring. Steel wings spread behind a long, slender frame shaped like an arrowhead. Turrets were mounted above the wings, and raiders opened fire, tearing apart knights and members of the provincial army caught outside of the defenders’ protective circle. Four furious bursts closed in on a Mountain Guard; the man’s armor held for four long seconds before finally yielding with a deafening crack. The knight’s shoulders exploded under the onslaught of armor-piercing projectiles. His helmet was smashed deep into his chest, and the lenses exploded, releasing brain matter.
They have airships? Bertruda thought numbly, shaking off the despair. Janine wouldn’t be giving up here, and neither will she. “Mountain Guard! Anti-air missiles, at once!”