“Warlord!” Ignacy yelled, pointing at the explosives. She followed his paw and saw the numbers on the display dying, one after another. The detonators went offline.
She felt her heart stop. Their plan, this whole massacre, to lure the enemy closer, their dedication to laying down their lives—all of this ended up being for naught. Was there a limit to the Ice Fangs’ treachery? Why did they hate them so much? Had the Sword Saint tried to contact her just to gloat?
“Janine, I know you are pissed.” Martyshkina joined the communication; shots of revolvers accompanied her words. “And trust me, so am I. But you must listen to me. I can’t come to your aid; there are too many enemies in the settlement, and I have civilians…”
“Marty,” Janine said softly, splitting a hordeman in two in two. She spoke quickly, too afraid that the Ice Fangs would cut off communication. “It’s ok. You are not to blame. Pull back from Quatindor. Save the civilians. Don’t ever trust the Ice Boys. They betrayed us. Please watch over my pack and my family for me, and forgive me for drinking all the vodka on your birthday…”
“So it was you who did it, bitch! I mean, shut up, you big buffoon!” Martyshkina roared. “Yes, our cousins screwed us over! But they are trying to help us now! Leonidas and Macarius have joined forces to reach you! Reinforcements are on the way; wait…”
She noticed it thanks to the video feed coming from a male’s lenses. A crack in reality opened above her head. First it was a thin blue line, fast as a laser beam, ripping through the empty air. Like a flash of lightning, the line expanded into an oval shape to let a long, curved sword pass through it. Its point was aimed at the back of her neck.
“Sleeping on the job, mutant?” hissed a mocking voice from above, and Janine spun around.
She parried the thrust with her rifle, slowing it long enough to bring up her own axe at the expense of her rifle. Her opponent fell from the opening, kicking with two of his six heavy legs across her shoulders. Brood Lord springboarded away from Janine, his legs sinking deep into the ceiling. His armor was repaired; there was a handgun in his hand, pointed at her soldiers.
In a span of a second, the two of them exchanged eight blows, bludgeoning each other with very little grace and putting their full might into every swing. Brood Lord frowned as his finger squeezed the trigger, but half of his handgun was already missing, cleaved away by the Taleteller’s return arc after he had blocked an attack. A shard of still broke away from his blade, and the khan noticed Eled approaching him from the left. Wordlessly, he darted away across the ceiling.
Another portal opened in front of Eled, spitting out the clowns involved in Houstad’s butchery. Accompanied by the musical laughter, the bastards leapt at the warlord, aiming their daggers at the joints. Eled joined her maniacal laughter with theirs, ruining their symphony and repeating the feat by blocking four stabs with the scythe’s shaft. Her blade sliced through the afterimages.
“Fun!” Eled chuckled, using her weapon like a stick to knock her opponents aside. “Go!”
Bursts of shardguns highlighted her armor and the jumping clowns. The sharpest spikes dented and scraped against the warlord’s plates, bouncing away and spinning in the air. But where Eled herself remained unharmed, the Horde’s killers cursed, hiding their pain behind obscenities. Caught in mid-air, they bled like cusacks and stumbled visibly as they touched the ground and rolled away from the scythe’s reach. Their suits were torn, dozens of shards entered their bodies to near half-length, and the brother and sister said nothing, scurrying away. Eled chose not to pursue and concentrated upon the closest hordemen, collecting her grim harvest.
“Don’t run away this time,” Janine asked Brood Lord, taking the axe in both paws. “We do have a score to settle.”
His brows rose behind the visor, and a pleasant smile spread across his face. Jumping from the ceiling, he blocked an incoming shot with a careless swing of his blade.
“Janine! Is that you hiding in that ugly pile of junk? A surprise, but a welcome one.” One of his eyes glanced at the explosives, and Janine saw a flicker of HUD reflecting off his retina. “Is this your contingency? Going out as a suicide bomber… Ah, no imagination. You disappoint me.” He snapped his pincer, and a portal swallowed the explosives. “Well, we robbed you even of that. Don’t be sad. Your misery is just beginning.”
Brood Lord lunged at Janine, bringing the full weight of his body down on her as their weapons collided. The ground cracked beneath her leg, but with a titanic effort she pushed him away, and he circled around her, shearing away an upper part of a male’s head with a snap of his pincers. Chuckling, Brood Lord charged around the hall, oblivious to the gunfire drumming against his bulk. His skittering legs trampled the Wolfkins in his path, bulging steel and rupturing organs. Janine ran after him, maneuvering around her own allies to avoid knocking them off their feet and exposing them to the enemies.
“Once again, you rely on others, too weak to face me yourself!” Brood Lord sneered. “Have you no shame? How many must die for your cowardice?”
Her opponent had no such limitations. He jumped up, bounced off the ceiling, and landed five paces away from Janine. The cruel blade impaled a warrior, lifting the dying woman to use as a shield against Janine. She did not hesitate, honoring her soldier’s devotion. The Taleteller’s edge cleaved through the brave soul, ending her suffering, and scraped against the curved sword as the remains dropped onto the floor. Brood Lord tried to close his pincer at her waist and Janine slashed with her claws, forcing him to yank back his hand, shaking it in surprise at the bleeding over a cracked chitin.
They pressed against each other, taking their weapons in a two-handed grasp again, and the familiar orange irises appeared from behind the khan’s eyes.
Smoke poured from the back of Brood Lord’s armor when a mechanism around his shoulders broke under the strain. A flicker of electricity ran down his ornate sleeves, but the man’s grin never wavered as he pushed against Janine. The stone floor cracked underneath them, and a small fissure separated the fighters. Unencumbered by his poison and supported by her own plate, Janine found herself equal to him. Not just equal, superior. The state’s technology surpassed that of the Horde, and given enough time, his junk will break.
“Impressive. It’s been a while since I had to work so hard to score a kill.” The khan looked past her. “Your worst-case scenario is here.”
Janine did not turn. Through the shared vision with another soldier, she saw Bogdan, two warriors, and a male caught by Drozna’s hands. The bastard had stepped out of the portal, seized them, and brought them closer to his chest, teasing Predaig into firing at him. His feet slowly crushed a fallen warrior against the floor as he waved a finger at the warlord, standing alone in the hall without any weapons or protection, shielded by his enormous muscles and bone growths. The flame of Ignacy’s flamethrower splattered harmlessly against his back.
“Let Bogdan… Order your beast to let my soldiers go,” Janine pushed the sword away, drooling as she pursued the khan. “Or your death won’t be a pleasant one.”
“Bogdan… Bogdan…” Brood Lord clicked his tongue, tilting his head as he examined the captured Wolfkins. “Four… two females, and Bogdan sounds like a man’s name. Which one is he? Who is he to you? A husband? A lover? A son, perhaps, or a brother? Specify, Janine. We don’t want me to be mistaken, right?” He laughed at her silence. “Oh well, it doesn’t really matter. You have already told me everything I need. I’m sure I will find out who exactly this Bogdan is and how you two are related when I skin them alive! Drozna! Whatever happens, don’t kill the whelps and don’t let them die.”
“That’ll cost extra, Khan,” Drozna grumbled, and the khan sighed. Suddenly his visor slipped into the helmet.
His lips formed an 'O', and Janine ducked under the spit aimed at her exposed mouth. She uppercut the bastard into the jaw, but the khan escaped the skewering by jumping. His body whirled in the air, his legs stuck to the ceiling, and he touched his chin, frowning at the pierced part of his helmet and a slight cut on his jaw.
“Let’s play a game, Janine,” he said nonchalantly. “For every cut I receive, this Bogdan of yours will lose a pound of flesh. Speaking of. Drozna!” He roared, banishing the false pleasantries from his tone.
Janine dared not break their fight, blocking the incoming slash. That was what he wanted—to force her to try to save Bogdan, exposing herself. This way, both will lose. But it was hard. So damned hard. She swore she would never be like her mother, and in the end, she abandoned her cub like that woman.
Flashes of memories, so sweet and innocent, filled her mind. Bogdan and Ignacy had been cubs of a medium-sized litter, so furry, hungry, and demanding. Janine had hugged them, trying to be gentle as she lay on the overheated stones, praying to the Spirits in thanks for their survival. That lifegiving wasn’t effortless. Their local shaman, Starstruck One, had to work her claws and fangs to help the little ones out, and Colt had force-fed his wife cusack meat and milk to help her recover, while the young girls had examined their siblings, suggesting names. Janine had soon stopped hugging her cubs as they whimpered and cried for milk. Her instincts had been running wild, as usual, and both Colt and the girls had acquired some impressive scars from the bites of their worried mother.
But their family was happy. That was all that mattered—the weeks of celebration and how they had checked the family lineage to make sure the little ones would have proper names. Bitter and merciless wars were forgotten, and the whole family celebrated life and played with the little ones.
The mere thought of losing her cubs hurt. She kept her focus only because the loss had tempered her many times before. Part of her soul was dead. Her cubs had died in the past, and it was inevitable that it would happen again. Death was an eventuality in the Wolf Tribe.
“Predaig,” Janine said, matching her opponent’s flurry of cuts.
“Janine,” her named sister interrupted her. “You trust me?”
“Always.”
“Then don’t worry about a thing.”
Predaig shot at Drozna’s leg, stopping as the bullets ricocheted off the bone plates. Several tiny cracks were left in the unnaturally durable bone, and Drozna smirked, unleashing a wave of rage. The Wolfkins in his hold howled and thrashed, clawing at his arm and trying to bite each other. The giant claws shifted, ready to obey the khan’s command and gouge lines into the soldiers’ bodies.
The autocannon retreated behind the Predaig’s wrist, and the warlord shrugged, taking her double-bladed sword. Janine couldn’t tell whether Drozna’s power had affected her or if her named sister’s will was too great. It hardly mattered. Predaig was of the first generation; in the course of her life, she had defeated far greater foes than this foolish beast could ever imagine. She swung, filling Janine’s heart with dread as the captured Wolfkins’ necks ended up in the direction of this seemingly simple attack.
Drozna noticed it too and grinned in anticipation. The grin turned to a flash of pain and then fear as he stumbled back, letting go of his captives and pressing both hands to a large gash on his neck. The edge of the sword had phased through the Wolfkins and landed at the foe.
It was impossible. Predaig had no power; her weapon was crafted from a simple wreckage of a spacecraft she had found in a desert, and it took Janine a moment to realize what had happened. The sword was blurred from sheer speed, but it wasn’t the warlord’s top speed. In the very last split second, she had shown her true abilities, redirecting the attack so that it went over the allies’ heads and then back down again, nearly doubling its original speed.
So this is the secret behind her mysterious splitting of the hostage-takers. Janine grunted.
“Bitch!” Drozna roared, both to let out fear and to check if he could speak. Two more blurred arcs sliced away parts of bone and muscles from his arms.
“Step closer,” Predaig sang, her voice relieved of any burden. “Step closer, child, and play a little. The day was long, and I thirst.”
“You should have thirsted for living longer rather than angering me!” Drozna roared. The rage stopped tugging at Janine’s nerves. “Enough of it. I don’t need to hear this shit! I don’t need any fancy armor or weapon to tear you down!”
“All I hear are words, silly boy.” Predaig smiled.
“Soon all you will hear is my fingers crushing your skull.”
Drozna charged at Predaig, and a shimmering sphere of overlapping sword strikes enveloped her. Not a single move was wasted; when the claws scraped against steel, the warlord used it to turn a parry into a counter cut. Thrusts flowed elegantly into slashes. Missed slashes were reverted into parries or blocks and the dance began anew. This was Predaig, a woman from the dawn of the tribe’s birth, radiant in her prime, just as she had been when she had faced a skinwalker and lived to tell the tale after a day’s battle. The weight of years had been shed, and she fought like the legend she had been in her youth. Several Wolfkins of her pack turned on the cameras, expending precious energy reserves to immortalize the last hunt of their glorious leader.
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Eled was a pure rage unrestrained, and Janine relied on honed skills, while their sister was a perfect blend of both styles, driven by instinct. The animalistic behavior of her opponent was met with an explosion of aggression that was more reminiscent of an animal seeking to bleed the larger prey rather than brawl with it and risk losing.
And Drozna pushed through it, barely batting an eye about his wounds and roaring when his attacks missed. Usually, New Breeds gifted with strength relied too heavily on it, but in the case of the hordeman, it served to complement his lethality. With a tenacity worthy of a Wolfkin, he closed the distance between the fighters, biting into Predaig’s own bite with his own teeth. There was a loud boom as two maws closed simultaneously and Drozna’s arm swiped at Predaig’s breastplate, shattering it and wrapping around her arm. Before the hold could tighten, Predaig leapt back, escaping the forced close combat, and sliced deeply into Drozna’s arm as the fighters separated.
Predaig’s helmet had a gaping hole; she had lost the skin on her left cheek to Drozna’s bite; several of her own fangs had fallen out. Blood gushed from four lacerations across her chest. Her opponent fared no better; his bleeding ribs were visible, and dozens of crimson rivers flowed across his body, turning white bone plates red. Drozna chewed Predaig’s flesh in her mouth, preparing to lunge.
“Weren’t you asking me to step closer?” Drozna asked. “Strange to see you running away.”
“It was just a fluke. Don’t let it bother you.” The warlord gathered her blood in a paw and drank it, throwing her head high and bursting into loud laughter.
Janine smiled too, joyful despite the situation. Ignacy helped Bogdan to his feet, and they retreated with the others to the center of the hall. Eled was a whirlwind of death, sucking in the unfortunate victims and sweeping across the hall like a natural disaster. Predaig reverted to her older self, no doubt guided by the ghosts of her family. What a perfect day to die!
“Why are you laughing?” Brood Lord asked, their weapons clashing against each other. Sparks from his sword lit up his mocking face. “Is the stress finally getting to you? Or is it sheer desperation? Help me here; your forces are dwindling while ours are endless. Is dying in this ditch…” He groaned.
It was a well-known fact that a person could often put more strength into something if their mouth was closed and their mind was focused on the task at hand. Janine had let her opponent run his mouth, ignoring shots landed on her armored bulk. And when she judged that Brood Lord was distracted enough, she had put everything into one blow, drawing a long line across his chest.
“You talk too much, coward.” Janine continued to smile like an idiot, driving him back. Part of his mustache was cut off, and a scratch under his eye was bleeding. “You have the privilege of seeing how Wolfkins die. Rejoice! For your yellowbellied, wretched, rotten carcass and soul will be my offerings to those who have lost their lives in this war.”
“I will see you die; that much is true. But before that, I will take everything from you and drink deeply of your despair.” Brood Lord landed on the ground, and his front legs kicked Janine in the left knee with enough force to dent metal into flesh.
Brood Lord rose on four legs, using his sword to keep Janine’s axe in a clench. Then he delivered a kick with his left leg against the side of her helmet, lifting the Warlord off the ground. She did not resist the impact, letting go of her weapon with her right paw and grabbing Brood Lord’s leg, dragging the bastard along to the floor.
Before she could lift her snout from the stone, Janine kicked the bastard in the stomach, piercing his armor and scraping her claws across his flesh. The force behind their combined attack sent them flying, knocking fighters from both sides down with their bodies. Janine rose, grabbed a hapless hordeman, and crushed the man’s head in her paw. Brood Lord was on his six legs as well, wiping his face clean with a pincer.
“Amusing,” Brood Lord chuckled. His voice changed again, returning to a royal and almost friendly tone. “I ought to be angry, but at the same time, this is the best fun I’ve had in the past week! No, in the entire month! Thank you, Mutant Janine, truly. I am looking forward to breaking you.”
“The feeling isn’t mutual, Malformed,” Janine responded. “I don’t need to see you broken; all I want is to see you dead.”
“What…” He stopped, baring his needle teeth. “What did you just blurt out? How did you call me?”
Janine stopped in her tracks, her mocking response stolen from her. The sounds of battle, Brood Lord’s words—everything faded. She was a little cub again, desperately searching for her mother and never finding her anywhere. The joy of battle, the determination, even the willingness to fall—nothing mattered anymore.
She had felt this way before. The first time it happened was when she had spoken with Ravager on that misty mountain and demanded that she kill that wretched Eugenia for what that bitch had done to her son. Then she had seen the person behind the Blessed Mother, or rather the progenitor herself, but not as a broken and crazed animal, but as a collected and thoughtful individual who had gathered the splinters of herself to assess the situation and learn what had happened. The effect that had touched her spread. Brood Lord licked his lips, Drozna was nervous, Eled blinked, the hordemen lessened the intensity of their fire, and the Wolfkins looked around in worry. It wasn’t a result of a power. This feeling stemmed from being in proximity to something truly divine.
Blessed Mother?
The shattering of the ceiling jolted her out of shock, and she looked through the lenses of her surviving troops. The black sword cleaved through a body, and Macarius Voidrunner—wearing a knight-captain’s helmet too small for him—blitzed several hordemen, taking up a position in front of the wolfkins and parrying incoming shots. Five headless bodies fell in his wake.
“Away, filth!” Leonidas thundered, breaking through the ceiling and swatting Drozna away from Predaig with his shield. His gauntlet, its electric claws twitching, sliced through the sternum of another shocked hordeman. “Not one of your soldiers dies today, Warlord Janine. I swear it on my honor!”
The unexpected appearance of two sword saints turned the tide of battle, and the hordemen found themselves slowly pushed back out of the corridor. They still fired but no longer charged forward, more afraid of losing their lives than of their leaders.
“You don’t have it, traitor.” Janine allowed them to join the linked vision, but she herself was done showing the Ice Fangs courtesy. Brood Lord retreated behind the ranks of his soldiers, gesturing for them to come at her. It didn’t work. “Many of my soldiers have already died. You have ruined our trust.”
“I will restore it!” Leonidas roared desperately. “House Summerspring will repay for every life; we will mend every broken bond and…” His lenses whirled, focusing on the invaders preparing to tear a lone Wolfkin to pieces. The sword saint’s footprints left a mark on the stone as he propelled himself forward, batting the enemies away with his shield and splitting the bodies into several pieces with a single swipe of his gauntlet. “Not a single one of my kin will die today anymore! Not one! If necessary, I will pay with my life to reunite our groups and restore the trust! Macarius, open the…”
A gray orb crashed through a wall next to Eled, silencing Leonidas. The sphere struck the warlord in the side, and the armor plates that could withstand artillery fire turned to dust in its path. Janine recognized this energy; she had seen it used several times by the Dynast’s bodyguards. The idea behind it was well known; it wasn’t an energy field, but vibrating sonic frequencies that shattered molecular bonds, rendering most alloys useless. Because of its energy consumption, disruption technology wasn’t widely used in the Reclamation Army.
Twin bursts of energy engulfed Eled from the darkness of the broken wall. They darkened her fangs and silenced her roar by severely burning her windpipe. The blow to her side had finally penetrated the plates, and the end of the glaive was buried in her ribs. She had to retreat, but the berserker’s fury had taken over the warlord, and Eled stubbornly brought her scythe down on the approaching foe. Another burst of energy had completely melted her helmet, burning much of the fur, and a hand thrust through the opening, grasping her head. Fingers pierced the damaged eyes, reaching for the brain, and the glaive had found the heart; the disruption field ripped it apart before the blade could touch it. With a single spasm, Eled exhaled her last breath and was no more.
“Next,” came a synthesized speech as the steel boot trampled the body of the dead warlord.
Their grievances abandoned; Janine, Predaig, Macarius, and Leonidas charged at the steel titan, entering the ruined hall. He easily rivaled Drozna in size; as he moved, there was no creaking or grinding of his power armor; he stepped nimbly and fluidly, unexpected for such a large suit; the cannons over his shoulders tracked the approaching opponents but hadn’t fired yet. A force field bubbled up around him, blocking the shots of Eled’s grief-stricken soldiers.
“Feast.” They heard a voice and thought it was him.
They took a single step and were thrown down as the entire roof of the hospital building disappeared. It was uprooted, the hordemen above were tossed aside, away from the rubble, and the reinforced concrete was gone faster than they could blink, opening a view of the sky hidden by the swirling smoke above.
There was another figure among them. She stood, dressed in regal purple furs, held up by golden belts studded with diamonds and rubies. A simple leather belt around her waist held two sheathed golden scimitars; threads of jade, silver, and gold were woven into the mane of black hair that flowed from beneath the thick leather cap that covered the woman’s face up to her nose. There was no armor on the woman. Her pupils shrank and dilated, trapped in the web of red vessels, and blood trickled down the eyelids.
She smiled, and Janine found herself exhilarated against her will. The woman was taller than anyone else here. She was burly, but her skin was bulging with barely concealed muscles. A single punch to the sky ripped a hole in the darkness, letting the sun shine down as she spread her arms and Janine gulped. The Gilded Horde had a Ravager of their own. A demigod capable of defying the laws of nature, a divine incarnation of their own god. And she was here. Looking at them.
Predaig was the first to react and the first to die. It was the HUD that registered her lack of a heartbeat; the warlord was still running toward the woman, trying to stab the tip of her sword into her bloodshot eye, when the HUD marked her as deceased. The curved scimitars appeared in the woman’s hands, but there was no movement—at least nothing that Janine could register. A tornado of air swept past them, dragging the warlord and the sword saints across the floor as Predaig fell into two ideal halves.
Leonidas died next; his wordless cry of indignation at the deaths of his allies never left his lips. He was decapitated faster than anyone could breathe. His head blinked several times as it hit the ground, looking pleadingly at Janine. She didn’t know what he was trying to say. Then his shield crushed the head as the headless body lost all its strength.
A cloud of smoke hidden their killer and was banished by a single snap of her fingers. Her hands were once again empty, and Janine heard a scream beside her. Macarius was no longer standing; his arms and legs had been cleanly cut off, reducing him to a stump. The sword saint was biting his lower lip, trying to cope with the agony as the newcomer took the first step.
An air of fear emanated from her, almost visible and incredibly oppressive, mimicking a similar feeling when standing in the presence of the Blessed Mother. Her pupils narrowed to the size of a grain, and the sclera was now crimson. Her eyes met Janine’s through the lenses, and she smiled.
Around them, the people were knocked down, unable to stand in the aftermath of an apocalyptic landing. The hospital shook one last time and collapsed, opening them to a full view of the Gilded Horde’s armies surrounding the place. The invaders and the Wolfkins climbed away from the rubble, and Janine found herself alone, standing unharmed in the circle of safety this woman had created.
“Mad Hatter!” Cheers rang out. The steel giant added his voice to theirs, busy ripping Eled’s head from his body. “Khan of Khans! Khatun! Avatar of the Sky!”
Mad Hatter raised her hand, and the cheers died. She extended her hand to Janine and beckoned with two fingers.
Janine needed no further invitation. She clenched her fangs and brought the Taleteller in a diagonal arc toward the towering woman. Mad Hatter must have been at least six or seven meters tall; even without her power armor, she easily towered over Janine, smiling with bright red lips at the advance. She could have killed the warlord at any moment. Size was one of the things indicating danger, and Janine had killed bigger opponents.
No, what jarred her senses to the point where she wanted to scream and escape was the sheer pressure coming from the woman. She felt... unnatural, alien, like some kind of abnormality or singularity that had appeared in reality. She was like a bright, poisonous insect; everything about her was a warning to stay away or die. Mad Hatter was the predator. Strength clothed in a human body.
A finger stopped the Taleteller, and the khatun flicked Janine aside, sending her rolling. Mad Hatter examined her finger, nodding at the slight cut as the warlord charged at her again. The swing passed through the empty air and a blast of wind slammed into Janine’s muzzle. Mad Hatter was behind her, leaning against Janine’s body and holding a warrior in her hand. The khatun examined the Wolfkin and tossed her aside.
“Soft,” Mad Hatter spoke, her voice rough and bored. “I expected more from your chaff.”
“You…” Janine spun around. Once more, Taleteller parted the sound boom.
“Tell me,” Mad Hatter asked from behind, looming over Janine, “have you ever seen the Sky?”
Hands grabbed Janine under her armpits, and the world changed. She found herself looking down at the hospital, which was getting smaller by the second. Then she saw the ranks of the approaching army, the town, and even the retreating Reclaimers. She shook her head, wondering about the feeling of floating, and then realization hit her.
She was in the air! Her body was slowing as she passed through the cloud. Impossible! She thought, hastily remembering what Ignacy had told her a few years ago. High clouds usually travel about five or fourteen kilometers above the surface, and checking the time on her HUD, Janine confirmed she was facing Mad Hatter on the ground no longer than three seconds ago. It was inconceivable; it defied her imagination; she could not have been thrown this high in such a meager span of time!
Pain came next, pulsing from where Mad Hatter had grabbed her. The grip had shattered the armor, sending several shards into her skin and creating wide cracks around the entire suit. Her body slowed at last, and with the ancient horror woven into her very existence, Janine understood she was falling.
Normies enjoyed flying; their eyes often burned with excitement at the chance to board one of the planes that now circled between the Reclamation Army, Iterna, and the Oathtakers. Fools. What goes up always comes down. It didn’t matter if people liked it or not. And when you fall, you only hit the rocky ground.
Every Wolfkin was afraid of falling. Not of heights, no. As long as the tip of their claws touched a mountain, there was little to be afraid of. Even if a Wolfkin slipped from a mountain, she could still hold on to a slope. But to be utterly helpless, a prisoner in the confines of a plane in the air, subject to the terror of falling... That was something to be afraid of.
Janine had thought that Terrific had beaten this fear out of her by throwing her and other cubs from a hill over and over. Terrific didn’t care if she broke her bones. After a fall, she would check their snouts and force them to look into her eyes. At the slightest sign of fear, the cruel training resumed. As it turned out, the training didn’t help, and Janine’s heart threatened to stop as she plummeted to the ground at terminal velocity.
When she finally crashed, merciful darkness swallowed her whole world, devouring her fears for her pack and her sons.