The monster’s paws landed softly on the floor. Her ears caught the hiss of the liquid trying to dissolve her legs, but aside from the unpleasant sensation, there was no danger. Slits opened on the floor, sucking up the deadly substance and the watery remains of the deceased. Part of the acidic waters flowed into the open corridors, and the heat turned it into pale vapors rising to the ceiling.
There were still survivors. A flick of her arm sent a whitecoat splattering like a fly against a wall. A desperate woman fell to her knees, beseeching the monster to stay her wrath. Number One obliged, stomping the life out of her faster than a brain could register the pain. The orange fiends tried to retreat into the corridor she had used to enter the room. She threw a broken metal spike at them, impaling all four. No mercy. No more torture. Pure rage and quick kill. Closure to this part of her life.
She came over to the energy shield surrounding Academician. The man wasn’t a normal human; she could tell this much by the fact that he alone was without a gas mask, inhaling the deadly fumes with no more effort than she did. He reeked of pure rage, facing her eyes unafraid. The monster raised her paws, first testing the shield carefully, then plunging her claws into it with full force, straining the device in the man’s cane to its utmost limit. Number One wasn’t nearing her upper limit, carefully conserving her strength, worried about any potential tricks her prey might have in store.
The shield worked simply enough. It created a protective sphere around its user, blocking the incoming attacks. Things that lacked sufficient weight, like acid from the vat or things without enough punching potential, like bullets and debris, would bounce and fall off the round surface of the projected energy. But by striking several points at the shield’s surface, it was possible to short-circuit the projecting device as it struggled to compensate for the violation of the field’s integrity.
“Who do you think you are ravaging through my laboratory?” Academician inquired. He scowled at the chuckle, and a brighter flash of his crimson irises betrayed them to be artificial implants. “What are you laughing at, thing? You believe you have achieved anything?”
“Ravager. It has a nice ring to it.” The word enchanted her. She had a name, one she had chosen for herself. Number One, vat born; these were the monikers of her past. A human should have a name, and a monster should have a title to match. Ravage and slaughter everything evil until only humans remained. “I am not sure if I won, but you? You lost, father,” she told him, straining the muscles in her legs to increase the pressure.
So many were dead, and her work wasn’t even done. What good did it do her? Her kin remained dead, the suffering of the past days refused to disappear, and she no longer felt comfortable standing on two feet. The frightened girl from before disappeared into the darkness that rose in her place. Ravager didn’t gain friends; she never changed anyone for the better, never comforted a soul, she did the hideous job her owners had created her to do, murdering and rending, although Ravager doubted the fools were happy about that now.
But there was one thing that brought her comfort. Academician was finished. Today, his dreams will fade away, never to be fulfilled. That was something, wasn’t it? She didn’t let elation rule her. This man’s eyes were still calm and calculating. A prey was most dangerous when it was cornered and had nothing left to lose. He still had cards to play.
“Father? Do you consider yourself my daughter?” Academician’s knuckles paled from the sheer rage. “I am your creator, you delusional, disobedient, worthless whelp. You are my tool, a subject upon which I can hone my craft, and nothing more. That is all you’ll ever be! My mind brought you into this world. By my will you live; by my design you toil. And if you are incapable of fulfilling your function, then I will break and remake you as many times as it takes to create a suitable combat unit. I am Academician, and your existence belongs to me!”
“Mind toning down your lunatic ramblings, snack?” Ravager asked, pushing the field. A series of loud cracks ripped through the sphere, followed by sparks flying from the spaces around the claws, bringing a smile to her lips. “Such blatant shit irks my ears.”
Death. Left. The voice in her head said. Ravager reacted without hesitation, diving to the right. Academician swung his cane, pointing its end at her. The shield vanished, locking a smaller one around the man, and the cane fired a beam of darkness. Pure whiteness surrounded the edges of the released ray and heat of such intensity that the orange fiends near Academician turned into black shapes against the white, disappearing for good.
A tongue of pain licked at her left arm. Ravager’s eyes widened at the missing biceps and exposed remnants of her muscles, as well as the sight of blackened bone. There was something else inside the wound; she had some sort of subdermal armor, but none of it changed the fact that her arm had lost a considerable amount of flesh from shoulder to elbow. The weapon barely grazed her and she nearly died.
The doom rolled on, vaporizing both people and everything in its path. The ruined barricade disintegrated into black specks, a parody of a mine shaft appeared in the mech’s remains, the wall collapsed, pouring debris into the hall. Steel, shattered armored glass, and canisters rained down on the hall, flattening the survivors. Ravager’s eyes met Academician’s.
Unwilling to risk another hit from the antimatter, she lunged at him. The computer above mumbled something about the emergency sealing procedures, and her foe tried to swing his cane to hit her, but the red haze obscured her vision. The claws broke through the weakened shield, piercing the man’s shoulders, and she dragged her paws down, splintering his clavicles and humerus, ruining his elbows, and declawing him for good. Academician’s feet shuddered as the claws of her legs stepped on them, pinning the man to the place. His eyes flashed, releasing highly concentrated laser beams that died in the void of her fur.
Ravager bit him. Still holding him by the ruined arms, she ripped and swallowed, chewing on every part of his body to eliminate any hidden explosives or concealed weapons before they had a chance to rob her of victory. Pieces of flesh rose in the air, floating in the poisoned air, and her paws shoved them all into her mouth. No trace of him will remain in this world. The yellow light of her eyes turned red as his blood stained them, but Ravager didn’t care, devouring her prey whole. In the end, he tasted the same as every other human. She arched her back, unleashing the howl to the ceiling, proclaiming her victory to the world and any gods willing to listen.
She remembered little of what happened next. Ravager had spent several hours hunting down the last surviving whitecoats and orange fiends, ending their lives. She stopped only once, at the request of a pathetic group who begged her to wait until they had finished writing letters to their families. Both sides knew there would be no mercy. Ravager could not find the strength in her heart to spare them. But she gave them time. There was no animosity between her and their families.
Ravager wasn’t able to find the way out of the laboratory. In her rage, she smashed walls, finding solid walls of an unknown, impregnable alloy behind them. Door after door led her to the same picture: every airway and exit was sealed, and she couldn’t even leave a scratch on the smooth surface. Rage turned to fear. Ravager picked up Academician’s cane and fired repeatedly into one such wall, refusing to believe her eyes as the walls of her tomb held.
Trapped. It enraged her. She howled, throwing herself at the pristine wall, kicking until her paws bled, headbutting, and through it all, the computer system running the complex kept trying to kill her, synthesizing more potent toxins and viruses that made her head hurt. In her fury, Ravager wanted to destroy everything, but she held back her wrath, leaving the messages her tormentors had created intact.
Eugenia. The name pulsed in her brain, electrifying her as the monster stalked the halls, feeding on the dead. Her wounds on the arm healed, but it brought no relief. Eugenia. Eugenia. The nasty, wicked, cursed blonde! If only she had never met her, if only Eugenia had never stood in Ravager’s way, then she wouldn’t be trapped here with no way out, alone and in silence. She began counting seconds, making a single slash every 86,400 seconds. At 431,637 seconds, she found a room deep in the facility, one that had no doors leading in, but a heartbeat alerted her. Thinking it was a surviving whitecoat, Ravager stormed in, breaking through a wall.
It wasn’t a whitecoat. It was a human. A copy of Ravager floated, suspended in a stasis field that slowed down every life function to an impossibly high degree. If Ravager had to hazard a guess, for every day that passed, barely a second passed for her... sister? There was no denying their kinship. The girl had a smaller stature; she had somehow stopped transforming halfway through before turning into what Ravager had become. Her ears were long, the snout protruded enough to fit a hand inside the jaws. Elegant, furry fingers of the girl’s hands rested on her chest, and through half-opened lips, Ravager saw a white glint of fangs. The girl’s capsule bore a painted round circle, while another capsule, emblazoned with the number 1, stood beside it. She, too, had been here once, before being extracted and placed in the growing vat. Ravager was sure of it.
How she wanted to break her sister free! It would be a trivial task to cut off the cords, depower the capsule, and catch the falling body, whispering words of reassurance. But she didn’t dare. Not with the poison in the corridor. Not until the walls refused to let them go. To what world would Ravager liberate this girl? A world of prison, darkness, and death. Her paws trembling, Ravager retreated into the darkness, cursing Eugenia’s name. It was her fault! She was in police custody; why couldn’t that blasted girl tell when Ravager was? Eugenia, that bitch, wanted for Ravager and her sister to suffer.
31,449,738 seconds later, Ravager found herself on the knees, howling to the uncaring gods. Months of solitary confinement and poison clouds had taken their toll. Ravager caught herself forgetting words. The clarity of her thinking had suffered. She lunged at shadows, fantasizing of seeing Eugenia or her gang in there, laughing at her, mocking the relentless migraine throbbing in her brain. It was so intense that Ravager had passed out several times, waking up spasming, drumming the number of seconds on the steel floor. The laboratory turned into her personal hell, and Ravager begged the Spirits to deliver Eugenia to her.
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At the 34,560,000 mark, she slumped to her knees. An eternity of loneliness—over a year of being alone. There was no more food to be found here; she devoured corpses despite the rot. The last virus released by the computer had created a kind of fungus in several rooms, and she satiated her hunger by eating it. Her mind kept returning to the girl in the stasis field, watering at a forbidden thought. Just a mouthful. It won’t be that dangerous. In these moments, Ravager bit her own arm, vowing she would rather die than hurt the girl. She didn’t know her, not even her name. Ravager decided to do whatever she could to give her a chance at life. A chance she sorely lacked.
Finally, after 62,899,200 seconds, a change occurred. She didn’t believe it at first, taking the tremors for another hallucination. Either by chance or by some miracle, the savior had found her. And the monster walked.
****
Blessed Mother!
A voice called out to her, urging her to wake up. The monster tried to resist.
Get up already, Big Sis! A kick in her side followed the urging words.
She awoke, accompanied by reddish spots blocking her vision and a headache threatening to tear her brain in two. Half-groaning, half-growling, she stretched her arms out to their full span, endured the popping in her shoulders, and looked up at the night firmament, seeing it clearly despite the toxic clouds above, counting stars to defeat the headache. It receded but refused to disappear, always lurking in the back of her mind, like an old friend who never passed an opportunity to rake its torturous instruments over her brain.
A multitude of smells assaulted her nostrils, and sounds came to her. Boastful words of her rough kin, the sound of grinding gears, the hushed whispers of people. She heard a soldier announce his wife’s pregnancy to his comrades, and they cheered, raising flasks in celebration. Ravager made a note to preserve the male’s life. The Wolfkins were at it again, provoking their white-furred cousins into sparrings.
With the Twins no longer around, she had to keep them safe, always keeping the Whites at arm’s length to prevent her madness from seeping into them. Unlike her own kin, they were unspoiled, pure, and had a grand future. She shook off her sadness and concentrated further. Mechanics joked grimly, finishing adjusting power armor. So many wonders in this world!
And none of them was meant for her. She looked at her paw, surprised at this sudden thought, and remembered her true purpose in the world. Why not for her?
Her paw, with fingers the size of a human torso and claws that could rend everything in their path. They gleamed white despite the dried blood marring their surface. Thick black fur covered her body, darker than any night, while the light from her eyes illuminated her weapons of murder. Smiling with a long snout, she let out a laugh.
Oh… Right. I am a monster. Ravager contemplated and surveyed her army. She stood atop the mound made of the plates of the enemy soldiers. Onyxia… or was it Ashbringer? Janine perhaps? One of her rowdy girls had caught a group of people during a hasty resource grab to deny them to the invaders. The fools sought to starve out the invaders. Upon hearing the news, Ravager took to the field, hunting down any such party. Some were soldiers of the local kingdom; others were typical raiders. She took the equipment of both groups as trophies and murdered those who resisted. In doing so, she spared the villages the fate of being robbed blind and being left devoid of supplies to survive.
The weak still scattered, afraid of her, even after she dropped their supplies at the homes of their elders.
I deserve this. Murderer. Kin-slayer. A monster. Suffering is the least of what I deserve.
Ravager saved herself. Meanwhile, the world died, undergoing a brutal rebirth through the fiery flames. Flying vehicles fell, and soon skyscrapers followed, littering the lifeless ground. Creatures broke free from the laboratories. But the people remained. Mad, strong, weak, good—all sorts of people. And now it fell to her to save those too weak to save themselves in the only way a monster could. She let the army soldiers educate the villagers that times of their oppression had passed and shoved the captives into her crawler.
It loomed over her, her gigantic moving den granted to her by the Dynast, the man who let her leave the laboratory and raised her to be a commander. She named it the Inevitable. Factories in its bowels supplied her army; rows of batteries aided her family more than once, clearing a path in the heated battle. It was also a convenient prison, a place to hide when the urge to kill was too strong. Tonight, they won’t be of much use. A city unto itself. It had vast halls to produce food, arsenals to store weaponry, and… medical facilities. She steered clear of them, despising the whitecoats. They may speak the honeyed words, urging Ravager to present herself for treatment, but she refused to lose her freedom ever again.
A pond of her lesser copies set up a camp around the mound. Black-furred Wolfkins; a blood of her blood, grown from the scraps of her skin. Their camp was one of the dusty tents, surrounded by rows of proximity mines and protected by watchful scouts. It was a camp of people ready to pack up and leave at any second, striking, retreating, and biting the opposition anew. There was no clear order in the positioning of the tents; a warlord or a wolf hag might place her command at the edge of her pack. The camp’s inhabitants oriented themselves by scent or, when that was impossible, by instinct. Shamans held ceremonies, promising the Spirits to deliver vengeance.
Something happened while she slumbered.
They shared her brutish visage, inheriting the cruelty of her madness. Time and time again, she tried to set them up to be better than her, to turn them into something she desperately wanted herself to be before the isolation broke her. Ravager failed, often lashing out and creating crueler traditions in the process. Eventually, she stopped, leading her kin in the battle and letting them grow up on their own. As the number of her children grew, so too did the number of changes. Some acquired rust-colored fur; others were spotted. It mattered little; Ravager welcomed them all. They were her family. A family she poisoned and a family she would die to protect.
Next to them was another camp, hidden behind a constructed wall. Its tents spoke of the splendor of its inhabitants; the soldiers reading for battle looked almost indistinguishable from the Wolfkins. Their limbs were thinner, their eyes were crimson orbs instead of amber moons. Brittler in bones and fangs, they possessed an elegance and agility unnatural to their blood cousins. These were the Ice Fangs; their fur was white, occasionally blue, and extremely rare, with yellow flecks. Ravager had inherited these cubs from those she had named brother and sister. Unlike her own cubs, they lived for both war and peace, yet they too fell prey to superstitions, venerating Ravager as their Blessed Mother.
She hated every second of this charade, but no longer dared to put an end to it. The last time resulted in casualties.
Their camp, nestled under the protection of the Inevitable’s main cannons and turrets, well-placed pillboxes, and patrols, ensured total security from an unexpected attack. Knights inside toiled, drilling the lesser ranks as their captains passed by, performing the last inspections, scrutinizing their soldiers for any imperfections in their armors. Squires hoisted the banners, clearly marking the place of stay of every Sword Saint, and sages watched for potential spies and questioned local aides about nearby ruins.
The greatest of Ravager’s soldiers, Warlords Dragena and Alpha, Sword Saints First and Camelia knelt around her, awaiting the instructions. Behind them, in the distance, was the looming city of the local warlord. More of a fortress, really, with high walls surrounding it. Hundreds of projectors brightly lit the sky above and the land surrounding the city. Warning horns sounded their melody, activating defenses and turrets to repel any intruders.
And close to her stood a shadow—a smaller, identical copy of Ravager, but so different in mind and habits. She wore a thick black cloak that could change color to mimic her surroundings. Underneath, her body was encased in a sleek suit of armor, one of the most advanced pieces of technology available to their young state. She slung a rifle over her shoulder, but the true danger lay in her countless tools of trade hidden beneath the cloak and within the armor. Zero. Her little sister bared her neck, removing the gorget and rubberized neck guard. Ravager grinned and patted the cheeky girl on her featureless helmet, showing that she wasn’t angry.
How could she be? Zero had a troubled past, burdened by jealousy, but she rose above it, becoming everything Ravager wanted her other cubs to be.
“Blessed Mother.” Alpha raised her head, staring at Ravager. “The offer of reunification was denied. Our emissary has been killed. This battlefield has a target worthy of the Butcher-Maiden.”
A snarl left Ravager’s lips, and she felt her muscles contorting and twisting, fighting back against the bloody urge that demanded her immediate advance. No. Going in alone was not efficient; it would bring only more death and destruction.
She warned the noble fool that this would happen. But no, he claimed his duty before the state and left his guards behind, walking alone to his destiny. Another life she had failed to save.
Her low growl and anger reached both camps, agitating the Wolfkins and Ice Fangs. Even the Normies and mutants, the regulars of the Third Army, stopped their activities. Their officers did not even need to issue an order; squad by squad, division by division, these brave souls completed their own preparations for battle, reported their readiness to Captain Cristobo Bulwashnikov, and sent requests to accompany her into the battle. Her pack, horde, and family.
Naturally, they will all be refused. The New Breeds will conquer this patch of land far more efficiently than a Normie or a mutant army could. Had the conquest been left to her dear friend, he would bombard the foe into the stone age before marching in his columns under the protection of the crawler’s shield, digging trenches in case of a sudden need for temporary retreat, never exposing his soldiers to danger except by chance. Saboteurs would plant viruses in the fortress’s systems, and sniper teams would reap the toll of officers from the opposite side.
An adequate plan. But she sensed the beating hearts inside the capital. Too many civilians. And something else—the way the enemy positioned their forces—brought a hint of suspicion into her tormented mind. Ignoring the headache, Ravager forced her brain to work. No wallowing in self-pity. A sort of death awaited them unless she could understand the ambush. She needed control. Clarity. Ravager scanned her subordinates, noting the shared concern on the faces of Alpha and First. They, too, had sensed something was amiss but couldn’t put their finger on it.
Still, the unity the Normies had shown in their anger over the envoy’s death was inspiring. The man may have been a piss-stained pacifist who wouldn’t last a day outside of the Core Lands, but he had the guts to stick to his dedication, berating her for every life taken. Men and women who had spent their lives fighting wars burned with the desire to avenge such a different member of the pack.
Ravager sensed her foe. A single heartbeat somewhere in one of the tall towers rising to the sky, alone calm in the entire city, assured of victory, protected by a multi-layered defense of energy barriers. The sound didn’t come to her through some overlooked weakness in the enemy’s defenses; no, the prey, imagining herself a hunter, let it pass, inviting Ravager to bite. In doing so, she helped Ravager understand.
Her foe was a potential S-Class New Breed, a person equal to her not in physical might, but superior in mind. That genius spawned countless inventions that allowed the oppressor to rise above everyone else. Why, then, was this place so desolate? The capital forced the villages to grow meager food, took everything, and poisoned the land for tens of kilometers in every direction, slowly turning this country into an unlivable, irradiated toxic waste for anyone. The damage was so extensive that even terraforming would take decades to repair. Why not build a paradise if you plan to rule?
Ah. I see now. A grave.
“Rouse the packs, Alpha.” Ravager looked up, inhaling the air filled with toxic fumes coming from the city. Her amber eyes focused briefly on the distant white disk hidden behind the heavy clouds. “The city will be brought back into the fold before the first ray of sunlight. For the Dynast and the Reclamation Army!”
Come, Techno-Queen. Show me the doom you have in store for me, you foolish, petulant girl. And when you do, I will drag you into the Abyss.