The give pierced Onyxia in the chest. There was no blood; the intense vibrations created by the disruption field around the edge had seen to that, and bck, white, and red mist drifted away from the warlord. She never gasped; she never cried any st order. Anji froze, shocked to the core at the impossibility of what had happened, but her master never wavered, not even in the face of death. Her arms, spasming and convulsing, closed around a small recess in the give’s haft and stabbed, one final time. The generator creating the field hissed and exploded, and Onyxia remained skewered on Iron Lord’s weapon.

  Dead. Her icon went dark.

  Anji rushed at Iron Lord. The khan had paid dearly for this feat. He lost his right arm to the shoulder, and the jagged edges of steel covered its feeble stump. She had emptied her shardgun and eighteen spare magazines into his bulk, covering him in gashes and disabling his ranged weapons as Onyxia eradicated the tendrils. He bled from gashes, and his steed y on its side, dead or dying. Deep gouges covered his neck and helmet.

  It didn’t matter to her. She ducked under his kick that sent debris flying across the width of the square. Her cws scratched his leg, and she hooked onto his knee, trying to climb up to his mangled arm and burrow into the wound. Warlord. Onyxia. Leader. Iron Lord thrust his own ruined shoulder into her, and the torn edges of his suit scraped her armor, tossing the wolf hag back.

  You are Anji? The shadow had asked back then, walking past the rank of the fresh cubs assigned to the pack. The merciful girl?

  Yes, mistress! Anji had replied, heart beating, and a paw patted her on the chin.

  The title is warlord, little one. The shadow’s zy gnce had silenced the giggling. No worries. You’ll learn. Do you regret it? Going easy on that girl?

  Uhm… No, m… warlord! I’d do the same even today.

  Good. Never regret a proper deed. The lot! The scary shadow had addressed the group. Welcome to your second den; you’re going to love it here. We do things differently in the Onyxia Pack. Anji got the gist of it, so I will expin it to the rest of you pipsqueaks. No mutitions. We ain’t following Terrific, Ygrite, or Alpha’s examples here. You want a domination duel; you drag your ass to your wolf hag and ask her to supervise it, understood? Anyone who dares to cw out an eye, bite off a pinky, or even pull a tooth out of a rival’s jaw will answer to me. See how the scouts cringe? Ask them if there are scarier things than pain. Next, male, female, I don’t give a damn. Everyone eats their fill. I didn’t bust my ass helping build the Recmation Army for you dolts to go hungry. If any shaman assigns you the famine trial, you report to me, and I solve it. The word diet does not exist in my pack. Don’t like my methods? Challenge me.

  A diagonal ssh of the give caught the top of Anji’s head hard enough to knock her off her feet and send her spinning. Her neck nearly snapped despite the kinetic dissipator; her white helmet shattered. She still stabbed at the massive fingers, striking between the segments, to no avail. She nded and rolled aside, feeling the tremors of the missed bde rolling underfoot. If that field were still on…

  “First, the queen,” Iron Lord said in a distorted voice filled with white noise. Onyxia y on the ground, her spine severed, but her limbs closed over her like spider legs. “Then her spawn…”

  Another swing sent Anji into retreat. She wasn’t close to the warlord. No one could boast of such a retionship. Even after she had grown to be the strongest wolf hag, Onyxia had remained a distant figure, barging in and out of the pack’s activities. The warlord had been solving the most pressing matters and insisted on her wolf hags teaching on their own. This may have contributed to their pack being the first to form a brotherhood alongside its sisterhood. They had to work together not to be outshined by others, and if that meant relying on the males or even listening to their expertise, then the wolf hags and scouts couldn't care less. She had taught them the value of limiting violence and precise strikes and the benefits of mercy and cooperation, surprising Anji, who had expected to be ridiculed for her timid personality.

  Onyxia had been a pilr, a figure on whom they could fall back on during a crisis. She willingly listened to any compints, settled serious disputes, straightened out the rowdiest girls, and most importantly, she was there when it mattered. No Wolfkin had to fear an ambush, for the shadow warlord would step from outside the field of their vision, assume command, and sy the rising threat with an iron fist. Even her fame as one of the First Generation wasn’t valued as highly as this quality. They had become a family, and she had been a cementing factor.

  That no longer existed.

  What can I do? She was faster than Iron Lord, even with four broken ribs and a plethora of bruises. The khan thrust his give, and she tried to cw at his fingers as he swung his weapon, sending her tumbling. Her speed mattered little; Iron Lord had an eternity of battle experience over her, and even one-handed, the reach of his give negated any advantage.

  Hiding behind a sb of stone, she calmed her breath and darted to the left as his leg broke through her cover. Okay, he is slower than me. Two, he is noisy. She lured the big guy into a small forest of sbs that had bulged during their fight. Iron Lord crashed through the front row, and she circled around him, pnning to jump at his back, tracking his location by sound alone. She stepped back; the tip of his bde scraped across her breastpte as he turned. It doesn’t help one bit. Not that big of a difference between us. He is bleeding. Can I keep him here long enough? Think, think, what can I do to kill him?

  Iron Lord and she disregarded the most obvious of choices. Retreat and find an armor-piercing firearm or heal your injuries. He wanted to finish her; she could taste that much in his swings, which carefully funneled her into a single line, not letting her escape his sight. Anji wasn’t sure why she persisted. It was stupid, reckless, ineffective, and ignored what Onyxia had taught them... but she could not let the warlord go unavenged.

  “This…” Iron Lord burst into a run, surprising her with how quickly he had closed the distance, the shadow of his bde upon her. “…the end!”

  Suddenly, a cannonball of fury crashed into his helmet from the right, tilting the man to the left. The drills had taken their toll, and Anji charged, sshing at the man’s groin and shoving a paw into the hissing sparks opening in his belly. He kicked with his knee, and she dodged the blow, slipping between his legs to find herself nose to nose with Kaisa.

  “S’up, Anj!” Kaisa ughed. “You seemed to be in a pinch, and I decided to prove that you were not alone. Where is…” She fell silent, noticing Onyxia’s corpse.

  “Together.” Anji said, bending her knees.

  “Ahead,” Kaisa confirmed.

  “How many of you vultures are there?” They darted to the opposite sides from his swing. “Step forth and be done for!”

  “You cimed to be a leader!” Anji taunted, recalling the tricks Kaisa had taught her from Ygrite’s teachings. An enraged enemy was dangerous because of the adrenaline release, but such an individual was also predictable. “Yet here you are standing alone; everyone has abandoned you! Some boss you are, loser!”

  “I’ve had enough of your insolence and interruptions, flea.” Iron Lord spun his weapon, preparing to stab her as she disappeared behind a sb. “I alone am enough for any number of you.”

  “Yeah, sure! Keep coping! You are alone! All alone! No one by your side!”

  His bde pierced the empty space as Anji stopped, watching through Kaisa’s lenses. Her friend, uncharacteristically silent, tensed her body and unched herself with a precision worthy of the best wolf hags of Onyxia’s pack. Her cws tattered the pte of Iron Lord’s helmet, and she leapt over him as he sliced back. Anji broke through the cover and made the distance to the Khan in a single leap, sinking her cws into his neck and bouncing off him to save herself as his hand moved.

  They hunted him, leaping and retreating, sshing once and hiding among the rubble, calling and jeering. Onyxia and Ygrite’s styles blended in Anji and her friend. Looking through each other’s lenses, they calcuted a trajectory, slowly driving that mound of metal back into the open. Neither rushed, aiming their attacks at his gorget and helmet, weakening him to reach the human inside, their legs sending them flying faster than bullets.

  Iron Lord was a step away from reaching the retively smooth surface when Anji nded on his shoulder and grabbed the side of his helmet, jerking it up with a single titanic effort. Already weakened by her warlord and their assaults, the gorget snapped, ripping muscle fibers and cords, and the helmet was flung aside.

  A ssh drove her off the shoulder, giving her the ample opportunity to see Iron Lord for the first time. His wrinkled, parchment-like skin had a brown color, paled by the decades of lightless existence. Gray hair framed a head that was ridiculously tiny compared to his suit. Yellow almost swallowed the whiteness of his eyes, and she noticed the gleam of steel teeth through his lips, pursed with age. Wires ran the length of his face, penetrating the skin around his jaw, temples, and the top of his skull. Iron Lord was intubated at both corners of his mouth and in his nostrils.

  The give sshed across the ground, drawing an entirely new trench, and a wall of dust and stones neared Anji. She was about to run when Kaisa faced the coming blow, stepped on the bde, and wrapped her arms around the haft.

  “Now, Anj! Finish it!” She yelled.

  “Impudent…” Iron Lord said in a wheezing, weak voice, but fury raged in his brown eyes. The rage changed to concern as Anji jumped, aiming her cws at his head. “Don’t underestimate me!”

  He let go of his trapped weapon and punched. Anji raised her forearms, hearing the crunch of metal and the crack of her own bones. Simultaneously, she swung her legs, reaching for Iron Lord’s head with the tips of her toes. Cws fshed, and he roared as she was fired back like an artillery shell. She plowed a line into the stone, groaning in pain; her little and middle fingers refused to listen, but she also giggled through it all.

  The eyes. Two bloody lines ran down from the two holes on the khan’s face as he stumbled back, the give summoned back into his hand by a magnetic mechanism in his gauntlet. The man swung around blindly, forming a small whirlwind as the wolf hags crept after him with renewed vigor, drooling with anticipation as the ancient urges took over. They crippled their prey, weakening and softening it. Now they had to cut it down, and then they could feast.

  Anji snapped out of this state first. Pay attention to your surroundings. The dunes stretch evenly to the horizon, so why is there an even patch? Onyxia had said when Anji had failed her first field test, failing to spot a minefield pnted by raiders. The bck dots on Iron Lord’s body shifted. She couldn’t find a better word for that. They remained visibly the same, the bck spots, but she could’ve sworn that they had changed position, barely.

  “Kaisa, back!” Anji grabbed the wolf hag by the shoulder.

  The give’s bde shot upward, connected to the haft just by a long chain. Iron Lord struck Kaisa, reaching her with the tip of his bde and cleaving through her side. Anji’s yank saved her friend’s ribs, but the khan closed the distance as the coils of his chain began to close around the wolf hag’s leg. The two barely made it to safety before the chain links the size of their arms closed, crushing a nearby boulder to dust.

  “Your victory has been taken from you!” Iron Lord ughed, spinning his weapon and bombarding the area with his bde. The chain, the edge, his every move was capable of shattering bones, and the Wolfkins fled back to the ruined part of the square.

  It was no longer a suitable cover. He followed them, leveling everything.

  “How is he seeing us?” Kaisa gasped, trying to get in touch with Command. She looked around.

  “Cameras. Those bck thingies on him are cameras,” Anji cursed, feverishly trying to come up with something and failing. There was no longer any gap in Iron Lord’s movements. A wall of death surrounded him. They cked Onyxia’s precision, and every missed attack would result in a limb being trapped inside a link chain. “We can’t bleed him out. I took the bastard’s eyes out; Warlord Onyxia had severed his arm… A Normie would’ve already keeled over! You have a gun or a grenade? Anything?”

  “Nah, I used up all my ammo on the way here. What, you thought I was so reckless that I would go into the melee if I still had a shardgun on me?” Kaisa snapped from her pain and turned to Anji.

  “Yes!”

  “Realized it, mutants?” The khan’s cackling ughter reached them. “You take your gifts for granted, fools! But we invent; we think of ways to overcome the limitations of our flesh, and no parlor trick is beneath us! The day will come when your kind will no longer look down upon us humans! We will match and surpass you! Stand and perish!”

  “Warlord…” Kaisa drew a word. “Ygrite. Please. I need you. We can’t win, not on our own…” Her plea added to the towering invader’s confidence.

  “Kaisa.” Anji gulped. “I will hold him back. You run.”

  “No.”

  “Idiot! I thought you wanted to have cubs!”

  “You want the same!”

  “But we can’t…” The helmet closed around Kaisa’s head, and she broke free.

  “Trust me, Anj. We aren’t done yet. Let me lead!” Kaisa said on the secure channel and ran. Anji followed, unsure what wild idea went through her mind.

  They abandoned the square for the partially destroyed skyscraper and broke into the main hall through the windows. Elevators no longer worked; half the pce had been demolished by the shelling, but the tower still stood like a sore thumb, bravely defying the Gilded Horde’s attempts to topple it. Gss crunched under their feet; the wolf hags spread around the hall, and Kaisa tore an ATM off the wall, looking around and clicking her tongue in weird satisfaction. Accompanied by the shattered gss, Iron Lord charged in.

  He swatted aside the tossed ATM, hurling the give bde at Kaisa, and she bent backward, letting it fly over herself. The give’s end pierced through the series of walls.

  “From the rear!” Kaisa demanded loudly.

  Anji obeyed, not quite understanding what was going on. Kaisa acted smugly all of a sudden, watching through her lenses but focusing more on the building than on their enemy. She closed in on the khan’s back and heard the grinding of his servomotors as the suit rotated.

  Dragging the bde on the chain in a circle.

  “Duck!” Kaisa commanded, and Anji obeyed, chuckling to herself as the chain passed overhead. “Love tricks, idiot? This one’s a killer!”

  It bisected the walls, the supporting beams, and utterly ruined the first floor. Not waiting for the order, the wolf hag scrambled, hurrying to the exit as the skyscraper gave up at st and came tumbling down, its weight on the khan standing in the middle of the first floor. Iron Lord screamed in both denial and fury, throwing up a hand as the tons of stone poured down on his very normal head.

  The forty-story building folded in on itself with the thunderous crash, sending every piece of rubble, every corpse, and every destroyed vehicle nearby jumping. It leaned, colpsing as it fell, sending waves of debris in all directions, carrying Anji to a ptform overlooking the pza. She sealed the armor, not in the least threatened by the shards of gss and jagged concrete. Her main concern was not to get buried under excessive weight, and the wolf hag swam to the surface, trying to locate that crazy ss.

  They both ended up ‘spilled’ right back onto the square; the ptform colpsed onto the garage level, and the two women looked at each other, their hearts beating madly. The ground was still shaking, and a cloud of dust covered them, but the two burst into ughter.

  “This time I didn’t lose track of my surroundings and used my head! Take that, Ygrite, Onyxia… sorry,” Kaisa added quieter, and Anji lifted her arms above her head through her grief. Their paws spped together with metallic noise.

  “She would be proud of you, Kali,” Anji said.

  “And of you, and of you!” Kaisa nodded.

  “So that cry of yours to Ygrite was…”

  “Totally fake,” Kaisa snickered. “She never comes when we call. We owned the bastard! He is… Wait.” She stood up.

  “What are you worrying about…” A jolt of understanding widened her eyes, and Anji sprang to her feet.

  Iron Lord is stronger than us. By far. He killed a warlord. So where the heck is our reward? The shamans said we hadn’t reached our potential yet, and they were never wrong.

  The pile of the colpsed skyscraper moved, shoving aside the buried cars, and a hand broke to the surface, clearing the rubble so that Iron Lord could stand. His face was scarred and wounded, the skin cut from his forehead fpping, a shard of gss in his cheek, but the man was very much alive. He straightened, finding them, and the chain began going back into his give.

  “By the Spirits’ left butt cheek, what does it take to send that bastard into the Abyss?” Kaisa cursed, and they ran at him, desperate to finish him off before he could get out of the rubble and regain his mobility.

  He swung at Anji’s shoulder. Kaisa stopped the blow, catching it and cursing as the edge nicked her foreleg. She gritted her fangs, holding the weapon, and Anji jumped, stabbing at Iron Lord’s face. He let go of his give, closing the fist for a punch, and Kaisa rammed the weapon’s butt up, using it to halt the arm. There was no cry of fear or surprise; the khan fought to the st to break free and survive.

  But the stab went through, and his head exploded in a spsh of gore. Iron Lord, the right hand of Mad Hatter, had died alone and trapped in the emptied Houstad.

  Anji bounced off him and nded next to Kaisa as the changes gripped their bodies. It wasn’t the usual surge; waves rippled through their flesh, violently pushing away the ptes of armor to make room for the enrged mass of muscle. They both fell to their knees, panting, their stomachs sinking, and the reward was still ongoing, prying the boots away, forcing their fingers through the gauntlets, and devouring the calories to sustain the ascension.

  This change wasn’t anywhere close to what they had experienced before. Kaisa growled, her lips cracked and stretched to the ears, baring fangs. Anji nearly bit off her own tongue as new vertebrae formed. Her fangs cnked intensely, and she clutched her head, rolling from the pain in her chest. Her heart was reshaping itself, gaining additional chambers, nerves burning, eyes seeing with unusual crity. Next to her, Kaisa headbutted the ground, suffering from her own transformations.

  In the end, both could barely stand, weakly rising to their knees. They didn’t ask anything, but Anji’s ears picked up the boots.

  “Damn it all. Is there no end to them?” She groaned as the hordemen moved onto the square. Their leader said something into his helmet and drew two curved swords.

  “The upstart is dead!” The hordeman cheered. “Hail Brood Lord Khan!”

  “Hail Brood Lord Khan!” His crowd bellowed.

  “Anji, I will take a hundred on the left; you deal with fifty on the right,” Kaisa said, wiping away drool.

  “What am I, a cub? You take the fifty on the left and I take the hundred!”

  “I order you…”

  “I am the same rank as you!”

  “Want to do it right now?”

  Their heads bumped, and Anji found herself snarling, almost surrendering to instinct. Something primal, unknown, and ancient in her told her to reassert her authority or lose trying. Against her will, the cws fshed, and Kaisa responded in kind. Then they stopped, chuckled, and turned to face the impossible odds.

  A shake tossed up pebbles on the ruined square as a figure as rge as they nded, stirring the hordemen. Warlord Ygrite knelt near Onyxia, clearing the woman off the dust, and scooped her into his arms. The streaks of darkness still seeped from the joints, but the systems reported no life signs in Onyxia’s body, and her limbs were in rigor mortis, confusing Anji. She was about to say something when a message popped up on her HUD.

  Do nothing. And I intervene when it matters, Kaisa. Not my fault you do not call more often.

  “My sister,” Ygrite said. Gashes opened around her armor, and fangs, still colored red, pushed their way ahead. They grew on her arms, her back, and even her legs, piercing their way to freedom in an ugly manner, their tips covered in torn skin and fur. “You took her from me. I challenge you to a duel.”

  “A duel, huh?” The hordeman tossed his sword up and caught it. “Not feeling that. Crawl and beg me for mercy. Then maybe we’ll give you a quick end.”

  “Can’t you do this small favor for me?” Ygrite whimpered, pressing Onyxia tighter to her chest and cradling her as the hordemen ughed, enjoying and mocking her weakness. Anji tapped Kaisa’s finger, silently reassuring her, and offered to look through her lenses. Shadows moved outside the square, and Kaisa smiled wearily and fell onto her back. “You don’t know what you did. She was the first, my sister, my blood, our protector. To send her off without a proper send-off is… Butcher them already!”

  Shots erupted from the ruins around the hordemen, driving them back. Their leader managed to block the shards with his sword, but the warlord was already upon him, bringing the fanged fist to his chest. Her lower jaw split in two, opening the hungry maw that closed around his head.