How did they pull this off so fast? A pestering thought throbbed in Janine’s brain even as she assigned vectors for advance, and their spheres crossed sixty kilometers ihan three minutes and desded upoown. The energy required to manipute magic forces to create such precision and speed has rehe crawler’s main shield briefly inoperable, but it mattered little as tank divisions f while its mighty ons came online, ready to support the pack.

  This town’s defenses weren’t weak. Four sentry towers and high, reinforced walls provided well-fortified positions for soldiers to fire 160mm mortars to fend off a storm. A minefield and tried-aed sensors should have alerted the defenders long before visual tact was established. So how? pcy? Inpetereachery?

  It didn’t matter, Janine decided, surveying the approag settlement. The ocurs of her helmet projected vision from the external cameras onto her retina, and thanks to the links to the other spheres, the Wolfkins had a nearly omnidireal sight. It could and did fuse many New Breeds using this teology for the first time, and they had to rely on calming stimunts in their first es. But after a fighter acclimates to this strange sight and grows aced to trusting their armor’s intricate operating system, they trahe limits of normal situational awareness.

  Is fshed on the HUD, marking the hewed bodies of the protectors. Several patrols on lookout walked arrogantly over the ruined walls. Then, like shooting stars, the spheres of the strike pack broke through, announg their arrival with a thunderous cascade of stone and the tremors of explosions as the metal joihe ground, killing several intruders as they passed. The nding ramps opened, and Jaormed out before the first corpse reached the ground.

  Most buildings here, from simple bars to living blocks and schools, were fusions of crete and steel, desigo best serve as defeructures against underground predators. Streaks of smoke rose from windows; heavy wheels rolled over children’s pygrounds, fttening them and the nearby greenery. Warehouses y broken, and long lines of hunched figures moved goods from them, delivering them to the settlement’s ter. More is fshed, addihe allied symbols, and blue, the enemy color of the fat-looking bastards. Spheres’ cameras added their own recs to the video feed, and their radar waves created a renewed map of the e area.

  Tonight’s prey wore mismatched power armor, inid with jewelry, gold, cheap minerals, or simple yellow paint. It somehow covered them enough for full prote despite its ridiculous assembly. They carried butcher cleavers and occasionally curved bdes on their waists, using their oversized guns to intimidate the poputo submission. The area bore traces of an inteillery barrage as defenders fought for every house in a desperate attempt to slow down the invasion. Rubble-blocked streets and the jagged ends of the ruined buildings pointed skyward.

  Janine absorbed it all in a split sed, fog on the primary task at paCs stood ready to fill their cages with sves and riches. Most of the popution was herded from the ruins and whipped to the main square, where the bodies of the mayor and his family hung by the legs from a desecrated Dynast’s statue, molteal dripping from their mouths. Infirm, elderly and those too young were of no io the svers, and a giant dragged a maddened mother from a house, throwing her cub on the pavement. A leg raised, ready to trample the g little one…

  “Wolf Tribe.” Janine fired her energy rifle, and a touch of lightning engulfed the visor, drawing a short-lived shrill as the beam vaporized everything in its way as it reached the shit that served as this idiot’s brain. She calmly nodded for the woman to pick up her cub and hide. “Those in our care cry out for salvation aribution. Do we falter?”

  “Never!” was the response, and the strike pack burst from the spheres. Camelia, that proud sword saint who had tasted the blessed milk of the Twins, added her cry to theirs.

  And the hunt began.

  The Alpha Pack scout cursed; her finger frozehe trigger. The IFF’s system identified a group of citizens ih of her shot araihe armor. Sarkeesian ughed, leaping into the fray and headbutting away the ft of the bde, which was aimed at an elderly man. The wolf hag threw the raider down, released her grip, pressed the shardgun’s barrel to his stomach, and fired several point-bnk shots, liquefying his insides.

  “No sed takes,” ughed the gigantic wolf hag, stomping on the head of the trying-to-raise raider.

  “Soldiers!” Janine’s axe cleaved through a neck. “The gilded filth’s still alive after a hole in his stomao ces, a shot per head.”

  “On it!” Ignacy’s shot tore a knee wide open, and Dragena’s scout jumped, kig in the facepte. As the body touched the ground, the male calmly fired two rounds into the twitg body.

  “Stop! Freaks! Not a leg toward, mutants!” A panicked raider ih of Eled’s pack shouted in garbled ispronoung the emphases. He pointed his on at the citizens carrying goods from the store. “Metal chests, take a leg, and they go! Back…”

  The warlord emerged from the cloud of smoke, closing the distaween herself and the hostages, never saying a word. Eled’s scythe moved, colleg the bullets fired by the terrified invader on its bde. An almost zy flick of the paws sent the scythe in the opposite dire, and its horizontal cut across the abdomen parted the raider in two, redug his screams to a whisper.

  “Took you long enough!” Laughed an old man, assisting a weeping girl and boy to their feet.

  “Hunt,” Eled said blindly, pig up the still twitg remains. She lifted the body and popped it over her head, ughing as a red wave washed over her. “Hunt! Hunt! Murder! Sughter! Butcher!”

  “Yeah, I get the clue,” said the old man, and hobbled away, leading the youo safety.

  Eled advanced, not b to hide, her scythe flying in her paws, weaving blindingly fast ar the air and reaping the lives of those in her path. Shots, grenades, and even rockets were carefully sliced or pushed aside as the warlord entered explosions, safeguarded by her battlepte and incredible skills. Lost in a murderous haze, Eled’s field of vision narrowed to a tiny corridor where shadows screamed and fired, trying to survive in vain.

  Ja her be, trusting in her named sister’s ability to differentiate between allies and enemies. It ar for the course with her.

  Eled first earned her rank on a distant battlefield, wading through fields covered by craters made by an inteillery barrage and then surviving the suffog closeness of sewers leading ihe city. She did that, a simple wolf hag at that time, believing that she was following her warlord. They heard her calling the warlord by name and asking the woman to slow down, even as Eled faced heavy vehicles in battle. It was only after Zero caught up to her and asked about the obje her paw that Eled realized she had been carrying the warlord’s scythe instead of a shardgun all along. The warlord died, and in her berserk fury, the wolf hag asded, leading her pack to victory and breaking through the siege.

  Camelia fluttered past a group of enemies, her spear a blinding light severing limbs. Those opposing her died, and the sword saint fired in tandem with Anji, downing those who tried to retreat to the ter of the settlement. her wasted any time finishing the wounded, leaving them to two males and the scout of their small team, and the sword saint and wolf hag moved ahead.

  Predaig advanced alongside her soldiers, not pushing forward like everyone else. Her eical swings severed bodies, her kicks sent rge sbs of sto more distant targets, opening them up for her pack. She breathed easily and moved without a trace of fusioe her age. Predaig treated this fight no differently than a mock battle, stig to the basics..

  The strike pack had already dispersed. Janine and Eled moved to the ter, Predaig to the south, and Camelia to the north. It was iable, for the spheres nded far from each other in order to avoid causing a possible collision. But there was no reason to pursue this strategy. So far, a of surprise and terror has carried them. It won’t st. A er drone always strikes back.

  Break the windpipe and a body will die. But where? Where could the leader of the raiders be hiding? Closer to the greatest riches, no doubt. End this target, and there will be no ce fanized resistance. Janine was ready to bet her life on it. She’d do a huimes before.

  Distant yells of people and the crag of wood distracted Jahere was supposed to be a chapel of the Po the north. This belief was stras priests frequently led prayers in modest buildings made of dry wood, teag the faithful to treat others as they would themselves and spreading the gospel about the i goodness of the world. A lie, but a sweet one, and the Wolf Tribe had nothing against it. Goodness stems from duty, and the priests performed acts of charity even in dangerous wastes, unknowingly fulfilling their obligations. They might be misguided, but they still earhe tribe’s respect.

  The intelligence of Janine’s armor obligingly switched her vision, giving her an image captured by the spheres during the nding. She saw a burning wooden frame, all that remained of the chapel, and prisorapped in the ter of it. The murderous freaks had fyed the skin from the priests’ legs and arms, leaving them to die from bleeding a. They tied the priests in prone positions to wooden poles before their pce of prayers and threw their floside to burn.

  “Camelia, you lead Ignacy, Anji, and these three are to save our people from the fire. No mercy,” Janine quickly said, assigning two males frena’s pad the Alpha scout to the Sword Saint. “The rest verge at my location. Sisters, brothers! Hunt. Feast on those who dare to y hands on the people uhe prote of the Wolf Tribe! Crush anyoing the Dynast underfoot! Reduce them to memory!” Jaohe sed part of the Savage Promise, an oath taken by Wolfkins upon joining a military pack.

  This close to the Core Lands, the nd was no longer lifeless or barren. This pce had greenhouses—pact, special domes frowiables—and the air was cooler and slightly humid. Unlike further to the north, the buildings here were not utilitarian fortresses to house the entire popution, where narrow slits served as windows and where citizens slept, gun in hand. No, these were apartment buildings; people here had begun tet their fears of beien, ensved, and oppressed, and nice cubs’ drawings covered the gray stone surfaces; clothes dried on windowsills; billboards announg a soon-to-be-opeheater or holding advertisements stood along the roads suitable for civilian transport…

  And this peace was shattered. The greenhouses’ domes were shattered, and their pnts withered in the air. Fmes licked aaintings, and bodies of sughtered cubs cooled off as their parents screamed and cursed their cruel fate. Bullet holes scarred the billboards, and there were no songs to be heard.

  They didn’t howl. Not this time. The purpose of a howl is to demoralize and scare an oppo into surrendering. It was a tool to reduce casualties. As they charged across the bloody pavement, the Wolfkins shared a on desire.

  To hear a different kind of song.

  “Those who threaten the peace of our nds, we shall destroy!” The Wolfkins, excluding Camelia, echoed Janine’s voice as she repeated the st cuse of the oath, and Camelia voiced the words a sed ter. They she air. Bck, spotted, and white, united by the shared pain. Smells of released bowels, blood, and smoke filled their nostrils. Aoo; they breathed it in, mapping the hostages’ location in this unique way.

  Civilians who provided the Wolfkins with medie, armor, and supplies—people whose aors had saved the Wolf Tribe and who had every right to expect to be protected—now y dead or were captured. Losing family members and friends in a war was uandable and, in many ways, fivable. But this? This horrible failure demanded not revenge, no. But an effit and merciless extermination, so that not even a trace of this violent filth would remain in this world.

  The invaders incurred a blood debt. And it was time to collect.

  Janine pushed ahead, using the Taleteller’s bde to block the ining rounds and firing iurn, burning the raiders’ legs. They tried to crawl away, and one even reached frenade, pulling the pin with a shaking hand. Shrapnel bounced and ricocheted off the armor ptes, only scratg them as the warlord tio advance, using wide swings to clear the path and draw attention to herself.

  They streamed toward the main square, scouts, males, and warriors breaking into the apartments and hunting down marauding fools. The Warlords were too big to ehe buildings without colpsing them and thus endangering the hiding civilians, but her soldiers made an exempry work of handling this task.

  “Males, warriors, take to the roofs,” Janine said as they approached the crowded main square.

  To her momentary surprise, the raiders closer to the square didn’t paniake the mistake of letting the Wolfkins close in. The enemies closed ranks, filling the street with the bark of their guns, areated in an orderly fashion, trating their fire on the weakest members of her pack. As a male vaulted over a piece of debris on the roof and prepared to toss a grenade, shots ripped through his armor and tore into his chest. He toppled and rolled to the side as a warrior kicked the about-to-detonate greraight into the raider’s ranks, losing part of her helmet and face to the gunfire from the opposite roof. Meanwhile, the enemies calmly ighe explosion and the hissing acid on their suits.

  A group of raiders emerged from the roof’s rubble cover, aiming their rocket unchers downward, while those oreet grabbed their own ons in an attempt to stifle the advah superior firepower. Janine didn’t have to give the and. Impatient One lu the building, cmbering up on her own cws. A raider panicked and fired a rocket at her, shaking the building with the blooming, fiery explosion. The rest of his gang cursed, stepping away from the edge of the colpsing roof.

  It was a mistake. Rather thaher the explosion, the shaman broke into the building and raced through the rooms, carefully navigating her way through the lenses of her allies. On pce, she leapt up, broke through the floors, and grabbed a raider by the ankles. Her sharp cws bisected steel, sinew, and bone, and the screaming mao the side, fountaining blood gushing from his stumps. A cw drew a line across the wounded man’s belly, opening it wide.

  The two remaining raiders faced a hurrie of violence, as an elbow strike to the neck sent a chubby woman across the roof and a kick sent the kneecap of another skyward. The man screamed, trying to aim his uncher, and a paw stabbed, pierg the square identification system and the facepte behind it.

  Impatient One swung her entire body aside, and a rocket exploded the dying man as the shaman gnced back warily. Janine shared her daughter’s fusion. The shaman didn’t hold back her elbow strike, but the female raider stood on her knees, gasping for breath, ahroat was clearly very mutact. Before she could fire the sed rocket, a knee had already struck her in the chest, sending her sprawling against the stone ledge. It gave way, but the cruel paws dragged the screaming foe back, right into the mauling swings that tore her to tatters.

  Janine closed the distao the enemy line and kicked. Her short leg reached the raider’s waist, but it was enough as her feet peed deeper, turning his pelvis to bone dust. The man colpsed, and Jaomped, ending his life and bringing her axe to bear on another raider wielding a rocket uhe Taleteller sshed him from shoulder to midse, destroying the heart, and then dragged the body across the ground, knog several more raiders off bance.

  Her ruse paid off; the closest raiders thought her axe was stud aimed their unchers at her, while their rades illumihe area with fshes from the bursts of gunfire. A fshed on the HUD, the system worriedly warning the warlord of potential damage as gouges opened on the vambraces and craters dotted the chest pte.

  In a grand scheme of things, it mattered little. The kiic absorption system tio fun, dispersing the impact across the surface, and the Taleteller came to life, slipping free of the corpse. Two more foes fell bisected by Janine’s bde, while the enemies’ hesitatiohem in position for the Wolfkins fire.

  We must keep them from the hostages…. A familiar din interrupted her thought.

  “Artillery! South!” Janine raised her energy on, trying to pin-point the projectile before it could nd.

  Eled moved toward her, hurling her on into the air, where it collided with the approag shell and split it apart. The warlord caught her falling on by the shaft and sshed through a raider’s legs. The fallen raider let go of her ons and raised her hands. Whether she was trying to surrender or simply in pain was irrelevant. A boot came down, crushing the helmet and breaking bones.

  “Eled! Locate and elimihe artillery piece before it fires again. Take four soldiers with you…” a squealing interrupted Janine’s and.

  A male from her pack had lost himself te. Agitated by the ruins and dead bodies, he stumbled against a raider in a ruined house and tried to wrestle his head off. The man grasped the wolfkin by the paw and effortlessly shattered it, then headbutted the ining bite, shattering the fangs. The thirty-year-old veteran, Din, blihrough the pain and attempted to cw his oppo, but a bde lodged in his chest, its tip pushing a shoulder bde out of alig as it exited from his back. A siwist widehe wound, shattering the ribcage, and the shards damaged the surrounding ans enough to make the stab fatal. Din’s i on the HUD went dark. Even with the aid of a bat suit, such a feat was out of the normal human league.

  “New Breeds among the enemy ranks!” Janine issued a warning as the raider emerged from the ruins, seeking to joireating ranks of his fellows, only to stumble upon another Wolfkin, a male from Onyxia’s pack.

  “Do you need assistance, Janine?” Ravager joihe unication, sounding deadly calm, and the warlord sprang into a, p the question.

  Traditions dictated she let the male die and pursue the retreating erying to maximize the damage. But for herself, Janine had decided that not every tradition was worth adhering to. Impatient One and Soulless One perceived it as heresy, but she sistently refuted it with a straightforward truth. If their way of life erfect, why did they ge it from time to time?

  So when the oversized sword he male’s neck, her elbow met it, denting the bde as Janine swung her axe at full force, carving a rift in the hunter’s body. He choked, not quite believing that it was it, and came apart in pieces.

  “Such a soft girl,” Ravager’s melodious ugh filled the el as she ghrough the cameras.

  If Ravager arrives, all resistance will vanish instantly. Even through her ughter, Janine could feel the boiling fury behind the Blessed Mother’s words. Was she the locus of this anger? Was the Blessed Mother thinkio be unworthy for saving a male’s life? If so, she could extract payment ter; Janine will not resist, nor would not have acted differently given the same choice. Lives take priority.

  And it was because of lives that the Blessed Mother could not be unleashed. If she walks, she will leave ruins in the wake of her movements, quickly losing herself to the bloodlust. And who’s to say that she won’t turn her ire upon the civilians?

  “Grenades,” Janine ordered, fag a newly formed defensive lihe enemies spread out; five of them leaped forward, trying to buy time for their rades behind them. It was in vain; Predaig and Janine had no desire to py around any loheir bdes left dead meat in their paths, denying ae to the foes. “My apologies, Blessed Mother. The field of battle has no prey worthy of your presence.”