Orderly chaned in the magic catapult unch bay. Where the Normies dispyed exempr discipline and ess as they prepared five round-shaped spheres for takeoff, the Wolfkins rushed into the bay at full speed, howling to annouheir arrival and demanding a spot in one of the magic catapults. Janine and her bodyguards were one of the first to arrive, pushing the Wolfkins frena’s pack aside on their way. Janine smmed the knob of her axe into the floor and bellowed a guttural roar, seg the obedient from the ining troops. The bickering subsided, and Wolf Hags and Scouts unhappily fell in line.

  “Captain Cristobo.” Janine approached the captain, who was standing before the spheres, reading information from his terminal. “What’s the sitrep, sir?”

  “Eco… Just Peachy is being raided.” The captain nodded, greeting two more warlords and two sword saints as they ehe bay. “The attackers made quick work of the defenders, bypassing the patrols aralizing the outside sensors, eliminating the perimeter towers, and then rushing the regurs. Their first strike was aimed at the unication tower, so they know their craft. We will use the magic catapults to send in an assault team. Saving civilian lives is the highest priority. Recapturing the town, eliminating the attackers, or anything else is at your discretioA fround reinforts is thirty minutes. Save our people, Janine.”

  “Yes, sir. Suit up at once!” Janine whirled and faced Impatient One, who had brought a bowl of ioid blood. “No rituals! Gear up immediately! Males, attend me!”

  Impatient One nodded, dropped the bowl, and jumped away, giving Janine a wider berth as the bodyguards mounted armor pieces on the warlord, rapidly iing cords into the impnts’ sockets, and pushing the warlord without a hint of reverence or respect. Ignacy arrived, already his armor. He leapt to the males’ aid, wielding his new arm with the same ease as his inal limb and effortlessly activating the power armeor. Around them, newer pieces of the Wolf Tribe’s power armor rose from the openings in the floor, delivered straight from the armory. It mattered not if a suit beloo another Wolfkin; at this moment ency, engineers and males put it on the females, anyway. There was no snarling about any disrespect or refusal of the Normies’ aid; the amber eyes of every Wolfki were focused oask at paw.

  “Battle!” Eled ran a finger along the edge of her scythe bde. “At st. I’ve been longing for a det sughter. Ready for petition, Janine? Let’s see if you collect as many skulls as I.”

  “Curses,” Predaig said, spreading her arms. Her fur had grayed in several parts of her body, giving her hide a spotted look. “We haven’t evehe Outer Lands yet, and Devourer immediately fucks up!”

  “Enough!” Janine grinned, lifting her lips and baring her fangs. Now was not the time for pointless boasting of imaginary superiority. As if the raiders had tacked when the Wolf Tribe was here! “I came first. I lead.”

  “You lead. We follow.” Eled and Predaig bowed quickly together.

  “I follow,” Impatient One said.

  “I follow!” shouted Till Ingo’s strange, snow-skinned assistant. The woman arrived carrying twin maeguns, which she snatched off the passing guards.

  “Nope.” A paw grabbed her by the nape and yanked off her feet. Despite being tossed in the air, Banshee made a graceful turn in the air and nded smoothly as Wolf Hag Sarkeesian and two scouts of the Alpha Pack took her pce.

  “I was here first! I fight!” Banshee argued vehemently.

  “But you put on a suit?” Sarkeesian’s mouth daggers gnashed out the question, and the mutant stopped. “Thought so. Elites of the Alpha Pack, ready to serve! Any challenging Warlord Janine’s authority is our enemy!”

  “We follow!” The mixed group of assembled Wolfkins howled.

  “Thank you for your help, Wolf Hag. Children these days,” Till Ingo remarked from his p the operator’s seat. The man took over a sole and proceeded to prepare the unch procedure. “Worry not; as a reward, I shall give you a smooth nding. Banshee, be a good girl and help your teacher.”

  “I fight, father!” The mutaurhe ons and ran to Ingo.

  “No, you ’t,” the man said patiently. “Still too young and inexperienced. And I am not your father, student. Keon, increase the output; we want our forces in sooner.”

  "But sir, won’t we risk missing the nding coordinates?” asked the former servant of Teo-Queen and g the man in charge of the shift, who nodded and added:

  “Sir, we haven’t used the magic catapults in a while...”

  “Calm down, will you?” Till Ingo asked. “I was the one who reied them. They went out of fashion because the stationary ptforms are not usable by Normies, and the ones on crawlers have the added ive of being uo deliver a rge enough strike group. In theory. This isn't the case here, as we have sword saints and warlords. Using the mainframe, we make real-time adjustments to at for the crawler's movements, ensuring a precise delivery. See these calcutions on the dispy?” He g Cristobo. “I’ll be joining the nd forces, captain. I am very curious to learn how our sensors failed to alert the town about the raid.”

  “We thank you for your assistance, sir,” Cristobo said politely, not breaking away from giving orders to the nd troops.

  “I follow,” Bertruda announced.

  “No.” Jaiced she was limping. “Stay. Too valuable to lose to the wounds.”

  Bertruda’s snout twitched in annoyance, but Camelia put a paw on her shoulder and stepped forward. The sword saint was still dressed in a light nightgown of a bck color; her on, the Mooed at her waist in the form of a sheathed cymore strapped to a jeweled belt.

  “I follow,” she said in a tohat left no room for objes.

  Janine sighed. A ge was needed. At the dawn of the Wolf Tribe, the warlords didn’t permit their packs to mix up, even in the fami danger, f them to fight as separate units. Such a strategy cked bes granted by a singur and and had cost far too many lives, so the warlords assigned Alpha, Dragena, or an officer in charge e-scale es so that the leader could coordinate packs, monit the flow of battle and giving orders when to push or pull. Now, a host of Wolfkins from various packs, including even the Alphas, have willingly submitted themselves to Janine, giving their hides to her care. Like it or not, she ’t spurn away help from someone as strong as Camelia if she cares about the survival of her troops. And the sword saint did show up earlier than many others.

  “Accepted. But we have no time to wait for your armor, nor will you hold back, Sword Saint.” Janine’s eyes dug into Camelia’s crimson ones.

  The sword saint didn’t waste time bowing. She tore her rich gown off, exposing a body covered by exquisite impnts, richly incrusted with silver, and painted in the colors of her household so that from afar they looked more like talismans. The engineers gave her Ygrite’s power armor, as it was the only suit fit for someone of her size. If Camelia experienced any paihe hissing cords were pushed into her impnts and sparks of the e briefly lit the surrounding skin, all without an underarmor to mitigate a rapid union, then she didn’t show a sign of it.

  “I follow.” Kaisa, still bandaged, leapt ahead.

  “No,” Janine replied, pointing at the entering Anji. “Wolf Hag Anji joins the pack. You stay.”

  “But I was here first! I…” Kaisa stopped at a kiss of the Taleteller’s bde against her neck.

  “Submit,” Janine demanded, and the stubbirl exposed her neck without wasting a sed. Haste and a decision to reward good behavior kept Janine’s jaws from inflig further punishment. Kaisa retreated and joihe engineers in suiting up Anji.

  “Don’t you dare die out there, Bootlicker,” Kaisa hissed.

  “I didn’t know you cared. It’s so sweet!” Anji’s lips parted in a mog, honeyed smile, and the rival wolf hag groaned as she pced the helmet on Anji’s head and attached it to the get. The fingers of her good paw rahe rubberized prote, tapping on it to check if it was in pd that there were no gaps. “Don’t worry, Kali, I will be fine.”

  “Kaisa! The name is Kaisa! You owe me three lives tonight for the butchery of my name!” Kaisa rasped, trying her best not to bite the other woman. “We aren’t finished! Your hide is mio take.”

  “Aww! I’ve made a frenemy! Shall we paint our cws together ter?”

  “Fuck off to the Abyss, weirdo!”

  “No, seriously, Kali, thank you for your help.” Anji took the young woman by her paws, and Kaisa gurgled, choking on her ing foam. “It’s very kind of you.”

  Ja go of her axe so her helpers could put on her gaus. The helmet came , and she blinked, summoning the HUD, now filled with the new is of the soldiers’ names from outside of her pack. She gasped against her will when Ignacy jammed plugs into the impnts near her spine, and a small, pierg pain made her spasm as her nerves received aric jolt. With Taleteller in her paws, Jaomped and sat in the sphere, sharing it with Impatient One and three more soldiers.

  Camelia Winterso her aides, taking unsteady steps to get used to the cumbersome, heavy bck power armor. Even though she wore it for the first time, the grace taught through grueling decades of training worked its magid her feet produo sound. She lightly nodded, accepted a shardgun, and strapped it to her back before uhing her bde. The Moon trembled, and streaks of molteal rose from its sheath, adding mass to the bde. Both pieces of her on joined, and a massive spear was now in the sword saint’s paw, held with the same ease as a quill. The bde was so long that its eended back a quarter of the spear’s length, f a triangle.

  Camelia had a unique power, impressive even amongst her peers. By adding her own blood to any alloy, she imbued it with her own essence, maniputing and shifting it like a skilled sculptor, creating neons or tools. In battle, when the sword saint found herself in dire straits, her own battlepte flowed, closing the cracks and gashes like a swarm of nanomaes, rest the iy of her armor. Camelia wound the lower end of her spear around her wrist like a whip to shorten its length, theered the ung catapult and took a seat beside Anji, Ignacy, and two other Wolfkins.

  It took each member of the relief forly a little over two mio prepare and sit in the spheres strapped in for the rough nding ahead. At the end of the third mihe spheres were moved to the tracks and lifted into the air, held in pce by an activated magic force. The soldiers inside didn’t feel anything until the very st sed, wheapults propelled their “ammunition” forward at such a high speed that the engineers and teis couldn’t even perceive the moment when the spheres fshed and flew through the tunnel leading outside. Janine summohe reports and reviewed the avaible information from the crawler’s side.

  Their destination was a small frontier settlement named Ecological Habitat 647, but even traders called it Just Peachy. Situated on the long stretch of nd that ected the Core Lands to the Outer Lands, it was a regur pce, walled for security, and stationed military personnel provided stability. In several decades, this pce was to bee another part of the Core Lands. Captain Ivar fought fang and cw, trying to secure the mining rights for the Outer Lands, as the nearby mountains had a retively well-developed mining industry, and a stream of immigrants provided a solid workford a nice example for the Recmation Army’s propaganda to show the outsiders how superior life uhe state was. The town itself thrived, announg the opening of the sixth school and publicly thanking the Blessed Mother and Wyrm Lord for their patronage.

  About half an ho, an armed group stormed the pce, took out the unication tower, bombarded the walls, and created a gap wide enough for the entire assault force to ehe one who called for help was a store owner’s daughter, a girl named Kit, who had slipped ihe wreckage of the tower, found a w terminal, a a request for relief that icked up by the crawler’s operators. The girl was naturally panicked and distraught, making fusing statements and mistakes. At first, she screamed about thousands of attackers, but soon calmed down and admitted that there were probably far fewer invaders. She reted the horrific screamers who had injured her boyfriend and sliced apart her family. She told about a great red et that rode after the escapees and the gigantic beasts stalking the ruins. The girl whimpered, clearly injured, as she begged for help, expining that something had happeo the safety bunker and failing to provide any further useful information.

  Aside from two things. The attackers wore power armor covered with golden embroidery, and they began to indiscriminately butcher citizens of Just Peachy, seemingly with no reason. The operators asked her to hide for the time being.

  “A battle is expected in an urban area full of civilians. Activate IFF,” Janine ordered.

  “Must we, warlord...” The Alpha Pack scout began to moan a question, but stopped abruptly when she heard a shardgun aimed at her. The woman quickly bared her ne submission.

  “Heard loud and clear and obey, warlord,” Sarkeesian assured Janine.