100 kilometers south of Houstad

  “We are too te,” said an officer of the provincial guard in a stern tohat left no room fument.

  Jeanne sighed, keeping her head low. Ever since she had been forced to leave her church, she had chosen to enlist in the army. Her belief didn’t permit any violence, but there were ways to help, and she traversed the region, warning the stubborn farmers about the invasioing elders until they agreed to evacuate, and assisting the squads assigo the task in any way she could. Inspired by her example, the ranks of the volunteers swelled, and they made goress thanks to the brave sacrifices of their defenders.

  But their luck ran out today. Heavy le missile unchers drove into the farmnds. Oblivious to the panicked screams of the settlers, the hordemen secured their positions, and six farmers y dead while the rest sought to escape. The officer was right; it was too te; if their group tried to get a, they’d just add to the list of future victims.

  The abbess closed her eyes as the first missile took to the sky and smoke covered her people. Faithful or not, she prayed for the deliverance of their souls when she heard a gasp and broke off the prayer, worried that they had been found.

  Not a single enemy was left in sight. Battered remains of the missile unchers boomed at the horizons, callously flung away; the take-off missile was absent from the sky, and only a distant explosion high above the clouds lit up the surprised faces of the farmers. And Jeanne didn’t bme them. Five hundred enemy soldiers and six missile unchers vanished in an instant. With a creak, the intense wind that swept over the pce carried rge swaths of earth skyward.

  “How is that possible?” she whispered.

  “The Dynast watches, ma’am!” A soldier proudly admitted to itting the heresy; his hand reflexively formed a mace sign. “He is always around in one form or another, and his servants are mighty!”

  “Well, then, mighty servant.” The officer spped the young man behind his ears. “Less yapping and more serving. Escort the farmers out of here. You saw nothing, ma’am.”

  “My hearing also grew worse with age.” Jeanne forced a smile.

  ****

  Apanied by a crack of her neck, the khatun reached Eugenia, saying nothing and without so much as grasping her ons. Nanomaes already covered the wounds, rest the smooth surface of the Elite’s suit and repulsing the blood so that the surface shone a cheerful blue hue again. But Eugenia was breathing hard; her posture no longer betrayed certainty, and she threw her arms up.

  A blurred line ected with the tonfas. Mad Hatter’s punch, so terrible and powerful, hurled a tornado against Houstad’s shield, all trated on a single point, and Janine yelled for the troops to take cover. The wind burst in, blowing into the warlord’s face harder than most sandstorms she knew, but the dome restored itself, sparing the troops the worst.

  On the field, Eugenia reeled; Mad Hatter’s punch sent her own fist against her helmet hard enough to shatter a part of the facepte and utterly ftten her nose. Janine didn’t o guess to know that the Elite’s wounds reopened, but the worst sight was a shimmering line h before the perfectly calm khatun. She was baited into this rapid flickering pund still struck far too fast fenia to take advantage of this move.

  A hand caught the Elite by the colr of her suit, crumpling the alloy as if it were mere paper, and pulled Eugenia closer to Mad Hatter.

  “Tell me. Do you see him?” Mad Hatter asked. “Do you hear his words p poison into your ears, promising gifts in exge for servitude?”

  “No… no idea what you are bbbering about,” Eugenia exhaled, panting heavily.

  “Hm. So he doesn’t call to you.” Mad Hatter looked up. “Curious. Is that because you were born before the Extin? Or maybe you ck certain qualities…”

  The sizzling edge of the tonfa flew past Mad Hatter’s head, missing it entirely, and Eugenia gasped for air as a knee rammed into her sor plexus, hard enough to make the woman vomit blood. The grabbed ‘colr’ of her suit disected itself from the main mass, and a portal readily opened behind her. But an elbow in the back of the neck sent the Iternian away from the escape, and then a leg sweep finally nded on Eugenia’s right leg.

  A metallic pimple grew on Eugenia’s leg moments before the tact, as nanomaes reinforced the threatening area to cushion the blunt damage. And it exploded, scatterial shards everywhere. The leg plunged into Eugenia’s flesh like a razor, breaking the kneecap and severing tendons. The tonfas dropped, lost from pain, but the blue fist swiped at Mad Hatter’s face, right at the regeing, steaming flesh, boung off and grabbing the hair, ripping a k out.

  “That’s just childish.” Mad Hatter spped Eugenia, sending her down. “All this effort just to ruin my haircut. What are we, es, squabbling over which of our children to prompt to authority?”

  She took Eugenia by the ankle, jerked the woman over her head, and whipped her, using a living body as a whip. A loud crack of dislocated bones reached Janine’s ears; the Elite arched her body, still holding the torn hair, her mouth open in a wordless scream. Mad Hatter purposely let everyohat weakness and then smmed her fist into the helmet, breaking half of it and crushing Eugenia into the ground with enough force to send a torrent of ground into the air.

  I never imagi would be this one-sided. Janine ched the Taleteller. How long had it been since Redeemer and Ravager first cshed head-on? The two had evolved together, ohrough the genius of bioengineering, the other through the reward of her power. They grew; their potential seemed limitless, and even if that traitorous butcher had been forced to throw their fights first, the Tribe at rge came to sider the two as equals.

  If one was dominated so…

  “Listen to me, hero.” Mad Hatter’s knuckles pressed hard into Eugenia’s cheek. “You got your sotion prize. Now it’s my turn to have fun. Yes,” she chuckled to something, “I know you hear me, and I have figured out the reason why you are here truly, imitation. I am going to increase the pressure against your cheekbone, slowly. First it’ll crack. Then it’ll shatter.” Spurts of red colored Eugenia’s pale cheeks as the woman struggled to breathe. She elbowed Mad Hatter in the ribs, to no avail. “Eventually, the pressure will reach your ears, and if you’re lucky, they’ll burst. Or not, and they’ll be sent flying, dangling oierves, further fusing you. You have options, though. Feel free to plete your mission and escape through a portal, but then I swear I’ll eat those he gates alive. If you stay, you’ll fail your wimpy try, and I’ll have your flesh for a midday snack, but oher hand, my mood will improve, and I promise to spare... I don’t know. Hey, Ismaeel, how many doggies have your brats collected?”

  Mad Hatter positioned herself above her victim. Her toes dug into the ground, left arm behind her back, the right ha digging into Eugenia’s face as the woman y on her side, elbowing the tormentor. They both tensed, straining their muscles, but one pushed herself to the limit, and the other easily tered any attempts at resistance.

  A prong formed on Eugenia’s elbow, and it briefly pierced Mad Hatter’s skin, drawing blood. A casual blow broke it, bruising the elbow. Electricity erupted from Eugenia’s suit, brightly illuminating both women, and sparks danced in the khatun’s ears. Yellow arcs licked the unprotected body, melting the surrounding ground, but whatever the armeor was, it couldn’t match the tonfas’ discharges, and the taller woman didn’t so much as bat an eye.

  “Five hundred and six, Khatun!” Iron Lord responded, paying no attention to the light show. “Four more in critical dition. The healers are unsure if they’d survive; they refused augmetics.”

  “Five hundred a is. That many of the defenders I’ll spare.” Mad Hatter snorted. “A good number. For five hundred days, the Sky tested our aors with stant hurries before deeming them worthy to worship him and leading them to the Steppe. It is a sign of my true father’s favor. So what will it be, fake? Duty and self-preservation? Or lives?” Eugenia opened her mouth to answer, and the khatun shoved her fist harder into the other woman’s head, dusting four teeth of Eugenia right iheir gums. The pale skin reddened, slowly swelling uhe merciless pressure. “No more speeches. No glorious end. It’ll be cowardly ly, and whichever you choose, someone is going to die.”

  ****

  50 kilometers northwest of Houstad:

  To be aware of how to do a thing aerly incapable of perf the feat was torture. Sed’s eyes, misshapen as they were, picked up the smallest particles; the gifts bestowed upon him by his parents helped him see the bullets in slow motion, and he could do little but ssh at them, far too te to save his pte from being besmirched.

  He had arrived at the zone of the failed evacuation, quickly evaluating the siege camp set up by the hordemen. They had bombarded the troops sheltering in the food processing pnt and were making steady progress, already breag the walls. With their khan murdered in the north, that gang exhibited cautiousness, aking risks, using le ordio drive the defenders away from the gaps, while widening and then sending in multiple assault teams, stig ted bat and using their naturally superior biology aer armor to overwhelm aance. Oaken down, they’ll chase after other escapees.

  Or would they? What was the reason the hordemen sought to capture this pce? The voy had transported family relid gathered resources from a Sunbde gold mine. Perhaps this rabble would indulge in pointless petition…

  A knight had to know when to run to fight another day, for a knight’s duty y not to the individuals, but to the state. Sed had already straihe limits of this rule by arriving here, driven by the Ice Fangs’ values. The moral reasoning for him being here was that he refused to abandon those ihe practical reason was simpler; tying up an enemy force here reduced the threat to Houstad and spared other escapees, as emboldened by the glint of gold, the sdrels would doubtlessly pursue them, hoping to double or triple their ill-gotten gains. Or so he lied to himself.

  The Ice Fang leaped, nding on the mortars in the enemy’s rear; a single swing of his arm cleaved through the four bodies. He didn’t pause, charging toward the walls, aware of his limitations. In a test of physical prowess, not even First or Alpha could stop his blows, but he cked their overall quality. His unevenly sized limbs forced him into the impractical quadruped stance, and without his sword as a e, the Ice Fang could barely traverse around fast. His ans swayed inside his body, saliva choked his lungs, denying him the stamina to perform feats of speed, and occasional fusioricks on his mind. He cked speed, agility, endurance, and eveh. When he fought the enemy, his body fought him.

  But a true nobleman never mented what he couldn’t do. Sed’s pte was a marvel, equipped with several raurrets, which he used to scatter the unworthy from his path. Those who remaihe bigger imbeciles wielding pathetic excuses for swords and crag with energy hammers, became his targets.

  Foolishness had no p war. Even a child would have uood that his rapid advance would not give the turrets enough time to score enough kills, and the mere fact that ptes cracked under his projectiles should have vihe foes to form a line and face him, trusting in their ability to survive long enough. Upon tact, they should have fnked him and ter surrounded him, striking at the joints and denying him the ao who their champions were.

  That was what he would have done had he anded a unit fag su ued and brazen assault. Fortuitously, his oppos cked the sophisticated and superior faculties of Ice Fangs or the brilliant bat instinct of his bck-furred kin. And so grenade unchers mounted above his protected shoulder bdes fired smoke grenades, enveloping the group, and holographic projectors in his limbs activated, surrounding Sed with copies of his fi students. The first brute was baited into attag a lithe, spear-armed Ice Fang, and his hammer flew through her ethereal head instead of blog the ining doom.

  Sed’s swing was akin to a wreg ball, g any innate elegance, yet precise enough to nd uhe hordeman’s armpit. His sword plunged full length, slig through the reinforced ptes as if they were little more than freshly toasted bread. The man’s torso slipped from his body, and the ssh tinued, one of the many prongs of his serrated bde smming into another’s helmet and lodging in the woman’s head.

  The body went limp and was dragged from her feet as the sed-born of the Twins rose on two feet. It was an ugly sight; his purple cape swiped the dirt, one leg was a n, and another immediately buckled to stand on a knee as ragged breath and drool spilled through the half-open mouthguard of his helmet. Sed pummeled two foes into piles of broken bones using the very body of their rade.

  Such a dispy of savagery had several objectives. First, to lure them into a foolish belief in his poor thinking habits, falsely warning them of his armor rather than his intellect. Sed, to partially evade the maddening shooting of the lesser threats. Durable as it was, his prote wouldn’t st forever, and already notches and cracks were beginning to cover it. He o preserve the holograms as long as possible. Finally, Sed had to cough the fluid that was clogging his airways through his swollen gums, and he found that standing upright helped.

  His rger hand caught a panicked hordeman and smmed the hapless fool to the ground. Sucivilized fighting might be worthy of a defender, but it was beh a knight. Sed hated every sed of seeing the viscera on his armored fingers. What would First think of him now... He jumped into the fray and joihe soldiers.

  “Sir!” the wounded retainer of the Sunbde House, a Normie, had saluted him then. His mouth barely twitched, but the rest of his unit recoiled, half-disgusted, half-terrified by the drooling, crawling creature. The lenses of various sizes on his head and the eborate silver and gold bat pte only added to the ridiculous sight. “Has there been a ge of pns?” asked the man with a hint of hope.

  “ive, officer.” Sed shook his head. “I am all the help we’ll have.”

  Inspired troops fought harder, but a deceived unit was a source of future insubordination. On the slim ce that any of the present would survive, the Sunbde decided to stick to hoy, unwilling to participate in a deception that widehe rift between the Order and the Tribe.

  “Shit. We have children here,” the retainer cursed. “There aren’t enough of us to guard every entrance, and I am worried that the fatties are about to level us off the face of the p.”

  “They won’t,” Sed assured him. Fatties, eh? What does this make me, then? “Not uhey are willing to their prize. e, everyone. Civilians are owed our prote, and in my name, I swear to stand alongside you until my very st drop of blood.”

  It was a less-than-optimal strategy as the bombardment resumed. But faced with the choice of being withered down attempting to silehe mobile artillery or being chipped away inside, he had picked the tter option, intending to hold for long. Miracles, or rather happy acts resulting from a ge in morale, did happen in war. There was a tiny ce of survival. For four hours, Sed traveled through the food produ facility, fronting the invaders in the narrow corridors. His perception of time slowed, and he memorized the st moments of soldiers dying under his and.

  To be outside his capsule, to apply his theories to bat firsthand, was... exhirating. For the first time in years, he tested his theories firsthand, anizing ambushes areats, taking into at the health of his precious allies. The turrets announced his arrival, lighting up the smoke-filled, partially ruined corridors with bursts of projectiles, and he followed, smashing, slig, cutting, tearing, even biting. He had never even ceived himself capable of such fury, but as his on rehe bodies, he accepted this part of himself as he accepted every fw his fate had bestowed upon him.

  The end of the road. He kept thinking that thought, gathering the remainiainers at the ter of the facility, in a pce the enemy would not dare bombard. Civilian workers hid behind tainers filled with preetals, artifacts, or simple diamonds and gems. They clutched a gift far more precious, their children, to their chests, trying to calm dowtle ones.

  A meager dozen and a half bat-ready soldiers stood ready to protect them. The rest died; their anding officer faced his doom after he was shot and then stomped by the hordemen, and Sed assumed full and. He, a desdant of the Twins themselves, would die leading the Normies. Bereft of glory, denied a st charge unless he wished to abandon those he guarded.

  Gashes covered his pte, pools of torn flesh across his flesh spurted blood, his bones ached, his lips parched from a catastrophic ck of water. The holograms no longer surrounded him, and even the remaining turrets fell silent.

  “I have taken your every assault, your toughest blow, and I am still standing!” Sed roared, rising to two legs. “e! Is there no champion among you brave enough to collect my head or die a dog’s death? Am I fag a swarm of is or warriors? Face me if you dare!”

  He frowned, fused at the sudden silehat had befallen the corridors. A mere sed ago, he had heard ughter, curses, and the boasting of the fn scum. They were taking up positions, fanning out, and surrounding the great hall with the iion of overwhelming the survivors in one fell swoop. Now there was nothing, not even the clicks of reloading mae guns.

  A giggle came from the corridor leading to the mairahen another came from a brea the wall, a wicked mog noise mimig Sed’s sug, watery speech. The giggle intensified, f an orchestra of cruel mirth that echoed off the walls, frightening the children and their families and turning the soldiers’ faces pale. Sed himself stiffened as he noticed a tall figure rag through the shadows of the corridor. The speed of the figure overwhelmed his cameras, but the pallor of its skin and its height brought him to a halt.

  “Took our toughest blow?” a high-pitched voice asked in a tone full of venom that made Sed’s ears hurt.

  “Tease,” growled another voice, a sound of an animal imitating brass tonality through the grinding of fangs.

  “If face us thou wish…”

  “Then face us, you get!”

  A se of the wall leading into the hall erupted, briefly showing Sed the standing hordemen. Covered in dust and debris, two figures burst in; one nded sprawled on the floor, and another pirouetted over the shocked defenders, nding with a cck of cws against the floor and wing at the trembling children. Their bodies, naked except for their dangling, tangled, and dirty hair, bore no scars; their snouts stuck out a little farther than those of most Ice Fangs and Wolfkins. Tall as Sword Saints and Warlords, the newers possessed both the grad might of the two groups, creating a perfect mockery of every shared virtue of both groups.

  Sed didn’t waver. He did not wonder why the fallen had joihe Horde. They did not. Their goals were momentarily aligo maximize monstrous amusement, and amuseme ohing to the lost souls. These creatures were too dangerous to let them be.

  His sword sshed at the standing skinwalker’s head, but the woman shifted her body axis slightly, barely tilting her head, and the edge passed over her temple. She immediately returo her standing position, fast enough that the humans might not even notice her movement. To the Normies, it looked as if the sword had phased through the skull. Then she kicked backward, sending Sed rolling to the ground.

  Strong. The pain of a single blow, masterfully calcuted to be delivered at the exaent of his brief release of tension to bat the innate spasm, throbbed in his gut. His own iines were now pressing against his liver. He grasped the dee, forcefully fixing it, and tried to stand up.

  “Why?” The skinwalker’s head turo face him, breaking her own ne the process, and the families screamed at the gleaming bone pierg her skin. “Because the inside mirrors the outside.”

  He stopped, fused at the accusation, and the sed skinwalker bounced off the floor, delivering a punch to the joint of his armor and numbing Sed’s rger arm. She held back the cws, but he heard the crack of bone.

  “How could you be beautiful?” growled the sed skinwalker, dang away from his stab. “The Horde came for the riches. There they are.” She motio the tainers.

  “And these are whom you swore to protect,” said the first skinwalker, her cws closing around the head of a terrified girl. “Tasty, sweet… morsels.”

  “Begone!” Sed swung overhead, and the skinwalker dodged the blow, jumping away from her prey.

  She and her sister fshed around the Sunbde, ughing, giggling, and pointing fingers, inviting his aggression and skirting around his sword. Their terattacks followed, aimed squarely at his joints. Both monsters growled with pleasure, enjoying the fire of the retainers, not even b to dodge the bullets as their bodies healed the damage in seds.

  “Calls himself a knight…”

  “Yet he refuses to surrender goods to save his subjects!”

  “Selfish! Greedy! Cries about his appearance!”

  “And always hides ihtub!”

  “How many of your students have died without your assistaheir accusations heaped on Sed, bringing more pain than any of their blows ever could. “Hypocrite! What sort of teacher refuses to practice what he preaches? Asks the universe why, when the answer is obvious! Rotten on the inside, corrupt oside! Aernal disgrace to his parents!”

  Their bobbing, blurry forms weaved around Sed, lobbing righteous accusations at him, pointing out every hypocrisy in his as, and tearing down every delusion he had. He didn’t even ask how they knew about the exact deaths of his siblings. It was undeniable. Even monsters and lunatics acted, while he shut himself away in his shame, relying on the relief of the maes, providing words and expertise, as his siblings perished one by one, and their offspring shouldered the burden, braving the dangerous world. And he... what had he aplished?

  He hadn’t even been able to save ahe battle for Houstad had undoubtedly already begun, and he wasn’t at his brother’s side.

  Sed was kicked around; his sshes no longer carried any precision, and even desperation couldn’t fuel his weary limbs. He lost t of the shattered bohe pte ulled off him piece by piece, exposing his ugliness for all to see. A double kick to the stomach lifted him into the air, and another skinwalker elbowed him in the head, nearly popping his rger eye. He tried to bite her, but the creature ughed, stealing his front fangs as he was dropped on the tainers, breaking them with his weight.

  He rolled off them, afraid to crush the families, and two feet pierced his sides, bringing him down on the hiding people by force. The skinwalkers stood on one leg, juggling his sword between them, and ughed, one happily, anleefully.

  “You never acted! A dead weight for your sibling! As crush, hahahahahah! Look at you, an alcoholic sug on a tit full of self-loathing and pity! And because of that, your appearahey stopped, and for a while the only sound in the hall was the guhen the dishes of their eyes widened, gaining something resembling focus, and Sed himself heard it. A faint howl, a call of the persohought to be a seother. Ravager’s noble procmation that all would be well, and in it he found the strength to push himself higher, using only three limbs, and tried to cw at the thoughtful face with his dried-up appendage of an arm.

  “…Doesn’t matter.” The legs let him go, and the skinwalker pushed the sword into his hand. They took him by the head and whispered in his ears. “You think yourself ugly, cursed, and useless. Silly, silly boy. Haven’t you proven yourself wrong? Your teags have helped the Order to shio them…” They gestured to the soldiers and civilians. “You are a savior. Your appearano longer matters to them. Don’t waste time g over missed opportunities. Ain’t worth your precious tears. Get what you today. Bee the pilr of the Order that you know you be! Be a teacher, be a fighter, be a lord, but be, not hide! Carry on, and you’ll be surprised how many don’t give a shit how you look.” They trembled, gnced up, and streaked toward the hordemen. “We’re helping, Mom!” they cried, carving themselves a path through the esg enemies. “We don’t do mischief, ho!”

  “What just happened, sir?” asked a youainer, reloading her pistol.

  “Not a fai idea,” Sed answered, using his sword to stand. “But we ’t get pt. This pce is safe no longer. Leave the valuables, a’s hurry north.”