Aranea led her pack after Sonya across the mountains. Thirty Wolfkins in total were under the wolf hag's command as she led them toward the canyon ahead. As the state expanded its influence within the Ravaged Lands, this place became an intersection of trade routes from three different towns. The road itself remained neutral territory, not owned by either side. As usual, a convoy carrying goods would be passing through. To their credit, the Resistance had never dared to attack the Reclaimers' vehicles, but the warlord had predicted that tonight might be different.

Sonya halted, raising her head to the sky, the helmet folded backward, exposing the snout. She sniffed, stretching and raising her paws to the moonlight.

"Yes," she said, facing Aranea. "Tonight, we will settle it. You and I will clash."

"I've issued no challenge. Why the hurry?" Aranea blinked, surprised.

"Can't you sense it? That weight in the air, the dread spilling all around us? A presence boiling your blood and demanding the end of one of us." Sonya sighed when Aranea shook her head. She continued, softening the voice, "A cursed cub indeed. Your mixed blood prevents you from hearing her call."

"Call? Whose call?" the scout demanded.

"Have I raised an idiot?" Sonya's face changed into a mask of anger, lips curled, fangs flashed, and drool dripped onto her plates. A controlled contentment danced in her amber eyes. "We left the city hours ago. Where are the animals? Insectoids? No prey, no hunters in sight, nothing to feast upon. Divinity has descended upon us from above. My path has finally come to an end. No fear remained, just peace at last." She took a deep breath.

Aranea looked around, surprised that the rest of the pack had removed their helmets, seemingly oblivious to potential dangers. Some faces betrayed confusion. Kate pressed a fist to her face in horror, and the rest stood calm. One thing united them, though: a similar dreamy haze in their gazes and an occasional hint of longing. It was as if a touch of magnificence had fallen upon them. Even Aranea's paw closed and opened as if nudged by an unseen presence toward impossible achievements.

"You feel her too, don't you?" Sonya smiled warmly at the reaction. "From this day forward, you are truly our kin. Never let anyone call you cursed again."

The wolf hag approached as if to embrace Aranea when a loud explosion snapped them into reality, turning heads toward the road. A bright fireball flashed, ripping through the silence, and an avalanche of rock began to fall from one side of the canyon, shutting the path and trapping the convoy in the narrow passage. Aranea smelled burning tires, and smoke carried on the wind.

"How could we not have noticed them?" Kaleb screamed, both trembling in fear and shaking in anticipation.

He crouched low and stepped onto all fours, not caring about putting on the helmet. Aranea blocked his path, and he twitched, burying his fingers deep into the stone, ready to leap at her. This surprised the scout. Kaleb wasn't the type to throw himself unprepared into the fray, yet right now, he was lost in a battle frenzy.

"Calm yourself, idiot." Kate grabbed Kaleb's pauldron, holding him still. The scout reached for her beads and pressed them to her chest, shaking. "Don't charge ahead! Everyone, come to your senses! She is not here! No one has seen her in years! Breathe, breathe, or the Spirits will curse you for neglecting your duties! Don't let a ghost drag you into madness! We are better than this!"

Aranea was shocked by the genuine concern and dread in the voice of her fellow scout. Just what in the Abyss is going on? Her finger pressed a button to summon the warlord. What could possibly have caused Kate to be so afraid? Why does everyone act so weird?

Then it dawned on her. An unknown presence observed her, letting its presence be known. Aranea whirled toward the wasteland, and there, kilometers away from the group, stood an enormous Wolfkin whose color matched that of the cosmic void. Its all-encompassing, all-knowing eyes briefly met hers, and then the figure vanished faster than Aranea could blink, filling her with suspicion that she might have been hallucinating. No one, nothing, could have moved away so fast from the open field. She decided her vision had played tricks on her. It was probably the result of the horrible desolation before. A mirage and nothing more.

"Helmets," Sonya ordered, nodding to Aranea in approval of the call. Gunfire and the hiss of energy weapon discharges reached the pack from the direction of the stopped convoy. Alongside them came screams. "Form up. The warlords will arrive shortly. We engage and rescue whoever we can."

The pack surged toward the happening battle, claws splintering jagged rocks. Like beasts, the front of the pack leaped from the cliffs into the canyon while the rear climbed down the slope.

The assailants ambushed two large trucks and six cars. Aranea spotted foes dressed in dark leather uniforms trimmed with golden threads and wearing black cowled cloaks and silver masks. The assailants were arranged in strict groups of three: with two armed with rifles and the one in the middle carrying an energy weapon in hand. One such formation approached a car, and a blue flame spewed from the rectangular brown gun, melting the closed door into slag for the fiends to shower the inside with bullets.

Rage rose to the surface in Aranea; a vessel popped in her eye. These are potential parents! She broke ranks, unleashing the howl mimicking the one she had heard in the recent vision. It echoed off the fallen rocks as she stormed into combat, jumping ahead of her pack. Her legs collided with the shoulders of the bastards shooting inside the vehicle. Her toes found armor beneath their uniforms and cloaks and crumbled it with ease, denting into the fragile bodies. Bones snapped under the pressure, filling her ears with a pleasant prelude to the sweet music of their screams.

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She bounced off the cripples, weaving off the path of the flying plasma orb. A kick to the bastard's knee dusted it completely, snapping the leg like a straw. Aranea tore the weapon from its weakened hands and used its butt to knock out all three writhing raiders cold. Glancing inside the car, she saw blood, an unmoving body, and a groaning couple covered in bullet holes.

A swipe drove her away from getting inside. She had briefly noticed the upward arc nearing her nose and reacted at the last second. Fresh torn edges appeared in the melted door. The creature that rose to face her was green; chitin plates covered its body from head to toe. A wide plate covered the area where eyes and a nose should have been. Fangs, too large to hide inside of jaws, protruded from the maw, and hooked claws stuck out from the fingers.

With mindless, aggressive hissing, the creature tore through the car's roof with a horizontal swipe, aiming for Aranea's throat. She took a step back, gaining enough distance to evade the strike, but the claws still gouged a thin line in her breastplate and shortened the taken energy weapon in half. Better not block that. She noted, grabbing the shardgun and pressing its barrel to the exposed right side of the beast. A single shot tore through the thing's torso, sending fountains of green blood. It stumbled, but rather than collapsing from the severed spinal column, it spat a clot at her. Aranea leaned to the side, shoving the car aside, and the spit landed on another vehicle. The bulletproof surface bubbled, corroding instantly, and gave way to the unknown substance.

Aranea kneed the creature, closing its jaws before it could spit another glob of acid. She rammed the shardgun's barrel under its skull and fired once. The greenie's upper head disappeared in a puff of green smoke and a torrent of slime. Adrenaline jolted through Aranea's veins, and she declined the gift once more.

A bullet ricocheted off her helmet, and Aranea ducked, rolling away from the car to draw the fire aside. Another trio emerged from behind the truck, firing at her. Kostya climbed the truck, disappearing half of the black-clad to the left with a single shot that shaved away both flesh and bone. The two remaining men instinctively took aim at Kostya. Aranea rushed them, kicking one of them, the one wielding the energy weapon, onto the road. She slammed her palm into his fellow's silver mask hard enough to bulge its green lenses and crash his head into the truck. The body slipped and fell to the ground, unconscious. A hiss to her left alerted her to the gun's charge.

"Use your weapon!" snapped Sonya, landing on the black-clad. He squealed as the leg broke his sternum, and she shot a hole in his head. "Stop trying to take them alive!" Sonya leaped to Yuki, elbowing her away just in time to save her from a greenie sneaking up behind her while the warrior was busy tearing the silver masks. A hail of shards ripped it apart.

Am I trying to take them alive? Aranea thought to herself, briefly looking at the shardgun in her paws. Sonya was right; she was. She had never killed a human before, merely monsters and occasionally crazed robotic bots. To end a person felt wrong.

A wounded man climbed from the car, his eyes filled with pain and confusion. One of the black-clads pointed a rifle at him. Aranea reacted without thinking, realizing that she had pressed the trigger only when gaping holes appeared in the bastard's torso and he was flung back like a rag in the wind.

Up close, the Wolfkins unleashed carnage upon the raiders. Be it melee or ranged, the rigorous training and their superior physiology gave them the edge, and blood spilled abundantly, accompanied by the torn limbs and panicking screams of the black-clads trying to mount a defense. It helped them little, as the Wolfkins crawled under the rubble, jumped over the cars, and assaulted from every direction. They wielded their paws, shardguns, the sharpened ends of their vambraces, and even their knees and elbows with enough skill and force to kill a Normie in an instant.

I took a life. Aranea understood, standing guard over the wounded caravanner and pressing a trigger again, killing a black-clad wielding an energy cannon. A bullet found her back but failed to penetrate her armor. She grabbed the injured, placed him back into the car, and then turned around, blasting away the foe.

Not a monster, not an insectoid or a horror that crept out of an abandoned bio-laboratory. Not even a humanoid machine. She ended an actual human—a person who had dreams and desires, who breathed just like her, and who maybe had a cub waiting for him or her back home. By the Spirits, she didn't even know if it was a he or a she. Her breathing intensified, and she understood Olesya, who had been acting strangely for a week after the mission to eliminate a cannibal gang. And yet Aranea….

Felt nothing. Her thoughts and worries were focused on keeping her pack and allies alive; the lenses were pinpointing enemies for Kostya and Kaleb to kill; she had sent a command for Sly to guard Yuki's back automatically; her fingers sank into the trigger, sending the shards at another scum trying to fire at a trucker… It freaked her out. Not the fact that she had just killed another person. It was the realization that she had crossed that line and was unbothered by it.

Mom and Dad would've been disgusted with me. I should feel something. The hanged priest, the dead people, the frightened cubs… Yes. Whispered a primal voice into her ear. Etch it into your memory. The scum responsible for that deserved to perish. So is Tilden. Let it go. Accept the reward and continue slaughtering until daybreak. Rain down your rage upon them without mercy or respite….

An attack of the green creature on a Wolfkin pulled her from the pointless introspection. The thing pushed its hand through the warrior's chest, all the way through. However, the armor systems alerted the soldiers that the heart and one lung remained intact.

"Kostya!" Aranea barked, breaking into a run.

She closed a paw around the thing's wrist, straining her muscles to stop it from twisting the arm as the greenie tried to fling the convulsing warrior at Kostya. The male didn't miss that chance, shooting twice: first to sever the greenie's second arm and then the one inside their ally. Aranea released the limb, spun, and landed a heavy kick to the greenie's head, shearing off the top part. Armless and partially headless, the thing headbutted into a shot and disappeared in gore.

Kostya gently laid the warrior down, raising a thumb up to another male who carried their injured away. A missed lung? A damaged spine? Those were not problems for a Wolfkin, but Aranea experienced a touch of pure hatred over an ally's injury. She didn't know the woman, and it didn't matter. A pack member who would have readily had her back in any situation nearly died.

No more restraint or mercy.

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