Chapter 37: Chapter 31

The half-wyrm landed on the ground with a loud sound, cracking the stone beneath her feet. Leila usually moved around with grace and elegance, but now she charged toward her foe with heavy steps, leaving footprints in the stone ground. Lalo saw her and lifted one hand up, a leer appearing on his face, showing the broken, blackened teeth. One of his arms moved up and his finger snapped, creating a wall of fire above Leila and attempting to push the half-wyrm into the ground. Her wings hit, sending air around her in all directions and creating a sphere of safety around herself. The flames were pushed aside for a brief moment before Lalo moved both of his arms down. A raging hellscape appeared above the half-wyrm, melting the very stone beneath her and trying to smear her body across the molten stone.

For a brief while, Aranea lost sight of Leila. The half-wyrm did not respond to her, her life signs became blurry because of the searing flames that were washing themselves against her armor. The halfbreed remembered well how even the walls of the bunkers were of no use before Lalo’s powers, the man was able to melt through both armor and flesh with ease.

Aranea was still firing at the Chort, who was weaving around the incoming projectiles like some kind of supernatural creature, with multitudes of eyes sprouting from his shoulders and covering his arms. His human eyes were locked on the warlord, he tried to make a desperate dash to claim his prize, but even if the shots of Aranea and others missed, the wolfkins either fired dangerous enough projectiles to cause the mercenary to dodge out of the way, or they were shelling the area around him, cutting his flesh and exploding the eyes on his body. Chort dared not abandon the defense and instead pushed his own allies forward to make way for him.

Greenies and newly made blueish creatures produced by Chort charged from their hiding spots, crossing the distance toward the building in great leaps. Most of them were cut down by the fire of the reclaimers, but these creatures were only meant to distract the pack. The true attack came from above, several groups of greenies climbed onto the walls of the building where Tiny and her pack were, aiming to claim their lives. They were stopped dead by Annie and her pack, who formed a defensive perimeter around their allies. Annie herself turned into a ghostly figure, her movements overloaded the optical zoom of the cameras while she was claiming her toll from the ranks of the advancing enemies. Greenies and blues tried to attack Tiny’s pack from a floor below, but Annie’s pack pushed them out there as well. In the tight corridors of the building, the wolf hag of Dragena unleashed her skills, pushing ahead of her soldiers, her savagery seemingly scaring even greenies. Their blood covered the floor, limbs were severed while Annie gracefully moved around them, slashing through meat and bone with her knives. She pushed them from the rooms beneath Tiny and her team all the way to a broad landing. It was there that the creatures revealed that they had learned a new trick. The blues knew how to use firearms. Aranea noticed something strange in their movements, distancing herself from concentrating on Chort. Seeing through the cameras on the power armors the halfbreed saw how several blues took the weapons into their clawed arms.

Annie nearly died when a blue fired a shardgun into her abdomen. Only through sheer training did Annie manage to dodge to the side, allowing a scout from her pack to spear the blue with a well-placed shot from a sniper rifle. The blues were busy collecting the weapons of the dead reclaimers amidst the chaos of battle, mimicking the animalistic movements of their lesser kin well enough to fool the reclaimers into thinking that these creatures planned to wield the weapons like clubs. The wolfkins learned the hard way about their assessment error. Two wolfkins from the Annie pack and one wolfkin from the Aranea pack fell victims to the weapons of their dead comrades. Annie gestured with the knife, forcing the rest of her pack back while she herself turned to face the enemies, her arms hung by her sides like ropes. Aranea was unsure what the wolf hag just did, but according to the blurring image of the cameras, Annie appeared in the midst of the enemies, leaving just slashed bodies behind herself. Chort made a truly obscene number of allies in preparation for his fight with the warlord, but the single wolf hag started to thin them out.

Meanwhile, Carty jumped from the building, landing in front of the woman. Without stopping, the elite guard of Yasen was in the scout’s face, her arm moved forward like a bullet, aiming for the shoulder, and Aranea felt a tingle of fear. Right now, she was doing exactly what Janine had been trying to beat out of her for years.

"No duels," Janine told her years ago, "No honorably matches one-on-one with the enemy, nothing. Not until you become a warlord. Until then, have your pack surround the enemy and riddle them with shards."

"But what if…" Aranea tried to ask then, and Janine moved, impossible fast her index finger hit across Aranea’s snout, breaking a fang.

"No duels."

But this time, Aranea had to rely on this method to slow down the enemy before they could reach the reclaimers. Carty and Sly partially risked their lives to draw the enemies’ attention. However, only partially. For Aranea had learned everything she could about the enemies and had complete faith.... No her full confidence in the two soldiers she had chosen to play the decoy role... And in the soldiers whom she assigned to help them.

By half-turning the upper part of her body to the left and leaning her body to evade the blow, Carty dodged the thrust of her opponent. At that moment, Kate and Kaleb fired their shardguns, aiming at the woman’s face. The moment she saw them, she tried to jump back, and Carty’s claws found their mark on her side, causing the woman to curse, while she leaped to the side, evading the shots. The woman’s power armor was of a lighter model, one that was meant to enhance speed at the cost of protection. The scout’s claws punched through the armor on the woman’s waist and scratched the bone before she was temporarily safe, holding the bleeding wound. Carty reached for her guns to finish off the enemy when the woman kicked a stone in front of herself, landing a piece of rubble into Carty’s arm and making her lose a hold on one of the pistols. Aranea took note of it because the scout's wound bothered Carty far more than she let on. It became self-evident when the elite guard leaped at Carty’s once more, forcing the scout into close combat to not allow either Kate or Kaleb to even have a chance to aim their shots.

"Carty," Annie called over the communication, sounding worried. The wolf hag was busy bisecting two greenies, yet she too was busy watching over the battlefield through the cameras of her allies, "Need assistance?"

"Wolf hag you know me," Carty said in a strained voice, narrowly evading a hand that almost touched her helmet. A second palm moved to get the scout, and Carty punched the hand away, making the woman scream and back off, straight into Kaleb’s line of fire. Shards hit the woman in her leg, making her fall to the ground, while the scout fell on her wounded leg, releasing the ruined pistol from her grip. She used the weapon as a brass knuckle to avoid touching the enemy’s hand, "I love playing with food." The scout puffed heavily, while blood ran down her leg once more. She coughed and found a pistol, waking toward the woman rolling on the ground.

Sly, meanwhile, charged at his own opponent, running on the ground on all fours. His artificial limbs trembled for a moment before striking into the elite guard. The man lifted two fingers before releasing a tiny dot that was held by his fingers. A column of steel came into being, causing Sly to crush his head against it, three of his spider legs helplessly hit against the column of metal, leaving scratches, while Sly himself fell on the ground, shaking his head and making Aranea curse silently. His opponent circled around the column, one arm moving to touch the shoulder of the wolfkin…

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The arm was pushed back when the last one of the mechanical legs pushed itself back before Sly, activating a force field. Under the power of the guard, the energy shield shrank in size for but a moment, before a continuous flow of energy expanded the half circle of the shield once more, pushing the hand of the enemy back. Before the guard could do anything else, his right arm exploded in a fountain of steel and blood, as Sonya's well-placed shot left his arm dangling on a single broken bone and a tiny thread of meat. The guard fell on his back, screaming, while Sly stood up, saluting to Sonya. Instead of replying, she fired over his head, striking the steel column and forcing the soldier to duck and rush toward the fallen foe.

Leila’s wing pierced the fire shroud around her, she moved forward, ignoring both the heat and the pressure, waking knee deep in the molten stone, reaching for a still solid stone before herself with her claws. She pulled herself free from a small pool of molten stone, standing unharmed before Lalo. Aranea tried to call a system report of Leila’s armor and found that she couldn’t, the terminal that was responsible for this temporarily went offline due to overheating. The crimson armor of Leila almost glittered with heat, her every step left a molten trace on the ground. The half-wyrm relied on the internal supply of oxygen simply to breathe, such was the heat that covered the steel of her armor. Made from an unknown alloy, this armor was resistant even to the insane heat that Lalo produced.

And the elite guard could see it. The enemy new breed lifted two palms at the height of his chest and a bright orb appeared between his palms. The enemy’s leer changed to a mad grin when a beam of pure plasma extended itself from the orb between his palms, hitting Leila’s with the force of a moving car and making Aranea’s heart skip a beat. Leila pushed forward, ending one step away from the elite guard, her arms risen up before herself, her wings curled forward, trying to shield her body from the brilliant heat ray that was unleashed on her. The ground beneath her was molten, and the half-wyrm started to sink, causing Aranea to desperately try to come up with anything. Lalo was far more dangerous than Yasen or Chort in many ways, blessed with incredibly potent power, this new had truly tremendous potential, easily reaching captain level. But he was a fool, the one who never fully trained his power. All the information that the investigation bureau had managed to gather about him pointed to him being drunk of his invulnerability, the man never tried to push his already incredibly flexible power to its limit, being fully content with smashing everyone who stood before Yasen. The man was a dimwit, he could reform himself from the flames and could create flames at will, along with changing the heat of the flame. His weakness was water or any fire extinguishing substance. It temporarily forced him to gain solid form, making him unable to recuperate from the grievous wounds using the flames around him. But where would they find water he…

Leila reached out with her left arm, grabbing the smiling foe by the collar of his armor.

"Gotcha." Aranea heard her whisper, and square-shaped devices along her wrist unleashed a gas. Still bathed in the overheated beam of her enemy, this weird substance expanded from Leila’s arm, pushing the heat of the enemy aside and making an orb between his palms dim for a brief moment, before it simply whisked out of existence like a broken lamp. Lalo looked at his arms briefly in confusion before the mist left his lips. His eyes widened while his lips went blue, and his skin was becoming pale. The elite guard tried to close his eyes, calling the flames back to him.

The heat was dying around Leila, while she herself stood in the shroud of milky white mist that cooled down her armor, banishing away the searing heat that reigned supreme over her armored joints just a moment ago. The systems of her armor came back online, showing Aranea that Leila’s heartbeat was reaching new heights, a light sedative was unleashed by her own armor to slow down her increasing pulse that threatened the half-wyrm to have a heat attack. Wyrms were built differently, after all. Any wolfkin would have suffered irrecoverable damage from such heat, special alloy or no special alloy. According to the data that came onto Aranea’s retina, Leila suffered only a few minor burns on her left arm and the membrane of her wings ended up being burned away in several places.

Like a river that was sucked into a hole in the ground, the flames that were spread by Lalo flowed back to him, dying within the shroud of cold spread by the devices in the left arm of Leila. When Lalo tried to jerk himself free, Leila punched him across the jaw. It was a simple punch, not the refined hit of Annie. But this punch carried the might of a being who was able to easily rival a shaman in strength. Lalo’s skull was dislocated from his neck, his jaw exploded upon coming into contact with steel fingers. Unable to turn himself into flames, he suffered a serious concussion, becoming a lump of flesh in Leila’s grasp, his legs went limp, and he sank in her hold like a rotten sack, giving a single wheezing sound before going out cold.

Meanwhile, Carty walked toward her own opponent, pinning her arms with her legs and aiming a pistol into her helmet.

"Wait!" The woman quickly said, "I surrender…" Carty’s pistol kept looking into her face, "Seriously, I give up! I surrender!"

"Carty!" Tiny spoke in a strained tone, and Aranea could hear the scout reloading her weapon. "The enemy is giving up," Tiny said.

"She is lying, I can hear th…" Carty lifted one paw to her helmet.

"Carty, you are to accept enemy surrender just like scout Tiny says." Aranea stopped her midsentence, calming herself down and taking aim at the mercenary once more. With all the threats neutralized, they will be free too…

The palace roof exploded, and with a laugh, Yasen crashed through the remains, sending a barrage of his kinetic force to the roof where Tiny and her team were.

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