Chapter 47: Chapter 41

"We found the target, sir. She is in the underhive." Lord Steward smiled upon hearing Teofil’s words. With the former regulators’ permission, he modified their throats, giving them the ability to emit a sonic signal that was impossible to pick up by normal human ears. This signal bounced from building to building, carrying their words to him, the only person in the city whose ears could hear these words. Teofil then started describing how to get to the underhive, and Lord Steward rolled his eyes, understanding that he had forgotten to tell them that he knew his way around the city.

During the fall of the palace, Lord Steward escorted his new allies out via an underground exit made by his own bulk, later collapsing the newly made tunnel with his own flesh. The former regulators dropped their armor and weapons and were now spread around the city, searching for her.

It was not a hard job, the woman was standing out like a sore thumb despite her best efforts. She could not be seen close to the Wolf Tribe’s forces, thus it was somewhat easy to pinpoint her possible locations in the city. Neither could she risk showing up before officers of the state, nor could she risk trying to escape the city, not with all the troops around Belaz.

He wasn’t spreading the Oath, of course, even his current allies were still just nonbelievers. Brogard was with him, his body was dissolved among the mass of Lord Steward's. Only Brogard's brain was intact. Lord Steward was busy burning the Number out of him, slowly and meticulously, cell by cell, reshaping his genes back to the original form. He could sense the second Number in his body, panicking, while Lord Steward was dissolving the remains that tried to overrate his own psyche. He gave the number the choice of cooperating with him or being destroyed. The creature made its choice. Perhaps the one within Brogard or the other one will be more reasonable...

The Number who used the body of the elderly man and the Numbers in a few other dead bodies were already smuggled out of the city by his agents, the scientists in the capital wanted to see what they could learn from this plague of non-humans. A smile touched the lips of Lord Steward. The Numbers will be provided with vat-grown bodies and will be thoroughly researched. This Creator of theirs, the rogue Rho… He fucked up with the wrong crowd this time. Lord Steward will enjoy eradicating everything that this scumbag has created.

He wasn’t the one to share any superstitions against non-humans. Among the Oathtakers, he was one of the few who willingly worked with Crawler after all. But, unless there was a way to change the Numbers from the beings hellbent on annihilating humanity to normal citizens, he will wipe the slate clean of their presence. Not even a trace of them will be left. The world had suffered enough.

Lord Steward stood from the table, jokingly saluting the bar owner, a burly man in his thirties. He smirked to the officer assigned to watch over him, joked a little with the people on his way to exit, and came outside, greeted with the loud sound of construction work, curses, shouts, and most incredibly, laughter. Lord Steward briefly looked around, noticing the relieved faces of the locals. The pain and fear of the passing days were over. Finally, they no longer slept under shelling, no longer lay awake afraid that they wouldn’t wake up or that their loved ones in the army would never come back. No fear of the ceiling falling on you...

Idiots. Lord Steward’s pressed his lips into a thin line and his body exploded into strains of flesh before the surprised look of the officer, disappearing within the cracks of the ground, slithering deeper and deeper underground. He reached for the ruined tunnels beneath the city, finding the gigantic lump of his mass that he had left behind. The strains of flesh fell on a sickly looking, lifeless mass that was being gnawed upon by the rodents and insects. Lord Steward’s body dissolved against the mass, taking it within himself and reforming his body into a worm-like form that streamed across the ruined sewage tunnels, sending local parasites into wild panic.

The reclaimers were fools. Sure, it would be easy for him to wield his power like a sledgehammer, rummaging through the city until he found her. But this would cause resentment among the locals toward him in the future. The same resentment that the locals will, undeniably, feel toward the reclaimers. Only a moron would use military force to force a region's unification, Lord Steward agreed with Iterna on this point. Better to have ten years of negotiations and assassinations rather than a single day of war.

"Brogard, you with me?" Lord Steward asked, while his body streamed toward the underhive, a formerly illegal bazaar where all kinds of goods could be found and bought. Teofil reported to him that a month ago, someone hacked into his communication network, pinpointing him the location of the underhive. The regulators’ police force then quickly closed the place down. Now it serves as a small medical center for the poor and those who do not want to get in the eyes of the reclaimers. Only a token military presence was there.

"LS," The troll's head appeared on the front side of the moving body, inhaling air and breathing heavily. Over the years, Lord Steward learned how to guess the behavior of trolls. Brogard was in pain, extreme pain even now. The high templar no longer had any nerves, Lord Steward modified his brain to not allow even a shadow of pain to enter the sensory cortex of his brain. However, it was the blasted Number who filled his comrade with pain, causing him to relive the pain he suffered over and over, "Never… Never asked you this before. What’s your real… name?"

"Chmonya Ure," Lord Steward unhappily said. He needed to divert Brogard's attention to something else, or else the templar would suffer mental trauma as a result of being subjected to such prolonged pain, "If you tell anyone, I will deny it to my death. Nobody will believe you either."

"No… shit?" Brogard’s eyes, filled with pain, turned in his eye sockets to look at the place where Lord Steward created his mouth, "Not Alexander… Or Brutus… Or at the very least John… Fucking Chmonya?"

Upon moving through the tunnel, Lord Steward listened to the voices of people all around the city, trying to pick up interesting gossip.

"Please, if you know anything about my family…" The rest was cut off by the sound of a working instruments, distorting the speech.

"Damn invaders. I had a home, you know? And family," The sound of a cup slamming against the table, "A fucking shell took everything."

"Where is Sly? Why is it so hard to find this damn male!" A voice of one of the females from the Wolf Tribe.

"Thank the Sun God, you are alive!"

"Mom, I won’t be dying so easily. Come now, stop crying, all is in the past, we live."

"You heard about the competition? The one who gets a date with Sly gets a fortune!"

"But he is from the Wolf Tribe and you…"

"Who cares, tokens are tokens! We decided to give it a try! You chicken out or what?"

Who the fuck is this Sly? Lord Steward wondered.

His body smashed a stone blockade leading to the underhive and collapsed in on itself, becoming a sea of pulsating flesh on a dusty stone floor. The sound of his coming was deafened by the noise that was going on in the tunnels.

Lord Steward started changing himself, and Brogard's head once more disappeared inside his body.

****

"Done, next!" Csonka said after finishing bandaging the hand of a youth. The fellow was a former soldier of the regulators, who quickly dropped his military uniform after the battle was over and was now hiding in the underhive, along with other people. The man spat in her face before leaving, "Yeah, fuck you too, asshole."

She wiped the drool off her snout with her prosthetic arm, eyeing the second patient. A middle-aged man with a bullet hole in his left shoulder. The wolfkin frowned upon seeing that the bloodstain on his shirt was small.

"When did you get shot?" Csonka demanded to know, but the man simply looked at her. It was irritating. She told the police about this place. She helped local slaves to be freed. She desperately tried to warn everyone about the Numbers, treated the wounds of the locals, and yet everyone still treated her like shit.

But this is fine. I deserve it. Csonka told herself. Years ago, she was a member of the Omega Team, sent to evaluate a threat of the Numbers who hid in the lands of the Oath. When Chosen Prince invaded, she helped some locals escape him, escorting them to a nearby base.

Oh, how the Oathtakers rewarded her! Both of Csonka’s legs were now missing below the knees, replaced by needle-like steel prosthetics of the lowest quality, causing her to feel a tingle of pain with each step. Her right arm was gone, sawed away by these blasted cultists who accused her of trying to find routes for the reclaimers' invasion force. She now had a three-fingered augmetics replacement for her arm, the cheapest and yet the most expensive thing that she could afford. Years of substance abuse to numb the pain had caused her once-beautiful hide to recede, and she shaved off her own hair when she noticed gray strands. Her eyes, once filled with fire, were now pale. All that came to her with ease before, even something as simple as taking a piss, now caused her to feel tingles of pain.

Csonka broke during the torture. She could push on through almost everything, but the fact that she, elite among the elite, allowed herself to be broken, to reveal all she knew to the cult… This indignity was too much to overcome. She left a resignation letter to Alpha, not daring to even look in the eyes of her comrades, and left, paying for the augmetics herself and trailing the Numbers, trying to at least atone for her failure by destroying them.

The wolfkin failed in this as well, her warning came too late.

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"Sit," Csonka snapped at the man, trying to make him sit on the metal stool. His skin felt like a stone brick, and when he sat on the stool, it bent underneath his weight. With panicked eyes, she looked at the face that shifted before her very eyes, "No… Run, everybody! He is going to kill us all!" She shouted to the people who were lined up for the medical aid, and the crowd moved back in panic. The people on the upper floors of the underhive looked down, panic appeared in the eyes of both traders and civilians. A small patrol of the reclaimers heard her shout and now tried to reach them through the crowd of retreating people.

"Pardon the surprise, Cs…" The man’s features flowed, his nose changed position, the position of his eyes became slightly wider, and his hair changed color. The wound disappeared, the shirt turned into black leather. He started to stand up.

Csonka spat out an incendiary grenade. She may have been a disgrace unworthy of being called the wolfkin, but she was the former member of the Omega Team. No matter the situation, she was never fully helpless. The stomach was just one of the many places where she could store a potential tool.

Lord Steward was still saying something when she rammed the grenade deep into his mouth. The last thing Csonka saw before flames hid the face before her was a mix of confusion and annoyance in his eyes.

Unwilling to see if this would drop him, she turned around and ran like mad toward the corner of a plaza where she had a small place in one of the shacks. The underhive was located in the abandoned parking lot of four skyscrapers, the ceilings and mighty floors were hollowed out by locals, who placed their stores and shacks here. This place was crowded even in the better times, now it was simply filled with people. It was for this reason that Csonka ignored grabbing her backpack and only reached for a pistol. If she starts throwing acid grenades here, she is bound to kill someone among the locals. Assholes they may be, but they deserved better.

I will not let them torture me again. She thought in panic, turning and seeing how Lord Steward was standing up, his body covered by flames. Csonka heard a loud inhaling sound that came from him, and all the raging flames around him were sucked inside his bulk. The bastard smiled at her and exploded into writhing tendrils that slithered toward her on the floor. His body simply unfolded, the transformation wasn’t accompanied by any sound, save for the movement of tendrils against the floor.

Csonka did not try to fight. She jumped, half-breaking one of her cheap needles like prosthetics. The damn thing bent a little, piercing the flesh beneath her knee and causing the wolfkin to groan in pain. She had become such a coward, even this simple cut drove her into panic, prompting her to madly reach for the hanging energy cables from the ceiling and climb up. It was for this reason why Csonka never tried to take on the Numbers herself, well, that and the fact that she was too slow now.

She heard him moving after, the tendrils moved to the upper floor and reached for the cables, trying to pull her down. Csonka screamed in panic, jumping up to a ventilator shaft and crashing inside. The moment she moved across the tight shaft toward the exit, the metal behind her exploded and tendrils broke inside, worming their way after her. Csonka hated herself, but she screamed again, charging forward and leaving one of her prosthetic legs behind. She saw a turn to the side, a pathway leading into the main city, and leaped there, narrowly dodging the tendrils made out of pinky pulsating flesh. The wolfkin crashed through a grating, falling onto the steel below and losing one of her mechanical fingers.

Csonka ended up in a narrow alley, seeing the light of one of the main streets ahead. She could hear the loud working of drills, loud booming noise of excavating vehicles. No doubt some of the Wolf Tribe kinsmen were there.

Hurry, I… Csonka tried to stand up and fell to the ground, noticing anew the lack of her leg. Swallowing panicked drool, she understood that if Lord Steward came after her in person, he wouldn’t stop at destroying anything and everything to get her. And there wasn’t anyone who could stand up to him, They wouldn’t take me back alive! There was but one chance to escape the torture. Csonka grabbed her armor piercing pistol and pressed the barrel against the temple.

Csonka blinked, looking at the entrance to the ventilation shaft. She expected to see tendrils, to see the wall crumble, but nothing of the sort happened. All sounds of Lord Steward disappeared, his mass wasn’t anywhere to be seen.

Maybe he… Csonka’s arm was jerked to the side, and the pistol flew away. She tried to jump away, and her body was lifted in the air, held in an immobilized position by unseen threats. The wolfkin felt how her heartbeat became a drum because of panic and fear. She felt him. It was the flesh of his body that held her in place. Lord Steward spread himself so thin that he became invisible to the naked eye, surrounding her, capturing her…

The ground beneath her rose, a bubble made of dirt and stone, which turned into a pulsating cocoon first and then into the body of Lord Steward. His mimetic ability was unrivaled, this was one of his many abilities granted to him by his powers.

"Apologies for the scare, Csonka," He smiled in her face, and a wave of flesh rose in the air behind him. The walls of the alley shook, cracks went by their side, and the flesh behind Lord Steward bulged forward, showing oversized bone blades that were immediately pushed back by the flesh. Csonka felt fear, fear that was threatening to stop her heart, to take away her thoughts, fear that was far greater than anything she felt just a moment ago. Such a familiar fear. No, she can’t be here, "But you are a hard woman to find. And Oathtakers always…"

She fell into him, pushed by the unseen threads. Her flesh slid into his, and his body expanded, becoming bigger and bigger. For Csonka, there was no pain, but her lost limbs suddenly became extremely itchy. She wanted to bite into them, gnaw on her own skin until she got to the bone, anything to get rid of the itch. Csonka was surrounded by crimson water, and the blood that flowed around her soaked her entire body, reaching every pore. She felt herself energized all of a sudden.

The end was as abrupt as the start. She was spat from a cocoon of flesh, landing right in front of two mighty legs. She saw claws the size of her arms and…

Arms?

Csonka herself, over. She had both arms. Her legs were fine once more, the same mighty limbs that she once had, filled with muscle just like before. Her fur was a pristine black color, instead of the palish gray that it was before. Even her hair grew anew, reaching all the way to her waist.

"But…" Csonka whispered in confusion.

"Oathtakers always pay their debts," Lord Steward said, standing before the light of the main street, keeping a distance from them, "A catastrophic mistake has happened and thus you suffered. We tried to find you, Csonka, to remedy this mistake, but you always run."

"Please don’t take me back," Csonka whispered, climbing back until she felt her legs behind her. She hated herself, feeling how her piss covered the fur, but she could not control her fear. This man, like any Oathtakers now, instilled a primal horror into her. When neither the resistance nor the reclaimers listened to her warning about the Numbers, she called the Oathtakers, telling them about the location of their falling champion. But she never expected them to corner her, "I can’t… I can’t endure it once more."

"You won’t." Two hands lifted Csonka into the air, holding her struggling body with ease. She turned around and saw her face. The face of her warlord.

"Well, hell there, Alpha. Long time no see." Lord Steward smirked, and Alpha thrust her left arm forward, holding the struggling Csonka close to her body. A gush of wind moved toward the ruler, the ball of wind was propelled by the warlord's arm left cracks across the building’s walls, tearing the stone from the ground before hitting Lord Steward. He simply kept smiling, enduring a blast that could liquidate a human being.

"This was a warming," Alpha said, showing two rows of fangs in her mouth. Alpha was vastly different from the other kinsmen. Her paws and feet only had three fingers, her claws could pierce steel with a mere touch and were a constant source of danger even for allies, "Touch my soldier ever again and I will do you in. Scram from the city."

"No, you won’t," Lord Steward kept smiling, speaking with a false regret, "Alas, I must stay a bit. After all, I am the one who represents this city. Until your superiors officially seal the deal and take over, of course."

"Warlord," Csonka said, feeling horror upon understanding that her urine tainted the warlord’s body, "Please! I am not worthy!"

"I never gave you permission to leave, omega Csonka," Alpha said, looking down. Csonka felt fear, Alpha’s temperament was that of a raging fury. She was quick to force her will through pain and fear, beating lessons into her soldiers. But instead of opening her, Alpha closed the second arm around Csonka’s body, "You need something that I can’t give. But the others can."

With these words, Alpha leaped into the air. One moment, she and Csonka were on the ground, and in the next moment, both of them were above a thirty-story building. Alpha briefly looked around and hit the air with her arms once more, bouncing off of it as if it was a springboard, propelling both herself and Csonka across the entire city. The omega knew this technique as the "air step". In the entire Wolf Tribe, only two warlords could perform it. One was Alpha. And another was Valerye.

Like a comet, they flew above the city, descending ever so slowly, following the will of gravitation. Csonka felt the wind tearing at her body, despite all her fur, the usual overheated air of the Ravaged Lands turned to a cold breeze. The omega was tightly pressed to the mighty chest of her warlord, she could barely see what was happening around them, but felt a crack of stone when Alpha’s legs found the ground and the warlord landed, leaving a trail of destruction in her wake.

"Our sister is back!" The shouts came, and Alpha threw Csonka in the air, only for her to be caught by countless paws. The Omega team, at least thirty members of her former team, were all around her, catching her and throwing her in the air before catching her again. She heard the laughter of Blaze and saw the smiling face of Ron. She tried to tell them that she had failed, that she was dirty and unworthy of being with them, but the omegas refused to listen to her, "Our sister is back!" They laughed and cheered while the Alpha team formed a circle around them.

"Take Csonka to Hekanta for a check-up. Omega Csonka is to be examined and then sent off to the Core Lands for rehabilitation," Alpha burrowed Csonka with her eyes, "I never gave you permission to leave. Take as much time with these therapists as you need, but come back to us all fixed up. The pack is waiting for you, and this time, always pick up our calls."

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