She awoke, still entombed in bodies, but no longer surrounded by cold flesh. Three hundred and fifteen skinwalkers coiled around her, cradling the rexed pale sbs, sniffing her hair, sting her, sharing the warmth of her body. Alpha pressed the palm of her paw to her chest, sensing the newly formed lung inside. Even the cracks in her ribs had disappeared.

  “Sister’s back with us. Good day, sleepyhead!” Voices sang around her, and the light of their eyes illumihe warlord. “Let’s py, let’s py!”

  They hugged her, the once-proud warriors rendered into psychotic mobile sughterhouses by the fw of their biology, through no fault of their oha could not find it in his heart to reject them. Even monsters needed family. And someone who cared.

  “I ’t join you,” she told them pinly. They gave her space to stand, and her cheeks blushed at the uanding that the bitches had ed her the way a mother s an unruly cub. “A war awaits me.”

  “A war? Battles! Sughter! Take us along; we’ll py with meat bags!”

  “We’ll pry them open!”

  “And see what’s inside!”

  “We’ll fill the nights with screams!”

  “A with joy!”

  “Like a family!”

  Alpha almost agreed to their pleas. Now that they had calmed down a bit, she was able tnize some of them. There was Anya, a wolf hag who had watched over a remote vilge for a thousand days and nights after the Iternian Culling. The woman believed herself to be the sole survivor of the Tribe and had performed her duties admirably until she was reunited with Ravager and rewarded. She had nearly taken her own life wheransformation took hold, but had survived long enough for the taint to spread.

  o her stood Lena, once a curious scout in Pack Alpha and a proud mother of four litters. Hoy she had been to win the domination matd receive her promotion. The woman had willingly accepted the ge, believing it to be part of the Spirits’ wills as the shamans taught. Alpha examihe ged fad saw nothing of the formerly posed woman. Lena’s ugly grin had reached her ears; the ers of her mouth cracked, her features distorted. The ridiculous, radiant smile, the bliss of a junkie. In her previous life, Lena had never begged. Not even ono matter how hard it was. Ruined. So pletely and irrevocably ruined.

  The skinwalkers were off the leash; it was just a matter of time before the first civilian was devoured or worse. A careless word will sow the seeds of flict, and assembled tools of destru will find their way into unprepared paws to further the siing spectacle pnned by these monsters.

  “No,” said Alpha. “Return to the Outer Lands. Away from civilization, away from the settlements and military bases. Live ie caves and be good. you py this game for me?”

  “We ,” they lied unhappily. “But why stay here? We have such woo show you!”

  “I am still stable,” said Alpha.

  “Are you?” inquired the skinwalkers surroundi the bottom of the pit. “We sense disturbance.”

  “It is sadness,” admitted Alpha. “I hurt those under my and to summon you.”

  “We don’t want you to be sad, sister.” She te their approach. Two skinwalkers climbed nimbly out of the pit and raced toward the tree line. “You think we want to hurt you, but we don’t. Visit us, alone or with Mom. Such sights we show you underground! And no evil, promise, swear!”

  The earth shook as the skinwalkers bounced off it, breaking the branches above and disappearing into the forest, not b to hide their movements. Alpha used her fear wave, now much weaker than the version she had used before, to track their dire north. Maybe they weren’t bullshitting about obeying. Perhaps, just this ohey’d do as they promised and not linger in these nds, wreaking mayhem.

  Testing her arms and legs for pain, she climbed out to find Sarkeesian and a shaman lying on the ground, their lips and fur covered in dried blood. Knowledgeable paws stitched together the ends of the gaping gashes left by Alpha’s cws, closed the wounds, and eveached severed limbs. Not daring to risk harming them, Alpha roared a call, calling the pack bad hoping, against all odds, to hear two more voices.

  Legs stomped, and the cream of her pack hasteo answer her call, advang cautiously to their location. Of the two missing women, there was no sound.

  “W-warlord…” the shaman exhaled. Crimson threads covered her and Sarkeesian’s bodies, strands of hair stolen from Alpha’s hair used in pce of stitches. “They... the revetions the Blessed Ones whispered to me. They cim that the Spirits didn’t create the Blessed Mother, that she ied them, ahey are real now, brought into reality by her existend our faith.”

  “Tread carefully. Take nothing at face value,” Alpha cautiohe woman, marveling at the level of medical care she had been given. The shaman will do more than survive; bless the Spirits, she’ll even keep her legs! “Skinwalkers’ words are ced with lies. The Spirits use them to test our resolve aion. For every truth, they feed us ten poisons. And today they have already worked holy.”

  “There is oatement that is less obscured than the rest.” Sarkeesian’s blood-soaked eye focused on the warlord; a swollen mass of flesh pletely covered the other. “Our young. Did you harm them?”

  “Yes.” Alpha k, pg her arms on the ground.

  “Why?” the wolf hag asked, trying to sit, and the wounds on her shoulder reopened. Alpha probed the woman’s mind, using a whiff of terror to keep the wolf hag pinned.

  “Because I am a tool,” Alpha began, remembering the white rooms of the experimental ter and the screams of dying subjects in her cws. “It’s that I am different from the rest of the Tribe.”

  “No… shit, ma’am,” Sarkeesian tried to smile, grimag in pain.

  “Lie still, will you, soldier?” Alpha held back the urge to sp the idiot, worried about her safety. “What is a secret is that I am not a Wolfkin. I am a product, the distilled vision of what a Wolfkin should have been acc to a vile vision and a ed mockery of the Blessed Mother’s cubs.” She spread her arms, hating the o lie.

  Ravager had ordered that the ins of the Wolf Tribe be kept secret from the lower ranks, o be revealed to outsiders or a the supreme shaman and the warlords. She feared possible reprisals, and for a long time Alpha sidered her paranoid, until the day came when Iterna carried out the Culling of those with the ‘impure genes’. Sihen, every warlord had learhe value of keeping their mouths shut, cautiously quashing any attempts at racism within their nation and praising the wisdom of the Dynast and the ander who had repeatedly warhat this might e to pass.

  For their sakes and as far as they k, the Wolfkins mutated from humans, like Ice Fangs.

  “Pretty idioti retrospect, huh? The imbeciles who created me failed to notice the obvious fw of my ridiculous cws, incapable of wielding anything. A tool incapable of even dressing itself, a savage barbarian in a world full of excellent ranged ons, a waste of resources. But they crafted me true in the rest, the bastards,” Alpha said bitterly, mingling falsehoods with the truth, unwilling to shy away from admitting her sins. Sarkeesian deserved better. “Loyalty is ingrained in me. I ’t resist an order from my superior. And they used me as a fighting dog to test the limits of those they captured, f me to kill until the day came when the Blessed Mother and the Dynast delivered us.”

  “Blessed be their names,” the shaman muttered.

  “Indeed.” Alpha sighed. “My sin remained. I fessed everything to the Blessed Mother and asked for punishment, fully uanding the gravity of what I had done. She listened and embraced me, refusing to punish me and asking for only ohing. That I be a good girl.” The absurdity of it all sounded as ridiculous now as it did then. “Sihen, I have imprinted on her and the Tribe, doing my best to atone and keep my crimes a secret. Now you knoha raised her head, exposihroat to another female for the first time sihe versation with Ravager. “Judge. I won’t resist now or ter if you are too weak.”

  “Not my pce tue against the ander’s mercy,” Sarkeesian forced the words through her broken drills. “I have seen you in a, Warlord, and tens of thousands rescued and trained by you. Whatever you have done in the past, I am hoo serve the woman you have bee. Help me to my feet; I will join the defense of Houstad.”

  “No,” Alpha said. “Warlord Janine is wrong about many things, but even a broken clock is right twi a day. You’ll sit this o.”

  “My friends are dead, bitch!” The wolf hag snarled. “Their souls demand vengeance!”

  “Wolf Hag!” the shaman gasped. “Watch your tone!”

  “For that, I’ll scar your back ter, Wolf Hag,” Alpha promised, hearing the approag footsteps. “Rest. My decision stands. This war is over for you.”

  “I thought you were supposed to serve the Tribe!”

  “And I am. To the Tribe. Not Sarkeesian. Sarkeesian is a part of the Tribe pced at my and,” Alpha told her, standing.

  Starstrue ehe clearing, g the pit, and immediately checked on the wounded. She exhaled in relief and snapped her fingers, silently anding a wolf hag followio call the medics from the ranks of Normies. There were no more secrets left here to be kept from the outsiders’ eyes.

  “Will the Blessed Ones return to their dwellings?” asked Starstrue, marveling at the gift of two spared sacrifices.

  “Most of them,” Alpha answered. “The e is broken, but I feel the i. Two pns to fool around, the majority go home, and one is missing. Prepare the search parties; I will not leave my soldiers…”

  “We found them on the way here, Warlord,” Starstrue said.

  As the shaman shoha what her cursed sisters had doo the two injured shamans and the dead woman, her paws closed and cws drew long lines in her arms. Twisted limbs were stretched to the breaking point, the bones ihem reduced to bone dust. Dead eyes, still wide opened from the unspeakable torture, stared at the shocked pack members.

  We don’t want you to be sad.

  Instead, they made her first joyous and then enraged.

  “Take them off,” Alpha said, maintaining aone. “Respectfully. them in cloth and give them a proper farewell, Shaman. Don’t let the Normies see what’s been doo them. Then off to Houstad.”

  “You speak as if you pn to go a separate way, Warlord,” Starstrue said.

  “I am,” Alpha firmed. “I hope my sisters will five me for not personally sending them on the final journey. But matters of the living demand my attention. Our kin escort the voy ees. I will join them as soon as possible to protect them.”

  ****

  Mad Hatter stood in the exposed hall of the aer, admiring the results of her handiwork. The Recmation Army believed in the security of their wall, and there was a certai to that, as their bastions, built at a certain distance from one another, possessed impressive firepower and mao repel any regur invasion. Unfortunately for them, she didn’t belong in the realm of normality, but rather acted as the deity’s wrath inated, and so she had passed through the ser beams unharmed, fttehe bunkers with the swings of the scimitars, and inhaled a full chest of forbidden chemical ons, desperately unleashed to repulse her.

  The fortification ruins surrounded her, and the khatun had examihem curiously, questioning the survivors. Fshes of gunfire bahe darkness of the colpsed corridors as soldiers tried to attack her; brutish, apish assaints stood shocked as she had been weaving around their blows and outpag bullets, inquiring of their traditions to determiheir future role in the Gilded Horde. It was a game. She had promised to spare the bondsmen, Normies as the Recimers called them, if a single bullet or kouched her furs, hair, or skin before nightfall. The defenders had been unsuccessful so far.

  She passed the trol soles, ign a few survivors who preteo be dead and dutifully tried to tact their and. Such loyalty had to be rewarded, and the khatun decided to forfeit the game at dusk and ie these serfs into her . Baaken from the defeated war bands caught her attention, and she touched the fluttering cloth aher, unfurling several.

  Behind her en field divided by roads; a single ssh of her scimitar sheared off a third of the fortification, sending it crashing down like a ndslide. Had she known of such trophies, Mad Hatter would have shown more care. Crude boaffs, with spines of the unfortunate victims braided around the steel poles, stood alongside exquisitely tailored silken standards so wide they could easily pass for sails. She reized the greenish patterns snaking across the silk, shining even in the shadows. So some of the nations she had quered had tried their hand at raiding the Recimers’ nds.

  “Curious. Shall I destroy you? Your Sultanate refused to surrender,” she said, ign the insistent whispers of her ‘passenger’, who was trying to vihe khatun to accept his offer. “And what is this?”

  She heard a noise and stepped aside, irritated when a bullet dehe alloy-covered bohat served as the pole for a war fg. These were her trophies now! Ign the urge to murder the gasping soldier, Mad Hatter moved on, running a finger over the cap of a dead officer seated in front of a dispy. Debris had fallen from above, pierg the man’s chest. Was he in and here? She closed his mouth and leaned forward, examining the dispy, eager to glean something of value, tapping the gold-encrusted unicator in her ear, ready to send any useful information to Iron Lord.

  Their dear traitor had reported that Houstad’s leadership was uaking every effort to safely evacuate its popution at the cost of abandoning its industrial and research facilities. Sure, the traitor was a scheming flea who harbored pns to use the Horde and had already tried to deceive them about the size of the Recmation Army, but in this the reports sent to them proved true, much to everyone’s bewilderment. She uood the value of seality, but on folk could use their owo escape. An abandoned factory ce where ons were made for the enemy. Ahe reports on the s tio prove it.

  “Hey! What do you think you are doing, causing a ruckus around here? It’s our hobby; get your own, copycat!” Mad Hatter blinked, hearing the cheerful, mog query.

  She didn’t notice the newer. The soldier gasped, not i the inhuman speed, but at the tall, pale body t over the human. The creature’s scarless skin was white, muscles coiled beh it, always in motion; its fiwitched, and it grinned with a wide maw full of sword-sized fangs. It resembled a Wolfkin, but its eyes cked tration, as if a thousand thoughts and desires passed through them in a sed. The thing stood rexed, shamelessly exposing its nakedness. It had no fur, but a long blond hair touched its shoulders. Its back was to the horizon, where a mushroom explosion swallowed a good third of the blue sky, and the rag shockwave reached the ruins.

  “You’ll do.” Mad Hatter smiled, gauging the creature’s physical limits from its height, the way it breathed, and the visible muscles. Not much exercise, but better than nothing. “Tell me, intriguing embellishment of the day, what are you? I have never seen a pureblood like you. Are you a mutant, a test subject, or did you take the deal…”

  “Liar riding a liar.” The thing cpped its hands and tilted its head, examining some unseen curiosity.

  White motes shied away from approag the strange beast, and for ohe pretender was not in a hurry to snatch a champion. He seemed disgusted by this aberration, and it was new information, but it wasn’t what draihe smile from Mad Hatter’s face.

  “Peculiar statement.” It bothered her more than even sleep deprivation. “Why did you call me that…”

  It lunged, apanied by the sound of a fired on, colpsing the part of the floor, and the soldier screamed, grabbing the edge of the ruined room to save himself. The operators stopped feignih and rushed to his aid, while Mad Hatter raised an arm and examined a wound with disbelieving eyes. The creature’s talons sshed at her, far faster than it should have been able to move, and a single drop of blood appeared from the paper cut on her arm.

  She was wrong. So exg. Mad Hatter wished to experiehis feeling again.

  “How…”

  “Oh, don’t cry; I barely grazed you!” The monster fell on his ass, rolling with glee as a series of wet pops went off around its knees.

  “Is this your power?” Mad Hatter inquired as the cut disappeared into the smooth skin. Pity. She’d like to earn a scar. “Super speed? Cute parlor trick, but useless. It won’t save you.”

  “Who said I’m wanna be saved, liar?” The thing stood up, crouched, and pced its palms on the ground. “I’m enjoying myself.”

  “Again you say it.” Mad Hatter frowned, growing irritated. “Why? Whom have I lied to?”

  The creature jumped, blossoming a wide soni in its wake. Its edges touched the soldiers briefly, but it was enough to reduce them to a crimson mist. Angry and ag on impulse, Mad Hatter punched, pnning to wipe the ridiculous grin of this madwoman who had dared to kill those the khatun had deemed fit to spare.

  What? Her ears caught the sound of tearing ligaments as the knuckles shaved the flesh from the creature’s skin, barely toug the bone.

  The creature’s head twitched, bending so that the skull disappeared behind the body, and the air propelled by Mad Hatter’s fist tinued, crumbling the reinforced fortifications and gouging into the intact segment of the wall, the devastation growing as the talons struck the khatun’s chest.

  There was no pain; she had instinctively braced for the ining stab, but the impaocked her off her feet and brought the astonishing thrill of being cartwheeled through several walls and ending up buried in the rubble. Mad Hatter stood up, ign the bullets boung off her body and the unicator falling out of her ear. She o the few soldiers, accepting their victory, and walked back to the dust-covered aer. The crazy naked woman lihere, kneeling by the soles he intact wall, pying with the cables with a single w arm. Her right arm hung loosely, then fixed at an elbow and shoulder, and paws mouhe dangling head at the back of the neck, letting the mog amber meet the khatun’s.

  “Okay, I figured it out.” Mad Hatter poi the woman’s trembling legs. “Your impossible evasion, inability to stand after g me in the first e, and unnatural burst of speed… A normal human usually knows his limits and does not try to turn his head beyond the impossible because it hurts. You have regeion and ighe body’s limits, deliberately suffering what should have been a fatal injury just to nd a hit or dodge.”

  “It’s one way to match you.” The fiend shrugged.

  “Match me?” Mad Hatter pced both arms behind her back. “Arrogant, crazy woman. Your delusions have led you to the wrong idea. You are touched by divinity; I will not deny it.” She walked up to the tensed woman, not b to take a defeance or reach for her scimitars. “But I am God’s daughter. If I want to, nothing touch me.”

  “Wrong on both ts,” the thing snorted, “but cute.”

  Mad Hatter serenely rested her head on the shoulder, just in time for the swinging arm to miss. Now that she knew what to expect, she could clearly hear the tearing of muscles and the breaking of bones. For a moment, the woman’s arm arced above the khatun, then it came down, snapping at the elbow, shoulder, and wrist. Mad Hatter stepped away from this toud from the sweeping leg kick that failed to reach her fur robe. As quickly as the limbs self-destructed, they healed, regained mobility, and the dance began.

  Bloable of leveling buildings Mad Hatter, the creature’s speed rendering her arms and legs invisible to the naked eye; the merciless onsught resembled the ravenous white beams of a high-powered ser to several soldiers who arrived to withe otion. The dispt of air deprived them of the privilege of the divine edy as the unleashed shockwaves popped eyes and tore bodies, widening the cracks in the room and sparking from the shattered soles.

  Not a siack reached Mad Hatter, who strode through the forest of living spears aimed at her. A slight tilt of the head brushed hair away from covetous hands; careful footwork moved her elegantly aside the line of attack, her inparable mind predig every possible move hundreds of steps into this dance, and the khatun closed her eyes briefly, trusting her predi to carry through the prelude.

  Sounds died as their bined movements bahe air around them, and silenveloped the room, disturbed by the pretender’s irritating offers of power. The two opped their dan the vacuum; this moment beloo them alone, a challenger against an avatar of God, and Mad Hatter would not have it any other way. If that creature thought she or it could do me in, the and do it.

  To her credit, the pale-skinned horror opped improvising, deliberately extending the length of her limbs by violently shattering each bone and using the limb as a whip. Through the agony of self-mutition, the creature delivered blows from every ceivable as arms boung off the floor and walls as it closed in on the fleeing foe.

  But every py had its finale, and Mad Hatter opened her eyes, blinking away the blood as the sounds resumed. Here it was, the ehe creature’s right arm twisted, ing around its axis, each muscle ging tightly to the boo lend superior speed to its thrust, and the seemingly mindless attacks positioned Mad Hatter with her back to the wall. Left ht, or an undignified escape from the stage. Exploiting my pride, huh? Ni, but every ps only to fail against an Avatar. A little more speed to circle around the woman and then a chop to finish…

  The creature held off the attack, briefly baffling Mad Hatter, when suddenly an e fsh of explosion surrounded her, shattering the ground, and she uood the thing wasn’t attag randomly. It had iionally stayed in this room, fiddling with soles to activate a self-destruct sequence, while Mad Hatter had been too founded by the loss of her footing. Just as the khatun had pnned everything in advance, so too had her oppo, and the rotating arm emerged from the spreading fire, closing in on the robe.

  I refuse! In the midst of the growing explosion, Mad Hatter found a stoo stand on and, for once, used all her strength to bounce off of it. The added velocity turhe piece of roto a meteor that tore its way through the floors of the bastion to the surfad deeper, opening deep yons around the pce. Her jump carried the khatun outside, and she witnessed firsthand as the Recimers’ stronghold was scattered by the atmospheric wound she had caused. The fortress no longer existed; any survivors died faster than their paiors could alert the brain to the pain, and the wave of destru tore through the nearby green and rocky pins.

  “Seems I forced you to run away after all!” A ughter came from the rising cloud of dust, and the badly mangled creature limped to stand on a shaking pilr. The thing cked an eye, one arm was missing, and it grew thinner, no longer possessing reserves tee.

  “What are you here for, really?” Mad Hatter asked, aowledging the fact but not the loss. It did not touch her. She had won.

  “To train you,” the creature gurgled, spewing blood. “It wouldn’t be fun if Mum murders you in a siab.”

  “Then her skills are…”

  “Surpassing my own, yeah,” the thing firmed, ign the shaking ground around.

  “Good.” Mad Hatter covered the distance of a hundred meters faster than the pale creature could react. “Because your skills…” Still holding her hands behind her back, the khatun kicked; the tip of her foot the Pureblood’s ankle and traveled all the to the head, opening the body. “…are nothing t about.”

  The force of her kick reverberated through the creature’s body, bursting every blood vessel and damaging every cell as the body unfolded in glorious petals of white ahe khatun waited, firming the death, and nodded as the remains slowly merged with the dust of destru. She had killed regeors before, and she will do so again.

  Do you see it? The red-eyed form whispered in her ear. The world is far vaster than you have dared to imagine, my daughter. Today you made a mistake and survived thanks to your superiority, but how long will that st? Accept me, take yhtful pce at my side, a us remake…

  Liar. Mad Hatter’s chest strained, expanding slightly, her muscles flexing, tightening. An invigorating surge touched her, strohan anything before; the pretender tio blurt out his falsehoods, and she didn’t care enough to pohe implication that he hadn’t offered his services to the creature, or that the thing had been able to see him.

  No, she stood for several hours w about that statement. She never lied, did she? In a world of deceivers who wao take advantage of everyone, she had told the harsh truth since childhood.

  What was the lie?