Flame came through the cracks in the stone, licking the metal of an immobile armored coffin in which Aranea lay still. Even through thick armor, she heard a sound of a falling stone, mixed with the hissing sounds of dying insectoids. Countless legs scuttled across the surface of the cave, while drones desperately tried to find safe haven from the fiery hell that was coming from above. The flames found them and cooked them alive, leaving nothing but scotched remains no matter where they ran, walls, floor, or ceiling.
The hellish assault came to a halt just as instantly as it began. The wolf hag heard how someone shouted that the area was cleared, indicating that the regulators moved on, checking caves in the area to ensure that hover tanks could pass safely.
"All systems are online, drones confirmed the approach of the hover tanks. Aranea, how do you feel yourself?" Sly asked in a worried voice.
Instead of answering, Aranea lifted her left arm, allowing the auto-cannon to come to life with a wheeling sound. She looked at the rotating cannon and allowed a smile to touch her lips.
"Excellent." The wolf hag replied, and the display of the warform came back online, banishing the darkness that engulfed her a second ago. The internal systems of her new armor came to life, cooling off the surface of the armor.
Today, she was encased in the armored mechanical suit known as the "warform." Unlike a regular power armor, the wolf hag was suspended in the center of this armored form. Back when she first saw this suit in fort Uglo, it was taller than three meters. Following the incident when the initial prototype was literally destroyed by a careless movement of a wolf hag, after a heavy redesign it now stood at three and a half meters tall.
It carried the same weaponry: an auto-cannon on the left arm and a high-precision, armor-piercing cannon on the right arm. The mechanical backpack behind her shoulders served to house an additional energy generator and a missile launcher. There was no close-range weaponry on the warform, as the suit was meant to engage the foes from a distance. But when yesterday, Aranea put it on and made a ten-meter long leap and crushed a boulder with the lightest tap, she felt confident enough to engage even Bento’s heavy assault team up and close.
The losses among the wolf hags, shamans, and warlords were unacceptably high. Only the Gilded Horde, Iterna, and Oathtakers ever killed more than a single warlord, and now the Resistance was responsible for Dragena’s death, for Martyshkina’s being in a coma, and for the deaths of over thirty shamans. Such casualties were unheard of since the first wars against the Oathtakers, even during the invasion of the Gilded Horde, the losses were far less, and back then, Ravager created a whole new mountain range next to Houstad while fighting against the greatest of khans. According to rumors, after Devourer offered to send in his own troops, Ivar forced the development of the warform to enter the combat trial.
And Aranea was one of the volunteers, sent to serve under the leadership of Scorpio, who was slowly encroaching upon Dresgen fortress. Scorpio sent all of his warlords back, instead plucking up villages and settlements from the enemy via diplomacy. With Yasen gone, the madness of Blaguna Nokto became self-evident. With no restraint, she sent off her forces to collect everything of value from her subjects, bringing it all toward the capital. Meanwhile, the black wyrm slowed the advance of his forces, sending emissaries to towns and villages in the path of his forces. After the first few villages refused to listen to warnings of the black wyrm and burned at their hands, the rest quickly changed their tune, eagerly switching sides. Aranea’s heart bled for each and every civilian who died as a result of Blaguna’s madness, but she was forced to admit that Scorpio had a certain way to achieve his goal.
Way, that was more to her liking. Today, Aranea was supposed to deal with the front army group of the Soultakers who operated from a nearby fortress and capture the command officer in charge. Her pack, meanwhile, was busy waiting to ambush a small task force of the regulators, who were supposed to loot a village. The village’s elder wisely switched sides before, after a few recruits from the Regulators’ ranks informed him of the coming raid.
The warform’s head had no lenses, Aranea could see her surroundings through a gigantic display that glowed before her eyes. Several lesser displays showed her the darkness of the cave to her left, right and behind her. In time of need, the armor plate on the head of the warform can be detached, allowing the pilot to look through the armored visor. She saw dead insectoids and nodded happily. The special chemical meant to make the warform invisible to the annoying beasts worked like a charm. The stones around her partially melted, but the hull integrity of her mechanical suit was still pristine, even crudely painted smirking wolfkin’s head in the circle of a yellow ring, meant to represent the sun, was still on her right shoulder. Tiny came up with the idea of using this symbol to mark the Aranea’s pack, and the wolf hag approved it.
The suit was buried in a cave on the side of a mountain range. The Soultakers had precious few hover tanks left in the region and were unwilling to take risks with deployment. But this time, they made a mistake. Just like the black wyrm predicted.
"I am ready to join the hunt." Janine said over communication.
"There is no need, warlord!" Aranea responded quickly, coming to the wall made of human-sized boulders that were partially melted together by the flame. A single punch made by her arm shattered them like glass, "Please offer your advice to the scout Tiny in my absence, if this is not much to ask."
The wolf hag came crushing through the wall, seeing the regulators in the distance. The hover tanks had already entered the canyon, and Aranea nodded to herself, cutting off all communication from the headquarters aside from the channel with Sly. Tiny was in charge of the pack today, she will do just fine.
The soldiers barely had time for a warning shout when their bodies were riddled by auto-cannon rounds. Men and women jerked for a brief moment before being thrown at the stones behind them, slipping and tumbling down with a small avalanche of stone. Aranea ignored the similar crew on the other side of the canyon, the regular army's ambush units should have already moved out to this location, they can deal with those soldiers, while she had her sights set on a prime target.
The hover tanks, three out of four, made an attempt to retreat from the canyon, to face Aranea in the open field. Each of them was armored with a main cannon, twin anti-infantry machinegun turrets on each side of the elegant tower that mounted the cannon, and a small missile launcher behind the tower. The wolf hag refused to allow them this, the backpack behind her back opened, unleashing four missiles, two for each side of the canyon. The following explosion collapsed the sides of the canyon, burying one of the hover tanks beneath the stones and denting the main cannon.
Aranea jumped aside as a shell from the sole unmoved hover tank kissed her right shoulder, tearing away a good inch of the armor and exploding in the place where the wolf hag just stood. The warform had to become immobile before launching the missiles, but cutting off the enemy’s ability to retreat and taking down one tank was a worthwhile trade.
The wolf hag heard a drumming sound against her armor and the stones around her exploded when the remaining three hover tanks employed their anti-infantry machineguns. These were of the same caliber as Aranea’s auto cannon. Even the lightest models of power armors provided little defense against this. But right now, the wolf hag utterly ignored them, throwing up her right arm and taking aim at one of the rear tanks. A single shell left the barrel of the armor-piercing cannon, spearing the hover tank beneath the main cannon, killing the officer in charge of the tank and at least one member of the crew, before coming around the rear of the tank and creating a round crater at the end, burying itself a good five meters into the ground.
Aranea whistled at this firepower, dodging enemy fire. No wonder that her suit only carried five such rounds. This weapon right here could make even a warlord feel uneasy.
She charged down the slope, aiming to get up close and personal with the tanks, while her anti-armor weapon was busy reloading. It took roughly twenty seconds for the next shell to enter the chamber, far too long for Aranea’s liking, but these were the flaws of this test model. Meanwhile, she just had to survive.
The front tank refused to let her close, its main cannon fired right in front of Aranea’s legs, creating an explosion strong enough to halt her, while the second tank landed a shell directly into Aranea’s shoulder, sending her into a spin against her will. The systems of her armor screamed a warning, when a large crack appeared on the shoulder’s armor, but otherwise the wolf hag was good to go.
She landed on her arms, using the stone as a springboard to leap aside, dodging two more shells aimed at her back. Damn, the Soultakers are good! Aranea thought with excitement. Here, all alone, she felt alive, like nowhere else. No one under her command, no one to be afraid of or rely on. Just her skills against the enemies’. Her pure state kicked in, and Aranea smiled, seeing how the rear tank unleashed missiles. A mistake. The wolf hag has already devised a strategy to capitalize on this.
The wolf hag was half afraid to become obsessed with vengeance after killing Yasen. Shamans and Sonya warned against such feelings, rightfully pointing out that not even the blessed mother can take on the entire world. But in the coming days after the fall of Darkhold and their transfer to the army of the black wyrm she felt nothing. Even when she clumsily found Markus, trying to make an excuse for killing his father, she felt nothing but sorrow for the young man, but nothing about the dead man. It was like… a task that she scratched from her list and moved on. There was so much to do, and the halfbreed could spare no thought for a scumbag like Yasen. He was gone from the life and good riddance to him. Markus was too shocked by what had happened to forgive or condemn her, and he was appointed as the temporal ruler of Darkhold, having his hands filled as it is, working to bring life in the city and in the surrounding areas back to normal under the constant gaze of the blue wyrm and his minions. Aranea wished only the best for Markus and his people, even if he would rightfully choose to hate her for the rest of her days. All of them had paid far too great a price for this reunification.
The missiles closed in on her, and she faced them with fire from her auto-cannon, exploding them in the air and covering both herself and her surroundings in smoke. The slope shook, the tanks chose to fire to her left and right, trying to predict her movements.
Aranea jumped forward instead, pushing the servomotors of the suit to their very limit, lifting the eight-ton mechanical suit over the remaining tanks. A soft click indicated that her armor-piercing cannon had finally finished reloading itself, and Aranea took aim at the rear tank’s hatch.
She fired a single shot that silenced the entire chaos of battle. With an ear-piercing sound, the shell left a round hole in the hatch, killing the officer in charge and eliminating the engine. It speared the armored engine, exploding beneath it while the armored vehicle fell on the ground.
Aranea landed before the last hover tank. Instead of retreating, the vehicle turned off the gravity engine, falling onto the ground and swinging its tower to knock back the wolf hag. She grabbed the long cannon, holding it in place, and pointed the auto-cannon right at the hover tank’s structural weak point, beneath the tower. With a soft click, the warform informed her that the wolf hag had used her entire auto-cannon’s ammunition by now and was in need of manual reloading the magazine.
Curses! This thing has no staying power! Aranea now fully understood Sly’s concerns from the time she first saw this mechanical suit back in Fort Uglo. The auto-cannon lacked a fully automated reloading system like the armor-piercing one, making it more of a liability now.
The hover tank came to life, forcing Aranea to let go of the tank’s tower, grabbing the front armor. The damn soultakers aimed to splatter her against the wall behind her. Aranea bit her lip, hearing the actual strain on the warform’s servo motors. And, whether she liked it or not, she could only use a fraction of her physical strength while half-suspended in this suit, forcing her to rely on the machine to carry her through this engagement.
"Aranea, the suit was never meant for…"
"Not now, Sly," Aranea interrupted, "it's time to stress test this thing."
The wolf hag actually pushed the hovering machine into the ground, leaving dents in the stone road, enduring the fire of the machineguns. She felt herself incredible! She was holding the forty-ton armored vehicle in place, the mechanical suit allowed her to match, endure, and destroy three other hover tanks. In fact, Aranea felt strong, strong like a warlord…
She shook her head, banishing the drunken sense of overwhelming superiority. The warform was at its limits, some displays before her eyes went dark, burned out because of excessive energy supply directed to the systems, the servo motors started cracking. This thing merely gave her a ghost image of a warlord's power, nothing more.
Aranea jumped, letting go of the hover tank that charged on, smashing against the mountain and causing the surviving team of the regulators to curse when some of the stones fell from underneath their feet. Meanwhile, Aranea landed on the hover tank’s tower, spending a moment tearing away the missile launcher and twin machineguns, before charging toward the hatch, grabbing it with one arm and tearing it away.
A flashbang came from inside, exploding in her face, followed by a shot from a laser pistol. Neither of the attempts halted the wolf hag in any way, the HUD of her warform adjusted to the flashbang explosion with ease, while the armor endured the heat of the laser. Aranea reached with one arm, grabbing the officer she was tasked to capture, dragging the struggling form out and lifting the officer over the open hatch.
She recognized the woman, even despite the helmet that covered her upper head. She had the same long black mane of hair, a black cape flowed from the shoulders of her dark uniform. The laser pistol on her arm found Aranea and fired anew.
"Hello there, Cat." Aranea smiled to Katriana Vincent and allowed a small needle to come from her free arm, pushing the needle into the woman’s neck and injecting sedatives into her bloodstream. The officer jerked once more, before the conscience left her body and she slipped into a dream. Aranea threw the body over her shoulder and looked down inside the tank.
"People, you have two choices. Either you leave the vehicle and leg it, or I’ll kill you." Aranea lied to them. Already, the soldiers were capturing the survivors from the regulators' unit. The soultakers will never be allowed to walk free, just like their commanding officer, they too will be drugged and taken back to the camp where Leila will remove the bindings from the ones who had them. This was the only way around the mental bindings of the Soultakers.
The tank crew, nonetheless, agreed to Aranea's offer. They too knew that she was lying and knew full well that this was the only way they were getting out of here alive. Aranea watched them and the others leaving the hover tanks and allowed the regular army to apprehend them and the crew of the tank that was buried under the stone rubble. The mission was a success, and it was time to head back.
