Katriana’s eyes became glassy when Leila’s mind took control over her body. The half wyrm took the soultaker’s head with her palms, not allowing the woman to break eye contact.

Aranea had seen this mind control power in action several times by now, and each time it made her uneasy. They were in the small stone building, meant to be used as a prison, while the army was busy laying siege on Bloodmoon Bastion, the sole remaining fortress that stood between the state and the regulators’ capital. Scorpio decided to take down this place to deal with the holed up Soultakers first before laying siege to Dresgen.

"All done." Leila said, releasing the soultaker, and the woman blinked, backing off from the half-wyrm.

"What did you do to me, you fucking mutant!" Katriana demanded to know with a panic in her voice. Both her arms were tied up behind her back, the soultaker still wore her black uniform, only her helmet, gloves, and boots were taken off by the security. The woman hissed when she backed into Aranea, who stood before the exit.

"Katriana, or should we call you Cat?"

"I don’t care! Pick any name, tell me what you did to my mind, you ugly whore!?"

"Just removed the imprint that demanded your death in case of capture," Leila said tiredly, "Captain Scorpio wishes to make you an offer. As you have undoubtedly noticed, there is something really fishy going on with the resistance. Your side attempted to destroy the entire Belaz just to get to us…"

"Nothing but propaganda and lies." Katriana cut off the half wyrm.

"Truth. But if you don’t believe this, surely you saw how your very side used civilians as hostages…" Leila stopped, looking into the soultaker’s face, "You do know, right?"

"This shot aimed at Chort wasn’t an accident, right?" Aranea smirked, and Leila looked at her pleadingly. The wolf hag insisted on her presence here because of fear that the black wyrm might have ordered Leila to force Katriana to become his slave or something. Scorpio allowed for Aranea’s presence on the condition that she be silent.

"I have no idea what you're on about," Katriana shrugged, "Accidents happen in war."

"And finally, we have the fact that you and your people were subjected to Blaguna's madness," Leila continued, walking from one side of the room to the other and pressing the tip of her claw to her lower lip. "Surely even you have to admit that the "dangerous" raid in which your command sent you and your soldiers was nothing short of suicidal?"

"So far, the only ones who killed men and women under my command were you people." Katriana responded, struggling to break free from the restraints on her arms.

"We are at war," Leila replied bluntly, "and you have the opportunity to limit the number of casualties on your side."

"What about my soldiers?"

"They were captured shortly after you fell asleep," Aranea told the soultaker, "Leila already removed the imprints, or bindings, or whatever your side calls them, off your comrades. The captives are to be transported back to the rear and will spend the rest of the war in prison."

Katriana looked first at the wolf hag, then at Leila. She pressed her lips tight and shook her head, causing the black mane of her hair to shift like waves of water. The officer tried to break the restraints one more time before calming down.

"Fine," She said, "A deal then. All the soldiers who were captured with me are to be escorted safely to Iterna’s refugee camp. All of them, regulators included. Do this for me, and I will be willing to listen to the offer of the black lizard."

"I will have to discuss this with the captain," Leila nodded, and closed in on the soultaker, causing the woman to press her back into the stone wall. The half wyrm wrapped her tail around Katriana’s waist, pushing her closer and slicing off the restraints on her wrists, releasing the prisoner, "Aranea, I will take it over from here. I will not use my mind power, I swear." Leila continued, ignoring the fact that Katriana desperately tried to push her away.

The half wyrm walked to a sole table in the small room and sat before the terminal, calling for the captain. With a tail she pointed to the chair before herself, and after a momentary hesitation the soultaker took the chair, putting it as far as possible from Leila, before sitting and massaging her wrists. Aranea only shook her shoulders, leaving the two alone, under the supervision of the guards in the corridor outside.

The wolf hag came outside, greeted by the sounds of a working camp. At the south of the camp stood several massive artillery vehicles, the soldiers had just returned from shelling the enemy fortress on a daily basis. The artillery corps was the pride and joy of captain Scorpio, these men and women wielded the most precision artillery pieces in the entire Third Army, bar none. Once, they wiped away an entire cannibal tribe, leveling the village without leaving as much as a mark on people in dens for prisoners.

But right now, they found themselves helpless against a looming square-shaped fortress that could be seen even all the way from here. The Bloodmoon Bastion.

In the days of the past, Bloodmoon Bastion was buried underground, it was one of many reserve fortresses of the nation that controlled these lands before the Extinction. Its walls were made of pitch-black metal that seemingly absorbed all light coming to it, the size of a fortress was not overly big, according to the spies from the locals, the Soultakers struggled to fit even fifty hover tanks inside, and with recent losses, this number was dropped to a mere thirty. But this fortress was fully self-sustainable, it was capable of producing both tasteless nutrient paste and water for its defenders, the defense batteries on its walls were perfectly able to damage even the warlord.

Previous Regulators found this place and even managed to activate the fortress, raising it from the ground. It was too small and in a desolate location, far from any trade routes, to serve as one of the cities, but since the Regulators took over, they have used this fortress as one of the defense bases.

Ivar wanted to one-up Scorpio and tasked Janine with opening gates and taking the fortress down. Aranea remembered how her warlord attempted to do just that, her form wreathed in flame, blood pouring from countless wounds in her body, while the warlord retreated, after her surprise attack failed and the enemy’s batteries saw her through the darkness of the night. Scorpio quickly took over the command of Janine’s pack, sending the warlord back to the camp and making a military oath that the fortress will fall in ten days. It was the morning of the second day and the captain was still nowhere to be seen. While waiting for the warlord’s recovery, Aranea volunteered to test the warform.

Aranea had her orders, but she walked toward the infirmary anyway, following the call of her warlord. The place was spacious, but aside from several near-dead regulators, two of whom bore wounds from Aranea’s auto-cannon, the place was almost empty. Captain Scorpio and his forces took surprisingly few losses during their advance.

Janine sat on four stretches, tied together to accommodate her enormous bulk, while medics from Annie’s and Virginia’s pack were busy treating her back. Her flamecaster was missing, revealing to the world her stump, with several broken mechanisms within her arm. An engineer was standing before the warlord, doing his best to get the augmentation working again. The fur was missing from the left side of Janine’s face, ugly burns covered her skin. Her right side was tightly bandaged, one of the energy blasts broke through her armor, eating away a large chunk of flesh beneath her ribs. Her armor was removed, leaving the warlord to sit dressed in an oversized medical robe, open on the front and back, her axe lay on the bed behind her.

Marco stood nearby, looking at the massive steel piece of the shell that was coming from Janine’s back with a look of disgust on his face. Both medics tried their best to remove the broken shell, but all their attempts were in vain, even with their enhanced strength, they dared not risk tearing it away while their instruments were getting broken against the warlord’s flesh, causing both women to curse out loud.

"I have had enough of this," He told the medics, "I am going to ask Till for one of his cutters..."

"Don’t bother about it," Janine growled, "It will dissolve in time."

"Yeah? Like the metal spike that we found next to your lung? Be silent and let us work," Marco turned to the medics, "Prepare painkillers and dress in hazmat suits. It’s going to be messy."

"Warlord," Aranea came closer and bared her neck to Janine. The warlord merely looked at her, forcing the wolf hag to stand still instead. Janine nodded, allowing Aranea to speak freely, "I and Sly are to leave for the mission…"

"None of you are going," Janine cut her off, "Scorpio has made it clear that this mission is only for volunteers. I will be the one to go with Valerye, not…"

"Shut up, Janine!" Aranea snapped, feeling her blood turn to ice beneath the warlord’s hungry looking gaze, "The Reclamation Army is the incredibly wealthy and powerful state! Who, then, gave you the right to throw away lives, your own or otherwise, so easily?" The wolf hag squeaked, trembling like a rag in the wind. She forced herself to keep on going, "What, you think no one will care if you die? You think no one in the entire state can do your job? How many people will die in the future if we lose you here? We have no need for your barbaric self-sacrifice, you have a duty to live on, so for the love of Spirits, sit down, shut up and let the medics do their jobs!"

Aranea trembled when the massive arm moved towards her. She was fully expecting to be picked up and lifted to the massive jaws, one of steel and the other of flesh. She imagined how the cruel fangs will burrow into her flesh, breaching all the way down to her bone, taking away one of her limbs for daring to… Janine instead grasped her shoulder.

"Come back alive." The warlord simply said, before lying face down on the stretchers.

****

"…Thank you for the hard work, Leila." Scorpio said over the communicator, his jovial voice made her heart beat even harder. Trying to resist the urge to turn red, the half-wyrm put the communicator down. The solid pitch-black scales of Scorpio’s hide, his beautiful purple eyes, his…

Concentrate, you idiot!

"Your offer was accepted, the captain eagerly awaits meeting with you in person to discuss the details," Leila said to Katriana, forming a triangle with her fingers and trying to look imposing. The soultaker only nodded, folding her arms on her chest, looking at Leila with pure disgust in her eyes. Not hatred. It made her curious, "What is it between you and I?"

"None of your damn business." The woman snapped back.

"I can make you talk, you know," Leila’s threat sounded hollow to even her, and Katriana only laughed at her bluff. Yes, in battle she could have ordered the woman’s heart to stop, but Aranea was right. Leila’s power was messing things up more than fixing them. The half-wyrm noticed that Kate often wakes up, trembling, mid-night, "Listen, we fought together. You saved my life and I owe you one…"

"You saved mine, we’re even, now just fuck off, will ya?"

"…Is it something that I did by any chance? Have I killed a comrade of yours or…"

Katriana only rolled her eyes, standing and walking from one side of the room to another, looking like a cornered animal. She put both her arms behind her back, holding the cape in place.

"Your side has already killed plenty of my friends," She finally said, stopping Leila with an irritating nod, "Yeah, yeah, I know, war and all that. It’s how you look," Katriana continued pointing at Leila, "Your wings, your tail…" She spat on the floor in disgust, "I’ve had a few mutants in my unit…"

"New breeds," Leila nodded. One of the prisoners from the tank unit had unusual looking snake eyes. Another prisoner lacked any bones in his arm, but his limb worked just as well as the limb of any other person, "This doesn’t answer my question, if you dislike the new breeds, why did you ask for their freedom?"

"Because I am not a racist!" Katriana forced herself to come closer to Leila, slamming her palms against the table and looking at the half wyrm with a mix of disgust and strain, "I am fucking not! I risked my damn life to save all kinds of people around the Ravaged Lands, and if you even so much as dare to imply that I…" The soultaker calmed herself, clenching her fist and forcing herself to keep looking into Leila’s eyes, "It’s because some of you freaks look like Malformed. If only you could have seen what these freaks were doing to people out there..."

"I've seen it," Leila said, standing up and pressing a clawed hand to her chest, "But not all Malformed are responsible for their kin's hideous crimes. There is one who works…"

"Just… Let’s drop the subject," Katriana said, turning around and falling back in the chair, "Your very sight offends my eyes and that’s the end of it. If you want to have a chit-chat so much, pick another topic."

"Sure. Can you tell me about the culture and people of your people?" Leila asked with a ray of hope in her voice.