Itu Kerehoma ran across the sand plains. The moment he lost the connection with the commander, he took the recording and ran. Chort did it, he had little doubt of it. The mercenary came to him shortly after he received confirmation that Katriana Vincent was down in a fight. He remembered it very clearly…

Itu was finishing recharging his machete when the door to his room exploded. He turned around, half in panic, half in worry that the reclaimers could have sneaked up on them. The machete in his arms moved, slicing away the pieces of wood. Then, from the darkness of the corridor behind his room, a tentacle slid into his room, moving faster than his eyes could track. It reached for his body, wrapping around his upper torso, and the soultaker felt how the sharp fangs within the tentacle were tearing at his flesh. His hand moved once, slicing the tentacle away. Before Itu could even understand anything else, he felt pain in his whole body and his machete fell, the energy that ran across its blade turned when the weapon hit the ground.

Coughing from pain, Itu glanced down at his body, feeling how his vision was going dark. A hand speared him, breaking his bones, ruining his lungs, pulverizing his heart and bisecting the spine column. His legs went limp, but he managed to look up into the smiling face of Chort.

"Now then," The mercenary smiled, "No more loose ends."

Itu only smiled in his face, allowing the "Retry" to activate and carry him away from the room. He only regretted that he could not see the surprised face of the mercenary.

He blinked twice, finding himself in the hangar of the fortress, dressed in the simple uniform of the Soultakers, armed with his machete. The recordings lay in his backpack, along with the supplies for the journey. All in all, he looked just like he was when he spoke with her the last time. Itu tried to contact Katriana via a communicator, but only base command answered him. Without thinking, he turned toward the entrance and used the codes provided by the commander to get away safely.

Itu’s power allowed him to leave anchors of himself on the land itself. Should anyone hurt him, or should he need an emergency exit, the "Retry" activated and carried him away to safety, placing him in the precious spot with the same gear and in the same condition that he was in when he was using the anchor. During his time as a mercenary, Itu sometimes used his power to duplicate food and water for the mercenary group. But he hid the ability to duplicate food and water from Jek. Dominion always said that she was up to no good. Turns out, it was Dominion who was a scumbag. It was Jekaterina who saved them all, but Itu never found the heart to tell her the truth that he was hiding something from her.

He spent half an hour making a detour to the nearby mountains, leaving an anchor in a remote cave. The process was simple, he grabbed the ground with his hand and concentrated for a minute, leaving a ghostly apparition of himself on the ground. He could easily do this with his foot, but when Itu was alone, he always did the ritual with his arm. Creating a new anchor caused all anchors from the previous days to disappear. Just to be safe, Itu made another anchor, two steps away from the first one. Two ghostly apparitions of him were in the air, disappearing before his very eyes. Good, the precautions were in place.

His sole goal now was to reach Jekaterina and give her the information. King was ok with using his own people as hostages. His mercenary bodyguard set up Katriana. Something very fishy was going on. She needs to know, she…

Itu stopped, jumping back and finding a grenade on his belt. There were some tremors in the sand in front of him. He threw the grenade ahead. Before the device could explode, a figure erupted from the sand, charging at him. Itu faced the enemy with a thrust of his machete. He cursed in mid-thrust, when the fist of the figure slid underneath his blade, crashing the thumb. The figure charged past him, and he turned around, facing the foe. The grenade exploded behind him, deafening him and wounding his back with pieces of metal that found their way through his backpack. This potentially destroyed the recording of the speech between King and Chort, but Itu did not care at the moment, he had the means to retrieve it. A more pressing concern was before him.

A woman, dressed in a crimson business suit, stood before him. Her short red hair was tied up in a knot behind her head, her suit was stained with sand and pieces of rock. She blinked the sand away from her eyes while Itu took the machete in his left arm, reaching for another grenade on his belt. The woman smiled and charged at him, backhanding the hit of the machete away with her right hand and crushing his knee with a kick from her left leg. Itu moved to grab her with his left arm, confident that he had lured her close enough. An elbow in his ribs was his reward for such a foolish assumption. The speed and reflexes of his foe were not that above his own, but the woman read him like a child.

Her strike carried him away from her by three steps. He fell on the ground, hoping that she would charge in for a kill. But when the grenade went off in his hand, he only saw that she jumped away from him, gaining distance. He allowed himself to scream, feeling how his skin was tearing away, how his organs were being reduced to…

Blinking away the tears, Itu found himself in the cave. He fell on his knee, the agony of his death still very clear in his mind. His body trembled weakly, while he tried to think. He had never seen this woman before. Who could she possibly be...

Itu fell on the floor like a doll when his spine cracked. A boot hit him across the spine, a blade hidden in the heel came out and pierced his spine, paralyzing the soultaker below his waist. He groaned, trying to look behind with a still moving neck, when he felt a cold metal piercing the skin on his head.

Itu used the second anchor, allowing himself to reappear behind the attack. His hand found the machete, and his eyes saw the back of the woman in the crimson business suit. Itu didn't care how she found him; he forced the painful memories away as the blade of his machete was about to fall on the back of her head, slicing right across her...

The fabric on her elbow was torn, and a blade came from the back of her elbow, piercing the soultaker into the belly. He croaked, trying to slide away from it. The woman jumped back, pushing the blade even deeper into his spine with perfect accuracy, despite his struggling. A trickle of blood ran from his nose when his spine was separated for the third time on this day.

"H… how?" Itu asked, feeling cold below his neck. The woman tore the blade away from his body, allowing it to slide back into her suit while she herself caught his head with her warm hands. She lifted him in the air, looking him in the eyes.

"Don’t feel too bad, honey. You killed me five times before I got you," She smiled with crimson lips at his confused face. Holding him with one hand, she reached for the black bead in her ear, "Miss Green? Yes, it is done, King can keep on going safely. What?" The woman asked, briefly looking at Itu, "No, please tell Academician that the person is dead. Sadly, I can’t deliver him for the experimentation."

The woman put the second hand back on Itu’s neck. He wanted to say that he was still alive when her fingers found his throat and tore it away, going all the way to the bones within. In a moment, his neck was snapped.

Itu’s death was painful, but mercifully short.

****

"She lied to us. The bastard was alive. Shall I punish her?" Green Valkyrie asked Academician, who was sitting in a comfy armchair before a set of old-fashioned displays. The room was covered in utter darkness. Except for a heater, which kept a cup of coffee warm, not a single device in the room was turned on.

"For what?" The insufferable man laughed, before lifting the coffee cup and taking a sip, "Green, her job was to stop the asshole. Our dear girl wanted to kill him and deny me a chance to open him up, and well, she has a right to that. Besides, how would you punish her? By killing? As if this would stick!" He shook his head, "Ah, I miss Purple Valkyrie."

"Didn’t you two hate each other?"

"That’s beside the point!" Academician responded, putting the cup away, "The smart girl always knew how to allow others certain liberties, if the mission was completed. Liberty! We are the sole successors of the Old World!" He shouted, jumping in the armchair, "To deliver humanity from the yoke of mutants and nonhumans, we create mutants, arm them, train them, and command them to kill the genetic trash that dares to pollute our beautiful world! All in the name of liberty for humanity! How could I, then, blame one of my dear comrades for exercising her liberty to do as she sees fit!?"

"One of your damn mutants killed Purple," Green said, shaking her head, "Academician, start taking your job seriously, or one day your damn experiments will kill me. Or you."

"Happened already, failed to keep me down. Now hush, my dearest. I must think. How else can we fuel this war to go on longer?"

****

A group of four people walked across the scotched plains of the Ravaged Lands, heading toward the corpses of long-dead trees. The trunks of these trees were wider than a tower, and the branches were as thick as a human torso. Once, they must have been a gorgeous sight. Their barks were covered by cracks, showing the dead insides, not a single leaf covered the branches. Ash from the Old World was embedded into the trunks. Like so many marvels of the Old World, these trees, too, are dead now, standing monuments to something that was once and will never be again.

Miska felt sick to her stomach upon seeing this. The Ravaged Lands were known for causing depression and anxiety in anyone exposed to their wastes for too long of a time. But seeing these mighty creations of nature, knowing that they survived the Extinction, only to wither and die in the days that followed, devoid of water and suffering from the sun, which now brought them death rather than substance, was heartbreaking.

She could hardly bear it. Just like two others of her fellow soldiers, Miska was dressed in the black and gold uniform of the regulators, a shotgun was in her arms, and a silver mask adorned her faceplate, hiding Miska’s skin from the howling wind that even now tortured the corpses of these trees. She once shared the fact that she felt uneasy coming here with the other soldiers, causing almost all of them to laugh at her. It was hardly surprising, prior to being drafted, she and the others worked at a farm. Growing cusacks and later cracking their skulls to skin them for leather and meat, working on the back-breaking job all day hardly left much care for the soul.

The blue who walked with them never laughed at Miska, instead telling her that he felt the same. The Chort’s creature resembled a human in shape, standing slightly taller than any of them. A pair of belts ran around his waist, keeping twin SMGs in holsters while he walked, with his arms folded around his chest. Aside from belts, he was otherwise fully naked, but the heat and the wind of the Ravaged Lands provided no challenge to the blueish skin of this creature.

Unlike their green kin, the blues liked coming and drinking with the soldiers, laughing at jokes and making jokes themselves. Some of them preferred to go by "she", but most simply used "he" to describe themselves. Each and every one of them were almost indistinguishable from each other, a living copies, but with varied personalities. Some eagerly learned how to cook, some, like this one, were busy spending time in the fortress’ library, learning all they could about the Old World. And all of them, without exception, knew how to use weapons and kill. Miska saw this blue take apart five enemy soldiers with almost contemptuous ease.

The fortress way behind them shook when artillery shells hit against the mighty walls. In the past three days, the garrison had gotten used to such "greetings" from their new "neighbors". The reclaimers couldn’t take them down, the garrison kicked the butt of their so-precious warlord with ease, their black lizard made an oath to take them down, and all that the blasted invaders could do now was spill their impotent rage against the walls from outside of the firing rage of the fortresses’ batteries. No matter what they do, Bloodmoon Bastion will never fall to them. The shelling soon stopped, like it always did, and the disgraced foes crept back to their base.

The howling wind made Miska’s cape flap behind her back, but the servomotors inside her power armor allowed the regulator to march on, undaunted by the rage of nature. There used to be a settlement here, nestled in the old mine. But the people were supposed to be evacuated from the area, or at least this was what the commander declared. And now they have detected an energy spike here.

The group walked further in, noticing a single building ahead. A simple house, the walls made from the wood of great dead trees, the walls bearing countless scars from the wind, even despite the protection of tall trunks all around it. This was supposed to be the house of one of the prospectors, the mine itself lay further to the south, and the majority of people lived inside, evading the sun. But a few strange souls choose to live in this dead forest, away from civilization. And according to the device on Miska’s arm, it was from here that the strange energy spike was coming from. And…

"I am detecting encrypted communication," Miska said, when the decoder on her wrist sent an update to her helmet, "What is going on?" She looked at the building and the blue loudly inhaled the air. He lacked visible eyes and a nose, but judging by the food that other blues were cooking for the defenders, the creatures definitely had a sense of taste and smell, as they were able to make gorgeous food that almost made soldiers want to swallow their tongues, "According to the data, someone tries to get to the command channel! Should we call for reinforcements?" She looked warily at the house. It had two "windows," two tiny slices in the wall that were covered by metal plates. Thanks to her power armor, the regulator had enhanced hearing, but right now all she could hear was the cracking of tree branches. The place looked desolated.

"No," The blue said, unfolding his arms from the chest, "Too late. Call the fortress, tell them to obliterate this location, and fire all your weapons at the house at once."

"What?" Miska blinked. The device on her wrist was capable of detecting working power armors. No enemy would be stupid enough to come this close to the fortress, without one.

"Don’t you get it, Miska? The patrols of my erratic green kin undoubtedly passed by this place earlier. But there is not a trace of any bullet holes or blood… This is a trap. Warn the command and fire now, riddle this house with bullets while I am fighting against the one behind us!"

His hands reached the SMGs while he himself was turning. Miska had no idea what he was talking about, but she tried to obey his order, lifting her shotgun while seeing how the blue threw up his weapons, taking aim at someone charging at them from behind. Both he and the attacker became two figures made of blur, two shots fired by the blue flew to the skies. The blue made an attempt to retreat, firing again, and his body was flung toward the house, landing on the ground with limbs broken.

Miska’s finger found the trigger when someone crashed into her. She felt pain all over her body, the world spun around her, followed by the sound of tearing cloth and metal. To her surprise, the regulator noticed that she was flying upward. During one of her spins in the air, Miska saw two dark forms on the ground, her comrades were felled before either of them could as much as scream.

So fast. Miska thought, wanting to scream the warning to the command, only to find out that the generator of her power armor was destroyed, the com system was torn, leaving a gaping hole in the lower part of her helmet, allowing the cruel air to bite at her chin. The soldier was enchased in the depowered power armor, feeling trapped and unable to move even a finger. Swallowing her panic, Miska concentrated on trying to move her arms or legs. With pure horror, she realized that both of her elbows, her knees were shattered, the excruciating pain was driving her mad. The regulator could feel the bone shards scratching against her skin with each turn in the air.

All that was coming up, bound to come down. Swallowing nervous drool, Miska noticed that she was falling down, from a height that allowed her to see the house’s roof. She closed her eyes, preparing for another surge of pain when her body was caught, before either of her limbs could touch the ground. Miska opened her eyes, blinking away the tears of pain and feeling how piss was running down her legs, when she saw the face of their attacker through the lenses of her depowered helmet.

The creature of nightmares, one of the doggies. Its snout was longer than Miska’s wrist, one of its eyes was crimson, while the other was of pure amber. The eyes looked almost artificial because of the light that was coming from them. It was dressed in a simple green shirt and cargo pants. Pitch black fur that looked to be able to stop a bullet covered every inch of the creature’s body, only around the crimson eye, the fur turned to white, creating a small circle. Even with the fur covering, this being had a single visible scar running down the left chin. Two triangle-shaped ears moved, listening to every sound. The muscles on this creature’s arms looked like solid chunks of stone, bulging visibly even despite the fur. A bullet hole was in the doggie’s right shoulder, along with a small dent above. The blue didn’t go down easily.

Miska’s legs were unable to touch the ground, and with horror she understood that the creature was holding her by the armpits. These creatures did not have hands; instead they had paws, and Miska trembled, awaiting the moment when cruel claws would slide from this creature’s fingers, rendering the steel of her power armor useless and biting into Miska’s skin.

"Mercy," Miska croaked, shitting herself and preparing to be devoured alive. Lady Blaguna frequently sent information to the troops about these creatures, the enemy's maddened shock troopers, the beings without mercy or restraint, those who feast on the corpses of fallen regulators and helpless villagers, "Mercy for my comrades, please! Eat me, if you want to, just let them go. We… we… we let one of your kind go once!" She blurted out, remembering a story about how the soultakers returned one of the doggies, along with the regulator. The regulator never came back, undoubtedly eaten by now. Lady Blaguna made sure to spread this story, pointing out that it was the height of stupidity to treat these creatures like normal prisoners. Her order was to kill any doggie on sight.

"Calm yourself, you will be treated like any other captive," The being said, carrying Miska to the house, trying to hold her steady, "People, open up! We have guests, prepare a place in the basement!"

They are going to take us apart and eat us alive! Miska closed her eyes, speaking her prayers, hoping that she would be strong enough not to reveal anything during the torture.

"And prepare painkillers, all of our guests could use them." The doggie added.