A Radiance Christmas (Stand Alone)

Serena felt a flush of rage as suddenly she understood the sack, that man was a thief, he was going to rob that human nest of their belongings and went to let out a bellow of rage before a large claw-tipped hand got clamped over her mouth.

She looked at her younger self in confusion as she shook her head before pointing and turning her head to face the window again.

To her complete confusion, the large red-suited human opened his sack and instead of placing the families belongings in it, he appeared to be taking out brightly wrapped colourful wrapped boxes and placing them under a large colourful tree before eating a plate of odd human food and drinking what appeared to be brahmin milk before vanishing only to appear on another roof moments later and repeating the process.

As they watched he jumped to every house and delivered gifts to all of them, once he was done he climbed into the slay which took off into the night sky, how the hell did Radstags fly while also pulling a sleigh!?

Serena turned to her younger self for an explanation but she simply smiled at her and then vanished only for another Claw to step into sight making Serena's mouth fall open as she was literally looking at herself.

Just like her younger self, this Claw was slightly see-through almost like a ghost or spirit but why was it her?

The ghostly version of herself smiled and beckoned her to follow her which she did only to find that the human village they were in now looked exactly like the one in the valley below their cave and it looked exactly like it did right now.

Instead of windows, the houses had both a mixture of bars and wooden beams to protect and hide the occupants from attempted robberies and break-ins, but it was the looks upon the faces of the people that really crushed her heart.

Misery and tiredness were everywhere she looked, it was like staring into the heart of depression, there were no colourful lights, no decorated trees, no wrapped gifts and most profoundly, no joy of any kind.

Her ghostly self beckoned for her to follow which she did and what she saw made her heart ache, looking through the boarded windows of a house she saw a human family, the hatchlings looked sad and like all the life had been pulled from their very souls, she also saw that the parents looked thin and gaunt, suddenly she realised that the parents were not eating that they were sacrificing their health for their hatchlings.

Her ghostly self guided her over to another house and this one obviously belonged to a hunter, but rather than being out hunting for food for his clan he was hiding behind his walls and his sadness radiated through her like a coldness, as she watched the strikingly beautiful human male sat there just cleaning his tools while looking at them longingly, he was obviously wishing that he could go out and provide for his clan.

When she stepped back she turned to look at her ghostly self only to find her gone, instead, there were two near identical elder claws infact they were identical except for the way they presented themselves and once again she recognised it as herself.

But while one version of her elder self looked truly amazing with brightly polished and long horns, clear and clean scales that looked thick and well-groomed along with a tail that was thick and luscious the other version of her was the polar opposite.

Thin, gaunt and obviously malnourished, her scales were caked in mud and dirt, her horns while long looked like they'd been chipped and blunted, her tail looked thin and listless.

The gaunt version of her beckoned and she followed leaving the radiant version of her to simply watch as with a gentle flesh she found herself in yet another version of the human village.

Only this one looked even worse than the other, it was filled now not with regular humans but with raiders, gone were the hatchlings who had once roamed and played, gone were the hunters and the workers of wood, metal and stone as well as pelt.

In their place stood cages filled with gaunt and miserable-looking skeletal humans who looked like they had been worked to the very bones that they very nearly were, sat around were raiders that were sneering at the caged humans, brutalizing them in vile and horrific ways, then the image changed to show both her and her brother far from this village shivering and miserable in yet another cage and it was obvious from the piles of corpses near the door that they had been harried and hunted by the raiders relentlessly, driving the pair to despair and near madness.

Her heart roared in grief as she saw her proud and beautiful brother as nothing more than a claw-shaped shell of a male, he looked like he had barely any strength left to carry on and the look in his eyes said he was giving very serious thought to simply hurling himself from the cave mouth and into the void of the cavern below them.

But as Serena yearned to reach out and embrace him to tell him it would be ok her strong-looking self appeared and grabbed her tearing her from this vile place and into another one.

This one simply couldn't be more different if it tried, the village was the same one but it was vibrant and bright, it was filled with life and joy again, gone were the miserable faces, gone was the gauntness that seemed to plague every adult, gone was the misery.

In its place were flushed and happy faces, joyful hatchlings ran and played yelling in joy, lights and trees like the old human town had were in every home, but what had caused this transformation?

That's when she saw it or rather them, there in the centre of the town were two very familiar figures, her and her brother decked out in white trim red and they were handing out gifts of items and food to all who came to them and they did come to them without fear, this was it this was the way she fixed everything!

Before she snapped back to reality and burst back into reality she saw all of the ghostly versions of herself and together in unison they choaresd "Choose your fate and theirs."

Waking with a start she inadvertently woke her brother who was sleeping on his pile of branches a few feet from her with a start, "Huh? Wuzzat? What's going on?" he exclaimed in a groggy and sleepy voice as his yawn exposed his large and well-maintained fangs.

"I know how to change things! I know how to fix things for both the humans of the village and us!"Serena exclaimed excitedly and even through his bleary and sleep-filled eyes she could see the confusion glimmering there.

"Huh? Fix what now?" he asked in the same vain of confusion.

"Everything!" she exclaimed excitedly pulling him to his feet and before his brain had even comprehended that he was moving she had shepherded her sleepy brother out of the cave mouth and into the world beyond, there wasn't a moment to waste!

"Explain this to me again because the last three times have just gone right over my horns, ghosts visited you in a dream and they showed you your life?" Sabat said scratching his horned head as Serena growled in frustration.

"Look it's simple, what's the major reason we haven't been able to find a new pack since we lost ours?" she said.

"Umm the ferals really don't trust us because we can speak English and we act different?" he suggested and she clicked her large fingers and pointed at him.

"Exactly! And what's the major reason the humans of the village live in fear?" she asked.

"Err because of the raider humans that kill and kidnap the peaceful ones?" he suggest and she snapped her fingers again before holding up two fingers in a reversed V sign to indicate he'd got two points right.

"Exactly! I'm saying I know a way to fix both problems, the raiders are no friend to us just like the peaceful humans aren't either, but I'm suggesting there may be a way where we can show the peaceful humans that not only are not a threat to them but we can help them, then boom we get a new pack albeit a different type of pack and they get protection, everyone wins except the fucking scum raiders!" she said dragging him through the abandoned human city that was a couple of miles from their cave like a homing missile seeking the reality of her dream.

"Yeah ok I'm beginning to get those points but what I'm not clear on is how in the name of hell you expect to achieve this end?" Sabat said as Serena squealed upon finding what she was looking for and dragged him into the abandoned human shop.

She frantically began to dig through the once produce that was now mainly just trash until joy stabbed her heart as she laid eyes upon exactly what she was looking for and holding it aloft, "With the power of a human holiday! We are going to make the Santa Claws real!!" she exclaimed happily thrusting out the human book towards her now extremely confused brother and pointing to the jolly red-suited figure on the front.

"The Santa Claws?" he asked now looking lost.

"He's a figure from human mythology, I saw him in a dream, he comes to human nests and delivers them brightly wrapped gifts to bring joy and happiness to them, we are going to make the Santa Claws real for those humans, we are going to bring them gifts to bring them joy and in so doing we will show them that we are not the threat they believe we are, that we are just like them, two souls who just want a warm nest with a loving mate to fill it with joy and happiness," she said flicking through the pages of the old tome until she found a picture of Santa delivering his gifts to the hatchlings of the humans and showing to her brotheris

"I'd say I'm to think you've gone full crazy beginning I'm pretty sure we're well past that and onto smacking mole rats into orbit with said tail," Sabat said doubtfully.

Serena snarled at him, "Well what is your fucking plan genius? Shall we just live in that cave until we are too weak to fight or to hunt? Shall we wander endlessly until we find that there was no place for us all along?" she snarled angrily making him take a step back in alarm before puffing himself up and squaring off with her flexing his claws as he did.

"Better that than getting ourselves skinned by ungrateful humans!" he snarled back at her as she smashed over a mannequin with her long tail in frustration but no sooner had she done so but something red and fluffy dropped at her clawed feet and she looked down.

A slow smile crept onto her face as she bent down to retrieve the little red object hoisting it aloft to show Sabat who just looked at it in confusion, "This is a fucking omen brother, of all things I could have hit in this shop I had to hit this!" she said holding out the little red had with a white fluffy trim complete with a little white bobble on the end.

"Now I know you've gone full crazy tail," he said but before she could rebuke him there was a blood-curdling scream from outside and both of their head snapped up in alarm.

The screams were followed up by a load of hoots and hollers, 'Raiders!" Sabat snarled in a low menacing growl, that's when there was a second scream and this one sounded like a woman.

"Come on!" Serena said heading for the door and her brother looked at her like all of her scales had just fallen off to reveal a human tattoo of an anchor with the word 'Mum' tattooed on her tail.

"What now!?" he exclaimed.

"Did you now hear the screams!? There are peaceful humans in danger!" she exclaimed and he raised an eyebrow.

"So?" he said.

"So we can help them and use that as a way in! Now stop asking stupid questions and get your fucking tail in gear!" she snarled dragging him out of the door before he had the chance to protest again.

From an alleyway off the street, the pair could easily see the human raiders, they were dressed in their usual assortment of tattered leathers and odd garbage-like bin lids bolted all over them.

They were holding an assortment of basic weaponry from metal blades too long sticks, some even had crude pipe weaponry, at a rough count there were ten of them gathered in a circle around a pair of peaceful humans who were on the floor at the centre.

Serena could see one male and one female dressed in leathers that were blatantly hunting gear by the skins they were carrying and also wearing, she also noticed bows and arrows on the floor having been taken away from them and discarded in the surprise attack.

"Please, let us go we have no beef with you!" the male said sounding desperate.

"Ho ho you hear that boys and girls? He says he has no beef with us!" one of the raiders said, he was a particularly scrawny male who was tall and wiry, he was supporting a large spiky coloured hairdo that ran up the centre of his otherwise bald head.

He was carrying what looked to be a particularly nasty-looking sword with a large jagged edge, he used the tip of the blade to lift the female peaceful human's chin so he could look at her face.

The male peaceful human slapped the blade away from her neck, "Hey you leave my sister out of this, this me and you talking!" he snarled.

"Oh, this one's got some fire! We like fire don't we peeps?" he said and his group started laughing again.

"He's going to need it with what I've got planned for him," one of the other raiders said this one was a white-skinned female with a shaved head and a load of tattoos covering her face and arms.

She licked her lips while looking at the prone male who looked at her with fire in his eyes, the other raiders laughed, "You hear that? It seems Jen has taken a liking to you little man so while we have some fun with your pretty little sister there she can have some fun with you and if you're a good boy and make her happy she might not even slit your throat and make your sister watch as you bleed out in the middle of the street," the leader said making the others laugh again.

Sabat issued a low growl that was barely audible thanks to the distance, "This is why we're going to help them," Serena said and he looked at her before nodding his head to show his agreement he might not be fully on board with his sister's scheme but she knew in his heart he was not the sort of male who could let this sort of thing pass unpunished.

"Follow my lead," Serena said and with that, she leapt out of her cover from behind the bins and began to run full tilt down the alleyway letting loose a bellowing war roar as she ran.

Soon her brothers joined it and thanks to the echoing acoustics of the alleyway it must have sounded like the raiders had a hundred angry claws running right at them.

The effect was unmistakable, the fear that gripped them paralyzed both the raiders and the peaceful humans alike as the bellowing roars washed over them like the heat of rage given sound and form.

Only a second after that wave hit them both claws burst out of the alleyway like two vengeful demons, 'Deathclaws!!! Fucking run!!!" the leader yelled in pure panic but he never got the chance to even follow his own instructions because he was Sabat's first target.

The huge male claw singled him out and bolted right for him swinging his huge claws in a massive roundhouse swipe that connected at his shoulders and cleaved them and his head clean from his torso like he'd just run his claws through soft clay.

Meanwhile, Serena's first target was the vile female that was called Jen, she wanted her to suffer for the pain and humiliation she had intended upon the peaceful male on the floor, but rather than dispatch her quickly and mercifully she instead stabbed her clean through the stomach and lifted her screaming form off her feet proceeding to used her as a literal human shield against the defensive attacks her former friends aimed at her.

She was immediately struck by two machetes like blades and a large spear which now stuck out of her screaming body, Serena saw two of the raiders level firearms at her beloved brother and instantly she leapt between them using Jen to absorb the bullets fired at him before launching Jen's now lifeless corpse at her former friends and following it in with a series of high speed stabs through her body and into those of her former friends.

In mere seconds the two angry Claws had completely massacred the Raiders to a man, not a single one had made it out of the encounter alive and now the pair stood painted in red blood from the fallen as they turned to face the two cowering peaceful humans on the floor.

"Do not be afraid little humans we mean you no harm," Serena said softly which caused both of them to lift their heads to look at her in shock.

"Y-You can talk!?" the male exclaimed and now Serena got her first proper look at him and suddenly she realised why vile Jen had wanted to claim him so badly, he was striking!

He was tall and broad for a human, about six foot two and made from solid muscle, he was lean without an inch of fat on him obviously thanks to both his profession and hard life not being one of abundance.

Thick bushy brown fur sprouted from his head and was tied back into a kind of tail behind his head and it followed down around his head to create a thick but well-kempt beard below his chin.

From under thick eyebrows, a pair of sharp and curious green eyes looked her up and down, "Yes we can and as my sister says we mean you no harm little human so please stop cowering and pick yourselves up," Sabat said just as the human's sister lifted her head and showed them her face for the first time and to Serena's complete surprise and silent secret joy she saw her brother falter as a curious look of pure surprise and shock crossed his stoic features as it wasn't only the brother that was striking, hell even Serena herself despite not being interested in human females in the slightest could see she was quite the beauty.

She had long flowing hazel brown locks that ran right the way down her back to her hips, caramel white skin that looked tanned from many hours spent out in the sun which made her vivid emerald green eyes that she shared with her brother all the more vivid, add on top of that her delicate looking features that hid a surprisingly strong will that shone now through her eyes created a truly breathtaking effect.

Sabat caught his sister looking at him curiously and he seemed to shake it off and he recomposed himself which caused Serena to smirk outwardly while inside a little claw in her heart whooped and jumped for joy, it seemed that it wasn't only she who could see the secret hidden beauty of humans.

The man helped his sister to her feet and the pair quickly retrieved their bows and arrows, "Thank you for saving us though I have no idea why you would do such a thing for us," the man said.

"Are we all not denizens of this world? Should we not all try to lend a hand or a claw in another's time of need? Because for me that would lead to a very cold and lonely not to mention hostile world, there is death, fear and hate aplenty out there its not hard to find should you look for it, but to me, a kind gesture can go a very long way if you let it," Serena said and the man looked amazed.

"Wow ok you'll have to forgive me but I never imagined a Deathclaw to be umm wise," he said and Serena huffed in annoyance.

"Why should it not be so? I am not a dumb beast you know I am as sentient and feeling as you are," she said both huffily and haughtily.

"Umm forgive me miss umm Claw I meant no offence or disrespect well this is the first time I have actually had a conversation with a Deathclaw," he said bowing his head apologetically.

"We prefer Claw if you don't mind, we are not like our somewhat savage cousins, we do not strive to bring death wherever we roam, we simply wish to live in peace," Sabat said.

"Hey wait you are the two death.....err I mean Claws that live in the cave on the mountain above the village aren't you! I've seen you bathing in the river! I knew I recognised those scars!!" the man's sister suddenly exclaimed in a rather musical voice while pointing to the two large claw scars that ran across Sabat's chest which he'd gotten in an honour duel defending his pack from a wandering feral who thought he could simply take one of the pack's females for himself, he learned a very painful lesson that day and Sabat got himself another scar, though most were not as visible.