Crossing Boundaries Pt. 04

The dogs howled, falling in swathes, icicles lancing into their bodies. As was the case for most battles where distance had to be a factor, projectiles were the tool of choice, shooting forth, formed from the elements, the mages even sinking their power deep into the earth, forcing it to crack and shake and split. That, however, was more difficult to control, sending fault lines splitting down the streets, ripping up the roads, canines plunging into the depths of the earth. Chaos abounded and yet they kept right on coming, marching forth as if they saw none of the terror, home soldiers leaping onto them with feral cries of desperation in war.

"Yes!"

He growled, smacking his fist into the palm of his opposite hand, aching to be there, in the thick of it. But he had to command, had to lead where he was, using the enchanted blocks of metal that he had been given to set off signal after signal to his troops, the mages and back to base. They would all need to know what had come...

But not even he could have expected what would happen next, the lead battle mage standing tall, lightning crackling from her fingertips. She was a force to be reckoned with, the one who stood up against everyone, and yet the serpent's head turned with a glint in her dark eye. The pupil, already narrowed to a reptilian slit, darkened further, the yellow of it sharp and conniving and yet it was not her intelligence there that could be seen anymore.

It was evil. Her green scales smoothed back down over her head, no cobra hood to be found on her type of serpent despite how she presented herself. A smile came with the flash of her venomous fangs, dripping with glistening, sickening fluid, but her eyes were on her own comrades, her own troops, those that had fought beside her, shoulder to shoulder.

Only later would it come out what had happened, her hands outstretched, tail lashing the air, raining thunder and lightning down on them. Yet it was her skill as the lead battle mage that came into play there, retaining the destruction solely to her own and not touching a single canine soldier nor the humans moving amongst them, advancing as their plans came to final fruition.

For that battle at least.

The anthro troops fell, mages and soldiers alike. There was no evading it and kind souls turned their eyes from the death, the fading of lives that had so much left to be lived. One could only consider it a blessing that the end of their time on the land that they loved came swiftly and decisively. They felt no pain.

The civilians, however, were left with the smouldering, burning, steaming wreckage, their town destroyed, the human stalking forth, surrounding by canine soldiers, bodyguards, all for their protection when they had struck down so many already. The wolf woman cowered, her husband right there by her side, but there was still nowhere to go as a human, floating rather than walking with those strange, psychic abilities of theirs, took centre stage in the play of destruction.

The burning wreckage of a building that had once been a sweet shop did not bother him, merely moving over the flames without being touched by them. His smile pulled eerily at his lips, showing through his helmet where the front visor had been pushed up even if his eyes could not be seen. The licking, flickering flames did not seem to be able to snap up the fuel of his clothing, no matter how closely he floated. The wolf trembled. Where was his shield? Did they not even need magic or a physical shield to protect themselves?

His armour was more ornate and there was no space within the helm for his ears, like with the canines, though theirs was designed to be chunky and blocky, imagining muzzles and the rougher head shape of an anthro creature that humans were more familiar with. Yet the spiralling designs on his armour were for show and did not speak of a real battle as the wolves hid, peering over the broken sill of a building, their ears laid flat to their heads so that they could not be seen by picking up.

"Tend to your wounded."

The human, faceless and nameless, ordered the dog anthros as if they were servants in employ: a foreign concept to the wolves. They did not enslave other species and that the dogs obeyed the humans so readily... It was a strange concept, a foreign concept, a concept that did not make any sense at all, not to them. But it didn't have to when it came to one species overcoming the other, dominating them, bringing them down to their knees, even if the dogs, truly, had always been quite content with their position.

The battle mage, the only one remaining, walked straight up to the human, removing the stylised helm that had only covered some of her features, the serpent's tongue flickering out darkly. The underside of her jaw was lighter in colour, a yellow-green shade sweeping down her throat, though she stood there as still as a statue, staring blankly ahead as if she saw nothing at all.

The human's lips, visible along with his chin, curved up into a smile.

"Excellent."

He said no more than that, but the wolf got to hear no more as his head snapped towards her, something pulling at her, clutching her, as if the wind itself had grown fingers and was intent on sinking them into her hide through any means possible. She could not help herself, crying out, twisting, dragged out of her hiding place along with her husband, while others in there that had taken refuge with them hunkered down, hoping against hope that they would not be uncovered.

Held in the air as if by her shoulders, the wolf woman heaved and gasped, her eyes wide and bulging, a kind of terror that could not be controlled ripping through her. Her husband was right there by her side but all she could do was lock onto the man behind the helm, something sharp plunging into her head, though there was no tool to be seen.

Her mind swam, flickering from thought to thought, though there was no pain, not after the initial, confusing penetration. She grunted thickly, eyes closing -- and then she was on the ground with her husband, the two of them on all fours, gasping and heaving, a strange sense of violation stirring uneasily in the pits of their stomachs.

"Only civilians." The human's announcement surprised no one. "Follow."

The dogs leapt to heel, keeping close, noses quivering as they sifted through the scents. Yet even their sensitive sense of smell was teased down by the carnage, unable to sniff out the hiding anthros as easily with so much to confuse them.

"There are priority targets hidden here, according to her mind." The human inclined his head to the battle mage, although that was not something that the canine anthros could understand the implications of. "Search them out and we shall be going."

The battle mage followed him as he floated deeper into the town, leaving the wolf and her husband there to cry, to cling to each other. No prisoners that were not their intended targets, the ones that they had to take for reasoning, interrogation, perhaps even ransom back to officials, were taken, leaving the civilians behind. It was a far cry from the carnage that had swept the town when anthros had been gunned down without any kind of discrimination for who they were and what they were there for, the humans intent on forcing their army on at all costs.

But no one was going to tell them to stop.

The war had already been won.

*

Back in the present time...

The anthro wolf started awake, fumbling for her lamp, a tightness in her chest that she had not felt in years. The fear, oh, the fear -- it was still there, even though she thought she should well have been over that by that time. It took too long to slow her heartbeat again, nerves frazzled, trying to repeat to herself, as she had so many times over, that it was all in the past, that it was nothing to fear, nothing to worry about, something that had been a horror but could not hurt her in the present.

That was not the case for her, however. It was not so easy to convince a mind that what it thought was true and took as a fact was not the truth, not her present. Yet all she could do was shakily comb her blonde hair back, sweeping it out of her face, though it was struck through with more strands of grey in that time than it had been in her younger years, betraying her age.

Breathe... It's all okay.

But it wasn't okay. She remembered too clearly how they had fled the country, the war streaming forth, humans taking all that they pleased. Every anthro regretted attacking the humans first but it had been far too late to take that back after everything that had taken place, the wolf trying to sweep the memories from her mind. What she did not know, however, remembering how she had held her husband's hand so tightly that it had made hers hurt, that pushing memories down and locking them away left her vulnerable to more.

Dead friends in the street.

Burning pyres of bodies.

Youngsters crying, orphaned.

The flashbacks kept coming, breath quickening, a tight band around her chest.

Breathe, honey, breathe.

But they were there, one after the other, the feel of having a human in her mind, how the humans had struck the minds of anthros, soldiers and civilians alike, to force them to fight their own or give up their secrets. Even one of the airships that her kind had been so proud of had exploded when they had thought they were the best of the best, completely indestructible, the fireball blasting through the magical shields, even the enchanted armour that had been painstakingly laid down over it having no effect against the power of the humans. The unseen weapon had blistered it right out of the sky, broken and flailing, every soul on board lost along with the lives in the city below that it had crashed into.

But she could not remain there in the memory for long, panting heavily, shaking her head, clenching and unclenching her hands. She drummed her fingers on the kitchen table, though could not fathom why such a dream had gripped her so wretchedly, waiting for the kettle to boil over the magic flame. Of course, they had amenities like electricity but anthros would forever remain divided on which way was the most efficient to work with, as everything was accessible to everyone. Magic was trained and practised but easily infuse into objects through enchantments, so it could be sold and made available to many. Truly, neither way was better when it came to everyday living, but it would forever remain something that was up for contention, everyone having their preference.

"A dream... Just a dream..."

She cradled a mug between her hands as she pondered the dream, dipping a toe into it and shuddering away. Why had that come to mind? Why had she been back there?

Oh, the answer was not that far off. Her daughter had completed one year at university so far, one of the most prestigious, if not the most prestigious, in the country, and she had not seen her... Well, that was not something that she wanted to consider either. That had been a long time. Too long, in fact, and she turned her muzzle from the past, eyes downcast. Only if one looked closer at her would they see the shadows under her eyes.

She drew the newspaper, how she preferred to read for it was easier on her eyes, across the table to her, shivering at the rustle of the magically inked paper. She'd never liked that sound. But the page was still opened to the human who had started at the magic university along with her daughter, her only family, one who had been distant from her for too long, even though she didn't want to consider her role in that. She had done her best for her daughter all along, to the best of her ability. That, in the end, was all that she could do.

A human... The fear was there and anyone she asked would have very much said that there was good reason for it, considering all that she had gone through. Looking back, all that she saw was the human's smile, how it had sickened her to her core that very day, how his violation of her mind had felt. He'd picked something out of her head and she didn't know what, but ever since then her own mind did not feel like it belonged to her, a sense of unease residing permanently in her heart.

If her daughter was around a human... She took a deep breath that did nothing to steady her. She did not know what she could say to help herself, but there surely could be no real risk to her daughter at the university itself...could there? Her husband had passed away from illness years ago and her stomach twisted at the thought of something lacking, something missing, the shape of him in bed beside her gone.

Logic and emotion did not always match up. She sighed, the water and coffee ready for her but her mind elsewhere. Maybe she would have to pay her daughter a visit to ease her mind...

Yet not even she could have imagined just what her daughter would be easing her way into.