[Wolf Lord+ | Draft] Volume 2 - Chapter 110 - Defender (Patreon)

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Hello everyone, LunaWolve here!

Welcome to the draft release of Volume 2 - Interlude 110 - Defender for y'all.

As always, a quick reminder that this chapter is still in the process of being workshopped by me and that this is simply the first-draft.

And also: Please do not read the chapters here on Patreon, but go for the googledoc, .pdf or .epub instead. Patreon butchers all forms of formatting and you're missing out on easier and more enjoyable reading experiences.

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Bit of an oversized one, but not by much!

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I'm looking forward to hearing your first impressions and opinions on this chapter. \o/

I hope you will enjoy it!

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Here is the link to the chapter:

GoogleDoc Chapter

Click me to get to the Doc!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WlHNgRrjY1gEDeOvVUp4Fj1iYaTiOWrJVn3twWVZka4/edit?usp=sharing

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Volume 2 - Chapter 110 - Defender

On the matter of severity, let there be no known confusion: “Soulburn” describes a spectrum, not a singular condition.

At its mildest, the patient presents with irritability, restlessness, and a persistent, unlocalized agony that is often described as omnipresent.

At its worst, the progression is thus: Tremors that respond to no muscle relaxant and do not show on any scans. Sensory hallucinations—visual first, auditory second. Paranoid ideation. Fracture-pattern psychosis that is clinically indistinguishable from late-stage schizophrenia. 

All of this arrives long before the Soulburn itself becomes lethal. 

Note as such, with clear conscience and rapt attention: Secondary deaths caused by the Soulburn’s other symptoms, is the primary way that it kills.

A Psyker presenting with Soulburn is therefore never to be assessed through simple self-report. The damaged instrument should never be the one taking the critical measurements, for they cannot possibly know how bad it truly is. 

Severity grading by a certified professional is thus mandatory before any patient is discharged back into active duty.

—

[Excerpt from “Clinical Notes on Psychic Afflictions, 2nd Edition” — Dr. Imminin Hel-Ridna, UHF Medical Corps Psychiatric Division, PFC 734] 

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Thea stared at the AR-303 analogue in her hands, while her mind was busy elsewhere entirely.

‘Æht? Are you there? Hello?’ she forcibly thought into the deepest corners of her mind, the same way she’d done it before, when Æht had surprised her from inside the bathroom mirror just before the last Runepriest session. ‘Æht, talk to me.’

It felt strange, trying to reach out to the strange entity living inside her own mind—her own Soul, if the mini-Delve was anything to go by—especially considering how long she’d been utterly terrified of her very existence in the first place.

But now—after having learned more about Æht, after having actually interacted with her, and especially after the mini-Delve had shown that at least some level of amicable relationship was possible, given that Æht had saved her from falling through the Gate at visibly great cost to herself—Thea felt quite a bit more confident in approaching the other version of herself.

Or, rather…

‘Æht, I—I don’t know how to use [Glimpse] yet. Not even the Passive version… I kind of need your help here. Please?’

That was the core of the issue, really.

She’d been wearing Lucas’ copied equipment, doing her best inside the training scenario—but firing any of the weapons had felt utterly wrong. 

Like something was fundamentally missing.

‘Because something is missing…’ she thought ruefully, a strange sense of despair settling in as the full weight of Æht’s continued absence finally registered.

Ever since she could remember, her gut feelings had been what guided her decisions—even back on Lumiosia. They hadn’t been anywhere near as strong as her precognition was nowadays, with Æht fully present and even capable of reaching out to her at times, but…

‘I get it now… You were right. You were always kind of there, weren’t you…?’

She couldn’t actually recall a single stretch of her life where her gut feelings hadn’t been steering her clear of trouble—she’d simply always assumed she was careful by nature. 

In reality, however, it had likely been a combination of the Old Man’s teachings, the perceptive instincts those very teachings had carved into her, as well as Æht’s constant, Passive application of [Glimpse], that had truly made up the entirety of her “gut feelings”. 

Feelings that she’d also learned to rely on when shooting, to find her marks—every single time she feathered the trigger. 

Feelings that now, with Æht already absent for more than a day, were simply gone.

‘I thought Desmond had just gotten surprisingly good at dodging my shots at the start… But Lucas’ AR-303 variant is a Laser-type. There’s literally no way he should’ve been able to dodge fucking anything, if my shots had actually been on-target to begin with.’

The pieces had only truly come together when her shots went wide on the most recent group of spawned Stalkers—which absolutely should not have been happening, given how much less mobile they were than Desmond’s drones. 

That had finally sparked the connection.

It wasn’t the weapon that was the problem.
It wasn’t the scenario, or the enemies within it.
It wasn’t even the relatively unfamiliar equipment she was wearing.

It was Thea’s own mind.

A fundamental disconnect between what she expected to feel before, during, and after every shot taken—and what reality was actually providing her with.

An emptiness that painfully radiated out from the very core of her being—much like the ever-present, low-grade agony of the Soul Burn, seeping from a very similar, nondescript somewhere all around her.

For the first time in her life that she was willing to remember, she felt truly and utterly alone.

‘Such a perverse feeling,’ she couldn’t help but think. ‘Like somebody’s stabbing me deep in my chest, while also making me want to throw up…’

She was decidedly not a fan of it—so she did the only thing she knew to do about things that she didn’t enjoy: Work through it quickly.

‘Æht, listen. We’ll need to have a bit of a talk about the whole [Glimpse] thing going forward,’ she tried actively thinking toward the entity again. ‘Just… Let me know when you’re back, I guess? N—Not exactly sure how this thing works. Can I leave a message or something…?’

Thea shook her own head hard, realizing the sheer ridiculousness of what she was doing.

Æht was clearly not going to answer—nor, as a direct result, be able to explain how their communication worked. So what was she doing here, exactly? Just standing around in a paused scenario, pleading with some kind of entity cohabitating her damn Soul to some degree, without any idea of whether it could even hear her or not?

‘Nothing. That’s what,’ she answered her own question.

She took a deep breath, then quickly looked up at the stands, where Evelyne and Lucas were expectantly staring down at her.

‘Sorry, Lucas… Didn’t mean to lie to you about your equipment—it’s honestly fine. Although there’s a few tweaks I’d probably recommend for the AR-303, assuming this analogue is close enough to the original that—Ehh… I’ll—I’ll make it up to you someday? I guess?’ she ultimately thought in his direction, fully aware that he was incapable of any kind of telepathy.

But she hoped that at least the sentiment would somehow come through, if nothing else.

“Alright, ready to continue! Think I figured it out!” she yelled up at the two of them, raising the AR-303 analogue in her hand in a sort of wave—before it started clanking against the bulky armour she was not exactly used to wearing, and she decided to stop fucking around.

‘Alright, Thea… Let’s re-learn shooting from scratch then, if Æht needs a nap or whatever it is she’s doing… Shouldn’t be too hard, given your Perception and muscle memory. Just… take an extra microsecond to actually confirm you’re on the target, rather than shooting the very instant you think you’re on them. Shouldn’t be too hard.’

With the self-pep-talk completed, she took a deep breath and then quietly ordered the scenario to continue.

“Resume.”

—

—

PoV: Lucas Callahan

The very instant Thea uttered the command word, the scenario area regained its full colour from the previous pause-gray. Lucas, still next to Evelyne atop the stands, was paying rapt attention to everything happening down in the sand as the scenario subsequently continued.

Thea was moving the very instant the last of the gray disappeared, the AR-303 coming up in one smooth motion, the muzzle settling on the exact patch of wall-hugging shimmer where the Stalker that had ultimately caused her to pause was still located—and she fired.

The bright, red beam instantly lanced out of the muzzle, and the Stalker simply evaporated, its camo field and body collapsing into a burst of static and scattering ash.

As was Thea-typical, she didn’t even bother to acknowledge the kill.

Her rifle was already swinging to the next target—another faint shimmer that Lucas, even knowing exactly what to look for by now thanks to his own and Thea’s efforts, still could barely distinguish from the arena’s ever-present heat-haze—and she fired again.

Another mark had been found and dealt with, as the Stalker collapsed with a hole in its upper chest. Then another collapsed a moment later. And another…

She’d fired four times in rapid succession, twisting and turning on the spot to get her muzzle onto each and every one of them, and had gotten four kills for her efforts.

The entire remaining Stalker group had been erased, one shot each, the whole exchange over in less time than Lucas usually needed to confirm a single one of the damn things even existed in the first place.

“Looks like she did figure it out, huh?” he jokingly offered to Evelyne beside him.

The Sen Heir simply hummed in congenial agreement, her eyes never leaving the arena.

He didn’t pay her much further mind after that either, though—figuring she was likely feeling a similar way about what was happening down in the sand and thus not interested in small talk.

He had a demonstration to watch—and, more importantly, to study.

Over the next few minutes, the scenario did exactly what it had been designed to do by its original creators: It escalated.

More Stalkers appeared, in larger groups and along smarter approach vectors, which Thea dealt with by pre-sighting their spawn locations—temporarily even leaving the room with the Marks entirely, seemingly trusting that she’d hear any enemies approaching the room before they could get to the Marks behind the Stalwart—and killing the majority of them within seconds of materializing.

Desmond’s drones, put on a strict respawn timer as part of Thea’s scenario alterations, also returned in coordinated pairs and triples, swarming in from opposing walls in the same pincer patterns that had ended half a dozen of Lucas’ own runs. Thea, however, rotated between them, the Stalkers, the Grunts and the Slicers with apparent ease—somehow always already half-facing the next threat before said threat had even spawned in or made it to her position.

‘How does she do that?’ Lucas couldn’t help but think, for what had to be the twentieth time in the past few minutes. But there was no time to truly analyse each and every single thing she did down in the sand. He simply observed, and memorized as many of them as he could.

During the next major wave, basic Grunts poured in and set up firing lines, hammering away at her and at the Marks tucked safely behind the grav-locked Stalwart. 

Thea dealt with those primarily by simply letting her armour eat the shots—always angling herself just right to keep a high deflection angle, which Lucas immediately noted down as something he really should be paying more attention to himself, given the level of efficacy on display in front of him right now.

The majority of them, however, she killed using one of Lucas’ own Abilities: [Remote Detonation].

Ever since Thea had shown him how incredibly versatile any and all explosives became with said Ability, part of his standard equipment had been a vast array of differently sized high-explosives that he could toss, plant, or otherwise make use of.

Thea was currently using them as a sort of makeshift field of landmines.

She’d set them up earlier, after hunting down a stray group of Stalkers—simply dropping them mid-run and leaving them behind in the exact areas where Grunts, if they wanted any good firing lines at her or the Marks, would have to stop.

So dealing with the majority of these waves had been as simple as reaching out with one hand and quietly invoking Lucas’ own Ability.

‘This honestly kind of hurts to watch… How is that even allowed, really? She shouldn’t get to be better at using my Abilities than I am—at least not to this absurd degree. Come on…’ he thought, yet internally felt nothing but awe and respect for the tiniest member of the squad. 

‘She’s truly something else…’

One of the next waves, however, brought the Slicers—lean, fast, melee-oriented enemies that slunk from cover to cover and rushed her in sudden, coordinated bursts whenever they ran out of terrain to hide behind or got close enough to think they had a shot.

Very much not to Lucas’ surprise—considering that he hadn’t really struggled with them either—Thea handled even those with a downright contemptuous ease: Feeding them point-blank laser fire, smashing their heads into pulp with the butt of the rifle after letting their weapons scrape uselessly off a bad angle of her Super Heavy armour, or simply checking them mid-lunge with an armoured shoulder—which resulted in quite a few gruesome and bloody outcomes—before finishing them on the ground with a quick shot, the buttstock or, her apparent favourite based on number of uses, a stomp of her boot.

Inevitably, however, enemies started showing up that Lucas had never seen before in any of his fifty-eight attempts. Because by that point, somewhere around the three-minute mark, Thea had crossed his personal highscore on her very first try—and the scenario had started showing her content he’d simply never survived long enough to earn the right to face.

‘Unbelievable,’ he thought, slowly shaking his head in disbelief—having, apparently naively, assumed it would take her at least one or two tries to beat his record, given her relative inexperience with his exact loadout and stats—yet he couldn’t muster even a droplet of envy about it. ‘Just how much time have you spent grinding these games, Thea? How many years did you pour into this, instead of going to school, seeing nature, making friends?’

He felt a split mixture of awe and pity.

For it was truly incredible to see somebody like her exist—somebody who could simply do exactly what they said they could, with no apparent self-aggrandizing. But it was similarly scorching his very Soul and heart to imagine the kind of horrific conditions that would have been required to form a young girl like her into that exact kind of somebody he was seeing now…

Shaking his head to clear it of those errant thoughts, he focused back on his observations instead—filing the thoughts and emotions away for a later consultation with Corvus, on whether there was anything they could do to help Thea out, now that she no longer had to be alone with all of Alpha Squad around her.

One of the things he did note as interesting throughout it all was that some of her shots on Desmond’s drones were still going wide—a burst skipping past a hard-juking frame here, a correction needed where before he would’ve sworn Thea would never need one there. 

Her overall accuracy, however, had almost magically climbed back up to… probably ninety-nine percent, if he had to take a wild guess.

Whatever had been wrong with the equipment before, she’d clearly diagnosed and subsequently fixed it mid-session, during that brief, three-or-so-minute pause of the scenario.

He still wasn’t sure what exactly it was about his equipment that had caused her misses, of course. The AR-303 analogue had been calibrated fine, as far as he was aware—he’d zeroed it himself before they’d even started running the scenarios, and had the Wildmaws interface check it twice, just to make sure everything was in working order.

But whatever it ultimately was that she’d found, he was absolutely certain she’d have a few choice words about it with him afterwards—delivered in that still-strange, no-preamble, super-confident arcade-Thea cadence he’d learned to simply hold on and take notes through.

‘Looking forward to improving my equip…’ he thought with a sly grin. ‘Has to suck for the others, not having their own Thea in the squad.’

The grin faded as fast as it had come, as the thought continued.

‘Which might literally be me, very soon here… If I don’t figure this stuff out—and quickly.’

So figuring out he did.

Throughout the entire scenario, he paid very close attention to her every move—in some ways quite literally, such as with her positioning: Always three to five meters off the Stalwart, never fully glued to it, yet also never so far away that something like a Stalker or Slicer could slip the gap underneath her watch—close enough to collapse back onto the shield in one burst of movement, far enough that every enemy had to solve for her first, before they’d ever get a chance at the Marks.

Another thing he noted as supremely important was the way she angled her shots.

She rarely, if ever, fired directly at an enemy’s center. Instead, she almost always aimed a half-degree off-axis, so that even her “misses”—if they could really be called that, when using a grenade launcher—forced the targets to move into worse positions for her follow-up shots.

The most important lesson, however, the one he immediately tried to internalize as best he could, was the way she used the Havoc throughout the scenario. 

She was bouncing grenades around corners practically constantly, clearing out enemies in dead ground that Lucas himself would simply have waited out instead. He couldn’t even explain why he would have waited, now that he watched her do the opposite and saw how effective the strategy really was.

The grenade launcher was quite literally built for exactly that sort of usage in the first place.

‘You’ve been using the “bounce around corners” weapon as a last-resort, line-of-sight panic button, Lucas. Hystasis would have you bled and sacrificed for your idiocy…’

Around the four-minute mark, things got properly hectic within the scenario arena’s bounds—a whole army of Grunts spawned in a single, rolling wave, led by a larger, Commander-looking enemy type that hung back and visibly directed them, splitting the wave to pressure Thea and threaten the Marks simultaneously—yet Thea reacted calmly and simpled did something Lucas had not even conceived of as possible.

She rapidly fired the Havoc dry, breaking the wave’s leading edge—and then, instead of reloading, she simply threw the spent launcher backwards over her shoulder, towards the Stalwart, straight at the Marks huddled behind it.

“Reload!” she yelled, already turning away, and went right back to fighting off the approaching horde with the AR-303 alone—using the terrain, her positioning, and the Super Heavy armour she was clad in as her sole defenses.

Behind the shield, a few moments passed, before one of the Marks picked the Havoc up and started feeding shells into it.

‘Huh? They—They can reload our stuff?!’

It seemed Evelyne had caught that particular tidbit as well, as out of the corner of his eye, Lucas watched the Sen Heiress lean forward in her seat, ever so slightly.

“I didn’t even know they could do that,” he probed.

It was a deliberate little probe, trying to tease some information out of the woman—a risky move, as Corvus had very extensively reminded him in a private conversation last night. 

“Every sentence you trade with a Sen is a transaction, Lucas, whether you can see the price or not,” were the exact ones of Corvus’ words that came unbidden to him at this moment. 

But even the stoic Squad Leader of Alpha Squad had conceded the other side of the coin: For all the danger the Sen Heiress represented, she was also still a Sen—an incredible fountain of knowledge and intel, no matter how one sliced it. 

Letting said fountain sit untouched next to him on a bench seemed like yet another massive kind of waste.

“I was not aware of it either, I must admit,” Evelyne replied, her tone measured as always. “But it does track, if we consider what the scenario is meant to represent, does it not? The Marks are potentially injured civilians—or perhaps even Marines. But they are capable of movement; otherwise you and Thea would never have been able to corral them behind the Stalwart in the first place. So it only logically follows that they’d be capable of basic motor functions as well—such as reloading a grenade launcher.”

Lucas had to agree with that.

Once again, however, he felt that familiar twinge of self-reproach behind his chest—for that chain of reasoning had been simply sitting right there, available to him, for two hours, and it had taken Thea physically showing it off to him for him to realize it.

He was relying so heavily on everyone around him, just to have a fighting chance against Rachel… Thea’s massive time investment and efforts. Evelyne’s intel. Isabella’s conditioning and training sessions. Corvus’ planning behind the scenes. Karania’s injections. Desmond’s assistance… 

The list was growing almost impossible to keep track of by now.

‘Thea’s working her butt off for me, every day. Even going as far as climbing into my gear to show me exactly what to do in a scenario that’s specifically meant to teach me to figure it out on my own…’

It felt terrible, if he was being entirely honest with himself.

He hadn’t felt this useless since the early days of the Rinox hunts, back on Quaris.

When he’d merely been the third- or fourth-choice Shielder, relegated to the ridge with the spotters, forced to simply sit and watch as the main hunting parties went in for the kill.

Anxiety eating him alive, hands flexing around a shield grip nobody had asked him to use, the same loop running through his head, hunt after hunt: “I could do this better. If you just gave me a chance—I would have moved differently right there. I would have braced earlier, angled wider. I could keep more people safe than this!”

But ultimately not getting that chance… Not for years, despite his best efforts to convince the parties otherwise—for that simply wasn’t how the hunt rosters worked, and no amount of complaining and loud certainty from a princeling was going to change that.

Somehow, this all felt very familiar now.

The watching. The learning from someone else’s example. The genuine awe at how incredible she was—and, underneath it all, running constant and rhythmic like a second heartbeat, the old ridge-line litany: Considering how he could improve on all of it.

Because Thea, for all her skill, was not perfect—not in his eyes, at least.

Brilliant, undoubtedly. Adaptable in ways he’d never match, absolutely. He could not have derived the solutions she was demonstrating—not in two hours, maybe not even in two weeks. That was the honest truth, and he’d made his peace with it by now.

But seeing the solutions laid out in front of him like this…? He could come up with ways to get there quicker. At least on the defensive side of things—the side that was actually his.

He noted the stretch along the eastern-side wall where his larger frame could hold an angle Thea physically couldn’t, allowing him to cover two approaches at once where she’d had to choose a different, inferior one whenever the Grunts showed up.

He noted a way to use the Stalwart more actively—unlocking it, walking it, re-anchoring it along the fight’s rhythm—rather than letting it languish in the corner as a static wall, all without ever losing the Marks… At least now that Thea had shown him they were more dynamic than he’d first assumed.

He noted a half dozen other minor adjustments as well—ones where he wasn’t sure whether Thea was unaware of them, or had simply chosen not to reveal every single little thing to him out of courtesy, leaving him something to adapt on his own. 

He was very grateful either way.

The scenario inevitably came to a close, however, around six minutes in—when a combined assault of Grunts, Commanders and Stalkers created enough of a distraction and diversion for Thea to just barely miss a duo of Desmond’s drones for one brief instant—which he’d apparently chosen to spawn preemptively, rather than waiting for his third to respawn, to coordinate with the massed assault—before they detonated behind the Stalwart and ripped apart all of the Marks at once.

It had been an abrupt end, but not exactly a surprising one.

The most surprising part to Lucas, truly, had been just how long Thea had managed to hold out in the first place, on her very first try.

He was already on his feet and about to jump down into the sand to congratulate her—and thank her for her efforts—when he froze dead in his tracks, and his heart sank so far into his feet that he plummeted back into his seat with a loud clank of armour hitting stone.

Thea’s helmet visor had turned transparent the moment the scenario had marked the run as lost—the arena was still up, and thus the audio remained disconnected, but he could see her face clearly…

He’d expected triumph. 

A sly grin, or maybe a self-deprecating smile at having been outdone by Desmond, of all people. Maybe even some level of frustration at losing an impossible scenario, knowing her.

But instead, what he saw was just her face. Thinking hard.

She hadn’t even acknowledged the end of the scenario. She was already visibly digesting everything that had happened, working out how to do better on the next one.

As shocking as that part was—not even taking a brief, minuscule moment to allow herself to feel the end of the previous scenario—it wasn’t what had hit Lucas.

What had, was the distinct sense of loneliness that came over him at the sight of it.

‘You’ve never had anyone to truly celebrate with after a good hunt, huh? Nobody to compliment you, to rake you over the coals, to gently poke that ripped armour with a spear and jokingly tell you that you got lucky you didn’t die today…’

He was starting to put it together now—how Thea had become the way, and the person, that she was nowadays.

Seeing her like this, alone down in the sand of the grayed-out arena, chewing through her run like it was simply yet another challenge to beat despite being impossible—refusing to even take a single second to really feel what she’d just done—

“Hmm,” he heard Evelyne muse next to him—and his blood boiled.

‘She’s merely somebody trying to use Thea for her own gains. Not a real friend. Not somebody who actually, truly cares for what has to be the loneliest Marine in this entire damn Drive!’

He could practically see the image of Corvus’ concerned face in front of him—but he ignored it. Ignored the words Corvus had spoken to Alpha Squad the day before, and reiterated to him in private the night before as well…

“Evelyne… I very much appreciate what you’re doing for me here. What you do for Alpha Squad as a whole, really. Your intel is invaluable,” he said, without looking at her—his eyes fixed on Thea, who seemed somehow even lonelier than usual to him.

“I’m just happy to—”

“—If you ever betray her, or cause her to get hurt, I promise you, on Xagis, Hystasis and the entire pantheon combined: I will, in turn, hurt you in ways that even your family has never once conceived of.”

He got up from his seat as he finished his last word, mentally shooing away the panicked, pale face of Corvus in his path, and jumped down into the sand—just as the scenario’s arena finally dissolved, allowing Thea to hear him again.

“By Xagis, that was so damn awesome to watch, Thea! The way you…”

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