“Do you smell smoke?”
It was the first time Katya or her companion, a tall, scurffy maned wolf, had spoken in two hours. The ruins of the Old City always made them eventually fall silent, the empty streets and gaping window openings often making fur prickle and hackles rise, as if the mind expected ancient demons or long dead soldiers to appear in them at any moment. Seba, the wolf, sniffed the air, nose twitching slightly as he breathed in the scents of the surrounding region. The whole area smelled of ancient, long extiginguished flames and death, but there was a different scent floating on the wind. The air carried a whiff of fresh, acrid, chemically smoke, and it wasn't coming from Katya's coal dusted fur.
"I do. We're not alone here," Seba said, scanning the sky for a plume of black soot. He spied it after only a minute of searching, and it was distressingly close. He hoped Katya wouldn't say what he knew she was going to say, because he'd agree with her, and he wanted to stay focused on scavenging the Old City for the useless bits and bobs the people of Hirkhansa seemed to enjoy so much.
"Let's go check it out," Katya said, an overconfident grin plastered across her muzzle as she began to pick her way over the weathered rubble towards the smoke.
"Kat...C'mon now..." Seba said under his breath, his long limbs struggling to find the same pawholds Katya was using as he followed her, cursing every time he slipped. He soon successfully made his way over the hill, his nose stinging as the smoke filled the air. Why would anybody be here, in the middle of an ancient ruined city of forgotten beings, burning things? It certainly didn't smell like a camp fire. In fact, the smell made Seba's head ache. He scanned the area in front of him. People were busily throwing things onto a burning pyre outside of a building with a faded sign in a language Seba couldn't read, the sound of crashing metal and breaking glass filling the air as they worked. Then he saw Katya wildly waving at him from behind a boulder, putting a finger to her muzzle at the same time. He sighed and made his way over to her as silently as he could, making a cutting motion across his neck to get her to stop waving.
"What?" He asked, gravelly voice low as he struggled to gather his limbs up tightly enough to effectively hide behind the rock that was just barely tall enough to hide Katya behind it.
"Look at the weapons that fox is carrying! I've never seen wonderous things like that before!" She said, voice just barely quiet enough to be considered a whisper as she pointed at a thin Grey Fox struggling to carry several strange, black, rifle like objects to a carriage a few yards away from Seba and Katya's hiding place. The fox stumbled, falling with a choked cry, the objects scattering across the rocky ground.
Almost immediately, a large, overweight cougar charged over to the fox, viciously kicking and stomping on him as he uttered a torrent of horrible, toxic curses about the fox, his mother, and her nocturnal habits.
"Seba! Don't!" Katya hissed, watching Seba crouch walk towards the cougar, knife drawn, and making no move to stop him. Seba was halfway to the cougar, who was still viciously beating the fox, when his footpaw slipped, sending pebbles noisily skittering across the rocks around him. Seba Froze. The cougar turned.
"Uhm...Hi there! Enjoy kicking helpless peoples' asses, I see," Seba said, smiling like an idiot. The cougar looked at him, maw agape, ears cocked at an amusing angle, before shouting an alarm and moving to draw his weapon. Seba drew faster, putting three rounds into the cougar before he could get a single shot off. Seba cursed loudly and sprinted away, praying to every deity he could think of as a hail of bullets slammed into the ground around his footpaws.
"Don't just sit there, Kat! Run!" Seba shouted, drawing his second revolver and firing behind him, cursing and wondering how anyone could pull the trigger fast enough to put that many rounds down range at a time. Katya obeyed his order, soon outpacing him and disapperaing into the ancient city. Seba cursed again and followed her, bullets whizzing by his head and smacking into the walls around him. Katya led him into an ancient building, a square monolith reaching high into the sky, and pulled him into a doorway.
"What the hell are they using?!" Seba hissed, panting heavily as he examined her for wounds, and she him.
"I don't know! Some type of automatic rifle! I can't wait to get my paws on one and study it!" Katya said, eyes bright as she imagined the mysterious intracacies of the unusal weapons being used to try to kill her.
"We have to live long enough to grab one first! There's at least six of them," Seba paused, clapping a paw over Katya's muzzle as one of the shooters, a burly draft horse, ran by, shouting in a strange language, "And we can't take them head on. We're gonna have to go silent. Pop a flare and meet me back at the pyre when you're sure all of them are dead. Be careful, Kat."
Katya responded by rolling her eyes and drawing her kukri, it's wide, curved blade more of a machete than a knife. This wasn't her first time in combat. Seba watched as she disappeared into the rubble, pulling what looked like a metal tube wrapped in a thick cloth from a pocket inside his duster coat and threading it onto the barrel of his revolver. He had five rounds left. He grimaced and drew his dagger, closing his fingers around the cool chain mail grip. He didn't like using his dagger. It was messy. He froze and held his breath as one of the shooters slowed and stopped in front of the ruined building Seba was in, sniffing the air as he stepped inside. Seba waited, hearing the quiet clicking of claws on rock draw ever closer.
Then in an explosive burst of motion, Seba charged from the doorway and backhanded the startled coyote across the side of the head, hearing the coyote's neck snap as the impact of Seba's weighted glove jerked his head unnaturally far to the side. Seba caught the body as it fell and dragged it into the doorway he had occupied a moment ago, hiding it as best he could. He then krept out into the ruined alleyway behind the building, freezing and pressing back behind the wall as he spied a female Ibex, dressed in the same strange uniform as the coyote he had just ended, slowly walking in his direction, probably looking for her dead buddy. Seba burst from the corner, lining up the sights of the pistol on the ibex's head as best he could, wincing as the bullet whizzed by her head. Not having enough time to cycle the hammer of his single action revoler and line up another shot, Seba spun his dagger in his paw and charged her with a battlecry, plunging the knife into the side of her head and jerking it down as far as it would go. The knife stayed wedged in the base of the body's skull as Seba tried to pull it free. He left it where it was as he let the body fall. Seba crept down the alley, revolver drawn, listening for any sounds, or lack thereof, that sounded out of place.
Almost immediately, he heard a gutteral battlecry and felt the huge form of the draft horse from earlier slam into his side, knocking the breath from his lungs and the revolver from his paw. Seba tumbled to the ground in a heap, but was quickly on his feet again, struggling for breath as the massive horse cursed at him in a very foreign tongue. Seba charged him, hoping to catch him off guard. He did. He drove his weighted fist into the horse's gut, but instead of feeling flesh yielding to his fist, he felt one of his knuckles pop as his fist impacted a very solid piece of brass. The horse laughed and grabbed Seba by the collar of the duster and tossed him aside as if he weighed no more than a bag of bread.
"Cheater." Seba said, landing on his feet and charging the horse again, withdrawing a cruel looking spike from within his duster as he aimed for the same spot, hoping it was weakened. He found his mark. The spike plunged through metal and deep into flesh, the horse giving an angry, pained whinny as Seba scrambled back, running for his forgotten revolver, half hoping the damned horse would fall and plunge the spike deeper. He got no such luck. The horse charged him just as Seba reached the revolver. Seba grunted, grabbing it, broken knuckle protesting as he fired a mostly wild shot.
Seba thanked every diety he could think of as the horse crumbled to the ground mid run, clutching at his throat, pained gurgles the only thing coming from his bleeding maw. Seba strolled over and finished him with two shots to the head.
He silently hoped he was the last of the strange uniformed shooters he would see alive. He was out of ammuntion, and weighted gloves would only serve him so much with a broken knuckle.
He looked up as he heard the whistling scream of a signal flare being fired into the air. Kat worked fast. Sometimes frighteningly fast. Seba made his way back to the pyre, scrambling over the rubble, cursing as his long limbs struggled to find pawholds yet again. Katya was already digging through the burnt remains of books, medical supplies, and strange machines, her maw an endless torrent of how much of a great loss all this ancient technology was. Seba was more interested in the grey fox laying slumped against a carriage, motionless, staring at the overweight cougar Seba had killed. He made his way over to the fox, being careful to appear nonaggressive and keep his paws in view. Blood flowed freely from the fox's nose, one of his eyes was already swollen shut, and one of his ears was badly torn.
"You...attacked the brotherhood," The fox said, speech tinged with an accent Seba couldn't place, and slurred with approaching unconsciousness. "And killed my master."
The fox's eyes rolled back, and his muzzle fell to his chest.
Katya stepped up to him and examined the strange brand on the top of his muzzle, "Unfortunatley, Seba, I think you just became a slave owner."