Jalrek’s shadow consumed Khyrani. The brassy tang of gunpowder still hung in the air from Bopo’s accidental blast, mingling with the sharp vinegar bite of sweat. Cold prickled the skin beneath Khyrani's collar. Her plan of dodging notice until the thirty days passed had burned down to ash alongside the powder keg. “Every night?” Khyrani managed, her voice a reedy rasp, trying to inject some disbelief, some protest. “Sir, with all due respect, my… my current fitness levels are hardly conducive to advanced sparring. Perhaps a more gradual approach?” She feigned a cough, hoping to sound frail. Anything to escape. Jalrek merely chuckled, a low, unnerving sound that vibrated with suppressed energy. “Oh, I think you’ll surprise us all, Khyr. You already have.” His gaze, sharp and assessing, raked over her. “And don’t worry about your *fitness levels*. We’ll build them. Consider it a personal project.” He turned, a flicker of something unreadable in his eyes, and strode out of the medical bay, leaving Khyrani with the shaking Bopo and the faint, lingering scent of his own contained ferocity. Dr. Vazzil merely offered a weary, sympathetic shrug, already reaching for a new bottle of potent-smelling tinctures. Nausea pooled beneath Khyrani’s ribs. Before she could even properly despair, the world outside the Brass-Blood Cohort’s thick durasteel walls erupted. The deep, guttural roar of a fully grown Sand-Kraken reverberated through the very deck plates, followed by the grinding shriek of stressed metal and the frantic clang of alarm bells. The fortress-caravan lurched violently, nearly sending Khyrani sprawling. Above, the rhythmic thud-thud-thud of the heavy-gauge harpoon cannons began, each shot a tremor through her boots. This wasn’t a standard dune skirmish; this was a full-scale assault. “Brace for impact!” a distant voice bellowed, swallowed by the cacophony. Khyrani hauled Bopo by the scruff of his collar, dragging him toward the nearest reinforced bulkhead. Just as they reached it, a section of the durasteel wall above them peeled back with a screech of tortured rivets. Dark shapes, sleek and armored, swarmed through the breach. They moved with the cold precision of clockwork automatons, their limbs whirring, their faces obscured by grim, visored helms. Iron raiders. Elite trackers. And they were inside. Chaos erupted. Recruits, still reeling from the sudden breach, were cut down with ruthless efficiency. Khyrani shoved Bopo into a cramped storage locker, muttering, “Stay put, for once.” She knew these Hounds. Their master, the Obsidian Chieftain, never left loose ends. And she was a very large, very inconvenient loose end. She moved, a blur of calculated evasion, through the pandemonium, her martial instincts guiding her. Dodge. Weave. Her eyes scanned for an escape route, a shadowed corner, anywhere to melt away into the background. She just needed to survive this, to get back to her bunk, to *sleep*. She darted behind a stack of corroded oil barrels, as a Hound, larger than the others, its clockwork arm whirring, stomped past her hiding spot. She held her breath, pressing herself flat against the cool metal. The Hound stopped. Its head, a polished durasteel globe, rotated with a faint *click-whirr*. It didn’t have eyes, but its sensors seemed to pierce the gloom. Khyrani recognized the subtle shift in its posture, the way its weight settled. It had detected her. She tensed, preparing to spring. “The lazy-crane stance,” a guttural, synthesized voice rasped from the Hound’s speaker grille. Its head tilted, and it took a step towards her. “Unmistakable. The Obsidian Chieftain will be most pleased to reclaim his prize.” Ice knotted Khyrani’s gut. *No. Not now. Not here.* The Hound reached out an iron talon, hook-tipped digits clicking wide. “His runaway bride will make an excellent example.” Before the talon could brush her coarse linen uniform, a flash of crimson and steel erupted from behind the Hound. Jalrek, a terrifying whirlwind of motion, moved with a speed Khyrani hadn’t yet seen. His runic-etched arm, glowing faintly with crackling energy, swung a massive, serrated blade in a brutal, arcing blow. The machine's skull, still spouting synthesized static, sheared free with a crunch of ceramite and wiring. It clattered to the deck, sparks spitting from its severed neck while its body crumpled, whirring to a stop. Jalrek stood over the twitching automaton, his chest heaving, his eyes blazing with an almost feral intensity. Not at the dead Hound, but at *her*. Rage blazed in his glare, tangled with a raw, dangerous bewilderment. He looked at the headless tracker, then back at Khyrani, his jaw set, a muscle twitching in his temple. “Bride?” Jalrek’s voice was a low growl, barely audible above the din of battle. He took a step towards her, his weapon still gripped in his hand, droplets of black engine oil clinging to the blade. “What did that thing mean, Khyr? *His* bride?” Khyrani’s mind raced, a thousand lies forming and dissolving. “I… I don’t know, Sir!” she stammered, trying to sound as bewildered as possible. “Perhaps… a malfunction? It’s a tactical ploy among the enemy automatons, confusing targets with false information.” She forced a convincing cough, hoping to buy time, to appear innocent. But as the words left her mouth, a searing heat flared at the base of her neck. Her runic draft-brand, usually a dull, almost invisible tattoo, suddenly pulsed a violent, angry red. A dry, rasping cough tore through her throat, and she instinctively covered her mouth. When she pulled her hand away, it was coated in a handful of fine, gritty black sand.

The Warlord's Hounds