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“Candidate Maxova, are you prepared?”
Her chest tightens. The top half of a frayed olive flightsuit barely clings to her body, but the legs are tucked neatly into immaculate leather boots. Lumille Maxova’s favourite part of curfew each night is the light polish she’s permitted before she crawls obediently into her kennel. The Handler, of course, approves - So many get sloppy, skip a night thinking they’ll pass morning inspection, but they never do. And if I am to be a Hound of the Federation, if I want to Survive, to fall short is unacceptable.
“Sir, yes Sir.” She cracks bruised knuckles between swollen fingers and pulls her matted red hair back from her sunken eyes, but the uneven bangs fall back in place regardless, leaving dry strands to hang limp in her vision. Finally, she drops into a fighting stance, weaker right hand forward, stronger left held back close to her breast.
The candidate across from her stands a confident four inches taller than Lumille. Big Harlaw, they call her, shoulders wider, eyes wilder. She wears a white-grey uniform in far better shape than the tattered one Lumille is wrapped in - Probably picked up from the south front, Lumille always thought, or during that shock campaign last winter. Was that last winter, or the year before?
“Candidate Harlaw?”
The brute chuckles, rolling her left shoulder, then right. An eager grin settles on her lips. Her voice is darker, richer. “Sir.”
Silence descends on the hangar. Bays 3 and 5 each host a mech undergoing some sort of upgrade or refitting above Lumille’s paygrade, but as the trial approaches, engineers in black Federal fatigues pause their work and lean to watch. In Bay 4, thirty candidates surround Lumille and Harlaw in a ring, their varied flightsuits a mark of their haphazard collection: A prisoner from this garrison, a defector from that one, even a few in Federal black who must’ve really let down their superiors. Many hold themselves for warmth, not used to Bay 4’s deployment door hanging open to give them a view of the Nyrian mountains and glades beyond the facility. Chill wind and rain murmur nearby.
Harlaw and Lumille have never felt hotter.
Fifty feet above them on the enclosed command deck, the voice they’ve heard every day in workshifts and missions, simulations and conditioning, dreams and nightmares and their most impossible fantasies calls out again, Her voice lifted on loudspeakers above the din outside. They can’t see Her face, but that’s not unusual, it’s rare for Her to grace the whelps with a look at Her radiance.
“You have learned well, and I will be pleased to call one of you my Hound when this is all over. Now, girls. Maxova, Harlaw. Off The-”
Their bodies stiffen in the single word before acceleration. Harlaw, confused and denied like an edged submissive, looks with violent need to the enclosed chamber above her for a glimpse she won’t be blessed with. Lumille doesn’t dare glance up. It’s a bad habit of their Handler, although neither would risk calling it that. She loves to watch them stew a moment to build drama, or to add on some new condition, some modification to make things-
“Ah, candidates, it slipped my mind until just now, but a new directive came in this morning. You’ll be the first at this facility to test its parameters. Candidate Maxova, you have been stationed here for…?”
Lumille doesn’t know what the game is this time, and the only thing she can do is answer. As best as she can recall, that is. Time here… The heavy winter, the hot summer, were there… were there two? “Sir, erm. A-a year. Or two. I-I don’t-”
“Hrnm, let’s check the file. Lumille Maxova, stationed at Summit Base in the Whelp Program as of… four years ago. Does that sound accurate?”
Blood pounds in her eardrums. No, not… she remembered fields and forests not so long ago, staring up at the stars before the Federation blocked them out. It feels like yesterday, like this morning, or like a thousand lives ago. She remembers being pulled from a broken bunker by her allies, by people she trusted- I trusted them, yes? They didn’t wear her uniform, but they healed her, saved her, gave her a chance, and all that was…
Of course, Handler would never lie to her. Handlers aren’t capable of lying. But four years without grass or pine or starlight send a shiver down her spine. She swallows it, steadies her breathing. If this is the truth, this is the Truth. “Yes Sir.”
“And Candidate Harlaw, I’m seeing here this will be your seventh year in our program.”
For just a moment, Lumille steadies herself enough to look up at the woman across from her. A heartbeat ago, a snarling wolf ready to charge. Now, a broken mutt, eyes cast down from the command deck to the steel grates below her boot. Those eyes stare into the abyss for a long moment, and perhaps only because Lumille (apparently) has three less years of training, three years less being ripped apart and put back together, it takes Harlaw far longer to come to the same conclusion. Eventually, she pushes away a tear with the back of her right fist and nods, “Yes, Sir.”
A wave of shame washes over Lumille, masking another emotion that she can’t quite name. There’s a sense of familiarity, maybe even a sort of kinship with this brute. Somewhere in the haze of memory, she can see starlight, far above, and Harlaw’s face, soft, smiling up to the night sky like she’s never smiled before… Lumille shakes out of this secondary stupor, sucks in a deep breath, and commits her mind to the task at hand. I will not have sympathy for an enemy soldier. I will not have sympathy for an enemy soldier. I will not have sympathy for an enemy soldier.
“Good. Per our new directives, seniority is to be rewarded with an advantage. Maxova, remain still. I’m revoking your permission to fight back.”
The stars Lumille had almost forgotten explode while her heart sinks.
“Harlaw, you will be awarded free strikes equal to the difference in years between yourself and your opponent. Which is to say, three. You may attack her, three times, wherever you please. When you are ready.”
All traces of the broken mutt vanish, and the wolf stands tall again. She shakes the loss from her empty pupils and fills them with fire as she takes a few tentative steps towards Lumille. For just a second, the smaller girl’s leg inches back into a more defensive position, but the correction comes just as quickly.
“Hold, Maxova.” Her eyes water, her body quivers, but she locks up and tries to meet Harlaw’s imposing approach with grace and defiance.
Two possibilities enter her mind. The first, of course, is that she's been found wanting. Handler wishes me beaten to death.
A boot thunders into her ribcage, and Lumille hears the crack of broken bones well before she lands. Pain thunders in every ragged breath that follows. The girls around them are silent, Harlaw, dead silent. The only sound is Lumille’s nails on the steel grate underfoot, scraping urgently, just hoping to get back to her feet. She's not certain she'll get a chance when she glimpses Harlaw at the edge of her fading vision, and though she falls on her side in an attempt to create distance, it does nothing to impede the giant’s next brutal assault. A poorly-aimed roundhouse kick glances off Lumille’s chin, and even at half force, a sickening crunch in her mouth draws forth a primal scream of pain. Her jaw is on fire, but thank fuck she missed, Lumille is lucky to even be conscious after a strike like that. With a glance up, she realizes Harlaw's frustration, as the brute growls up to the command deck.
“That's not fucking fair! She backed away! I barely grazed her!”
To punctuate that, Lumille spits out a tooth and lets it clatter through the grated floor beneath them, once again drawing Harlaw’s eyes back to her. The murmuring girls fall silent around them. Their Handler offers nothing in response.
Slowly, as cleanly as she can, Lumille rises to her feet, drawn back into her body by a potentially-dislocated jaw. She's in agony, but she's one of the pilots here who can confidently say she's been in worse situations. Harlaw’s expression shifts from anger to morbid fascination, as the damaged toy once again stands ready before her.
The second possibility, Lumille thinks, is a different kind of test. Harlaw is bigger, yes, but I’m quicker, smarter, and I can take so much more. Harlaw was broken into a mad wolf long ago, but I’m a different kind of beast.
This time, Harlaw lines up her shot. She stomps over to Lumille, grabs her roughly by the shoulder, and presses a fist to her stomach, but not to strike at once. For a second it looks like she's acting in haste, but something steadies the approach, the rage ossified into determination. Harlaw holds her fist against Lumille’s stomach, almost rubbing with equally-bruised knuckles for a moment, and Lumille can almost hear the butterflies in her stomach. It's an involuntary response, but she's rock hard.
Harlaw seems to notice with a glance downwards, and sneering in disgust, she pulls the fist back before bringing it in, hard, to Lumille’s gut. The hit crumples her, head halfway to her knees, arms tight around her stomach as she struggles to regain her breathing. In that time, she feels Harlaw not backing up, but leaning in close, speaking in a voice only her victim-to-be can hear.
“If you survive the recovery after this, I'm going to come back down to the newbie kennels for you after, you stupid little cunt. I'm gonna stuff your hole with a strap the size of the mech they’re gonna give me. I hear girls like you keep it nice and gaped for women like me, too. Maybe you'll even squirt from it, you pathetic mutt.”
In this precious time, which Harlaw could be using to get her emotions under control, or calling for the fight to start so as to brutalize the winded girl in front of her all the quicker, Lumille finds clarity. Handler fucking hates this mongrel. Handler wants her to feel strong, so when I win, it's all the more embarrassing. Handler would never want a heavy cudgel at her side when she could have a scalpel like me, and in a straight up fight, Sir already knew who would win.
So I have to earn it instead.
Harlaw is on the other side of the circle of mumbling candidates, stretching out her arms and checking her wrist for damage, but she groans and turns when she hears Lumille laughing. It's a light, happy laugh of genuine delight, of realizing the game she's in and having solved it. She touches her chest, feeling the bruise already forming, and she's decided to make a show of it, so she unzips her flight suit to the waist. Tying her sleeves in a loose knot at her hips, she puffs out her chest to show off her athletic top, toned arms, and bare abdomen, all slick with sweat. Nothing to do about the pain, only swallow it, bring her breathing back to level, and wipe away the drool dribbling from her now-crooked smile.
She won’t know her theory is correct until she’s won, but Handler’s words over the speakers fills her with renewed energy, singing with the pain and the tightness in her crotch into a war-song of arousal and purpose. “Maxova, you may fight back. Resume stances.”
Lowering down into a pose of aggression again, Harlaw wipes the lock of disbelief off her face, settling into one of confidence. “You’re insane.”
Now Lumille is the one grinning, and as she swallows one last breath of air, she waits for those three little words to echo through the hangar and send her to war. “Maxova, Harlaw. Off The Leash.”
And nothing makes Lumille Maxova feel good the way surrendering to the beast within does.
Most candidates fear the alter egos drilled into their heads by their Handlers. It’s a terrifying thing to embrace oblivion and let something Else, something Empty, take over the controls. Each whelp gets a glimpse out the hangar door of a world they may one day walk free across again, and most loathe to think that these few spots of real sunlight and fresh air will be enjoyed from the back seat of their own minds, as if through a cage door. But in many ways, Lumille isn’t like ‘most candidates’.
She probably would’ve made a better Federal soldier than an agent for whatever lost cause she used to fight for. Resistances and local militias and proto-states the world over are saddled with lofty ideals of compassion and harmony, but even the Federation records suggest that Lumille never believed in any of that shit. What little Handler allows her to remember is cruel and brutal, colored with starvation and desolation. Somewhere in her file is the blacked-out name of a brother she’s forgotten, and parents just as gone, even their faces, all lost to the fire and smoke in which a thousand girls like Lumille were forged. She believed from a young age that pride should be taken in anything you do to stay alive, and the Hound is a fucking expert at staying alive. It always made her the perfect target for the kennels.
In Lumille Maxova, Her perfect target to be broken and rebuilt, the Wrath briefly wonders if She sees a kindred soul. The screech of hydraulic cranes herald Her arrival, and the command deck thunders into the hangar floor with an authority that makes most of the whelps yip and back away. Pneumatic hissing is followed by the click of perfect leather boots across steel, true divinity in a mirror finish compared to Lumille’s humbler reproduction of the same shine. The audience parts, revealing the leftovers of a bloodbath - Below Her, a spider ensnares her dinner in a violent embrace that brings a toothy grin to the Wrath’s lips.
Harlaw lays with her back flat and bleeds from anywhere blood can flow. She’s still breathing, more or less, but clearly unconscious or too lost in the humiliation of defeat to form a single sound above her ragged breaths. The brute resembles a singular bruise, eyes swollen, arm at an impossible angle, every inch of her covered in scrapes and clawmarks, her fatigues all but disintegrated. She’s lost teeth, she’s lost hair, she might’ve lost an eye, but the Wrath knows none of that matters.
What matters is the Hound, triumphant.
The demon driven into Lumille’s body with years of conditioning and torment digs its claws deeper and deeper into Harlaw, one arm pinning Harlaw’s own, the other tearing at Harlaw’s exposed abdomen, dragging down with brutal force. The Hound is staring a hole into its prey’s mouth, watching every breath, making sure she doesn’t fade away before the fun part is through. A warm meal is better, after all. Their captive audience fell into a hushed mixture of arousal and fear long ago, and now avert their eyes from Handler as they’ve been trained, but can thus only stare at the other center of attention. They can see Lumille’s erection, thick and heavy through her flightsuit, and the dark stain growing ever darker as the Hound grinds her cock against Harlaw’s chest, marking her prey, claiming it, making it more and more truly hers.
The Wrath can see Lumille is nearly as wounded as Harlaw, but the Hound doesn’t notice, doesn’t care. So many hounds lose their grip and surrender at the first broken bone, so many girls not worthy of anything more than cannon fodder, but Lumille’s Hound, much like its host, is a cut above the pack.
When a whelp earns a victory like this, it comes with a simple reward: The right to dominate the failure. Through a decade stuck with class after class of sniveling runts looking for true animals within, the Wrath always sees pure brutality in every victor, a beast taking out its base desires. The Wrath has seen a hundred girls grunt and whine and pant with their tongues halfway to their breasts as they rut against their defeated opponent, no thoughts, just pleasure, just release, just a hungry monster eating its fill.
But really, the thing that sets Lumille apart is the silence. If she’s breathing at all, it’s too steady and quiet to hear. Every thrust against Harlaw’s stomach is less bestial than methodical and precise. With a slight shudder and a single, deep exhalation, Lumille cums, but her rhythm holds steady. She keeps going, eager to transfer the moisture from the front of her suit to Harlaw’s broken body. It’s not the only fluid she’s covering the brute in, as thin strands of leaking semen are joined by thick ribbons of drool and steady streams of blood.
A few girls whimper as Lumille’s possessed body cums again. At least a few glance to their Handler, as if begging for her to stop the beast, but for once, the Wrath has no interest in discipline or interruption or games or doing anything but let four years of training sink in. Before, maybe there was still a Lumille down there able to surface, before, maybe she could go back to something resembling a ‘regular’ life.
The scent is sickening.
But to the Wrath, Lumille Maxova is the most beautiful monster She’s ever seen.
Lumille wakes up, and every part of her body is on fire. Ears ringing, knuckles bloody, pain like a needle shoots through her leg, broken in more than a few places. Blurred sight slowly converges into familiar shapes, revealing a throng of other girls surrounding her, staring, eyes wide. Somewhere, Lumille hears laboured breathing, and hopes it’s not just her own but Harlaw’s as well. She tries to step back to give the medics room, but realizes too late she’s on her knees, and falls onto her back.
She wonders how she must look to her classmates, a mad, still-crooked smile from ear to ear as she takes in relieved gasps of oxygen. Thankfully her Hound is kind and generous, giving her flashes - A kick to the jaw to answer Harlaw’s from earlier, the crunch of her elbow, the screaming, howling agony of inevitable defeat, and then growing silence as Hound lays into her windpipe until she is at last silent. A candidate whimpers, and Lumille follows the mutt’s gaze to her own pants. Gods, did I…? Her weary hand touches the crotch of her suit, and she can’t help but laugh. She used to dread battle. She’s so much stronger for what she’s become, how much harder she’s become. One must imagine Handler happy.
And then, She is there. Perfect as always. Lumille has no idea how long She’s been there, or how much She watched, but every instinct in her heart howls with pride. She dares not look much above Handler’s perfect boots, but she steals a glance higher to Her finely tailored gloves. Lumille has dreamt of that hand running through her hair, scratching her under the chin, and finally pressing the cold steel of a muzzle to her face. And now, here She stands.
For Lumille’s part, she pulls herself back up to her knees as quickly as able, not wanting to hang so limply on such a triumph. Once she’s mostly upright, body still slouching forward but showing far more life than before, Lumille’s eyes settle on Her laces. Will I be blessed enough to be the one to polish them now? Or dare I dream even higher? Her heart swells as she imagines her warmth pressed against it, grinding for hours on end, or pumping between its sole and the cold granite floor of the kennel.
“You’ve done well, Lumille. And I have a treat for you."
Lumille thinks she knows what comes next. She’s seen it before, seen the ecstasy of graduation, the steel wireframe offered, lovingly fitted, and at last buckled. She doesn’t consider her dislocated jaw and the steady trickle of drool disappearing between the grates between her knees. She doesn’t think about the Federal mechanics nearby groaning in annoyance as they hand over lost bets or whisper and laugh about the stain in Lumille’s pants. The only thing on her mind is feeling that muzzle pressed to her snout and the endless bliss of serving Her as deeply as any can hope to.
And then she hears a click, and sees a service pistol offered her way, clasped loosely in Her pristine gloves.
“There’s just one more thing first.”
Even the wind is silent. The only sounds are Lumille and Harlaw’s ragged breathing, oddly in synch, but today now falling on either ends of destiny.
“This is Candidate Harlaw’s second failure. Per our new directives, those who cannot improve on their second attempt will no longer be reassigned.” The reality of the offered pistol was clear from the moment it was unholstered, and if anything, the Handler’s statement is more for the benefit of the engineers standing by, or the operations staff in the command deck, all on their feet to watch the ceremony unfold.
For just a moment, Lumille feels the walls closing in. No, no, no, no, she hates Harlaw, sure, and she wants nothing more in the world than to beat her and to please Her, but Harlaw is a peer. Not only that, she’s a wounded peer, a soldier, her victim, her poor shattered rival laid bare. Somewhere deep in Lumille’s mind, hidden under years and years of programming, she sees flashes of a distant world she no longer belongs to, a world where she sits in a foxhole with a woman who looked very much like Harlaw. They swap stories, they watch the horizon. They stay alive, together.
And yet, She is here, telling her it must be done, and She cannot be wrong.
Firm, fragrant leather cups Lumille’s cheek.
For the first time, her head is tilted upwards for her.
For the first time, she is swallowed by the coal black irises of her Handler, the divinity they call the Wrath in whispered prayers. Her Handler. My Handler.
And the unraveling little girl is whole again.
“I know it must be confusing, Lumille. That is why you will not think. You will not question your orders. You will do as I tell you when I tell you to do it. Do you understand?”
This is what it feels like to be kissed by the gods. She wants to ask for her Hound to do it instead, so she can slip into blissful submission, but she knows she is strong enough. She will do anything she has to for Her.
“This whelp understands, Sir.”
“Good. Now take the pistol and kill Georgia Harlaw.”
Georgia. That was her name.
Every part of the motion is smooth, and the gunshot happens before she can process it. No more hesitation, no more thinking. She may as well be the Hound. And in a way, she is, now.
Lumille doesn’t realise Harlaw clawed her way back to consciousness a few moments ago, and heard half the conversation between her broken sobs. Lumille doesn’t hear Harlaw’s quiet plea for mercy, for one more chance, to be of any use to Her. Lumille doesn’t see Harlaw’s one good eye look up, but not too high, still unable to look higher than Handler’s knee without being bidden to do so.
The only thing Lumille sees is a dead dog.
Just as quickly as she took the pistol and just as quickly as she fired it, it slips from her hand and clatters on the grate below her. The problem with an order given to act and not think is that in the moment after action, there is only time for thought, and Lumille no longer finds herself able to keep her form rigid. She’s barely able to remain upright on her knees, and she falls forward, a hand pressing against the grate, stinging against her wounds but far from the worst of it today.
Georgia. That was her. We kissed in that foxhole, under the stars. Not passion, not love, but two frightened girls hiding from the explosions overhead.
Lumille would collapse into nothing if she could, fall away at the seams and become dust on the hangar floor, but she hears a tongue click with a deeply specific meaning, and she dares not disobey, not in a moment of ascendancy like this.
Tears flowing freely, sniffling as quiet as she can manage, she is the last of the candidates to stand to full attention, legs together, eyes forward, bodies stiff. She’s not the only one crying, but it takes her that extra beat to get her boots back under her, and that long moment is bitter agony, not just for her, but for every other whelp watching her fight to rebuild herself.
Georgia is, was, tall, but Handler is taller still. If Lumille’s resting eye level would settle at Georgia’s lips, then on Handler it comes up to the clavicle. She tries to imagine burying her face there, grief drowned in Her breastbone, and body-shaking sobs destroying her body altogether. Perhaps she’d be a prettier stain than a person.
“You are a good girl, Lumille Maxova. You did everything right. I’m proud of you. Are you ready for your treat?”
Her sobbing breaks as warmth floods her body, love and light and belonging, but it doesn’t stop the tears. She knows every word that passes through her lips will be punctuated with sobbing, so she settles on the most simple affirmative she can, a soft, quiet, “Sir,” hoping it’ll be swallowed by the world and nobody will hear her tremble.
It’s harder to notice her sorrow once the muzzle is in place, that thin steel shield over her lips, nose and chin, casting the lower half of her face in thin shadows. It’s a place for her to hide and vanish and belong. Involuntarily, her body loosens, slumping down and abandoning the rigidity of the candidates around her. It’s an earned position, one that Hounds so often take comfort in, the slouch that confirms they are no longer a person. They don’t have to be a person, they are a dog and a beast and with that comes no small amount of serenity.
The Wrath turns to the command deck and takes a few heavy steps towards it, head turning over Her shoulder just long enough to call out, “Heel. And fetch my sidearm.” To pick it back up is an acknowledgement of guilt, but good dogs don’t question their orders, they obey, and if they must think about it, that’s for after.
Lumille Maxova picks up the pistol, limps after Handler to the command deck, and stops herself from taking one last look at Georgia Harlaw’s body before she becomes the Hound she’s meant to be.