DogForge by Casey Calouette

growth. Denali glanced at the dead dog and decided there was safety in numbers. She followed after her peers.
    The forest was a mass of barking, snarls, and hidden violence. The air was thick with fear and the sticky taste of blood. Dogs savaged other dogs. Where both were trialed, the meeting came down to skill, or luck, But where an unblooded youth met one with metal teeth, the ending was always the same.
    Denali tripped on fronds and leapt over decaying logs. She caught sight of Karus and his group. Before them, the wall of scent told her that there were many dogs.
    She passed a dead dog, a salvager named Killian. His throat was torn out and his tongue dripped blood. Flies buzzed at the wounds. She backed away, snapped her eyes from it, and felt the fear come on strong.
    It was then, while she was looking back, that she stumbled out into the open.
    The rich green ended in a sudden line. She broke out into a charred waste devoid of any life. It was as if a great thing had suddenly descended and scorched it all. Her feet scrambled on the raw, dead, soil and she retreated back into the undergrowth. The ground didn’t smell burnt, or even charred, just dead.
    Then she realized why they’d attacked them in the trees. There was no cover until the starport.
    She gazed at it through the shadows of the fronds, oblivious to the fight around her. The great spires she’d seen in the distance looked like dead tree trunks. The light blinked on the top, but it looked lost, forlorn. At the base the complex was huge, almost a flat topped pyramid with branches of concrete and alloy. It was, other than a mountain, the largest thing she’d ever seen.
    The entire area was surrounded first by dead soil then by dead machines. Wrecks of man things, things with wheels, things with tracks, things with legs. All dead, weeping stripes of corrosion, and seeping oil. Beyond that was the dog field. Mounds of scrap, sooty fires, and the remains of structures where the dogs slept during the yearly pilgrimage.
    It stunk and she didn’t want to get closer.
    A noise rustled her out of her thoughts and Karus stumbled in with the other two close behind. All three panted heavily with tongues wide and wet.
    “Go on!” Mjol nudged Denali.
    “You go on.”
    Violence exploded from the greenery. Samus lead the first group out driving the yellow dogs into the ashen waste. The yellow dogs snarled and barked, but they were outclassed and outmatched. The larger dogs from the mountains hammered.
    Samus slammed one of the yellow dogs into the ground while crushing the neck of another.
    Denali watched in silence with the other three. This was not what she had pictured a battle to be.
    Grat led the second group out and even fewer of the yellow dogs fled before them. A howl, thin and worn, caused the yellow dogs to break and flee. Tails were tucked and the violence stopped suddenly. Samus panted on one edge and made his way towards Grat.
    Mjol yipped and pranced out onto the ash. The others walked out slowly and watched the yellow dogs flee with dust devils chasing behind them. 
    “Denali!” Grat barked at her.
    She ran across the crunchy ash and kept her eyes on the yellow dogs. They had slowed and some had even stopped.
    The maulers emerged from the treeline, heavier and slower. They walked almost casually towards Samus and Grat.
    Denali found herself as the only young dog listening. She glanced at the others and they were all together swapping stories about the fight.
    Samus looked grim with blood streaked down his face. Grat had the same look as always, a set determination like a rock.
    Ivan glanced at the yellow dogs and then to Samus. “That’s it?”
    “I doubt it,” Samus growled. He stared towards the spires. “They’ll be in the cover.”
    “Do we try and hold it?” Grat asked.
    “Don’t be a fool, we’d need a thousand more,” Ivan growled back.
    Grats ear flapped in the wind and he looked away.
    Samus took two steps and stared across the