DogForge Read Free

quarter and a searing burn on his tail.
    The skelebot slammed the axe down on the floor with a crash like an explosion. A spray of hair and a slice of blood spurted out from Samus. It spun and sprang out like a coiled spring. It threw a stiff arm behind and slammed Barley aside. She yelped, rolled, and tumbled over the corpses. She stood with a snarl.
    Samus rebounded off a sheet of steel and felt a tearing snap. The bot gripped his tail tight. He yelped and fire burned through his spine before he was free. The adrenaline was now something more, he could feel it focus, tighten every joint, and push him faster. A stub of tail dropped from the skelebots grasp and tumbled to the floor.
    He ran. With every leap he could hear it behind him. Close. So close. The claws clacked and the axe sang through the smoky air. He needed to hide, do like a pup, and get somewhere small.
    “Grat!” He cursed and leapt through a narrow gap. He was caught in a space that ended in a crimped passage.
    The skelebot thundered on the strut behind him with the axe. The axe’s edge crackled in the same deathly blue light and tore chips from the heavy support. The bot couldn’t get in. Yet.
    “Grat!” Samus howled louder. He could feel himself change, the wildness came out, the animal fear. He tried to push it away, the thing that told him to leap in, attack it, get out. Wait. Just wait!
    It stopped. The axe hung midway through a chop with energy crackling and singing on the blade. The head spun in a complete circle and, as if satisfied, it nodded and pulled back the axe once more.
    Grat leapt out from a strut high in the darkness above and connected with the upper shoulders of the skelebot. It screeched and thrashed but Grats jaws locked on the axe arm. His eyes closed tight and his teeth bared.
    The skelebot screeched louder. It slapped and punched at Grat. Each blow cut and hammered into Grats pelt. The claws snapped shut and pierced deep into Grat’s side.
    Samus charged and hammered into the skelebot with his mouth biting down onto the other arm. Grat streamed blood from a clean diamond shaped wound in his side. But Grat did not let go.
    Samus bit down and felt his teeth scream. It was the same every time: it started out slow, cool, and got warmer, hotter, until he couldn’t bare it anymore. Then his teeth were like fiery daggers in his mouth. But oh they cut, he loved how they cut.
    Grat’s teeth pushed through first and the axe dropped to the floor. The screeching stopped and the skelebot slammed the crimped stump of his arm into Grat and flung the heavy dog away. Samus released and struggled back. His teeth were almost there, almost. The arm bore a heavy cut and teeth marks like a pick stabbed into it. The skelebot paused, scanned, intent on something else.
    Barley leapt through the pile of corpses and stood over Grat. Grat stood on shaky legs.
    “Get him out!” Samus howled to Barley. He turned his eyes to another tighter passage and saw the lance on the corpse. His first leap put him past the skelebot and his second skidded him alongside the dead dog. He had a moment’s recognition that it wasn’t a dog like any he had seen: it was smaller, with thinner hair. It seemed so frail in the suit of armor. He grasped the lance in his heavy jaws and pivoted the point up just as the skelebot rushed after.
    In one eye Samus watched as the skelebot tried to dance aside on the polished floor while in the other he looked into the dead eyes of the dog next to him. His jaw steered the lance to the side and it speared into the upper shoulder of the skelebot. Blue light flared for a moment and it convulsed once before settling and relaxing.
    He released the lance and sat back on his haunches, feeling the burn where the tip of his tail once was.
    “Send in four, we need to strip what we can,” Samus said.
    Barley and Grat limped through the field of corpses and moved out through the mass of cables. Samus stared at the bot and felt the adrenaline ebb