Free DogForge by Casey Calouette

charged forward. It was lost on a gust for a moment and appeared again almost on top of them. The skelebot powered through the drift and leapt for Karoc.
    The larger dog deftly stepped aside. The skelebot flailed with its pincered hands and fell off the cliff into the white maelstrom. He grinned at Denali.
    “Use it against them! They don’t think.”
    Denali turned into the wind and tensed. The next shape came out and suffered the same fate. Then two more. Each rushed through the drifts and charged mindlessly.
    “Spit that damn thing out,” Karoc said, after tumbling one more into the valley.
    Denali shook her head and felt the snow drop into her ears. “I need it for the trial!”
    Karoc laughed and spat blood. “That’s the spirit!”
    Three more came and the first two ran straight for Karoc. The third hung back and watched.
    The first slammed into Karoc and the second came in close behind. Karoc ripped his massive jaws into one skelebot and thrashed it into the other. The second skelebot lunged out with a claw and latched onto Karoc’s front leg.
    Denali charged in and suddenly realized she had no idea what to do. So instead of doing nothing, she slammed the canister against the skelebot’s leg. There was a clang of metal on metal, a hollow sound, and the skelebot screeched.
    Karoc tossed the first skelebot off the cliff and savaged the second. The skelebot flailed and sailed into the white.
    The wind drove the snow in a gust that shattered against their fur. Denali stumbled and tucked her head low.
    The gust stopped and, as quickly as the storm came, it left. The wall of white marched down the slope and into the valley. Denali turned and was amazed, the clouds above the storm were nearly black. Above her was an icy blue with the shell of a broken moon high in the sky.
    “No,” Karoc growled.
    Denali spun back around. Her heart thumped loudly in her ears, it was the only sound she heard. Then the adrenaline flowed.
    The entire valley, from the broken structure down, was flooded with skelebots. And they were all headed straight for Denali and Karoc.
    “Run child! Run!” Karoc howled. He stood rigid, his back rising with his head proud in the air. His medallion, a mark of his station, was long lost to the snow.
    A skelebot, the same that had watched, stood impassively and waited.
    Denali snapped her head back. She couldn’t leave, not from the pack, he was an elder. “No,” she whimpered past the canister.
    “That one,” Karoc stated, “will die first.”
    “I can’t leave!” Denali cried out.
    “Go now, for the love of man, go!” Karoc pleaded. He turned his head with his large drooping eyes focused on Denali. “Go,” he said once more. He turned in the snow, raised his hackles, and charged.
    Denali stood and felt a chill down to her bones. Stretched out in the distance, like a steel wedge, the skelebots approached. Karoc, a lone warrior, charged through the drifts and tore into the first skelebot with a thunderous crack.
    The sound snapped her out of the moment and she ran. Her cold feet pumped through the drifts and she aimed herself along the knife edge of the ridge. Farther down, she saw a line of dogs covering the pass.
    Karoc howled after shredding the first skelebot and stood atop the steel corpse. A skelebot with a lance attacked next, followed by a trio with bare hands. His teeth flared in the icy air. Waves of steam rolled off of his wet fur. He turned, snarling, and attacked the next. The lance struck and he was down.
    Denali stopped. No, she thought, no! She turned, and almost started to run.
    He stood once more, a wounded beast, and tore the lance from his breast. That wave of skelebots fell beneath his steely maw, but more came. More, and more. Until finally the skelebots moved past the spot where he once stood. All Denali saw was a dark form surrounded by red snow.
    The icy air burned her eyes as she ran. Her teeth chattered past the icy cold cylinder. A stark sadness hit her. The