Velko and the witches

At long last Velko got to the first barbican of Moroygrad, the witches’ fortress. Yes, fortress they called it, yet it was a whole city, a city whose size nobody knew, apparently. It could spread across tens of kilometers, even hundreds, for that matter. No one had gone in and back out to tell. Fortress, a fortified city, a fortified country--it was a complete mystery.
Velko stared dully at the gate.  
"Why wouldn’t those retards just go along the walls on the outside and see how far they reach? " he told his dog. "Is it that difficult? I know these are of some primeval civilization, and a ton of stuff’s unknown to them, but still."
The dog did not answer.
"Are you listening to me?" Velko looked down toward his fat, one-eyed dachshund.
The animal was gnawing at its crotch intently. It disregarded him for a moment, then raised its eyes up slothfully--one honey-colored, the other pink--to state, "I’m busy," and resumed its gnawing. The rear’s tiny, black tail tapped the ground with vigor, in contrast to the rest of the body, where every inch of chubbiness lay spilt lazily.  
Velko let out a sigh of annoyance, and his long, red bangs flew up above his forehead. He detested it when his dog did that. What was more, it did it precisely at the most unsuitable moments. Say now; they were standing just before the walls of the foulest place in the land, as the local people described it, Moroygrad, the "beast’s city", the hellhole that had consumed so many challengers and the source of all the myths and dark rumors which lurked within the people’s imagination.
"’Tis in Moroygrad that the fears and ambitions of young hearts run to around here, good sire," they’d told Velko. "Their great trial and their best try at glory."
Needless to say, it was a big deal. And in the face of that big deal, there was his dog chewing on its bells.
"Won’t you cut it out? Why the hell now?"
Once again Velko got no answer. So he decided to just not bother his nerves with it and focus his attention on the city’s gateway.      
The gate was neither that big, nor that creepy-looking, given the place’s reputation. It only had one wing, half broken. A hole gaped in its oaken planks, round and fiercely gored open, no doubt, by some monstrous battering ram. Yet, weirdly enough, the opening looked as if it had teeth marks along its edges, making the gate liken those bitten wafers from the screen commercials back home. Its paint seemed to have been black, but almost none remained of it now. The arch that sustained the door was built of simple rock, stones cemented upon stones; a truly primitive construction. The crenels on top were long gone, together with most of the fortification’s upper half. As far as Velko could see along the wall’s length, there were the bizarre wafer bites defacing the city.
"I know what you’re thinking," the dog spoke. "Looks as if a giant tried to eat it."
"Nah," Velko scratched his nape, murmuring. "No such thing as giants. That’s tommyrot."
"We’re on a different planet, and you haven’t the slightest notion of what species we may come across. Why don’t you spit-grease these rusty eyelids a bit so you can see beyond the zits on your nose?"
The boy hurled his gaze toward the fat dachshund, who hadn’t paused his crotch chewing at all whilst talking.  
"Just eat your balls there and keep that snout busy. I didn’t take you with me so you can play the philosopher."
"Every single time you scold me for this, you do it as if I still have my balls with me. D’you forget you had me castrated?"
"Seems I did it for a reason. You can’t keep your trap away from there for two seconds."
The dog raised his eyes again.
"I never did this before they cut me, you know. Never even looked at it."
"Then why now?"
"Cause of the loss."
A pale glimpse of ferociousness ran across the golden animal iris. For a brief moment the chubby little dachshund lost his comic looks, despite the jiggly fatty belts on his hips and back and the one empty eye socket, now plugged with a piece of old, pink chewing gum. His tiny hackles went up.
"Go on. Try and bite me," Velko said, his muscular stature still as a rock. "I’ll then rip out the one ball you still have left on you. And you should know that I have no more gum to make you pretty."
"Just deal with your damn, run-down pile of a city and leave me alone."
With this, the dachshund turned his back to his owner and started licking his empty sack anew. One could wonder how the thing managed to fold in and bring its two ends together, with all the length and lard in between.
The outcome of the conversation stirred a mood of gloom within Velko. He’d never been glad to quarrel with his dog in such a manner, but sometimes the dog was simply asking for it. Always bringing up the castration subject, for example. Or the other usual one about the eye. He had clearly not forgiven his master. Yet, after all, Velko wouldn’t beg forgiveness from a dog. He could easily crush him into a pretzel, if he but felt the whim for it, make him swallow his porky cur-buttocks whole, and not a soul throughout the entire Union of the Five Quasars would peep. Simple as that.
His waist and backbone were hurting after the long road they’d travelled from the living settlements up to Moroygrad. So he pulled the enormous bazooka down from his back and sat in the grass near his dachshund. The shadows of the city walls steadily crept closer and closer toward them, nourished by the nearing sunset.
"Sorry," Velko muttered, then started digging around in his backpack.
"It’s alright. I still like you, even after having me chopped. Give me a protein bar, I’m hungry too."
Velko tossed him a foil-wrapped oblong.
"Hey?" the dachshund spoke in puzzlement.
"What?"
"Don’t "what" me! Open it for me. Ya think I make use of my thumbs? You’d probably have cut them off as well, if I did."
The boy tore the wrapping, took the bar out and dumped it before the dog. Sharp little teeth bit the food to pieces less than a second later.
"What are we going to do about the city?" Velko asked, as he unwrapped another protein bar for himself. "What do you say, are we going in?"
"How many credits is the Union going to reward you, should you manage to provide a full analysis of the area?"
"Two hundred at the least. This planet is of the less studied ones and of the furthest too. As for that city, they have no clue on what the heck it’s supposed to be. So here’s the deal: I explore it, take the data into the National Archives, and it’s safe to say I’ll get my hands on quite the credit mine."        
The honey-colored iris and the pink piece of gum both turned to stare at him.
"We will get our hands, you mean."
"Fine, we will," Velko snapped. "So I’m thinking we should try. Since the local goons are saying the city’s full of witches, this probably means we’ll come across some nutty, old bitches who’re gonna sprinkle us with reeky potions and throw dead rats and amulets in our faces. Weapons, I say, no more than knives. They don’t even have electricity on this dumpster of a planet, so what else would you expect. I bet we’re gonna walk this witch-hole through and through as if it were a park. We’ll describe all unfamiliar species, cook up a nice little map, and all that stuff. Just what the pimp ordered."  
The dachshund observed the ruined walls and gateway. His tail had stopped tapping the ground.
"What about the giant bite marks on the stones?" he asked his owner. "These don’t look like the work of nutty bitches with amulets to me."
"No such thing as giants, I’m telling you. The city must’ve suffered some siege or something, like the ones in Gaia’s early millennia. Mom read about that to me, remember? Those trebuchets that hurl large rocks and stuff. It’s gotta be the reason why the wall’s gutted."
"But look at how similar each blow is, if not identical. Even the one on the gate. How come they used projectiles that equal in size and perfectly spherical? Would be interesting to witness such precision in so simple a world."
Velko rolled his eyes.
"Stop it with the freaking giants. There’s some logical explanation out there. And we’re gonna find it."
"We will. When we get inside. I say go for it."
The dachshund got a pat between his large dangling ears.
"It’s decided then," Velko said. "We’ll go pay the witches a visit. Eat up now; we don’t wanna see your bum-bacon melting away from all the talking."
#
A distant shrieking laughter woke them in the morning. The dachshund rose clumsily on his tiny feet and started growling toward the walls of Moroygrad.
"Wha-what?" Velko mumbled, still partly shackled to his slumber.
"Get up!" the dog snarled. "Look, up there! Atop the gate!"
The solid ground had squashed the boy’s body into a stump. It hurt so bad he hardly managed to sit up. He hadn’t taken his bulletproof vest off for the night just in case, but now he wished he had. He hadn’t tied his long hair in as well. Now it was all tangled up with weeds and thorns. They’d gone so deep and fast into his thick red locks it seemed as though someone shoved them in there purposefully.  
"What the hell?"
He started pinching and pulling at his hair, wondering at the amount of junk in it.
"Hey!" the dachshund snarled once again, insistently. "Look there. Look at her!"
The cackling grew all the more retarded as it drifted through the open fields. Velko squinted ahead to focus his blurry sight. There was something moving above the city gate. He rubbed his eyes and looked again; it was the silhouette of a person.
"Who is that freak?" the dachshund wondered, his instincts keeping him focused on the constant growls.
"Can’t see well," Velko said. "Fetch me the stripoculars."  
The device was centimeters away from where he was sitting. The dog raised one of his hind legs and kicked it, not so much as to hand it to his owner, but rather to show him where it was. He grabbed it and looked into it. It took a moment for the stripoculars to do their job; the digital lenses found the desired target automatically, focused on it and presented it for close observation, dismissing the rays reflected by textiles so the observer’s brain would not bother with seeing clothes that could veil hidden weapons. Every single time Velko used the gadget, he couldn’t help but recall how much he loved its label.
Thus, what he saw through the stripoculars was some naked woman with saggy breasts and shaggy hair, jumping up and down upon the arc. The crazy laughter was definitely hers.
"Should we go closer? Check her out?" asked the dachshund.
"I gotta say, if she’s one of the "witches", this is all gonna be a piece of cake," Velko replied and put the stripoculars down. He took joy in seeing his little pet put a stop to the nervous growling. The animal had always been difficult, holding in severe grudges, overusing its mouth and all, but it still believed and relied on its owner’s protection and strength. As a dog should.  
It took the boy a few minutes to stretch his sleepy muscles, shoulder his backpack and the heavy bazooka, then he prompted his clumsy little pet to come along.
Both trooped merrily toward the ruins and the screaming witch. The only thing that partly succeeded in disturbing Velko’s jubilation was the dry prickly weeds tangling in his hair. He would fix that later. His curiosity was now too drawn to the mad woman.
The initial hundred-meter distance that stood between them and Moroygrad melted down to about twenty. The shattered gate loomed before them, somewhat proud and arrogant, even though in laughable decay, and the nibbled walls loomed with it. The freak cackled on and on.
Until she stopped suddenly. Speech then came flying into the ears of the newcomers, not as ragingly absurd as the laughs before, but just as foul and repulsive, if not more. There was something exceptionally abominable about such a slaughtered-pig-grunt voice being able to form units of intelligible communication.  
"Go no further, boy!" she shouted. "Moroygrad shall swallow you and then bog you right down into the deepest bowels of hell!"
The surrounding nature absorbed her disgusting vox queerly, both entities distorting each other in unspoken mutual resentment. An echo came creeping back across the landscape, somewhat choked down; as if trapped in deep water, the dachshund thought, muffled and pointless.
"Interesting trick," Velko told his pet. "I say, the view from here is far better. No need for me to watch her naked."
"Did you see any weapons on her?"
"Just some stupid sickle or something, hanging on her waist. Nothing more."
The witch burst into laughter again. She pointed a finger at them.
"Run back, boyyy! Run and take your legged sausage with you, else I heat up the cauldron! What a juicy little hog!"
The dachshund looked at her, saying nothing. He only raised a chubby hip up to expose the weenie hidden behind. He did not do it so he could pee; it was a gesture. For this same specific gesture, his owner used a middle finger as a symbol. The pet, however, saw no point in games of symbolism.
The woman, not having grasped the answer, as it seemed, went on shouting.
"It was me, boyyy! Mee! Your pretty hair, ha? A bit messed up, is it? Yes, boy, Moroygrad suffers no pretty little fools. You step through that door, and I will wreck more than just your ginger mane!"  
It took Velko a few seconds to get startled. When he did, he let none of his fright run loose and overt on the outside.
"You stand there, no visible reaction," the dachshund spoke. "Means you must be startled and trying to hide it."
"Clam up."
"It’s because of the hair. You’re wondering whether it was really her. And if it was, how could she have tangled the grass so tight without you even noticing. Seems this witch has her trickery indeed."
"She’s no witch. There are no witches. Had she come close to me during the night, I would’ve dispatched her."
"Would you have, really?" the pet’s gum eye looked at him, the tiny spot of a brow above it raising so as to stress the question. "You’ve never killed before. She will be your first, should you act on it."
Then the air split apart again, cracking from the witch’s euphoric screeches.
"Boooy, you talking to the sausage? By Moroy, we have us a halfwit over here, who would’a guessed! A beauty, a stud, but a chump all the same! Run, I tell you, run far, else the maggots eat you!"
Velko got angered by his dog’s big mouth and the woman’s raucous trap. He reached behind his back, drew up the heavy bazooka.
"The first,"  he whispered to himself.
"Wait!" the dachshund cried out, and his lard-belts shook beneath the golden fur. "Let’s question her first! And not with that! You’ll blast the whole damn gate down, and how’re we going to get in then?"
The boy’s eyes were spewing fire, his body all hackled up. Yet his hands remained still. It was a sign that he entrusted his sidekick with the task.
The dachshund went three paces closer to the gate and pinned the gaze of his only eye directly onto the woman.
"Who are you and what? Tell all!" his voice boomed out with confidence. "We give you a chance to cooperate before we act further."
Then the retard fell into dead silence. The dachshund delighted in his little victory of shock-punching the bitch back in return. Where, one might have assumed, would the people on this union-forsaken planet be able to come across a talking dog?
She prolonged the silent pause just beyond the first hint of apparent fear. Then spoke again, this time with no amusement whatsoever.
"Hey, boy, I am not to speak with your filthy animals! How did you hex this one so, giving him tongue and all? Speak for yourself, coward! Tall the fool, with rock-soaked arms, and in iron carapace dressed, yet afraid, dreading converse with a woman!"
Velko did not twitch. The dachshund spoke again.  
"Who are you and what, I ask once more! Was it you who played the hair prank? If it was, when and how did you manage to do it? What is this city? Start speaking!"
"’Tis the city where you’ll find your bucket to kick, sausage! Off with you! I’m letting three hundred bloodhounds loose on your jollux-arse!"
Velko’s voice soared strong and seemingly calm.
"Are you of the witches of Moroygrad? The damned city where young daredevils go in search for glory to never return? So the people of these lands say. Is it true?"
No answer came flying from her. Another thing flew instead. She took the hidden sickle out from under her black petticoat, pointed it toward the sky and cackled some words of no comprehension. Then, in the blinking of an eye, she hurled it down upon the targets.
The piece of sharp metal was given a precise and strict path: straight to Velko’s heart. Yet even so the two companions did not bother to react. The owner didn’t even step aside to avoid the blow. The perfectly aimed weapon, sharp, ancient and bloodthirsty, slammed into his latter-day armor-vest, producing a desperate clang-cry of failure.
Velko raised up the bazooka.
"Don’t!" the dachshund bawled and jumped at him with stifled breaths, bit on his boots. "Not with the bazooka. Go with the whiplight. You can get her from down here."
Velko hearkened yet again, though with heavy reluctance. He laid the beastly weapon on the ground. His left hand then crept in on his waist, going under the plastsilk kimono. The fingers clutched their target and took it out in the open with swift impatience: a long metallic stock with a yellow button on one end.
The witch atop the arch hollered in rage at her failed attempt on the intruder. She raved at the outside fields first, then proceeded to turn backwards--as if to do some mouth-foaming at the fortress as well or at someone inside of it--but whatever she did, the woman took no notice of Velko’s whiplight readying itself to subvert her.  
"Alright, this is officially your first," the dachshund pointed out measuredly, his vox devoid of any alarm. It was a moment of extreme importance to his owner. He was about to take his first life. "You ready? Let us do it the exact proper way. If you do your first by tradition and rule, all that follow will turn out so as well. It’s what the Union says."
"I know," Velko replied, trying to subside the fury that nipped on his every muscle, the boiling bloodlust toward the demented tramp. "It’ll be by the rule."
"You mustn’t hate. You mustn’t venom it up. You heart and consciousness must be clear. You do it for the good of both the Union and the Five Quasars. If your first kill is out of selfish savagery, your psyche will distort and do away with the cause."
"I know. I’ll kill her for Union’s sake. And science’s. She’s disrupting our research, our mission. That’s why I’ll whack her, not out of hate."
The words coming out of his mouth seemed to be aiming at his own self-persuasion.  
"Start whenever you decide you’re ready and not before. Take as much time as you need. I’ll be here waiting."
The dachshund brushed up against his legs then, circled him once and plopped down on the ground, resting his chubby forepaws on master’s heavy steel boots.
Holding up the stock of the not yet activated whiplight, Velko declaimed, "By the Law of the Union of the Five Quasars, I sentence you to biological death."
Then he fell silent for a moment, taking in a deep, faltering breath before producing the execution rite.  

"Sleep,
Run toward the gray of night;
Make no vain a fight,
For I give you the gift of death.

Sleep,
Run beyond, into seraphic light,
where mortal flesh of saying has no right,
For I relieve you of the ill of mortal breath.

Sleep,
And know so: for you I spake a sacred rite;
Thus bear me not a rage of vengeful might,
as I too shall one day follow you within a silent leth."

This whole time the nutty bitch did not cease her vicious shrieking at both the outskirts and the inners of Moroygrad. At times she almost managed to distract Velko to the point of screwing up his recitation. But he stood his ground. He honored the tradition of alien-life termination, repeatedly making sure he’d banished the contempt from his thoughts. Only one thing remained now: the killing.  
The seconds of lull following the poem came to pass in a weirdly unwavering flow, with the exclusion of the woman’s screams. Despite her cacophony, it seemed to the dachshund that his owner’s silence weighed down the open plains like a mountainous rock. Was the boy starting to cow? Or was he struggling with hate?  
Guess we’re going to ponder on it later, the pet concluded, as Velko finally decided to strike a blow.
The palm that held the stock arced backwards with a sudden move, and in that moment a finger pressed the yellow button. The obliterating laser beam--flexing and twisting like a vicious, blazing snake--spilled out of the weapon’s handle, then took a furious leap toward the witch. And the photon thong was at her throat, biting on it with a burning hiss before she could figure out what had occurred. There came no screams. The whiplight yanked her out over the arch’s broken crenels as if she were a sack of cotton. Her body succumbed to death in midair.
It all ended with a thump.
Real silence came then. The dachshund’s chubby paws still lay on Velko’s boot. And Velko did not move. He’d frozen with the whiplight still pointing ahead, as if he’d forgotten he could now lay the weapon down.
Neither of them spoke. Better to wait. They’d discussed it before: when in a tough situation, perhaps it would suffice to simply give in to some peace and quiet. And this was a tough situation indeed; Velko had just killed someone for the first time. True, she was some alien from a miserable planetary barn, an inadequate twit of an undefined species. Yet she was a kicking, breathing thing. She had been.
More than ten minutes rolled by after the witch’s assassination without them peeping. Velko still stood motionless. But the dachshund’s tail, unable to debar all the anxiety from spilling out, was now tapping the ground impatiently.
The animal mumbled at last, "If you did it in hate, no worries. We’ll fix it. You’re not the first to botch..."
"I didn’t botch it," Velko interrupted. "Didn’t hate her. I just hadn’t realized till the last moment, that I was gonna be the one to shut her trap, like, for eternity."
"But we had prepared you for..."  
"Yeah, I know. But all that preparation amounts to precisely a spit’s-worth’a turd, when you finally come to doing it for real. It’s like..."
The dachshund jumped up at the boy’s knees. The eye and the gum shot a lively stare out.
"No matter," said the dog, hitching up his humongous ears victoriously to try and cheer his owner. "You didn’t botch it. You are now officially one of the Conscientious Assassinators of the Union. Forget that other stuff. Let’s have some breakfast, what do you say? Then we’ll fix up that weedy hair and put on some new face paint so that you go inside the city nice and handsome, eh? You deserve it!"  
Though he had awoken from peaceful sleep just minutes ago, Velko felt as if his body was about to disintegrate any second. His knees shook, try as he might to make them stop; his chest shrunk tight, squeezing the air out of his ribcage. He let himself slowly lower down onto the ground and sat, not once turning his eyes away from the smoked-up corpse in front of the city gate.
"Yeah... I deserve it."
"Give me that whiplight now," the dachshund said, bit on the stock in his palm and put it away from him.
It was a nice morning. The planet’s nature itself was actually pleasant. It bore resemblance to the old Terra, humanity’s original home. Yet they were in many ways different. Terra’s seas, for instance, had had that mythical blue color, while here they were orange. The plants and soil were more or less the same, but Terra’s blue skies were nowhere to be seen around here either. The present cosmic dome was a mishmash of several nuances, mostly a harsh, dark red, spilt within stirring gushes of slimy green; a somewhat sapless and repulsive shade; still, it gave off the peculiar sense of cheerful randomness.
"The Union will be very proud of you, you know," the dachshund kept encouraging his young master. "You are now in service to science. You are matured. Sixteen years old and have taken down your first alien pest. When we get home they’ll put you on record in the Archives as an active member of society, how about that! Hey, let’s get you out of that kimono and the bullet shirt as well, take it all off. We’ll put the pajamas on."
The pet took care of the clothing, brought some fatty pills from the rucksack for a snack, then they got to the hair problem. The thorns and weeds were all over, clotting the streams of disheveled red wisps. He started to bite off one thorn after the other, ripping each out with a real struggle, but trying to avoid hair loss at all cost, whenever possible. Velko just stood in silence, staring at the dead woman up ahead.
"They’ll put me in the Archives when we get home..." he muttered at last.
The dachshund spat out a dry weed before answering, "Yes. I say, if that doesn’t make you shit rainbows, I honestly don’t know what will."
"But I don’t wanna go home."
The pet froze in hesitation, took a moment to kill off the slight tickle of panic that pinched the tip of his tail. Then said, "No? And why would that be?"
"Why do you think I even agreed to leave home and set foot on a freaking dumpster in the very ghetto of the Union? To deal with rubble towns and crazy bitches that hide in them? No. I did it cause I wanted to get the black’ole outta there."
"I thought we were only here for the credits."
"That was just a bonus."
"A bonus, you say?" the dachshund whooped in irony. "Well, if we don’t go home when we’re done exploring this Moroygrad, where the hell and what the hell are you going to spend your stupid credits on? You going to give it to some of the fugly hobos around here so they can tell you your freaking fortune? Or perhaps you’ll wanna visit one of those filthy cosmostations and find a good little harlot there to finally make you a grown man for real? We could buy apartments with these credits, for Union’s sake, or travel somewhere nice! Or even set me fr..."
For the first time after the witch’s death, Velko looked away from her. His lantern-jawed face whirled and pinned directly onto the dachshund’s pink-gum eye, the expression on it promising nothing good.
"Shut your trap, dog!"
"Call me that again and I’ll shove these thorns down your..."
"I am serious," the owner snarled. His palm shot up, two fingers fiercely clutching one of the many fatty rings that circled the dog’s neck. He squeezed. "You are an animal of mine. Speak as such."
"Am I to assume I’ll never be fr..."
Velko squeezed harder to quiet him down.
"Know your place, and you’ll live your dog life as fully as can be. And watch it. Am I clear?"
There was no reaction whatsoever. In Velko’s mind that was a "yes".
"Good. Now get me my make-up from the rucksack," and he released his forceful hold.
Upon silently completing the last command, the dachshund went several meters away from his master, and remained there in solitude. As for moral support, he had now drawn the line. The boy was struggling with ill murderous conscience? Well, screw him. Let him struggle his ass off on his own. So great and dignified a human had no use for a dog-slave’s aid.
As noon neared, both were still parted by quiet distance, the witch-city ever staring at them with its mocking face of ruin. The dachshund lay in the prickly grass, gnawing at his belly-fat rolls, or the place where he was cut; Velko sat in his pajamas--a translucent dressing gown made of simple plasmic cotton--preoccupied with applying his face paints, using a needle-thin brush. Sharp, pitch-black lines of soot delicately enclosed his eyes and washed over his eyebrows; he repainted the fading red lightning bolts on his forehead and rewrote his late mother’s name in gold ink across both his cheeks; the stringy net of veins running down his neck he smothered in arsenic.
As in most cases, Velko was the first to act on the grudge-breaking.
"You know what bugs me the most? When the hell are you gonna stop pouting? You’re the dog, I’m the owner. That’s how the world works. What else do you want me to explain?"
"Nothing. Just smear your pretty blush on there and zip it."
"Your kind were mere pets to us in the past. And then, after we managed to wake your simple brains up to evolution, we turned you into our helpers. What would you choose: playing stupid games with me and shitting all over my carpets, or assisting me in my work and life?"
The dog’s tiny head stirred within the pool of chubbiness, his face fixing upon the boy. One of the furious eyes was a mere furious gum, yet it was just as fury-emitting as the real iris on the opposite side.
"Helpers?" the dachshund nearly roared out, "Tell it true! Slaves! Dogs are slaves. I am your slave. You could beat me senseless or just take me out any moment simply for the fun of it. And no one, no one in the whole damned Union would peep. And don’t you dare tell me your ginger noodle never thought of that! I can nose out a shit from over three freaking hills away, and I can detect what is to spawn from your brilliant mind before it’s done so. Even when we were nothing but stupid pets, it wasn’t all such an everyday use-and-slaughter fest, as it is now. Tell it all. Say it, you vile human bastard!"
Velko tossed the brush aside and flew toward the dog. The thorns in his hair jumped up into the wind; his agile muscles sprang forward with the vicious swiftness of a leopard’s, every one of them bulging in distress beneath the plasmic pajamas, every one of them out for blood.
The dachshund’s little heart, thick in fat, lost its rhythm to a momentary bolt of terror, but even the wiggly tail did not flinch on the outside. He’d readied himself for this outcome plenty of times before, so his resolve remained a pillar of rock in the face of the earthquake to come. He would know, at the least, that he walked out of the world, speaking words that only a brave and truthful mind would, unlike billions of his kind across the Universe.
"The brute will kill me remorselessly. I bet he lied to me, I bet he killed that woman with hate. And now he’s starting to pervert. He’s not even speaking the assassin’s rite."
Oh well, he would do it for himself.
Velko was already looming over him when he shut his only eye and started whispering in haste.
"Sleep,
Run toward the gray of night;
Make no vain a fight..."
Then the owner grabbed his snout, and he could speak no more. So he uttered the prayer on in his head, even quicker. He had to say the whole thing before he’d perished.  
"Sleep,
Run beyond, into seraphic light,
where mortal flesh of saying has no right..."
Velko shook him, roaring, "Don’t pray! Don’t pray, I tell you!"
The dachshund kept his eye shut. He was nearing the rite’s final lines, and he would soon be ready. Just a little longer.
"I’m not gonna kill you, you stupid, fat, yapping piece of gob! Never! Do you hear? Never!"
Then the pet looked.
"Yes, you may be my "slave"! And yes, I may lawfully be able to crush you with a single kick between those giant flappers on your head! And I may believe it all myself, but even if I do believe it, why is it that I haven’t done it by now, eh? And why is it that I would never do it? Of us two you’re the philosopher. So explain to me how I can have you serve me as a doormat, but I can’t toss you in the garbage when you’re useless?"
"Choke on my nana’s stillborn, you helminth," the animal muttered from beneath the boy’s fists.
"Stop insulting me and listen! The world marks you down for slavery, that’s clear. But if I don’t treat you as a slave, doesn’t that mean you’re something more to me?"
"You haven’t disposed of me, yet you take me for a servant all the same."
"Even so, did I ever really beat you? Did I ever seriously lay a hand on you? You haven’t the slightest idea of what I’ve seen! Boys, half my age, throwing their curs out the window, cause they were smelly! And I? What have I ever done to you? Even if you are my slave, it’s only in words."
"Tell that to my severed balls. Or to the piece of gum stuck in my skull."
"I had you castrated so you wouldn’t have puppies, who then you’ll surely know to be slaves, and I mean slaves for real. And as for the eye, you poked it out yourself, or have you forgotten? Running down the corridors of the freaking clinic like an idiot, just to avoid castration, smashing your stupid face right into the scalpel stand!"
The dachshund kept silent, staring into Velko’s freshly painted eye-contours.
"I’m not gonna kill you," said the boy once again, his voice low. "Don’t pray."
He let go of his snout, looking away, then turned to face the walls of Moroygrad, somehow hesitantly. He sat in the grass right next to his pet, once again overcome by strange weariness for no physical reason.
The witch’s corpse still fumed before the shattered gate. The two stared at it quietly as before and let the moment of peace go on for a while.
"I’m scared," Velko finally spoke, and his words trembled with unease.
"Of what?" the dachshund asked.
"I think I killed her through spite. I’m not sure."
"No matter. I’m here for you. If you happen to get twisted, we’ll cut your balls out as well. That could fix you up," he tried to cheer his owner up.
"Will you come inside with me? Into the city? Will you help me this time? This last time... if you wish."
It was the closest thing to a hint of formal emancipation that the dachshund had ever heard from Velko. He decided not to prolong the subject, fearing he might spoil it all.
"I will come."
The boy nodded. Then he realized he’d had enough deep talks and fighting. He got up and headed for the place where he had dumped his make-up brush to try and find it.
In the following hour the owner finished applying his face paints, did his pet’s sinister eyeliner too--of death-whispering black--put his combat fatigues back on, then got each weapon nice and ready for action.  
Finally, Velko and the dachshund made for the gate of Moroygrad. They would study the entire place, take the info to the Union’s database, and then, as befitting all skill-proven hunters of knowledge, they’d wallow in their promised pile of dinero.
They strode over the dead witch without looking. The reeky smoke-worms creeping out her melted throat caressed their feet, as if in salute. Then the moment came when they would step through the arch. Velko held his whiplight at the ready.
As the door’s ruptured bowels came looming over their heads, the pet spoke, "We couldn’t get all the thorns out of your hair."
"Yeah. There’s more still. It seems they’re not coming off, unless I get a serious haircut. And I kinda feel like, I don’t know, like they’re actually growing bigger or something. Sounds dumb, but I really think so."
"What if it really was that nutjob’s doing after all?" the dog voiced his speculations. "What if she cast a spell, like, for real? What if she truly was... a witch?"
He expected Velko to stifle these questions with his usual skepticism, but he remained silent this time.
"Well, well," the dachshund carried on, his voice soaked up in cheer, in an attempt to quiet down the slight shivers that started running up his spine, as the city closed in on them, "If that’s not vanity, I don’t know what is. You mess with his pretty hair a little, and he’s off to fetch the stake and the garlic."
"Witches or not, we’re getting our credits," Velko mumbled, "That I know for sure."
They left the gate behind, and before they could take a closer look at the inner fortress, a thick greenish fog crept out of nowhere, spread across heavily, ate up every inch of space.
"You know what comes to my mind now?" the dachshund whispered, his rolls of fat jiggling with fright, "The Union has occupied and thoroughly examined thousands of planets and galaxies. Why not this planet as well? Why would they skip it? And why would they allow amateurs like us to come here and see how the land lies, instead of doing it themselves? You know, I might be a dog, but I’m kinda feeling now as if I’m a mouse in a maze."
"Shhh, quiet!" Velko hissed him silent, gestured him to stop.
They could discern nothing in the fog, but the blurry shadowy lumps that were the high walls and sharp roofs of inner structures. Suddenly there came a wail of petrifying horror. The two wondered what it resembled more: a baby’s cry or a jackal’s howl.
The fog thickened around them still, came down as tiny drops upon their skin, and the drops’ touch tickled, itched, then burned. The dachshund whirled in panic.
"Poisonous gas? What if it’s some spell?"
"Run back! Back to the gate! We should’ve thought this shit through!"
They flew and soon saw the gate again. Only now it wasn’t shattered. The wooden wing, high and solid, its oaken flesh all smeared with the black of night, barred the entrance fully. The cry-howl coming from the city’s bowels drew closer.
"Get the bazooka!" the pet wuffed in fury and let his sharp teeth come out loose and lethal midst the smog. "Topple down that fucking hut! Show them focks some real magic!"
Velko hurled the monster-gun into position, its muzzle gaping against the doorway.
"Don’t be afraid!" the boy called out to his dog, waved the stinging vapors off his sight to take precise aim.
"I am not! I’m with my owner!"
Then the trigger cracked and bent, belching out a shell within a cloud of fire.