RE: BLOOD AND IRON

The streets of Vienna had become an open wound, festering with blood, smoke, and the unrelenting echoes of gunfire. The Werwolf Brigade’s purge had begun in earnest, and though their campaign had already shattered the city’s criminal underbelly, the battle was far from over.

The resistance was not composed of a singular, organized faction. Instead, it was a chaotic web of brigands, criminal syndicates, and ideological revolutionaries. Ethno-nationalist separatists waged war in the name of their own fractured visions of sovereignty, religious fanatics saw the collapse of the monarchy as a sign to enact their own holy war, and Marxist revolutionaries—emboldened by the chaos—sought to turn Vienna into the first stronghold of a new socialist order.

These groups did not fight for Austria—they fought for themselves. And in doing so, they ensured that the empire’s fall would be even bloodier than its slow, inevitable death.

A cold drizzle swept through the ruined avenues, turning the cobblestone streets into a mess of mud and blood. The scent of burning flesh lingered in the air, a sickening reminder that the city was being gutted from the inside out. In the depths of an abandoned tenement, now turned into a command post for one of the largest revolutionary cells, Gregor Varga, a former dockworker turned Marxist militia leader, stood over a table covered in stolen weapons and bomb-making materials.

“The Werwolf Brigade is hitting the brothels and drug dens first. They’re dismantling the networks that fund our operations,” one of his lieutenants spat. “We cannot allow them to keep pushing unchecked.”

Gregor’s jaw tightened. “Then we push back. We are not rats to be slaughtered in the street. The monarchy is dead. The revolution has begun. We must strike first and make them bleed.”

His words were met with nods and murmurs of approval. They had all seen what happened when the Werwolf Brigade came—entire blocks razed, suspected dissidents lined against walls and shot, entire families vanished in the night. These mercenaries were not soldiers of Austria. They were executioners, paid in gold and blood.

The orders were given, passed through the alleys and ruins like whispers in the wind. Small cells of fighters—some with military experience, others nothing more than desperate men with stolen rifles—began preparing for a counterattack.

The first explosion shattered the fragile calm of the night. A horse-drawn carriage loaded with explosives was sent barreling toward a Werwolf supply convoy, detonating in a fiery blast that sent shards of burning wood and steel into the unsuspecting mercenaries.

Automatic fire erupted from the rooftops, cutting down Werwolf foot patrols as they scrambled to react. The revolutionaries had no discipline, no real tactics, but they had desperation, and desperation made men willing to throw their lives away in the name of vengeance.

The Werwolf Brigade, however, was not an army of conscripts. They were hardened killers, veterans of the Great War, men who lived for battle, and now without one to call home had resorted to mercenary work. And unlike the revolutionaries, they were true professionals who would use any means necessary to fulfil their contract to the letter, no matter how cruel or immoral.

The Werwolf troops responded with ruthless precision. Squads formed defensive perimeters, calling in reinforcements from armored half-tracks rolling through the streets like iron-clad beasts.

The roar of their machine guns drowned out the screams. Flashes of gunfire illuminated the wreckage-strewn streets as Werwolf Brigade riflemen moved house to house, clearing out suspected insurgent hideouts with merciless efficiency. They moved like a pack of predators, well-trained and accustomed to urban warfare.

Gregor watched from the cover of a ruined warehouse, his pistol steady in his hands. He spotted a Werwolf officer barking orders, directing his men to encircle a rebel safehouse. Gregor exhaled, slowed his heartbeat, and squeezed the trigger.

The officer’s head snapped backward, his body crumpling to the ground.

For a moment, the Werwolf advance hesitated.

Then, just as quickly, it resumed.

Gregor’s heart pounded as he dove back into cover, chambering another round. The battle was far from over. But for every revolutionary who fell, another would rise to take his place. The Werwolf Brigade may have had superior weapons, superior training, and the unwavering command of a machine without conscience, but the revolutionaries had something else.

Nothing left to lose.

The battle raged across Vienna, from the narrow alleys of the merchant district to the once-pristine boulevards now littered with rubble and corpses. Revolutionaries hijacked trams and used them as makeshift barricades.

Drug-fueled street gangs, who had once run the city’s vice trade, now fought not out of ideology, but because they had no other choice—the Werwolf Brigade had made it clear there would be no mercy.

The fighting intensified as dawn approached. In one district, Werwolf units used flamethrowers to clear out a heavily fortified theater being used as a Marxist command center.

Smoke and burning flesh choked the air as the rebels inside screamed and howled in agony. In another, Werwolf sharpshooters set up in the spires of cathedrals, picking off insurgents as they ran through the streets, desperate for an escape that did not exist.

Gregor’s militia had managed to hold their ground through the night, but supplies were running low. Ammunition was scarce, food scarcer. A runner burst into the safe house, panting, his uniform soaked in blood.

“The bridge is gone,” he gasped. “Werwolf artillery took it out. We’re cut off.”

Gregor ran a hand through his sweat-matted hair. “Then we dig in. We hold out as long as we can.”

His men did not cheer or rally. They simply nodded, adjusting their rifles, checking their magazines. They all knew what was coming. There was no way out of this city. The Werwolf Brigade would burn Vienna to the ground before allowing it to remain in the hands of rebels.

And still, they fought.

It was near midday when the final push came. The Werwolf Brigade moved in force, tanks rolling down the avenues, their turrets swiveling to rain death upon the insurgents who remained. Gregor’s men, entrenched behind overturned trams and broken walls, fired everything they had. But it wasn’t enough.

Gregor saw his fighters fall one by one. A young man, barely eighteen, cut down by machine gun fire. A woman, once a teacher, clutching a rifle she barely knew how to use, caught in an explosion that sent her broken body into the rubble. One by one, the revolution was dying.

The last thing Gregor saw before darkness took him was the silhouette of a Werwolf Brigade soldier looming over him, rifle raised. There would be no prisoners.

The purge would be absolute.

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