“What have I done?” He blubbered, his emotions raw after being stripped of his power.
“Well for one thing, you royally pissed me off.” A cool voice sounded suddenly from beside him.
He jerked his tearful face out of his hands and looked over in time to witness a tiny red fist collide with his chin, wrecking his jaw and instantly rendering him unconscious.
“Stay down for a bit, kay?” Nina chirped.
Her clothes were tattered and covered with blood from her battle with the Ogres and she had nasty bruises all over.
But she was a fighter, and it looked like there was a halfway decent scrap going on not far away that she ought to get in on.
Almost absentmindedly she knocked over a shed with her hammer and wedged his legs underneath it to keep him from squirming away somewhere.
“After all the shit you pulled I really want to yank out your spine. But this time, just this once, I think it isn’t my right.”
She looked up at the sound of Xalanth roaring in pain, and her face set into a fierce scowl.
“I’m definitely going to kill your girlfriend though.”
Chapter 52:
Titanic Threesome
Outside of the mounting chaos within Nameless’s mind, a Dragon’s roar of pain and fury echoed around the battlefield.
Evadne laughed, her voice strangely high and cruel.
“That’s it you scaly bitch! Bleed for me!”
Their furious exchange had finally ended, and Xalanth was now on one knee, her armoured hand holding her side as Evadne tore her rigid armoured claws free of the Dragon’s flesh. With her other hand the Chimera seized a fistful of Xalanth’s hair and gloated as she tilted her face upwards.
“Tell me Dragon, when is the last time someone killed one of your kind?”
The wounded monster spat at her.
Evadne laughed as she wiped the bloody spittle away with the rigid claws of her damaged hand.
“Not nice, you should die better than-”
Abruptly a massive black hammer struck the Chimera and sent her careening away from Xalanth’s kneeling form.
A tiny mountain had barreled out of the melee into the open area around them and swung her weapon with both hands, sending Evadne into an awkward tumble in the mud.
While the dark monster tried to make sense of the sudden shift, Nina took the opportunity to help the wounded Dragon up.
“Better question, when was the last time someone took down a Gigas and a Dragon fighting together?” She inquired flatly; “Oh wait, that’s never happened before.”
Xalanth let out a humourless snort, blood trailing from her lips.
“My thanks, mountain-daughter. I’m afraid I have been found lacking, but together we shall end her.”
Nina nodded.
“Normally I don’t like uneven fights, but this asshole keeps slipping away from me and she needs to be in the ground already.”
The Dragon’s eyes narrowed.
“Agreed.”
Once Evadne had picked herself up out of the mud Nina gave her a level look before calling out to her.
“This is the third time we’ve met, but we never have been properly introduced. I’m Nina. And you’re Dead.” She hefted her hammer and her voice dropped dangerously low, causing the ground to rumble and shake as she imbued it with her wrath; “Nice to meet you, Dead.”
Evadne hissed as her tail lashing back and forth, one arm hung useless at her side; the giant had landed a solid blow and had held nothing back.
“I see the Gigas live up to their reputation! Useless Ogres!” She cursed with a snarl; “Whatever, I don’t care who you are! Everyone dies today!”
But as she spoke she became aware that the sounds of battle around them had tapered off, moans of pain were all that could be heard now.
“What the- fight! Keep fighting!” She screamed at a nearby group of Tenebrae surrounded by pale-skinned Amazons.
They didn’t move, instead they stood stock still as the darkness that swirled in their eyes began to flicker with golden light.
As the blonde warrior women put themselves between Evadne and the Tenebrae, she wheeled about in desperation.
“You have to keep fighting! What, what is this?!”
“Looks like you losing.” Nina noted as she likewise took in the sight.
It was the same all over the field: what few pockets of Tenebrae that still stood against the combined wave of Aegis, Amazons, and Antlions had frozen in place, some had actually fallen over, their muscles rigid.
“No! This isn’t how it’s supposed to be!” Evadne cried out, suddenly sounding much more like a monster girl than a demon.
But darkness rose around her.
Nina lunged to prevent her from escaping again, bringing her hammer down in a mighty overhand swing, but under the demon’s control the Chimera whirled in place, her tail wreathed in shadow and smashing into the side of the giant’s head with incredible force, clothes-lining her into the ground.
Demon-touched or not, no way would her snake’s fangs be able to puncture the giant’s skin.
“Ow.” The little red warrior complained, giving her head a shake as she woozily got to her knees in the muck.
The Chimera would have been on her then but Xalanth roared and slammed into her from the side and the winged pair tumbled through the mud, once more exchanging vicious blows.
But while the weakened Dragon’s claws screeched against Evadne’s armour, the Chimera’s were cutting deeper into Xalanth’s scales with each and every strike.
The circle around them grew wider as those that were able began to drag, pull, and carry the motionless Tenebrae and wounded clear of the three-way brawl.
Nina regained her feet in time to see a wave of darkness slam into Xalanth and throw her back again.
“That’s cheating! My weakling’s right, this magic crap needs better rules!” She groused before throwing herself at Evadne again.
It went on like this for some time.
The thunderous pounding of Nina’s hammer was met with Evadne’s whip-like tail strikes and vicious claws. Blood flowed from all three combatants, though it soon became clear that even with only one good arm, Evadne was a formidable foe.
A thousand years or more of malice could not so easily be undone.
“You stupid cunts! Do you even realize what I have become? I will- I will kill everyone myself if I have to! Starting with you!”
“You sound like a budget villain. Shut up already, it’s annoying.” Nina panted out, spitting blood into the mud around them.
Evadne’s claws had torn into her skin from her forehead to her chin, narrowly missing one of her eyes. Blood and muck had caked into that side of her face so she couldn’t see clearly as she wiped at it with one shaky hand.
And her injured ribs were screaming at her to cease whatever the hell she thought she was doing.
“It really is.” Xalanth wheezed plaintively.
She coughed and an alarming amount of blood spattering out from her mouth.
The Dragon was gravely wounded now and was kneeling once more, one wing broken and useless while the other trembled with fatigue.
In all her years she had never been so hard pressed, not even when fighting the Dragon-killing weapons used by the Divine Republic during the war.
But something had shifted in their opponent: she was off-balance.
Far too much of their fight had been at the direction of the demon within her, and now it had all but turned away in disgust, recognizing the inevitable.
With the loss of the Tenebrae, Evadne’s ultimate goal was very clearly out of reach, and black tears streaked down her face as her bottom lip quivered with real emotion.
“Why can’t you all just die!” She wailed; “Why do you fight so hard to carry on with lives of grim misery and pain?!”
“Because sex is a thing dumbass.” Nina snapped irritably; “Maybe if you’d gotten laid more you wouldn’t be such a twat.”
Clawing at her
hair with her good hand Evadne was quick to refute her.
“Tell me that once you’ve had your children stolen from you!” She spat out, raw pain in her words.
Having to relive the moment over and over in her head in order for Jonathan to create the army of Tenebrae made the deaths of Kaylen and Petra that much more immediate to her. And with Jonathan unconscious and her demonic patron sulking within her, she had no means of shielding herself from it.
Nina huffed out an impatient sigh.
“It really blows what happened to your kids. But you can’t punish the whole world for it. That isn’t cool.”
“I have to!” Evadne sobbed, ever more black tears streaking down her face; “Don’t you understand that?! There is nothing else left for me! I have- I am nothing! Nothing!”
The Gigas slowly nodded as her breathing evened out.
“Yeah. I get it. Which is why I have to kill you.”
In once last desperate bid to accomplish as much destruction as possible, the demon within Evadne once more flexed its power to swallow her despair and replace it with the same seething hatred she always felt, causing her to hiss and drop back down into her predatory crouch.
Meanwhile Xalanth had recovered what strength she could, and Nina cleared the last of the muck and blood from her vision by mopping at her face with the remnants of her tattered shirt.
Again they both felt the shift in their opponent.
No more words.
“Hey ‘Lanthy, I have a crazy idea. I’m tired of this dipshit, help me end her?” Nina asked with her eyes locked on Evadne.
“Thought that was what we were doing?” Xalanth held one hand to her side, her breathing coming with difficulty; “I’m open to suggestions.”
“Good, I’m gunna need some more of that fire of yours. In fact, I need every bit of it.”
Without explaining further, she began to move deliberately towards the Chimera, shaking out her hammer arm in preparation.
“But-”
“No time. Breathe on me. Now!”
With that Nina shook the ground with another mighty roar and made one final reckless leap towards Evadne.
Though taken aback, Xalanth didn’t hesitate: she threw her arms back and drew in a painful breath and unleashed it with everything she had left, the billowing wave of fire quickly engulfing the Gigas as she soared through the air.
The Chimera hissed and shielded her eyes from the radiance of the flame, too slow to bring up another shield of shadow.
And blinded as she was, she couldn’t see Nina’s hammer as it descended on her head with all of the mountain’s strength and rage behind it.
For her sisters.
For her bond-mate.
For Kar...
And above all else for every one of the Ogres that she had been forced to kill.
The curtain of flame billowed over them, both monsters disappearing from view.
And within it Evadne was pounded into the mud under the weight of the giant’s long-delayed vengeance; her snake tail limp at her side, the armoured shadows that coated her finally shattering under the relentless assault of Dragon-fire and Gigas-iron.
Xalanth slumped forwards onto one hand just after her breath ran out, her other still holding her wounded side as she coughed up more blood while the last of her fire quickly dissipated in the persistent rain.
Her fiery attack hadn’t lasted nearly as long as it had earlier, but it had been enough.
The now naked Nina loomed over the stunned Chimera, lying prone on the battlefield. The giant’s skin actual glowed cherry red from the heat of the Dragon’s flames, as did her massive hammer.
Flat on her face, Evadne’s vision was limited to one eye, and it was dominated by her own arm, limp and splattered with muck and black blood.
Neither the Chimera nor the demon within her could will it to move even an inch.
“C-Can’t you see th-tha’s the only way?” She slurred out; “If I don’t k-kill you all, he will.”
She could feel the impotent fury of the demon trapped within her broken body, feel its smoldering disappointment at her failure. Its power and malice had been all consuming to her for so long...
But it could not stand in the mortal world without a willing host.
And while the Chimera whimpered out her warning into the mud, standing over her was her undoing.
“I’m supposed to be gracious in victory.” Nina remarked while looking to her glowing hammer, bemused; “That is the pledge that was handed down to me. But you make it really fucking hard... Evadne.”
“You d-don’t get to decide for-” The dark monster rasped out blearily, blood matting her hair along with the rain and mud.
But the Gigas didn’t let her finish.
Instead she punctuated her own words by bringing her glowing hammer down again and again on the broken girl’s head and back.
“I’m - talking - DEAD!”
When the giant’s assault ended Evadne was still forever, and the demonic shadows of hate that had held her in sway for over a thousand years dissipated from her lifeless body, washing away like ink in the rain as finally, fatalistically, the Chimera were truly extinct from the world.
Dark blood sizzled on her weapon while Nina looked up into the rain, the water likewise hissing and spitting against her heated skin as the weight of her actions settled upon her.
But she was the mountain, and she would carry it.
Shaking off the grim thoughts, Nina turned from Evadne’s remains and approached the kneeling Dragon.
Xalanth bowed her head to her.
“Without your aid my story would have ended this day. You have my thanks, Drakkan-freend.”
The Gigas sniffed.
“All good. You dead?”
With great effort the ancient monster girl regained her feet again, one wing trailing limp behind her as she raised her head to smile at the Gigas.
“Not as yet. How did you know-” The Dragon coughed and spat out another gob of blood; “How did you know you could withstand my flames?”
“Didn’t.” Nina grunted, then winced as she traced her fingers over the claw-marks across her face.
Before Xalanth could respond though, cries of alarm sounded from all around.
“What’s happening to them?!” One of the volunteers screamed.
The Tenebrae were convulsing; the golden light that had been a flicker in their eyes now spilled out and burned the darkness away with its radiance.
“I have a pretty good idea.” Miranda staggered through the mud towards Xalanth and Nina.
She and hers had headed back into the fight after securing Yana, but now she was limping.
Of all the things that could have happened to her she had slipped and rolled her ankle, and she wasn’t happy about it.
“Armstrong succeeded?” Dawn Morrow asked, leading a number of people in search of wounded.
“Seems to be the case.”
“Miranda, is my lady safe?” Xalanth demanded.
“She’s still got five Antlion queens with her. We came to see what all the screaming and fire and death was about over here.”
“Just me settling things with Evadne, wanna see?” Nina gestured at the Chimera’s grisly remains in the mud.
Miranda chuckled darkly.
“I’ll take your word for it. Your people were worried about you, something about some Ogres? And why do you always end up in the buff when shit goes down?”
Nina didn’t bother to answer the second question as there was little humour in Miranda’s words, and she had even less desire to address the first.
Meanwhile the convulsing of the Tenebrae ceased and the light faded.
“Is it over?” A grizzled looking Wolfen asked from nearby, blood matted her hair as she scanned the field for any threat.
“Almost, we still need to catch that prick Jonathan, and make sure the kid is okay.”
“I broke his jaw earlier. Jonathan’s I mean, not my guy’s.” Nina said.
She frowned as she licked her fingers and touching her still-glowing hammer with a faint sizzle. Her own skin had cooled in the rain, but evidently the heat of Dragon-fire was slower to fade from her weapon.
“Good.” Dawn Morrow began to give orders again; “Miranda, take Nina and secure the murderous bastard. The rest of you, the medical teams are up to their eyes in wounded, so if you can walk and talk you can help with triage. Move it Aegis! There are still lives to save!”
Though only a few days prior she was much lower in the Aegis’s command structure, humans and monster girls alike scrambled to obey her orders now.
The Tenebrae were still unconscious, though their eyes were no longer black or gold but had reverted to their natural colours.
But as they walked towards Wayfelt and the shed she collapsed on Jonathan, Nina’s head snapped up.
“Master…” She whispered, fear naked in her voice.
“What is it, what’s wrong?” Miranda demanded.
“Someone else can help you with dickbag! I need to get to my man!” The giant shouted even as she ran off.
“Nina!” Miranda cried out at her fleeing back.
Chapter 53:
Despair
Nina sprinted through the muddy field and up the hill towards where she’d last felt Nameless, the giant having to dodge between the wounded and those helping them as she ran.
No!! Master please!
Her heart ached: emptiness had taken the place where her bond-mate had lived.
Less than a minute later she pulled up short of plowing through the protective ring of Undines.
They were all crying.
With her heart in her throat she pushed past them as she heard her bond-sisters doing the same.
Milly was lowing non-stop in desperation, while Erica was likewise yowling in despair.
Only Volka shed no tears, her head slumped and her arms wrapped tenderly around the form of William Nameless Armstrong.
He was still.
“No…” Nina whimpered.
Her hammer fell from her nerveless fingers, the Dragon-heated iron hissing as it landed in the churned up earth.
All around heads hung low as the monster girls mourned, the overcast sky a grim reflection of the hearts of the sudden widows. Milly dragged her hands through the mud, her deep moos of grief echoing around them all, Erica reached out and the two clung to each other desperately.
The Heartstone Saga Page 45