Chapter 775: Supplies

The woman kept watching the old man.

Selene left them with the nurse and went to the soldier who had lost much of his lower body to the fleet’s first attack. They had kept him alive through the retreat from the breach and the crossing through the web. Now they still had to treat the wound that had nearly killed him.

"Can you hear me?" she asked.

His eyes moved toward her.

Selene called for supplies from the sheltered side of the wall. They needed room, clean cloth, and people who could keep working without collapsing beside the beds.

Selene caught the eye of a fighter still guarding the empty road and pointed him toward the clean cloth. He sheathed his weapon and came over.

Dorian returned carrying one end of a makeshift stretcher in his right hand.

The two men with him supported the other side and kept the body level. They placed their dead fighter beside the other casualties, away from the treatment area.

Dorian stayed to straighten the cloth across the man’s chest before coming back to Selene.

"The path is clear," he said. "No one followed us."

She looked at his injured arm.

"Sit down. You’re leaving blood all over the place."

He began to look toward the perimeter.

"I can see the street from here," she said. "So can you. Sit."

Dorian sat against the wall. He kept watching the street while an attendant unwound the soaked cloth.

***

Andrew watched the emergency fleet climb away from the city.

The infinity marks inside his eyes turned as he followed the damaged formation. Several vessels had to leave space around one ship that could no longer hold a steady course.

He had counted on the fleet to prolong the conflict. It had helped at first. Now it was retreating while the surviving vampires stayed behind their defenses.

Andrew shifted his attention to the service yard.

The organ was gone.

Arachne had taken it with the power his formation had forced into it. The barrier around the remaining smoke belonged to Alex now, and the red marks on the paving no longer answered one another.

Andrew pressed his thumb against his storage ring.

He had not lost the Asura crystal. He reminded himself of that before the sight of the empty yard could make him choose something stupid.

Returning would not put the organ back inside the apparatus.

He had seen Thepes forced into the damaged room, his body held by the pair’s ice and runes. The artificial Progenitor was still alive, but he was no longer driving the army Andrew had expected to keep the heirs occupied.

Both of his largest pieces had stopped doing what he needed.

Andrew’s mouth tightened.

He had not asked Arachne to care who won. He had expected her hunger and the presence of her daughter’s remains to keep her fighting long enough for someone else to die. 𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ

Alex had given her a way to take what she wanted and leave.

That was the part Andrew hated most. The heirs had not needed to overpower her. They had endured long enough to turn the bait into the price of her withdrawal.

He looked toward the men guarding the ruined service yard.

The remaining local formation could no longer help him. Trying to repair it would put him beside a place the survivors now knew mattered, under the eyes of people who had managed to contain Thepes.

He withdrew his attention from the yard.

The crystal was still in his ring, and his All-Seeing Eyes still worked. The core had cut Adam’s contact once. That was a useful result, but Andrew had no intention of treating it as permission to remain within reach of the Emperor’s next search.

Adam already knew who had broken the prison’s suppression. Andrew could still keep the survivors on Proxima from learning the rest of his arrangements. Another attempt to force them back into the fight wasn’t worth risking the resources he had kept.

Andrew turned toward the exit of his current shelter.

The survivors would soon start looking for whoever had arranged this battle. Andrew still had people and observation points elsewhere; he could watch them without waiting beside the ruins to be found.

He stepped out, leaving the local trap behind.

***

The last low transport passed above Alex’s barrier without firing.

He watched it join the ships climbing away from the city. Their guns remained pointed downward until the angle became too steep to follow the streets beneath them.

Mingyue stood beside him with one sword still in her right hand.

"Dorian isn’t pursuing," Vesa said.

"I can see."

The ground line held behind the low buildings. Instead of pouring into the streets after the humans, the soldiers were bringing the last reachable wounded toward Selene.

Alex lowered his hand and let the barrier above the wall fade. The ships were no longer shedding fragments over them, though he kept the smoke contained behind its separate boundary.

His left shoulder sagged as that pressure eased.

Mingyue put her sword away.

"Come on," she said.

Alex looked toward the room where Thepes remained restrained, then toward the wounded.

"Vesa, keep watching him. We’re going to Selene first."

"I will, King."

He and Mingyue walked along the ruined wall.

There were bodies beside the treatment area now. Alex recognized the armor on one of them from the corridor, though he had never learned the man’s name.

He slowed, but a nurse called for help moving a bed before he reached the bodies. The soldier carrying one end had lost his grip, and the patient began sliding toward the broken side rail.

Alex caught the frame with his right hand. Pain pulled through his side as Mingyue took the other end.

They lowered the bed together and waited while the nurse secured the patient.

The ships receded above the city without firing again.

Selene looked up from the wounded man in front of her and saw the blood running down Alex’s side.

"Both of you," she said, pointing to the empty space beside Dorian. "Sit there."

Alex looked at Mingyue. She was already moving toward it.

He followed her and sat with his back against the wall, close enough to hear the nurse asking the next patient to keep breathing.

For a while, neither moved. An attendant cut the cloth away from Alex’s side and bound the wound after he had slowed the bleeding. Mingyue let another worker clean her forearm, then rested it across her lap instead of testing the grip again.

The next two beds passed without either of them having to get up. Selene had found fresh carriers. At the road, a replacement squad took over while Dorian’s tired fighters counted the people they had brought back.

Alex watched the change, waiting for the shout that would send him to his feet. It didn’t come.

He leaned his head against the wall. Beside him, Mingyue closed her eyes, still close enough that their shoulders touched.