Chapter 167: An Overzealous Offence

"My Queen!" Bilorial shouts out, face straining with the effort as blood oozes from his shattered shoulder.

"Stay down!" Eris yells back, scythe already at her side as she runs toward Vexena, "This fight isn’t yours."

"Be careful!" Xenara calls out, still clutching the stumps of her severed legs.

"Kick her butt!" Virelle yells in support, bouncing beside Veena’s leg. "Punch her face in!"

Eris pools her strength into her legs, magic swirling around her boots in crackling black threads, and leaps into the air to help her Queen, her boots leaving a small crater in the earth where they kick off, scythe already crimson-black at the edges, every ounce of remaining strength poured into a single desperate arc toward the fight overhead, teeth gritted so hard her jaw aches.

She barely gets within fifty yards of the action.

A searing orb of holy light catches her broadside mid-leap. The swirling sphere of divine magic knocks her clean out of the air and sends her tumbling across the scorched earth. She manages to brace her scythe against it just in time, the impact driving her backward and downward in a screeching, deepening crater of torn earth and debris, the orb’s heat scorching straight through her armor and searing into the flesh beneath.

With a grunt of enormous effort, she twists her blade around the orb and knocks it aside entirely, sending it hurtling off toward the treeline, where it detonates with a deafening boom~ in a blinding pillar of white fire that flattens every tree for a hundred yards, splinters and cinders raining back down across the crater like black snow.

"T-That was..." Eris hitches as a pressure wave rolls out from the impact zone, sending her hair fluttering backwards.

She stares at the aftermath, incredulous, chest heaving, a thin line of blood trickling down from her hairline where the heat had simply licked a little too close.

"Hiiii," a voice says cheerfully from directly beside her, close enough that she can feel its warmth brushing across the skin on her nape. "Your Queen is already having fun with my sister. Thought you might want to play too."

Eris whips around to find Nela grinning at her from a foot away, her fiery curls still crackling faintly with restless, gathering power.

"W-Wai—" Her mouth falls open, and that’s the only warning she gets before Nela’s fist connects, wreathed in raw divine fury, knuckles cracking bone square across Eris’s jaw and sending her rocketing and rolling wildly through the air, tearing clean through an entire pocket of trees, wood splintering and cracking in her wake like sun-dried kindling, birds scattering in every direction as every impact cracks out like cannon fire.

Eris doesn’t stay down. She’s back on her feet before the dust even finishes settling, scythe trailing ribbons of black flame as she carves a wide arc through the air, forcing Nela to skip backward with a delighted laugh rather than take the hit head-on.

"Ooh, feisty!" Nela crows, weaving a spear of solid golden light between her fingers and hurling it in a blazing streak that punches clean through the overturned carriage Eris ducks behind, splinters exploding outward in a cloud of smoke and cinders.

Eris uses the cover to close the distance instead of retreating from it, blade flashing low in a sweep meant to take Nela’s legs out from under her, and for one triumphant heartbeat it actually connects, a thin line of golden blood welling along Nela’s forearm where the scythe’s edge catches her.

Nela blinks down at the cut like she’s never seen her own blood before, more delighted than dismayed. "You actually hit me!" she squeals, and the ground around both of them buckles as she throws her full weight into her next strike, catching Eris across the ribs and sending her skipping like a thrown stone across the cratered field, wheat and dirt exploding upward with every bounce, before she finally skids to a smoking stop near the treeline, scythe spinning away out of reach.

High above the ruined field, Vexena and Hela’s fight has taken to the sky entirely. Twin shapes of crimson and gold trade blow after earth-shaking blow, speeds blurring into little more than streaking color across the skies, swords meeting again and again in explosions of raw magical energy that shimmer down across the battlefield like falling stars, painting every upturned face below in flickering, volatile light as thunder rolls out across the valley with every single clash of magic-boosted steel.

The rest of the team watches, stunned into total silence, weapons hanging forgotten at their sides, as Demon Queen Vexena strains visibly to keep pace with the glowing, streaking image of the Saint Sister.

She blocks and weaves, countering with everything she has as sword after glowing sword tears across the sky to meet her, each contact of demon blade against holy blade erupting out in concentric rings of pressure that snap back against reality in thundering cracks, the very air itself groaning under the strain of two forces never meant to meet.

Without warning, Vexena breaks off mid-clash and plunges downward, dragging Hela with her in a controlled freefall that shears clean through the treeline bordering the field. The two of them tear through a hundred yards of ancient trunks like they’re made of matchsticks, wood and bark exploding outward in a widening cone of splinters, before erupting back out the far side of the shattered forest in a spray of leaves and shredded canopy, neither one so much as slowing down.

They finally break apart at the last second, putting real distance between themselves for the first time, and the fight shifts entirely. Vexena’s clawed hand plunges into the scorched earth and drags free a churning wave of shadow-fire, black flame licking with violet edges at its center, and hurls it skyward in a roiling wall. Hela meets it head-on with an open palm, holy lightning crackling down her arm and out through her fingers in a blinding lance of white-gold light. The two forces collide mid-air with a concussive CRACK~ that flattens the grass for a quarter mile in every direction, the resulting wave of steam and ash rolling outward across the battlefield like something physical.

Vexena is genuinely, unmistakably struggling against an opponent who looks, for anybody who can actually see her amongst the blur of movement, like she’s barely trying at all, still smiling unmistakably between every soul-shaking blow they exchange.

"Is she... is Vexena actually losing?" Sera asks, mouth agape in awe.

"I don’t think my mother’s ever lost ... to anyone," Veena breathes, watching her mother get driven backward through the air. "Not once. Not ever."

Bela doesn’t wait to see where the ash-wave lands. Both hands snap up, and a shimmering golden dome blooms into existence over Vexena’s remaining soldiers and the huddled team alike, catching the wall of superheated air a heartbeat before it would have cooked every one of them where they stand. The dome holds, humming with visible strain, chunks of scorched debris skittering harmlessly off its curved surface like hail off a tin roof, and only once the wave passes does she let it drop, exhaling hard through her nose.

"Sometimes I really hate being the responsible one," she mutters to no one in particular, already watching the sky again with a look of mounting dread as Hela drives into Vexena a second time, and Nela and Eris blur across the battlefield once more in fresh clashes of holy light and demonic fire.

"Please, slow down!" she shouts up at her sisters, cupping both hands around her mouth. "You’re going to cause a tear in reality if you keep this up!"

The team’s heads all turn toward the yelling brunette in unison, dawning horror spreading across every battle-battered face as their eyes flick between her and her sisters, who are currently dismantling the two strongest women they know, piece by piece.

Bela lifts both hands innocently, palms out, the very picture of misguided but peaceful intentions.

"I’m not involved in that. I promise. I’m only here for the Prince, honestly! Please don’t—"

That’s exactly when a full battalion of Vexena’s remaining soldiers, screaming battle cries, magical weapons drawn, rushes her all at once in a kamikaze sprint, apparently deciding that a glowing woman calmly commentating on a god-level fistfight is exactly the kind of threat that needs immediate handling, by them in particular.

"Uuuugh." Bela sighs, long and drawn out, the sigh of someone who has clearly had this exact conversation with mortals many, many times before, and has grown weary of receiving the same result every time.

She flicks one wrist, almost lazily, fingers fluttering with barely any effort.

The battalion screeches to a halt as their own shadows reach up from the ground beneath them and swallow every single foot-soldier whole, an entire legion of Vexena’s most trusted and trained gone in the space of a single blink, boots, blades, and armor all swallowed into nothingness without so much as a scream left echoing behind.

Every jaw on the team drops open at once.

"That was self-defense," Bela says, wincing at their expressions, hands raised placatingly. "They’re not dead, just—"

The team scatters in a chaotic cacophony of screams and shrieks, running in every possible direction, boots slipping in the mud.

Veena grabs Virelle and bolts, tail lashing behind her.

Sera dives under a crumpled carriage, dragging her greatsword in after her with a screech of metal on wood.

Raikya sprints toward Frostlick, still half-hidden amid a field of wheat, running as fast as her paws will carry her, ears pinned flat against her skull.

And Pip snatches Vuvi off her feet without breaking stride and jets straight for Lula and Penelo at the carriages without a second’s hesitation, a trail of steam hissing out behind him and Vuvi’s muffled complaints trailing in the dust.