▪︎ Chapter 111 ▪︎ “I saw it first!”

Lavinia leapt forward and brought her greatsword down through the center of a spider.

The blade entered between its forward eyes and continued through the creature with scarcely any resistance from flesh, though the carapace gave a brief crunch before splitting. 

The spider collapsed into two uneven pieces, and Lavinia grimaced when warm fluid splattered across the front of her dress.

"Oh, come on."

She tore the sword free and stepped away from the remains, looking down at herself with growing offense. 

Dark blood, spider fluid, mud and things she had no desire to identify covered her boots and much of her dress. 

The clothing would repair itself perfectly from tears, but unfortunately that didn't mean it rejected everything disgusting that touched it.

Valerie had gotten the better weapon.

Lavinia was increasingly convinced of this.

Valerie could stand twenty feet away and send her chain whipping through whatever she wanted. 

She could wrap things, slice things, throw things and generally perform ridiculous tricks while remaining comfortably outside the splash zone.

Lavinia?

Run forward.

Swing giant sword.

Become covered in whatever had previously been inside the thing she'd swung it through.

Was she not the main character?

She should have been aura farming by now. 

This was precisely the kind of situation where an anime swordsman would walk calmly through a battlefield while enemies separated into perfectly clean pieces behind them. 

Their clothes would remain immaculate, their hair would blow dramatically in a wind that affected nobody else, and there would probably be moonlight reflecting beautifully along the edge of the sword.

Instead, Lavinia had spider insides on her cheek.

A large cat lunged from her right.

Lavinia snapped the greatsword upward.

The flat of the blade intercepted the creature in midair. 

Nearly eight feet tall at the shoulder, it possessed enough mass that the impact drove Lavinia's boots slightly into the softened earth, but the cat lost the exchange much more dramatically.

It tumbled backward.

Before it finished rolling, Lavinia was already there.

One horizontal slash passed through its torso.

The halves struck the ground separately.

More blood sprayed across her.

Lavinia stared down at her dress.

"This is discrimination."

She hefted the sword onto her shoulder and looked forward.

Then her joking expression softened.

Something had changed.

The Tide was thinning.

It wasn't over. Animals still charged through the trees, and there were enough of them that any ordinary human position would have remained in severe danger, but Lavinia could see farther into the darkness than any human could. 

Night didn't reduce the forest to vague shapes for her. Individual animals remained clear between trunks hundreds of feet away.

There were gaps now.

Small ones.

Places where she could see empty ground for several seconds before another creature crossed it. 

The endless wall of moving bodies had become streams, still dense but no longer appearing inexhaustible.

They were winning.

"Huh."

Lavinia lowered her greatsword and prepared to rush forward again.

Her ears twitched.

She stopped.

Something was moving beyond the trees.

Not the ordinary rustling and snapping produced by the Tide. Something deeper. Slow. Intermittent.

Lavinia tilted her head.

Then she jumped.

The ground vanished beneath her as she shot upward nearly sixty feet, clearing the canopy in an instant. 

At the peak of the jump, she looked toward the forest.

A quiet, disbelieving hum escaped her.

"Oh."

Something walked above the treeline.

Not flew.

Walked.

Long segmented legs rose from the forest and disappeared into it again, each attached to a central body that towered nearly a hundred feet above the ground. 

Countless green eyes glittered across its front, some tiny at this distance and others large enough to remain clearly visible. 

Beneath them, a gaping mouth opened between rows upon rows of fangs.

The thing was recognizably spiderlike only because Lavinia couldn't think of anything worse to call it.

Anyone terrified of spiders would simply die.

Not literally, probably.

Maybe.

Lavinia spread her wings before gravity could reclaim her and hovered above the canopy.

"Valerie!"

Far below, a chain snapped through the Tide.

Valerie looked up.

"World boss!"

Valerie stared at her for a moment before jumping. Her wings emerged halfway through the ascent, carrying her the rest of the way until she hovered beside Lavinia.

"What?"

Lavinia pointed.

Valerie followed her finger.

Her expression emptied.

The giant creature advanced through the forest with a smoothness that made its size even more disturbing. 

Trees disappeared beneath it, some snapping when its legs passed through them. The Tide flowed around its feet.

Valerie slowly turned toward Lavinia.

"I could vaguely understand murdery normal animals."

"Mm-hm."

"I accepted murdery big animals."

"Very mature of you."

Valerie pointed toward the creature. "That is too big."

Lavinia smiled.

"Is this even Earth anymore?"

"Technically?"

"Lavinia."

"I don't know!"

The creature continued toward Oakridge.

Lavinia adjusted her grip on the greatsword.

"I want to kill it."

Valerie looked at her.

Lavinia's smile widened.

"No."

"I'm going."

"Lavinia—"

Her wings drove downward.

She shot away.

Valerie remained hovering for a moment, watching the little golden-haired vampire accelerate toward something nearly twenty times her height while carrying a sword taller than she was.

"Of course."

She wanted to follow.

She really, really wanted to follow.

Then Valerie looked down.

The Tide hadn't ended.

Soldiers were still fighting. Animals still rushed toward the defensive lines, and while the vampires had begun pushing them backward, abandoning those positions now could undo part of what they'd accomplished.

Valerie folded her wings and dropped.

Her boots touched the ground, her chain already moving before she had completely landed. 

It snapped through a boar, changed direction around a tree and caught another animal by the legs. Valerie pulled, flinging it sideways into two others.

"Fine!" she shouted after Lavinia. "I'll clean up!"

She accelerated.

If Lavinia was going to fight the ridiculous thing, Valerie would make sure nothing smaller reached Oakridge while she did it.

Ahead, Lavinia skimmed above the trees.

She wasn't alone for long.

"Lavinia!"

Lavinia glanced backward.

Gwendolyn flew after her, holding a spear nearly fifteen feet long.

Somehow the spear was remarkably clean.

Gwendolyn was not.

Her white hair was splattered red, her face was streaked with blood, and much of her black dress looked as though she'd rolled through the battlefield rather than fought across it.

Lavinia immediately felt better about herself.

Gwendolyn smiled brightly.

"I want to poke it first."

"No."

"What?"

"I'm cutting it first."

"That's unfair!"

"I saw it first!"

Gwendolyn opened her mouth to object.

A violent rush of displaced air came from above.

Both looked up.

Evangeline fell past them.

"Oh, you bitch!"

Evangeline's wings were folded tightly behind her, both hands wrapped around the haft of an enormous war hammer. 

The weapon was nearly twelve feet long, its massive black-metal head inset with blood-red crystalline gems.

She struck the creature first.

The hammer crashed into the upper portion of its body.

The impact traveled visibly through the enormous frame. Carapace fractured beneath the hammer, several nearby eyes ruptured, and the creature lurched sideways as trees snapped beneath its legs.

Evangeline kicked away from it.

A sharpened limb swept through the place she'd occupied an instant earlier.

Another stabbed upward.

Evangeline twisted between them and spread her wings.

"I was scammed!"

Lavinia burst out laughing.

Evangeline flew backward as another limb sliced through the air.

"There's no health bar! And it's too tanky!"

"You stole my hit!"

"I hit it first!"

"You came from nowhere!"

"Skill issue!"

Lavinia accelerated.

She swept past Evangeline, raised the greatsword over her shoulder and aimed for one of the immense legs.

Her blade struck.

The dark metal bit deeply into the appendage, cutting through the exterior and burying itself into the flesh beneath. 

Lavinia followed the movement with her whole body before ripping the sword free and climbing away.

The wound was enormous by human standards.

On the creature, it looked insulting.

Lavinia stared.

"Oh."

The leg was thicker than she was tall.

That was inconvenient.

Gwendolyn didn't accelerate after them.

Instead, she spread her wings and allowed herself to glide.

She shifted her grip along the spear.

Her smile faded into concentration.

The creature's body swayed with each stride, but its head remained relatively predictable. 

Dozens of eyes moved independently, giving her far too many targets.

Gwendolyn chose two large ones.

She drew the spear backward.

Then threw.

The weapon left her hand with a scream of displaced air.

Fifteen feet of black metal crossed the distance like a falling meteor.

The spear struck the creature's face.

Two green eyes exploded.

The spear continued several feet into its head before stopping, most of the shaft remaining exposed and vibrating violently.

The creature screamed.

The sound rolled across the forest.

Lavinia's ears flattened instinctively as the shrill cry carried for miles, loud enough that soldiers at distant defensive positions turned toward it.

Then the creature ran.

Lavinia blinked.

Its enormous legs began moving with horrifying speed. 

Each stride covered tens of feet, trees snapping or disappearing beneath it as the spiderlike thing surged toward Oakridge.

"I thought you were the slow type!"

Gwendolyn flew toward her embedded spear.

Evangeline pursued from the opposite side.

Lavinia climbed.

One hundred feet.

Two hundred.

Five hundred.

The creature continued accelerating below her.

At nearly a thousand feet above it, Lavinia stopped climbing.

She rolled backward.

For an instant she hung upside down in the night sky, wings spread and greatsword clutched in both hands.

Then she folded them.

She fell.

The creature reached the outer defensive points before she did.

Lavinia saw soldiers scattering away from its path. She also saw the Tide around them beginning to break apart. 

What had once been an unending surge was now separated into groups and streams.

Among them moved three enormous wolves.

One white.

One black.

One brown.

They tore through the remaining animals, the white wolf striking a bear from the side while the black one brought down a deer.

Lavinia fell faster.

Five hundred feet.

Three hundred.

She angled herself toward the creature's back.

At a hundred feet, Lavinia raised the greatsword over her head.

Then she swung.

The blade struck the creature's back with the combined force of Lavinia's descent, her strength and nearly two hundred pounds of supernatural metal.

The carapace ruptured.

Her sword drove deep.

The entire creature trembled beneath the impact, several legs buckling for an instant as Lavinia disappeared almost to her knees against its enormous back.

She kept both hands around the hilt.

"Okay."

The creature thrashed.

Lavinia grinned.

"That one mattered."

───

Chloe tore into the bear's throat and pulled.

Flesh gave way beneath her jaws.

The bear stumbled, tried to turn and collapsed as Chloe released it. 

She shook blood from her muzzle before looking toward the enormous shape that had emerged from the forest.

Her ears flattened.

No.

Absolutely not.

Chloe had come here to help defend Oakridge. She had not come here to fight whatever nightmare had decided that being almost a hundred feet tall was reasonable.

She was tired.

Not human tired. A human would have collapsed long ago after fighting at anything approaching this intensity. 

Chloe and her pack had arrived during daylight and spent more than an hour and a half tearing through the Tide before finally being forced to withdraw and rest.

They'd returned once they recovered enough to be useful.

And now there was that.

Chloe watched a golden-haired vampire fall out of the sky and drive an enormous sword into the creature's back.

Other vampires circled it.

One carried a war hammer so large Chloe wasn't entirely sure she could have used it comfortably even in human form. 

Another flew toward a spear embedded in the monster's head.

Chloe made her decision.

Not her job.

What was she supposed to do?

Nibble its legs?

She was strong. She knew that. She had spent the weeks since the First Divergence discovering just how absurdly strong she had become.

That didn't mean she was stupid.

The vampires were already entangling the thing. 

Every so often, one of their weapons struck with enough force that the impact carried across the battlefield. 

Chloe was fairly certain some of those attacks would badly deform an armored vehicle.

She could contribute elsewhere.

Something moved beside her.

Chloe turned.

A blue-haired vampire stood perhaps thirty feet away.

Cordelia.

Chloe vaguely remembered her from the interview on the news.

Cordelia held an enormous trident, nearly fourteen feet long, its three dark tines stained with blood. 

She stared at the giant creature for several seconds before shifting her hands along the shaft.

Then she took a throwing stance.

Chloe watched.

Cordelia threw.

The air screamed.

The trident crossed hundreds of feet and struck the lower portion of the creature's head. 

One outer tine disappeared completely, followed by much of the others, while the remaining shaft jerked violently from the impact.

Cordelia looked pleased.

Then she turned toward Chloe.

The enormous white wolf stared back.

Cordelia gently bowed her head.

"I think I'll go help with the big one."

Her wings tore open.

She launched into the air and flew after her trident.

Chloe watched her go.

If she'd been in human form, she would have stared.

Instead, a deer tried to run past her.

Chloe pounced.

Her weight struck its side and drove it down. She bit into its throat, tore away and immediately turned as a bear charged her.

Her claws ripped across its chest.

The wounds opened nearly to bone.

The bear swiped.

Chloe ducked beneath it, lunged upward and drove her shoulder into the animal hard enough to knock it sideways.

The black wolf hit it next.

Together they brought it down.

Chloe howled.

The sound carried across the battlefield.

She was exhausted, sore and covered in blood, and she was having the strangest realization of her life.

She'd done something useful.

Actually useful.

Before the Divergence, Chloe had never been anyone particularly important. She wasn't some self-sacrificing public servant. 

She hadn't been preparing her entire life for the day she'd need to defend a city.

She had been a lazy slacker.

She could admit that.

She liked sleeping late. She liked avoiding things she didn't want to do. 

She could spend an impressive amount of time doing absolutely nothing and feel very little guilt about it.

Yet she'd led her pack here.

They'd arrived while the sun was still up, when vampires couldn't come out to help. 

They had fought until their bodies forced them to stop. They had rested, recovered and come back.

People were alive because of that.

Maybe not people Chloe would ever meet. 

Maybe nobody would ever know exactly which lives had been saved because one enormous white wolf killed an animal before it crossed a defensive line.

That didn't matter.

Oakridge was her home.

Her friends lived here.

Her family lived here.

Other people lived here.

People she'd never spoken to and probably never would.

A boar rushed toward the defensive line.

Chloe intercepted it.

She hit the animal from the side, rolled with it and came up first. Her jaws closed around the back of its neck before it could regain its footing.

Another howl answered hers.

Then another.

Her pack.

Chloe's tail lifted.

The Tide was dwindling.

She could see it now.

There were fewer animals coming from the forest. 

The spaces between them grew larger, and soldiers who had spent hours retreating were beginning to advance carefully behind the supernatural fighters.

Chloe surged forward.

She didn't want to be a hero.

That sounded exhausting.

Heroes probably had expectations attached to them.

But she could protect people.

Apparently, she could do that.

The realization filled her with an unexpected excitement.

Chloe howled again and charged into the remaining Tide, the black and brown wolves moving with her.

Far above, the monstrous spider screamed as another vampire weapon struck it.

Chloe didn't bother looking.

Still not her job.

She had plenty of smaller things to kill.