▪︎ Chapter 112 ▪︎ “The Tide’s almost done here.”

Lavinia jerked sideways as one of the Behemoth's legs swept through the air, the sharpened limb missing her by several feet before continuing through the crown of a tree. 

Branches exploded outward and the upper half of the trunk folded beneath the impact, but Lavinia was already climbing another few dozen feet, wings beating as she hefted her greatsword back into position.

Below her, the monstrous spider twisted between Gwendolyn, Evangeline, and Cordelia. 

All three vampires took turns darting into range, striking, and retreating before its dozens of eyes could properly follow them. 

The Behemoth looked considerably worse than it had when it first emerged from the forest. 

Portions of its carapace were cracked or completely missing, several eyes had been destroyed, and one enormous leg dragged awkwardly whenever it moved. 

Green fluid leaked from cuts, punctures, and craters across its body.

It was still kicking.

That was becoming offensive.

Evangeline swept toward its head with her enormous war hammer raised over one shoulder, intending to bring the weapon down on a cluster of remaining eyes. 

One of the Behemoth's forelegs suddenly stabbed toward her, forcing her to abandon the attack. 

She twisted in the air and smashed the hammer directly into the approaching limb instead, the impact knocking it aside with a crack that carried across the forest.

Evangeline tumbled backward before catching herself with her wings. "Rude!"

Another leg immediately followed her, and she darted away before the point could reach her.

Lavinia watched from above, unable to keep herself from considering how absurd the entire situation was. 

The creature's attacks posed relatively little danger to her or the others. Getting impaled would hurt. 

Being crushed beneath that enormous body would undoubtedly break quite a lot of things. 

A sufficiently unfortunate strike might even incapacitate one of them for a while, especially if the creature managed to tear them apart badly enough.

But they'd heal.

A human facing this?

If Lavinia were still human and someone had handed her a rifle before pointing toward the nearly hundred-foot monstrosity, she suspected she would have looked at the rifle, looked at the spider, and politely placed the rifle on the ground.

What, she wasn't driven and motivated enough? Did she need to believe in herself more?

No.

Sometimes the monster won.

The thing was almost a hundred feet tall. Humans weren't supposed to fight this.

Gwendolyn swept past its face with her spear in both hands and thrust the long black point into another eye. 

The creature jerked away as she pulled it free, leaving another stream of green fluid running down its head. 

Cordelia came from below a moment later and drove all three tines of her trident between overlapping plates of carapace before twisting the weapon and tearing it back out.

Lavinia stared at them.

Gwendolyn poked it.

Cordelia also poked it.

One simply had more points.

She glanced at her own greatsword and felt marginally better about her life choices. 

At least she possessed variety. She could slash, stab, use the flat, throw the thing, fall out of the sky with it and, apparently, complain while doing all of the above.

"I'd rather cut through ten thousand more animals than keep doing this."

The Behemoth answered with a shrill screech.

"Yes, I'm talking about you!"

Lavinia tightened both hands around the grip and angled herself downward. 

Her wings folded behind her and she accelerated, choosing the damaged leg she'd struck earlier. 

The greatsword came around in a powerful diagonal slash and bit deeply into the already weakened appendage, splitting carapace and sinking into the softer material beneath.

Green fluid erupted around the blade.

Some splattered across Lavinia's face, arms, and the front of her dress.

Her expression twisted immediately. "Ugh!"

She ripped the sword free and climbed away before the Behemoth could retaliate. 

The fluid on her skin began itching almost immediately, followed by a sharper burning sensation. Lavinia wiped her cheek against her shoulder and glanced at her hand. 

The exposed skin had reddened, and several tiny breaks were already sealing themselves beneath the residue.

Wonderful.

The spider juice was irritating.

Literally.

The sound of wings approached from behind, and Lavinia turned to find Violetta flying toward them with her halberd in both hands. 

The nearly fourteen-foot weapon looked surprisingly natural in her grasp now, its dark supernatural metal glimmering faintly beneath the moon while the blood-red crystalline gems set around the head appeared almost wet in the low light.

Violetta slowed beside her and surveyed the battered Behemoth. "Can you kill it?"

Lavinia pulled farther out of the creature's reach and hovered beside her, wings giving slow, lazy beats while she rested the greatsword against her shoulder. "I don't see why we couldn't."

Violetta looked down at the monster, then back at Lavinia. "How long?"

"Eventually?" Lavinia considered the question more seriously. "Honestly, I think one vampire could kill it alone if she really wanted to."

Violetta raised an eyebrow.

"Provided she was willing to spend a night or two chopping at it."

A faint smile appeared on Violetta's face. "That's considerably less reassuring."

"I didn't say she'd enjoy herself."

Below them, Evangeline struck one of the creature's damaged legs again, and the limb briefly buckled before straightening. 

The Behemoth twisted toward her, only for Gwendolyn to stab another portion of its head.

Violetta watched them for another moment before her expression became more serious. "I received updated reports while I was at the command center. There have been thirty-seven confirmed nuclear detonations worldwide tonight."

Lavinia's fingers slipped around the greatsword.

For one alarming instant, the enormous weapon dipped out of her hands before she caught it again.

"Thirty-seven what?"

"Nuclear detonations."

Lavinia stared at her. "Tonight?"

"Yes."

"Thirty-seven?"

"Confirmed so far."

For several seconds, Lavinia forgot entirely about the nearly hundred-foot spider trying to murder her friends below.

"Jesus."

Violetta looked toward the distant lights of Oakridge. "We're the exception, Lavinia. Not the rule."

That stripped most of the amusement from Lavinia's expression.

"The Tide is global," Violetta continued. "Reports are fragmented, particularly with communications becoming increasingly unreliable, but population centers across multiple countries have been attacked. Some are holding. Others collapsed within hours."

"So everywhere got this?"

"The Tide, yes. I haven't received any reports of another Behemoth appearing within the Unified Sovereignties, though that doesn't necessarily mean there aren't any."

Lavinia looked down.

"Behemoth?"

"That's what the military has begun calling this one."

Lavinia studied the creature for a moment. Nearly a hundred feet of legs, fangs, eyes, and stubborn refusal to die certainly qualified. "Fair."

Violetta shifted her grip on the halberd. "Some countries still have werewolves helping defend population centers, but we've already seen their limitation here. They can fight far longer and harder than humans, but eventually they have to rest. In places where vampires were driven out entirely, there's nothing capable of maintaining this kind of pressure indefinitely."

Lavinia looked toward the defensive lines. 

Even at this distance she could distinguish several wolves moving through the remaining Tide, their larger bodies unmistakable among the animals. 

They had returned after resting, but the very fact that they'd needed to rest proved Violetta's point.

"And without vampires..."

"Some cities had nothing capable of compensating once their conventional defenses broke."

Lavinia looked toward the forest.

The change was impossible to miss now. Animals still emerged between the trees, but the continuous flood was gone. 

What had once resembled an entire landscape moving toward Oakridge had separated into scattered streams and isolated groups. 

In several places she could see open forest floor extending hundreds of feet without anything crossing it.

"The Tide's almost done here."

"Yes." Violetta lowered her halberd into both hands and angled toward the Behemoth. "Which means we should finish this quickly and clean up whatever remains."

Lavinia sighed. "Fine."

She surged forward.

Her greatsword came down across the Behemoth's back, breaking through another section of carapace and sinking deeply into the flesh underneath. 

Green fluid sprayed outward immediately, splattering across Lavinia's face and neck.

She recoiled in disgust and tore the blade free. "Nope. I'm done."

Instead of circling for another attack, Lavinia shot toward the defensive line.

Several soldiers were retreating from the path of one of the Behemoth's approaching legs when she descended among them. 

Her boots touched down cleanly, leaving her standing in front of them with a nine-foot greatsword in hand and almost every visible part of her covered in blood, mud, and green slime.

The soldiers stared.

Lavinia pointed toward them. "Do you have grenades? Or anything else that blows up?"

One soldier blinked. "What?"

"Explosives. Grenades. Things that explode when I put them inside the giant spider."

The soldier looked toward the Behemoth, then back at the gore-covered vampire standing in front of him. Apparently, that was enough explanation.

"Get her grenades!"

Someone hurried toward a nearby supply position while Lavinia planted her greatsword point-first into the ground. 

The enormous blade sank several inches into the softened earth and remained standing almost vertically beside her.

"I'll be back for you."

One of the soldiers glanced toward the weapon.

Lavinia immediately noticed. "Don't steal my baby."

The soldier stared at the sword, then at the five-foot vampire who had just called it her baby. "I wasn't going to."

"Good."

A hastily assembled bag was handed to her, filled with more grenades than any human would have wanted swinging from one arm while moving through a battlefield. Lavinia barely noticed the weight.

"Thank you!"

Her wings opened, and she launched back toward the Behemoth.

Using grenades against its intact exterior probably wouldn't have accomplished much. 

The creature had already demonstrated that its carapace could withstand ridiculous amounts of punishment, and Lavinia suspected a grenade exploding against the outside would merely irritate it.

Now, however, they had spent several minutes cutting holes in it.

That changed things.

And Lavinia was tired of widening those holes herself.

Not physically tired. She could swing her sword until sunrise without her muscles weakening in the slightest.

She was disgusted.

Every slash produced another shower of green fluid. 

Whatever was inside the Behemoth irritated her skin badly enough to make it itch, redden, and sometimes bleed before regeneration repaired the damage. 

Her dress was soaked in the substance, her hair felt horrible, and she was fairly certain some had gotten into one of her ears.

Fuck that.

The creature would probably die eventually even if they left it alone now. 

It had lost an absurd quantity of fluid and suffered injuries Lavinia couldn't imagine any living thing surviving indefinitely.

That wasn't good enough.

Even dying, something nearly a hundred feet tall could cause catastrophic damage if it reached Oakridge. 

It didn't need to deliberately kill anyone. It could flatten houses by stumbling into them.

Lavinia landed lightly on its back.

The Behemoth immediately thrashed beneath her, but she adjusted her footing without difficulty.

She placed the bag down, removed a grenade and pulled the pin before leaning over one of the open wounds.

"Hold still."

She dropped it inside.

Then she stomped directly over the opening, driving the grenade deeper into the torn flesh.

"Bye."

Lavinia jumped.

Her wings opened and carried her rapidly away.

The explosion came from inside the Behemoth.

Its body jerked violently, and a spray of green fluid erupted from the wound behind her. The creature's shrill scream echoed across the forest.

Lavinia smiled.

"Oh, that's much better."

She flew toward Gwendolyn and tossed her a grenade. Gwendolyn caught it one-handed, looked down at the small explosive and immediately brightened.

"Oh."

Cordelia received another. Evangeline held out her hand before Lavinia even reached her.

"Me!"

Lavinia tossed her two. "Don't blow yourself up."

"I'd grow back."

"That's not permission."

Their tactics changed almost immediately. Cordelia landed beside one of the punctures left by her trident and shoved a grenade deeply into the opening before launching away. 

The resulting explosion tore the wound wider from within. Evangeline chose one of the craters she'd made with her hammer and used the end of the weapon's haft to push another grenade farther into the damaged tissue.

Gwendolyn was having entirely too much fun.

Within a minute, the Behemoth looked miserable.

Lavinia almost felt sorry for it.

Almost.

Green fluid leaked from nearly every surface of its body. 

Several legs trembled beneath its weight, while another dragged uselessly through the churned earth. 

Every internal explosion produced another shrill cry, and the once-steady advance toward Oakridge had deteriorated into an uneven stagger.

Then the creature opened its mouth.

Gwendolyn saw the opportunity before anyone could stop her.

She darted forward, pulled a pin and threw a grenade directly between its rows of fangs.

"Gwen—"

Gwendolyn reversed direction and fled.

The Behemoth snapped its mouth shut.

A muffled explosion followed, jerking its entire head sideways.

Lavinia stared at Gwendolyn when she returned.

Gwendolyn smiled brightly. "What?"

Before Lavinia could answer, a familiar voice came from above. "What did you do to it?"

Valerie descended toward them.

She looked remarkably better than Lavinia.

That alone was infuriating.

Valerie's gaze moved over the staggering Behemoth before settling on Lavinia, Gwendolyn, Cordelia, and Evangeline. 

All four were covered to varying degrees in green gore, while Lavinia looked as though she'd personally bathed in it.

Valerie started laughing. "You cheated! You used items on the raid boss."

Lavinia's expression immediately became saintly. She spread her arms and flew toward Valerie as though preparing for an affectionate embrace. "Valerie."

Valerie's laughter stopped.

Her eyes widened, and she immediately darted backward. "No."

"Come here."

"No!"

"You know you want a hug."

"Any other time!" Valerie wrinkled her nose as Lavinia continued approaching. "Right now you smell horrible."

Lavinia stopped in midair, her arms slowly lowering as a genuinely pitiful groan escaped her. "That's mean."

"It's also true."

Lavinia reached into the bag and discovered only one grenade remained. 

She pulled it out, looked toward the Behemoth and then back at Valerie. "Split its head open for me."

Valerie's eyes brightened. "Why?"

"So I can put this somewhere important."

"What about your sword?"

"Back there."

Lavinia gestured vaguely toward the defensive line.

Valerie glanced around and noticed Gwendolyn wasn't holding her spear anymore either. 

Cordelia's trident and Evangeline's hammer were similarly absent, all three having dropped their weapons into the forest or near the battlefield once the grenade strategy became considerably less disgusting.

"You all abandoned your weapons?"

"We had grenades."

Valerie laughed again, then descended slightly.

Her chain began rotating.

At first, only five feet of it moved around her. 

Then she released more length through her hands, allowing ten feet to enter the rotation, then fifteen, then twenty. 

More followed until most of the enormous articulated weapon swept around Valerie in a broad circle.

The air around it began to shriek.

Lavinia instinctively moved farther away.

She watched the terminal blade accelerate until it became difficult even for her eyes to follow perfectly. 

Valerie was controlling more than a hundred pounds of moving black metal, adjusting her body and grip constantly as the chain accumulated speed.

If that thing hit Lavinia now, she was fairly certain it would bisect her without encountering much meaningful resistance.

She'd regenerate.

Still.

No thank you.

Valerie shot forward.

The rotating chain followed.

At the last moment, she changed the angle of the entire weapon, sending the terminal blade sweeping upward into the Behemoth's already battered head.

The result was spectacular.

Carapace burst outward as the blade carved deeply through the side of the creature's skull. 

Several remaining eyes disappeared instantly, and a torrent of green fluid sprayed from the enormous cleft.

Valerie curved away before the creature could retaliate.

Lavinia accelerated toward the opening.

She pulled the pin.

"Final hit!"

The grenade disappeared deep into the Behemoth's ruined head, swallowed by torn flesh and shattered plates of carapace. 

Lavinia immediately climbed, beating her wings hard to put distance between herself and the opening.

The creature thrashed beneath her. Its remaining green eyes rolled independently, several fixing on nothing at all, while its sharpened legs stabbed into the earth in frantic succession. One tore a deep trench through the ground. 

Another swept sideways and snapped two trees near their bases before burying itself several feet into the soil.

Then the grenade exploded.

The blast was partially contained inside its head. 

The Behemoth's entire forward body jerked violently as the damaged side of its skull bulged outward and ruptured, spraying fragments of black-green carapace and viscous fluid across the trees below. 

Its shriek began at a pitch sharp enough to make Lavinia's pointed ears twitch, but the sound broke halfway through and deteriorated into a wet, rattling hiss.

The Behemoth stopped.

For several seconds, the enormous creature remained standing as though its body hadn't yet realized it was dead. 

Green fluid streamed from the wounds riddling its back and head, dripping from its underside in ropes thick enough to splash visibly against the ground. One leg trembled. Another slowly folded at the joint.

Then the first supporting limb gave way.

The Behemoth lurched violently to one side, its tremendous body dropping nearly twenty feet before another pair of legs caught its weight. 

Those limbs bent under the sudden load, their pointed ends carving long furrows through the earth as they slid. 

A tree trapped beneath one leg bowed, splintered, and disappeared beneath it.

Another leg collapsed.

That was enough.

Nearly a hundred feet of creature tipped sideways.

Its remaining limbs flailed once, scything through the surrounding canopy as the central body rolled toward the earth. 

Trees vanished beneath its weight in a rolling succession of cracks, entire crowns swallowed beneath the descending mass. 

One long leg struck first and snapped partway along its length, twisting grotesquely beneath the body before the Behemoth itself slammed into the forest floor.

The impact shook the ground.

Soil, leaves, broken branches, and green fluid erupted outward in a broad wave. 

Nearby trees shuddered hard enough to shed branches, while the tremendous body compressed against the earth with a wet crunch of breaking carapace. 

Fluid surged from its existing wounds and spread into the churned soil beneath it. 

Even hundreds of feet above, Lavinia felt the disturbance through the air as the creature's remaining legs struck the ground one after another, some folding awkwardly beneath it while others stretched across the forest like fallen towers.

For several seconds, one leg continued twitching. It lifted weakly, scraped across the earth and flattened several bushes before dropping for the final time.

Nothing followed.

The Behemoth was finally dead.

Lavinia hovered above the carcass, looking down at the enormous trail of broken trees, gouged earth and green fluid surrounding it. Then a smile slowly spread across her face.

"I got the final hit."

Valerie flew alongside her, took one look at Lavinia's pleased expression and immediately objected. "My contribution was at least twenty percent."

"What?" Evangeline flew closer before Lavinia could answer, visibly offended on behalf of everyone who had spent the last several minutes being showered in spider innards. "You snuck in at the end!"

Valerie gestured toward the enormous cleft she'd opened through the creature's head. "I opened its head."

"After we did all the work!" Evangeline shot back.

Gwendolyn nodded vigorously beside her, her empty red eyes somehow managing to look genuinely aggrieved. "She did. You don't get twenty percent for showing up at the end."

Valerie placed a hand dramatically against her chest. "I was killing the Tide!"

"Excuses," Evangeline said.

Violetta descended onto an intact section of the Behemoth's body while the argument continued. 

Compared with the others, she was irritatingly clean. There were stains on her dress and halberd, but nothing approaching the state Lavinia and the others had achieved.

Lavinia stared at her.

Violetta noticed. "What?"

"You look nice."

"Thank you."

"That wasn't a compliment."

Violetta smiled faintly. "With the Behemoth dead and the Tide continuing to thin, I can confidently tell my superiors that Oakridge doesn't require consideration of a nuclear strike."

That ended the argument.

Gwendolyn tilted her head. "How would they even use one? It was already this close to the city."

Violetta's expression sobered. "That's apparently not preventing their use elsewhere. The information remains incomplete, but at least six of tonight's confirmed detonations appear to have occurred either within city boundaries or close enough that the cities themselves would have suffered catastrophic damage. The remainder appear to have detonated within the Diverged Lands."

Lavinia stared at her.

She had assumed the nuclear weapons were being used against concentrations of animals somewhere out in the new wilderness, far enough from population centers that the primary concern would be whatever effects followed the explosion.

Not cities.

"Six?"

"At least."

A shocked hum escaped Lavinia as she looked toward Oakridge's distant lights. 

The reasoning came together quickly once she thought about it. Larger population centers attracted greater numbers of the Tide. 

If their defenders collapsed, those same cities became enormous concentrations of Diverged wildlife, with surviving humans trapped among them and no practical means of moving enough conventional forces across the altered world to retake them.

"They cleared the board," Lavinia murmured. "Once the Tide got inside and they couldn't get it back out, they just..."

"Destroyed the concentration," Violetta finished quietly.

Evangeline stared down at the corpse beneath them, then toward Oakridge. "Humans are crazy."

Gwendolyn nodded solemnly, though only for a moment before glancing around the surrounding forest. "I need to find my spear."

The abrupt change made Lavinia laugh.

Cordelia smiled faintly and looked toward the city. "For what it's worth, I'm happy we came. We helped everyone, the defensive lines are holding, and apparently no one has to seriously consider destroying Oakridge to stop this."

Violetta's expression softened. "I'm grateful for your help as well. All of you."

Lavinia rolled her eyes, though there was no real irritation behind it. "We're on the same team. It was only natural we'd come with you."

Her gaze dropped to herself.

The front of her black dress was soaked in blood, mud, and green fluid. 

Her arms were stained almost to the elbows, her hair was sticky, and patches of exposed skin continued reddening wherever the Behemoth's fluids remained long enough to irritate them.

Lavinia sighed.

"Even if being on the same team apparently means I'm covered in grime, blood, and spider juice."

Valerie giggled, and Violetta joined her.

Lavinia gave them both an offended look before turning toward the defensive line. Somewhere over there, her greatsword was still standing where she'd left it.

"I'm going to get my baby back."

Valerie blinked. "Your what?"

"My sword."

"You called it your baby."

"I did."

"You've had it for a few hours."

Lavinia spread her wings and looked back at her. "And?"

Valerie started laughing again.

Lavinia ignored her and launched into the air, heading toward the defensive line and the nine-foot greatsword she'd left embedded in the ground.

Behind her, the Behemoth remained motionless, its enormous carcass sprawled across the ruined forest while green fluid slowly pooled beneath it.