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—woosh
Enzo moved through the horde of flying beasts, cutting one after the other without slowing, each void cutter stroke clearing the space directly ahead and nothing more.
No wasted movement.
He was focused on one thing.
Victoria's figure cut through the wind ahead of him, moving fast and direct, her red armor catching what little light the swarm hadn't swallowed. Her eyes were fixed on the Daemons at the mountain. Enzo's eyes were fixed on her.
Two lines. Laser focused. Rushing forward while everything else in the sky moved against them.
—slash
—woosh
—slash
Behind them the wall had opened.
The Ark swung low over the tree line and the soldiers who had been holding the perimeter pushed forward to fill the gap, shields up, ion cannons repositioning, the line extending outward to catch the beasts that had broken off and driven into the forest.
"Activate the mind root!!"
Kig's voice cut through the noise at full volume, directed at his underlings with the specific edge of someone who had almost forgotten something critical.
He had planned to use the mind root as a precaution, a shield for the area if the situation shifted suddenly. The attack had come too fast and the thought had slipped in the first moments of chaos.
Fortunately it had been prepped beforehand.
An evergreen shroud washed over the city in a wide rolling wave, soft and immediate, spreading outward from the walls in every direction. Where it touched the beasts that had broken through, it cleansed. Where more were pressing in, it stopped them at the boundary like a wall that had no visible surface.
The pressure on the inner perimeter dropped.
Not gone. But manageable.
"Hold your ground!!"
Voices overlapped across the line, soldiers rallying themselves and each other, the rhythm of it finding its footing again after the first shock of the swarm's arrival.
The line held.
"Enzo!!"
Raven's voice came from behind him, sharp with panic.
She and Zeke were following, pushing through the same horde he was cutting through, the two of them moving fast but not fast enough to close the gap.
They didn't understand.
They couldn't see the full picture of what was happening or why he was moving toward it instead of away. All they knew was that there was one day left. One day and this would be over. Enzo was throwing himself into the worst of it for a reason neither of them had been given.
But they followed anyway.
Without hesitation.
—woosh
—woosh
The mountain got closer.
,,,,,,,,,,,,,
Victoria appeared in front of the ship.
She landed and straightened and looked at what was in front of her without any change in her expression.
Thirteen Daemons.
They stood in a loose arrangement, some of them still reading the situation, others already fixed on her with expressions that hadn't decided between caution and confidence yet.
"That is the Red of War?"
One of them asked it with a smug tilt to his voice, looking her over the way someone looks at a reputation they haven't decided to believe in yet.
There were nine hundred and ninety-nine Divine Daemons in the universe at any given time.
Victoria had killed six. The number had dropped to nine hundred and ninety-three, and the remaining ones had heard about it. Word of that kind moved fast among them, carried a specific weight that settled differently than battlefield reports. Of all the divine children across all nine divine kingdoms, she was the one they wanted dead the most.
Not because of the six specifically.
Because of what six meant about what was possible.
"You talk too much."
Victoria's voice was flat.
She reached into her space of holding and pulled out a circular disk. It caught the strange yellowish light of the sky and held it, bright and humming, covered in wrap undulations that moved across its surface in slow even pulses.
A treasure of the night.
This one wasn't built for raw attack. Its power sat in its field, a radius that worked against anything tainted with corruption, weakening it significantly on contact. Against thirteen Daemons standing in one place, the geometry of that was worth more than a direct weapon.
She let it sit in her hand and said nothing else.
"Hmp!!"
The Fire Daemon moved first.
Fire spears pulled together in front of him with speed, formed and launched in rapid succession, one after the other, tracking her position as she moved.
She dodged them clean.
The first. The second. The third.
Then the formation around her changed.
The other Daemons had been reading her movement, mapping the pattern of her dodges, and now they closed in from multiple angles simultaneously, their motion synchronized in a way that individual combat didn't prepare you for. Not one attacker adjusting to her. All of them adjusting together.
She was surrounded.
The disk in her hand pulsed once.
Victoria's eyes lit up.
"Wonderland Creation: Red Moon of War and Life."
A blaze moved through her gaze as the wonderland activated, expanding outward from her in a wave that reshaped the space above and around her. A red moon appeared overhead, massive and immediate, cutting upward through the swarm of flying beasts still darkening the sky. It pressed against the sun directly, the two sources of light meeting and mixing, bleeding into each other until the world below shifted color entirely.
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Everything caught in it, the mountain, the ship, the thirteen Daemons, the distant walls of the castle, all of it washed in that particular shade that sat somewhere between war and fire.
The flying beasts caught inside the wonderland's radius faltered.
The Daemons felt it land on them and their synchronized movement broke for a half second, each of them recalibrating independently, the coordination disrupted by the weight of the space she had created around them.
A half second was enough.
Anyone looking from a distance could see it clearly, the quality of what her wonderland was, what it did to the air, to the light, to the things inside it.
It wasn't just a domain.
It was a statement.
The thirteen Daemons in front of her were beginning to understand that the reputation hadn't been exaggerated.
The disk pulsed again.
Victoria hadn't moved.
