Calypso blinked. "Ah. I didn’t think that through."
"The axe, darling," Nyx noted.
"I’ll get it back!"
"... No need," The Space Valkyrie sighed and pulled it back for her overly energetic friend.
Alice’s beam was the last to fall, and it fell like judgnt. The golden light of Radiant Devastation lanced down from the dark halo above Kaiden’s head and struck the center of the basin, sweeping left in a controlled arc that carved through Slashers, rubble, and the trailing edge of Chinedu’s reford barrier. The S-tier spearman threw himself clear as the beam sheared through the space he’d occupied a heartbeat earlier, golden fire scorching the stone where his boots had been.
The sweep caught one of his fighters who didn’t move fast enough. The beam hit the man’s already ruined armor from Kaiden’s attack and punched right through. He dropped and didn’t get up.
The first kill.
Many humans were hit, but these were strong awakened fighters equipped in high-tier armor. Their guilds had invested far too much in them to send them out unprotected.
Ash managed to raise his head. Blood in his eyes, blood in his mouth, ribs grinding against each other with every breath. His cara drone still hovered beside him, broadcasting everything, and through the pain and the confusion he looked up at the ridge where Kaiden Grey stood silhouetted against the sky.
"You..." Ash coughed blood. "You psycho... this is... the Association will..."
Chinedu’s voice cut across the basin, sharp and commanding, the easy warmth stripped away entirely. "Illegal engagent! Deliberate friendly fire on registered combatants! You are in violation of Association combat regulations!"
Kaiden didn’t even look at him. He was already charging the next volley, sigils spiraling into existence around his forearm, the sa violet and black rings locking into place with chanical precision.
"ALL UNITS, MOVE TOWARD THE RIDGE!" Chinedu roared. "GET OUT OF THE BASIN! CLIMB!"
The surviving fighters broke. Ash was barely conscious against his boulder. Brittany and Stacy staggered upright, helped by Trisha. They ran for the ridge wall, for the rocks, for anything that led upward to where Kaiden and co stood in safety and away from the killing floor.
The Slashers chased them.
Twenty-odd monsters still alive in the basin, and the mont the humans broke formation and ran, every predatory instinct in those chitin-plated skulls fired at once. Pack hunters chased fleeing prey. That was the rule. That was the only rule they understood.
Chinedu’s fighters scrambled up the rocks with the desperation of people who’d just learned what it felt like to be on the wrong end of a coordinated assault. Hands grabbing stone, boots slipping, hauling each other upward while the Slashers sward at the base. One fighter fell behind. Two Slashers hit him simultaneously, forelimbs shearing through his back armor and into the flesh beneath.
Another went down when a Slasher leaped and caught his ankle, dragging him off the rock face. He hit the basin floor and three more were on him before his squad could turn around.
Two dead to monsters. One dead to Alice. Three critically wounded. The mathematics of a massacre, tallied in real ti by every viewer watching through Kaiden Grey’s eyes.
Chinedu reached the rocks first, hauling himself up with one arm while his spear hand drove downward into a Slasher that had climbed after him. The creature fell. Two more took its place.
"GREY!" Chinedu’s voice tore through the basin. "CALL THIS OFF! THIS IS COLD-BLOODED MURDER!"
Kaiden looked down at him from the ridge.
His expression was perfectly calm, the clinical detachnt of a man watching a problem solve itself.
"Really? But we’re trying to save you."
Chinedu’s fighters climbed. Rocks and desperation and bleeding hands, dragging themselves toward the ridge while monsters snapped at their heels and the man they were climbing toward watched with the warmth of a winter sun.
Then Nyx stepped to the edge.
The Space Valkyrie had been the only one who hadn’t charged during the initial volley. She’d stood at the back of the group, arms crossed beneath her chest, watching the carnage unfold with the mild interest of a woman browsing a nu she’d already morized.
Now she looked down at the dozen-odd fighters scrambling up the rock face toward her, monsters in pursuit, blood and terror on every face.
"Oh my." Her voice carried down to them, sweet and lilting and absolutely horrifying at once. "There’s so many monsters chasing you! Let help, too!"
She raised two hands.
One of the boulders beside her, already conveniently there ’sohow,’ lifted from the ground. Spatial force compressed around it, and Nyx flicked her wrists.
The boulder hurtled downward.
The stone hit the rock face hundreds of ters below and swept two fighters and four Slashers off the wall in a cascade of bodies. They fell back into the basin, and the fighters’ armor enchantnts absorbed enough of the landing to keep them alive.
The Slashers that landed on top of them had no such concern for their wellbeing.
Nyx was already lifting the next boulder.
"So many monsters," she repeated, genuinely distressed. "They just keep coming!"
The second boulder hit a cluster of three Slashers and one fighter who’d made it halfway up. All four went tumbling back to the basin floor.
Chinedu watched two of his people get swept off the rocks and fall into the pit below, and the rage in his face was blinding. He drove his spear into the wall and used it as an anchor, pulling himself higher, faster, muscles burning with the effort of a man who’d realized that the only way out was through.
Kaiden watched all of it.
He stood on the ridge with his arms folded, his girls spread around him, and he watched Chinedu climb toward him with the detached interest of a man observing a particularly determined insect scaling the rim of a glass.
He watched how Chinedu dodged Nyx’s next boulder, only for Luna and Aria to hit him together, making the man release a blood-curdling scream as he fell as well, though he fought the monsters off that fell with him.
Kaiden watched it all, and realized that extre pride was swelling in his chest.
These were the girls who hadn’t wanted to hurt a fly a couple of months ago.
Luna, who used to curse at her monitor but never hurt anyone, now threading lightning through human bodies with a grin and violet light dancing in her eyes.
Aria, who’d spent her whole life being the paragon of kindness, the bubbly girl with a heart so big it embarrassed everyone around her, firing beams from above that carved through flesh and stone alike, serene as a painting.
Nyx, who everyone adored after five minutes of conversation, the woman whose warmth and easy laughter made strangers feel like old friends, dropping boulders on climbers with a smile and a voice sweet enough to rot teeth.
They were no longer the won they’d been before.
A couple of months ago, they were students and drears and kind-hearted souls who flinched at violence and apologized for inconveniences. Girls who blushed and stamred and looked at the world through eyes that hadn’t yet learned how sharp it could be, and the world had taught them since.
Not anymore.
They were the Sinsworn Valkyries of the Paragon of Sin. Won who had chosen their man and ant it with every fiber of every oath.
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