This wasn’t the worst fight Kaelira had ever been in.
In her second year of training, she fought four people against one in a siege exercise and ca out with nothing worse than a burned sleeve. At seventeen, she fought a frost troll with only her base fire output and the kind of stubbornness that her teachers had said was a bad thing until it saved her life and they stopped talking about it.
She had never fought anything that didn’t fight back, like a real living thing.
"If all you want is a fight... then co on!"
The three maids ca at her at the sa ti from different directions. The first thing Kaelira noticed was that they were moving too quickly.
They weren’t moving like trained fighters who were making smart decisions about how to move. Instead, they were moving like bodies that weren’t making the sa cost-benefit calculations that living bodies did.
They moved without the small pauses that even the best fighters made. They did not flinch when her fire approached, nor did they shift their weight before a strike that was clearly intended.
She hit the first one on the left with a wall of fire that would have stopped anything with a survival instinct, but it went right through it.
Not unaffected. It slowed down, and the shadowy parts of its shape flickered and shrank at the edges where the fla touched. This indicated that the fire was having so effect on them, even though it wasn’t halting their advance.
But it didn’t stop, and it was still moving when her second burst hit it and finally pushed it back three feet.
The second one ca from the right and grabbed her forearm before she could move it, and the grip was so cold that it cut through her combat focus and into sothing more basic: the instinctive physical response to contact that was completely wrong.
She burned the creature off her arm and spun around, using the energy from the spin to strengthen the blast she directed at the third one. The third one had moved to her back while she was dealing with the other two.
She had asked Lilith, "I say this again...! "Who the hell sent you here just to kill !?" she asked, as her training instructed her to gather information.
Lilith then answered. "It’s none of your fucking business, human."
"Stop asking shit like that and expect an answer from it!" She was standing at the back of the secondary chamber, perfectly still, like soone who already knew how things would end and didn’t feel any need to hurry to get there.
The maids moved around. They were either learning or already knew that charging directly into Kaelira’s fire field was a bad idea.
The second try went better because they worked together. Two of them made approach vectors at the sa ti, while the third stayed at a distance and did sothing with the shadow substance of its form that pulled at the light in the room, making the bioluminescent fungi along the walls dim in patches and making it harder for Kaelira to see.
Kaelira pushed more power into her fire, using it as both a weapon and a light. The brightness pushed the shadow suppression back.
It also cost her. The Inferno Berserker class was made for long-term damage in direct combat, not for long-term tactical managent in a small space against enemies who didn’t fight the way they were supposed to.
She was using up resources faster than she would have against living enemies in the sa situation.
The second wave hit her from three sides with the kind of accuracy that worsened it because it was chanical. She stopped one; deflected the second with a firewall she held for two full seconds, which hurt her right away; and the third got past her guard and pushed her back two steps.
The impact was wrong; it was too cold and too focused, like being hit by sothing that had found the exact spot where it would hurt the most.
Her left knee touched the floor.
"Nrgh... fuck... why did I act all weak like this...?"
"This... isn’t who I really am!!!" She stood up, feeling all the rage burning all over her body.
She set fire to everything around her in a full radial burst that cleared the area for three seconds and cost her more than she wanted to think about with her current reserves. The maids backed up against the walls, where the firelight made them flicker. Lilith watched from the back of the room with the sa calmness.
"Soone...!" Kaelira’s voice rose to the ceiling, where there was a passage that was visible but not reachable. "ANYONE...!"
The sounds of battle coming from the main chamber were faint and hard to understand, and no one answered because they couldn’t hear her over the noise of the battle and the stone.
"It’s no use calling up help," Lilith laughed. "You’re already stuck in your own grave, and I hope you can at least just give in to it..."
"Death is a rcy... for fools like you."
She stared at the passage and knew the fall was six feet. She couldn’t reach it unless she started running from a higher point, but there was no higher point.
The walls were straight up and down. There was no furniture in the room, no debris she could climb on, and nothing else useful except for the size of the room itself.
Kaelira looked at Lilith and said, "You’re going to tell eventually..." Her voice was lower now because she was trying to control her breathing.
Lilith’s face stayed the sa.
She said, "There isn’t really a need for that," and her voice was calm and conversational, as if they were talking about sothing much less important.
"This isn’t about facts."
The maids ca back, and this ti there were more of them.
Rex’s undead creations had been coming into the room from the connecting passages while Kaelira was fighting. They were moving through the shadow phase and appearing in the areas she wasn’t looking at.
They weren’t attacking yet; they were making a ring around her that slowly pushed inward, making it harder for her to move without giving her a target to hit to stop the compression.
Kaelira’s fire was at sixty percent, or worse, maybe fifty-five. The truth was that she had stopped counting at so point in the last two minutes because it was taking too much ti away from fighting.
Kaelira thought. ’I can’t keep doing this by myself...’
’Those demon maids... I underestimate them...’
’They’re far stronger, and intelligence...’
’If these keep on going... I will...’ Kaelira closed her eyes, and then he could see Apollo’s silhouette to remind her that she didn’t need to give up.
She looked at the ring of things that were made, and she watched the three maids move to the edges of her firing range.
"I won’t die here..." She turned to look at Lilith. "Even if I die... I’ll make sure you all go down with !"
Her knee was shaking. She was upset about both of them, but she couldn’t argue with them.
They were both fine tremors that she was controlling through willpower.
She had been in worse situations and gotten out. She kept saying that to herself, just to believe that she would eventually make it out.
The problem was that in the worst situations, walking out was possible because it led sowhere. The only direction available was upward, but that was six feet beyond her reach.
She had to make enough noise to be heard through the stone and chaos in the main chamber.
And...
Kaelira Ignisvale wasn’t going to sit around and wait to see what happened next.
She gave her hands everything she had left.
"Yeah... I guess this is it..."
"In a world like this... only the strong survive, and the weak fall..."
"Just one push... and it’s all I needed." Kaelira clenched both her fists and felt the fire rising through her body.
The Inferno Berserker class at full power felt like a focused, contained state that wasn’t quite painful but that the body knew it couldn’t last, like running at full speed and knowing that the cost would show up as soon as you stopped.
The fire she was holding in both hands was white in the middle and got brighter at the edges.
Lilith took her first step forward. Her face was still calm and sure, but there was sothing else in it now.
"It doesn’t have to be this way," she said. "Just give up!"
Kaelira said. "Yes..."
"...it does!"
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