[Complete] Ch 13.4 Is it Wrong for a Sword to Remain Sheathed Against Injustice? (Patreon)

Is it Wrong for a Sword to Remain 

Sheathed Against Injustice?

Story Starts

-=&<o>&=-

Chapter 13.4

Of Acts of Evil and 

Reclamations

Syr felt the cobblestones vanish beneath her feet as Mamma Mia hauled her onto one hip and launched them both skyward.

The rooftops of Orario’s western quarter spread beneath them—clay tiles cracked from recent fires, washing lines still strung between gutters where no one remained to collect them. Heith landed a half-second behind, her pink twintails whipping in the updraught as she matched Mamma Mia’s pace.

They had received word from their goddess. Head towards the gate nearest the pleasure district. That was Freya Familia’s assigned sector, and the three of them were overdue.

Horn kept her expression neutral inside Syr’s face, though heat crept up her neck. Her goddess’s emotions bled through their connection—sharp, focused, threaded with something fierce. Freya’s attention was fixed on Central Plaza. On the man fighting monsters there, pulling citizens out of the tide.

Horn knew the shape of that fixation well enough to name it.

‘Not now.’

The distraction was manageable. Not like that night, when her goddess had worn this same face into Shirou Emiya’s bed. Horn had felt every second of it through their bond—phantom pleasures quaking through her own flesh as if she were the one beneath the red-haired man.

“Syr? Are you all right?”

Heith watched her from the adjacent roofline, concern plain on her round face. One of the few Familia members who understood the arrangement between Horn and the goddess, and one of fewer still who bore no resentment over it. She knew better than to use Horn’s true name whilst she wore Syr’s form.

“Fine. I was distracted.”

“We should make it quick,” Mamma Mia grumbled. The former adventurer shifted her grip on Horn’s waist and surveyed the route ahead.

Neither Horn nor Heith argued. Central Plaza sat closer to the Hostess, but the new security measures required every person entering the secured perimeter to strip to bare skin. Mamma Mia was long retired—her Falna was not. And Horn, unlike her goddess in Syr’s form, carried a visible Falna on her back. Neither status wanted advertising.

Anyone who had been active in the days of Zeus and Hera would remember the former captain of the Freya Familia—before she abdicated to Ottar and opened a tavern.

Mamma Mia gathered herself and leapt. The gap between buildings vanished in a single stride. Horn’s stomach lurched as the street dropped away, thirty feet of empty air, and then they landed, tiles cracking under Mamma Mia’s boots. Heith touched down beside them without a sound.

Three more rooftops passed before Horn caught it.

“Mamma Mia—wait. I saw something.”

The dwarf woman slowed to a halt at the roof’s edge. “What?”

Horn pointed back and to the left, towards a narrow alley running crosswise to their path. Mamma Mia followed her finger. Figures. Six of them, crouched between stacked crates in the alley’s shadow.

Horn pressed a finger to her lips.

Mamma Mia set her down without a word. The three of them circled wide, keeping low along the rooftree until they had a clear view into the passage.

The figures huddled around an open crate. Their hands worked with clumsy urgency, threading blaze rock fragments into the linings of civilian coats—stitching the stones between layers of wool and cotton with needle and gut-thread. Enough explosive sewn into ordinary clothing to walk through any checkpoint unchallenged.

Horn closed her eyes.

The connection to her goddess pulsed. She drew on it—not Arcanum, but the residue of what Freya simply was, carried down through their bond. Charm. Diluted through a mortal vessel, thinned by distance, but sufficient for wills already hollowed out by fanaticism.

“Do not look this way.”

Her voice carried down into the alley. Six heads stilled. None turned.

“What are your group’s goals?”

The nearest man answered without hesitation, his tone flat. “We are tasked to infiltrate the secured sector and assassinate Freya. Our secondary objective is to strike a devastating blow to the enemy camp.”

“Are there more of you?”

All six nodded.

“Where?”

The man’s eyes had gone glassy. He spoke as though her question outranked every order he had ever been given. “Three on the eastern side. Five to the north. Our god waits in the west.”

Horn held the connection steady. “Let no one hear of what we speak.”

“I understand.”

She drew deeper. The charm thickened in the air between them.

“Split up. Use your blaze rocks to detonate the eastern team and the northern team.”

The six rose. They divided without discussion, pocketing needles and thread, and filed out of the alley in opposite directions. Their footsteps faded.

Horn let the charm go. Her shoulders ached where she’d held them. She had not commanded them to turn on their own god. Even by proxy, even through a mortal’s borrowed voice—that remained the greatest of taboos.

“You’ve become quite adept with your charms, Lady Syr,” Heith said quietly.

“Thank you, Heith. But it was our Lady’s insight that found them.”

Horn turned towards Babel. The tower’s peak was lost in haze and smoke. She looked anyway, feeling the thread between herself and the goddess at that window pull taut.

‘A god in the west. She has heard it too.’

Mamma Mia grunted and scooped Horn up again. “Enough staring. Move.”

They crossed five more rooftops before reaching the gate. Mamma Mia dropped to street level and the guards straightened, recognising her face. Two detonations cracked the air behind them—one from the east, one from the north. The sound rolled across the rooftops and died.

They passed through the checkpoint without stripping. Civilians in the queue muttered, voices rising, until Hedin stepped forward from the barrier line. Lightning crackled around his fingers. A knot of Evilus operatives rushing the gate died where they stood, bodies hitting the ground before the thunder finished rolling.

The muttering stopped.

“Mamma Mia.” Hedin handed her a slip of paper. “We’ve sent Ottar to Central Plaza. They’ll need Heith more than us.”

Mamma Mia scanned the note and scowled. “I just got here.”

“And now you’re leaving.”

“Tch.” Mamma Mia crumpled the paper and shoved it into her apron pocket. She grabbed Horn with one arm and Heith with the other, hoisting both onto her hips. “Hold tight.”

“Hedin.” Horn spoke before the dwarf could jump. “Evilus is stitching blaze rock into the linings of civilian coats. Between the layers."

Hedin’s eyes narrowed a fraction—the only acknowledgement he ever gave anyone. “Noted.”

Mamma Mia leapt. The rooftops blurred beneath them—unbroken tiles now, washing lines still hung with clothes that might yet be collected. Horn watched the smoke rising from the distant streets and felt her goddess’s attention shift, briefly, towards her.

-=&<o>&=-

“I-it’s Dáinsleif!!”

“Gaaaaaagh!”

None were safe from his jet-black sword. Orario was nothing now but a battleground for wild beasts drunk on blood. These beasts were neither good nor evil—they were mindless. And so, whilst Hegni was usually timid and reactive, tonight he felt no guilt in cutting them down.

“Sleep,” he intoned, voice low and graven. “The black blade sings tonight, and its song is requiem. Fall before the Dark Elf King’s judgement, ye who have forsaken the light.”

He kept his eyes from the corpses lining the streets. Focused solely on hunting his prey.

“Is it only our section that’s like this?” he muttered, the graven voice slipping. “I wonder how things look where Allen is. I don’t really care about them, but I hope Lady Freya’s all right. Oh, I just can’t stop worrying about her! It’s so scary!”

The cloak of night shielded Hegni from judgmental gazes, encouraging him to voice both of his registers aloud. It was then that a pair of high-pitched voices pierced the darkness.

“It’s okay, Hegni!”

“Give up your life, and you won’t have to think such worrying thoughts anymore!”

“Oh, here we go…”

He couldn’t bear their girly, squealing tones. He pulled up his collar, shielding himself from this filthy pair’s sight. They should not get to look upon the face his beloved goddess had once called beautiful. ‘The abyss gazes back,’ he reminded himself solemnly, ‘and the abyss has terrible taste.’

“Let’s turn his lifeless husk into a pretty little doll, Dina!” said one. “We can sit him next to my darling Hedin, too!”

“What a wonderful idea, Vena! I’m sure Hegni loves it, too! Oh, I love him so much, I just want to strangle him!”

“Careful, sister! You accidentally said how you really feel!”

“Oh, did I? Whoopsie! Aha-ha-ha!”

These sickly, singsong voices belonged to a pair of sisters whose hearts were black as tar. They both wore scanty robes like exotic dancers, each purposefully styled as the mirror opposite of the other.

One tied her hair in a single side bunch, the other two. One had skin pure and white as a newborn babe, whilst the other’s was dark and alluring like forbidden fruit. No adventurer was fooled by their childlike appearance. All knew them to be a pair of carnivorous flowers who killed those unfortunate enough to attract their lustful gaze.

The elder was Dina Dis, a white elf with golden hair. The younger was Vena Dis, a dark elf with silver hair. Each bore a tear-shaped tattoo beneath opposite eyes. They clasped hands and laughed sweetly and innocently.

But their depravity was so base that Hegni refused to even consider them members of the same race.

“You’ve come… as the omens foretold, Dis sisters.” He levelled Dáinsleif at them, collar high, eyes shadowed. “The stars weep at your approach. Even the night recoils.”

“Of course!” said Dina. “How could we turn down a magnificent party such as this?”

“We can’t be late!” added Vena. “We have to hurry and kill the two of you, or else the lives our god granted us would go to waste!”

The two sisters chuckled gleefully to each other. A wicked, unceasing laughter that chilled Hegni to his very core.

There were two groups considered extreme even by Evilus’s standards. One of them was Alecto Familia, of which Dina and Vena Dis were captain and vice-captain respectively.

Broken was the only word that could accurately describe them. They were twisted pleasure-seekers, finding joy only in the pain and suffering they inflicted on their victims. They ranked alongside Valletta in terms of how many adventurers and innocent townsfolk they had sent to an early grave.

“Please stop following me around,” said Hegni, the oracle’s voice abandoned entirely. “Go bother Hedin; I don’t care. Just leave me alone.”

“We can’t!”

“That’s right, we can’t!”

“Because we love you two to death, more than anything else in the world!” they said in unison.

As much as Hegni hated to admit it, these two were his and Hedin’s archenemies. The sisters had been obsessed with them ever since the four clashed by chance and suffered a painful draw.

Hedin loathed the girls for the dishonour they brought his people, whilst Hegni was simply baffled by their bizarre words and actions.

For instance, they once told him:

“Hegni, we’re the real edgelords!”

“Yeah, our god told us so! That means you’re just a fake!”

“What a poser!” they declared together.

Hegni hadn’t the slightest clue what they meant by that, but for some reason their words made his blood boil, and he found himself overcome with murderous rage.

He had lost track of the number of times he and Hedin had tried and failed to kill these two. Their strange personalities aside, Dina and Vena were both Level 5, amongst the strongest of any Evilus fighter. In height they both measured somewhere near 150 celch and resembled human girls of fourteen or fifteen. Though, of course, they were elves, and in fact older than Hedin and Hegni, who were both about seventy. Despite their cute and innocent act, Hegni knew the pair were more cunning and blackhearted than any he had ever faced.

“Hey, look, Vena! Hegni’s not such an edgelord today!”

“You’re right, Dina! How strange! That must be a good omen! It must mean this paradise is going to go on forever!”

‘I should have just used my magic,’ Hegni thought as he pulled up his collar once more. He had hoped that fighting in darkness meant enduring no one’s gaze, or that these two would find something else to obsess over in a war the size of a city. No such luck on either count.

‘I don’t suppose they’re going to give me time to don the Warlord’s Mask now.’

Then again, perhaps it didn’t matter for these two. Despite his crippling shyness, Hegni found he had no qualms speaking plainly with these girls. Not from any closeness—he simply did not care one whit what they thought of him.

“Fine, let’s do this,” he said. “This cursed blade hungers, and tonight I shall feed it. I kill you, and I never have to see either of your faces again, filthy sirens.”

In Hegni’s eyes, the two of them did not qualify as elves. They were something else—something monstrous.

As soon as he said it, the two sisters dropped their smiles, and their eyes opened sickeningly wide, boring holes into Hegni’s soul.

“Don’t call us that word,” they said in unison.

“We are elves, whether you like it or not,” said Dina.

“What’s the difference between us and the others, huh?” asked Vena. “You’re just a meanie! A big, mean meanie!”

Very rarely, as if in bitter spite of the nobility of the elven race, a twisted individual of unmatched darkness would be born. The Dis sisters were two such examples: a cruel trick nature chose to play upon their kin. A pair of living contradictions—obsessed with the purity of their race, and unable to meet it.

Hegni didn’t know what the two had endured for it. Persecution? Ostracisation? Were they desperately suppressing their true natures, lest they break entirely?

Hegni didn’t know. Nor did he care. He had no pity for their lot.

It didn’t matter what they had been. It didn’t matter their tragic past or noble motive. These sirens were responsible for untold death and destruction. That was all that mattered.

“Die for us, Hegni! Along with Hedin over there!” they cried together.

Hegni had but one wish: that tonight he would finally sever his bond with these two. With that wish in mind, he unleashed his magic and sent his sword hurtling towards them.

Shink. Shink. Shink.

The projectiles arrived before their sound did. Three blade-arrows punched through the air from the direction of Babel, each trailing a shimmer of pale, dissolving light. The first struck the cobblestones between the sisters, forcing them apart. The second clipped Dina across the chest as she twisted away from Hegni’s slash. The third caught Vena’s thigh mid-dodge, shearing through fabric and skin alike.

Crack. Crack. Crack.

The sound caught up.

Dina’s skimpy top—what little there was of it—fell away in two pieces. She didn’t flinch. Instead she turned towards Babel and set one hand on her hip, thrusting her bare chest at the distant tower as though posing for a portrait.

“Such a pervert,” she declared, golden eyes narrowing.

Vena fared no better. The projectile had carved a line across her outer thigh, and the impact had torn the ties of her bottom wrap. The cloth pooled at her ankles. She stepped out of it without a hint of shame, half-naked in the firelight.

Hegni didn’t let up. He closed the distance the moment they separated, Dáinsleif carving a black arc towards Dina’s exposed flank.

Dina pirouetted away. Vena was already moving—she seized a passing Evilus soldier by the collar, ripped two potions from his belt, and hurled him bodily at Hegni. The man’s arms pinwheeled as he sailed through the air. Hegni sidestepped, but the throw bought the sisters the seconds they needed. Green liquid splashed across Dina’s chest wound and Vena’s thigh as they retreated in tandem, kiting him through the rubble with practised ease.

“That’s him, isn’t it, Dina?” Vena hopped backwards over a fallen beam, pouring the last of the potion down her leg. “The archer from the report! The one our spy wrote all those pages about!”

“The one on the tower!” Dina spun under Dáinsleif’s arc and blew a kiss towards Babel. “Ohhh, sister, do you remember the best part?”

“The elves!” they squealed together.

“Every elf who gets close to him says the same thing—” Vena ducked a thrust, giggling.

“—that he feels like home!” Dina finished. “Like the deep forest! Like the holy places! All those prim little purebloods, flocking to a human because he feels more elven than they do!”

“And now he’s undressed us, sister! Both of us at once!”

“So forward! We’ve only just met!”

“Do you think we’d feel it too, Dina? If we got close?” Vena’s voice lost its singsong for half a breath, and what was underneath was naked. “Home?”

“We’ll have to peel him open and see,” Dina said sweetly. “If it’s true, we keep him. If it’s a lie—”

“—we keep him anyway!” they chimed, and laughed.

Hegni’s blade passed through the space between them and struck sparks off a wall.

“How could that pervert expose such innocent maidens!” Vena wailed, skipping back into rhythm. “We were saving ourselves, you know!”

“For Hegni and Hedin!” Dina added brightly.

Hegni’s eye twitched.

“Innocent,” he repeated flatly. “You’re both older than me. Older than Hedin. You’re a pair of seventy-year-old hags playing dress-up in children’s clothes, and the only thing you’ve been saving is a body count.”

Dead silence.

Dina’s healing cut stopped knitting. Vena’s potion bottle slipped from her fingers and shattered on the cobblestones.

“Hags,” Dina whispered. Her golden eyes went very, very wide.

“He called us hags,” Vena said. Her voice had dropped an octave.

“He called us old.”

“TAKE THAT BACK!” they shrieked in unison.

Both sisters drew their weapons.

-=&<o>&=-

“Not them again.”

“The psycho sisters, Lady Freya calls them.”

“They’re not even that edgy.”

“I really feel sorry for Hegni and Hedin, having to deal with them all the time.”

A short distance from the intersection, four prums stood shoulder to shoulder. Whilst the rest of the Freya Familia squadron gaped at the clash erupting between Hegni and the Dis sisters—steel screaming against steel, sparks arcing through the smoke—the Gulliver brothers only muttered amongst themselves.

Shink. Shink. Shink.

Blade-arrows punched into the street at intervals, each one finding an Evilus straggler before they could rise. The rhythm had returned.

“Tch. At least the archer’s back at it,” Dvalinn said.

The four knew of their Goddess’s interest in the archer. Of course they were jealous. Freya’s attention was a finite resource, and every scrap directed elsewhere was a scrap stolen from them. They harboured no warmth for anyone who drew her gaze—not Allen, not Ottar, and certainly not some unaffiliated adventurer perched on Babel like a gargoyle with a bow.

Which was also why none of them moved to assist Hegni. That, and the convenient fact that their orders were to hold this intersection, not the street where the dark elf had wandered off to pick fights.

Here, where four roads met, Alfrik, Berling, Dvalinn and Grer had just finished clearing out the Evilus rank-and-file. The junction sat in a blind spot Hegni couldn’t cover from his end, and the ground squad had been forced to engage on foot. The skirmish was over now. Bodies lay in a rough crescent around the four brothers, each corpse bearing a single decisive wound.

Hegni’s battle rang on from the far end of the northern street—a percussion of curses and clashing metal that the brothers collectively ignored. They turned their backs on it.

“”””So, who are you lot supposed to be?”””” they asked in unison.

Four sets of eyes fixed on a group emerging from the southern road. A dozen adventurers, perhaps a few more. Humans, animal people, dwarves—a broad mix of races and equipment. Many were tanned and weathered. Some carried swords, others axes or maces. A diverse lot by any measure.

Except for one detail they all shared.

Every one of them had bulging, bloodshot eyes and some manner of gag forced between their teeth. Drool and foam spilled down their chins. Their bodies twitched and shuddered, muscles clenching and unclenching in spasms that had nothing to do with will. Not one amongst them looked sane.

“Hurgh… Huuurgh…!!”

“What’s up with these guys?”

“Gross.”

“They’re out of their minds.”

The guttural groaning pushed Berling, Dvalinn and Grer back half a step. Only Alfrik held his ground, spear angled low, eyes narrowing as he studied the horde.

“Looks like Evilus is back to their old tricks,” he said. “Pumping adventurers full of drugs and cursed items and throwing them away as expendable pawns.”

“Expendable?” A voice rose from the rear of the pack. “Perish the thought. These are our finest warriors.”

An animal person stepped into view behind the drugged fighters. He was past middle age, sturdily built, with a long beard that hung to his sternum. He wore a priest’s habit in black and purple, the hem stiff with dried blood. The cane in his right hand was slick with fresh. His eyes carried an unsettling brightness—a man savouring a private joke at someone else’s expense.

“It’s you. Apate’s lapdog.”

“Basram.”

Apate Familia fielded the strongest forces in Evilus, rivalling Alecto Familia in raw combat power. The four Gulliver brothers levelled their collective hatred at the old priest without restraint.

Apate Familia’s cruelty hardly bore mentioning—it was understood, the way fire burning was understood. Freya Familia had already killed their captain, their vice-captain, and every notable lieutenant in previous engagements. Attrition alone had forced Basram to the front lines. That a priest now commanded their field operations said everything about how far the order had fallen.

And yet, judging by the old man’s words, they were not ready to surrender.

“What do you mean, ‘finest warriors’?” Alfrik’s voice dropped flat. “Explain yourself, Basram. Or die where you stand.”

Basram chuckled. “Ha-ha-ha. I fear you will kill me either way. But don’t worry—you shall see what I mean soon enough.”

He smiled. The horde lurched into battle stances, weapons rising. Foam dripped past the gags. Rolling eyes found the four prums and fixed there.

“You snivelling worm.”

“This mad rabble won’t stop us from crushing you.”

“This day marks the end of Apate Familia.”

Berling, Dvalinn and Grer spat their insults and drew their weapons. Great hammer, greataxe and greatsword—each as tall as the prum who wielded it—caught the firelight. The three brothers squared their stances, eager and ready.

Only Alfrik hesitated. His spear stayed low, his grip loose.

‘If these are truly his finest warriors, where were they before? Why didn’t they show when we took the captain’s head?’

His eyes moved across the enemy line. One face. Then another.

‘And something else. I know these faces from somewhere…’

“Don’t let your guard down,” he said to his brothers.

-=&<o>&=-

Shink. Shink. Shink.

Three supposed civilians dropped where they stood. Emiya had resumed his overwatch.

Evilus infiltrators, almost certainly—their shadows pinned by the Black Keys the Ganesha members had hurled from across the street. The bodies did not fall. They stood frozen where the blades had caught them, dead on their feet, hands halfway to daggers they had never reached.

Ryuu exhaled.

Ahead, Kaguya and Noin held the mouth of the intersection, cutting down stragglers pushing through from the unclaimed blocks. Behind them, the rest of the Familia rotated in and out against Vito—Alise pressing, Lyra flanking, Iska drawing his eye with thrown steel—none able to land a decisive blow on the Level 4, but keeping him boxed.

A sharp crack split the air from Babel’s summit. Then another. Then a third.

The barrage had returned.

Cheers went up from the Ganesha shield line. Ryuu caught the relief spreading through the formation—shoulders dropping a fraction, grips readjusting on weapons rather than tightening.

They had pushed their sector forward by a single block since the assault began. One block. Every medr demanded verification of every face that stumbled towards them out of the burning streets—hands raised, mouths open, screaming for help. Most were genuine. Some were not.

One had got through twenty minutes ago. A woman clutching an infant that had turned out to be a bundled coat. Every hand had been occupied; no one could spare a Black Key before she reached the buildings. She had detonated between two secured structures. The blast cracked the foundation of the eastern one, and they had spent precious minutes moving forty civilians to the adjacent warehouse whilst Kaguya and Noin held the perimeter alone.

Three had died. Two were children.

‘The days when it doesn’t answer your conscience?’

Ryuu remembered the words Emiya had said to the god who dared mock her justice.

But this was not the time to dwell.

“Argh, this is annoying!”

Vito caught Lyra’s wrists mid-strike, pivoted, and hurled her bodily into Alise. Both women tumbled across the cobblestones. His dagger came up and batted aside one of Emiya’s blade-arrows, the impact ringing down the street.

Three more projectiles streaked from Babel. Vito threw himself out of the sightline, ducking behind the shell of a collapsed storefront—

An ōdachi swung from behind him.

Vito twisted sideways. The blade followed, carving a furrow through masonry and clipping a lock of his hair. He stumbled forward, back into the open. Two more blade-arrows came down; he batted both aside, growling, even as Tsubaki’s blade forced him to give ground.

“I’ll fucking skin that archer alive.”

Tsubaki Collbrande stepped into the street, the long curved sword resting on her shoulder. Her single eye tracked Vito as he scrambled for distance.

‘Level 5.’

One of Orario’s few first-tier adventurers—captain of Hephaestus Familia. Ryuu had heard the woman tested her own creations in the deep floors alone, because no one else could evaluate them to her satisfaction.

Tsubaki glanced up towards Babel’s summit. Her mouth curved.

“Such an interesting magic—those blades rival any expert smith’s work.”

She said it to no one.

More footsteps. Adventurers poured into the street from the unclaimed sector—Hephaestus smiths armed with their own work, hammers and short swords and polearms, and behind them the Berbera of Ishtar Familia, bare-armed and bare-middled, dressed for a dance hall rather than a war. Ryuu had stopped being scandalised by Amazon dress long ago—one shared a roof with Iska, after all. They fanned out across the intersection, filling the gaps in the line, and the gaps stayed filled.

Ryuu dropped to one knee beside a downed civilian. Her fingers found the robe’s collar and tore it open. Blaze rock—four fragments, each wired to a thin copper strip running down the man’s sternum. She cut the stitching with her short sword, peeled the fragments free and passed the bundle to the Ganesha member at her elbow. He sealed it in a leather pouch and withdrew behind the shields. Another member worked the spent Black Keys out of the shadows, hauling on each with both hands.

How easily it had all become routine. Three days ago she had never opened a dead man’s coat. Now her hands knew the work without her.

In the intersection, Tsubaki’s ōdachi carved a horizontal arc that drove Vito back three paces. Alise was already up. She darted in from the opposite angle and opened a shallow cut along his forearm.

Vito hissed through his teeth.

“Hey,” Tsubaki called without turning. “You know your orders?”

“Secure Central Plaza and let Ottar return to the frontlines,” Alise answered, wiping blood from her cheek with her sleeve.

Ryuu cleared the last blaze rock from a second body and rose. Kaguya and Noin were falling back from the intersection’s mouth as the Berbera stepped forward to replace them. Noin’s breathing came hard but even; Kaguya flicked blood from her katana and sheathed it in one motion.

Alise’s voice carried across the formation.

“Astraea Familia—let’s go!”

She turned to Tsubaki and raised a hand.

“We’ll leave everything to you!”

They ran.

Ryuu looked back once.

Vito was no longer boxed. He wove between Tsubaki’s reach and the Berbera’s line, bleeding from the forearm, kiting every blade that wanted him. Then he seized a passing Evilus straggler and hurled the man into his pursuers, leapt for a side street, and—middle finger raised at Babel—vanished.

The Hephaestus and Ishtar lines did not give chase. Their orders were to relieve Astraea Familia and to hold and push the border.

Ryuu faced forward and ran harder.

The plaza ahead was a wall of noise—and in all of it, through every report that had crackled across the channel tonight, there had been nothing about the medical tents. No news was not good news. Not tonight.

‘Please be safe, Ardee.’

-=&<o>&=-

End

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