Sláine answered the question with the sharp cut of her blade.

If last time had been any indication, as soon as she began causing trouble she'd raise the ire of the natural participants in the memory. It only made sense that someone specifically orchestrating this would put some guardians in place to keep out unwanted elements or, at the very least, use those presences to their advantage. So, best to get it out of the way, she thought, and she rounded the corner to deliver a blow towards Latrodecus.

As soon as she was within view, Latrodecus sprung to life. "What the — intruder!" she shouted, managing to heave herself away, just a hair's breath away from the swipe of metal.

Sláine adjusted her grip, sliding the pole of her weapon back and catching it with her shifted hand. She kept the woman at bay with a sharp jab, and seeing her dodge to the right and swipe inward with her sword, Sláine caught it in the joint where the axe-blade met the spike. Having the advantage of leverage, it was easy to force the weapon aside and leave the woman open.

But she was facing two opponents, not one, so when the tip of a spear thrust into her range, Sláine let out a grunt an swung her leg out of the way. She didn't want to get too caught up here though, so when the woman pulled back and began running down the hall, Sláine let her and turned her attention to the second guard.

There was another thrust towards her, which Sláine returned with a blow of her own, knocking aside the weapon. They spent a few moments interlocked in a quick series of attempted attacks and aborted motions, either from improper distance or lack of good opening, and Sláine feinted upwards before slamming her hands down, avoiding her opponents weapon with a twist of her body as she lunged.

The spear on her halberd didn’t piece the armor, but it was enough to send her opponent stumbling backward, and Sláine threw her weight into an upwards stab into his eye-socket. He turned his head, forcing the spear’s tip to miss, but she re-angled the weapon, plunging its hook into his eyeball. The man screamed, trying to stab her in his death-throes, but she knocked it aside with a quick shift of the end of the pole and a slide of her front foot backwards.

The slam of footsteps and the clang of plate signaled the arrival of more guards from both sides of the hall.

Two from the left, two from the right, she noted, and Janus wisely stayed back, only the very edge of his face visible as he peered around the corner. Sláine grinned as all their attention was focused firmly on her.

Each pair contained one person who was more lightly armored compared to the others, both of whom held back as soon as they saw her, while the other two had spears and shields. Sláine picked one, leaping forward with a speed and ferocity that clearly caught them off guard. She pulled the shield back with the hook, raised her arms, then stabbed downward before he could react — burying the spear into the hollow of his throat. Blood spurted from it, and the man desperately tried to plug the hole with his hand before he collapsed.

The other immediately stabbed at her, hiding her face beneath her shield, but a shadowed hand reached out of the wall, grabbing the weapon before it could sink into Sláine’s flesh and heaving it towards the floor. Sláine gleefully took the opening to attack, the armor caving inward underneath the force of her blow, and she saw Janus with a single hand outstretched, mouth pursed in focus — he sure could be helpful when he wanted to be, couldn’t he?

She wondered if Red could do things like that too. She’d have to ask her once everything was back to normal.

Her attack hadn’t been nearly enough to take the woman down, and she slammed the head of Sláine’s halberd away with a crash of her shield. Simultaneously, one of the others moved his mouth, she couldn’t see whatever he was muttering, and suddenly he —

Charged in, swiping his hand-axe in a gesture that Sláine thought was entirely pointless until she saw it was shimmering with an odd light. It left a patch of inkier black in its wake, something darker than the deepest darkness, and from out of the crevice poured an uncountable wave of spiders. They rushed directly at her, and though Sláine took a few quick steps back, there really was nowhere to run.

Oh, great. This sure was familiar.

A fog came from the other’s hands, beginning to fill the corridor with a black mist. As soon as she took a single breath of it, she realized that it didn’t make her feel… great, it burned the inside of her mouth and the lining of her throat, but her constitution was nothing if not absurd, and she ignored it in favor of the more immediate problems.

The woman hadn’t let up on her attack, and while Sláine was focused on her, she felt the itchy tickle of spiders crawling up her boots and onto her flesh. Deciding the best thing to do was accept this was going to happen and try to get the element of surprise, Sláine let herself fall when they bound her legs, and waited until the woman — panting — was about to skewer her before launching an offensive.

“[ Bind Break ]!”

She felt that unnatural strength take hold of her, allowing her to muscle her way through the spider silk bonds, and without pausing in her movement, she did a little experimentation — could she take advantage of that to lend power to her next attack if she did it quickly enough?

Apparently she could, as, when Sláine’s attack was intercepted by the woman’s shield, it shattered beneath the force of her blow. Sláine could hear her howl in agony as she almost certainly broke her arm in multiple places, and she didn’t let up until she fell and Sláine could finish her off with a final pierce to one of the now-exposed segments.

Hah. Killing elves by the half-dozen — just like old times, I suppose.

This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

(Sláine, it should be noted, was maybe the tiniest bit racist when it came to those with pointy ears.)

She rotated her torso, anticipating another attack, but a high-pitched shriek made her realize that she wasn’t currently being targeted. The two spell-casters had spotted Janus, who was utilizing a tortoiseshell made of shadowy limbs gathered around him for protection against the spiders, but Sláine recognized these two as war casters from the way they integrated weapons into their magic. That wouldn’t be enough to protect him from a magically enhanced blade.

So, Sláine would have to do some heroics.

As she tried to run forward, she realized that the cloud of darkness wasn’t just draining her energy, it was slowing her too, making her limbs feel heavy and sluggish. Growling in frustration, she used [ Reckless Spin ] and, in the middle of the motion, queued up a few more repetitions of the action. This, in essence, turned Sláine into a very sharp, very angry [ Berserker ] tornado, and the elf that didn’t stumble back soon learned the penalty for crossing her.

Poor Janus whimpered as he was put firmly in the splash zone again.

Sláine carried her momentum forward, pausing only briefly when the second caster deflected the halberd with his axe, but it was a small weapon, dinky she might even call it, and it was no match for someone with reach and the skill to use it. She interrupted him mid-spell as she’d been trained to do during her military schooling, and as soon as he lay dead on the floor, the creeping darkness disappeared. Sláine could feel herself breathing easily again.

There was no time for rest though. “Up!” Sláine said, grabbing at one of Janus’s hands to pull him to his feet.

“Eh? Ah!” he squeaked, surprised, and he flailed as Sláine suddenly… felt emptiness in his glove. He caught himself on the wall, and she only belatedly realized that the arm she’d grabbed must be one of his artificial ones made from magic.

“Sorry,” he explained, crouching down to quickly snatch up the fallen glove and put it back on. “I have to, er, actively want to interact with something, or the spell will fail. Surprise makes it disappear.”

“Huh. Weird,” Sláine replied, noting that the accidental de-manifestation had freed that wrist from the manacles binding him, leaving the chain hanging uselessly from the other hand. She could only assume that he had just… not bothered to free himself this entire time. Had he just — forgotten? It seemed plausible. “Anyway, stay close enough to me that I can bail you out in a pinch.”

“R—Right!”

Sláine then proceeded to bust through the door.

The coliseum was in an uproar, the robed figures scattering like a horde of white rats and the confused sounds of everyone from above rolling downward like the tide. It seemed like they'd interrupted things right near the end. Red stood before the shattered altar, the broken pieces of marble littering the ground before a jagged fissure in the earth, and, more immediately important, two more guards were waiting for her, spears pointed towards the door.

Sláine heard a shout from beyond.

"Princess! Hide!"

Looking up, could see that other man from before — Lycosidae — by Red’s side, along with Latrodecus, who must have left the battle earlier to raise the alarm and secure Red's safety. Great, she'd hoped to have eliminated at least one of those annoyances before confronting Amoena, but she supposed it couldn’t be helped. "Hey, Janus! Scream very loudly if you need my aid!"

"I'm — alright, I'm quite good at that!"

Sláine interrupted the trajectory of one thrust, angling her halberd so the spear slide uselessly past her arm. Behind her, Janus worked his magic, forcing the other guard to the floor the same way he’d done to Sláine earlier. Sláine swiped another stab aside, stepping back as the motion left her open, and then pounded her weapon into the enemy as they advanced to reclaim the distance. She looped the head down to deliver another blow right by their neck, and then cleanly transitioned into another stance to bash the restrained guard directly on his spine.

“I know!”

She saw Red being ushered into the dark by what Sláine assumed were her two personal guards, considering how they seemed to prioritize her at every possible opportunity. She would have felt some pride at Red having the more skilled servants — considering Latrodecus had managed to hold her own against Sláine while she was raging even with a weapon disadvantage — if there wasn’t a vindictive streak within her that wanted to challenge the other two to a duel right now.

Actually, since they were going down below with Red, she might get that chance. Amoena was there, after all.

“Sláine, where’s the person who’s doing this? You can tell, right?”

“She’s — oh, wait.”

Dammit, Sláine realized. Right, she was getting distracted mowing down enemies, but all she’d have to show for that would be a pile of corpses at her feet. Earlier, the presence had registered as being on this level of the amphitheater, and she’d assumed from earlier context clues that the mystery threat was Amoena. But Janus had definitely just said a few minutes ago that the presence she’d detected was probably the memory manipulator, who couldn’t be Amoena, because that person had to be a ‘Shattered One’ and the Queen-Consort of Being a Huge Emotionally Manipulative Bitch was a Spider.

Ugh. This was all so confusing.

But wait, what was Amoena’s involvement in this, then? There was definitely only one ‘major threat’ here, but she had to be part of this memory in some capacity. Janus had said it was the final part of the ritual: Red going down, meeting up with her dumb mother and voila: instant priestess, just add spiders. She’d sort of assumed that the ‘real’ Amoena would be here, just like the real Red, the real Sláine, and the ‘real’ Janus, but… if she wasn’t here…

Then where was she, and what was she doing?

…Well, that seemed like a variable that was going to bite her in the ass later, but for now — [ Threat Detection ].

Pain. That was normal. But that presence of… power, of malice, or something unique to this world she’d found herself in, that was behind her. Sláine whirled around, weapon at the ready, and looked…

Up.

And as soon as she did, she saw a woman leaning over the railing as she watched them.

She had the same dark skin and light hair as Janus, and her eyes seemed to glow similarly purple in the darkness. Honestly, to Sláine, she had the bearing of a small, angry gremlin, with tousled white hair and the sort of sharp facial features that made it seem like she'd bite anyone who even thought about touching it with a brush. It didn’t help that when she met Sláine’s gaze, she was glaring.

And something seemed to… change in the world around her. Perhaps it was a byproduct of whatever it was Janus had done to her eyes, or perhaps it was a side-effect of visually observing the architect of this place, but the crowd circled around them now looked like they were flatter, like their presence was two-dimensional, and something like marionette’s strings stretched off their bodies and upwards into space.

"Ah, that's unfortunate. I'd been hoping you'd use up all your time talking..."

Janus whipped around, drawn to the sound of the voice, and Sláine paused in shock at the next words she said.

"Big brother."

Then, the woman hopped onto the railing, the dark silk poncho she wore floating upwards as shadow arms blossomed from underneath it like the tiered petals of a lotus. Some of the threads Sláine could see attached to the crowd glistened around her many fingertips, and for some reason, they reminded her of the strings of a violin.

“…I guess this means we have to fight, doesn’t it?”

>> Question the morality of beating up someone's little sister