Kalender watched light itself get bent and shatter. There were people—if that was what the blurs were—being thrown around between the sparks that might have been bits of chipped swords, if the bell-like sound of metal-on-metal contact was anything to go by.
Yeah. He wasn’t a Hero. Time to get out of here.
When he tried to stand, he still felt Jyn’s grip around his arm. Looking at her, she was still in a daze.
“Jyn?” He shook her. “Jyn! Come on, we really need to go!”
She looked at him. She shook her head, a little surprised about herself; she never thought she’d be the one to get into a daze. “Right,” she said with a nod. “Let’s g-” —
Gellar picked them up like children in both her arms. “You’re taking too long!” she complained—before jumping off the roof.
The knights below had already taken care of business, and there were Maids on the castle’s ramparts shouting orders left and right as the gates opened. It was going to be a long night.
***
As the mortals retreated, the immortals took their turn.
Arpeggio’s heart raced as she fought opponents on a level she had never encountered before. Over and around houses and buildings, she clashed with the armored demon.
His weapon was just cheating. It was a sword one moment, and then a spear the next, and that’s assuming they were even fighting up close and personal.
When Arpeggio took distance and slashed out a mana blade, the demon shot out a mana blade of his own, the two attacks clashing and canceling each other in an electric explosion—and when Arpeggio thought it was just going to be a game of numbers, sending out so many mana slash attacks that she might as well be splitting atoms by now, the demon didn’t take a single step back, meeting her attacks with equal numbers of his own.
A sword fight with nothing but pure shockwaves—was it even swordfighting anymore?
Despite the seemingly grave situation, it was thrilling—every bit the kind of fight Arpeggio had always wanted to have!… Except for the fact that they were fighting in a populated urban area.
Collateral damage was mounting. In the midst of such a close fight, however, she couldn’t even spare a second to think of all the innocents caught up in it. If she had a battle-ending move, she would’ve used it in the forest.
How could she win? Against the armored demon’s conventional fighting style, Arpeggio could still hold her ground. The problem was his buddy. The green-skinned demon’s random magical attacks seemed to come out of the ground, the walls, the sky, and even the armored demon’s own armor. It was an impressive display of teamwork—if only she weren’t on the receiving end of it.
Cyrraia had been snooping around and peppering the armored demon with arrows every now and then, helpfully timing her attacks with Arpeggio’s. The armored demon was still too skilled, evading her arrows and swatting away Arpeggio’s sword in the same breath.
When that failed, Cyrraia tried looking for the other demon. It turned into a game of stealth for the two of them, shooting arrows and spells at each other’s shadows and traces.
While the swordsmen dueled with shockwaves, invisible forces peppered the buildings around them full of holes. Neither side had the advantage.
Minimine observed all this from the sky. The kitchen knife in her hand glowed like a rainbow, raring to go, but there was just not a single natural entrance she could make in this kind of fast-paced work environment.
Ah, there’s one. Arpeggio and the armored demon broke off, the round ending with the demon standing on a roof higher than Arpeggio. How condescending. They were just staring at each other now, probably doing 1000 mental calculations per second just to look for openings in each other’s stance.
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Minimine descended behind Arpeggio, throwing all those calculations out the window.
The armored demon quickly changed his stance, and his weapon morphed into a thick buckler and a wide dagger that glowed gold. Even so, the recommended god-killer to god ratio was three, and he knew that with just him and his partner, they probably wouldn’t make it out of here alive.
“Arpeggio Selisie, good work making it this far,” Minimine said.
Arpeggio nearly jumped out of her shoes from the out-of-nowhere voice. She’d heard Minimine’s telepathy, so she’d known she was somewhere, but why did she feel compelled to speak up from right behind her every time, huh!
“I’ll take it from here,” Minimine said—then she disappeared.
The armored demon moved his buckler just in time to intercept, but he didn’t expect the force to be so great. Minimine sent him flying into the sky—and jumped right after him!
Still with his wits about him, the demon hacked down at the approaching goddess. His soul-destroying weapon flashed brightly as it hit Minimine’s mana shield, bouncing off with an ear-splitting ring. All it had managed to inflict was a crack, however, and Minimine’s little knife was already up against the demon’s stomach.
Even as he sustained a full-on stab wound, he managed to hack once more at Minimine. Again, his weapon bounced off with a flash, and the earlier crack had propagated, but that was still no reason to celebrate.
Minimine grabbed him by the collar and threw him back down to earth.
The ground erupted and swallowed him up. Before the dust even settled, lightning shot out from the ground straight at Minimine. They hit her shield, only managing to make it shimmer.
From the opposite direction, higher up in the sky, a portal opened up, and the green-skinned demon flew through. His black robes fluttered in the crosswinds above Harmony, his hand gripping the god-killing dagger meant for Minimine.
She’d seen him coming the moment the portal opened. Before the tip of his dagger even reached her shield, she air-stepped an inch away, gripped his arm, and added just a bit more momentum to him.
The ground came at him fast. He just barely twisted away, hitting the ground along the side of his body as a result, breaking bones here and there as he skipped along the road, leaving craters each time.
He came to a rolling stop right behind a hole where his armored comrade had become one with the bedrock.
A hand reached out from the hole, and the armored demon hoisted himself back up to street level. He looked around once, perfectly grasping the fact that his support had done a stupid thing in trying to take a goddess by surprise.
He looked at the green-skinned demon, who laid 10 meters away, doing nothing but be lazy and groan in pain.
“Stand,” was all the armored demon said. He was tired, but his weapon wasn’t broken, and his armor, merely tarnished and cracked in places.
Far above him, Minimine’s ribbons had come undone, and her hair, coated in magic, wafted gently as if suspended in water; the moon behind her outlined the silhouette of a creature whose domain had been violated.
She stared down at the soulless intruders of her world. Killing them wouldn’t even grant EXP.
The armored demon looked back up at her. His two hands gripped his sword’s hilt; he lowered his stance into earth-style defense; his best foot slid forward; the lesser went in reserve.
— A futile warrior’s request to meet the end.
***
While the northeastern quadrant of Harmony was steadily getting leveled in a losing boss battle, a far different scene played out in the west.
Viktor Redd, the last Priest of the Harem God, and Helma Kel, Priestess of Love, hid behind the same crate in an alley, waiting for the patrol out in the street to pass.
“There’s so many of them…” Helma whispered. “Can we get to the castle like this?”
“We gotta believe in my Harem Senses,” Viktor replied behind her. “There’s a gap in twelve seconds. Get ready.”
Ahead of them, the thralls of the cult marched in perfect synchronicity. Whichever regiment they had hailed from, they didn’t know, but what was more concerning were the Republic troops mixed in with some of them, shouting commands in Artemian while the knights replied in Lyrican.
Had Viktor not had his Harem Senses, they would’ve chalked it up to treason of the highest order. That both Lyrica’s and the Republic’s troops had been charmed, however, wasn’t much better.
The patrol passed. Viktor put his hand on Helma’s shoulder. “Ready,” he whispered, then patted her shoulder twice.
They dashed out of cover and crossed the street, entering the next alley. They hid between two boxes in a hurry, and the next patrol marched through the street.
The darkness was their friend here, but it was also the darkness that kept them from recognizing that there was a Scarlet Knight and a frightened girl just across from them.
They eventually saw them, though, and the two parties locked gazes.
Wary at first, they soon found sympathy in each other’s appearances. Both parties were, after all, hiding behind two crates in a dark alley, both probably hiding from the patrols who marched in endless circles, dragging people out of their homes, executing the men, and dragging the women off to goddesses-know-where.
Both parties appraised each other.
***
Name: Viktor Redd
Occupation: Priest of the Harem God
Name: Helma Kel
Occupation: Priestess of Love
Name: Code Dedd
Occupation: Harem Slayer
Name: Searchie
Occupation: Royal Detector
***