Time’s up.

I drifted off sometime in the night but Kierra practically leaping out of bed wakes me. She pauses in the middle of dressing when she feels my eyes on her and leans over me to plant a quick but hungry kiss on my lips. “I shall go first, my love,” she whispers.

“It’s dangerous to move alone,” I respond in just as soft a tone, still not thrilled with her chosen role. “They’ll be looking for you.”

“They will never find me,” she growls. “Tonight, we do not fight. We hunt.”

One more aggressive kiss and she flies out of the room. As she says, Kierra isn’t fighting. Despite her prodigious strength and the most common use of the physical affinity in combat being buffing martial fighters, she is at her most deadly at range. It’s easy to forget that her best weapon is the bow, given how much she enjoys wrestling her prey and the multitude of blades she carries with her.

A berserker can be annoying in the right circumstances, especially if they can heal themselves, but they are ultimately easy to counter. If she’s in the thick of things, her regeneration can be overwhelmed, her mana exhausted. I’ve managed to do so on my own, despite my lack of experience.

She’d do a lot of damage running at the hunters headfirst, but she’ll do a whole lot more using her power in bursts, putting an arrow through an unsuspecting hunter before disappearing without a trace. With me taking point and Geneva watching over Alana, she doesn’t have to worry about anything else. Just reaping as many lives as she can or pleases.

In comparison, Alana is much slower to rise and far more thorough in her preparations. It starts with fluttering eyes and scrunched eyebrows. I catch only a hint of her baby blues as she stretches jerkily. She’s strong, stern, and admirable, but graceful? Not very much.

Geneva is at the side of the bed with a bowl of steaming water and a rag when she slips out of the bed. After washing her face, she is much more alert. The succubus brings her armor and helps her don it, finishing with a dark cloak borrowed from the estrazi to hide its details.

“We’ll get going,” she says, voice sounding a touch deeper, a touch more menacing, through her helmet. “It’ll take about an hour for us to get into position.”

“Be careful. They’ll be looking for us.”

“They won’t like what they find.” She pauses before reaching a gauntleted hand toward me. The feel of the cool metal is a little uncomfortable, but I don’t pull away when she strokes my cheek. “Remember what I said?”

I sigh. “Yeah.”

“Whatever happens today, I love you. That won’t change.”

I lean into her touch. “Love you too, sweetie. Go be a hero.” Somehow, it feels right that she is the only one whose actions will be beyond reproach today. I have no doubt that she’d grimly accept a role similar to Kierra’s. It’s my own selfishness that makes me want to see her, hm, unspoiled. As vigorously righteous as the day I met her.

A calm settles over me as she leaves the room. Something adjacent to the numbness of the previous days. Acceptance, maybe. This is the path I’ve chosen. For better or worse, no matter what I become after this, it was my decision. I don’t ask for much. Only that I do right by my chosen family and that my divine father looks down on me fondly. The world is a crazy place, something I learned intimately once I really started living, but I’m sure I can manage those two things. That has to be enough.

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If it isn’t, then I’ll go somewhere it is. And if that place doesn’t exist, I’ll smash a corner of the world and create it.

I entertain dark thoughts as the minutes pass.

Faster than ever before, my hour is up, announced by the rapidly rising sun spilling an annoying amount of light into the bedroom. I’m even less graceful than my knight as I roll to my feet and stumble out of the room, becoming more coherent with every step.

The grounds surrounding the estate still look terrible. I can’t justify doing anything grand with it, as the estate isn’t our home and I don’t think we’ll be staying for too much longer, but it’s just depressing to look at for any length of time. Maybe we can plant some grass before we go. The Teppin knights were nothing and worth nothing, but the poor fields are innocent. They don’t deserve to be scarred.

“Rolly.”

My elemental appears in front of me in a burst of color. “Is it starting?” she trills in obvious excitement, flashing in shades of yellow, orange, and bright reds that border on pink. “You’re a little far from the action.”

“I’ll get there soon enough. Thought you’d want a front row seat to the play.”

She laughs, the sound of tinkling bells. “I’m always watching you, my summoner. After all, that is part of our contract.”

That’s right. Rolly agreed to follow me so that, one day, she could tell my story. Well, this should be an interesting scene. “You should move away,” I warn, before shrugging off my prime form. Then I take it a step further and relax my control over my ooze.

My elemental form expanding to its full size is…comfortable. Like kicking off a pair of snug shoes after a long day. Beyond that, I feel strong. Saints, it’d be hard not to feel powerful when I’m larger than the estate, my massive form throwing most of the main building into shadow.

“Whoa!” A speck of light flies in front of me as my lueorale grows more excited. “You didn’t smell anything like a human but what is this? You kind of remind me of ***** but that’s not possible. Some kind of descendant? Hybrid? Oh, this is going to be good!”

I ignore the little lightfly, as Kierra calls her. Her comments are interesting and I make a note to explore them later, but not now.

Now, it’s time to be the villain.

I move forward, taking a moment to adjust to the rolling-sliding movement of my oozey body. Thankfully, everything about this body is instinctive. It doesn’t take long to become accustomed to it and soon I’m barreling toward the city.

I’m not just big. I’m enormous. As tall and wide as I am, I might as well be a moving hill. A hill moving at my speed? The poor buildings don’t stand a chance. I don’t even feel the impact as barrel over and through them. Whipping out a tentacle thicker than a tree and several times longer decimates them a row at a time. In the face of that kind of destruction, the people too foolish to get out of the way can’t even be considered. I can hear them as they scream and run, but their voices sound weak. Tiny. Not too different from the buzzing of insects, but with more varying tones.

It doesn’t take long for the hunters to notice me. In this form, I can see all around my body. In front of me, hunters crowd my base with swords and spears, doing more running than fighting as they quickly come to the realization that they can’t do anything to slow my forward momentum. I can see the hunters behind me, cautiously following in my wake, evacuating civilians still in the area while launching spells at me. I can see the hunters on the surrounding roofs and in the air, though I’m not sure what they’re doing. There’s a lot of movement happening but very little magic.

It doesn’t matter. I pay them no mind, falling into a rhythm as I sweep my tentacles while cutting a path from the Teppin estate to the city’s western gate. The guilds are spread throughout the city. Rather than congregating in one area, they just avoid a few areas, like the richer neighborhoods near the estate and the Myriad Zone. Before, I charted a path that would ensure I cause the maximum amount of damage by cutting through the center of the city, going a little south before going straight west. I don’t even notice their efforts to stop me as I make good on my promise to reduce the city to rubble.