Brynhildr’s hammer sank deep into the Chimera’s torso, eliciting a scream of anger from the creature. Its serpent tail lashed out at the Shieldmaiden and swiped her to the side just as Eir swung her large sword at one of the Chimera’s hind legs.

Eir was too fast for the Chimera, and her sword bit two entire feet into its thick hind legs. The Valkyrie ripped her blade from the abomination’s flesh, spraying silver-black blood in the wake of her vicious attack.

I watched the action from where I sat, legs splayed out in front of me as my chest heaved desperately for oxygen and my muscles continually cried with exhaustion. The resurrections had completely drained me of my heart energy, and though my Core was working to restore my expended reserves, there was no way it could work fast enough after that level of draining.

Right as Brynhildr would have dealt a finishing blow to the Chimera’s skull, a slightly larger than human sized shadow launched itself at the combatants. The shadow, the Drakoryx, slammed its full weight into Brynhildr and sent her flying. Hammer and stinger collided in a fury of blows that I was too low level to visually track.

Eir screamed and scrambled toward her remaining sister to help but was quickly intercepted by the Chimera who widened its lion’s maw and bellowed a challenge toward the Valkyrie. It crouched into a prowl, all thirty feet of its lithe frame extending and tensing. An enormous paw raised, just a little, then smashed into the ground as it charged forward.

I was fairly certain in a normal situation the Shieldmaiden and the Valkyrie could have dealt with the two creatures with relative ease. But these were different. These were my creatures, and they would not fear death. I felt it in my very bones. In my soul. The only thing these resurrected creatures feared was my demise.

And they would fight until nothing remained of themselves to prevent that from happening.

I couldn’t help it. Despite everything, despite my situation and the exhaustion keeping my legs pinned to the ground, I laughed. And this time it was a real laugh. Still cold and ruthless, but real.

The sound distracted the Shieldmaiden for a moment. It was only a split-second mistake and shouldn’t have cost her anything in a normal fight.

Unfortunately for her, the Drakoryx was not a normal fighter. Its stinger sprang forward at an unparalleled speed from Brynhildr’s blind spot and stabbed into the woman’s stomach, piercing through the shield as if it was made of paper.

She gasped, and Eir screamed. The Drakoryx shrieked in victory only to have Brynhildr’s hammer, still clenched in her hand, slam into its face and pummel the creature away. In the aftermath of the hammer strike, the winged creature lay still, a rainbow of energy flowing out from it. I tried to reach out and redirect the leaking energy back into the Drakoryx, but the translucent wisps refused. Whenever I tried, it was like trying to grasp smoke.

I tried a different tact. Instead of pushing the energy back where it was leaking, I attempted redirecting it with a small wind of my remaining heart energy. It wasn’t much, but I hoped it would be enough to lead the leaking energy into the Chimera vessel.

As if attracted to the pull of the Chimera’s resurrected soul, the Drakoryx’s released energy was sucked into the Chimera, and the creature let out a roar that was overlaid with a second vibrato. Almost like the Drakoryx’s soul remnants had merged with the Chimera.

When I managed to pull my gaze away from the Chimera, which was somehow still releasing its distinct roaring shriek, my eyes met Eir’s. The Valkyrie glared at me with open hate, having clearly put the pieces together.

I shrugged and mouthed silently, “Too late.”

The Chimera leaped at Eir, and I grunted with the effort of pushing myself to stand. While the Chimera and the Valkyrie exchanged blow after blow, I stumbled my way toward the Shieldmaiden who lay crumpled next to the dead Drakoryx, clutching the stinger still protruding from her stomach.

Tears ran down her face, but they never turned into sobs. Brynhildr struggled to push the stinger out from her stomach. When she saw me approach, she stopped struggling against the stinger and instead grabbed both her weapons, her eyes becoming set with fierce determination.

“You are no saint,” she said, accusation and hatred clear in her determined stare. Brynhildr said nothing more as she used her elbows to climb into a sitting position and winced when the stinger was forcefully shifted down. “In the name of the Kingdom and the Crown, I wi-“

I didn’t let her finish. With a wordless command to the resurrected Mindscribe, Brynhildr’s stare glazed over, and her mouth froze where it had been in the middle of a word. I knew the Mindscribe was challenging the Shieldmaiden in her Mindscape, but at this point, all that hardly mattered.

Eir still screamed in the background, and I could hear the panicked fear and desperation in her voice. I didn’t care. They had tried to play me. To kill me. All of them had tried. Were still trying. All of them were always playing with me and scheming, ever since I’d arrived.

They enslaved us all.

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Then they killed Marisar, a peaceful healer. The first and only truly kind person I’d met in many long years. The river of rage in my mind erupted and surged forward like a tsunami.

It was time to set an example. Clearly, stealing the King’s son-in-law’s soul had been too clean, too kind, and the death of the slave soldiers too irrelevant.

They wanted a show? A show I would give.

I knelt by Brynhildr and closed the woman’s hanging mouth. With a gentle hand, I pushed her back to the ground so she lay prone on her back.

I kept her eyes open, even though I knew she couldn’t actually see me.

Then I pried her large hammer from her tight grasp. It took me a moment to do so, the woman’s fingers clutching to the hilt like she would have clutched to life had her mind been present.

I placed my other hand on the hilt and stood, the hammer's head still firmly on the ground. The arena had gone silent. Not a single movement as the entire audience held their breath.

The air around me was cold, and my eyes were brutal as I raised my gaze to the overhanging section where I knew the royals resided. And then I turned my gaze to the Church of Life. And finally, I allowed my eyes to roam over the entire audience, letting my stare rest on the slavers in the distance.

“I chose to challenge your Gods,” I said, my voice somehow resounding across the arena with a volume enhancement, despite the fact I hadn't used any such skill. Although I didn’t know who was enhancing my words, I didn’t particularly care. “And I have judged these Gods, these three fates, to be lacking.”

And I swung the hammer down on Brynhildr’s head. Blood sprayed, and I tasted the hot metallic taste in my mouth. I raised the steel weapon and slammed it down again. And again. And again.

The arena stayed completely silent. No one laughed or jeered anymore. What they were watching was not a historical reenactment or a play. It wasn’t even a fight. What they watched was a brutal slaughter.

I wanted them to feel my wrath and to understand my promise.

That this was just the beginning. Not even their Gods could stop me.

When Brynhildr was so fully destroyed that the hammer hit nothing but bloodied and gored sand, I stopped swinging. Still, I didn’t allow myself to fall back to the ground. Perspiration soaked freely into my ragged clothing, mixed with dirt and blood, both my own and not my own.

Eir was still locked in combat with the enraged and enhanced Chimera. The Valkyrie, for her part, fought like the four hells incarnate. Her every strike was fueled by raw power and desperation, and though the Chimera fought with equal ferocity, it was clear the beast would eventually lose. It had already sustained deep gashes to both its hind legs, and it was missing half of its serpent’s tail. A line of thick fluid trailed the severed tail, and I wondered just how much blood the creature had lost.

The Valkyrie had sustained similar damage with many cuts crisscrossing her torso and legs. At some point during my slaughter of Brynhildr, the Chimera had managed to take one of her arms.

“It wasn’t supposed to go like this!” Eir screamed, her sword drooping with the effort of holding it at the ready. “No one was supposed to even get hurt.”

“Except for me,” I said pointedly, not bothering to disguise the heavy layer of sarcasm.

“You’re a slave,” she hissed, and the Chimera thundered its disagreement.

I just shrugged. “Am I? Aren’t I a Saintess Candidate for the Goddess of Light and Life?”

Eir barked an empty laugh. “Goddess of life? What life?” Her voice was reaching a manic high, and I could see the sanity beginning to slowly drift from the woman. I’d debated having the Mindscribe paralyze her as well, but in the end, I decided not to. I wanted the audience to witness someone they idolized feeling the pain of the slaves they watched as entertainment. “I’d sooner believe you’re a messenger of the Death Goddess than a saintess blessed by the Goddess Dhalia.”

I thought about that for a moment and chuckled. “I guess we’ll find out. Well, not you.” I gestured at the disastrous state of her body.

“How can there be a child such as you,” Eir snarled in disbelief and anger. “How can one be so cruel at an age so young?”

“Cruel?” I spat and motioned toward myself with a wave. “I am not the one attempting to murder a child.”

The Valkyrie shook her head. “I simply do not understand. It is impossible that you are the young lady of a noble family.”

I gave her a feral grin and, low enough that only she could hear me, I said, “I’m not.”

[You have killed (1) Seer of Dhalia and (1) Shieldmaiden of Caelos.]

[You have absorbed enough heart energy to form (2) heart rings.]

[Proceeding with formation]

[Error. Orpheus System overruled. Retaining unformed and unrefined heart energy.]

I laughed as the new energy poured into me and renewed my strength and spirit to about a quarter of my full capacity. Still, watching Eir’s weakened state as she struggled to fight against the Chimera and her wounds, I knew it would be enough.

I raised the hammer, one hand gripped at the bottom of the weapon's long hilt and placed my other closer to the steelhead. Then I heaved it into the air and followed the Chimera into a frenzied charge.

Eir batted away my strikes with the ease of someone much stronger than her foe, but she quickly found herself in a difficult situation when every one of my blows was immediately followed by a variety of attacks from the Chimera. My sole goal was to throw her tempo off, and after a moment, I achieved it. She was too lazy in recovering from moving to block my hammer strike, and as a result, the Chimera swatted her with a giant paw. Long claws raked canyons into Eir’s body as the pure force behind the Chimera crumpled the remains of her armor.

There was a sickening crunch as Eir’s body crashed into the arena’s far wall. After a moment, it slid from the wall, forming a lifeless heap. Unlike the other two, a reddish-white light hovered above the body. Immediately, I went to grab the soul sphere and push it back into the body to serve at my command, but nothing happened except for a sharp, nauseous pain spiraling through me and my vision suddenly flickering with black dots.

I looked into my Core and groaned. Empty again. I waited for a moment, hoping to get some energy from Eir’s demise, but nothing came, indicating to me the Orpheus System or whatever only rewarded its Awakened for the final blow. I stumbled over the dead Drakoryx and slid down its bloodied side to sit on the wet ground.

“Uhhh,” Jarold’s voice was harsh against the silence, and even I winced at the suddenness of it. “It… it looks like Gideon is victorious in his trials! She moves on to the second stage next week!”

While he spoke, I slipped my weak arms behind my back and wrapped thin fingers around the Drakoryx’s broken midnight-blue scales. I was careful to make sure a slight aura protected the open wounds on my hands from Skuld’s whip as I yanked a scale loose.

When the guards came to bring me back into the underground dungeon where the slaves were kept, my hands were empty.

As I walked, however, I could feel the sharp edges of the scale rubbing against my leg from the pocket it hid in.