"This! Sucks! Everything!" Carrie shouted, puncuating each of her words as she buried her axe into the Guardian in front of her. Around us were bodies of dead and wounded Nephilim that had been with us to fight the Queen and her guardians.
"Who's idea was this?" I asked her from my position pinned as I was by the Queen's corpse.
"That idiot's!" Carrie answered, still shouting but now kicking the dead Scourge. "He said to just charge in and then he was the first one that died!"
"I'm not happy about this either," I muttered as I stood up and grabbed my sword.
"Touka, how many did we lose in this?" Carrie asked as she slung her shield on her back and started to check on one of the wounded Nephilim. I knew that even if the Principality that had died leading this fiasco was the only loss that it was still too many. I'd put him in charge and that meant that everyone lost was on me.
"Should have trusted my gut on him and just taken over from the start," I said as I pulled out a bandage for the wounded Nephilim I knelt over.
"Why didn't you take over the first time he said something stupid?" Carrie asked as she pulled a bandage tight enough to use as a tourniquet on the poor Nephilim she was bandaging. "He said that we needed to do an orbital jump! There was no reason to do that when the shuttles had nothing to stop them from making the descent and there wasn't anything to save from the Scourge!"
"I know," I said quietly in agreement as I moved to grab the pauldron and check the name of one of the dead.
"And then there was the ocean fiasco!" Carrie continued, picking up steam as she went. "That stupid prick tried to say that there was no way the oceans on a planet that's ninety percent ocean were infested with Scourge! After we watched a Leviathan breach the surface!"
"No need to tell me," I muttered as I tuned her out and continued our work. Soon enough we were finished and Carrie had finally stopped berating the dead man for his many mistakes.
"Cai, patch me through to all Nephilim on the planet," I said. With a tone he indicated the connection's completion.
"Attention all forces," I began. "The Queen of this Horde is dead. Also lost in the fighting was Principality Jemicks. I will be assuming command for the remainder of this campaign. For the Lost."
I cut the connection there, not needing to hear that everyone not in immediate combat and danger had repeated the unofficial words of the Nephilim Army. "For all those Lost in the Fight" were the official words that were emblazoned on the Deva Collective's Seal of Sovereignty. That piece of artwork had been revealed to me by Carrie after I'd gone over my plan to make Kyouka and Julio Horsemen and send them out to clear galaxies when we finished these last few planets. This was the last one.
"Cai send word to the Phoenix that we need a shuttle for the wounded and a resupply and transport for Carrie and I," I told him.
"Horseman Applewood has already made contact and they are on the way," he answered me. I'd be lost without both of them.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
"Where to, Demigod, sir," the pilot of the shuttle asked as Carrie and I moved to resupply our kits for the next fight.
"The spot where fighting's heaviest on the western continent," I told her as the hatch closed behind us.
"Roger, roger, sir," she said as the shuttle began to head the appropriate direction.
"Cai send orders to Wings Fan, Quin, and Smith," I said as I restocked my med kit. "Tell them to accelerate their efforts on the eastern continent. Then, send orders to Wings Johns, Chin, Applewood, Riggson, and Jerrick. I need the western ocean cleared ASAP. If any of them need more manpower have them contact the fleet in orbit."
"Why the heavy fighting on the western continent?" Carrie asked as she grabbed a new med kit and some extra hatchets.
"They're seeing a lot of Guardians over there," I told her as I grabbed a backup sword and more hatchets for my own use. "If there is a Princess, then it's likely that it'll be there."
"And if you're wrong then that's just even more dead Guardians and that works out anyway," she said as she moved to replace shattered armor plates on her suit.
"Exactly," I agreed as I changed out my chest piece.
When the door opened some time later, I knew that I'd sent us to the right place. The forces here were fighting nearly fifty gathered Guardians with more Scouge than they could handle. All of it was under the clear control of a Queen.
"Carrie, I want you to gather everyone with a shield or a spear, surround and focus on the Cerberouses. Cai send word to the Wing in charge and tell them I want them to gather their best fighters and focus on the Reapers and the non-Guardians. I'll focus on the Rampagers."
"I'll switch to Revenants when we're done with the Cerberouses," Carrie said as she moved to focus on her orders. I made my way toward the Rampagers and was able to close in with them before they noticed me when I cut the head off the first one.
Roaring in rage, the three left charged me and I moved to dodge the first one by rolling toward the second one. Before it could grab me, I was through its legs and sending my sword slicing through its tendon, toppling it to the ground. Screaming in pain, the second one wasn't able to move out of the third one's way and they began to maul one another from the collision. Before I could move to finish them off the first one charged me again and I was moving to dodge it. I avoided its claws long enough to slam a hatchet into its torso and quickly danced out of the way. Before it could chase after me, the hatchet exploded and opened up the chest and stomach to send organs and filth flying through the air.
I moved to finish off the last two, but wasn't able to before the Queen made herself known. She flew through the air and sent sparks flying from my armor as her claws skated off me. Before I could send a hatchet after her, the flock of Harpies she'd been hiding in surrounded me. Harpies weren't like other Scourge Guardians. Each of them looked like a miniature version of the Queen without armor and unlike their land-bound counterparts, they weren't bigger than the non-Guardians they came from. Vultures were the size of Nephilim, where Harpies were barely three feet tall. If they weren't twice as vicious and only found around Queens, they'd have been labeled as Scourge and not Guardians.
As the Harpy flock surrounded me, I desperately swiped at them with my sword and the hatchet in my hand to try and open distance around me. I wasn't able to open that space before the Queen crashed into me and began to drag me higher into the air, the Harpy flock surrounding us. While the Queen pulled back her arm to claw me with her talons, I swung my hatchet and sank it into her armored shoulder.
Screeching in pain, the Queen released me and I began to fall.
"Cai! We're using the Seraph!" I shouted as I approached the ground.
Before I could crash into the hard rocky ground, I felt the last tool that Kiv-mel had left us before he passed on grab at my shoulders and send me into a controlled spiral that I pulled up from and soared into the sky. Extending out from either shoulder was a wing, each of them appeared feathered from the ground but that was just the miniature gravity drives that Kiv-mel had connected together. With Cai and my nanites helping to control the minor movements, I was able to adjust the position of the wings to hover, dive, ascend, and move in all six directions. Currently Carrie and I were the only ones that had mastered using the Seraph but I was confident that more would manage as time went on.
"Let's end this bitch," I said as I moved to chase the now fleeing Queen. "And her little flock too."