Chapter 40
"Oh dear," Melgara said in the kind of way that didn't actually seem very sincere.
"Don't suppose we can fix this with just a Band-Aid?" I asked and then laughed at my own joke before falling into a coughing fit. Turning my head, I ignored Melgara to scan what was happening elsewhere on the battlefield.
At the same time, Melgara put a very thin but at the same time heavy blanket around me.
"Oh, no. Shock isn't good," I said absently, taking the blanket and knowing what it meant but unable to really pull up the concern I knew I should be feeling. Really, the fact that I was so unfeeling about it was a worrying symptom.
But maybe I was wrong, because Melgara seemed absolutely delighted with my condition. I assumed if I was on death’s door, she would have been at least slightly more panicked.
She hurried back into the shuttle, grabbing several objects while I watched the fights still ongoing, lying on the ramp to the shuttle with a shock blanket over me.
Somehow, in the surprise of seeing me go down, Violet had lost her winning stance.
Ushael was back up, and this time, he was not exactly playing by the rules.
He was busy weaving around some of the other onlookers, using Madam Chiksai as a shield, before sweeping in and scoring a thrust right through Lily's chest.
While he hadn’t been Violet’s match in a stand-up fight, it seemed he excelled in the more chaotic brawl happening now.
"You're too soft. The fact that you'd risk yourself to save these lessers is only more proof of The Unity's wisdom. They're not worth anything, certainly not your life." He laughed, dodging out of the way and grabbing Tiri by the neck, using the other kikai as a shield.
It was quite frankly an embarrassing way to fight, especially given that he had been gloating about their strength not long ago.
Violet was doing her best, but she was still holding herself back, unable to risk Tiri in order to take advantage of any opening.
I shook my head. There was being soft, and then there was being stupid, and she had unfortunately crossed from one into the other.
"Violet. You need to kill him!" I shouted across the field. But my words did little more than bring a mocking laugh bubbling up from her opponent.
"Yes, listen to your human handler." He laughed, as if that was the funniest concept in the world. And then he threw Tiri directly into the path of Violet's blade.
For a heart-stopping moment, I thought for sure she was going to be cut in two, only for Violet to throw herself back with an invisible force, forcing herself to miss and leaving her wide open.
Ushael slipped back in with his saber, following her with his own shove of force and getting his saber into the center of Violet's chest.
She froze on the saber, her heart skewered. I wondered if she could fight without a beating heart, or if it would take her down while her body did whatever it did to regenerate.
I got the answer quick enough. She stumbled back, blood pouring out of her mouth and her chest as she tried to maintain a fighting stance.
But I suspected her biology was working heavily against her at the moment.
Even if she were a divine capable of healing through mortal damage, without a heart pumping blood, there was no blood pressure.
And without blood pressure, muscles wouldn't contract.
Ushael took that chance to gloat.
Meanwhile, I reached inside the shuttle, my fingers scrabbling along the side. I pulled at the mounting for the very illegal rifle that I had discovered along the ship.
Even Melgara wasn't paying too much attention to me. Too many eyes were locked on the battle that would decide our fates. And so I wasn't entirely sure anyone watched as I lifted it to my shoulder and sighted down it with shaking arms.
This was a dangerous gun, and logically, I knew that with shock, I probably shouldn't even be holding it. I was not in the right mental state to be making these decisions, but it appeared I was going to need to do this for Violet. I sighted down the barrel, and I pulled the trigger on Ushael.
The divine kikai flinched before he came at Violet with even more urgency, his body beginning to bloat in an uncomfortable-to-see way. It caused his arm to bend back unsightly and his blade to swing wide of Violet.
Down and beaten as she was, she wasn't stupid. She was trained too well to miss such an opportunity.
She jumped forward.
I was not sure if she had recovered and hit her target or fallen short.
The strike that looked like it had been aimed at his neck deviated low at the last moment, either because of her conscience or her struggling-to-function body.
But the end result was the same. She ended up stumbling forward, driving her blade through his legs and cutting them both off in clean stumps as she staggered to catch herself and barely managed to stay on her feet.
"Fuck," Melgara breathed, and she turned back to me, jabbing an injector into my side and beginning to pump me full of whatever was inside. She paused, glancing hesitantly at my scalp. She saw my concern, and then, with almost glee, she delivered several doses of something right into my hairline.
These ones hurt like a bitch. It was like she’d just wrapped my skull in liquid torment.
“Fuck.” I pulled away.
“Don’t worry. It’ll only hurt for a minute,” she said with no remorse whatsoever.
"Ushael!" the other kikai turned and screamed, rushing to his side and ignoring Lily.
But ignoring Lily was never a good idea. As he got halfway to his brother, the ground simply opened up. A massive pit, lined with dark spines, split in front of him, and the spines were all facing in his direction.
It swallowed him, Violet, and his brother. I had no idea what happened from there. All I knew was the other side burst open, and the three-tailed divine came soaring out the other side carrying his brother, while missing a good chunk of his leg, an ear, and half of one of his tails.
His eyes turned back to our group as he was poised to run away. "You will never survive. Your support of this one"—one of his tails flicked to point at Violet—"will spell your death. She has drawn you to your doom by involving you in fights you can't hope to win."
"You're not so scary," Lily said, her arms crossed and a smirk on her face.
The three-tailed divine began to laugh. "I have three tails, and you could barely handle me. You are doomed the second a real divine comes here to teach you the errors of your ways."
"Big words for someone who's lost." Lily wasn’t giving them the last words.
Yet the divine smirked. "Lost?" he asked, his brows rising as a smirk painted itself across his face.
"Losing would mean I came out of this exchange with a greater deficiency than you.
" The smile grew as his tails flicked beside him and a great rent carved into the earth, starting at him and heading straight towards me.
The ground split open and tore everything apart between the two of us.
Bushes, stones, everything simply parted like butter before the invisible knife that hurled in my direction, promising a sure and sudden death unless I moved.
Yet my body refused to be responsive as I demanded it get up and run away. It was like my circuit board was missing a particular relay. My legs and body didn't work, or perhaps I was simply observing my doom with a level of focus that made it seem slower than reality.
At the last moment, I caught a shock of a dark fluffy tail in the corner of my vision as Madam Chiksai tackled me, and hot blood splashed against my face.
There were multiple cries at once as Ushael let out a cry of frustration, the woman in front of me still holding onto my shoulders sobbed, and Lily let out a roar of rage.
I heard it all with a numb sense of realization that Madam Chiksai had just pushed me out of the way and paid the ultimate cost for protecting me.
Lily and Violet descended on the twins. Black spines drowned out the world as massive pillars of black mass rose and crashed down upon them.
Violet shot through with her saber, seeking them while also attempting to disarm the two kikai.
Apparently, it had taken a moment of rage for my two women to drop any pretense of battle and go straight for the throat.
I’d told Lily to let Violet handle the divines—it was something she needed to work through. Yeah… that wasn’t happening now.
It was a moment later that both enemy divines looked like pincushions, stuck in the middle of a spider's web.
Black mycelial mass spanned every inch between the pillars of Lily's secondary body, with spines sticking into them from every direction.
Their bodies were a mess. Violet's saber had carved them up.
"She's not going to make it," Melgara said, looking at the woman who was practically bisected.
Cut from the shoulder down to the hip, most of her chest was missing.
It was honestly a surprise that her eyes were still open at all.
Though, by the way they were glassy, I supposed there wasn't much left happening inside of her.
I reached forward and gently closed her eyes before shifting and viewing what remained of the battle.
Violet had violently dismembered our opponents, and Lily had released them from the cage of her mycelial mass that she had made in a moment of rage.
Violet had them down on the ground, and she was hesitating.
"You can still let us go!" Ishael shouted. "If you do that, you won't die a horrible death for what you've done."
I stared at him, blinking at their shamelessness. "She just showed you mercy, and you turned on her, and now you're asking for more?" I barked a laugh, before falling into a coughing fit.
"You should probably conserve your energy," Melgara offered.
"But you gave me those injections," I said. "I'll be fine, right?"
My doctor pursed her lips in a way that did not give me confidence.