Chapter 113. The Bickering Was Over, Survival Took the Stage
Kaela shoved her blade sideways, using the flat of the steel to knock a creature back, then pivoted on one foot. She exposed her left side, which was completely open as she prepared a massive horizontal cleave.
A larger, hulking beast with four arms was already mid-charge, its mandibles clicking in a frenzied rhythm: ’click click click click.’
"Kaela, behind you, you absolute disaster—!" Lia started, but she didn’t wait for the insult to land.
Lia threw herself into the space between Kaela and the beast. Instead of a clean strike, Lia grabbed a handful of loose earth and magical energy, hurling it like a shotgun blast at the beast’s face.
FWOOSH.
The debris and water hit the monster’s eyes, sending it stumbling blindly.
"I didn’t ask for help!" Kaela screamed, though she immediately seized the opening. "But thanks, I guess!"
Kaela spun, her sword catching the blinded monster across its midsection. The blade bit deep into the soft flesh beneath the armor, grinding through vertebrae with a wet, grinding GRIND CRUNCH.
The creature let out a gurgling shriek before collapsing into a heap of twitching limbs.
"See? Teamwork!" Lia panted, wiping sweat and black blood from her brow. "I set up the shot, and you finished it."
"Admit it, you’d be a corpse right now without me."
"In your dreams, prodigy girl! I was testing your reaction time!" Kaela barked back, though she stepped closer to Lia, their shoulders nearly touching as they formed a tight circle against the next wave. "Besides, if you died, I’d have nobody to beat in sparring tomorrow."
"And I need my motivation."
"Oh please, you’d fail spectacularly without me there to point out how wrong you’re doing everything."
A shadow loomed over them both. A massive, chitinous limb swung down like a guillotine.
CLANG!
Lia’s blade met the limb, her boots skidding backward, leaving twin grooves in the blood-soaked earth.
"Less talking, more stabbing!" she screamed, her muscles straining against the supernatural strength of the monster.
"Right behind you!" Kaela roared.
She didn’t just swing; she drove her shoulder into Lia’s back, using the momentum to propel both of them forward. It was a clumsy, uncoordinated tackle, but it sent them both rolling beneath the monster’s swing.
As they rolled through the gore and filth, Kaela lashed out with a vicious upward slash that disemboweled the creature from below. A cascade of steaming entrails spilled onto the ground with a nauseating SPLAT.
They both scrambled to their feet, breathing hard, faces caked in grime and blood, looking like demons rising from a pit.
"Okay," Kaela panted, wiping a string of gore from her chin. "Maybe you’re not completely useless."
Lia grinned, a sharp, dangerous expression that matched the steel in her hand. "High praise from the girl who almost got eaten twice in five minutes."
"Now come on, let’s finish this so I can go wash this disgusting shit off my face."
"Fine, but I’m winning the next spar!"
"In your dreams, Kaela! In your dreams!"
The tide of monsters seemed to grow thicker with every passing second, the dimensional rifts vomiting forth increasingly larger and more grotesque abominations. The courtyard was no longer a place of learning; it was a meat grinder of black ichor and screaming metal.
Lia and Kaela were trapped in a deadly dance, their coordination holding but their tempers were fraying faster than their defenses.
"You’re crowding my space, Kaela!" Lia screamed as she ducked under a serrated claw. "Your swings are too wide, and you’re leaving the left flank completely exposed every time you go for that stupid power attack!"
"My swings are wide because I’m actually trying to kill these things instead of playing around with water droplets like some fucking ballerina!" Kaela roared back.
She swung her blade in a vicious arc, decapitating a smaller scavenger with a wet SHLICK, but the recoil sent her staggering backward. "Maybe if you actually hit something instead of just splashing around, I wouldn’t have to cover your ass so much!"
"Cover my ass? I’m the one who’s been keeping you from getting gutted three times in the last ten minutes!" Lia’s face was flushed with rage, blood dripping from a fresh cut on her cheek. "You’re reckless, you’re loud, and you’re going to get us both killed because you can’t control your goddamn temper!"
"Oh, fuck you, Lia! At least I’m not a pretentious, stuck-up princess who thinks she’s better than everyone just because she can recite some textbook Tide Stance technique!" Kaela’s eyes flashed with genuine anger.
For a split second, the threat behind them vanished as she turned her glare on Lia. "You think you’re so perfect, but you’re just as terrified as the rest of us!"
"I’m not terrified; I’m trying to be competent!" Lia snapped, stepping closer to Kaela, her blade lowering slightly. "Which is something you wouldn’t understand—"
"ENOUGH!"
The roar didn’t come from the monsters. It came from William.
His voice cut through their argument like a lightning bolt, vibrating through their very bones. He was standing just meters away, his own blade buried in the skull of a demon, his eyes burning with a cold, lethal fury that made both girls flinch.
"FOCUS ON THE THREAT OR DIE IN THE DIRT!" William bellowed, his gaze sweeping over them. "This isn’t a sparring match in the courtyard!"
"These things don’t care about your pride or your petty bullshit!"
"They only care about eating your hearts! FIGHT OR GET OUT OF MY WAY!"
The silence that followed was brief, broken only by the wet breathing of the monsters. The sting of William’s reprimand burned worse than any wound.
Lia and Kaela froze, the reality of their situation crashing back down on them.
"S-Sorry, Instructor Wade," Lia whispered, immediately snapping back into a defensive crouch.
"Yeah, sorry," Kaela muttered, though her knuckles were still white around her sword hilt.
But the moment of respite was an illusion. From the shadows of a collapsed archway, something massive and silent emerged: a Stalker, a creature built for ambush, its body nearly invisible against the darkness.
It didn’t screech; it didn’t click. It simply lunged.
Lia was mid- adjustment, still shaken by William’s shout, her guard momentarily lowered. The Stalker’s primary appendage, a curved, obsidian blade that looked like a nightmare’s fingernail, swung toward her exposed throat.
"LIA! LOOK OUT!" Kaela screamed.
Lia saw it too late. Time seemed to slow: the glistening black blade, the hungry void in the creature’s eye sockets, and the inevitable spray of blood.
"Shit—"
She couldn’t move fast enough. But Kaela could.
Abandoning her sword for a heartbeat, Kaela threw her entire body forward. She didn’t use her weapon; she used herself.
With a primal scream of effort, she launched a devastating, closed fist punch aimed directly at the creature’s skull.
CRUNCH THUD.
It wasn’t a clean hit, but it was a powerful one. Her fist connected with the side of the Stalker’s head with the sound of a sledgehammer hitting a melon.
The force of the impact reverberated up Kaela’s arm, the bones in her knuckles grinding painfully, but the momentum was undeniable. The Stalker’s head snapped sideways, its trajectory completely disrupted.
The deadly blade missed Lia’s throat by mere millimeters, slicing only through the air with a deadly WHOOSH.
The creature stumbled sideways from the sheer force of the blow, its balance shattered.
"Get back!" Kaela gasped, blood streaming from her split knuckles as she scrambled to retrieve her sword, her breathing ragged. "Move, Lia! Move now!"
The Stalker reeled from Kaela’s desperate haymaker, its head twitching spasmodically as black ichor leaked from its ruptured temple. The momentary reprieve was the only opening they needed.
The humiliation of their argument and the terror of the near miss fused into something new: a cold, shared understanding. The bickering was over. Survival had taken the stage.
"On my mark," Lia hissed, her voice low and lethal, her eyes fixed on the shifting mass of the swarm. "No more talking... Just execution."
"Got it," Kaela replied, her breathing steadying despite the throbbing pain in her shattered knuckles. "I’m with you."
The swarm surged again, a wave of clicking mandibles and razor-sharp limbs. But this time, they didn’t meet it as two separate fighters; they met it as a single blade.
Lia moved first, slipping into the Tide Stance. Her movements became terrifyingly economical.
As three creatures lunged simultaneously, she didn’t block; she flowed. She spun on the ball of her foot, her body a blur of motion.
SWISH.
Her blade carved an arc through the air, catching two of the monsters across their midsections. The water magic infused in her steel acted like a hydraulic press, the enchanted pressure forcing the blades through chitin like hot knives through wax.
SHLICK SPLASH.
Two creatures split apart, their insides spilling onto the stones in a wet cascade.
"Now, Kaela!" Lia commanded, pivoting to create a vacuum of space.
Kaela exploded forward, shifting instantly into the Ember Stance. While Lia moved with fluidity, Kaela moved with explosive energy.
She didn’t just swing her sword; she ignited it.
"Burn, you fuckers!" she roared.
Her blade became a streak of molten orange as she unleashed a devastating horizontal slash.
FWOOOM.
The heat was so intense it cauterized the air itself. The slash caught a cluster of three scavengers, the flame spreading across their bodies, cooking them inside their own shells before the steel tore them apart.
CRACKLE POP.