Starting With an SSS-Rank Goddess Summon!

In all of their eyes that same sickening green light was burning.

Yet, unlike the civilians in the city, their glare wasn’t solid... It flickered wildly, dimming and flaring like a torch struggling against a gale.

”Captain,” Ther’Abella whispered, taking a trembling step forward with her polearm lowering slightly. ”Caelia... Moriel... Please... Look at me... It’s Ther’Abella, Ellvi took the core and she sealed Lady Eluned into the heartwood. We have to go back together.”

”Ther...”

Captain Kaelith’s mouth cracked open.

Her teeth were locked so tightly that blood seeped between her lips and ran down her chin as her hands trembled on the haft of her axe with her knuckles white as she fought her own limbs.

”Kill us,” Kaelith choked out, her voice turning into a strangled croak. ”Ther’Abella, please... We can’t hold it back much longer.”

Ther’Abella shook her head, tears spilling down her cheeks and mixing with the rain.

”I can’t kill you! I can’t kill any of you! We took our vows together beneath the blooming bough! We swore to support Lady Eluned with our lives! We’re sisters!”

”YOU WILL DIE!”

A harsh screeching voice tore from Moriel’s throat as the green light in her eyes flared blinding.

The spear-master crossed the distance in the blink of an eye.

SWOOSH-SLAM!

The crystalline lance thrust straight for Ther’Abella’s throat, then split into three strikes before she could register the first.

This was Moriel’s Crystal Needle, a technique that had once pinned a rift-wyrm to a cliff face.

Ther’Abella deflected the first thrust by a fraction of an inch, tilted her skull to let the second whisper past her ear, and felt the third punch through her shoulder pauldron and into the meat beneath.

BOOM!

She sucked in a breath through her teeth as the force behind the blow jarred her already damaged shoulder and sent a spike of agony down her spine.

Before she could recover, Captain Kaelith stepped into the pocket with terrifying speed with her shield forward and her axe back.

”DIE, TRAITOR!” Kaelith’s voice boomed, though tears streamed from the corners of her green-lit eyes.

The shield hammered into Ther’Abella’s chest and drove the wind out of her, and in the half-second she spent stunned, the axe came down in a vertical cleave that whistled with enough force to split a boulder.

This was the Rootbreaker... It was something everyone was really familiar with.

Ther’Abella dropped flat against the mud and rolled hard to her right.

KABOOM!

The greataxe cleaved into the bedrock beneath the soil and sent a shower of jagged stone and mud into the air.

Kaelith wrenched it free without a single pause because pausing was something the Captain had never in her life done in battle.

SHING! SHING!

From the left and right, Caelia and Evandra closed in seamlessly.

The twin blade-dancers moved with terrifying synchronization with their scimitars weaving a net of razor-sharp wind that sealed off every direction.

Their Gale Cross had once shredded an assault force of forty as the scimitars crossed above her head like scissors closing.

SHCK!

”Ah—!”

Ther’Abella twisted her torso, but one scimitar sliced clean through the meat of her left thigh while the other carved a deep red furrow across her ribs and blood sprayed into the mud.

”Ther, run,” Evandra sobbed even as her arms snapped into a reverse grip and drove both scimitars down toward Ther’Abella’s neck.

”I CAN’T!” Ther’Abella screamed through her teeth.

Behind the twins, the three archers fired in staggered rhythm, and the first volley alone would have shredded a lesser fighter.

They called it Thornfall... Three arrows loosed on three different arcs that landed within a heartbeat of one another, each one angled so that dodging the first would walk her into the second.

Althea’s arrow was a pinning shot, aimed at the mud beside her hand to lock her cloak to the earth.

Nim’s was a homing arrow that bent in the rain to find her and Cheryl’s arrowhead exploded on contact.

WHOOSH! WHOOSH! WHOOSH!

Between them they never left a gap wider than a breath, and each arrow was angled to herd Ther’Abella back toward the center, where the twins were waiting.

’T-this...’

She cut one out of the air, felt another graze her hip, and understood with cold clarity that she was not fighting seven broken women.

She was fighting the finest squad in the Sovereign Realm, and every one of them was still fighting well...

If she didn’t fight, she would die here and if she died here, no one would ever know the truth.

’This...’

Lady Eluned would remain trapped in that dark suffocating chasm for eternity, remembered as a traitor who had killed someone she had viewed as her own brother.

’Forgive me.’

Ther’Abella planted her left hand in the mud and channeled her wind-mana.

FWOOM!

A concussive shockwave erupted from her palm, blasting the mud outward and jarring the twins’ balance for half a second.

In that tiny opening, she pivoted on her good knee and swung her silver polearm in a horizontal arc.

The blade caught Caelia across the chest, carved through her leather cuirass, and sliced deep into her lungs.

Before Evandra could scream, Ther’Abella used the rotational momentum of the swing to drive the iron-capped butt of the weapon upward into Evandra’s chin.

CRACK!

Evandra’s neck snapped backward and both sisters collapsed into the mud with their blood mingling in the cold puddle.

As the green light faded from Caelia’s dying eyes, she looked up through the rain.

”Thank you,” Caelia whispered, her breath rattling out in a final quiet sigh.

Evandra’s hand twitched once against her sister’s sleeve, and then both went still.

THWIP-THWIP-THWIP!

Three explosive arrows tore through the downpour.

One punched through Ther’Abella’s left bicep, detonating on exit and tearing the muscle from the bone and the agony was so sharp that her vision went white for an entire second.

’No... I won’t falter!’

Captain Kaelith lunged through the smoke.

Even half-broken by the curse she moved like a siege engine, using the dissolving smoke of Cheryl’s explosion as cover, and her greataxe swung in a wide horizontal decapitation sweep that Ther’Abella saw only because the Captain had once drilled her on that exact angle.

’I can see the attack but—’

Ther’Abella couldn’t lift her left arm.

She dropped to one knee, jammed the butt of her polearm into the mud, and caught the shaft of the greataxe with the curved crook of her silver blade.

CLAAAAAAANG!

The weight of the blow drove Ther’Abella’s knee into the stone below and shattered the joint with a sickening crunch.

”Save her,” Kaelith wept with her arms straining as the green curse forced her to press the heavy axe downward toward Ther’Abella’s neck.

Ther’Abella looked into her Captain’s weeping face.

’I will.’

She let go of the polearm’s grip with her right hand, formed a rigid spear-hand with her fingers, and channeled every scrap of wind-mana she had left into a compressed high-frequency drill.

PZT!

Her hand thrust upward, piercing straight through the seam beneath Kaelith’s chin-guard and punching into the base of her skull.

Kaelith’s body stiffened as the heavy axe fell from her grip and splashed into the mud, and the green light vanished from her eyes, leaving behind only the deep gentle gray of an older sister who had watched over her since her first day on the high canopy.

”Good,” Kaelith breathed, blood bubbling past her lips. ”Save our Lady...”

The Captain collapsed forward with her heavy armor pinning Ther’Abella’s ruined legs to the ground.

Across the clearing, the three archers and Moriel were already advancing.

Althea nocked another arrow with shaking hands, and Moriel raised her lance, tears streaming down her cheeks as she stepped through the rain.

”AAAAAAGH!”

Ther’Abella tore her broken knee out from under Kaelith’s bulk with a violent wrench that left a trail of red behind.

She couldn’t stand as both legs were ruined, her left arm was limp, and her chest was carved with deep bleeding gashes.

’I need to move...!’

She dropped onto her stomach and, using her right elbow and her fingernails, began to claw her way forward through the mud and blood, dragging her polearm behind her by its leather strap.

THWIP!

An arrow pierced her right calf and pinned the muscle to the soil but she didn’t stop.

”U-urgh...!”

She ripped the leg forward, tearing the flesh around the shaft, and crawled inch by agonizing inch toward the Boundary Gate.

Moriel lunged with her lance whistling downward however Ther’Abella rolled onto her back and thrust her silver polearm upward with her one good arm.

SHCK!

The silver blade punched straight through Moriel’s sternum.

The spear-master gasped and collapsed over Ther’Abella’s chest, her blood spilling warm over Ther’Abella’s face.

”Thank you, little one,” Moriel whispered, closing her eyes as she went limp.

Ther’Abella shoved the corpse aside and kept crawling.

The three archers dropped their bows, pulled side-daggers, and rushed forward, sobbing uncontrollably as the curse forced them to strike.

The archers did not break at all... They drew side-daggers in perfect unison and came on in a staggered line, so that whoever she struck first would leave the other two an opening.

Ther’Abella spun her polearm along the ground and swept their ankles, and in a desperate flurry of blood and mud she drove the silver blade through one throat, then another, then the third.

Splat! Splat! Splat!

All three collapsed into the grass as silence fell, broken only by the heavy drumming of the rain.

Seven corpses of the Viridian Guard lay scattered across the field with their eyes finally clear of the green curse.

”M-move... I need to move...”

She bent her broken spine and dragged her ruined body across the final twenty yards toward the Boundary Gate.

The blue light of the archway had shrunk to a narrow, flickering slit barely two feet wide.

STEP! STEP!

A pair of dark polished leather boots stepped into view and stopped directly in front of her outstretched fingers.

Slowly, with agonizing effort, she lifted her head as rain and blood dripped from her eyelashes.

Ellvi stood over her.

The usurper looked down at the broken bloody shieldmaiden with a cold mocking smile with her arms crossed beneath her heavy bust.

The stolen divine mana of the World Tree swirled around her shoulders in radiant bands of emerald light.

”Look at you,” Ellvi mocked, her voice dripping with venomous amusement. ”The proudest, youngest member of the Viridian Guard, crawling through her sisters’ blood like a mangled worm.”

Ther’Abella bared her bloody teeth, a hoarse snarl tearing from her throat.

”You used dark magic... You cursed them to kill me...”

Ellvi threw her head back and laughed.

”Dark magic? How remarkably naive... I didn’t cast a single curse. I used one of Eluned’s own sacred spells.” She tapped her temple with a polished fingernail. ”It doesn’t implant anything... It simply amplifies what is already festering inside a person to its maximum... now do you know how I knew what to amplify? I spent a year reading every letter, every diary, and every private grumble your precious sisters ever wrote... Kaelith resented that you were the favorite, Caelia thought you stole her promotion, Moriel wanted your lance-training slot for her niece so each one carried a tiny, hidden seed of envy, and all I did was water them... They did the rest.”

She stood back up, smoothing down her dark leather corset.

”And the citizens? They didn’t need a curse. They’ve spent a year mourning their Overlord... All they needed was someone to blame, and I handed them Eluned’s name already shaped like a verdict.”

Ellvi looked down at her with pure, arrogant contempt.

”Emotions are weaknesses, Ther’Abella... Eluned spent a thousand years trying to study them like a foolish scholar and look where it got her. She’s sealed in the roots, while I wield her divinity.”

She turned her gaze toward the dying slit of the Boundary Gate. It was flickering violently, shrinking to the width of a hand.

”You expected me to kill you, didn’t you?” Ellvi asked, tilting her head. ”A dead traitor is only a corpse, and corpses can be argued over... A living fugitive, running into the wastes with the Overlord’s blood on her name, is a confession that walks so run, little squire. Every mile you put between yourself and Yggdrasil makes my story truer.”

Ellvi drew her right leg back.

”Go... Wander the cold wastes and rot in the outer dark, knowing that you were too weak to save your Lady and too pathetic to save your sisters...”

WHAM!

Ellvi’s heavy leather boot kicked Ther’Abella squarely in the ribs as the impact lifted Ther’Abella’s mangled frame into the air and hurled her through the closing aperture of the portal.

’N-no,’ Ther’Abella thought.

She reached out with her bloody, trembling fingers, trying desperately to claw at the stone edge of the gate and pull herself back toward the World Tree, toward the library, toward Lady Eluned’s gentle face.

’LADY ELUNED!’

SNAP!

The gate collapsed inward as the blue light died into nothingness, and the world turned pitch-black.

...

Ther’Abella fell.

There was no wind to whistle in her ears, no sound of rushing sky... it was only the agonizing phantom drag of momentum through the collapsed threshold.

In the pitch-black silence, the world refused to remain quiet.

Her memories began to bleed backward into the dark.

She heard them.

...Laughter.

It was the bright, ringing chime of Caelia’s giggles over a pitcher of fermented pear juice, the deep exasperated chuckle of Captain Kaelith as she dropped a training schedule onto the cedar desk, the quiet, teasing murmur of Moriel as she adjusted the grip on Ther’Abella’s very first lance.

They had shared the same hearth beneath the bough... They had bandaged one another’s blisters, broken bread under the canopy, and sworn their breaths to the same living sovereign...

’...They were always envious of me.’

The realization hit her not with fury but with a dull hollow ache that felt far worse than the shattered bones in her chest.

Ellvi’s poisoned words rang through the darkness, she didn’t invent it... she only amplified what was already festering.

It made no sense to her aching mind. She had looked up to every single one of them.

She had believed, with the earnest simplicity of a younger sister, that their circle was an unshakeable fortress yet beneath the smiles, beneath the affectionate ruffling of her silver hair and the shared cups of spring tea, a quiet bitter seed had been taking root.

They had looked at the way Lady Eluned smiled in the library, at the gentle rare warmth the Goddess reserved for her youngest squire, and they had swallowed down venom.

And in the end, it took so little to bring it to the surface... Just a whisper.

’And Lady Eluned.’

A suffocating knot seized her throat.

’I failed her.’

She had let the Lady be dragged down into the roots.

She had stood by while the heartwood split open and the lightless chasm swallowed that small green-clad figure whole.

The gentle, untouchable goddess who had wondered aloud what it meant to fall in love, who had dreamed of little footsteps on wooden floorboards and peaceful evenings beneath the orchard, was now entombed in the suffocating black, branded as a murderer by the very people she had nurtured.

Ther’Abella’s fingers twitched against the void.

’I couldn’t save the guard... I couldn’t save my Lady...’

She swallowed.

’...I couldn’t even die beside them.’