Demonic Po*nstar System

Chapter 720: Demon of Wrath

Both of Nyx’s hands were raised, holding a spatial barrier against three monsters that were trying to claw through it.

Nyx didn’t see it.

Luna did.

She threw herself back into the crescent’s path and brought her Stormblade up to parry. The blade caught the edge of the attack and held for a fraction of a second, lightning and white mana screaming against each other, before the crescent sheared through.

It took her arm at the shoulder.

The sound it made was wet and final. Luna’s left arm separated from her body in a spray of blood that caught the fading light, and the limb spun through the air toward the drop below.

Luna hit the ground. She rolled once, twice, and came up on one knee with blood sheeting down her side and her face white. Her left shoulder ended in a ragged wound that pulsed with each heartbeat, the flesh cauterized at the edges where Selena’s mana had seared through it.

Her Stormblade lay on the ground beside her, knocked from her grip by the impact.

For one second, maybe two, the mountain was silent.

Nyx felt something go terribly wrong behind her and turned.

She saw Luna on one knee. She saw the blood. She saw the shoulder.

The sound that came out of Nyx was barely human. Her hands dropped from the barrier and the spatial wall flickered, the three monsters behind it slamming forward into the weakening surface, cracks spiderwebbing through the translucent energy.

”Hold it!” Luna screamed at her from the ground, blood spraying from her lips. ”Hold the fucking barrier!”

Nyx’s hands snapped back up. The barrier solidified. The monsters slammed against it and held.

Her whole body was shaking. Tears were running down her face and she couldn’t wipe them because both hands were keeping three creatures from eating them alive, and the woman who’d just lost an arm saving her life was screaming at her to focus.

Then Luna lunged for the arm.

She caught it before it went over the edge, her right hand closing around her own severed limb, and she pulled it to her chest and clamped it between her teeth. Her jaw locked down on her own forearm, blood smearing across her mouth and chin, and she bit down hard enough to hold it in place.

Then she picked up the Stormblade with her remaining hand and stood.

— [MOD] Lady Leia: What the fuck!! This is really bad!

— [MOD] Kaiden’s Wife: no no no no no no

— [MOD] PrincelessPrincess: She’s bleeding really bad! She will bleed out! Everyone, call for help! I don’t care who you call!

— MoonlitHeart: I’m on it!

— 44xStorm: Luna is standing. She has the sword in her other hand and her own arm in her teeth. she hasn’t given up so neither can we!!!

— GigaAsh: this is the hardest thing i have ever seen in my life

Luna stood with her own arm clamped in her teeth and her Stormblade in her right hand, swaying, gray-faced, blood running from her shoulder and from the corners of her mouth where she bit down on her own flesh.

A creature lunged at her from the right. She pivoted on instinct and the Stormblade came up wrong-handed and clumsy but fast enough. The blade caught the thing across the neck and sent it tumbling. She stumbled from the follow-through, caught herself, and planted her feet.

Then she looked at Kaiden.

His eyes were crimson. The mana was already rising off him in waves, dark and hot, cracking the stone at his feet. She could see him going. She could see the exact moment approaching where the man she loved would throw away everything he’d built because of what had been done to her.

Luna dematerialized the Stormblade. It vanished from her grip in a crackle of dissipating energy, and she pulled her arm from her mouth with her free hand, spat blood, and spoke.

”Kai.” Her voice was a rasp, shaking, threaded with a pain she couldn’t fully hide. ”I’m okay. Don’t do this!”

She wasn’t. Her face was gray and her body was trembling and the blood wouldn’t stop coming. The only reason she was still standing was because Luna was too furious to fall down.

”Don’t.” She swallowed blood. ”Don’t throw everything away.”

She shoved the arm back between her teeth, bit down, and summoned the Stormblade back into her hand. The weapon crackled to life and she turned to face the monsters still climbing toward them, because Luna would fight one-armed with her own limb in her mouth before she’d let Kaiden Grey destroy his future on her account.

Kaiden stared at her.

At the blood on her teeth. At the shoulder that ended in ruin. At the Stormblade held in the wrong hand, sparking and unsteady but raised. At the woman he loved standing on a mountain with her own arm in her mouth telling him she was okay when she was so far from okay that the word had lost all meaning.

The world went red.

His mana surged. The crimson bled past his skin and into the air around him, dark and hot.

Bastet grabbed him. Both hands on his chest, her full weight against him, her face inches from his.

”Master, stop!” Her voice was raw with terror. ”This is what they want! You attack them on camera and they put you in prison for attempted murder!”

He looked through her.

”Kaiden!” The tanned felinid shoved him. He didn’t move. Her hands burned where they touched his armor, the mana so dense it was heating the metal, and she didn’t pull away. ”Listen to me! You throw one attack at them and they win! Magnus wins! Everything we’ve fought for, everything we’ve built, gone! There is still hope for us to run. They can only aim at us if there are monsters nearby. We just have to gain some distance. Let’s do that!”

Aria landed beside them. She reached for his face, both hands on his jaw, trying to turn his eyes toward her. ”Kai, please. Come back to us.” Her voice broke. ”We can’t lose you. Not like this! Please!”

Alice’s voice in his mind was small and cracking.

Every one of them was begging him to stop. The five women and the girl who made up his entire world were pleading with him to think, to breathe, to choose survival over vengeance, to let it go.

He looked at the ridge.

Selena watched. Her expression hadn’t changed. She’d just taken a woman’s arm off and she looked like she was waiting for a drink order.

No, that wasn’t quite true. Her expression did change.

She looked satisfied.

Kaiden’s mana erupted.

The pressure that had been building since the boulders fell exploded outward from his body in a wave that split the stone beneath his feet. The air warped. The light bent. And the sound that came from his throat wasn’t his voice anymore.

It was deeper. Layered. As if something behind his vocal cords had woken up and was speaking alongside him.

”I told you what would happen.”

The words hit the ridge like a physical force. The crimson bleeding from his skin had turned visible, a haze of dark red energy that clung to his body and seeped outward, and the edges of it were going black, veined with something that pulsed to the rhythm of his heartbeat.

”I made you a promise.” His hands were shaking. The knuckles had split, and red light bled through the cracks. He looked at Selena. ”And I am heartbroken that you’re making me keep it.”

The doubled voice broke on the word ’heartbroken,’ and for one moment it was just Kaiden underneath, raw and grieving. Then the Wrath swallowed it whole and what looked across the gap at his siblings was something far worse than an angry man.

Cassian grabbed his brother’s arm and pulled him backward. Calix didn’t resist. Both twins stared at the thing their brother was becoming, and their mana flinched inward on instinct, the same way a flame shrinks from a wind it can’t fight.

She tilted her head, and a grin spread across her face, slow and contemptuous.

”Go ahead, be my guest.” Her voice carried across the gap, clear and dripping. ”Try your best.”