Messengers.
The Crimson Spire didn't just have one Terror and a horde of guardians. It had its messengers.
Five Fallen Monsters — the same as Asteria — were watching, observing the slaughter that was happening below them. The slaughter of their kin and foe alike — with a vile, horrific indifference; not making a move to interfere.
Hordes upon hordes of creatures bombarded them. The archers at the rear, the vanguard at the front, and everyone in between. Everyone had to fight — everyone had to support.
Kai's voice yelled through the panic and disorganized chaos — ordering them to continue firing arrows, to push through exhaustion and fear.
To fight. To keep fighting...
...or they'd die.
However, that was the least of their problems.
The net wouldn't hold. The same net that allowed for some protection and was now holding a militia of corpses of nightmare creatures. That net was going to break.
That net was protecting them from the predators above. The Spire Messengers.
That net was going to break. Intentionally or not—
Kai made another decision. To cut the net, drop the corpses onto an empty space where none of his allies stood. A wall — a fleshy, rotting wall to protect them.
The sky was visible once more. The archers had slain the majority of the flying nightmare creatures, yet...
There were still five more high above them, circling in a grey formation. As soon as anyone gazed upon them, they felt fear strike their hearts.
The Messengers saw them too.
A moment later, the Messengers broke their formation and plummeted down to the sleepers below.
***
Among the blood soaked battlefield, Asteria was on her own one-sided slaughter.
A hill of monsters she had slain piled up — thrown onto a pile of neverending heights, every creature stacked had once desired to devour the sleepers behind her.
It seemed like there was no hope for them. One girl against an army? It's pathetic.
Hope was something Asteria didn't need. She needed strength, speed and power. The power to save people, the power to grow stronger — the power to have her own type of freedom.
Where was she supposed to look? She couldn't be in two places at once despite her earnest pleas, wishes and prayers to the dead divines.
In the near distance, she saw a radiant figure of flame — a figure that danced through her comforting flames of agony, slaughtering the nightmare creatures that faced her and ultimately turning them into ash afterwards.
'Nephis! She took her time.'
Asteria's relief ended as fast as it came. She heard screams, cries, and the painful splatters of blood. There were five pale bodied, blood stained ravens in the sky.
All assaulting that unfairly handsome Night from Nightingale — Kai.
One was bloodied and still on the ground, three were behind him, and the fourth...
Was about to pierce his chest.
***
The air was already thick with the copper tang of a hundred different bloodlines, but as the Messengers descended, the atmosphere curdled into something far more sinister.
These weren't the mindless, skittering scavengers Asteria had been butchering; these were the Spire's elite – Fallen Monsters that possessed a cruel, calculating intelligence.
From her vantage point atop the mound of chitin and gore, Asteria's glassy violet eyes locked onto the rear. Kai was a silhouette of desperate defiance, his bow singing as he tried to lead a line of archers who were rapidly losing their nerve.
The Fallen Ravens were a blur of pale, sickly feathers and elongated talons, diving with the force of falling boulders.
One of the Messengers slammed into the ground, its impact liquefying the sleepers nearby. Kai rolled, narrowly avoiding a beak that could have snapped a mast in two, but he was cornered.
Three circled him like sharks in a bloody tide, and the fourth – the largest of the pack – unfolded its wings, its shadow swallowing the young scout whole. It lunged, its talons aimed straight for Kai's heart.
"KAI!" Effie's roar echoed from the flank, but she was pinned by a swarm of centipedes.
Asteria didn't scream. She didn't have the breath to waste.
She flooded her legs with every drop of soul essence she could muster. The red coral beneath her feet shattered into dust as she launched herself, a golden streak of light cutting across the battlefield.
The Messenger's talon was inches from Kai's chest when the world exploded in a flash of molten sunlight.
CLANG.
Asteria intercepted the strike mid-air. The force of the collision sent a shockwave through the coral, blowing back the nearby sleepers and even staggering the other Messengers. She had blocked the strike not with her blade, but with her forearm, the [Might of Gold] sparking violently as it ground against the creature's prehistoric claws.
"Get back!" Asteria snarled, her voice a low, vibrating growl that cut through the Messenger's screech.
With a predatory twist, she grabbed the raven's leg. Her muscles, reinforced by her ascended physique, bulged beneath the gold.
With a guttural shout, she swung the multi-ton monster like a flail, slamming it into the two other ravens that were closing in on Kai's blind side. The sound of breaking bone and wet thuds filled the air as the three Fallen creatures tumbled into a heap of tangled wings and broken feathers.
Kai gasped, his face pale and splattered with blood, possibly his own. "Asteria... you..."
"Don't stop firing!" she snapped, not turning around. "If you drop your bow, we all die. Keep the sky clear!"
The fourth Messenger, the one that had stayed aloft, let out a piercing, mournful cry that made the sleepers' ears bleed. It dived, its beak open to reveal rows of needle-like teeth.
Asteria didn't wait for it to reach her. She summoned [Sentinel's Heart], the starlight blade glowing with a lethal, incandescent red. She lunged upward to meet it.
The collision was silent for a heartbeat before the creature was sliced cleanly from gullet to tail.
[You have slain a Fallen Monster: Cursed Herald.]
She landed softly next to Kai, her golden armour shimmering as it shed the black blood of the Fallen. The three Ravens she had slammed together were scrambling to their feet, their eyes burning with a hateful, malevolent light.
"Three left," Asteria whispered, her smile turning into something sharp and manic. "Kai, tell your men to focus on the horde. These ones are mine!"
She stepped forward, the [Might of Gold] flowing and hardening into a more aggressive, spiked configuration. To the sleepers, she looked like a vengeful star that had fallen to earth; to the Messengers, she was the end of their long, cruel vigil.
"Come on then," she challenged, beckoning them with a blood-stained gauntlet.
'Fuck. I didn't bite off more than I can chew did I?'
The three remaining Ravens recovered from the impact with a collective, bone-chilling shriek. Up close, they were even more ghastly – their skin was a translucent, sickly grey, stretched tight over elongated ribcages that throbbed with a dark, necrotic energy.
"Kai! Move the archers twenty paces back! Don't let the stragglers flank you!" Asteria commanded, her voice cutting through the unnatural cold radiating from the Messengers.
She didn't wait for them to coordinate. She surged forward, her golden sabatons cracking the red coral. The first of the three met her halfway, its wings snapping shut to propel it like a spear.
It swung an obsidian-like claw aimed at her throat, but Asteria was no longer fighting with hesitation. She ducked beneath the strike, the [Might of Gold] humming as she pivoted on a dime, and drove the pommel of [Sentinel's Heart] into the creature's hollow chest.
The sound of the shattering bone was eclipsed by the Messenger's shriek – a sound that was a mental assault rather than just noise.
She snarled, her own ascended presence flaring like a sun to incinerate the gloom. "Is that all? I've seen real Nightmares, you overgrown pigeons!"
'I hope a crazy queen counts as a nightmare...'
The other two flanked her, moving with a synchronized, predatory grace. One dived from above while the other swept low, trying to take her legs. Asteria leapt, twisting in mid-air with a flexibility that defied her seemingly heavy armour.
She parried the overhead strike, the starlight blade shedding sparks as it bit into the raven's wing, and used the momentum to kick the lower attacker squarely in its beak.
The force of the kick, backed by her essence, sent the creature tumbling backward into the encroaching horde of lesser monsters, crushing a dozen scavengers beneath its bulk.
As she landed, the first bird – the one with the shattered chest – lunged again, its eyes burning with a hateful, crimson light.
Asteria didn't dodge; she willed the [Might of Gold] to shift. The liquid metal flowed upward from her pauldrons, forming a shimmering, curved kite shield in a heartbeat.
The beak of the Messenger slid off of her shield, tumbling through the sky on her right.
"My turn," she whispered.
She lunged through the dying spray of acidic blood. The Messenger tried to retreat, but Asteria was faster. She gripped the hilt of her longsword with both hands, the red vein in the blade pulsing in frantic synchronization with her own heart. With a vertical slash that seemed to draw a line of starlight through the grey air, she cleaved the Cursed Herald in two.
[You have slain a Fallen Monster, Cursed Herald.]
The remaining two Heralds hesitated, their primal confidence shattered. They looked at the golden girl standing over the remains of their kin, her iridescent hair whipping in the wind of the battlefield. They realized too late that they weren't the ones hunting.
Asteria didn't give them time to flee. She blurred into motion again, a golden reaper in a field of red coral.
The battle for the rear wasn't over, but as she turned her blade toward the final two Messengers, the desperate archers behind her finally found their breath. For the first time since the march began, they saw a path to survival.
[You have slain a Fallen Monster, Cursed Herald.]
[You have slain a Fallen Monster, Cursed Herald.]
'Tsk, that could've gone much worse, heh?' Asteria clicked her tongue with a defiant smile as she heard the familiar voice of the Spell echo into her ears.