Mia had prepared for the pain. She knew magic could hurt her even in this — Wisp — form, but she didn’t have time for anything else. Stupidly, she didn’t have her trusty Arcane Shield spell ready to cast as she usually did in combat situations, nor did she have a Lesser Ward to protect her. Trying to dodge and Wisp Form were her only options, and she chose the latter in her panic.

  Mia knew pain, or so she liked to think. She’d broken bones, had rusted daggers in her gut, been scraped and cut more times in the last few weeks than she could count. So yes, she liked to think she’d grown somewhat used to it … but not so much as not to feel a single thing.

  The cogs finally started turning in her head, dislodging the obstructions her panic had caused and processing what Spirit Sense was telling her. There was a wall of arcane mana thicker than even Mia’s Phalanx between her and the spell, and the remnants of said spell were only now fading away after splattering across the wall.

  Mia popped back into existence, returning to her human body only to blink owlishly at the thick, opaque pink wall rapidly disintegrating before her eyes. Sparkle floated there, huffing and puffing as he turned around, hands on his hips. He gave her an imperious look, one she’d come to associate with him, nonverbally asking for praise.

  “Thank you,” Mia said absently, habit making her speak even though her mind was entirely elsewhere. Camie had burst through the door like a crimson storm of claws and fangs, and then came screams, only to be cut off far too suddenly.

  Mia’s gut churned, hearing even more screams of terror and agony echo shrilly in the hotel suite. It lasted but a moment, her heart growing cold and unforgiving, shaking off whatever pity she felt for her almost-killers. She’d almost died again. Was that the ninth or tenth time this week? It didn’t matter; she still lived, while only one of her would-be murderers — the man who’d tried to shoot her with a sniper rifle — still drew breath. By the sounds of things, Carmilla was in the process of making sure the man would remain the sole exception.

  It was with ginger steps and a heart filled with trepidation that Mia followed in her love’s wake, stepping through the hole she’d blown through the door, apparently too angry to bother with the handle.

  The living room was a scene of chaos, with furniture half-destroyed and thrown about, blood and other bodily matter marring everything from floor to ceiling. Mia almost slipped on a pool of blood, then kicked a detached head still wearing an expression of horror in death, even though the eyes held no light in them, not anymore.

  Mia grew numb, examining the stump with a clinical look, noting that the head seemed to have been torn off by brute force, and not cut at the neck. The hand hanging from the armrest of a couch was cut off quite cleanly, and blood still dripped from it freely all over the padded seats.

  Another corpse lay crumpled next to the wall, the man’s neck twisted right around an entire 180 degrees. Yet another corpse had a fist-sized hole going through the chest with what had to be the remains of a broken spine poking out through the chest cavity. Did she just punch through his chest, grab his spine, then tear her fist back out?

  Mia shuddered, but the wave of disgust and revulsion that would have had her heaving just weeks ago was absent. The scene wasn’t entirely novel, not anymore, though the sheer brutality of the kills still shook her. They hadn’t just been killed, but slaughtered, not like animals, no, there was too much hatred showing in each death. The closest thing she’d been forced to witness had been the remains left behind by roving goblins. Though those creatures wanted their victims to suffer, the one who killed them wanted them dead quickly but had too much anger to deal death cleanly.

  The room was silent, save for the murderer’s ragged breathing and the rising sounds from behind the doors. Mia hesitated for just a moment, but her heart was made the moment her silly vampire turned around. Camie’s eyes were large and wide, the ruby red of her irises consuming the whites of her eyes, and the pupils were wide. It reminded Mia of a cat sky high on catnip, though there was something wild and dangerous in both the vampire’s eyes and posture.

  Which was why Mia smiled disarmingly and strode up to her without pause, throwing her arms around her blood-coated girlfriend and pulling her in for a hug.

  “We are safe,” she whispered, her voice cracking just a little. She’d come so close to death again. Even if it had become annoyingly common, it never failed to shake her. “I’m safe. We’re fine.”

  They were pretty lame, as far as words of consolation went, but Mia was of the mind that the soothing tone they were spoken in was more important. Camie returned the embrace, arms closing around Mia with more than a hint of desperation, like she was afraid she’d vanish if she didn’t.

  A shuddering breath caressed Mia’s ears, and she just barely felt the hint of something sharp on her neck before the vampiress gathered herself, almost going limp in Mia’s arms, burying her face in the nook of the smaller halvyr’s neck.

  Mia reached up, her fingers gently caressing the red tresses of her girlfriend, the other holding tight around the girl’s waist even as her knees wobbled from the effort of holding up the larger, and much more muscular girl.

  Mia’s ears caught muffled murmurs, whispered words that sounded faintly like repeated apologies, though her mind was much more occupied with the distracting shivers running down her spine. The silly vampire was all but licking her neck, her muffled words vibrating her lips, which was extremely distracting even if this really wasn’t the time for her head to take an impromptu excursion to the gutter.

  At least it left her much more relaxed by the time she tugged it back out of the dump and shoved it back onto her shoulders. Camie had issues, entire volumes, really … but Mia’d decided to stick it out with her, no matter what. A few murders- … no, kills wouldn’t, couldn’t change that. Instead of the earlier wariness, guilt struck her.

  It should have been me. She knew Camie had trouble suppressing her vampiric instincts. She should have been more careful, been quicker with her Ward, should have had a Shield up, should have … she should have been the one to kill them. It wasn’t right. Camie shouldn’t have to dance on the knife’s edge that were her instincts just because Mia didn’t have the guts to kill people who were trying to murder her in her sleep, for why else would they have been here and done what they had? It should have been me. I’m sorry.

  Maybe she would have worked up the courage … in a minute, maybe more. But she’d have been long dead by then, had she been alone. Camie didn’t hesitate and dither around like an idiot; she acted. It made Mia feel horrible, a reminder of just how cowardly and weak-willed she had been, and apparently still was. No, never again, never.

  Her ears twitched, catching the sounds of battle from down the hall, screams and stings of spells firing one after the other. Mia felt a chill go down her spine. It was like the world itself heard her thoughts and decided to throw a test at her. But while she would have looked for an excuse to chicken out not so long ago, she felt her resolve harden and her eyes narrow. Never. Again.

  She pulled away slightly, which made the clingy vampire stiffen, but Mia just smiled affectionately and leaned back in to place a lingering kiss on the girl’s right cheek, the edge of her lips just barely not touching Camie’s bloodstained lips. When she pulled away again, the crimson on the vampiress’s cheeks was not entirely due to the blood she’d coated herself in.

  “Adorable,” Mark said dryly. “However, I’d like to know what the fuck’s going on if you don’t mind?”

  Mia turned around, slipping through the embarrassed apex predator’s grasp with ease, putting on an unaffected smile, though she was sure the burning in her own cheeks was not entirely due to the adrenaline.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  Everyone was out now, Brent and Helene standing near the now-open door of the suite, glancing out the entryway. Mark and Lina stood near the two girls, while Nikki just strolled back in from the balcony, and Mia caught sight of a pair of beastkin frozen like statues out there, matching the pair of ice sculptures that had tried to barge in on the runaway noble.

  The blue-haired woman was the only one who seemed to truly feel unaffected by the ambush. The only things Mia saw on her features were irritation — likely at being woken up in the middle of the night — and a thoughtful frown.

  “Beastkin somehow slipped inside the hotel,” Mia said. “I’m hearing dozens of battles ranging across the floors, they are probably hitting everyone who came out of the raid … I’m hearing Jeff’s lot and what’s probably Tristan going wild. A lot of them went after Jeff, like, twice as many as the ones here.”

  “The hallway’s empty,” Brent said.

  “Nobody else is on this floor,” Helene added. “The six guards near the stairs are dead.”

  “We need to help them,” Mia said with a vehemence that caused raised eyebrows and curious looks. Mia frowned in response. This wasn’t the first time she’d taken a hard stance on something, was it? “Graz won’t survive if we let the beastkin gut the opposing factions right now. Jeff’s lot is a counterbalance, and far more stomachable than the assholes who feed people to their pet monsters. I’m going, I can hear more people die with every second we waste here.”

  With that, Mia strode out the door, Brent stepping aside to let her go. Camie stuck to her side, and Helene joined her without a word. Mark cursed a bit, but he hurried after them, his footsteps sounding like the stomps of a giant in that heavy armour of his.

  The last three didn’t speak a word, but they too left the suite a second or two later and followed after. Mia let out a breath she didn’t know she was holding, a part of her relieved that she didn’t need to waste precious moments to convince her friends. Constant battle side-by-side forged bonds stronger than regular friendship, didn’t it?

  Mia fell back after she’d placed a Lesser Ward on Camie, Mark and Helene, slapping one of the rest of the group before spinning her runic model, arraying her newly improved Spectral Blade spell and an Arcane Shield.

  ‘Sparkle, could you scout ahead, please?’ Mia asked. ‘And … help out if one of ours looks like they are going to die?’

  ‘On it.’ Sparkle said with a grim determination that didn’t entirely fit the bubbly sprite. Without another word, he sank through the floor, and Mia caught echoes of his magic roaring alive through the Bond. It was always followed by explosions of mana she’d come to associate with a freshly dead person’s Core imploding once the Spirit departed the Body.

  Mia took a glimpse through her Bond’s eyes, grimacing as she’d just seen exactly what a human skull looked like from the inside. Sparkle apparently decided that turning himself into a projectile was the swiftest way to kill someone, or maybe the most fun, depending on his mood.

  The elevators were very much so in the ‘superfluous utility’ category of appliances, so they were obviously unpowered. That meant taking the stairs, which they would have done either way; elevators were just death traps when there was a possibility of an enemy waiting for you at the exit.

  Mia’s fingers gripped the hilt of her Spectral Blade hard as the group descended the stairs. Her ears picked up the sounds of movement from afar, and in an enclosed place like this building, it was all but impossible to sneak up on her. People weren’t used to being entirely silent, and Mia could even hear breathing and heartbeats if the person was within a dozen metres of her. Plus, she had Spirit Sense and Sparkle.

  Not that she needed any of the latter two to notice the trio of people lying in ambush right beside the staircase’s exit. Mia hesitated a moment, wondering if they were soldiers, maybe other raiders lying in wait to ambush beastkin instead of them. Even if they were beastkin, not all of them fell in with the asshole werewolf up the hill.

  “What’s the holdup?” Camie whispered, glanced at Mia’s uncertain expression and frowned. “I smell blood on them.”

  “Could be from defending themselves,” Mia said mulishly.

  The sounds from up ahead cut off, the source being the obvious wall of Air mana extending from Lina and covering the door. “I doubt they’ll have missed your whispering. I heard some beastkin have better hearing than elves.”

  “Doesn’t matter if they hear us,” Camie said decisively, and Mia was forced to agree. The three of them didn’t feel like Level 10s, 8 or 9 at best, and there were only three of them. If they attacked, it’d be committing assisted suicide by Arcane blender.

  The three did prove Lina’s words, though, as a larger male beastkin with horns and cloven feet burst through the door, a big meaty arm already lashing out towards Mia’s torso.

  Instinct from hours of sparring with Carmilla took over, and a Shield snapped into place to intercept the fist. It only held for a moment, but that was more than enough to arrest the man’s momentum. As the man tripped over his own feet, eyes wide as he took in not only the five very angry people suddenly up in his face, Mia’s Spectral Blade slipped from her grasp as she spun the spell circle.

  At Rank 1, but with the Chaos Aspected edge enhancement yet to be added, the arcane construct had gained a qualitative improvement in all aspects, but nothing else. Toughness, edge sharpness, and of course, the ‘function’ — if one wanted to use a programming term — responsible for imbuing motion and rotation into the blade, also gained a sizable improvement.

  Where it would have flown like a thrown Frisbee before and shattered upon hitting a concrete wall, it now zipped up and through the large beastkin without slowing, and then began its spin two metres away from Mia. The resulting magical blender tore through the door’s remains, bits of wall, and then flesh, bone and sinew as it met the two more beastkin.

  Mia stared, slack-jawed, at the large bovine beastkin’s eyes as he fell to his knees and reached up to touch the hole in his chest. His gaze held astonishment, terror and fear, the beginnings of shock and anger, but then light faded from his eyes and he toppled over. Mia stumbled back in fright upon seeing at least 150 kilos of pure muscle seeking to crush her under its weight, then she sucked in a sharp breath, her every muscle locking up, and then the world disappeared.

  Wisp Form slipped from her grasp a moment later, and she was deposited right on top of the corpse of the first man she’d killed. Mia jumped off as if the still-warm carcass burnt her, a twitch of her wrist and a mental twist yanking the Spectral Blade back into her grasp, though it left grooves and rents in the walls as it passed.

  Mia glanced towards the door and felt bile rise in her throat, finding the remains of a lanky man and a stocky woman lying there, bisected. The Blade had apparently caught them near the waist, leaving their guts spilling out of their upper halves.

  The man was still alive, his mouth moving and his hand trembling weakly, though no sound came out. They wore armour made of leather that echoed faintly of Earth and ‘toughness’ to Mia’s Spirit Sense, and discarded beside them on the floor were a pair of knives and a machete, all three still coated in still-drying blood. The lack of miasma Mia felt from them meant they couldn’t be monster blood.

  Mia wasn’t sure how long she’d have stood there, had she been alone; she wasn’t even sure how long it would have taken for either Camie, Mark or her Mom to snap her out of her shock, when a new, familiar scream for help snapped her out of it.

  “HELP!” That was Jasmine's voice, the green-haired elven archer from Sebastian’s group. Mia recalled her being stoic and serious even while loosening arrows at the Wendigo or the Raid Guardian, but now her voice cracked with an edge of desperation.

  Mia shook her head, huffed once, then stepped around and over the corpses without sparing them another look. It was easier to ignore and push them out of her mind that way. It was easier to suppress the realisation that she was a killer now, even if it’d been done mostly in self-defence and by accident, an accident caused by her panicking like an idiot.

  Self-defence wasn’t the problem, though she was sure the sight of the big beastkin’s terrified gaze the moment before life fled his eyes would haunt her for years to come. Mia had spent a fair amount of her formative years in the land of Freedom and Guns across the pond, so she was perfectly fine with killing in self-defence … in theory, anyway. In practice, it was much uglier, more horrible than she ever could have imagined. Watching them die, knowing it was she who killed them, was an experience she doubted even the centuries of life ahead of her would fully manage to erase from her mind.

  The problem came with the other two, the two whom she had killed by accident. Were they about to attack her? Would they have given up if she had managed to beat down the big beastkin? Were they there willingly? She would never know, and that was the worst part of it all.

  But she could have a breakdown later, once there were no more assholes trying — and succeeding — at killing people she considered, if not friends, then allies. Friendly associates. These cowards struck when the raiding group was at its weakest and most unprepared. They struck at the people who bled to save them.

  Ungrateful assholes. Mia fumed inwardly. It was their fault; it was all their fault. If they hadn’t come here, like cowardly, traitorous scum, she wouldn’t have been forced to kill them. All this could have been avoided. We could have had that damned Obelisk by now, but noooooo, these bastards just had to … they just had to …

  Was this a war? A miniature one, sure, but it was, wasn’t it? The war started not with a declaration of hostilities, but with a knife in the back.

  Mia had thought she had known hate before, when that twat Arnold, who just couldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer, all but harassed her out of college. You would think she’d hate the man-child who ruined her career before it even began, and Mia thought she did … but no. What she’d felt for him was a candle flame compared to the roaring inferno that consumed her heart now whenever she thought of that ‘Werewolf King’ who made all this happen.