X walked beside Sarandel with his hands tucked into his pockets, his pace unhurried, almost idle—an affectation so out of place it bordered on absurd given Arcadicia was still actively under invasion. "Can I assume you felt what came through the portal a bit ago?" he asked casually. "And are you just staying quiet for no reason?"
"I felt it," Sarandel replied after a beat, her gaze forward, posture unchanged. "It is not a presence I have encountered in a very long time. Someone from my generation." Her eyes narrowed slightly, the words carrying more weight than her tone suggested. She did not answer his second question.
"The Generation of War, huh," X muttered, lifting a hand to rub at the jaw of his skull mask. He glanced sideways at her. "Think we can handle him?"
For several steps, Sarandel said nothing. Then she raised three fingers first and then seven fingers second without slowing her stride. "Thirty to seventy are our odds."
X nodded once, then frowned under his skull mask. He folded his arms. "That low?"
Sarandel shook her head. "Seventy is our chance of winning. Thirty is losing."
That made him stop walking for half a step. "Are you serious?" he asked, genuine surprise bleeding through his usual nonchalance. "With the energy I felt? We actually have a higher chance of winning?"
"Kharveth is the Knight Commander," Sarandel said evenly. "That is the meaning of his name in demonic. He is a leader first and a warrior second. That does not diminish his power, but it defines how he uses it." She continued forward, her voice steady. "I suspect he will distribute his own power among his Demon Knights. That will weaken him compared to his peak."
X exhaled slowly, considering it, then resumed walking alongside her.
They were not heading toward the portal. Doing so would have been reckless even for a goddess—challenging two Demon Lords, a Demon King, and the Knight Commander simultaneously. While the Demon Lords posed literally zero threat to her, Sarandel was fully aware that both Domine and Kharveth could harm her, each in their own way. That was why she had chosen a different approach.
"Regardless," she said, breaking the silence, "we prepare. Remember the plan. Do not deviate from it."
X lifted his arms in a loose shrug and nodded. "Yes, yes. You don't have to tell me twice, goddess."
---
Callum dragged in harsh, burning breaths but never stopped moving. Even in human form, his werewolf biology kept him on his feet far longer than any normal person had the right to. He slipped under the snapping jaws of a drakorath, came up inside its reach, and raked his blade across its scaly chest. The creature reeled back as he pivoted, barely catching the curved sword of a sharaykthun on his own weapon. The demon flowed around the clash with a serpentine twist, forcing Callum to shift his footing, and in that instant the drakorath lunged again. Its fist slammed into his guard with crushing force, the impact rattling his bones and knocking him a step off balance. The sharaykthun capitalized immediately, its blade slicing across his right side.
The cut was deep but not catastrophic. Superficial for a werewolf. It still burned like hell.
"Some help here!" Callum shouted, forcing himself upright as the pain flared.
Vilak's skeletons were fully engaged, locked in brutal melees of their own, so the necromancer turned instead. He raised his staff and pointed, a pebble-sized mote of astral magic snapping into existence at the tip. It fired with a sharp crack, punching clean through the drakorath and the sharaykthun in a single line before dissipating into nothing. Both demons collapsed almost simultaneously.
"A-are you okay?" Vilak asked, eyes flicking to the blood soaking Callum's side.
Callum glanced down, then waved it off. "This? Yeah, it looks bad and it hurts like crazy, but don't worry about it. Werewolves can take a beating. This is barely anything." He holstered his blade, drew his pistol, and snapped a fresh clip[1] into place.
Demons were already charging. He fired without hesitation. Two imps dropped instantly, each taken cleanly by a single shot. A sharaykthun twisted and swayed, narrowly avoiding the first two rounds before the third caught it mid-motion and sent it sprawling. A drakorath barreled forward through the gunfire, rounds thudding into its chest until the pistol clicked empty, the final shot dropping it face-first onto the gore-slick stones.
Then, abruptly, unnaturally, the noise stopped.
No clashing steel. No roars. No screams.
Callum and Vilak looked around. The four skeletons—each of them reassembled multiple times over the course of the fight—stood amid the fallen, having finished off the last of the demons. Bodies were everywhere. The street was buried beneath corpses, blood pooling and running between shattered stone and broken weapons. Hundreds, at least. Possibly more. Somewhere in the low thousands. Callum couldn't even begin to count.
"Think this pile is good enough for an army of our own?" Callum muttered as he let himself drop onto his back, staring up at the dark and cloudy sky and taking whatever rest he could steal.
Vilak didn't answer immediately. He stood still, staff in hand, slowly surveying the carnage. "I don't know," he said at last. "There was something I felt arrive in this world that…" He hesitated, fingers tightening on the staff. "It unnerves me."
Callum pushed himself up on one elbow, frowning.
Vilak shook his head, as if discarding the thought. "But—" He slammed the butt of his staff into the ground. The black gemstone set into its head flared to life, pulsing with dark light. "If everyone else has done their jobs properly, we cannot fall behind."
Necromantic power surged outward from the impact point, flooding into the streets, seeping into the demon corpses as the energy spread rapidly across the battlefield.
"So," Vilak said evenly, "let us begin the city's counterattack."
[1] I know the difference between a clip and a magazine. This is a clip specifically.