"Hey, kid! If you're going to destroy that piece of shit, you'd better do it fast! It's not easy holding these sons of bitches!"
The line on the other end was choppy — human screams mixing with the screeches of Tyrannomorphs in a sonic chaos the radio could barely transmit. Eleonora's voice had lost all the composure I knew: there were no more measured words, no more calibrated sentences. Only the desperation of someone fighting a battle that grew more deadly by the second and that transformed any good sense into irrelevance.
"Damn! I'm trying, but it's not easy when you've got a goddamn elite Infernal chasing you!"
The screams on the other end continued for a moment — metal against chitin, muffled explosions, someone shouting something I couldn't distinguish. And then they stopped. The silence lasted a few seconds. And silence, on a war channel, is never a good sign.
"Damn. Daaaamn." Eleonora's voice returned — lower, tighter, as though she had tucked herself into some corner to talk to me, with the tone of someone who had just heard something they didn't expect and was still processing it. "What the fuck did you say? There shouldn't be any ancient Infernal there, much less an elite one. What the hell are you talking about?"
While she spoke desperately, I looked behind me.
A few kilometers away — far enough to give me some breathing room, too close for me to relax — I could see the silhouette of the enormous Infernal advancing. His armor gleamed with red reflections that blinked as he crossed through the organic structures in his path, destroying walls as though they were curtains, passing through buildings as though they didn't exist. Each obstacle that should slow him down was simply removed from existence by an impact of the shield or the hammer, without losing speed, without detouring, without the slightest hesitation.
Honestly, I was as surprised as Eleonora. There wasn't supposed to be an Infernal of that caliber here. But the nearly five minutes fleeing from that son of a bitch told me otherwise.
The Infernal was slow. That was obvious — however much he seemed to exert himself, he couldn't catch me when I was on Arachne. My daughter's speed, even in the swamp, surpassed his by a comfortable margin. In everything else, however — strength, resistance, defense, destructive capacity — he was superior by a margin that didn't seem normal. Didn't seem possible. Didn't seem fair.
There was the possibility that some Infernals hadn't gone to the main attack led by the Unicorn elders, and that possibility had been taken into consideration in the planning. What hadn't been taken into consideration was the quality of those who stayed behind. The idea was that only the rookies would remain — young, inexperienced, disposable. Who in their right mind would keep their elite out of the combat that could decide the war? It made no strategic sense.
Even so, it was what it was.
"It no longer matters whether there was or wasn't supposed to be an enemy of this caliber here. The fact is he's too strong. I'm going to destroy the antenna, but I won't manage it in the time we agreed. I need more time."
The time we had to complete the mission had gone out the window. The main factor was that I simply couldn't shake the enemy. He was slow, but constant — always there, always behind, always advancing with the mechanical persistence of something that doesn't tire, doesn't give up, and has nothing better to do than chase me to the end of the world. My attacks against the antenna were sufficient to destroy it in due time — Arachne slammed against the organic structure with the force of a wrecking ball, and with each impact the living walls cracked, bled, moaned as though they felt pain. But at every moment, I needed to pull back to flee from the Infernal, interrupting the process, losing precious seconds to gain distance he recovered right after.
My only unexpected advantage was that the Infernal seemed not to care about the antenna. He didn't try to protect it. Didn't position himself between it and me. He merely chased me — as though his mission weren't to defend the base, but to kill me. Maybe what I had said about the Vriseus had struck that Infernal in a way he couldn't process. Maybe rage had replaced duty.
"We won't hold out forever. We'll have to pull back. You have two minutes."
The rage climbed up my spine like acid. Losing the perimeter meant what was already difficult would become impossible. The enemy already knew what was happening and most probably was already directing part of its forces to this location. And I didn't know what was happening with the elders' group — to be honest, I didn't even have a notion of how truly strong they were. Everyone who was with me had talked plenty about the elders, about the family's internal guards, about the elite warriors who made Viego look like a child. I understood that could be true. But I also understood that the Infernal behind me was strong enough to make me flee — and if he was like that, I couldn't stop imagining who was defending the real objective.
"I'll do my best. But if you abandon me and I survive, you're going to regret it."
My voice came out lower and thicker than I wanted — with the weight of a threat I wasn't sure I could fulfill, but that I needed to make to keep on the other end the urgency I felt on this end. The silence that followed sounded like surprise.
"We'll try to hold as long as we can. I'll make contact when we can't hold anymore." A pause that lasted an eternity compressed into half a second. "Please, finish this."
The channel cut before I could respond.
"Son of a bitch." I spat the words like blood. "Daughter, let's head to the antenna again. Let's finish this."
✦ ✦ ✦
Arachne turned toward the antenna with the urgency of someone who understands that time is the most dangerous enemy in that fight.
The structure was larger than the others — an organic tower that rose at least thirty meters, with the same texture of flesh and metal fused together that I had already seen in everything on that planet. The surface pulsed at a rhythm that seemed faster now, as though it knew it was being attacked and was trying to repair itself between blows. Deep cracks covered the entire face turned toward us — marks from Arachne's previous impacts, open wounds that bled a dark and viscous fluid that trickled down the walls like black tears.
Two or three more hits and the structure would fall. I was certain.
Arachne slammed into the antenna with everything she had.
The impact shook the entire ground. The cracks multiplied — racing across the surface like roots seeking earth, opening in patterns that revealed the interior of the structure: layers of living tissue interlaced with something metallic that blinked and hissed like dying circuits.
One more. Just one more.
"Father. I sense a new enemy."
The words came out as surprise — and that was exactly what they were. The perimeter was protected. Arachne sensed nearby enemies all the time — it was the sixth sense I already knew, the vibration she transmitted when something approached. But this time, the vibration was different. More intense. More urgent.
"It's close."
Too close. That should be impossible. Unless the enemy had appeared from nowhere.
"What the hell, where is—"
"It's at our objective."
At the antenna.
I turned my eyes to the half-destroyed structure — and what I saw made my mind freeze for two seconds I didn't have to waste.
A woman.
At the top of the antenna. Standing on the cracked and bleeding surface, with the posture of someone who had been there for hours, not seconds — as though the entire building had been constructed for her to stand on top of it.
She was tall. Absurdly tall — nearly three meters, with a body that defied what I knew about proportions: slender, elongated, with limbs that seemed longer than they should be, thinner than the strength I felt emanating from them justified. Every centimeter of that silhouette was contradiction — the apparent fragility of the form against the crushing pressure that radiated from her like heat from an open furnace. The skin was the same dark tone as the other Infernals, but with a different texture — smoother, almost polished, like obsidian someone had sanded until it reflected.
The face I couldn't see.
A helm covered everything. It wasn't a functional helm — not the kind that protects, that absorbs blows, that exists to keep the wearer alive. It was something else. Ornamental and terrifying at the same time — a mask of dark metal that descended over the entire face to the chin, with no opening for the eyes, no slit for the mouth, no orifice suggesting anything human beneath. The helm's surface was smooth and curved, with subtle reliefs forming patterns I didn't recognize — something between writing and decoration, engraved in the metal with the delicacy of someone who treats weaponry as sacred art.
Behind the helm, hair.
Violet. Long. Descending down her back to nearly the waist, swaying in a breeze I didn't feel — as though the hair had its own wind, its own gravity, its own time. Each strand shone with a tone that was darker than the Unicorns' violet and more alive than any natural purple.
And from her back, emerging between the violet strands, two tentacles.
Not arms. Not tails. Tentacles — long, articulated, with the texture of Tyrannomorph blades, but thinner, more controlled, moving with the independence of limbs that had a will of their own. Each ended in a tip that glowed with the same dark red as the structures around — sharpened, curved, with the precise geometry of something designed for a single purpose.
The armor she wore was minimal — thin plates covering only the essential, stuck to the body like scales, leaving most of the arms and legs exposed. It wasn't protection. It was style. The silent declaration of someone who didn't need armor because the armor was her.
In her hands — long, with fingers that seemed to have one more joint than normal — a weapon. A curved blade, thin, the length of her entire arm. A single weapon. A katana of flesh and metal that pulsed at the same frequency as the veins of that place.
"What the fuck is that?"
The words left my mouth in a whisper that should have been a scream — but the presence of that thing compressed the sound around as though the air had grown denser.
Before I could do anything, she vanished.
She didn't move fast — she vanished. The space where she had been was empty the instant my eyes blinked, and when they opened, she was in front of me. Less than a meter away. The blade already in motion — a lateral arc that cut the air with a sound I felt before I heard.
"DAAAAMN!"
I created a shield with the mark — fast enough to anticipate the blow, fast enough to place it between me and the incoming blade. But not fast enough to create a base. The impact struck me as though someone had placed a locomotive behind that thin blade — the shield held, the mark held, Hard Skin held, but my body had nothing to brace against. I was launched backward like a ragdoll — crashing through an organic structure, destroying walls that exploded around me like viscera, passing through a second space that came apart on my impact, until I was finally stopped by the wall of a third building, which didn't yield.
My back hit with a force that tore the air from my lungs. The taste of blood returned. My vision blurred at the edges.
And then I heard it.
"Father! ARGHHHHHH!"
Arachne's scream tore through my consciousness like nothing on that planet had done. It wasn't a war scream. It wasn't a scream of rage. It was a scream of pain.
I forced my eyes to focus.
And what I saw destroyed something inside me.
The woman — that three-meter thing, with the blind helm and violet hair — was before Arachne. And my daughter was mutilated. The two front legs — the largest, the ones she used to grab, to pin, to protect — had been cut. Not torn, not broken — cut. With the surgical precision of something that knew exactly where to cut to cause maximum damage with minimum effort. The stumps bled — dark liquid gushing from the exposed joints, streaming down the living armor that tried to close around the wounds, but had nothing to close. And on Arachne's face — on my daughter's face — a deep cut descended from forehead to mandible, open, pulsing, with the depth of something that had come too close to what mattered.
Arachne roared.
The sound made the surrounding structures collapse. The pain and the hatred fused in a scream that shook the entire swamp — and my daughter, even mutilated, even bleeding, even with half her face open, advanced. The remaining legs destroyed everything around in a blind frenzy of agony — buildings collapsed, the ground cracked, the black mud rose in waves that covered everything. And in the middle of that chaos, Arachne fell. Toppled sideways. And her immense body crashed down onto the antenna's structure — which finally, under the weight of a Yokai Queen falling out of control, gave way.
The antenna broke.
But I felt no victory.
"DAUGHTERRRR!"
Before the woman could advance on Arachne again — and she was going to, I could see it in the angle of her body, in the blade already spinning for the next blow — I activated the Vivarium from a distance. The sphere pulsed in my hand and Arachne vanished in a flash of light — the enormous body, mutilated, bleeding, swallowed by the Vivarium in the last instant before the blade descended where her neck had been.
Saved.
But not the others.
To my surprise, the woman didn't go after Arachne. She turned — with the fluidity of something that has no joints, no rigidity, that moves like liquid poured into a mold that changes shape every second — and went for the ten Yokais.
The ten I had summoned. The ones that had been destroying the surrounding structures. The ones that had given me time to flee from the enormous Infernal while killing the small fry that hindered my escape.
In a few seconds, all were dead.
I didn't have time to call them to the Vivarium. Didn't have time to shout. Didn't have time for anything. The woman moved among them like shadow cutting through light — tentacles and blade striking points that shouldn't be possible to strike at that speed. One Yokai fell with its torso open. Another lost every leg on one side in a single arc. Another simply split in half — separated by a cut that started at the head and ended at the last leg without stopping once.
Ten creatures.
Seconds.
My body screamed with pain. My consciousness wanted to go dark — the impact against the wall, the mana nearly at zero, Blood Trail dying from lack of fuel. But I bit my tongue. The taste of blood kept me present. The iron on my palate as an anchor against the dark that pushed at the edges of my vision.
I couldn't die there.
"Damn. What the fuck is happening?"
While I thought that — leaning against the cracked wall, with the mark's armor failing in places, with the glaives trembling on arms that could barely sustain them — the woman appeared in front of me.
Without sound. Without warning. Without transition.
She was simply there.
And now, up close — less than three meters, with the planet's scant light hitting her from the wrong angle — I could finally see with clarity what stood before me.
Three meters of something that wasn't entirely Infernal.
The body was a living contradiction. The upper half — shoulders, arms, torso — had the sharpened elegance of a fencing blade: thin, precise, without a gram of excess. The long arms ended in hands with fingers that seemed to have been stretched beyond the natural, each joint bending at angles hands don't make. The thin-plate armor stuck to the skin like scales glowed with its own pulse — not reflected light, bioluminescence.
The legs were different — more robust, denser, as though all the strength the torso didn't carry had been deposited there. Each step drove into the ground with a stability that defied the swamp — where I sank to the shin, she barely left a mark. And the feet — they weren't feet. They were talons. Three articulated toes that opened and closed around the terrain like roots seeking firm ground.
The tentacles on her back moved independently — each one scanning the air around with the curiosity of serpents testing the environment. The tips glowed. Still wet. With the blood of the dead Yokais.
And the blade in her hand — that katana of flesh and metal — didn't drip. It was clean. As though the blood that should have been there had been absorbed by the weapon, digested, converted into something I didn't want to name.
The blind helm stared at me.
Without visible eyes. Without expression. Only the smooth surface of curved dark metal over a face I couldn't see.
I spat blood.
"Who…" The word came out wet, red, with the weight of a body that was giving up without asking permission. "Who the fuck are you?"
The woman didn't answer.
The violet hair swayed in the breeze only she felt. The tentacles rose behind her like cobras preparing to strike. And the blade — clean, bright, pulsing — spun in the outstretched hand with the slowness of someone who is in no hurry because the prey cannot flee.
And in the distance, growing closer by the second, the sound of heavy steps in the mud. The hammer striking structures. The shield destroying walls.
The damned Infernal was arriving.