First Demonic Dragon

Fiona couldn't believe the predicament she had found her unit in.

Somehow, she had fallen for the oldest trick in the book and gotten lured into a terrible position.

They weren't prepared for this sort of battle today.

When they got the alert of extreme amounts of abyssal energy coming from this planet, they were expecting to find another Nyasir at the worst.

But things were different now that they knew they were facing one of Abaddon's ten brides. And the one who controlled blood no less.

From the beginning their methods of dispatching her were cut in half.

As competent as they might be in their training, fighting in close quarters with a war deity was about as big of a 'no-no' as one could get.

This meant that they were forced to deal with her from long ranged distances, which could be time consuming depending on the experience level of the opponent.

Seras would have them out here for years with no progress made whatsoever.

That was if she did not crush them all underneath this giant unholy mass of blood first.

'Corporal, can you shoot it down?' The human asked telepathically.

{Negative, ma'am. The weapon isn't done charging.}

Fiona was really cursing her bad luck now. There was only one thing left to do now.

"Grab our injured and get clear!!" She ordered.

"Nope~"

Seras snapped her fingers and the massive ball of blood in the sky lurched forward.

Thick tendrils sprouted from the biomass one after the other with their sole intention being to knock the hunters from the air.

A few humans wisely opened fire on the tendrils before they came too close.

But the blood Seras called wasn't only sentient because it was connected to the moon-sized mass.

Even when the entire pieces were detatched, they still shot through the air with a mind of their own.

The hunters erected personalized body shields to keep themselves safe from physical harm, but their rides were not protected.

Seras controlled the boood to tear apart the silver gliders until they were scrap metal.

With the tools keeping them afloat no longer functioning, the rest of the humans fell to the ground awkwardly.

Upon landing, another blood tendril would come and exert tremendous pressure on their bodies to keep them down for good.

She was forcing them to prostrate.

Even Fiona did not escape from Seras' suppression, though she did take significantly longer to catch than the others.

But in the end, she hit the ground alongside them all the same.

"Ahh… This is better." Seras' smile was filled with ecstasy. "Is this not more befitting of your station than that haughty act you were putting on before?"

She approached Fiona mockingly and squatted down so that they were closer to eye level.

"You were so confident when you crassly spoke about my marriage just a moment ago. Where has your courage gone, I wonder?"

Fiona gritted her teeth.

'Admirallll!!!!'

{95%, Brigade Leader. Two minutes to full charge.}

Fiona was progressively becoming more and more annoyed by the second.

At this rate, her only suitable way to salvage the mission would be to request an extraction.

But doing so would not only sting her pride, it would also validate the Director's decision to not choose her as his heir and adopt her.

She couldn't leave here without accomplishing some kind of victory, even if it was a small one.

'Think, think..!' She urged herself.

Seras found Fiona's silence to be slightly unbecoming.

She grabbed the young woman roughly by the jaw; nearly reaching the point of crushing her face.

"It's not very nice of you to ignore me like this. I don't much care for people who aren't nice."

Fiona smirked as if Seras wasn't literally holding her life in her hands.

"So sorry for that, your majesty."

While it may have been unwise, the face that Seras made when she heard her venomous tone was more than worth the trouble.

Or atleast that was what she thought.

"We said that we would spare you if we ever came across one of you, but… exceptions can always be made."

Seras grabbed the young woman by the throat and started to tear out her trachea.

But just before she could utilize her violent talents, a hand suddenly grabbed her shoulder from behind- stopping her cold.

Even if she weren't intimately familiar with it's feeling, she would still recognize the very subtle and soft vanilla scent that was carried into her nose by the breeze.

She almost didn't want to turn around.

Her mind all but fell into a panic as she slowly turned around to face the consequences of her decision.

Her hurt was clearly visible on her face.

Like Seras, she looked almost the same as when she became Nevi'im without her full range of powers at her back.

Her skin was jade like and glossy like white marble underneath the moonlight.

She still had the same long, orange hair running down her back all the way to the floor.

Her body was wrapped in the same dark black dress with flowing sleeves and a long trail.

Etchings of green colored symbols adorned the cuffs of her dress and her back.

Though her emerald eyes were always bright and thoughtful, for now they betrayed only pain.

"L-Lilli.."

Lillian walked past a stunned Seras and directed her attention toward the captured humans instead.

With a wave of her hand, she made the restraints holding them evaporate as if they were all just a simple mirage.

Her voice was as gentle and quiet as death itself, and she only seemed to have one thing to say.

"Go. You all should tend to your wounded."

Unsurprisingly the humans seemed to have some kind of difficulty understanding this.

But Lillian remained firm in her decision.

"You need not look a gift horse in the mouth. Simply leave and remember this moment when it is time for our two sides to engage in a sit down. That is all I ask."

Fiona and everyone in her squad only seemed to get more confused.

And after a long silence, the Branch Leader had but one thing to say in response.

"FIRE!!"

A titanically large beam of pure energy suddenly struck Seras' blood moon.

It not only obliterated the large mass into nothing, but it continued it's descent and would quickly reach them on the ground.

"Bitch!!"

Seras summoned a projectile of blood in an instant and impaled the young woman right between the eyes; killing her instantly.

Behind her, Lillian was much less emotional.

She lifted one arm above her head and rolled down her sleeve.

Her pale, slender arm mutated horrifically into a ginormous amalgamation of bright orange tentacles.

She used her new extraordinary limbs to reach up and block the giant projectile before it could hit the ground.

As soon as it touched her skin, Lillian let out a heartwrenching scream of agony that rattled Seras to her very core.

"Lilli!!"

"I'm… fine." She gasped.

True to her claim, her arm began to adapt to the attack against it.

A thick mucus was secreted from her muscles, large gem-stone like protrusions sprouted along her tentacles, and her arm itself nearly doubled in size.

Soon, it felt no different than if she had let cool water run through her fingertips.

With one minor difference.

The gems along her tentacle weren't just for show.

They were absorbing the energy transmitted by the blast and charging up like a regular battery.

When the beam of energy finally ceased to fall from the sky, Lillian sent her own attack right back; with double the ferocity.

Countless red beams shot out from the suckers on her tentacles; firing into the air, through the clouds, and well into the atmosphere.

Her vision picked up the sight of a giant explosion occurring beyond the planet's atmosphere, and she sighed in satisfaction.

"Haaa…. Better."

The humans looked horrified.

That cannon was one of their forces greatest weapons.

It's energy blasts were designed never to hurt humans or spirits, but it was strong enough to vaporize even a Nyasir and send them packing back to Tehom.

And Lillian had simply palmed the blast as if it was her husband's nuts and tossed it right back.

Un-fucking-believable.

"Well that wasn't very nice now, was it?"

Lillian returned her limb to normal and wasted no time collecting the soul of the recently departed Fiona.

"Since you all were so rude, I think I'll be keeping this one. If your Director wants her resurrected, then he'll have to agree to a little sit down with us. I think that sounds fair, don't you?"

No one was sure if the humans nodded out of fear or a sense of compliance.

It could have easily been both.

-

Not long after they were gone, Lillian and Seras still had yet to say a single word to each other.

Seras was trying to find the right words to say that would help her apologize.

Lillian was waiting to hear what she would come up with to justify her leaving.

"…H-How did you get here so fast..?"

Lillian scoffed. Out of everything she wanted to hear Seras say, that wasn't it.

"I have never not been watching you, Seras. But you seem to have forgotten I have that privilege… in addition to a great many other things." Lillian replied pointedly.

Seras is a very violent goddess of war. She leaves a loss of life in her wake wherever she goes.

Lillian as a goddess of death can observe it all without tipping off her sister's senses.

But now that Seras had remembered that fact, her heart was in the pit of her stomach.

"H-How much did you see..?"

It should be known that Lillian was quite a patient woman.

I mean you'd have to be to raise children like Straga and Mira.

However, faced with Seras' continued deflections of the issue at hand, her patience quickly ran out and the look she was giving her became unkind.

"…Are you going to slap me?"

"I'm thinking about it." Lillian admitted.

Seras was becoming increasingly aware of the mountain-like circumstances she had in front of her.

And she didn't feel like she was really up to the challenge.

'…I need that old man.'