Chapter 44: Winners
The battle lasted twelve solid hours.
White Tower deployed everything it had. Cannon fire rained from the skies in long burning arcs. High level spells lit the horizon in colors that didn’t belong to any natural sky. Summons clashed against beasts in numbers too large to track from the ground.
Despite all of it, Arian could not fully defeat the six eared maqaue, Davos.
She forced him to retreat instead. His horde scattered in all four directions, beasts breaking off from the central mass and vanishing into the wilderness beyond the turtle’s reach.
Before he left, Davos turned back once.
His curse carried across the battlefield, loud enough that every soldier still standing could hear it.
He swore he would take Ethan and Hela again. He promised unspeakable things would follow.
"That bastard."
Arian’s voice was flat, cold in a way that didn’t match the heat still rolling off the battlefield.
"I’ll make sure he regrets ever meeting me. I’ll make sure he regrets laying a hand on my daughter."
She landed on the turtle’s back, her frame sturdy despite twelve hours of continuous combat, and began walking forward without slowing.
The demi humans in the camp had been routed as well. Many had died in the fighting, bodies left scattered across the compound’s ruined grounds. The survivors held their ground only until Davos broke off. The moment he was gone, they followed, abandoning the camp entirely rather than face the White Tower alone.
"Here’s the report."
As Arian reached the complex, a young man in white robes approached. His head was shaved clean, his expression composed in the way of someone trained to deliver information without editorializing. He held out a single sheet of paper.
She took it without breaking stride.
It was only after Ethan and Hela made their way back into the compound that Ethan understood the truth about Psycho Fin.
He wasn’t a prisoner who had simply seen an opportunity in a thrown match.
He was White Tower.
The fight against Hela had been planned from the start, a piece moved into position long before either of them stepped into the ring.
’So that’s what that was.’
Ethan filed the thought away without dwelling on it further.
"Good job."
Arian’s voice carried satisfaction as she climbed the steps leading into what remained of the compound, her eyes still moving across the report in her hands.
The numbers were better than expected.
Not only had the demi humans retreated, they had abandoned a significant cache of supplies in the process. Carriages stood intact near the rear of the camp. Rationed meals, sealed and stacked, filled crates along the compound wall. Magical resources, the kind that would have taken months to source through normal channels, sat untouched where the horde had left them.
All of it more than enough to carry the rescued captives back to human controlled territory.
But none of it mattered as much as the turtle itself.
This giant god beast.
It sat at tier 5, the only creature of that rank Davos had commanded within the entire horde. Without it, rebuilding what he had lost here would take years, if it was possible at all.
For the maqaue clan, this wasn’t simply a defeat.
It was a wound that wouldn’t close quickly.
"Hm?"
Arian’s attention shifted as she reached the top of the steps. Two figures stood off to the side, separate from the activity moving through the ruined compound around them.
One wore an expression that gave away nothing, as if everything that had happened tonight was simply the natural order of things settling into place.
The other smiled too wide, the kind of smile that sat just past comfortable, edges pulled tight at the corners.
"I thought I told you to stay away from my daughter."
Pressure exploded outward from Arian without warning, a mixed force that filled the space around her instantly, thick enough to press against skin like a physical weight.
For a moment, Ethan felt like he was staring directly into death.
Its gaze was unfeeling. It didn’t blink. It simply existed, fixed on him, patient in a way that suggested it had all the time in the world to wait for him to break.
Then Hela stepped forward.
She placed herself between Ethan and her mother and absorbed the pressure without effort, as though it carried no more weight than a passing breeze.
"Stop worrying."
Her voice was cold, but underneath the coldness sat something deliberate, something she wanted her mother to feel as clearly as the words themselves.
"It already happened. I’m a woman now."
Arian went still.
She exhaled slowly, the pressure receding from the air around them as quickly as it had arrived, and her gaze settled on her daughter with a weight that had nothing to do with cultivation rank.
(What was she supposed to do. Punish her for this.)
The thought moved through her mind without resolution.
Hela had been captured because her mother lost a fight she shouldn’t have lost. She had been placed in a cage like livestock, paraded in front of Davos’s horde, ridiculed in ways that would have broken someone with less resolve.
If Hela hadn’t found a way to work with this boy, if the two of them hadn’t managed to send the signal that brought White Tower down on this place, she might still be sitting in chains right now.
Arian had no anger left for that math.
"Whatever."
She turned away from both of them, the report still folded in one hand, her voice already shifting back into command.
"Set our course to Windgrave Fortress. We need to get back to human territory fast."
She waved a hand toward the front of the formation.
The giant turtle responded immediately, its enormous frame shuddering as it began to turn, a full rotation that carried the entire compound atop its back toward the direction of human territory.
—groan
The sound rolled up through the stone beneath their feet, slow and ancient, the weight of something massive finally moving after twelve hours of standing its ground.
Behind them, the ruined battlefield fell away into the distance, smoke still rising from the places where the fighting had been heaviest.
Ahead, only the long road home remained.
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