Primordial Villain with a Slave Harem

Chapter 1709 No Mercy

Without a jaw or a voice or any way to shape the words her lungs were trying to form, the appeal lived entirely in her eyes, and Aelindra put everything she had left into them.

Every shred of regret, every fraction of the sister she used to be, every desperate plea she couldn't speak pouring through two wide, wet eyes that begged for something she had no right to ask for.

She was begging.

A member of the Elvardian Council, a Level 74 blade dancer who had commanded armies and sat in judgment over nations, was on her knees in a blood-soaked cell begging her chained sister for mercy with nothing but her gaze, because she had destroyed every other way to reach her.

Myrasyn watched every second of it, and her face changed for a second time.

The composure cracked. Beneath the stern queen and the horrified sister sat a woman who had spent every hour in this dungeon knowing exactly which member of her family had put her here, and the hatred that crawled to the surface was old and deep.

Myrasyn raised her middle finger at Aelindra.

"You will not find pity in me, sister." Her voice was flat and carried none of the melody it had held moments ago. "Not after you threw four thousand years of trust into the dirt. Not after what you let them do to me in these chains. No, what YOU did to me in these chains."

Her ears pressed flat against her skull and the chains rattled as she straightened against the wall.

"Now stop your pitiful groveling and accept the fate you've earned yourself with your head held high, Aelindra Ael'vyrn. That's the only thing you can and will do now."

Quinlan turned from the sisters and started toward the wall where Black Fang hung.

[Eternal Hunger] surged with every step he closed, pulling through channels that had spent days eating her alive, and the eyes that found his from the chains were burning with something the hunger couldn't consume and the chains couldn't hold.

...

Undead by the thousands, dwarven blacksteel columns in lockstep, foxkin rangers threading between gaps, samurai formations, elven loyalist mages.

The numbers pouring through Kaede's rift had passed the point where counting served any tactical purpose, and the plains below the fortress had become a sea of hostiles that Quinlan's coalition was drowning in.

Lilith stood where she'd been standing since the fighting started, thirty meters behind the killing with her weapon sheathed, Bronnya at her left shoulder and Jallen at her right.

Void was ahead.

Both hands raised, casting spell after spell, to keep the people around her breathing. She was standing tall despite the strain she was putting her body through.

The laziest woman in the Scarlet Lilies had committed within minutes of the first clash, and every passing minute was a judgment on everyone still standing behind her.

Scar held the eastern flank, blue-skinned and spine-straight, directing soul soldiers with the quiet authority of a born general, all the while partaking in the brutal killing herself.

Lilith's former rogue. Four centuries at her side, and now the woman she'd lost commanded armies for the man who took her.

West, Morgana's seven elements lit the sky in salvos that cratered the undead horde, the enslaved queen burning harder in chains than she'd ever burned from a throne.

Alexios was far ahead, fighting an uphill battle against the Fujimori leadership, golden longsword buying ground despite the odds.

Near the eastern line, Felicity's purple hair caught spell-light between clashing bodies.

Short sword in both hands, null field rippling around her tiny frame, the grip white-knuckled and the stance still slightly wrong despite all her training.

A fourteen-year-old girl holding ground in a war that grown warriors were breaking under, bleeding for a side her aunt had decided was evil.

Quinlan's women were outnumbered and the gap widened. Scar's souls fought brilliantly but the undead never thinned, because Kaede's rift never stopped vomiting fresh horrors onto a battlefield already choking on them.

And Lilith stood thirty meters back, indecisive, while her niece held a sword she was barely old enough to carry.

She had decided Quinlan Elysiar was evil.

That was the root, not adventurer caution, not strategic patience. Prejudice.

She'd looked at a man who killed her best friend and sealed the verdict, then spent months refusing to see what everyone she loved had already seen as they crossed the line without her, one by one.

'What a pathetic whiny loser I became.'

The thought burned the fog out of her skull, once and for all.

"Lilies." Her voice came out hard and clear. "Anyone against joining Quinlan Elysiar's side, now is the time to speak up."

Bronnya and Jallen turned to her with identical shock on their faces, because they'd spent hours bracing for the opposite question.

Then Bronnya's shock cracked into a grin wide enough to split stone, and a gauntleted palm slammed into Lilith's back hard enough to stagger her forward a full step. "And they say I'm the slow one! Compared to you, I might as well be a renowned scholar of the highest intellect!"

Jallen showed teeth. "Don't badmouth our orc captain. Have some tact."

The two of them stepped forward before Lilith could, already cutting toward the Fujimori front where Alexios fought alone, and Lilith had to break into a sprint to catch up to her own Lilies.

They swept past Void on the way. Bronnya hooked the mage off her feet and onto her back without breaking stride.

"Sorry, you'll have to bear with 'sweat, mead, and metal' instead of 'night frost and lavender!'" she grinned, quoting Void's choice of words to describe the comparison between Bronnya's and Scar's smell.

Void settled against the armor with her eyes half-closed like she'd been expecting the pickup for hours. "I'll try to bear with it... It'll be very hard..."

As Bronnya's hands made two tight fists due to the sheer audacity her ears were picking up on, Void began murmuring with overwhelming dissatisfaction.

"I knew you were slow, orc woman, but to think this slow?"

A vein throbbed on Lilith's forehead. "Yeah, yeah, this dumb brute orc bitch finally got the message, now stop whining and let's kill these slit-eyed cunts and the rest of their cronies!"

The weight she'd been carrying since Scar's death lifted off her chest in a single breath, and what rushed in to fill the space was something she'd forgotten the shape of entirely.

And just like that, two of the most terrifying human women alive, one chained to a dungeon wall and one charging into a war, felt their hearts come undone at the same time.

Lilith's battle grin split her face and her heart was singing, and when her overhead swing came down on Chizuru's blade it carried everything she'd been holding back for months.

The elder barely parried.

Her guard buckled, both feet carved furrows through the scorched earth, and the eyes that found Lilith behind the blade went still.

Lilith was grinning. Wide, free, and completely unhinged, and whatever Chizuru read in that expression made her own darken further.

"Traitors, are you, Lilies?" Chizuru's voice was flat.

Lilith's grin widened until it stopped being sane. "For the first time in its history, the Scarlet Lilies terminate a contract they accepted!"

She pressed the blade harder against Chizuru's guard.

"Reason given: fuck you!"