Primordial Villain with a Slave Harem

Chapter 1992: No Forgiveness

Back on the sheltered balcony above the spider nest, Kaelira knelt beside Celia, checking that the unconscious girl lay clear of the returning women’s bloodied weapons.

At Quinlan’s call, the Elite Souls dissolved into streams of blue fire and returned to [Soul Reaper]. Black Fang’s dead spiders kept tearing at the swarm as the last soldier vanished from the lower bridge.

The queen strained toward the empty span. Before she could pull her belly free, Quinlan closed a collar of stone over her head and cut her ledge from the wall, keeping the rock clamped around her abdomen attached to it.

He drew the whole block across the cavern and anchored it at the balcony’s far right end, beyond his gathered women and the prisoners pinned beneath Aurora’s barriers.

"N-no..."

Marielle heard the queen’s broken clicking from farther along the balcony.

Under Quinlan’s earth magic, the wall beneath their shelter thickened into a solid buttress. He reinforced the balcony and its rear wall together, leaving them firmly anchored above the cavern floor while Aurora enclosed the whole shelter beneath ice-packed light.

Quinlan flew out over the bridge, rising toward the cavern roof with his family’s shelter behind him.

"There’s no escape."

Below him, the brood surged toward every passage still open.

At Quinlan’s will, the tunnel mouths slammed shut, crushing the spiders wedged between them. Under his earth magic, the plugs compressed until the giants’ hooks scraped pale grooves across them without breaking through.

Frost raced over the sealed entrances as Quinlan froze their surfaces into thick, interlocked plates. Spiders striking the barriers skidded off and fell beneath those still pushing forward, their shrieks filling the cavern.

"Up!" the queen rasped from her prison at the balcony’s far end. "Up!"

Her children climbed over one another toward the upper galleries. From beneath the roof, Quinlan drove compressed wind down over the swarm, flattening the first ranks against the heaps and stripping the walls of everything clinging to them.

The pressure folded their legs under them. Pinned among the dead, they scraped at shells they couldn’t shift while Quinlan gathered water into a swelling ring beneath himself.

Then Quinlan tipped it inward.

"A good meal begins by washing the ingredients."

The torrent struck hard enough to grind the upper heaps into the cavern floor. Water filled the gaps between bodies, climbing over open mouths while the wind held the larger creatures submerged.

*KRRRAAACK!*

Quinlan drove lightning into the flood. White branches leapt through the churning water, lighting the cavern from within as thousands of bodies convulsed together. Steam burst from splitting shells, and the queen’s recall dissolved into a long, broken scream.

At the front of the balcony, Seraphiel stepped closer to Aurora, her cheeks still warm as she watched their husband drive another bolt into the nest.

"He’s enjoying himself," Lucille purred.

Ayame grinned. "Of course he is."

Marielle dragged a breath through her swollen throat. The flashes beyond the shield kept forcing her eyes shut, but she could hear the women enjoying themselves. Someone outside this hole had to know what they were doing to her.

"The Guild..."

She coughed against the floor, blood stringing between her mouth and the paving. Their contract existed. People knew they’d come here, and Black would have to walk back into a town full of adventurers. He couldn’t keep laughing when someone powerful enough to stop him started asking questions.

"They’ll find out!"

Beyond the shield, red light began climbing the walls of the flooded nest.

"After a thorough cleansing, we bring the pot to a boil." Quinlan drew magma up through the mountain around the cavern, raising thick columns from openings high in its walls.

"Our contract... They know... where we went!"

The columns bent inward at his will.

Magma poured into the cavern in great, rolling sheets. The first impact swallowed the remaining cries beneath an eruption of steam. Quinlan drove the scalding cloud upward with his wind, boring a narrow vent through the rock above the nest to release it.

Where the water had boiled away, glowing rock filled the hollow. The fighting terrace broke loose and vanished into it, followed by the bridge and the ledges that had held the feeding cocoons.

"They’ll... investigate..."

The words scraped out of Marielle’s throat as a crack tore across the wall beyond the nest. She lost the strength to hold her head up, catching glimpses through her lashes of red light spreading into the adjoining feeding rooms.

He was still pouring magma into it.

Tons of it.

Through the widening fracture, molten rock flooded the rooms they’d emptied. Their floors buckled, spilling ancient masonry into the nest while the balcony shuddered against its reinforced wall.

Kitsara glanced down at Marielle, her smile one of utmost cruelty.

"Investigate what? Using what? The evidence my husband is actively melting?"

Marielle tried to answer the foxkin. Her mouth worked soundlessly as a section of the feeding-room wall broke away beyond Quinlan, its familiar square-cut doorway glowing red before it fell into the flood.

Quinlan laughed above the ruin and forced more molten rock through its foundations.

*KRRRROOOOOM!*

The wall beyond the nest caved in. Quinlan’s wind hurled the descending masses away from the shelter and into the molten depths, where their impacts drove burning waves against the far side.

Before the collapse could reach the upper galleries, Quinlan drove pillars of compressed earth through the wreckage to support the mountain above. Between them, the feeding rooms crumpled into the nest, their contents disappearing beneath the molten flood. His sealed tunnel mouths held it back from the deeper passages.

Aurora braced her staff as the blast struck their shield. Dust swallowed the view, pressing against its bright surface while the roar made Marielle’s teeth rattle.

"And now, the presentation."

Quinlan swept the dust away with his wind, revealing the devastation below him. The bridge ended in a glowing stump beneath the balcony. Farther down, broken shells surfaced in the magma between blocks of fallen masonry, split bellies spilling their cooked contents before the current dragged them under.

The women watched him descend through the red glare. Beyond his shoulders, molten rock poured through the remains of the feeding rooms into the pit, where the exposed egg sacs blackened and burst.

At the far end of the balcony, the queen worked her broken mouth around a weak call.

*Krr... iiiieee...*

Across the ruined nest, nothing answered.

Aurora parted the shield for Quinlan to land at the balcony’s front edge. He turned toward his women with the molten pit open behind him, spreading his empty hands as another section of ruined gallery slid into the burning depths.

"Bon appétit."

"You’re so silly!" Lucille laughed, still holding Blossom against her side.

Beside Aurora, Seraphiel watched her husband with a flushed, adoring smile while he stepped past them toward the rear wall. "Silly, perhaps... But also hot..."

Marielle tried to drag herself away. The barrier pinning her down held her arms against the paving, and the effort brought a wet cough that shook her injured head.

"Don’t..."

Andre strained to reach his wife with the hand that had held his sword. The barrier over his back kept him pinned beside her, his burned fingers scraping across the paving as Quinlan approached.

"Let us go. We won’t say anything."

"I know. Because I’ll make sure you don’t."

Quinlan crouched in front of Marielle and caught her chin, lifting her face toward the cruel red mouth Synchra had shaped for him. One eye struggled to focus on his helmet; the other had swollen almost shut. Dried blood pulled at her split lip as she tried to speak.

Quinlan’s fingers tightened.

"Please," she managed.

Aurora released Marielle’s barrier as the Primordial Villain hauled her up by her clothes and held her against the wall.

"You put your staff against my wife?."

Marielle shook her head, but even that small movement sent pain through her skull. Her good hand caught his wrist, clinging to it as her legs failed to support her.

He looked at the fingers gripping him and remembered her staff pressing against Seraphiel’s chest.

"There’s no forgiving that."

*KRRUNCH!*

Quinlan drove his fist into her face, putting his full strength behind the blow.

Her jaw broke against his gauntlet. Teeth burst through her torn lip as the blow slammed her head back into the wall. The back of her skull fractured against the stone, splitting the block behind it and splashing blood across his arm.

"MARIELLE!"