Shaula waits behind the curtains.

Currently, she is in a state of odd calmness. She is far past the anger that she was bearing within herself. She had heard the voice of the woman in front of the curtain.

Shaula has been training for weeks in order to prepare for this festival. She has developed her abilities, her physical and sensory prowess as well as her strategies for dealing with events like this. Both she and Ajax had formulated countermeasures for the worst situations they could possibly face tonight.

Hostage situations.

It is absolutely not an option to allow anyone to die because they were captured by the enemy and used as a shield. Furthermore, if either Ajax or Shaula acted rashly with the people they were trying to protect, they would cause damage to them. Their strength is monstrous. They had to be careful about handling fragile flesh bodies.

Ajax and Shaula are powerful beyond their wildest dreams but still vulnerable as individuals because of how weak the people they were trying to protect were. People who aren’t demigods like them… but they haven’t become so conceited as to believe that this God-given power placed them above mortals.

Luckily, Shaula has a plan for saving this mortal. Her plan is to use the crowd as a distraction.

Shaula amplifies her hearing to a level that is sensitive enough to pick up how far away individual congregations of heartbeats are from her. Due to the elevation of her senses, her spatial awareness is enhanced even further. She has to be extremely careful here.

If she doesn’t calculate this correctly, the woman might be caught up in her actions. She has to know the distance between the pregnant woman and the crowd on the other side of the curtains.

Ok… Ok, let’s do this then.

Shaula creates something in the palm of her hands. It’s a spinning marble of flame. Shaula has tried in the past to throw fire. However, fire is not so easily propelled forward.

From what she has seen as demonstrated by those in her home who can wield magic, such as Tori Blentare, the reason why magical fire balls actually have the ability to strike their target is because of mana’s intricacies.

Mana shapes the conjured fire into shapes such as balls or arrows, holds those masses of fire in place so that they don’t dissipate and then propel them forward as well. Mana is a remarkable thing indeed. Pure fire without its ignition chemical cannot be thrown so easily. When pure fire is thrown, it hardly flies any distance before losing its shape and dying out.

Shaula has no ability to use fire magic either, neither Angelidis nor Tori could even sense any mana within Shaula. Shaula doesn’t have the ability to sense mana either. As a result, her long range fire capabilities were dead on arrival.

However, Shaula had an idea. She decided to experiment with her abilities. What would happen if she were to combine her fire and her lightning? She may not have magic, she may not have mana, but she did have something else. Her own divine power. It was something that came to her naturally. The ability to keep her lightning semi stable.

The ability to wield fire and lightning weren’t the only things to come to her. She also received knowledge on how to wield it. It was when she decided to combine her heat and lightning that she “remembered” how to do something.

Shaula creates a ball of fire. She moves an electric current through the ball. Soon, a centre of plasma forms surrounded by ordinary fire on all sides. The shell of flame behaves like a container holding the plasma from within from immediately exploding.

She pushes more and more electric current through the plasma within the centre of the ball of fire. The heat of the fire layer surrounding the plasma increases as well. The plasma gets denser and denser as if being held together by the electric current. Shaula swirls the electric current within the plasma faster and faster.

It’s ready…

Shaula holds in her hands a heavy ball of energy. She makes sure that it doesn’t activate just yet. First, she calculates the trajectory by which she can throw it. Then, she listens in to the speech.

“...yet to repent. We must offer our help such that she can become a purified servant of our Lord. We are experiencing some difficulties concerning the rest of our--”

Shaula sees that the man on the stage, Siristine, has realized that the other beastkin sacrifices have been delayed. She smiles. However, she also understands that the longer she waits, the more Siristine will halt the festivities and bring more guards into the area. She has to act right now!

Shaula launches her attack. The ball of fire surrounding the plasma dissipates in midair and the plasma starts behaving violently. It spins faster and faster while in mid air as it flies into the crowd on the other side of the curtains. Within half a second of being thrown, it reaches the audience on the left side of the stage near the Miella and the carriages.

It hits an individual’s face rather than the ground itself. The individual’s head melts and evaporates within the next half second.

However, that wasn’t the intended effect of the attack.

As soon as the mass of plasma touches a solid surface, its electric cohesion nullifies completely and the plasma returns to gas. The electric charge now has nowhere to go, except everywhere.

Krackow!

From a point of nothing, bolts of lightning fly out to their immediate surroundings. Small strands of lightning. Lightning not powerful enough to set a tree on fire but powerful enough to stop the human heart of any individual human in its vicinity.

As soon as the tendrils of lightning expand outwards, three people in its wake undergo cardiac arrest and another forty fall to the ground unconscious.

The two men holding the pregnant woman immediately rush towards Siristine to protect him. This is what Shaula was waiting for. Of course, it was possible that they would have simply held onto the pregnant woman, but in a crisis, they have no desire or need to hold her, even as a hostage. Especially if their enemy doesn’t care about her life.

At this moment, the two of the white warriors only know that their leader is in potential danger. All the two of them saw was something fall from the sky at a speed almost as fast as sound.

Everyone else in the audience immediately spring to move away from the left side of the stage. They start running towards the back of the festival and into the forest. Some of the Miella have also been hit but their resistance to electric currents and their relative size only results in some agitation.

Shaula takes this opportunity to enter through the curtains and grab the pregnant woman.

Without caring about what they do at this point, she holds the pregnant woman in her arms and sprints towards the trees behind the festival stage. No one follows her.

~

Darkness. She’s moving. She’s moving. She’s moving quickly! She realizes that… she’s being carried by someone.

She had all but accepted the fate of tonight’s festival. She did not expect anything like… like this to…

She weakly holds her abdomen so as to protect the baby. At a speed like this, if she fell from the person carrying her, she might… No, nothing like that would happen, nothing like that would ever happen to her child, she would never let it.

“W-Who are… Can you tell me who you are? Did you… did you try to save me?”

“Try? No, I actually did save you. Hold on.”

The woman feels the blindfold over her eyes being pulled off. Her eyes face the wind head on. It’s dark. She cannot see who it is carrying her. From the feel of the person’s soft bountiful breasts, it’s a woman. A woman was able to carry her away from that place. A woman was able to pick her up and escape. This same woman is currently running at an inhuman speed.

She must be… a magic user.

Body strengthening magic could pull this off; at least, Tahira believes it can, she’s never seen it push a person to a running speed like this though.

The pregnant woman lets go of her abdomen and places her arms around the woman’s neck. She hugs her. She starts softly crying. She truly thought that… that this was the end. Her punishment was the forced abortion of her child. After this, she would have been taken to a church away from the city of Linis and forced to spend the rest of her life there.

She would have been kept celibate. She was unsure if the ceremony involved her forced sterilization too, she wasn’t given all the details beforehand. But now…

“Thank you… Thank you so much… Thank you…”

“...”

The person carrying her doesn’t respond. She slows down her movements. She had been running through the forest for about a minute and a half. They were quite far away from the festival already.

“What’s your name?”

“I-It’s Tahira.”

“My name’s Shaula. Tahira… Why are… Why is your body so…”

“I-I was given some kind of drug. It took a lot to even stand but… they threatened to--”

“It’s alright, you don’t have to say anymore… But… I heard your prayer.”

“...My prayer?”

“The prayer you made just a minute ago… I heard it and…”

The woman Tahira feels Shaula stop. Shaula places Tahira down on the ground gently. Tahira is leaning against a Spectabile tree. The white leaves reflect the starlight above and even allow her to see her surroundings. She can barely see Shaula’s face. She’s obviously beautiful, but the weak starlight makes her seem more ominous.

“I heard your prayer, Tahira, and… I’m going to help you.”

“...Wait, are you… you’re going to leave me here?”

“I’ve brought you to a location where there are no pack animals anywhere nearby; you should be safe for some time. After I deal with the people there, I will come back for you. Don’t worry, I remember your scent.”

Tahira feels fear at the situation. She’s in an extremely weak state right now. She cannot defend herself at all. However… she realizes that she has been given a second chance. Her fear right now, in this moment… would be disrespectful to her saviour. Tahira is not her main objective after all. The members of the festival are. She should be grateful for…

“...Wait, you’re… what do you mean you’re going to help me? You’re going back there to…”

“I’m going to return to that festival in order to kill everyone there who took part in your degradation and torture.”

“...What!? No!! You can’t deal with them! Even the men who were holding me are extremely strong! Y-You can’t face them if you’re not born noble! Y-You might have some training but they’ve been trained by heroes!”

Tahira can make a guess at the background of a person like this. She doesn’t believe that a noble would sacrifice their place in society to save her. Not all nobles participate in festivals such as these but the ones that don’t aren’t much better. They’re dilettantes or hedonists and simply not religious enough to partake in gatherings such as Sapiora’s Bloodshed.

This woman, Shaula, wouldn’t be a noble. But that also means that she’s not as strong as a full-blooded noble; such is Tahira’s concern.

“Are you a noble, Shaula?”

“No, I’m not. But don’t worry. My strength does comes from God and right now, I’m feeling his blessings quite powerfully.”

“...Please don’t… What if… What if you die and… what if I’m left out here? I-I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be ungrate--”

“Don’t worry, that won’t happen. I promise to come back for you. I swear on my life.”

Tahira holds her arms with her hands. She feels a shiver up her spine. It doesn’t… it doesn’t feel real. The circumstances of it all. To be saved from that place so easily. She’s now nowhere near the festival, and her child is safe and sound. Shaula was incredibly careful with her.

“Haha… Have… Have I already died?”

“No, you are very much alive. Cherish your life.”

“Can I… Can I see your face more clearly, Shaula?”

“...”

“Please…”

Shaula sighs. Tahira notices Shaula lift her hand up slowly. Within moments, a small fire ignites within the palm of her hand. It grows brighter and brighter until Tahira can finally see.

She truly is a beautiful woman. A face that… a face that displays impatience and anger right now. Shaula wants to return there. Tahira notices a new expression that she hasn’t seen before. She can’t quite tell but it is bloodlust. Shaula’s itching to do her work.

Tahira does want to ask one thing however… something that she’s not sure of but wants to ask anyways…

“Shaula. Can… Can you spare my--”

“No. None of them will be spared.”

“...I understand.”

With that last moment, the fire goes out and Tahira sits there in darkness.