As the armored and unmounted humans approached with blades drawn and shields ready, Lyrhea sighed deeply and then echoed the urging of THE SENATE by simply saying two words.

“Do it.”

At this, the mounted knight cocked his head to the side.

“You wish for death that badly, aberration? Good.”

“Not what I was referring to.” replied the first of the snake people. A smile crossed her face and she gave a condescending look as she too tilted her head and gave a look fit for a Karen. “You really should have invested more into scouting, you know.”

As soon as she said this, an arrow flew from where the archers had been stationed, though it was aimed not at Lyrhea or her people or even the cowering cultist, but at a human knight. It struck him in an exposed section where his brigantine armor gave way to a small patch where neither the armor nor the padded cloth beneath it had any coverage.

“Gods damn it!” that particular knight spat, shooting a passing glance over his shoulder to flip the bird at the idiots who couldn’t watch their friendly fire. As soon as he did this, though, a dozen and a half more arrows came down, striking either the padded cloth or exposed flesh of any they could reach.

“How?!” the mounted knight wheeled around his steep and got a face full of arrows as a prize for realizing that there were more Lyrheans that he hadn’t seen or noticed. And, once that cat was out of the bag, the originally collected human knights and warriors became noticeably unnerved.

“Counter your Trap Card with my own; Lyrhean Counter-Ambush, ACTIVATE!” Yelled the leader of the snake-people as around ten Lesser Lyrheans burst from the same place that the human ambush had come from as more arrows rained down. Simultaneously, a few tree-branch-sized icicles flew from another vantage point, impaling more humans and sending shards of ice in all directions.

The mounted knight, for their part, had tanked the attack to their face rather well, and not one of the arrows had actually penetrated their armor, but the collective force had stunned them for long enough to allow mass confusion to seep into the ranks of the ambushers. As more of them fell, either by an envenomed arrow or envenomed blade, or even large pieces of magical ice, the rest decided that it wasn’t worth it and chose to run.

…

“Urgh..” groaned the formerly mounted knight. They looked around and, to their horror, realized they were tied up and, to make matters even worse, had their helmet removed.

“Damn monsters! The formerly mounter knight yelled. “Just kill me already and be done with it!”

Lyrhea didn’t even bother to look back as she dragged the armored woman (yes, woman) through the interior of a ruined diner, obviously straining both her muscles and the rope that bound the knight. As the knight demanded over and over to be killed rather than suffer any more humiliation and dishonor, Lyrhea finally stopped moving and spoke a single word in a completely uninterested tone.

“No.”

And with that, she resumed dragging the knight around. The grinding of metal on the ground attracted the attention of that which Lyrhea sought, and as soon as she noticed that the entity she was hoping to find had found her and her prisoner, Lyrhea dropped the rope and walked off a fair bit away, sitting down and crossing her arms as though she was waiting for something.

“Open wide,” Lyrhea said in a still disinterested voice as a shadow looming over the female knight caused her to look from Lyrhea to the snake that was looking at her hungrily. “and say ‘Ahh’.”

…

“Where did the Chosen of the Serpent take that foul and worthless infidel, if I may ask?” the cult leader asked in a voice mixing trepidation and rampant xenophobia.

“Watch your words, mammal.” spat Luxnilae as she slapped the teen across the face. “You will not question the actions of our Mother. Know your place.”

“Yes, because while Mother seems to still have some small fondness for your kind,” Frosrahsa added, delivering a swift kick to the teen’s shin, “we don’t. Humanity has done nothing but endlessly try and fuck our kind over, to say nothing of what it did to us before we ascended.”

“I wi-” the teen didn’t get another word out before he was slapped again.

“Did we tell you to speak, monkey?! It is Your fault that our Mother was put at risk by that ambush! What would you have done if she had suffered even a single scratch?!”

“Please, I didn’t know they were the-!”

“SHUT UP MAMMAL!” interjected a Lesser Lyrhean as he added a shove to the list of injuries the cult leader had suffered. “Show us where the rest of you inferior kind is before we make sure you never have the chance to harm our Great Mother again!”

The teenage cult leader nodded quickly and walked towards a slab of concrete that rested at an odd angle over a hollow where a collapsed building had essentially been embedded a third of the way out of the pavement.

“My fellow faithful.” the teen said in a tone that was surprisingly reverent for one who just got slapped around by his superiors. “Come out and be saved, for the masters of the New World are here to take you.”

From inside the semi-subterranean building, the sounds of movement could be heard. After a few more seconds, a head popped out from behind the slab of concrete, followed by a body, followed by many more as the whole cult, or those that were still alive, came out in a near conga line.

Each and every one of them had their eyes seemingly glaze over with the madness of blind devotion and religious fervor as they spotted the Lyrheans, be they True or Lesser, and after they had all emerged, they got on their knees and began to pray.

The Lyrheans seemed pretty pleased with this, and they likely would have gloated aloud and made a bigger show of things had their buzzkill of a Great Mother not returned leading a ‘new’ face.

“What fuckery is this?”