Ch 33 – The Princess strikes back. Well, not so much a strike as a… l-look, just read the chapter, okay!?

“Enough of this,” Melkar exclaimed, as he swept up out of his throne-like chair. His hand shot out in an overly dramatic gesture—his way of trying to take back some semblance of control over the situation. “Karga, please show our uninvited guests out, if you would.”

The ogre placed the jarred demonic heart back into the cabinet and tilted her head. “Will you allow me to use my magic?”

I eyed the cabinet, a desire to rush past the diabolist, the werewolves, and the ogre to make a grab for it almost pulling me to my feet. Instead, I stayed put, still kneeling on the floor and pondering over how I could get to the item before escaping.

“No,” Melkar replied with all the insistence that suggested it was a question the ogre frequently asked.

She shrugged. “With pleasure, master.” Her grin made it evident that she meant it.

Karga vaulted forward as Galia stepped in front of the others. A flash of light blinded the room as a thin, rapier-like blade materialized within the blonde woman’s hand, just in time to repel a swipe of the ogre’s thick claws. Galia stepped back, nearly bumping into the two other girls as the demon continued her barrage.

“Help Galia,” Phaori commanded quickly as both her and Evara hastened to the side and out Galia’s way, stopping just in front of a window on the left wall, perpendicular to the door. “I’ll handle my three younger brothers.”

With a nod and a quick wink my way, Evara brushed her short hair out of her face and channeled a small ball of flames in the other.

Meanwhile, the three brothers began to spread out from each other just a few feet away from me. One kicked a small wooden coffee table to the side as the brother with longer hair snickered, dropping Lilis’s unconscious body to the floor. I winced at the loud thump she made and the way her head smacked hard into the thick floorboards.

“Are you sure that you can still beat us, sister?” he questioned.

The other two began letting out low growls, prowling around each side of the circular inset area in the middle of the room. In a blink, one of them shifted into the form of a wolf and charged toward her, pouncing right over the recessed floor. The two clashed and Phaori gripped his lower jaw as his momentum shoved them both directly through the window at her back, taking one of the curtains with them. Shattered glass scattered along the floor just a couple feet from where Galia and Karga fought, more of it flying as the other two werewolves both transformed and jumped through after them.

Melkar cursed under his breath, glaring as a bookshelf caught fire on the right side of the room. He took a step forward.

“Nothing can ever be simple, can it?” he grumbled as I quietly rose up off the floor behind him, a hand pressed down on the seat of a small chair to my right.

Like an insane pyromaniac, Evara was standing back away from Galia and Karga, grinning as she tossed a poorly controlled gust of flame toward the ogre just as the two fighters separated. Karga was forced to dodge it, allowing a slash of Galia’s blade to graze the demon’s arm.

My hands gripped around the legs of the chair as the diabolist boy lifted a hand toward the other side of the room where the three fought, Galia slowly backing out the door of the room. Worryingly, the blonde was bleeding all over the wooden floor with a number of gashes in her uniform. As the ogre slashed forward, Galia was forced to take a step back, and her followup strike was repelled by the smooth swipe of a claw.

I pulled my attention fully over to Melkar as I raised the small chair at my side up into the air. In his foolishness, or perhaps vanity, he’d fully turned his back to me. I’d make him regret that.

The diabolist’s hand stayed raised as he channeled, and a layer of ice flowed across the floor from his feet toward the melee and his bookshelf. I shifted my legs, using their strength as I slung the chair down against Melkar’s back.

Rather than knocking him to the ground—ideally with a broken bone or two—one of the legs splintered and the chair froze in place barely an inch away, as though hitting a brick wall. A thick layer of ice spread out from the spot, and I winced as a jolt of pain reverberated through my hands and wrists. The chair slipped through my fingers, and I admonished myself for not expecting such a trick. Especially after I’d socked him in the nose earlier.

Melkar turned to me with a scowl, as though only just remembering I was there. His concentration fell, and the ice spell broke, disappearing from the floor just as it was about to meet Evara’s feet.

Despite his obvious fury, he held it back. “Really now, Ruby? You’d be smart to just wait off to the side while Karga and I handle things. Be a good succubus and go to your room before you get yourself hurt,” he sneered.

I scoffed. “I’m not the one that’s about to be hurt.”

Despite my confident words, a pit of worry gnawed at my insides. If the chair didn’t work, I doubted a fist would either. He now held the upper hand. I had doubts that I’d be able to even touch him with magic like that protecting him.

Melkar sighed in exasperation. “Fine. I suppose I’ll have to just show you your new place the hard way.”

As he raised a hand, I realized that I’d hesitated too long. Once again, ice flowed along the floor—this time toward me. I hopped to the right just as spikes of ice shot up, intending to wrap around my legs and feet, or perhaps just stab into them.

My instinct was to run away, though I knew that if I wanted a chance at winning, I needed to place myself on the offensive, rather than defensive. So instead, I charged. Melkar’s eyes widened as my fist flew toward his face, hoping that the defensive counter to the chair had been a one-off. The ice crunched beneath my feet as his channeled spell spluttered, and he took a step back. Then my knuckles slammed into a sheet of ice appearing an inch in front of his nose. A loud crack met my ears as I hissed. I grabbed my hand, only for it to throb.

I’d broken something. Probably multiple somethings.

Ice engulfed my boots, growing slowly up my legs. I shivered, attempting to pull my feet from the trap to no avail. Panic began to grip me.

Then I took a deep breath, trying to focus my thoughts away from the pain and the ice and think. Seeing that my attack failed, Melkar’s face quickly switched from fearful to a confident smirk.

He reached out, hand gripping my cheek and giving it a squeeze. “You really are just a dumb slut, aren’t you?”

Melkar was a diabolist. He wasn’t nearly this good at elemental magic—I was certain of it. And he certainly hadn’t had ice magic protecting him the first time I’d punched him in the face. Which meant that he had some kind of enchanted item on him that was protecting him and enhancing his casting.

As he opened his mouth to say more, pulling his hand away, I bit down into a finger, teeth sinking down to the bone.

Melkar cried out, yanking his hand from my mouth in a spray of blood. He stumbled back.

And I eyed the flash of gold on his other hand—a ring that I was certain he hadn’t been wearing before.

“You bitch!” he screeched, curling inward over his injured hand.

With all the strength I had, I pulled against the piercing cold encasing my legs halfway up to my knees, hoping that the break in his concentration had weakened it. Some small amount of relief filled me as it cracked. I forced my legs free, taking two shaky steps forward on numbing limbs as shards of ice scattered. A few chunks clung to my boots and legs, though I had no time to fret over it, my eyes focused on one thing only.

As I took a final step toward him, Melkar’s good hand flew forward, gripping around my neck. His eyes were full of burning rage as I met them.

“I should hurt you for that,” he growled.

I could feel the cool touch of the ring pressed against my red skin.

Both of my hands gripped around his arm, and I smiled at finding his icy protection had limitations. I had him.

My feet pulled me to his side, almost slipping on the slick floor, and in one smooth motion, I pulled his arm up behind his back as he was forced to spin around. I hissed, remembering far too late that some of my fingers were broken and bleeding, just as Melkar cried out. Then his own feet slipped, and I let go just as he plummeted to the floor. A layer of ice formed where his hands reached out to catch the floor, though it did nothing to halt his fall. Instead, his palms slid out across it, causing his face to smack down against the frozen surface.

Idiot.

Melkar screamed out once again as my knee pressed down against his back—too slowly to activate the protective enchantment. I clamped his forearm in the crook of my elbow, and with my injured hand, slipped the ring from his left ring finger before tossing it across the room and through the window.

“G-get off of me!” he cried, flailing beneath me.

I smirked, twisting his arm painfully up behind his back. Between his wails of pain, I leaned down and whispered into his ear, “Who’s the dumb bitch now?”

His cry of pain twisted into one of rage, and a thick spike of ice thrust upward from the floor and speared into my shoulder. I jolted backward, gasping—the force of the blow having caught my breath. Then Melkar stood, shrugging me off of him. My hands reached back, only to find air, and I fell into the recessed area of the room with a heavy thump. A spike of pain shot through my crushed tail.

The annoying diabolist stepped in after me. My foot kicked forward, aiming at his ankle, only for another layer of ice to clash against the bottom of my boot.

…perhaps it hadn’t been the ring on his hand after all.

His magic curled around my arms and legs, pinning me to the floor in an icy prison just before I was able to get up. I squirmed to no avail, and Melkar placed a foot atop my broken hand. I screamed as he crunched down, hating the sound it made almost as much as the pain itself.

His face was a mask of darkness, eyes staring down at me without the barest hint of sympathy. “I’m going to break you, Ruby. A little bit, day by day. And when I’m done, you’re going to thank me for it.”

Another high-pitched scream echoed through the room as he ground his boot further into my hand. My body shook, both from the pain and cold, and I couldn’t help the feminine sobs that slipped from my throat.

He’s going to kill me.

The thought drifted through my mind as I thrashed against the ice slowly numbing my body.

Then I blinked in surprise as Lilis stepped up behind him. Clutched in her hand was a small object with a needle poking out the end, and being the fool that he was, Melkar didn’t seem to even notice that I was looking up over his shoulder. Lilis took one last step and pressed the needle against the side of his neck. The boy spun, knocking her arm away.

“You—” he began, his voice full of vitriol.

Then his balance faltered, face twisting in confusion as his boots slid on the ice below, barely keeping him on his feet.

Melkar blinked.

And then fell, his body unconscious before he hit the recessed floor to my left.

It seemed he hadn’t learned a thing from me hitting him with that chair. What an—

“Idiots, the both of you,” Lilis grumbled as she stepped down next to me, eyeing the two of us on the ground.

I frowned, glaring up at her despite my pain and shivering. “This i-isn’t my f-fault,” I argued. “All of this is h-his d-doing!”

“What I meant was, you should have dealt with him when you had him down instead of gloating,” she shot back, before letting out a sigh. “Let’s get this ice off of you and just get out of here.”

Very much in favor of this plan, I kept my mouth shut. Phaori and her three brothers were nowhere to be seen, and the fight with Karga had moved out into the halls. With Melkar out, the ogre would hopefully back down.

As Lilis began shedding me of my icy layers, I glumly realized that she was right. If I hadn’t paused to taunt him, I’d have likely beaten him then and there before he turned the tables.

Why did I always have to open my big mouth? I wasn’t that pompous, was I?