Chapter 35: Leon’s sister?

"Stand back!" Sophia grabbed Lily and pulled her behind her as she saw the goblins rushing their way.

"Your brother will be worried about you. I can’t allow anything to touch you, so stay behind."

Lily heard that and frowned. "Tch, I know what you are trying to do. You simply want to protect me so you can look good in front of my brother, and he will love you more," Lily said and walked to her side. Sophia looked at her with eyes that genuinely said she was confused.

"I might accept you as the girlfriend of my brother, and that’s because I am unable to be the one who loves him because I am his sister.

But I’ll not stand and allow anyone else to become the most important in his heart." She shot Sophia a look and then followed it with a smile. "If you want to get that level of love from him, then you’ll have to do better than me, and I promise that will not be simple."

As she finished that, she turned her head, and a goblin was launching itself at her. She lunged forward before Sophia could say anything. Her hands crackled with lightning. She evaded the goblin and then drove her fist right into its chest. It penetrated, and blood gushed out of it, splashing onto the floor as the goblin died right there.

"Try to keep up," Lily said with her smile still there and then charged ahead.

Sophia stared at the spot where Lily had been standing.

The goblin lay on the floor with a hole through its chest, still twitching. Blood ran across the marble in a thin line. Lily was already several steps ahead, lightning crackling around her fists, her ponytail swinging.

’That’s Leon’s sister?’

Sophia had not expected that at all. She had pictured a shy, quiet girl who would hide behind her brother. Instead, she had just watched Lily drive her hand through a monster like it was made of paper.

Her lips pressed together.

’I won’t let her beat me.’

She wanted to show that she could protect Leon’s sister. She wanted to win Leon’s approval, and she was not going to do it by standing at the back. She tightened her grip on her bag, tossed it aside, and ran.

"Don’t think you’re the only one who can do this!" Sophia shouted.

She stretched both arms out to her sides. Ice gathered in her palms, cold and sharp, and it stretched into a pair of long blades that glittered under the mall lights.

A goblin lunged at her from the left.

She did not slow down. She stepped inside its swing, crossed both blades, and cut through its neck. The head spun off, and she was already moving. Two kobolds rushed her from the front. She dropped low, swept her blade across their legs, and rose with a slash that opened both of them from hip to shoulder.

SLASH! SLASH!

A demon dog leaped at her back.

She spun, caught it on the edge of her left blade, and drove the right through its skull. She pulled both blades free and kept going, her feet barely touching the floor. She danced through the monsters like they were standing still, ice flashing in every direction, her braid whipping behind her.

Goblin after goblin fell. She cleared a path through the pack and left bodies scattered on the ground behind her. She did not look back. A kobold dodged her first cut, and she changed her angle in the middle of the swing and caught it on the second. She was fast, she was precise, and she did not waste a single move.

Across the floor, Lily saw it and smiled.

"Not bad," she said. "But watch this."

She moved.

Lightning wrapped around her whole body, bright and loud, and she vanished from where she was standing. A goblin raised its club, and she was already behind it. Her hand came down like a blade, crackling with white light, and the head came off cleanly.

CRACK!

She spun and drove her fist into a kobold’s chest. The lightning went through it, and she pulled her hand back with something still beating in her fingers. She crushed it and let the pieces fall.

A demon dog leaped at her. She caught it by the throat in midair and slammed it into the floor, then drove her palm through its ribs. Lightning lit up the inside of its body, and the dog went limp.

She kept moving.

She pierced a goblin straight through the stomach with two fingers. She decapitated another with a sweep of her arm. A monster grabbed her wrist, and she twisted, and lightning exploded out of her arm and left it smoking on the ground. She leaped from the top of a bench and came down on a kobold with both fists, and the marble cracked beneath its body.

Her smile never left her face.

She was fast and she was brutal, and every strike was clean. Monsters fell around her in every direction, and when one of them tried to flee, a bolt chased after it and ended the matter.

When she finally paused to breathe, she looked around.

More were coming.

A lot more. They poured down the escalators and over the railings, and they spilled out of side corridors in a wave of claws and teeth. Goblins, kobolds, demon dogs, and bigger ones with thick arms and heavy jaws. They closed in from every direction, snarling, until the two girls were surrounded.

Lily stepped back until her shoulder bumped into someone.

She turned her head. Sophia was standing right there, her back against hers, her blades raised.

"We have a lot of company," Sophia said.

"That’s fine." Lily cracked her knuckles, and lightning rolled up her arms. "I was getting bored."

Sophia let out a short laugh and shifted her feet.

For a second, neither of them said anything. They nodded at each other, once, without looking.

Then they went at it.

The monsters rushed in from all sides, and they did not break formation. Sophia took the left, and Lily took the right, and they turned in a slow circle as they fought, covering each other’s backs. Sophia cut down a goblin, kicked the body into the air, and Lily caught it on the way down with a lightning punch that blew it apart. Lily grabbed a kobold by the collar, threw it across the circle, and Sophia was already waiting with a blade.

SLASH!

They moved like they had done it for years. Sophia sent a demon dog flying toward Lily with a swing of her blade, and Lily caught it with a crack of thunder. Lily hurled a goblin at Sophia’s feet, and Sophia finished it without looking down. Ice and lightning flashed together, white and blue, filling the second floor with light.

The pack thinned. The roars grew weaker. The bodies piled up on the marble around them.

Finally, there was a pause.

Then a last kobold lunged, and Sophia and Lily struck at the same time. The ice blade and the lightning fist met in the middle of its body, and it fell apart.

Silence returned.

Sophia and Lily stood at the center of the ruined floor, with bodies lying in a wide ring around them. Both of them were breathing a bit heavily. Sweat ran down their faces, and Lily’s sleeve had a rip in it.

They looked at each other.

Then they both smiled.