While Ivar was dealing with his share of the load, Aurora was on her way to deal with the other half.
She took a little longer to reach the enemy because she was not as fast as Ivar. Still, although the exact winner in a fight between Aurora and Ivar was uncertain, Aurora was undoubtedly no weaker than him.
Her vampyre body was a well-rounded powerhouse, not to mention that she had her own abilities.
After all, just like the therian race had various transformations with different abilities, the vampyr race had multiple bloodlines that granted their own abilities.
In the case of the Dracul family, that was the ability to create blood out of thin air and control it in any way they wanted.
This ability was why Aurora arrived at the enemy, brandishing not only the sword Ivar had handed her but also a shield made of blood, while two weapons similar to the one she was carrying were floating around her.
These floating weapons were in no way comparable to the weapon in her hand, but they were more than enough to distract and harass her enemies.
She charged at the five bugs and sent her two floating weapons to distract two of them; when she arrived, she dodged one bug and parried another with her shield, allowing her to reach in front of the third, immediately stabbing forward with her sword, skewering the bug.
She made a spinning slash from this position to behead one of the two bugs she had just avoided and quickly raised her shield to block the other. She called one of her floating weapons back from harassing the other two and had it stab the one she was currently blocking in the back.
Afterwards, she quickly dispatched a fourth bug before the fifth fled and joined the original ten, meaning both she and Ivar had missed one of their targets.
She snorted as she looked at Ivar, "Hmpf, I can't even complain that you missed one now."
Ivar grinned in response, "That just means we were meant for each other."
Aurora couldn't help but groan at this playboy's response, yet her heart still felt sweeter for his words.
She chastised herself for being weak to that man's charm but quickly pulled herself together as she remembered they were not out of the woods yet.
She shared a quick glance with Ivar before they both charged at the now twelve remaining bugs.
They divided the targets equally again, and although this fight was a little trickier than before, they managed to get through it with no more than a few scratches.
When they were done, they breathed a sigh of relief; after all that time getting chased down, it felt good to retaliate and be safe for a little while.
They looked at the battlefield and decided to scavenge some armour from the fallen soldiers to increase their chances of survival in future fights.
Even Ivar, who usually preferred to fight bare-chested, knew this was a dangerous situation and not the time to be frivolous.
Yet, before they could get started, Ivar's wolf ears twitched, and he quickly dashed towards Aurora before scooping her in his arms once again and running in a specific direction.
But before he got far, his ears twitched again, and he changed direction, only for the same to happen a few more times before he stood still and kept turning on his axis while snarling at the surroundings, all while carrying Aurora in his arms.
Aurora, who had now realised the same thing Ivar had, looked calm as she put her hand on Ivar's chest and smiled, "It's alright; I enjoyed the time we had together."
Ivar was barely listening and couldn't stay calm as he kept turning; even if he knew the situation was hopeless, his wolf instincts were telling him to remain alert until the very last moment.
It was then that the air around them shimmered a little before six large qhanrid appeared out of thin air, surrounding the duo from all sides.
These looked different from the basic qhanrid they fought before; their builds were sleeker and more streamlined, seemingly built for speed. They even had wings on their back, and instead of scythes, their forearms looked more like spears.
These were chameleons, basically the assassins of the qhanrid. They were similar to quick-wing qhanrid but with the added bonus of partial invisibility.
Yet, this was not the main problem. Instead, the real problem was the strength level of these bugs, as they were all at the warrior level, one step above mere soldiers like Ivar and Aurora.
While Ivar and Aurora were powerful enough to contend with warrior-level beings, even if they hadn't technically joined their ranks yet, that was only when fighting one-on-one at most.
And while these chameleons were not made for direct combat, six of them were still way too much for the two of them to handle.
While Aurora closed her eyes in preparation for the inevitable, and Ivar kept turning while trying to find a way out, despite knowing it was useless, the bugs all raised their spears and stabbed forward.
But before the spears could reach them, the duo disappeared into thin air.
**********
Máni was a planet with two moons, the crimson moon Selene and the pale moon Luna. The most interesting part of these moons is that they are visible at all times of the day, no matter where you are on Máni.
Obviously, such a phenomenon would be questioned by any scientific mind and was part of the reason why these moons were considered deities by both therians and vampyrs.
While every race on Máni considered both moons to be deities, Selene was considered the patron of the therians, and Luna was the patron of the vampyrs.
There was no particular reason for this, aside from a feeling they all got when they looked at the moons, therians felt a connection to Selene, and vampyrs felt the same with Luna.
However, there was no organised religion regarding these moons, nor were any wars started in their names, nor were they even really worshipped. They simply were.
The people of Máni gave them due respect, but outside of the occasional cult, the fact they were considered deities had no discernible effect on the people of Máni.
There was, of course, a spike in cult activity around the time the qhanrid first showed up, but this quickly died down when it became apparent there would be no divine intervention.
This situation was why Ivar didn't immediately drop to his knees when he suddenly realised he was standing on something invisible high up in the sky, with Máni beneath him, the two moons in the background and one beautiful woman in front of each moon.
Many people considered Ivar a meathead with muscles for brains, but this could not be further from the truth. Although he never tried to hide his intelligence, how he behaved regularly was enough to convince most people of the meathead theory.
Perhaps only Aurora and Ivar's father knew the true extent of his intelligence and that his normal behaviour was simply the way he was.
This intelligence allowed him to quickly realise who he was standing in front of. But instead of kneeling, he looked at them suspiciously, wondering why they had brought Aurora and him here. Unless they had died, and this happened to all dead people?
The two goddesses seemed content to let him get his bearings for now as he first looked around and then at the two women before him.
The one standing in front of the crimson moon, presumably Selene, had a wide, seemingly excited grin on her beautiful face. Her skin was somewhat ashen; her hair was at shoulder length while looking wild, and her eyes seemed to reflect the crimson moon behind her.
She had several red markings on her skin, at least on the parts Ivar could see. She wore tight, red and black clothing that left little to the imagination while showing heavy cleavage around her large and perfectly rounded breasts. She was not particularly tall, standing at 1.7m (5'7).
Meanwhile, her counterpart, Luna, looked to be Selene's twin, at least in body proportions and facial features. Her clothes were white and gold while being more loose-fitting than Selene's, but still showing enough to realise her large breasts, thick thighs, and perky ass seemed to be carbon copies of Selene's.
The differences started with Luna's long, white hair while having the pale moon reflected in her eyes instead of the crimson one.
They didn't end there, though, as Luna also had white markings instead of red, while her facial expression was much calmer and featured a small smile rather than Selene's excited grin.
At this point, he felt something stirring in his arms; as he looked down, he saw Aurora had opened one of her eyes while asking, "Are we dead yet?"