Gluttony throws a rock at him. "Wrath would break you," she retorts.

Wrath bucks under Pride, shifting her weight so that she's toppling them-

Pride grabs hold of Wrath's arm and uses the momentum to wrench her arm back into place.

"You're welcome," she snarls as her back hits the ground. "One of theses days you're going to encounter something that you can't fucking heal from."

"But not today," Wrath says, pushing herself to her feet and surveying the scene in front of her, looking around for someone to target.

Gluttony's victims are still trying to eat each other alive. The man who downed the vehicles is dead; there was one other person caught by Avarice's bardiche in its brief moment of usefulness, and she is lying motionless half-under a bush, state of continued survival unclear. The closest other villager, by a fairly wide margin, is a middle-aged woman carrying a wailing four-year-old girl and pulling a nine-year-old boy along by the hand. She looks like she's about to collapse, but is still running as fast as she can.

Wrath smirks, and takes off towards the middle-aged woman. If there's any lingering injury or plant, it's certainly not showing as she moves, and she manages to put herself in front of the woman.

"Hi," she says, in a tone that manages to be sinisterly pleasant. "You really don't look like you're in shape to be running this hard. Especially not carrying a child."

She staggers to a halt, breathing heavily, too exhausted to try to evade.

—the nine-year-old boy picks up a rock off the ground and hurls it at Wrath's face. He's got good aim and an impressive throwing arm for his age.

Wrath barely moves, leaning very slightly sideways so that it glances off her cheek rather than hits her dead on. The look on her face indicates that she's finding the boy's attempt more adorable than threatening. She takes half a step forward, sending her nanites towards the woman. (She's close enough, and fast enough, that should the woman's ire turn on either of the children, the younger will be in Wrath's arms, and Wrath between the woman and the nine-year-old before she can harm them.)

...well, under normal circumstances that would've been an adequate precaution, but as it is Wrath is lucky she's so annoying, because the first thing the woman does is hug her four-year-old tightly and pull the air from Wrath's lungs by might-as-well-call-it-magic. If she'd done that to one of the kids, they'd be choking to death regardless of whether or not she could still touch them. As it is, Wrath can enjoy this uncomfortable surprise while the nine-year-old rushes her and tries to stab her in the leg with a dry broken stick.

After a surprised choke, Wrath just decides that breathing apparently isn't necessary. She looks down at the child and makes no move to avoid his attack. If she had more breath, she'd be correcting his form. (She's watched Lust spar with eir swords enough to know at least a little about form for that.)

Pride saunters up and places her hands on the woman's shoulders, her own nanites already infecting the woman, working around Wrath's carefully. "You are so—" she's speaking before her hands really make contact, right into the woman's ear, the nanites taking any pride the woman feels and bolstering it, making her overconfident, cocky.

—and before Pride can say anything more, the woman drops her child, spins around, and pulls the air from Pride's lungs while also attempting to scratch her eyes out. (Wrath can now breathe again! Lucky Wrath.)

Pride apparently can't decide that breathing is optional, but her arms still automatically come up to shield her face.

Wrath does not decide to start breathing again, pivoting around the boy to catch the younger child before they can hit the ground. Then she shifts upwards, the child juggled carefully onto one hip, the spare hand pulling a knife free and slamming it up into the join between the woman's neck and chin, directly at her pulse point.

This solves the immediate problem, but also offers the nine-year-old boy an opportunity to steal one of Wrath's other knives and stab her in the back with it.

Pride curses Wrath out in a barely there whisper as she regains her breath.

Wrath makes a half-surprised sound, breathing now restored, and looks back, turning smoothly. "I really wish I could show you how to aim that more effectively," she states. Perhaps strangely, her body is angled such that the child on her hip would be protect should the boy try to attack again.

He yells something and stabs her again.

She reaches down, catches the knife blade, but instead of deflecting it or stopping it, aims it into her side. "Better place to stab," she says, neatly sliding her hand down to twist the knife free of his grip, taking half a step back to crouch down. She ignores the knife in her side, and places the younger child in front of her, on their feet, holding on only enough to make sure the child can stand on their own.

As soon as Wrath lets go of the smaller child, she dives into the older boy's arms and he scoops her up and runs.

"Smart kid," Wrath comments, pushing herself back to her feet and pulling the knife out of her side.

"Smarter than you at any rate," Pride retorts snidely, poking a finger at Wrath's side.

Wrath doesn't appear to notice, except to brush it off, stalking across the ground towards where the others have gathered, scanning the area around them.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, there seems to be no one around who wants anything to do with them. The village is thoroughly deserted; Gluttony's new friends have torn each other apart; a few crows are investigating the mess, but besides that, things seem pretty quiet.

And then a roaring column of white fire blazes up on the horizon. Thunder booms as bolts of lightning wreathe the pillar of flame, crackling around it in unnatural arcs. It's not an explosion, because explosions stop, and this - whatever-it-is - shows no signs of stopping.

It's almost too bright to look at directly, making it hard to judge the distance by eye, but it seems to be on the other side of the river, only five or ten minutes away by ground transport if they still had a working ground transport.

Well, Pride and Sloth's were in fact still in the village, out of sight, and thus are still in perfect working order, although it'll still take a couple of trips to get all seven of them closer. Pride has gone and nudged Sloth awake, and the two of them are bringing their transports down.

Wrath nudges Sloth back far enough to slide in front of him. "Let's go."

She guns the engine and drives off towards the...anomaly.