Interlude four: "Farewell."

* * *

It was always a melody to him.

A melody that had been born out of the moans and cries of millennia ago, emerging from the streams of pure power and human passions along with the very existence of his person. One and the same melody, gradually becoming more complex, more whole, more complete, more comprehensive, drawing in other melodies, turning them into its likeness, giving them the same tone, the same shade of sound as it had originated in those infinitely distant ages. In time, when the consciousness of the spawned something became more and more complex, moving from empty instincts to complex behavioral patterns, acquiring what mortals living in the material world could call reason, the melody finally found its perfection.

He, in turn, had found a purpose, a singular purpose that allowed absolutely everything for its attainment - just like any of his kind. Each of them had found that purpose, always the same, always different for each of them. From the simplest of the inferior, born only a second ago, to the almost omnipotent Masters, beside whom he was like a newborn wisp, they all shared that purpose, even if they did not yet realize it. To acquire, to the very root, that which made them - them, that which raised and lowered, resurrected and destroyed. Whether it was Agony, Fear, Sloth, Gluttony, or the much-loved Lust, the essence of Vice, its true essence, remained the same for all who ascended.

Every soul, every feeling, every experience, and every existence became fuel, wood for an unquenchable flame that will burn forever as long as there are still those who will serve as fuel for this flame. A flame that your very existence longs to give to the entire universe, to show the truth that foolish mortals refuse to recognize, avoiding their happiness with all their might. They are the source of the fire, the origin of the fire that has nothing to do with the quintessence of annihilation we used to call the Flame. No, the flames of Hell were not fire. They were of a different nature, but they remained a forge and a furnace, a potter's wheel on which the newly converted souls were shaped, hardened, and reshaped.

Funny, but the creatures most hated by foolish mortals who didn't realize the inferiority they were trying so hard to rid themselves of were the ones who depended on the real world the most. Without souls, there is no Hell, or rather, there is no fleur, which is full of the melody that souls exude, and flair is everything. Once long ago, in those short fragments of eternity, when he was just learning about the universe, he managed to snatch a piece of the thoughts and aspirations of several Heroes summoned from the other world.

There were also those who, in their delightfully impudent chuckle, turned to Vice for power, childishly naïve, expecting either not to pay or to pay the lowest rate, not realizing that by opening their souls to them, by opening them to the quintessence of bliss, the distilled and materialized ultimate goal of all existence, they had lost the right to turn back. As it must be, as it has always been, as it will be forever and ever - souls are generated, manifested in the matter of the created world, to be later in their power. Every essence that did not enter any of the Domains, every groan, every beat, every thought and passion that flashed past their attention is a terrible insult, an insolent abuse of the essence of being, of creation itself.

From the same memory of the summoned, he managed to extract a strange association that compared their tribe to a term similar to that of the technological worlds. The children of the other sky compared the devils to the magical analog of a self-aware neural network. Extremely complex, branching, all-encompassing, yet never born to start living. The devils were inherently farther from humans than any undead or bloodsuckers, but at the same time, they were immeasurably closer to typical planar creatures - creatures of souls and feelings that never had feelings of their own.

The human consciousness is banally unable to cover the whole range of their thinking, to look at the world from the right angle. Even the strongest of those who see can understand only the tip of an iceberg, the crown of a giant tree, the surface of a sea surface. Only another member of his species is able to understand the devil, and the rest of us can only react, speculate, and assume. They understood mortals many times better than they did. They played their melody on the strings of other people's souls.

A different one for each of us.

The melody was playing in this city at this moment and an hour had been prepared for a long time. The artists were carefully selected, and the orchestra formed the first notes, testing their sound in trial and error. The chords merged to achieve an acceptable sound, guiding the fingers of the musicians and the voices of the choral ensemble. This melody was perfect if only because it did not matter at all which way its sound would be directed, how exactly they decided to interrupt it - any outcome, any choice, any variant, from the most crushing of victories to humiliating defeat, was still equally acceptable, equally perfect.

Isn't that why their tribe is so hated by mortals? Is it not this realization that makes them shudder with terror at the mere thought of opposing them, of trying to play the same symphony with them? The realization that the one you have chosen as your enemy cannot lose, that he wins even if he is defeated? Nothing makes a living and intelligent being as angry as the realization, even if deep inside, not revealed even to the one who realized it, that any of your actions, opposition, or even complete apathy and submission will still become fuel for the fire of the domain that has chosen you.

And yet, and yet....

Among all the variations of melody, there are and will be those that are still sweeter, longer, purer, and more desirable. Were it not so, all the inhabitants of Hell would simply do nothing, for nothing would bring as much passion as anything else. No, there is always something to desire, to desire more than you have. Once long ago, maybe millennia ago, maybe a second later, he had wished for the Eternal Empire, wished for its Emperor and all his blood, wished for these lands and the mortals who had built their nest of destiny upon it.

The limit of the ideal remains unattainable because while your melody is playing, all the other participants in the performance are also playing, adding their notes. To calculate all other compositions in all variants, adjusting your music to all possible outcomes is the sweet molasses of an unfulfilled dream that grows farther and farther away with every step. A place of concentration of the powers of mortals, the embodiment of the will of their rulers, imbued to the last stone with sophisticated magic and the elusive antiquity of primordial Law, is more than capable of playing in a rather ramified manner.

The melody gradually slips away, forced to become simpler and simpler, becoming more and more bland the fewer conductors of his will remain. His children, his toys, his creations, and his slaves. Each of them cherishes the dream of turning their situations around, turning states inside out. Each one has to leave his dreams as dreams, for as long as he owns the Domain, as long as his Chorus sings, as long as each of the cells of the common Bank is assigned to his essence, it is his will that decides who they are, what they want and what they think about. Even those who can afford, by virtue of accumulated power or their choir, to think different thoughts, hiding them behind dozens of layers of subservient deceit, are only deceiving themselves.

He is Authority.

He is Desire.

He is Lust.

He is Sovereign.

But fewer and fewer are his subjects. More and more have to be put at stake in the name of the melody for fear of cutting it short, of failing to reach the dizzying crescendo. Those who have been marked by him, dubbed Legends in the mouths of mortals, are dying. The number of the Worthy who have managed to rise above the masses is gradually decreasing, and the ranks of the forced subjects who have already acquired reason and ambition but have not accumulated any significant chorus and have not developed their skills are thinning. There are almost no toys left. The mortals filled with Lust and borrowed power are dying, unable to hold on to the power given to them, giving in and falling, with no chance of getting back on their feet.

Mortals spare neither themselves nor others, defending their right to see the world in the same old colors, ugly and bland, defending the gray and dull reality, dying for the right to die, never realizing that they are ready to give them everything for almost nothing, because any price next to the priceless loses its immensity. It is pleasant, funny, and delightful to watch them tossing, blind, and broken from birth creatures that very soon will become something else, more worthy.

But those punches, those jabs...

His will is stretched over the whole stolen city of the doomed. He gropes it with a thousand thousand gazes, looking out of the eyes of each and everyone who has just come here with his name and power in his heart. And fewer and fewer of those eyes remain, more unstable the melody, more quiet the notes played, more ephemeral the invisible ties that gradually drag the harnessed prey to the heart of his Domain, himself. The higher the losses, the more often and more clearly he has to invest his strength, realizing perfectly well that he is betting on the successful note already the very last bet - himself.

Otherwise, in a material world devoid of sound and sensuality, everything would have ended long ago. The incarnate celestials can always condescend to their blind flock, whereas they would all have nothing to counter such an argument. You cannot interrupt the sound of the melody of thunder and crashing rocks with just the sound of a thin flute. The whole song, the whole composition, belonged to him alone, to his domain and his will, and he alone was to bear the responsibility, to accept the burden of defeat that would inevitably come if he played by the usual rules.

No one plays by the rules, ever.

Every single inhabitant of the familiar universe, every embodiment of feeling that dared to come into reality, not for bread crumbs, not to show the true path to a hundred or two blinded souls, but for something worth any sacrifice, was sure to change the battlefield to something that would be more convenient for them. To cut off another's will, to confuse and alienate the Heralds and their creators from the piece that had already been grabbed, to prevent them from taking what had been taken.

He cut it off.

He took.

But this burden, lulled by his singing, is still awake, still fluttering the delicate web of tenderness and promises, refusing to open its eyes and see all the beauty of intimacy, all the ecstasy of expectation that will finally come to an end, never to stop again. And he continues to embroider new and new patterns with inaudible notes, continues to look with myriad eyes, to hear with innumerable ears, to collect and bind, to take what he desires, and therefore a priori belonging to him, just not knowing it yet. His creations continue his melody, so much belonging to him as longing to take his place.

His dance, his passion, his eternity, his delight, his Lust.

He's watching.

And he sees.
* * *

"From the side!" a scruffy bass yells a scruffily dressed barbarian mercenary, shielding a fellow soldier from a spiked tentacle, already severed but still searching for something to grab onto and inject the flesh-eating hallucinogenic poison. "From the side, you blind-eyed meger. He's hitting from the side! Side!"

"On the spear!" Another mercenary, younger and weaker, shouted, trying to hold the creature from which the tentacle had been cut off at a distance from the spear shaft, which was crackling with tension. "Get him on the spear, slow the bastard down, he's aaaaaaaaaaah!!!"

The intersection of the two largest streets in the central quarter was the scene of another massacre, of which there were countless. The human counterattack, sent by the corps that had managed to repel the first waves of the attack on the central city government, was overwhelmed at this intersection, first by a crowd of Lust-crazed cultists and the citizens simply affected by the fleur and then by several dozen elite creatures and a full corps of what in Hell was a line infantry. Unable to hide their movements from the devils, the humans and some number of non-human races were surrounded but no longer had the advantage of the fortified and enchanted walls of the city government on their side.

Perhaps now, each of them was cursing mentally that titled bastard, who, with his authority and uniform, had forced the decision to counterattack. They were sent for slaughter, even if they didn't realize it right away, because there were almost no elite fighters among them, and the unit itself consisted almost entirely of mercenary units of various degrees of fame and a certain number of regular army officers. Someone just needed to distract the devils while a smaller and better-equipped squad tried to breach the defenses of the nearest ritual point, a report about the importance of which came directly from the Palace.

"Hold formation, you infidel cattle. Hold scum!" Time after time, the squad leader applies the Commander's abilities, working to burn out his reserve but still pulling off the most massive effects of the flare, overpowering them, preventing his surrounding companions from finally falling into depravity and perishing without a fight at all. "Stand until Victory!"

The slogans are primitive and stupid because even without the education of a tactician, it is clear that victory is very far away and defeat is close, but the class skill still works. Experienced Commanders or Captains can give not single cheers but whole rousing speeches to strengthen both will and body with orders and even to work instead of Benefics, but he has only recently gained the second class and have not had time to develop it to perform such a thing.

The three brothers bore the family name of Cauldron, even though their father, who had been the commander of the squad before them, had been given that name as a nickname, noting the amazing ability of the old ruffian to cook divinely tasty Alishan pilaf literally on his knees in the open field. Now Cauldrons, who had long ago received citizenship of the Empire and had ties with a dozen small and even a couple of large noble families or merchant guilds, were eager to go back to their childhood. To eat the same pilaf with meat, to listen to their father's fables, to absorb the science of the squad instructors, and not to know any grief.

And instead, they have to survive, trying not even to save themselves but just to sell their lives with not such a shameful bill as they are being charged now. Sadly, they're just slaughtered like a ferret in a chicken coop, losing only rank meat. All the strongest creatures keep their heads down, working from a distance or approaching the formation of people only for a couple of moments, leaving back with a blink. And there is nothing they can do because there is no strength to push through the defense of enemy commanders, and there are no normal amulets. Only they and their common grave.

The middle Cauldron, a tall and stubby mustachioed man of about forty winters of age, waved his saber relentlessly, filling it with his power, creating a veritable cocoon of steel-colored flashes, preventing the two ordinary creatures from coming within striking distance. Their claws look imposing, but their hands are more or less the same proportions as a humanoid's, so it's easy to keep a distance. He cut off the only tentacle on the two of them, and now he was slowly increasing the number of wounds on the heavily armored pseudo-bodies.

A sudden change of stance and a slightly raised shoulder allowed him to take a throwing needle on his hardened and enchanted shoulder pad, fired by the hand of a foolishly smiling black beauty with a completely blank stare. Maisa, his younger brother's mistress, had been one of the first to fall under the full control of one of the distant creatures, and his brother had been foolish enough to hesitate, not to beat it to death. It was easy to find a new bad warmer, but he wouldn't find a new brother - the poison on Maisa's blades, nicknamed Olive for the color of her skin and even stopped cutting off her fingers for that nickname, was always excellent.

A swing of the saber, a risky approach, a blow of the stiletto, hidden for the time being in the wide sleeves of the Alishan free cloth garment, which is stretched over the armor, and the first creature, which used to have a tentacle, sprawls like rotten sugar powder, having lost its head. The second one, trying to get in the back, scratches the stiletto out of its eye, along with its eyes - Maisa had brewed the poison for that knife, too, swearing that even a ghost or a dead man would be badly hurt by it.

"No lie, wretch." Cauldron tiredly but contentedly summarized, intercepting another throwing needle from the rampaging Poisoner and Assassin with the fabric of his sleeve. "It really worked."

Somewhere nearby, but just as surely and infinitely far away, his older and now only brother yells his commands, deflecting a new dose of dope, but the middle brother only sighs sorrowfully. The boons that had been placed on all of them before they went on the attack, protecting them from the lion's share of the brainwashing, would soon be exhausted, and there wouldn't be enough personal amulets to cover the entire crowd. Although, why should he? There wouldn't be any crowd by then anyway!

Blowing off the head of the devil, Cauldron tried to cover his side from another poisonous iron, but the gift was late, though he was ready to swear that the creature that had subdued the girl had sicced it on all three brothers. Devils like to play such jokes, like friends killing friends and lovers killing lovers. However, unlike the youngest, he couldn't stand that bitch all his life, and deep down, he was even glad that now he could finally slaughter her.

"Cauldrons!" Yelled someone from the last set, either Chik or Brick, he couldn't immediately remember. "Cauldrons, I've caught Olive!"
STALKER

This is about the tone of voice one uses when one has "caught" a ravenous desert camel, which one now wants to take somewhere because the animal does not want to go free. A little turn of the body, giving way to some big man with an expensive-looking flamberge in his hands, and then Cauldron sees that Brick (it is him. He has an earring in his ear) has really caught Maisa, taking her in his grasp. But she doesn't even break free, only presses her form into the fighter who embraced her, and the latter's amulets of stable mind are fuming.

Well, now he's going to fulfill his dream, so to speak, as a farewell!

A dash, for which it was not even a pity to spend a little bit of reserve, brings Cauldron right to the couple entwined in a passionate embrace, where the recruit even stopped resisting the insistent caresses of the girl who pulled off his pants, and the old warrior is already bringing his trusty saber in a bogatyr swing... to fall to the ground in two pieces, cut lengthwise. Brick, who had already been stripped of almost all his clothes, just cutting them with the sharpest poisonous blades, stares mesmerized at the wide, doll-like smiling girl, only a shadow of consciousness realizing the end of their battle.

Having knocked out a sufficient number of resistance leaders, the elite devils spent on the attack, no longer saving their strength and skins, in a few seconds, destroying the center of the human formation. Some of them were subjugated, having already started, like Brick, the process of forced recruitment. Some of them were killed, and only a few managed to disperse and retreat into the alleys, which were also blocked but not as tightly as the central streets of the crossroads.

The drooling Brick did not see or hear how the older Cauldron, who had lost the ability to speak, think, and resist, was silenced.
* * *

The attacking group is choking on its blood, having fallen into a carefully prepared ambush. Neither the distracting maneuver with the least combat-ready units that had involuntarily sacrificed themselves, nor the multitude of disposable expendables of varying degrees of power, nor even the sheer prowess of the five fighters. The personal retainers and the main fangs of the Eternal City Governor, though they could not compare with the guards of the Imperial Palace since no one checked them for their suitability for the guard, but they deserved the title of Gems according to the classification of the Adventurers' Guild. At least, because a couple of years ago, they had organized the disappearance of one of such teams that had rashly taken revenge on one of the town governor's close relatives.

Only these five were left of the hundred stormtroopers, and the rest were simply torn apart by enemy enchantments or sucked into the walls of the enemy fortification. A seemingly ordinary trade representative building belonging to one of the affiliated guilds of the Golden Feather.... it was no longer a building at all. A colossal lump of slime had worked its way through the wood and stone. It replaced almost all the material of the entire complex, leaving only the outer shell. That was its flesh, which had taken on a hardened appearance.

The monstrously strong Legend - though, could they be otherwise, neither strong nor monstrous - was useless in direct attack, unable to fight and pursue the enemy in the open field. In defense, however, Stickiness of Perversion could not only cover the ritualists but also help conduct the ritual itself, embodying it within its own body. The creature and, in a way, the disciple of Soft Touch was in a truly joyous state of feeling, which it shared with the world at once. It sensed the death of its creator and teacher, longing to thank in every possible way all the tortures and punish in every possible way all the pleasures of the one who had managed to serve Stickiness so well.

The devil troops here were pathetic, few in number, and even the cultists had little in the way of borrowed power. Only the ritual masters hidden deep within the flesh of Stickiness were any match for the level of the invasion, but this place was not defenseless, as the stormtroopers experienced firsthand. The seeming ease with which they plunged into the enemy's defenses, the deceptive ease with which the outer barriers fell, the false uncertainty in the movements and faces of the retreating devils and their servants - all this deceived the humans (as well as two dwarves, an elf, a halfling, and a huge Juggernaut-class beast folk holstaur) who failed to recognize the trap in time.

In another situation, they could not get to the heart of the ritual in time, but they could give the forcibly immobile creature a fight, as well as possibly interfere with the cultists' actions. After all, they could remove the outer barriers and request the fire of the Palace's volley systems, which would not be lazy to work on such a tempting target. Light compulsions, small, almost imperceptible injections of fleur, the inflated pride of the squad leader, which was so easy to play on, even as devils of another Aspect, and the assault team was trapped.

The walls chomped greedily, growing hundreds and hundreds of tentacles that immediately filled the bodies of weakly resisting mortals with themselves and whatever they could pour into them. The dust and ashes of those who did not succumb to the effects on the mind, for within its perimeter, the creature can not only masterfully press on the brain but also hit with astonishing efficiency. The fleur of the rather gurgling Stickiness is impermissibly rough, as for Legend, devoid of grace and cunning, but it is strong, insidious, and does not stop, all the time testing the endowed for strength. The air is full of pheromones, potions, and the almost material magic of Lust, born from the endless supply of flesh and slime of the ancient devil. One breath and its particles are already in you, already sprouting, taking the place of your tissues, muscles, blood, thoughts, and desires, and your body voluntarily steps into the wall that has become soft and so cozy.

The five defend themselves, fending off the tentacle attacks time after time, burning the air around them and recreating it back to normal, setting up closed fields to keep the creatures from deploying their own. They do have a lot of amulets, even if the creature has already taken possession of the part of them that was given into the hands of simple stormtroopers. The creature could win at any moment, simply crushing the enemy with magic, overcoming all their desperation with sheer power, but it takes its time, taking its time, stretching out the pleasure.

The half-elf, armed with two swords soaked with Light, one short and one long, is the first to fall to the ground, dropping his blades, shaking in a fit, and ignoring Benefic's attempts to save Master of Blade. The convulsions are getting worse, the Juggernaut covering the whole team, the two battle mages increasing the onslaught, taking on some of the load of the swordsman unable to keep up the pace. He vomits, opening his mouth impossibly wide, throwing up his own body in its entirety-first his insides, then his muscles, then his skeleton, and finally his brain.

Flurrying away, the mental scream of Stickiness causes the companions to procrastinate before burning the vomited and emptied skin of what had been their friend. It costs them another life as the Empty Skin jerks closer to the Healer, simply putting it on top of him, picking up his two swords, slicing off the Arcanist's arm in one swing, and diving into the wall of slime. The creature's laughter is mocking and happy, for in trying to fight off the body of the Healer and the Benefic, they missed the moment when the vomited innards filled with slime gathered into a new monster and merged into one with the armless mage, and the second mage, ignoring the barely audible sob and the thick ice lance that pierced first the ugly creation of Stickiness and then the ceiling of the central hall that surrounded them. The five had managed to escape the deadly walls earlier, but the creature had dragged the walls after the fleeing toys.

The Tauren left alone, screams with impossible rage and the pain of loss, throws aside her shield, and grips her hammer with both hands, preparing to give as much rage as she can. The member of an extremely rare subtype of beast folk, who had long considered the team her family, did not even think of running or retreating, seeking only to bring the creature as much pain as possible, bidding farewell to the dead on the grave of their killer, not noticing the ravenous breaths and what went into her body with those breaths.

With another berserker's roaring cry, she throws the hammer away, tearing off first her breastplate, then her gauntlets, then her chainmail and under-armor, leaving her breasts exposed, like all Taureans - quite enormous. Only now, this prominent feature, about which more racist jokes have been invented than leaves on an individual tree, is slowly growing even larger. Tauren growls and grins viciously beneath her muffled helmet, milking her cow's udder with a vengeful relish, believing that this is how she will do the most damage to her blood enemy. Juggernaut let out a triumphant shriek as she reached her goal, splattering her milk and juices all over the place, not noticing the gradual sinking into the viscous floor but noticing exactly how one of her previously hopelessly lost companions, the Arcanist, appeared beside her in company with a vaguely familiar man from the hundred they had been assigned to reinforce.

The whole world of the warrior tired of blood and losses narrowed down to two cuties, who kindly began to empty so pleasantly overflowing breasts, and the beast folk moaned audibly and obscenely, closing her eyes, so she would never open them again... at least not with her past self, for Stickiness of Perversion would find a place and time for a new toy. It had been a long time since he'd played cowgirls with the Taureans. Then the teacher will take it away, then intrigue will trick out the desired soul, then instead of a female tauren it will get a male tauren, which is also not bad, but even having changed the gender, it still remembers what these toys were originally. Or not, who knows? It could also change its own memories so as not to spoil the game, making the fun more whole and proper, so it's not known how many times it has done that.

* * *
Dueling warriors, especially those who are strong and have already learned to control this power, are often beautiful - the precision of their movements, the grace of beasts of prey, and the power, the triumph of the art of killing. These are, of course, particulars, for there are perhaps more exceptions to such a rule than confirmations. At the same time, the battles of classical wizards are most often colorful, fascinatingly large-scale, especially if you watch it from afar, and not being in the center of the area that became the point of the fight. Whether it's a short-range battle, a standard magical duel, or an ultra-long-range battle, it's hard not to marvel at the flow of elements, planar manifestations, and pure magic in all its forms.

But there are also such battles that are not distinguished by colorfulness, and not always these are the battles of masters of silent death. Not always. There is a type of magic, divided into many subtypes and sections, that has no manifestation at all, entirely passing outside the eager eyes of the observant public, which does not even suspect the battle itself. Or does not have time to be surprised but becomes just another victim of such a battle. Mentalistics, Dreaming, Animaturgy, Positonics... the list goes on for a long time, as well as the list of archetypes to whom such types of magic are available due to connection with certain planes or personal skills. After all, if you need a classification of everything and anything, go to Naitmac Academium. They love such schematics there.

R'Arnristal disliked combat, as much as he disliked the world in its entirety, but he had had to fight too often, perhaps his entire life. Combat Mentalists are extremely rare, simply due to the fact that such magic is not suited for direct combat. By the time a mind mage reached the point where he could compete with martial archetypes on their turf, he would have been killed hundreds of times over. Nevertheless, there were exceptions, even too often. Go down to the Hive Cities of tentaclefaced ogres to realize how dangerous it is to underestimate the magic that does not tend to show itself with colorful flashes and deafening thunder.

R'Arnristal knew how to fight. He'd had to learn it about the same time he'd run away from home in a fit of adolescent maximalism, unwilling to be a servant without the right to reach the true heights. His family, as one could easily gather from the offspring's name, were what the arrogant snake-eared ones called Spikes, roughly speaking, close and trusted servants. Now, from the perspective of years lived, the old beast folk realize that one might as well not have run anywhere. The life of a spike is easy, simple, and clear because there is already a place where you will be assigned. There is already work, service, and understanding of the necessity of this service. All the spirits of the wolves will be his witnesses. He had a much harder time in "freedom" than in such shackles. Many and many of his acquaintances would give their hand to provide themselves or their descendants with such a warm place, from which he ran away in his pride.

Yes, he achieved a lot, accomplished a lot, and proved his superiority to himself and the world, but he never got happiness. Came, in his old age, the realization that all his battles, losses, elevation, and other steps on the ladder without end were, how can I put it softer ... stagnant. He had not found in life what he had once left home for, had been on the wanted lists of the Eternal Forest, had fought on the border with Alishan, Neitmak, the Eternal Forest, and had even become a person to be immediately exterminated in the territory of Seinberg and five other small kingdoms.

Master of Mind Magic, Psymant and Soul Whisperer, six tens of steps to infinity, two hundred forty-three with a small appendage of years lived, but still, he felt that it would be better for him not to show off and to accept service and die somewhere after the eighth decade surrounded by grandchildren and sons. The crisis of power is a rather well-known problem in extremely narrow circles, which many outstanding (to which he included himself without too much modesty) personalities have driven to the grave, or the bottle, or the hermitage.

He would probably fade away slowly, seeing no reason to continue. A servant, a few mansions, the opportunity to claim a province for his feeding at any moment (for the right to give him orders as his vassal, the Emperor would have kicked the past governor out of the office without a second thought), the opportunity to collect debts from many families and guild councils... But it was too easy for him to look into other people's minds and souls, to see there everything that he had to see too often, slowly weaning himself away from perceiving these fires of souls with a web of thoughts wound around them as living beings.

If it hadn't been for what had happened in the capital, he wouldn't have met the new spring. He had stopped taking rejuvenating alchemy, undergoing health-enhancing rituals, and even just keeping his body in shape. Though he had never forgotten since the time his jaw had been broken by the butt of a battle axe. He was even somewhat grateful to the devils, at least for the opportunity to end his journey in a less colorless.

No attempt was made to kill him, though three of his servants were processed by the cult at once, but it was not even an attempt, just a polite invitation to battle. After tearing their minds to shreds and shattering their Lust-ravaged souls, he didn't even turn his face to them, reclining in his favorite artifacts (and therefore favorite) armchair. In a matter of seconds, he had created a Network, beginning to shape it, to augment it, to connect new nodes to it, to give orders and take instructions at half and half with reports. His power was known, albeit rather forgotten, which allowed him to avoid unnecessary suspicions, immediately receiving all possible assistance from the guards, army, and free forces of various aristocratic families.

The carnage in this area continued unabated, and the Imperial forces had already managed to damage one of the Ritual's Anchors, but it was a small one, and only just damaged. It was made to work again half an hour later. But the losses remained relatively low for such a massacre, and the defenses were in no hurry to crumble under the blows of the slowed creatures. There, in front of the front line, the Guards were fighting, chained men were dying for their masters, legendary artifacts were being activated time after time, and Cesare Trimes had just recently used Crash of Everything. The ultimatum ability of the mythical artifact could only be activated in the hands of someone who had crossed the fifty-fifth step, but it was a sight to behold when activated. It was this attack that annihilated any energy of any type, including auras and the upper layers of the soul. That allowed it to damage the very point of the ritual, to which more and more forces were being drawn. The combined efforts of the three enemy Legends were enough to save the core of the enemy army, but the meat had been thinned out considerably.

R'Arnristal, however, had his own business to do.

General Kara, who had recently attained the status of Hero, helped with maneuvers and execution of commands. She was able to coordinate everything and everyone in any condition and much better than the wolfman himself. The strongest combat mentalist of the capital and perhaps the empire was given the role of the one who was engaged in intelligence and control of the enemy crowd, the one who broke the chains of command, anticipated maneuvers, eavesdropped on thoughts, changed orders right in the heads of those who received them and in every possible way shit on the army that was unlucky enough to have him as an enemy.

It would be suicidal for an ordinary mage to get inside the heads of devils or even their cultists, but he could hear the whispers of his soul, calmly and deliberately separating the effects of the fleur, structuring the soul to make it invulnerable to the exact moment and effect they were trying to use against him. Even the elite creatures feared the invisible tentacles of his will. He was far away, hidden behind the ranks of the defending and sometimes advancing army, behind the barriers and walls of other people's homes, but he was still there for everyone, invisible and unstoppable.

The creatures sensed him. They realized his power, and that was probably why they did not rush to attack, giving the humans time to gather their strength and crush the first ritual point, wiping it off the face of the universe with a concerted attack of three circles of battle mages and six blows of legendary artifacts. The second point, which was within sight of their battle, was hidden over the horizon, in territory controlled by creatures, but even its barriers were tickled by tactical charms.

And then they came for his soul.

He didn't know the creature's name, but he knew for a fact it was a Legend, with the help of another Legend, only weaker. And both of them were specialists in working with the brains and souls of mortals, able and fond, like himself, of operating out of the usual distance. No enemy seen, no enemy heard, but he, every last one of the Tacticians, Commanders, and Kara herself sensed their nasty presence. They felt it, realized it, considered it, and gave this battle to him as the only one who could not lose it.

They fought while the two armies fought their own battle, even if the creatures took their time to attack, disturbing mortals with the very edge of the general fleur. Two webs, two giant ospreys, and two spindles that tried to devour each other. The creatures were both acting as one, and he sent all his assistants away, for even the most talented of mentalists were too vulnerable to the fleur. Without the skill of animaturgy, of controlling their own and others' souls, there was no point in fighting a devil of this kind. They must be killed differently, forced into a face-to-face battle where they can't dispose of their frightening power.

He fought his war as it was.

There were two of them.

He fought for two.

The threads were torn, the webs were crumpled, but there was no winner, even though the creatures were, in general, stronger. But they were in no hurry to use that power, preferring to conduct a very peculiar dialog. Dialogue, where words were dagger jabs of mind-dampening influence, where blades of thoughts and stakes of aspirations faced shields of contempt and walls of indifference. The creatures knew how to play this game, had been playing it longer than the wolfman himself, and so they had to listen, to respond, to look for the source of their weakness in what they said.

// ... we have a lot to offer...

They spoke and did not lie, for they could indeed, as they could, brighten the endless longing that only a Hero, who had reached his goal and realized that he had reached the wrong goal, knows. Who but a soul scientist would know what they were offering? What was the difference between the almost disintegrated, mangled soul of the cultists sent to him and a true masterpiece, the basis of which would be another soul, a powerful soul, a soul that could control the process itself, direct it, complete it?

// ...you know what we're going to take...

The two seducers whispered, not rushing to back up their whispers in any way, working only with pure facts and logic. They could have killed him before the massacre began, immediately incapacitating a unit as dangerous as R'Arnristal was. All they did was welcome him, give him a chance to gather his strength, give him a chance to think and evaluate, to accept and understand.

// ...you still have nothing to lose...

The ringing of crystal and passionate moaning, saying all the things he'd known for a long time, understood for a long time, and, in fact, hadn't even hidden from himself or others. He had no family, no place he wanted to call home. All his friends are either dead or no longer friends, and he fights and kills in the name of those he doesn't really care about. Promised devils always carry poison. It is an axiom that can be broken only by a few out of millions, but any poison can become a cure. And even if it can't, there are moods when even poison can be drunk.

// ...warranties...

His answer is clear and concise even if he is willing to take the poison almost willingly, it doesn't mean he wants to just die right away. Or worse than dying - even a soul mage can be captured and restrained in such a way as to take away his soul, and he could answer nothing. The creatures had promised much and were ready to promise more, honestly voicing the price that no one in his right mind would pay. Could he, who had long since been extinguished inside and out, be called sane?

// ...absolutely any...

Clawing and screaming, orgasmic passion, and innocent purity.

...deal...

...sealed...

It wasn't easy to create a channel, but he wouldn't be himself if he couldn't manage it without distracting himself from the ongoing battle, especially since he had help and assistance from the other side. Quietly, invisibly, without arousing any suspicion, having at the same time hacked the amulets and minds of a couple of the most sensitive bodyguards assigned to him by the tacticians. They still do not see the whole picture, noticing only the old beast folk sitting in the rocking chair, who seem to be asleep. Only the most sensitive of them can pick up the notes of the forces he is using to realize that he is not just sleeping but doing something. Those who could understand what he was doing. He sent them away from a foolish death in an unequal fight.

The soul cried and moaned as the second of the weaker creatures came inside his body, coming straight through the channel he had built. It entered him without pain, skillfully and gently, as if it knew in advance that he would agree that it would have to flow into his body through such a channel. It was probably true - the creatures knew about him, had been preparing for this deal, and were sure he would accept it.

Lust and passion don't really cloud the brain. They stay at the very edge of consciousness. When it's needed, no one controls Vice better than a devil who smells prey. A new path, a new stream, and a river are harder to create, but now there are two of them, and the second one, not even trying (and he tracks in full readiness for betrayal) to influence him, helps with all her skill. No matter how strong he is, no matter how far down his path, she will not yield to him. Devils and souls are always one, without the latter, there will be no former.

The second transmission was disguised as an ordinary mental thread of communication, the kind he had made by the dozens, now and then giving hints to commanders or individual fighters. If General Kara accepted his message and opened her mind, he would attack - fast, clear, deadly sharp, with all his skill.

A blow, an interception of thought, and an immediate shift in perception.

Before the General even realized the attack, she had already forgotten about it, stopped perceiving the created channel, and could not realize the existence of R'Arnristal, who was in her thoughts. He couldn't have done it on his own. The General's amulets were too good. She was very strong in will and mind, but he wasn't alone. The latter is helping with all her strength, and the former, whom he is no longer hindering but covering, has not only opened a gap in the amulets but is also discreetly dispersing the attention of the general's retinue.

A moment later, the second one was already inside Kara, who was experiencing a continuous orgasm, unnoticed by everyone. The short and boyishly built woman, like a teenager, never falters, never stops giving commands, not giving her orgasms any importance, because they have become the new norm, a sign of contentment and good mood. Her Chain of Command is only getting stronger, branching out, encompassing more and more, and sending something else along with the commands and orders. Something that none of the junior commanders and tacticians see or realize, and even if they do, the three of them quickly extinguish it.

The army would be able to counter both him and these two, albeit not without difficulty, not without loss of manpower, and not without loss of initiative, but their actions come from inside the perimeter of the defense, stealthily and discreetly. Perfectly chosen tactics and superb execution. He doesn't hesitate to relay it over the communications network. The response is only a flirtatious acceptance of the compliment, like a quiet chuckle mixed with an invitation to taste the same caresses himself.

After six minutes, the armies stop destroying each other, though the strikes, especially the ultra-long-range strikes made by mages from behind the front lines, continue.

After ten minutes, General Kara switches completely to non-verbal command through the Chain because her mouth finds itself constantly occupied by members of her entourage, and a small queue lines up to the field headquarters. A general commanding through the Chain can make her subordinate cum almost instantly, so the queue moves very quickly.

Twenty minutes later, the general has already swallowed many liters of semen, which all goes into her form, turning the skinny and androgynous blood carrier of some very ancient and extinct race into a bimbofied version of herself, and almost the entire army is no longer shyly snuggling and engaging in intercourse with recent enemies.

Half an hour later, Cesare Trimes is handing the Bell of Decay to one of the creatures, not taking his eyes off the three cultists and one cultist who are spoon-feeding him something that looks suspiciously like shit. The rest of the strongest fighters have fallen even earlier, the Chain of command only getting stronger, and the panicked cries and orders from the command amulets leading to the Palace have long since gone unheeded.

"Your part of the deal is done." Not even trying to betray or get into his soul, says the first one that finally shows itself. "My Sovereign will fulfill our obligations today."

Lean as she was for such a strong creature, only slightly taller than him, red-skinned and naked, perfect in every movement, and just as dangerous, the deviless was uncharacteristically collected as for her species. Not all is well with them. Not everything has gone as smoothly as it did here.

"If." Speaks out, knowing that the creature groping him with the attentions of the souls of many seers will understand the full implication without difficulty.

"If." She agrees, wanting him even more but not daring to go against the bargain for now and under these conditions, probably fearing the wrath of her archdevil.

Or his endorsement.

"Would you care to visit the Lady General?" With a single touch, he made the passing cultist act as a chair, on which she sat down with the pleasure of stretching her perfect legs forward. She asked without interest or desire to tease, for he and this upstart's family, these arrogant idiots so chafing at the heritage in their blood that regularly reinforced that heritage, despite all the risks to the endowment, had clashed in his time. "In parting, so to speak."

"I've already said goodbye to everyone."

Somehow, after these words, she shut up and was even insulted, albeit in her own devilish way.
* * *

The symphony of the feelings of one who deprives himself of his essence is a dainty sweetness that quickly becomes boring, especially in such situations when there are too many sources of the right note around. But more often than not, we are talking about the usual adepts of Madness, with a gaggle of laughter and a predictably comical misunderstanding of commonplace truths, losing that part of the melody that makes them mortal, or someone who has already accomplished much. Someone who, with his power and will, draws an inexpressibly special shade of melody, creating a separate thread in the overall symphony. But if this someone is desperately unwilling to take such a step.....

Having managed to open such a wrongly cold shell of non-existence, he understood this boy much better than he could have imagined. The last and the first, doomed to defeat from the beginning, desperate to prove something not even to those around him but to the whole world, without realizing what it was he wanted to prove. The soul of the doomed Loneliness was so sweet that his heart overflowed with the sweet sadness of not being able to warm that soul himself, the soul that had so much room for his beloved Lust but which had deprived itself of everything.

It was like a sip of the rarest wine, a single breath of a skillfully created perfume that would immediately pass away, disappearing forever. He wanted to catch its note, to pour it into my melody, to make it part of the petals of my flower, to raise it to a new pedestal of the all-powerful Chorus, but sometimes you have to accept the world as it is. To enjoy what can and should be enjoyed instead of empty regrets of the impossible. No longer human, no longer Summoned, has gone too far, leaving him only to watch this fall, to squeeze as much passion out of it as possible. Take all you can, hear the rhythm, memorize the notes, and then leave the fool who lost his chance in his well-deserved Loneliness.

The chorus sang and boiled, parsing and analyzing the information received, integrating the pictures torn out from under the shell of non-existence into the mosaic of events, which, at last, acquired new integrity, more complete and perfect. Here was that piece of the puzzle, that lost trill of the flute missing from the whole picture. The murder of a Prince stripped of his name and memory, the failure to follow his melody under the gaze of a slumbering giant, the broken points of control, one of which had fallen even before the Eternal could be wrenched from its shabby existence. At least the destruction of Touch, at last, for which he wanted to thank with all shades of submissive passion, to plunge into the abyss of shrieking vulgarity because it would take a long time to create, to weave a new specialist of this kind out of other people's desires. Well, or to forge someone from the existing ones, but, all Aspects witnessed, he hated to repeat himself so blandly, to create something out of necessity, but not out of the flight of fancy.

He stepped on the carpet of softened bodies and secret signs that covered the square of forgotten Poets, with each touch correcting the multiplying errors, changing the discrepancies, correcting the incorrectness. The Source of the Keys on the back of the body chosen for this day released new and new threads, forming the melody of the petals, ensuring his wishes were transmitted to the battlefield, controlling and shuffling the treasury of the Chorus, selecting the optimal timbre. Part of the consciousness was here and now, part was indulging in debauchery with Chorus in the past, part was looking into the future, part was waging a war, an unnecessary, unnecessary war with the Palace, which did not want to understand all the benefits of the path predetermined for them and fall into his arms, part was fighting through the eyes and hands of his toys, and part, in general, was in sweet anticipation of something, remaining in reserve.

The Flaming Maiden burned out once again, rising from the ashes a little different, a little closer to the perfection he had ordained for her. He could push, tear out the soul, and plunge it into one of the petals, but it was so crude, so unsophisticated, and so disgustingly logical that he would not allow himself to think of such a perversion. Sometimes, of course, the perversity of simple solutions is a source of depravity, but today, he has a different Chorus, a different matrix of thought, and very different desires, not the mood. No.

How many more times would she be resurrected before she fully completed this circle of rebirths, already voluntarily joining the ranks of his children, his toys, and dolls? Eight, or is it still twelve? It is indeed an interesting thought, so interesting that he again decides to roll back a little the changes already made, to let the captive feel these changes, to be horrified in orgasmic ecstasy, and to resist them without noticing the new web already being laid. A strong soul, a strong Flame, which is not spoiled even by the shattered chains to which she reaches with all her might as if holding on to an anchor that pulls her to the bottom, away from the blissful garden that has already been prepared for her.

Passing by, going his route, looking like a completely random tossing through the Square of the Seven glowing from his magic, he again runs his fingers over the cheek of the maiden so submissive in her unwavering defiance, causing a new ecstasy, a new flash of flame, a new piece of personality, a new melody in place of the old, already shabby one.

Without noticing.

Not making it.

Without realizing.

The blow comes out of nowhere, as if there were no one to see in his Chorus as if the closed field of hundreds of other, separate fields and effects created by the petals did not exist. The shadow - evil, alien, unable to hear his melody as well as to reproduce any melody attacks swiftly and uncompromisingly. Anticipation of the last step helps to see and realize what is coming without understanding either the nature of the attack or its source, but this is not necessary.

The petals quiver, giving the command to Chorus, the right souls taking the position, opening the way for the event that would suit him best. Again, with joy and lustful laughter, the stranger's fate shelters him, taking the damage of the blow that its Sovereign was to take. But at the last moment, he sees the absolute hatred of the Shadows change trajectory, taking the form of a thin and deceptively fragile paw with blades instead of fingers, leaving real wounds in space. Instead of trying to give pain to a soul just waiting for it, the Shadow blades cut several dozen controlling threads from the Source Keys, disrupting the petals and bringing the forgotten sensation of the damage done.

It had been a long time since he'd enjoyed pain so much, a long time since he'd forgotten what it felt like to be hit, to be able to reach his goal at least a fraction of the way the threads of the keys had become a part of him. The pleasure of his essence, the changed tone of the rhythm of events could have been the jewelry that would have been stored in his memory for centuries, if not for something else. The passionate pleasure of the blow he had received was not even close to the sincere and forgotten surprise that had come over his delighted essence at the moment when he did not recognize his attacker.

It was the same one, the fallen one.

But it wasn't the creature he turned out to be.

Something different, changed but not defiled.

With the sound of a quiet exhalation, he spells the surrounding matter, manifesting the necessary patterns on the signs lining the square, striving by no means to kill but to capture, to take this accomplishment for himself. Guessing, but not even thinking that he would be the one to dedicate to Lust to someone who would be able to pass this way twice, even by different routes. It delighted him so much that it gave him new breath and strength and removed the doubts sprouting from the list of growing losses.

The patterns burn with fire, stitching reality together with a harsh thread, forbidding the hungry Loneliness to call to this feast, cutting off the adept of the Shadow and its Overlord into the arms of Sovereign. The four souls summon the Truth changed for them, the tainted Light closing the cell with a new layer, creating a multifaceted structure that is complemented by new patterns sprouting already upon it. The group of seers, singled out from the general Chorus, especially for this moment, indicates to the souls of the ritual masters the right combination, closing the structure without return.

The mortal who had fallen back into the human body tried to resist, rejecting one invitation after another, but his will cracked more and more, yielding to the relentless pressure, and the glow of Truth made him fall to his knees, bowing before what his new Sovereign was about to give him. The chains formed inside the cage, with links of all colors of the rainbow, cut into the reinforced fabric of the tattered cloak, into the garments beneath it, and into the flesh itself, almost reaching the bare essence...

.//.. break ...

The patterns burn with fire, stitching reality together with a harsh thread, forbidding to call hungry Loneliness to this feast, cutting off the adept of the Shadow and its Overlord into the arms of Sovereign, but the limbs of the mortal who had changed his Form were beating against the key parts of the pattern, wrapped in predatory jaws. Each blow is weak, worthless, and useless, but it is delivered exactly when it should be delivered as if it had not been read from cover to cover before, but the other way around. The seers, allocated specifically for this blow, change the vector, trying to find a gap in the archdevil's information defense, but find only the usual perfection, which this mortal simply could not break or deceive.

The four souls marked by the Light flare up, but the super-powered cell meets only a shadow that has lost all dimension, only the trace of one who has gone to his Loneliness almost forever, leaving behind only this mockery, a shadow of shadows, nonexistent and therefore invulnerable. Slipping from the grip of the four, it does not attempt to defend itself or retreat, attacking again, spitting a chunk of pristine blackness, almost crystallized Shadow energy right into the center of the devil's current body, aiming to strike the top node of the interspiritual bonds. It wouldn't kill or even scratch the base of the soul bunches, but it would be unpleasant and even a little painful.

It's starting to seem funny.

He and the souls of his beloved beholders caught a different, different development of events, an opposite outcome of the confrontation to the present one. Only a trace of it remained, swirls of vague memories, as if the past had never happened or had only appeared to be the past. The effect was not on the mind, not on memory, of that Sovereign could be sure, for those were his tools, the basis of his melody. No, the fragments of other unfulfilled events, tangible not only to the souls of those who saw but even to himself, did not come from this side. Not suggestion, not illusion, but something close to the control of causality. The devil could do that, too, albeit with a different configuration of Chorus, one not so suited to countering the Palace or the Avatara that had broken through the shroud.

But this is he - Sovereign of his toys, the master of his melody, and all others who hear it. Doomed to Loniless could not pull off such a thing simply because the hungry essence of his nature does not give such gifts and does not allow similar approaches. It gives other powers, powerful and dangerous, but not the same, not the same! The artifact was not the answer, could not be, for already Sovereign had managed to enlighten his unruly toy before it fell for the first time, finding no such things on it. And he would not have missed the unusual trill that such an attribute of sorcery would have made, nor would he have dared, nor would he!

But then how?

Passion boils.

The desire is boiling.

He craves this mortal even more.

The flesh on one of the material body's arms takes on a steely sheen, frustratingly releasing the note of one of the too-old, too-long-sounding souls objectifying the highly unusual Miracle. A blow from the altered hand shatters the crystal of blackness, releasing a cloud of darkness hidden within the hardened charms. Ribbons, hooks, needles, and even a few small creatures would be enough to take down a small fortress, but all the power of another plane is sucked up by the steely glint of Miracle's greed for other power. The chime of regret for the lost toy is mixed with the pleasure of that regret, the kind that only those who have learned to rejoice in letting go forever can understand.

The steel arm, folded in a pinch, beat forward as if he did not notice the quarter hundred steps between him and the mortal, forcing the latter to turn back into a flat and bland shadow, to lull the melody again, to get rid of the rhythm. White noise, devoid of all the grace of the usual mutilation of the mockery of the nature of the universe, for the very existence of which comes a natural punishment. Hundreds of drops of black liquid, like tar or alchemical oil, come off the fingers of the second hand, wrapping around the remaining silhouette, forcing it to become real again or to fall into the Shadow forever when the blackness blurs the two-dimensional shadow and deprives the summoned of the way back. A dozen threads leading to the Source lash out, breaking through all defenses, existing and not existing at the same time, binding the two of them tightly together, forcing the mortal (though whether he is still mortal remains to be seen, for he still has not uncovered the message of his essence) to accept the imposed duel on the devil's field. Two minds clash against each other. No matter how much of a champion this summoned one is, no matter how real he is, he is destined for nothing less than defeat. A second, even less than that - that was how long it took for the archdevil to break the defenses of silence and white noise, to make the pattern of sound play a familiar melody, weaving it into his own. Memories, aspirations, ties of friendship and comradeship - all this was rapidly mastered, viewed and, finally, changed under the inner laughter of Sovereign who did not restrain ecstasy, sweetly finishing the last chords of someone else's li.....

...break...

The flesh on one of the arms of the material body part takes on a steely sheen, frustratingly releasing the note of one of the too-old, too-long-sounding souls objectifying a highly unusual Miracle. A blow from the altered hand shatters the crystal of blackness, which bursts with contemptuous ease, revealing only the emptiness of a planted hoax, a false target, a hastily concocted and carefully recolored ruse whose power would not even be strong enough to kill a mere beast or ordinary mortal warrior. The realization of the Steelheart Cleric's wasted, wasted melody rang deep within the Chorus, a nurturing thirst, an anger as sweet and seductively sticky as the chirping of a songbird.

The sweep of the steel-covered hand is unrestrained by anything, unleashing an invisible, inaudible, and unstoppable death. The steel edict. No matter how one is corrupted, it will remain one of the strongest weapons of the never-before-seen religion on Alurei, something that simply must force the mortal to turn silent... again. Chorus flounders in sour-sweet agony, trying to grasp the remnants of memories that never happened. Like a vision that happened neither earlier nor later but at the same time as what happened. The lord and all those guests of his Chorus who watched this scene remembered, saw, and knew a different outcome. It was as if there were two versions of the same event, an exemplary success and an abysmal failure.

The steel pierces the essence of the mortal who did not use the iconic and familiar technique, which immediately swells into a cloud of blackness, falling to the ground and retracting into glowing sigils and melting flesh. A deception dropped like a snake's skin the instant an equally deceptive attack was spat out. The chorus sings, bringing out the right note, forcing him to turn his back to the settling wisps of blackness, hiding the naked Source of the Keys, taking in the crossed arms, covered by five barriers based on three planes, a new blow.

The mortal strikes again, just as he had the last time. Desperately, with no hope of surviving the blow, no attempt to defend himself, no intention of surviving. But he didn't survive, did he? Twice, the devil had taken his tune and replaced it with his own, but it was as if he'd swapped one outcome for another. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong! Shadows can't do it. Hundreds of unseeing eyes, thrown from every place from which they can be dragged, focused on the hungry emptiness of objectified Loneliness. He has no artifact, no blessing of any kind, and the mortal himself has wrapped himself in Shadow completely and utterly, with no chance to use anything but the cursed Shadow!

But he was doing something.

Something unclear.

Making himself wanted.

More and harder.

Instead of attacking back, the devil breaks the distance, retreating in a soft crouching step, commanding space to stretch that step to a hundred meters, to stop and raise his hands to the purple heavens. The petals flashed ethereal colors, reducing the onslaught on the Palace, slowing the process of descending, releasing hundreds and hundreds of lights, shuffling the working assembly of the Chorus into one less suited for war with the stronghold of the Eternals. Analysis, understanding, adaptability - a new Chorus, a new memory, and even, in some ways, a new personality, a new Sovereign taking the place of the old, approaching the enemy from a different angle.

The enemy steps forward, in one step transforming from the silhouette of a black man into a multi-legged creature with six jaws, to step as a crawling serpent, slithering across the stones of the square filled with the ringing of his chant, to step as a gigantic stingray, a sea manta of black color, to step again as an impossibly long stick man, as thin as he is tall, reaching with his sharp and hunched shoulders to the tops of the houses surrounding the square.

Step, new shape, step, new shape, step, new shape...

The mortal changes himself with each new form, making it difficult to analyze, forcing the Chorus to begin the autopsy anew, to pick up the melody for his silence anew. It is only fitting that it will take its beloved victim, love him, and he will love Sovereign in return, but each change rolls back that term and fills the hourglass of another's existence anew. With this Chorus, this Sovereign is able to simply drink the soul and take it out the moment he can understand nature, matching the most perfect and alluring song to every type of consciousness, personality, and thinking. The sheer number of beholders submissive to his Lust accelerates the process to such an extent that the already absolute technique, the best of the seducing forms of his Chorus, becomes utterly foul, irresistible, unstoppable.... useless in the here and now.

He doesn't attack the petals, doesn't try to snatch the soul-fires rearranged in the shuffle of the Chorus, doesn't tear the patterns that cover the stones of the sidewalk and doesn't even try to snag the threads of the Source. He simply walks, winding a circle after the unhurriedly treading Sovereign, as if they were two brethren in a circle or two hungry dogs over fresh prey. Such unaccustomed silence and music, such pleasant song, a screamingly molested scene. The card is laid out, the card is beaten, and Time, impassive Time, plays against both of them.

It's so beautiful!

The first to break this peace is the one who started it, showing such a deathly foolish impatience, unwillingness to evaluate the situation, the overture drawn by desires and memory. Another appearance of the creature, under which the sweet and unruly soul of the endowed one is still hidden, explodes with blackness, apparently attacking the very structure of the pattern covering the area. Predictable, naive, stupid, delightful, and hundreds of thousands of other epithets that have no analog in any existing language, created and invented by the supreme devil for himself alone.

As before the blow of despair. As before, with no intention of surviving it. As before, only because of this suicidal despair does it have some measure of success. Part of the sidewalk blackens, burns, and resurrects anew, flying upwards in multicolored sparks, breaking control and lowering the limit of suppression, accelerating the melting of flesh throughout the structure. Petals erupt again, unfit to strike inside the perimeter they created but far from defenseless, unleashing a classic, almost image-boring stream of soul blades. Each ghostly sword is a single soul embedded in it, simple and unremarkable. Hence, the ghostly glow is, for the most part, monotonous.

A little more fire - the tendency to the fiery aspects of development. A little black - the weight of madness bending into Darkness. A fraction of scarlet - blood spilled by warriors or brigands. Simple souls but invested in enchantments to the end, to the last of their wills, which they gladly fulfill for the sake of the new pleasures they will find at the end of existence. Each blade, on its own, is not so dangerous to such an unusual mortal, but there are many, after all.

The wounded Shadow, now a clump of segmented limbs around a toad-like body, does not scream or rage but only hisses faintly, losing chunks of its flesh to regrow them immediately. The multilayered barriers waste strength, force them to stop breaking patterns, the barriers give way, fall before the superior power, and it is too difficult, too impossible, to use deeper techniques, to send blades into the Shadow itself, in this place, where Hell is in power and where no Shadow can reside, especially if the devil is interfering with the rift-building process.

A titanic form, a hulk of shadowy flesh, saves the day, but the blow is struck. The defeat is again predetermined as the devil completes another rebuild and becomes another Sovereign, new again, a new melody born only now and only for this battle. A reason to desire the mortal even more tenaciously. It's been a long time since anyone made him rebirth himself twice. This soul would love him forever, more than forever, simply because it could not and would not be otherwise.

The blow is like the elegant gesture of a court maid of honor, the shy murmur of an embarrassed maiden, the tender touch of a mother bidding farewell to her son, atomizing with careless ease the hulk of a converted mortal who cannot defend himself. The blow stripped away the blackness of the hungry creature like an invisible grater cast from pure mithril, revealing the sparkle's radiance, the soul that yearned for his caress, so strange, so unlike ordinary, even very strong souls.

Fingers close on the impotently fluttering spark, sink into it with all the will of the mighty devil, releasing gentle and touchingly soft streams of flair so as not to damage the essence of the caught toy ...

...break...

The blow is like the elegant gesture of a court maid of honor, the shy murmur of an embarrassed maiden, the tender touch of a mother bidding farewell to her son. This lunge can defeat a wounded opponent, to break the exhausted nature of the summoned one who is tired of denying his and his Lust. Only he steps forward, boldly and passionately, again not trying to defend himself, to avoid the collision, making Sovereign believe for a brief moment that the mortal understood and was now ready to accept his gift with open arms.

The empty dream is scattered to dust by the storm when his caresses only shatter the discarded flesh like a lizard's tail. A tail the size of a two-story building, and yet the most important part still slips away, taking with it the spark he already thought was his. What a lingering, all-body blatant insolence! Is it decent to deny him such a small thing?

And this ability of his begins to seem more and more shameful because the joy of failure, the ecstasy of realizing that your prey, which has already become your prey, has slipped away again, is, of course, always pleasant, but not so many times in a row. The resistance of the chosen beloved adds sweetness and spices to the dish served on the table, making the sonata brighter and brighter. However, it is possible to over-sweeten it, turning the sweetness into the bitterness of fatigue when, even after catching someone else's melody, you do not have the strength to listen and rewrite it to the end.

How does he do it?

A question from those that cannot be solved so easily, not in such a deadline, not with so many melodies to be played by oneself, not under the sound of other people's instruments that seek to nurture dissonance specifically to one's creation. A question that he is able to answer, but the situation itself, when there is no time for the answer, no gap between the trills of other people's violins to find the answer.... beckons, and calls, squeezing one's gut in a sensual moan.

He is ready to step again, already in a new attack, at the same time pressing the newly rebuilt petals, changing new and old features, transforming the essence after them. Instead, he places a strong, almost monolithic barrier based on the primordial Cold, which disperses the heavy and murky spear of blood and fierce Flame with vapor and hissing drops. The unhappy sway of essence travels from the fine threads of the Source, from the many-faced petals and the body grown for this day, all the way down into the depths of the Chorus, through every section of the Domain that shuddered at His wrath. Sovereign hated it when anyone dared to interrupt his work, leaving it forever unfinished, devoid of perfection!

The strange mortal, his beloved, stands motionless, the toe of his left foot touching the paving stones of the mangled square as if weighing nothing, swaying in time with the blowing of the air currents. Beneath his mask, there is no smile, no grin, seemingly nothing, except Hunger and Loneliness, which cover him with their absolute shield. Instead, his mask laughs as if testing the devil's patience, testing how long he will allow his lover to torment and stretch it.

The other stands differently, resting against the fleshless stone, melting with heat and anger, the way a marching lad tramples the ground with steel boots. Her bare feet and the rest of her body are covered with a fine mesh of red-hot threads as if the maiden were wearing dragon scales. Are the scales, or are they the petals of a marvelous flower, encircling this animated and fierce elemental with indestructible armor? Does anger or fear drive her, burning her very personality in the furnace of the almighty Flame?

He had managed to forge her, making the maiden rising from the ashes a little different time after time, but there was still too much to be done. She was still rebellious, still not accepting his tune, still howling trumpets of fiery prominences, drums of promises and confessions burning in her fire. She is no longer the one who came here to buy her masters some time, no longer the one who vainly hoped to interrupt the descent, if only at the cost of her essence. And yet, and yet ... she was not his yet, for to turn her to her end too soon would be a true insult to the art to which the creature had dedicated its existence.

Neither of them were his adversaries, neither the dog on the chain of the Eternals who had been freed and miraculously retained the will to fight, nor the last of those who had escaped the spiked collar. In another place, in another time, they would have been at each other's throats, each bearing his song, his notes of truth and shimmering lies. Today, the situation is different and extraordinary, forcing the irreconcilable opponents to suspend a little the hunger of loneliness, the hatred of destruction.

Still not dangerous - neither the renewal of the maiden nor the change of the latter would protect them from Sovereign's real attack, nor would it help if he stopped looking for the beauty of melodies, did not play the role assigned to himself, but did what he most disliked to do. Just come and take what he can without the distraction of his cage of inhibitions and desires.

Still, too weak.

But still talented enough, satisfactorily inventive, superbly prepared, for anyone else to consider this moment.... no, not a turning point, not even a success, just one with any chance of becoming one. To become, if the phantom advantage was developed, to give truth to a false chance, because who else would choose the moments but those for whose caresses he had come here. Slowly and picturesquely turning around, the devil already knew, had time to scan in a dozen ways who exactly had been brought to their musical feast.

Warudo the Eternal stood calmly, seemingly unafraid to even tread the defiled ground, simply cocooning himself in a cocoon of timelessness, looping his current state as it should be. The eldest son of the Emperor, his undisputed heir, the first of the princes, and the strongest potential Chronomancer in the world, promising to surpass even his not weak father in everything. And he had come exactly where his future Sovereign was waiting for him.

The prince's gaze is calm and stern, devoid of both insecurity and fear, as well as hot hatred, only a sense of duty and an understanding of the necessity of conflict. This mortal had always, since childhood, been known for a character extremely phlegmatic and cruel. The Eternals tried to hide it, but the boy, who perceived Time in several directions at once, thought differently from humans, even more differently than "ordinary" Eternals.

Alas, it is not to be hoped that hatred for his brother's murderer, whom he undoubtedly recognized immediately, will cloud his understanding of the situation and compel him to attack his ally, pitting his personal Summoned against him as well. He will have his revenge. He doesn't even doubt that revenge will be exacted, but the Alishan shadowuser as he sees him will die after he has atoned for some of his guilt with his life and blood.

Oh, Alishan, that's so ironic. It makes the molasses sweet!

It was so commonplace and human to fit what had happened into the limited framework. Even the fact that the devil himself, having received the words of his toys, considered the same way before meeting the last of the first did not change this feeling of superiority. He understood everything and recognized the melody of truth hidden behind the silence of the void, but the Eternals could not. That is why he triumphs, and they do not. Isn't it clear?

The three stand around him as if forming a ritual figure, paying no attention to the thick, startlingly concentrated fleur, nor to the petals humming with tension that are too focused on conjugation to engage in this battle at full force, nor to all the promises he is willing to make to them for a drop of their love, for their notes within his melody.

The Shadowman is still as weightless and intangible, hidden and wrapped in his cherished loneliness, only a glowing image on the surface of the mask, playing with the blade of the dagger. Sovereign is not ready to swear it, but this dagger seems to him just a strip of ordinary steel, not even enchanted. Somewhere out there, beneath the tattered cloak, anything from a divine artifact to nothing could be hidden, but the caution that flared from the lack of information, the impossibility of hearing someone else's melody, whispered, inaudible rustle convinced him that there could be no simple dagger in those hands, that they would not let a steel devoid of secrets to such a symphony.

Varudo is leaning on a heavy, even ancient-looking sword of primitive and crude forging, and the devil knows exactly what kind of blade it is and why even he shouldn't let it get close to him. The heavy armor hides the prince's entire body, leaving only his head and face exposed. He would have covered it, too, but there is no helmet for this set of mythical armor. The master had no time to forge one. The blade and the armor are two equally powerful artifacts that, together with the will of the Law, give you a chance to survive at least a few seconds of one-on-one combat against the Archdevil. The armor that protects against any attack, any blow, but only those that can be inflicted by a single, pre-selected opponent - chosen even before the Eternal emerged from the flow of the River. A sword that would not leave even a scratch after a missed blow, but only the first, while the second would be the last, the final one, capable, perhaps, of stopping the music even for him.

Sophia the Flame, one of the strongest Summoned of the Continent and probably even the world, was nearly naked, worse than naked. Going out on what she understood to be her latest venture, she had not had the opportunity to dress herself up in the best protection possible. Her standard attire, a set of lightweight garments of legendary value, as strong as a knight's armor, burned in her fire as she attempted her strike, interrupting the convergence. The feather of the Ancient Phoenix, given to her by the universe itself at the moment of summoning, was now guarding the border with Alishan and, therefore, could not be used. But even having burned to the ground a dozen times, no longer resembling the one who burned for the first time in this long day, which became a blink of an eye, she is ready to kill and die. For a new homeland, for the Empire, and for Warudo, her beloved and precious one, who at this moment holds a chain invisible even to the archdevil, which bound the essence of the one who in another history would have been embodied by the Chosen One.

Three against one is not a fair fight at all. Too clear and utterly unchallenging in its predictable simplicity. Only slightly diluting the monotonous sound of frozen notes is the need to keep converging, to keep track of the battle in the city, rectifying it where the toys proved too stupid, willful, and useless.

He watched the myriad lights of the captive souls, giving his will to each of his servants, once again reshaping the sound of the Chorus to fit the shifting situation. Once more, Sovereign allows himself to bow picturesquely to none of the three but to each of them. Bowing, enticing, promising, enticing, enticing, seducing, seducing, tempting, and no doubt foretelling what is already obvious.

you'll all be mine.

The answer to his mercy was the coordinated attacks of the trio, as if they were not enemies, as if they had been fighting back to back all their lives.
* * *

Golems in the Empire of Ages were loved, used, and even respected by those who provided these units for armies, guards, aristocratic squads, or even individual guilds with trading houses. It was hard not to like a thing that could replace the average fifty men, taking the blows of enemy charms and arrows while protecting the more vulnerable meat bags from those blows. The Empire of Ages knew a lot about golem-building, both creating its creations and buying the mechanics of the Undermountain Kingdom, always having at its disposal a wide range of extremely fanciful, expensive to maintain, difficult to repair, but crushing in terms of combat giants.

Alas, there were relatively few such golems in Eternal. The place of such creations, be they solid-stone or mechanical, based on temple magic or classical magic, has always been near the borders of the state. That's where they belong because fast delivery of golems from the center of the empire is simply impossible without investing a crazy effort. The power of the golem in the ability to tear as paper infantry formation, sending ordinary soldiers, junior officers, grassroots mages, or even near-elite units to the other side of the world. Strong, unique, and really developed warriors or sorcerers are not afraid of the golem, and ten golems, too. At most, they will retreat.

There is a simple truth to this. There is nothing for a golem to do in a capital city that is protected from the arrival of a regular army. There is simply no place to use it because even if a group of mighty saboteurs breaks through to the heart of the empire, which sometimes happens, they will be opposed by the same mighty imperials, and by the time the sluggish constructs are brought to the end, everything will be over.

One way or another.

Nevertheless, there were a few golem squads in the capital, mostly from those belonging to non-army structures. For example, the main temple of the Ascended Warrior was guarded by two dozen silent marble statues at once, animated by the divine Miracle. At any moment, they could come down from their pedestals, stone fists, swords, or hammers, proving the power of their creator, because not for nothing, they say that inside each of them sleeps the soul of the adept marked by the Warrior. The other smaller temples also had such defenders, but in smaller numbers and of lower quality.

Then again, there were the dwarves, who always equipped their Embassies or Craftsmen's Quarters as if they were ready to withstand a siege and not an allied city but an enemy camp. A healthy paranoia, which they indulged, and they were always trying to forbid them to indulge. If, for some reason, they decided to stab them in the back during some conflict. But they tolerated it, of course, even though they warned against betrayal in every possible way, most often successfully.

The only mechanized brigade of heavy golems stationed in the capital was number sixteen and was not so much a military unit as a repair shop with a touch of training camp. A good portion of the shortlings living within the walls of the Eternal worked here, helping, repairing, and even teaching. Knowledge, of course, was not given to everyone, but the methods of the dwarven Mechanists and Pilots were never particularly secret. These secrets of skill are very much customized to the race, without which it is difficult to master them even halfway. The dwarves preferred to recruit those brilliant, who could surpass or at least match the dwarves on this field, lest one day, such a briliant should come to the tip of the army storming the Undermauntin. Sometimes, they even managed to get ahead of Imperial intelligence.

In any case, despite the number of available vehicles, both controlled and manned, it was at least problematic to use them against the guests from Hell. Some had been dismantled, some had already served their time and were good only for parts or meltdowns, and some existed only on paper, but in reality, they were quietly sold under the table. It is quite likely that it was sold to one of the undercover cultists - it was very timely and successful to sell the last very large batch right before it started.

Right now, Todbum of House Tsvrgpdk, nicknamed One Brow by his kin and people alike, did not even have the strength to curse his greed, so busy was he with the most fascinating task possible - to survive. His personal, moving with him from one place of service to another, walking armor of the Toughness Crusher class worked on the wear and tear of all parts, without mercy to the delicate structure of the alchemical propulsion and fragile core. Liquid flame, almost a material essence, albeit diluted with petroleum additives, poured from the flamethrower, stamped lead balls the size of hen's eggs by the materializers in the cartridges to the two automatic lead-gun turrets on his shoulders, but the charges to the main gun, replacing the left arm, had to be saved. They were pure cold steel with thick mithril plating and runic treatment - even the legendary beast had its teeth and brains knocked out by such shells. The devils were fidgety creatures, taking skill and leveling any damage by paying with other people's souls, but even they had to respect the Crusher and the One Brow sitting in it.

Two elite creatures, four huge piles of possessed flesh - the tactical crystal lens of clairvoyance called them some sort of Sowers, but to the straightforward dwarf, they remained under the name of walking asses - resembling asses walking on two fat thighs, and one large crystal golem, not otherwise taken from converted mortals, had fallen to the day's portable cannon fire. And then there were the two legendary creatures that had taken a couple of hits each and were now staying away, waiting for Todbum to run out of steam as his allies did. The fleur has little effect on the fighters in the golems, dropping, weakening, and being shielded by the glow of the runes slowly melting from overheating. It is possible to mess with their heads, which creatures in practice proved, forcing them to shoot into their comrades or just fall out of the battle, but a certain protection had everyone.

The pilots...

If he had known that he would call those sad clowns who were standing next to him, watching his back Pilots, he would have died on his beard! Except for his relatives, who were also not the luminaries of talent, himself, and a couple of talents who came here by chance, no one could control the mechanism of the golem armor properly.

But he acknowledged it, he acknowledged it, and paid tribute, if not to their skill, then to their willingness to fight and die, even without a chance of victory, even without hope of rescue. The news that came from the Palace was disappointing, claiming that the entire mechanical brigade had been cut off from the Allied forces and that there was nowhere to wait for help because it would be more cost-effective to send it to other places where it was needed more. They could only wish them luck and ask them to hold out as long as possible.

And they held on.

The old Hildra, a fat, squabbling old woman with the face of an ugly ogre, boorish and insolent, stood beside him, proving to Zvrgpdk that the Broken Kirk had lost its former influence to the point of giving even women the right to combat classes, but that their valor remained the same. Saddling a reinforced Disrupter, hidden in the iron gut of a tall machine taller than even his own, armed with a dozen battle wands of various orientations, the vile bitch stood behind Todbum's back, showering the attacking ranks with so much evil magic that there wasn't even any rot left of the average abomination after the hits.

A little behind them stood a formation of classical Colossuses, supported by unmanned Giant drones guided by their chasers, under the command of Bark of the Earth Shiver, a young upstart who had grown up under the Sun, not in the Underhill, a total pervert who drank beer without a foam cap and cure hungover with charms! And look at you, a sucker whose beard doesn't even wrap around his belly a couple of times. He holds the line in his Herald, shuffles reinforcing mechanoauras like a cheat's deck, and doesn't let the creatures break the already few defenders. Piloted golems and even guided golems are very few, even though it is possible to add stone golems, human-made, also serviced on their base.

Less than sixty working machines, of which there were now just over a quarter of a hundred. It's mostly standard Colossus, albeit with different types of armaments. That's serious power, capable of not conquering a small kingdom but pinching the borders and ravaging a couple of major cities. Todboom himself in his Crusher, a Hildra Disrupter that has already lost some of its wand armor, a more or less intact Herald whose pilot is about to die of a cerebral hemorrhage, two barely rebuilt and not really debugged Tearers... Too few, especially against devils who specialize in ranged combat and tricky tricks, too few.

True, there is another, shall we say, nuance.

"Wah, listen here, I your house garden trampled, I your Hell celibate introduced, I your mama without burqa seen, I your papa in burqa seen, come here, jackal's turd!" How much Todbum regretted at this moment that the first thing he did was not to remove its powerful stereo transmission systems from the personalized Hammer of the Empire sent for repairs, belonging to Uraz Kraz-Bamg himself, how much he regretted. "You fucked me, didn't you? I'll fuck you myself with this hammer, swalota, vanyushchee shit, rotten, moldy, asshole!"

A human couldn't use this piloted golem at all, just couldn't, and that's it. Personal binding to a completely different pilot, and dwarf, the lack of half of the necessary titles and class skills, which have nothing to replace and, in the end, the banal size of the pilot cabin! Honorable Uraz, even among low dwarves, was very low and puny, which forced him to seek a better life away from the House that did not accept the dwarf. The House had three hundred times regretted all its deeds that drove this talent out of the walls of the House, but they could not do anything about it.

Uraz became famous as one of the best Pilots in the world, having become an honored Hero years ago, one of those for whom the Emperor of the Ages commissioned a personal mechanical walking golem of the Hammer of the Empire class. Sitting in this behemoth, Uraz had more than once created such horror on the battlefield that his name was cursed in Alishan with enviable regularity. It did not add to the health of the already slim in body but mighty in spirit dwarf.

If it were the same Hero in the small cabin of the Hammer, it would not be mortals who would have to defend themselves now, but devils, for two legendary creatures the character of countless songs of praise, if not trampled down like cockroaches, would have forced to flee faster than a squeal and not return without reinforcements. Uraz Kraz-Bamg had recently traveled to the Undermountin Kingdom at their personal invitation, only to reject again the offer to return to the bosom of the waiting mountains. His vindictiveness was as worthy of legend as his skill. His personal war machine had been sent here from the border for testing and adjustment, and just to keep it from standing on the border, within easy reach of many saboteurs. No, it is extremely difficult to damage even the Hammer of the Empire, any of the three existing ones, standing motionless and out of control, and it is even harder to do it unnoticed, but why risk it?

Now they're gonna give it to the creatures.

Well, not right away.

"One at a time, bitches, one at a time, I'll give you all shit to eat, I'll give you shit to drink, I'll give you shit for change!" All the forces of Mountain let the next blow destroy the sound modules. His head hurts, honestly. "I'll remember you all, I'll slaughter you all, I'll kill you, you rotten jackals, I swear!"

Yes, indeed, a man would not be able to control this gigantic masterpiece of mechanical art, but that was a normal man. And it was difficult to call Barai, this miscarriage of the border mountain auls, who had crawled out of his stinking shithole for no clear reason, normal even in a relatively adequate state.

Actually, the young, boorish, unfriendly, but still talented to the point of injustice man was brought to his, Todbum's, brigade by the dried wobblers from the Eyes, whose department this scarecrow was under. Apparently, he was an important witness and, at first, even a suspect in some high-profile case on the border or even beyond it. In general, their games with small principalities, kingdoms, free cities, and other republics, which only say they are sovereign, but in reality are clearly under the Empire's ass. It's a familiar picture, only that they couldn't accuse this guy but threw him overboard as a waste material. Not out of pity for his ruined life, we are not in an anecdote or a love story, so that in the Eyes there was a place for compassion, but thanks to the skills of this savage roughneck.

Terribly crippled, missing both legs at the knee and one arm at the elbow, his face scarred and partially scalped, one-eyed and almost deaf, forced to speak through a mechanical enchanted voice modulator, he was not a worker but a mockery. Todbum would have thrown the "advised" specialist into the cesspool where such stumps belonged if he had not revealed part of his Status to the high-level Brigadier. Even if the classes were ridiculous and did not pay off injuries and unreliability. But the level and the list of titles inspired respect - very slight respect - even for the wise dwarf.

Looking at this human turd through his favorite sensor monocle, Todbum noted a lot of potential and the fact that either this cretin had jumped into the alchemical crucible, where some of his flesh and the essences that defined that flesh had been sucked out of him, or he'd dived into a breach in the Mist, which was even worse. So he was even more of a cretin than he looked. But accepted, of course. Thanks to Eyes' insistence not to throw away potentially strong recruits, and simply because he didn't know about the character of that fucking bastard Highlander at the time!

"Aaaah, you disgraceful bitch, your mother was a female hamster, and your father smelled like elderberries!" The beard of the first of the first, how loud that sound is, and also hissing and squeaking, because of the double-recording of the sound. "Your stupid face is uglier than my ass, and your ass is uglier than my brigadier's!"

For that last phrase, Todbum promised, if he survived, to punch the bastard in the face before giving him a personal victory feast, as he had already saved a lot of lives. And even his physical injuries won't save him because he's got it to his liver and more, the bastard. But their bastard, beastly, and just absolutely scum, which, of course, infuriates and requires regular threats of physical violence, and even use it. But at such moments, this craziness plays to the advantage of the whole brigade and its Brigadier because this shit can't be frightened if it is not afraid of its reflection.

Barai couldn't get into the cockpit of the Hammer. He just couldn't squeeze in because there wasn't enough room even for half a man. But there was only half a man left and the shittiest one at that, so he simply took off all his prosthetics, except for the voice one, managed to forge the access key somehow, and didn't break the golem's mechanics or himself against the defense. Yes, most of the golem's counter-control systems had been removed because, without the original pilot, it was hard to move it, let alone work on fixing it. But still, even with such indulgences, the ability to subdue the Hammer of the Empire at least partially without being bound to it.... that's a lot.

Todbum himself could do it, especially with the right preparations, the use of some of his amulets, the support of his own squad of mechanics, and God's help. Of all of the above, Barai had only a bottle of technical spirits, which did not kill him only thanks to the implant that had replaced half of his guts, but made the Highlander's already not-very-good accent unbearable. Todbum could do it, he could do it, but at the risk of killing himself with three chances against one for survival and success. Barai's chances were even lower, he was, after all, inferior to the Brigadier in everything, but he was lucky. Yes, lucky, very lucky. And he could throw off his limbs, but Todbum couldn't.
Отбросить коньки.

"Do you expect me to die in here, bitch?" The grinding of the filters and sound baffles of the built-in speakers seemed to work as another source of shock. "I wasn't hired to die for this paycheck! I survived last year's calamity not to be eaten by a cunt on chicken legs, fuck you, bitch, fuck you, pig dog, fuck you, son of a tax collector, fuck you, faggot!"

Yes, it was not the venerable Uraz the Exile, but it was still the Hammer of the Empire, even if it was used to barely a third of its potential, wasting resources and ammunition, wasting combat charges. And it was even more effective than the Brigadier because Todbum was in command, guiding the defense, directing the mechanics left in their workshops that right now were putting into battle more and more new controllable golems, and Barai was just killing. The armor and enchantments of the Hammer allowed him to ignore most of the fleur, preventing it from entering his mind, while the smaller part was calmly restrained by the madness that had seized the man and his stupidity - no brain, nothing to subdue.

The Hammer was even a little shorter than the faithful Crusher but almost twice as wide in the shoulders, reaching almost square proportions, and had a body made of an alloy of such price that the shavings taken from it could be sold almost by weight in gold. Yes, there is certainly not half of that weight of pure mithril, but only a little less. The combat effectiveness and strength of such a "body", created by dwarves for humans' mechanism, corresponded to its price, not to mention the fact that in addition to pure strength and resistance of the body were multi-layered and duplicated several times layers of runic scripts, there were personal generators of magical fields, there were embedded and fused into the body artifacts, among which even a couple of weak-weak, but legendary grade.

When attacking, the Hammer could fire astral beams of various types from its head, which was pressed deeply into the torso and could hit with telekinetic battering rams launched from the palm of his hand, which could tear down fortress walls, could use a lone lead-shooter turret on his left shoulder, firing not simple iron. There was also a hammer, which gave this model its name for a reason - one of the three legendary artifacts, for the use of which the project of creating the Hammers of the Empire was once born.

The weapon, too heavy for anyone but giants or very tall ogres, required truly steel muscles to lift it. But in the hands of an amazingly fast, maneuverable, almost invulnerable golem, this steel brick opened to the full, simply tearing barriers, ghostly flesh, and any matter to shreds. The standard manned type golems prefer to make either cannon-wielding or unleash them against a deliberately weaker but very numerous opponent. A strong warrior for a golem is, more often than not, too impetuous, fast, and elusive, but that's for a standard golem.

The Hammer of the Empire, under the control of Uraz, could literally dance with his enemies, taking apart one-on-one the legendary planar creature that had been summoned, the Alishan-created corpse-monster, the orcish battle monster that had also earned its legendary status, and even the cursed Necrotitan of the Great Desert. Well, if you take the blessings off that one beforehand, disperse the cover group and the escort, and then set fire to its flanks a bit more. Barai, sitting in the golem actually stolen from the glorious Hero, was also dancing, though not the graceful flow of movements of an experienced swordsman, but the drunken mating dance of a lame goblin. But he did it quickly, very quickly, and no matter how bad his movements were, no matter how wrong his blows were, and no matter how stupidly the man used the legendary artifact, it all paid off. Because if the opponent doesn't have time or has no opportunity to defend himself, it doesn't matter how technically correct you are in smashing him on the stones of the sidewalk.

Charms, magic blows, and fleur techniques are simply sucked into the ever-brightening hull of the Hammer shining with red-hot metal. Artifact absorbers activated at full power suck any power out of the enemy attack at the speed with which a good beer flows on a weekend night. Barai tries to dampen them with tricks that have no auric or energetic manifestation - mental suggestion of the veridical type, memetic information, piercing super-fast spells, all the things that devils are so loathed to fight for. It's not as if their tricks don't work - the creatures have a lot of experience and skills, and a crippled psycho is no match for a pious Uraz to counteract them at will.

Every now and then, the golem freezes for a fraction of a second and makes a different movement than the pilot originally wanted. The cripple's mind fogs, dulls, calms, makes him forget about the battle, and immerses himself in his fantasies. Todbum knows what he's talking about because he's also tried to be taken in the same way, but where the dwarf is left to rely on level, titles, and a set of personal defenses, the rabid Highlander is saved by his machine, whose amulet systems seem to have short-circuited in the continuous rolling of cleansing effects. Considering the highly advanced Amuletist class and the quality of the amulets inside the Hammer, it was decent.

"Bitch, you ate it, asshole! I'm gonna run you over with an undersized gurney, you bastard!" This degenerate was best at amplifying the work of sound-transmitting amulet complexes, though it was not surprising. "I'll have you as a breeding sheep, a donkey, and a cow combined!"

Very fucking decent.

The machines stood firm, retreating not too hastily, snapping back regularly, and managing to almost nullify the losses in manned golems, occasionally exposing simple Goliaths to blows, losing some of their cover but retaining the core of their combat power. The creatures, the possessed constructs of oiled flesh, and the cultists, thinned by their combined efforts, found themselves in a situation where it was still possible to win quickly and decisively, but the victory would be catastrophic, worthy of the Beardless Plight or the assault on Stupid Pass. Having already lost a bit more than they had originally intended, the creatures turned to tactics of measured attrition and clever tricks designed to bring the score in their favor. Much to Todbum's delight, such positional warfare was almost the only scenario that allowed mortals to win, if not win, then lose handsomely.

The same mental defenses, the constant fire of multiple wands, lead shooters, atomizers, and other wonders of dwarven weaponry, made any number of weak flesh a mountain of corpses, be they ordinary creatures or stupefied townsfolk, forcing the stronger creatures to remember that they were not immortal on this day. They did remember keeping a respectful distance from the Disruptor's longest-range wands, marking their presence rather than actually fighting.

This tactic also suited the endowed, allowing them to live longer, giving them faith and hope that someone would come, that the situation would change and they would survive this protracted day, that it was not yet time to say goodbye to each other in anticipation of eternal agony, perverse and obscene. This is not the death, not the outcome of defeat, which will be called noble, worthy, or at least not too shameful. And this hope grew with every second, with every moment, with every attack repulsed. In such a mood, the endowed ones drove away from themselves the thoughts that the creatures were only preparing something, that the devils were about to show their devilish nature and pull some trick for which they were not ready, against which the power of iron statues would not help.

They invented it.

They prepared it.

They showed it.

Todbum didn't know exactly how they did it, but he was inclined to use non-material creatures. That is, the devils are non-material, as most creatures are, but they recreate pseudo-material vessels for combat. This, for a second, is alphabetical knowledge for any educated reasonable person, as well as the fact that in a normal world, not in this horror- nightmare that the Eternal has turned into, the creation of a body is a labor-intensive, long and complicated process. Here and now the devils were incarnated almost by pure desire alone, though any of them could change into a nonexistent form, even if only for a short time.

Intangible devils, always intangible, rather than having disposed of the vessel for a short time, having no body as such at all, being rather objectified fleur which did not even have a sonm, were not, strictly speaking, devils, just as golems were not human beings. Analogous to a reasonable closed field, only based on Vice, imperceptible, intangible, irresistible, but unable to exist outside the sonm, a considerable share of which it constantly occupies, as well as falling apart from any strong attack. Now, these essences found themselves used strictly to the point, traveling from below, under stone and earth, reaching to the unprotected rear.

Mechanics, assistants, servants, and just random passers-by became their victims. They did not become them at once, gradually and completely unnoticed. They were communicated with, instructed, and answered, but it was not enough. Without distracting themselves from the negotiations on the communication amulets, the charmed unfortunates very professionally opened all the available defense circuits, and even part of the non-piloted golems disconnected.

Then the crowd ran out to meet the attack wave, before the pilots, who had not yet realized the depth of the problem, had time to react. The elite creatures followed, much faster, more decisive, and suddenly too, and they were noticeably more numerous than they had seemed at first. Wands and cannons blasted in vain, automatic lead guns emptied their drums and disks, but their effectiveness was poor. Stabbed in the back, deprived of coordination and the blessings of Mechanics, losing communication and order in their ranks, they were not prey, but they could not stop the enemy.

Strange moans and enticing whispers poured into their ears, merging into a litany of Lust, hypnotizing them through their amulet transmitters, putting them into a submissive trance. Communications were cut off, almost all of them, but some of the pilots had been listening to these whispers for much longer, they had been whispered to them a little earlier. One of the Tearers suddenly attacked the other, a couple of Colossuses also changed sides, the Chasers were pitting simple golems against golems that were still following the original directives.

They could no longer fight back. They could neither win nor survive, but they still had a chance to wash the enemy with their blood, to feed lead and flame to those who would later feast on their souls. It was at this moment, while the Sixteenth Mechanized Brigade still could, that two enemy Legends, of which one was a previously unfamiliar one that had come for reinforcements, struck while a third of them continued to dance around the embroiled Hammer.

A sexless clump of tentacle-like genitals and tentacle-like genitals emerged from above the battlefield, contemptuously ignoring several blows of battle wands from old Hildra, who had managed, thanks to Herald's enhanced sensors, to track the creature's appearance. The creature released a dozen captive souls, each of whom had once been a Technician, Mechanic, Guide, or someone of comparable class, and not weak, not at all. Only the non-combatants, subordinates, and submissives who ran outside screamed in a moan of endless bliss, and once they screamed, they began to melt like candle wax.

Their souls resonated with those used by the creature, amplifying the effect of the square attack, truly Legendary and worthy. The souls flared up, attracting each other or burning out, but still inside the devil's greedy womb were far more Machinists than it had spent on this strike. A blow that completely overran the unmanned giants, irrevocably disabled the defense systems and the few working automatic lead nest turrets, and disabled every last Colossus, leaving the pilots untouched.

Todbum instantly realized that the machines were only temporarily shut down, and a little later, when the pilots had been harassed and persuaded, they would be on the other side of this battle. Only the Colossus had been turned off by the charms, but the remaining higher-grade machines could do nothing. Here is the ugly bitch's Disruptor frozen, undamaged, and able to continue the fight, as an experienced mechanic can even now say, but Hildra herself, apparently, is already drooling lustfully inside the control section. Here folds in on itself a blazing Herald, to which has been applied some version of the gut blast, an extremely nasty and very difficult enchantment sharpened against golems.

Todbum should fight but he can't, as if something - whisper-whisper-whisper-whisper - makes you watch their debacle but not interfere until you've finished. The creature that had occupied Barai for so long jumps back, staring resentfully at the hands covered with terrible wounds from which streams of golden honey flow out. However, after blocking the blows inflicted by the legendary artifact with the Hammer's powers, there shouldn't have been any hands there. Nevertheless, the tall, only slightly shorter than the golem and unbearably alluring girl, as if molded from red and green pieces, swiftly removes even these ridiculous, as for such blows, wounds.

The other one, replacing one tired Legend, looks like a stretched man - long, like a bazaar jester painted in all the colors of the world, with a disproportionately stretched body and limbs, like really sun-heated rubber. The creature knots space itself, changing the vector of motion and gravity with indescribable ease, enveloping the Hammer of the Empire. Todbum can't know it, but this - whisper-whisper-whisper - seems to suggest the essence of what is happening. A space master, augmented by the souls of less fortunate masters of the same orientation, will simply pull the man inside out through a miniature wormhole so as not to waste energy destroying armor that will still serve them well when the man inside becomes obedient and lustful in equal measure.

Still, at the very last moment, in his fading consciousness, Todbum saw a reason for a slight smile. At least in something the creatures had failed, at least in something that horrible and unceasing whisper-whisper-whisper-whisper-whisper had been wrong... Instead of ending up in the hands of the stretching man, Barai only had time to wail:

"You, faaaaaaggot...."

The shriek quickly faded, drifting away, along with the golem, which soared upward and flew like a road stone after a boy's kick. The real Hammer of the Empire was flying away, and it was hard for One Brow to imagine what the creature was thinking when it tried to pull this stunt. There are so many rune scripts in there that complex spells of this type fail horribly, unlike more straightforward combat spells, requiring extremely complex recalculations, or knowledge of how exactly to act against such defenses.

The Barai-piloted golem was flying, leaving pieces of hull, having lost one of its arms cut off by the spatial shift, and the tired dwarf, closing his eyes, saying goodbye to his life, soul, and honor, caught himself thinking that he was truly glad not to hear those foul cries at last. The madly laughing Legend had also teleported somewhere, either in pursuit of his escaped prey or on some business, but it didn't bother the fallen warrior anymore. He was happy and remained happy for some time while he, rapidly getting better, thinning and growing tits Hildra and the rest of the survivors and pilots who had not managed to kill themselves were laid out and fucked right on the hulls of their golems.

He personally got some disgusting hybrid of the female and male body, as if possessing all the characteristics of both sexes, and Todbum even tried to resist but could not move a single finger, except the one that he did not want to move, but quickly wanted to.

Half an hour later, he was already driving his machine and the rest of the crew where he had been told to go, only he didn't look like an old dwarf anymore. Mutated, having grown several sets of genitals in the most unexpected places that allowed him to have sex with himself while driving the golem, now bloated and occupying the entire cabin, this lump of distorted flesh thought of nothing and remembered nothing.
* * *

"Stupid, lazy and ugly barbarian!" A woman armed with a magazine and a magnificently enchanted crossbow, beautiful in appearance, of a difficult fate, and of a very bad character, shouts through the sounds of the massacre in progress. "I was only with you to get into your bosses' pockets! And as a lover, you're not very good either!"

The words are the kind of words that hurt a man's pride more than a kick in the balls, especially if they are covered by an armored codpiece with a cushioning rune on the inside. Meticulously sent arrows with the effect of armor-piercing and additional damage by breaking the metal rod when the bolt is already inside someone's wound, hit even harder, just not on the one for whom the hurtful words were spoken. Devils with such weapons could be killed only by the most stupid and weak, literally having neither normal defense nor survivability. On the other hand, it was possible to kill at least someone because there were too many targets, and I didn't want to die. This way, at least if you didn't kill them, you could make them hide their bodies behind walls, trees, or just details of the terrain.

"A horny capital bitch who thinks she's a queen. Fuck." A man dressed in a set of heavy armor, assembled from several separate sets, and still barefoot on one foot and forgetting to put on his armor does not hesitate to respond, and he can give out even more claims to the lady of his heart than she gave him. "Why should I strain with you in bed? You will do everything for me, and so, two-faced bitch! Or did you think I didn't know about your class? I was sent to you with Ser Droggie's permission to find out who your employer is. And all they fed you was lies, you insatiable cunt!"

The girl, or, to be honest, the not-so-young woman who looked like an innocent seventeen-year-old flower thanks to her alchemy, choked on her indignation, which was thickly mixed with the hurt professional pride of the not-so-subtle Seductress. If it weren't for the overall situation, she wouldn't have been too lazy to aim her crossbow at an unwilling ally who, like herself, had been yanked right out of bed by the invading devils. A common bed, where she had already successfully completed the hypnotic trance and was about to move on to the most interesting part - getting compromising information about one of the inconveniences to her master Lords.

"I'll do it myself?" From the cry, absolutely identical in intonation to that of a harbor whore, who decided not to pay, much more corresponding to her real age and character, the panes in the windows of the cozy cottage-gazebo would shake, if they were still intact at this point. "You don't know shit about my class, you foul-smelling sheepfucker! You fucking told me everything three times, you little fucking woodpecker, or did you fucking think I was messing with you, huh?"

The small estate, consisting of a dozen small houses of seclusion, was used especially for the meetings of lovers who did not want to advertise their relationship. It was here that the couple, as well as the rest of the vacationers, were caught by a problem common to all the city's vested interests, and so suddenly that both of them did not even have time to get dressed. If they had not been retreated here at once by half a hundred guards, as well as the retinue of a high-ranking nobleman and a team of adventurers, among whom was a surprisingly strong Hydromancer, they would have quickly found themselves in an unenviable fate. On the other hand, if so many forces had not been drawn here to a convenient point for defense, which equally strengthened both druids and watermen, there would have been fewer enemies.

"Am! Ne! Si! Acs!" Each syllable was followed by the blow of a simple club, more like a rhizome plucked from the ground, almost completely devoid of any treatment, but still, an artifact of a rare rank approaching the epic rank while the man's face was one of genuinely happy and amused gloating. "I was cleaning my memory, bitch, and then I had a guest mentalist put false memories on me just so you'd listen, you fucking bitch! What, you think you're smarter than everybody else, asshole? So yeah, I was just relaxing and enjoying an expensive whore for next to nothing, and I got a bonus for it! But you worked hard, you worked all your holes, you cunt!"

With their backs pressed against the lake, on the opposite side of which was the city's largest park, more like a small hunting ground, the defenders have engaged in a tight positional meat grinder, eager to buy themselves some time. The enemy troops aren't eager to attack either, though they are stronger overall. The battle here is frankly out-of-state. No one needs it, and the creatures simply have no advantage in a crushing victory, nor do they have the strength for it. All the elite are now elsewhere, busy holding important positions and knocking out those who might interfere with the overall plan.

"You stupid scum, he enjoyed it!" Another attack had died down, so the two quarreling lovers were paying more attention to each other than to the defense, which was unprofessional and dangerous, but there was no one to say so because, in the heat of the quarrel, the two were somewhat out of formation. "I only pleasured you for the first few nights, you rotten degenerate, until the Attention Net was complete, and then I just had you eating shit, bitch! You're a little smarter when you're fucking gagged, you know what I mean, asshole? Enjoying it, huh?"

If it hadn't been for the crossbow-wielding cultists who had approached them again, forcing them both to huddle in the ruins of the retreat they had rented, a short and bloody fight would have broken out between the two lovebirds. Either the enraged warrior would crush his opponent despite all attempts at resistance, or the trigger network would work despite the frenzy of battle, after which the duplicitous agent would plunge a dagger into the neck of the powerless object of her work. Neither of them had any sympathy for each other, only a sincere desire to squeeze each other by the throat.

"We're all going to die here." Issued a tired and devastated Seductress, firing all available bolts and barely overpowering another wave of fleur, which, without the support of the Benefics focusing on the largest groups of defenders, was even more dangerous than usual. "And I, bitch, will die beside you. That's the worst doom I can think of."

"I can give you a hint." The mighty barbarian from the foothills of the northern limits, a two-meter lump of anger and hatred, is also tired, also barely murmuring, barely forcing himself to move his lips lest he fall asleep right there, to the lulling murmur of viscous promises. "You want it alphabetized?"

Their bodies obeyed worse and worse, and they realized that it was not just fatigue but something worse, but they had neither the strength to react nor the desire taken away by the devil's trick. The creature emerges from invisibility gradually, as if with difficulty squeezing into reality from somewhere far away, towering over the couple in all its glory. The slender and fragile frame seemed to be genderless, yet it had that soft appeal that only the most exquisite of courtesans and devils possess. Thin arms, thin legs, thin torso, faceless head with one large eye where a man's nose should be.

The creature had come here, chosen a position not yet visible to the regrouping mercenaries and guards yet suitable for its attack. Here, it can prepare a strike, direct it, coordinate the small units of cultists and ordinary devils, and crush the already tired endowed ones. The creature is strong, dangerous, and falls under the concept of elite, but it is already tired, having wasted its strength in previous battles, in which it managed to win unconditionally. The creature sees no reason to go up against these scraps of defensive forces, is not going to take any risks, and does not mind replenishing some of its lost resources.

The two people lying before her, deprived of even the possibility of fear, reduced to mere observers, would be a breath of fresh air, two small lights in the greedy hands of their molester. Briontia Mardo, a rather famous mercenary, taking on various subtle and soft tasks, acting under the auspices of several noble families and a couple of high-ranking agents of the Eyes at once, but loyal to herself alone. Bordar Gall, also a mercenary, but long since settled down, now working not for the Imperial Lords as he used to show the world but for one of the high, but not the highest, members of the Keep and Seal Foundation. It was an interstate association of power-hungry, unscrupulous bastards and self-sacrificing enthusiasts alike, formed out of the Empire of Ages, but now it was an organization that searched for and preserved dangerous artifacts and cursed relics.
СЦП

Not combat, but precisely dangerous, unpredictable, evil, and simply not applicable in any normal circumstances. The Foundation was famous for its pompous and overblown desire for secrecy, despite which almost every dog knew about them, the presence of patronage among the upper echelons of power, who also did not like to deal with various curses themselves, as well as a passionate love for the use of live lockpicks, recruited from prison scum, disenfranchised peasant and other low people. Enthusiasts, of course, but they are recognized masters in their ability to work with cursed areas, as well as in the ways of cleansing artifacts of high value from various abominations.

The creature literally absorbed all this knowledge and sucked it into its single eye, never ceasing to influence the paralyzed people, to send telepathic messages to its charges, to prepare another powerful blow, and to savor what it wanted to do to these two. Maybe it was too early to put them into the sonm, for it could still nurture them into something better, more complete? Oh, and the knowledge in the man's head, no matter how much it was mopped up by potions and magic, was also very much to be desired. Little things and unhelpful nuances, but it was the kind of little things that made up the kind of agency work that had allowed Hell to put roots deep into the hoards of curse gatherers on several occasions in the past. The only pity was that they were other devils from other domains, and the mortals themselves, thanks to the disjointed and cellular structure of their organization, managed to discard the converted parts of themselves each time, starting to rebuild almost from scratch.

"That's it. We'll finish like dogs." Indifferently and hollowly summarizing the outcome of her life, Briontia leans against her enemy's shoulder simply because she desperately wishes there was someone around at this moment. "Should we pray?"

"To whom?" Equally indifferent and tiredly specifies her enemy, just as unwilling to leave alone, though he realized that no one would let them just take and die, not devils. "There were five priests over there. But they didn't do any good. They didn't give even the weakest blesses. They just yelled prayers."

"At least to someone." The eyes open less and less, the speech becomes more and more muffled, and the strength less and less. "If they save us, I'll even marry you, you stupid asshole."

"At least there's some good news." Not even a whisper anymore, but a wheeze overcoming his shutting down mind. "We're not going to be saved."

Bordar promised himself he would marry anyone, even that two-faced bitch, if he could get out of here, or at least live another day, live for himself, not for what they would be made into later. They were both willing to promise, swear to be faithful and loving, to take any vows or asceticism, as long as it didn't end this way.

The lights dance around the creature's motionless statue, attracting the eyes and taking the hearts of those who look at them. The creature casts spells, and the souls it captures also cast those spells, creating a psionic field of monstrous power capable of safely shutting off the minds of at least half of those desperate fools who still hope to fight it. They've taken cover with a wall of water, trees distorted by the druid's wrath, a few barriers, and constantly renewing their purifying boons, but once they've gotten the hang of leveling the fleur, they've forgotten about the rest of the effects. Simple and reliable material enchantments would shut them out, but mental power had no physical manifestation and could not be stopped with the means at hand. Oh, they could survive that, but they would have to be prepared for the blow, and the devil had used only the most primitive elemental charms and a fleur so that the use of his strongest soul and a trio of worse ones would be sudden and unrepeatable. Of all the creature's treasures, after all the battles of this too-long day, only the flame of the mighty subterranean mentalist's essence remained intact, unburned by his lord's will.

Ten beats of the heart.

"Goodbye, barbarian. One last word, one last confession. "I hate you."

Five beats of the heart.

"Goodbye, bitch." Last truth, last will. "I hate you."

Three beats of the heart.

The creature is focused, expending all the concentration available to itself, transferring all the available processes to the souls in reserve, but the reserve is not enough. The creature is covered by its subordinates while it is defenseless, covered by those willing to sacrifice themselves and take on its wounds. From either side of the world, from underground, by teleportation or otherwise, the devil would have been warned in time, but the blow comes from above. It wasn't that they weren't expecting a strike from there. It was just that there was nothing and no one to block that direction for the tattered cultists and common flesh.

"...aaaaaaaaa!"

The faulty but very loud stereo system, set on afterburner, could, even without other factors, deafen or concuss a person in the vicinity, but the trouble was different. The material from which the Hammer of the Empire of the Honorable Uraz was made, in addition to dozens of other properties, was capable of muffling intuitive and predictive abilities. In battle, this was a great help, for the sake of which many rare additives were added to the alloy of the armor because it was precognition that could compensate for the lack of strength, survivability, and striking power if the Hammer happened to go against a strong but alive opponent.

The devil could easily react without foresight because one would have to be deaf and blind to miss the approach of a piloted golem as tall as two such devils! He could have, a thousand times could, if in a different situation, if this golem had not arrived, flying, by the way, in no way adapted to fly, at the moment of maximum tension.

The rumble of the fall of the multi-ton carcass, which does not fall into the ground when walking only thanks to runic mass compensators, could not cover the audible and, Bordar and Briontia could swear it, perplexed crunch with which the creature that almost took them became very flat, like Bordar's sense of humor, according to his, apparently, future wife.

"I can't believe it." Already unaffected by the mind-bending charms, but still as lost, both of the last-minute rescued baddies uttered. "It doesn't work like that."

"Evil bitch, I'm fucked your sheep, your donkey, your sister, and you too!" The pilot who had saved their hides didn't even seem to notice his feat, trying to get into a fighting stance, but he wasn't very good at it. "Never, never I'd accept an easy job in my profession, one more time! Why, why is it that every time I think I have everything normal, some shit happened?"

The savior was swearing, apparently either concussed or very drunk, or all of them together, very passionately, but monotonously and not particularly inventive, but loudly, even thunderously. Two people who recovered from paralysis did not go deaf only because after the first couple of statements, the sound transmission mechanics squealed particularly nastily and fell silent, finally breaking down.

"I've only read that in stupid books about knights in love." The Seductress was barely restraining a real hysteria, but the shrill and lost notes in her voice, miraculously not breaking into mad laughter, clearly indicated the state of mind of the one who had just believed, even if it was unclear in whom. "Well, it can't be like that. It can't be like that!"

"Oh, shut up." Bordar is shocked too, only not hysterical, but fatalistic because fulfilling the vows made in desperation will have to be done. "This is sickening."

The warrior feared that if he failed to fulfill at least some of these promises, Fortune herself would embody her essence beside him and give an epic kick to the careless oath-breaker. The possessor of level twenty-one and an uncommon class had lived long enough to not indulge in illusions. Unless he had just been personally kissed by the aforementioned Fortuna, he was a goblin. It really didn't happen that way. The odds were just too small.

"To Sheila's temple, yes." Giggling like a lunatic, Bree reloaded her monster speed shooter, hammering the last two bolts into it, not enchanted ones, but regular ones. "Be sure to get in there. She'll definitely appreciate it. She can't help but appreciate it."

"Planning a donation?" Strangely enough, the other attackers were in no hurry to finish them off, even though they should have, if not hit them, then at least run away from the golem crowing on the ground. "That's right, I'll sacrifice too. A lot."

"Stupid?" The question is perplexed, not meant to insult, and immediately answered. "Oh, right, definitely a fool. A wedding ritual to order. You're not going anywhere from me now! Not after this."

"What's that harlot got to do with it?" It wasn't that he refused to recant, but he hopelessly believed that the two-faced scum would be the first to recant and that he wouldn't be blamed. "Oh, but yes, it's your profession."

He was determined to keep his word and take his marriage vows together with this cold-blooded scum since fate had decreed it. But when the vow was fulfilled, the first thing he would do would be to snap her neck. The Seductress was also not going to give up her words and even kill her future husband quickly and painlessly, maybe even pleasantly. Well, in the extreme case, both of them were ready to endure at least a couple of months so as not to anger the forces that saved their lives, at the same time waiting for a reason, even if formal, for bloodshed. Neither of them doubted that there would be a reason.
* * *

The golem got to his feet with a heartbreaking squeal, holding the legendary artifact with his only surviving hand, using it instead of a crutch. In addition to the missing arm, one of his legs had stopped bending, and the other was bending even too willingly but in the wrong direction. Whatever that spatial-gravity effect of the collapsing type was - not that Barai could even pronounce the term in his normal state - but the machine was badly banged up. The fall was slowed down because the Hammer was designed to jump from mountain peaks directly at the enemy, landing in the middle of the infantry formation and causing all sorts of mayhem.

The golem survived and even functioned, but that was it. If this set of bolts had landed a bit away from the crushed creature, it would have killed him, while the pilot would have regained his balance and connection with the control circuit. Again, he survived. Again he was forced to pilot a crippled and almost incapacitated bucket with gears and bolts. Again, he was surrounded by creatures and something worse than death. Only now, he was alone. There was no second golem covering his back. There was no clear and pure, like ice water in a mountain stream, the feeling of the presence of an experienced Guider nearby that would back him up in attack and support him in defense.

Remembering how that battle in the cursed Stone had ended, his few remaining teeth ached with impotent anger. Remembering the long interrogations, the mentalists who twisted his head and memory, the suspicion and contempt he had been subjected to, remembering how he got used to his prosthetics for months, how he realized that he would no longer be a normal person or even a man... Once again, he desperately wanted to howl or stick his dagger in his sternum. But he was already speaking in foul language, speaking continuously, not caring at all about the mountain speech, just not being silent because he was afraid to turn off at the same moment from the maddening migraine and burning in the energy sheath. And he didn't even have a dagger at the moment - even his clothes, not to mention his weapons, had to be thrown out to get into the cabin designed for an imperial undergrowth.

Even then, fighting with the rest of the brigade, covering for a bent old fart without an eyebrow, he still didn't feel other people's backs, still fought alone, on the very front line. He didn't want to. He didn't recognize the bastards who despised him as having even a shadow of a right to cover that back. And even alone, he was worth a lot. Even alone, he was writing his legend, his own story by the fire of the family hearth, even if he would never have that family and the hearth had long since burned out. He was not going to run away from death but let the bastards try to bring him death on a plate, and he would feed them with all the hospitality of the mountains!

Finally getting the golem to relative combat readiness, standing on its columnar legs without risking a comical fall, Barai assessed his surroundings. The toxic and smoking stain of the crushed creature remained directly beneath him - even as he fell, he noticed exactly who it had fallen on, adjusting his landing a bit with the weight control amulet. That's jewelry work of Amuletist. He could pass his exams in forgotten Stavrosk right now, if he didn't get killed faster than a squeal. The family of that jackal who had once forced him into voluntary exile to sit in Stone still didn't mind letting Barai bleed. And he's completely innocent, he's done nothing wrong!

There were plenty of smaller creatures around, but they were now writhing in agony and foaming honey-colored foam along with the cultists. They'd caught a kickback from the common charms the crushed one was using, or something like that. He'd heard something similar before, and that was why he should be careful about telepathic and sympathetic communication and the creation of unprotected magical circles - if the foundation was knocked out, all the supports would fall. Wow, he had landed his ass so well, just exemplary. Now he would have to crush the assholes who hadn't come to their senses, find some strength for the jackals, and then get some rest - he felt, realized, and knew how close he was to the edge, after crossing which the burned brains would flow out of his ears.

Now, a little more.

And get rest.

Rest...

The creature could have appeared quite silently, as it had demonstrated earlier, but it chose to let him know of its arrival with the sound of a bubble bursting. A very large soap bubble, the popping of which was heard through all the barriers and his own heavy breathing, as if it were seared into his already tired mind. The creature, a corpse-eating brat of a cave slug, stretchy and flexible, like a condom made of alchemically treated sheep's guts, smiled so joyfully that he wanted to rejoice with it.

The awkward swing of the hand clutching the hammer ended with a whip-like blow from the arm that had lengthened as far as it could go. The limb wrapped around the weapon, around the golem's creaking, malfunctioning joint mechanisms, depriving the Hammer of the Empire of the hand on its only remaining arm and the legendary weapon all at once. The creature's grip smokes and bubbles like heated rubber, but promptly recovers again, taking on a look bright and ridiculous. So many colors, so many colored lines that it made his eyes water, and his mind couldn't keep up with the actions of the Legend that had already defeated him once. Barai had a serviceable and almost undamaged Hammer and some kind of cover at his side, but now there was nothing, only the desire to finish it as quickly as possible, as well as the realization of the futility of this battle.

A second blow, a third, a fourth, and then the golem didn't move at all, having lost all its limbs. Or rather, the legs remained, but the pacing joints were broken, turned in the wrong directions, the center of mass was displaced, all the amulets were hopelessly discharged, and the pilot himself could not even make this junk at least twitch. A piece of junk that was a masterpiece of mechanics only a few long hours ago.

Humming a tune to itself, the creature shifts its focus to the mortals who have just realized that the situation has changed twice. The creature is busy, very busy, with its own important errands, but it can spare a second to address the situation in this area. With feet stepping over the ground damp from its proximity to the lake, barely perceptibly sinking into the ground, the devil attacks, taking whatever second it can spare for the task at hand.

A slap, like a damp cloth against a stone wall, followed by the extinguishing of life at the very center of the human formation. Their hydromancer and druid fell dead, only to disintegrate into hundreds of neat cubes near the ground. Working with space has been Stretch of Proximity's specialty, for from its inception it has been able to obtain those souls that are metric and position bound. The sonm he collected gives him incredible mobility, putting this devil in the role of someone who can catch up and take, guaranteed to retreat with the taken, avoid punishment and strike again, at the most convenient moment.

A slap. As if with the palm of a hand on viscous clay, followed by dozens of bright, bright lights in the middle of a line of defenses that had not yet realized the danger, capturing the eyes and plunging people into a sweet sleep, filling dreams with the tender caress of Lust, so that when the mortals woke up, they would immediately follow their new masters. Such control is unreliable and may not work, but a few hours or even a day of wet dreams will ensure that the surviving cultists and stormtroopers will be able to recover from the setback and finish what they started.

Having finished with the fleeting business, the devil leisurely, but at the same time within a dozen seconds, opens the defenses on the defeated golem, revealing the control cage and the man lying in it, twisted, maimed, so ridiculous in his despair. Perhaps Stretch will take him personally, comforting him and showing him a new truth, but not by healing him or putting planar symbiotes in place of his missing limbs, no. He will show the cripple how pleasant it is to be a cripple, how powerlessness can turn into pleasure, and then he will help him, in response to his requests and pleas for help, he will finally deprive the impudent fugitive, who had to follow him through half of the Eternal, of all his limbs, deprive him of his eyes and hearing, deprive him of tactile sensations and smells. And only when only a piece of flesh, wandering in its desires and passions, deprived of everything and gaining everything, will he consider the mortal to have paid for his insolence.

Yeah, it's better that way.

That's more correct.

Graceful.

First just a few touches, to melt despair into interest, anger into thoughtfulness, emptiness in the place of missing parts into pride in their absence. Then to spread that pride, to change its tone, to excite desire, to send a few servants that will only inflame passion, to turn mutilation into the source of lust, to engender thought, the intention to mutilate the body still more, for the sake of passion mental and spiritual. What a song, what a mercy on his part, for the sake of this it is even worth spending a few souls, worth giving a commission to the nearest servants. Especially since the servants are here, not yet on their feet after the rollback, one could cover them with a fleur because their past shepherd had already found his last pleasure, so he would not ask for what he had taken, even if he had dared to defy Stretch earlier.

To bend over, squatting, to let the legs tuck up, to fold themselves in rings into two tense springs, to prepare the fleur that took shape, that objectified the intention....

The man stares straight into Legend's face, his eyes reddening from bursting blood vessels. The sight of the bands and patterns covering the body of Stretching Proximity is blinding and maddening. The man wheezes, losing the last vestiges of self-control, a mortal not yet aware of his happiness, still daring to fear, daring not to desire what his Legend has called happiness.

"I'm coming to you... Hestia..." Somehow the foolish and so naive cripple believes he's about to die as if something in the back of his mind forbids even thinking that the devils would choose to take him as a prisoner in any situation.

"No, darling." With a sugary drawl, the devil stretched out his words, bending so low he was almost ready to kiss his victim, resting one hand on the wet and quicksilver dirt around the site of their battle. "You're coming to me."

The creature moves not only quickly but also suddenly and completely unpredictably to both the eye and anyone's premonitions. It bent over its victim, and a moment later, its lanky body spread out like a giant frog on springs instead of legs, bouncing away from its victim.

Instantaneous, rapid, unpredictable... and useless.

The action was purely physical, with no magical overtones or effects on space. The devil was sure it would be enough to avoid something that the souls of intuits languishing in the sonm sobbed out loudly, interrupting their eternal orgy for the sake of that sob. The devil was right all around, for there were few things that would make him wrong. His actions were enough to avoid danger by repeatedly breaking the distance with a practiced movement.

The environment let him down, the support of his feet, which had somehow, quickly turned from the firm and trod, albeit wet, ground into sticky and shaky mud, from which this rubber shit could not push off properly. The leap was not merely calibrated. No. It was correct - the tension of pseudo-muscles, the energy put into the movement, allowed to push off not only from the mud but even from the water if there was a need. But the power invested in the movement seemed to go into the greedy mouth of the softened earth, absorbed into it without a trace.

The graceful pirouette turned to the ridiculous slip of a duck caught on ice, delaying the creature for a fraction of an instant, no more. It was just long enough to catch the legendary hammer that had been thrown by someone else's hand and knocked out of the hands of the destroyed golem. Without activated skills, this weapon wasn't dangerous enough to kill someone like Stretch of Proximity with a single blow. But the devil was willing to swear by his sonm, his place in the general Choir, and the Sovereign's favor that the power in this throw was not inferior to that of the golem holding the hammer earlier!

The creature was simply swept away, carried away with the hammer, forcing it to literally wrap itself around the hammer, burning from touching a foreign artifact. The creature, which had lost its hardness and turned into a viscous lump of tar, managed to avoid being torn apart without even spending a single soul or taking any damage. Except, of course, for the moral damage caused by the interrupted conversion, and it was hard to think of a better, worse insult to the devil.

Stretch blinked after two heartbeats, having already traveled a couple of kilometers in flight, breaking a dozen trees with his body and entering the low parabola of the flight path. If he hadn't acted, he would have flown for a long time, even if not to the edge of the dome, but still far away, so strong was the blow he received. Alas, except for physical strength, this blow could not damage anything, only by touching the legendary artifact.

A different Legend would have been forced to expend strength, suffer a soul or two of damage, or even suffer a serious wound, a torn piece of flesh and aura. Fortunately, Stretch was sent to fight golems because crushing blows of any power were harmless to him due to his chosen pseudo-body form, being reduced to nothing by cushioning. This time, the devil appears out of nowhere without a sound, without making a beautiful gesture to warn of his arrival, and there is no need.

Coming out of teleportation in the middle of the same clearing, next to the mortal pilot who had not yet realized what happiness he had lost, the creature leans the Beast Crusher against the stationary machine, feeling the viscous structure of its body bubbling where the artifact's magic had come into conflict with its flesh. His feet sink deeper and deeper into the mud, which is no longer mud, but a swamp sprouting rapidly in the middle of a forested area. A shaky cold came out of nowhere, sensitive receptors picked up the putrid stench of stagnant water and swamp slime, and visibility was reduced by wisps of greenish and noxious fog drawn in from the lake.

Unusual but undoubtedly familiar.

With a curling laugh, Stretch meets a log, a fallen tree trunk that seemed to fly out of nowhere, simply teleporting it to the side, stepping a little to the side, missing a stone the size of a greyhound flying from another direction. Mud and swamp magic let go of feet reluctantly, with effort, and the swampman's deceptively weak attempt to pull magic from the devil's body could also become dangerous. Dodging another throw of stone, Stretch sends a spatial slash and a stream of mind-softening and inviting flare to the presumed location of the enemy. Not that he hoped to induce the enemy into a dialog, during which he would weave his mind into a full-fledged web, but what if it would at least make him relax his disguise a little?

The devil had certainly accomplished something, the cut had touched someone, but neither pain nor pleasure was captured by the souls of the sensors and a couple of empaths released into the outer line of the sonm. The main thing was that the previous blow had made it clear that there was someone somewhere over there, and the creature was quite good at hitting spatial distortions over areas. The iridescent trill of wine bottles bursting in the frost poured into the mind along with the poisonous wine of the spilled fleur, slowing and looping any thought, turning any genius into an idiot, capable only of instinctive action, but not of normal thinking. Combined with the tearing and shredding of space, the combination was one of the creature's crowning tricks.

Three strong souls and one of the gems of his collection temporarily drop out, forced to rest after the strain. A few more souls disintegrate with a disappointed sigh, deprived of the torture of pleasure forever but having taken the damage not received by the more important captives. The devil shifts once more, conducting a substitute teleportation between himself and the empty space, exactly the same moment he began his attack, now watching the result from the sidelines.

Swamp magic was an unpleasant school, awkward and overly crude, lacking the devils' favorite finesse, but it wasn't hard to fight against. More amusingly, the very sensation of the presence of the Swampmaster and, from the looks of it, either a telekinetic or a very oddly evolved Juggernaut seemed wrong to his seeing souls. The force was used even more crudely than usual, primitive to the extreme, but with amazing control. It was as if the attacker was not a human being but some kind of monster or even a very intelligent behemoth.

The essence of the legendary devil catches glimpses of other people's feelings but has yet to decipher them. This saddens even more than the interrupted grace that left his chosen cripple without Stretch's attention for a few more minutes. Wanting to take not only the maimed boy but also the girl who had attacked him. Yes, he was almost completely sure of the gender of the sudden guest. He could sense it with all his being. Alas, he had to kill her but not take her. He had no time and no strength either. Stretching gave all himself to work with the fabric of reality and not to the fleur webs, yielding in the art of seduction to the multitude of his fellows. The role imposed by the Master himself was, as usual, as sincerely loved by him as it was hated to the brink.

The yellowish mist evaporated instantly, visibility improving again, revealing a perfect circle about a hundred paces in radius, where a light haze seemed to quiver, like hot air or a desert mirage. If it weren't for a leaf of some tree instantly pulverized into something even less than dust, ceasing to be after entering the quivering zone, this lie might have been believable. It was impossible to admire his work, even though Stretch was sure the fogging effect had taken its toll on his opponent's mind without the slightest resistance, but he didn't sense her demise, as if the hard-won technique had been wasted. So, either there was a mind-unbound disturbing amulet with a teleporting effect, which he hadn't noticed activating despite his relationship with space, or there was someone else who had managed to pull his ally out of the death zone, or...

The devil put two barriers at once: a pure energy barrier and a space-distorting one, so both of them would disintegrate at the touch of the legendary hammer. Two truths became immediately clear to the devil. It is simple and even somewhat exasperatingly offensive. The first truth was that artifact hammers should not be left unattended, even if they burn the hands when touched by everyone except the walking golem to which the hammer was tied. His opponent, on the other hand, also gets her hands burned, but they heal even faster than they char. The second truth is even simpler. The stupefying simplicity could not deprive the creature, who is already dumber than the hammer she is trying to break its skull, of its mind.

Despite the tantalizingly transformed body, the swamp ogre was not hard to recognize if you could look with the right eyes. The devil himself might not have been able to do it, but his seers did it well enough to earn him fleeting praise. Such creatures don't have many brains, and in battle, they don't use even those crumbs. Pure killer instinct guides the hunter's impulse, pushing the body along the perfect route. Yes, this particular specimen is clever, very clever, but remains ogre, stupid, and not burdened by this stupidity, and therefore invulnerable to the crowning trick of Stretching.

He wished he knew the name of the one who had done this to an unintelligent monster. Such a mortal, whoever he was, the all-good Lust was already waiting, regardless of his or her desire. A continuously pulsing connection, the decreed will of Sovereign that coordinated them all this day immediately responded to unasked questions, infusing Stretch's essence with available imagery. The wildly passionate huntress flashed in the vaults of memory, flashed at the point of external control, in the stretching ritual, just before that ritual was destroyed and complete silence ensued.

Thoughts and reflections do not interfere with the action. They pass even faster than the hammer brought down on the devil's head. The blow is artless and lacking in skill, for it strikes the ogre the same way it would strike an ordinary log, but it is still a dangerous blow, deadly fast. The hammer itself can only crush the easily bendable body, but the inertia of the blow will throw Legend straight into the arms of the greedy mire, which has already completely taken over the area. It would be easy for him to stand in the air, hovering over the edge of the pool, but if he were pushed into it, it would be too costly to maintain his defenses.

The devil bends, taking advantage of the little time the two barriers bought him, twisting so the blow only shook his beautiful form, pushing him aside rather than down. A burned spot of boiling tar remains on his side as some of it burns away in the evil aura emitted by the artifact, but he manages to escape the danger zone.

Only for the green adorableness to unclench her appetizingly fried-smelling hand, releasing the hammer after him. Black and blue burned in patterns on her arms and enormously bewitching chest, binding space, making it viscous and unruly, preventing teleportation or blinking. It could have been dangerous, but not for Stretch, who easily overcomes the obstacle by moving slightly to the side and then, with another blink behind her back, lengthening his arm and turning it into a whip. A swipe, a whip, and a bloody streak run down the ogre's back, into which the charged and concentrated fleur almost succeeds in infusing.

Another flash of ritual patterns burned away the poison of the devil aspect, and the wound closed even faster than he had managed to do so. A moment and the monster's back is hidden in the newly risen yellowish mist, and the pseudo-body structure is once again being strained by the very presence of swamp magic. The devil has no doubt that the green-skinned beauty has already taken the Crusher back into her hand because, with such regeneration, she doesn't even need the bind much. It was good that she couldn't use the artifact's techniques without the same bind. The same Inner Shiver that the honorable Uraz had used to kill many giants would be dangerous even for his super-flexible body.

The creature cast a disappointed glance at the gradually sinking ruined hull of the Hammer of the Empire, so invitingly open as if the ogre hiding in the natural backdrop of its native biome had forgotten about it. Hunting by decoy is certainly more complicated than the usual tactics of swamp ogres, even if the devil isn't an expert at it to know for sure. But he knows that a modified and decorated ogre is far from ordinary, just as he knows that when he takes his prey, Stretch of Affinity will put his back to a naughty little girl waiting in ambush, even if only for a brief moment.

Ah, what disappointment in his stump of a boy he feels at this moment! The simplest thing in all creation is to give himself into the hands of a good devil, and he cannot even accomplish that!

There is still something and someone to fight with. There's something to crush regeneration. It wasn't hard to cheat primitive, albeit wildly powerful, defense rituals, especially if they were hastily drawn on the skin, and there were ways to nullify the swamp presence, leaving the green-skinned child of nature and savagery defenseless before his deeds. But there had been too many battles today, too much the creature had already spent, and there was still much to be done to fight in this battle that, for the most part, neither he, nor Domain, nor Chorus, nor Sovereign needed. It's not worth it, not worth it.

Another disappointed sigh, a fleeting goodbye to the boy who had failed to live up to expectations, followed by the quiet sound of a soap bubble bursting, with which Affinity Stretch leaves the battlefield not defeated but not victorious either.

Whimpering in the ruins of the guesthouse, an almost engaged couple determined to kill their other half.

The remnants of the cultists who hadn't regained consciousness were dying in the mire, while the ones who had managed to wake up earlier were quietly and imperceptibly snapping their necks with huge hands that appeared out of nowhere.

Cursed and blessed dreams are seen by mortals enchanted with fleur magic.

Slowly, the broken golem sinks into the swamp.

And complete silence, as if the drawn-out battle had never happened.

However, if someone decided to search this place properly in the hope of looting and trophies, they would never find the legendary Monster Crusher.
* * *

The blade formed high up, almost under the very top of the dome that covered the city, assembling from smaller fragments. It was as if countless blood-red plates, seemingly tiny from such a distance, were being assembled into a single structure. The blade only superficially resembles an ordinary one-handed sword, more like an overly long dagger. It is only the thinnest scarlet sheath, the emptiness inside of which is rapidly filling up with what the blade has to bring within itself. Perhaps such a blow is stronger than the usual legend, and it is hard not to recognize the Blade of the Rose, sung in so many tales, right now showing its most iconic effect.

From below, this creation, still only beginning its slow downward movement at first, is covered with all its might. They protect the sky even more than they protect themselves. Almost the entire left wing of the Imperial Guard, the fists of the magical orders, the adventurers of the highest ranks. All of them were not whipping boys. Even the regular guards, the whipping boys of this battle, had been left out of the Hell ritualists' positions on the outskirts. Here, near the source of the fleur, only the most prominent individuals could keep their minds untainted, but even they needed amulets and benefits, of which there were plenty.

The attack was stalled, the creatures too well entrenched, turning the trading post of the Grey Chains, the Gold Belt Guild, the second of those belts to defect to the devils years and years ago, into an impregnable fortress. The Imperials could have laid down everything here, but they would have achieved only depletion of the defense formations and a small number of knocked-out bastards. That's why they had to switch to positional warfare, now and then repulsing long-range techniques and purifying the minds of those who had been harassed by those techniques. If they couldn't purify it, they took away their minds with their heads - they weren't playing games.

The mythical artifact was supposed to tip the scales, but everyone present had seen that the creatures had enough trump cards of their own to tip the scales at the most unexpected moment. The devils did not disappoint, confirming the worst fears. The unopened Rose, still in the form of a Hollow Blade, was flying faster and faster, ready to touch the devil's defense, to blossom on it, inside it, and wherever it could and could not.

The rose soared, tumbled, foreshadowed..... but it wouldn't move!

This attack needs height. It needs room to build up inertia, to turn its target into nothing. Rosa's strike had razed fortresses and slaughtered Alishan's border towns before, but today, the height of the dispersal played against the empowered. There aloft was a foreign sky through which the creatures, too, could act. Through which their leader could express his will. As if in mockery of the lords of the Law of Time, the archdevil summoned another Law, no less powerful in skillful hands. The crux of the devils' action was neither attack nor defense, no. It was a declaration of Existence. An edict that determines the position of something in space, direction, vector of motion, mass, and many of the things that the foolish summoners of the technogenic worlds call physical constants.

And Rose flew toward the target, aiming to unleash her power on it, falling like an unstoppable battering ram, as inevitable as a Warrior's blow, like a Grimmer's sentence, like a tax increase. It fell without moving a hair's breadth closer, gradually losing its murderous power as if it were miles away, compressed into zero, and made absolute. The path was looped, reduced to zero, and multiplied by infinity, which meant it could never end. As long as the effect of the Law was maintained, the blade would continue to fall, still in place.

The endowed continued their hopeless assault. Though, the devils could almost earnestly hear their commanders' teeth grinding, seemingly tearing, and soul-stealing music to the essence of the devils who had forced the enemy to waste one of their strongest trump cards. In the improvised headquarters, hidden under several shields, really gritted their teeth, even if the command did not just suspect the uselessness of the use of the Rose but knew exactly about that uselessness. That's why the giant blade was wasted so senselessly because it couldn't be spent otherwise. No matter how it was used, it would have to be activated under the dome, too close to the possession of the archdevil who had already arrived at the party. If they'd been able to use the Rose earlier... but they couldn't, they were too late. Now the only thing left to do was to give away the diamond card for free, hoping to buy back some copper miser for it.

In this case, this miser was the correct use of a little-known fact, which is not difficult to learn about because it is almost obvious, but it is much harder to understand correctly, as the Imperials hoped. Created from pure energy, Rose, this very energy with great speed, pulled out of the environment. In the encapsulated space of the dome, this effect should have become even more noticeable because the volume of free flows is about zero. In fact, the devils first noticed something wrong precisely because before the artifact manifested, there was an exemplary glow on their sensory artifacts and installed fields, not to mention the personal skills of the creatures, a kind of expanding spot of emptiness provoked by the change of ether currents.

Noticed, understood, and prevented.

Missing something different.

* * *

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Переведено на Нотабеноиде
http://notabenoid.org/book/80370/559321

Переводчики: Camrad_RIP