Готовый перевод Его не звали, но он приперся / They never called, yet he is here: Интерлюдия четвертая: "Прощание" - 2

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Creating explosive amulets is one of the easiest tasks imaginable for an artificer of any class and focus. Creating an explosion or other destructive effect with the art of creation is extremely easy, even too easy. A fair share of artifactors and amulet makers die from the unexpected triggering of their work. Virtually any action, senseless and chaotic jumble of runes, conflicting enchantments, displaced enchantments, oversaturated drives, or anything similar results in a loud bang. Something stronger, something weaker, something nothing at all, but the point does not change - to destroy is simple, orders of magnitude easier than to create. Thus, explosive toys of any kind are only one step more complicated than non-viable self-detonating structures. All you need to do is encapsulate the effect.

So, it should come as no surprise that simple explosive amulets are common to the point of being obscene and equally unpopular. They can and often do activate without your permission. And yet, among such crafts, there are also masterpieces. Disposable clappers, clapping which knock down low-flying dragons, make plains out of mountains and craters out of plains. It is generally accepted to consider disposable expendable creations a priori as something insignificant, inferior to a reliable and firmly built artifact of reusable use.

The Enclosed Ray, the secret of the production of which had been stolen by the Empire of Ages from Alishan four hundred years ago with great difficulty and loss, was the exception to the rule. For starters, the thing was not disposable, even if only in theory. In practice, the container-activator of the Ray was right in the center of activation, and if he could hold the magic contained in it as long as he wanted, he could not be in the epicenter of its release. There were, is, and will be few things and people that could be in that epicenter without harming their existence.

The Enclosed Ray lived up to its name, being a ray. A single and infinitely pure ray captured and hidden inside a guardian container isolated from everything else. A pure ray from the very heart, the highest Crown of the all-powerful and all-illuminating Sun. When this ray was released, it did not behave like other rays. No. When released, before returning to the Sun, from which it was torn by force, the ray acquires the properties of the Sun, only in miniature. The resulting cataclysm could be argued in terms of destructiveness with many mythical relics, and observers even from great distances saw the flash, burning eyes, and soul felt the shock wave following it, and for a long time observed a mushroom-like cloud in the place where the enemy army used to be. Well, if everything goes perfectly and no one interferes with the activation of the Ray.

Of course, there were different rays, and the number of them also mattered, but still, the use of such means in the capital city would have been considered treason and rewarded with execution. Nowadays, when the chances of defending not even the Eternal but the very existence of the Empire shattered by the sudden war were less and less, people had no choice but to use the last resort. Included in the list of those means are three unassuming-looking caskets that look like cylindrical containers the size of a fist. Three Enclosed Rays, three instruments of destruction, each of which could kill not even a city but an unlucky army on the march without the normal cover of the elite. If it weren't for the labor in making them, if it weren't for the danger of a planar breakthrough, and if there weren't well-known ways to offset the effect of the Ray, we'd be fighting with them and their analogs of a different planar nature alone.

Catch an army on the march - there will be no army.

If commanders knew about the attack, or at least suspected it, casualties would likely be avoided or minimized to a tolerable number.

The Empire of Ages and Alishan mutually did not use the Rays, as well as a dozen other things of comparable destructiveness, primarily because they are best used against civilians, against peasants and townspeople unable to defend themselves, who would not be able to fight back. And if you start doing that, pretty soon both the Khan and the Eternals will be left without their subjects, and their lands will be raided by the same Empire of Arms. There are, of course, special types of closed barriers that simply forbid certain types of attacks from being used within the barrier. The Enclosed Ray won't burst into flames, the Flaming Hand won't ignite reality itself, and the Coming of Blackness won't unfold in full force. These barriers were used. They sheltered large fortresses and cities but always kept in mind some nuances.

The nuances were not even hidden in the fact that, with luck, such fields could be either deceived or simply crudely destroyed. It was just that the barriers, complex, costly, and painfully sensitive, did not cover all cities, and even if they did, you could activate a gift under the walls or a couple of miles from those walls. You can strike them in the middle of abundant pastures or wheat fields, where it is simply unprofitable to put up defenses. Soon, the Empire would be left with scorched and desecrated deserts in the place of its breadbasket, while Alishan would be left without many of its cherished oases, which would be even more dangerous for them, children of inhospitable land than for the Empire of the Ages. In the last conflict, they fought to the fullest extent of their souls, even at the end! So much so that the border of the two states is still divided by a wide strip of dead lands and still dangerous epicenters of long-standing effects of high-class shock amulets and special abilities of mythical artifacts.

There were plenty of such places in the interior of every large country. Some of the weapons of such power mercifully left behind only a scorched crater; others, while creating less direct destruction, spread a pervasive blight over the surrounding countryside, poisoning the air and mutating the flora and fauna within a few journeys of the epicenter. Many sages seriously believed the world was still standing only because it was too difficult to create such creations. Whatever the stockpile of the continent's largest hegemons was, it was not enough. Or rather, a lot of it, a lot, enough to inflict tangible damage to the opponent, to hurt him badly, but only that. You can't kill him, just as you can't stop him from using similar tricks against you. Not that this fear prevented anyone from doing so, but at least the external norms of decency continue to be observed to this day.

The three beams that had been taken out of preservation, half of the number available to the Empire, and all of which were in Eternal at the time of the terrible calamity, were put into play not without doubts. At first, the Emperor had rejected the plan, unwilling to risk the city and its inhabitants, but the clearer the prospects of the defenders became, the less insane the plan seemed. So he was given the go-ahead, given the highest authorization, sent all the necessary passwords of confirmation, seals were broken, and powers were given. Now, however, many people wanted to ask whether it was necessary. However, with the appearance of abomination in Poets' Square, orders from the Palace came rarely and only fragmentarily, if not fragmentarily - even all the Time at the disposal of the Ruling Dynasty was no longer enough. The Emperor had given his will, and now it was up to those who were to carry it out.

And even every single desperate soldier, staff and tacticians, elite guardsmen and wise Order mages, renowned adventurers and honest servants be important to the plan, but the main violin was given not to them, but to the one for whom worldly glory meant nothing. At the moment of Rose's attack, the barriers concealing the stronghold created by the enemy barely perceptibly shook as if an air current whispered nearby, an inaudible rustle, a whisper of doom itself. This Whisper wore a set of equipment of legendary grade, collected from the Palace's reserves specifically for the current task, was of the fiftieth level exactly, was famous for his brilliant record, and was sent here for that very list. His mind had to realize there was no one else who could have tried to fulfill his probably last mission, but he was sure that someone from the kin of the targets he had worked on had helped him.

Whispers of these goals have extinguished much in his long, long career. It is customary for high-level assassins in the service of the state to quarrel with all those who might offer them patronage, from the enlightened Empire to the deepest provinces. So, they would value the patronage of their superiors as much as they value their skin. So they would realize to whom they owe their lives and everything else they still have. Classic, you might say. As long as you are weak and not dangerous to anyone, no one cares about you, but when you achieve something, they start tying you up with fantastic persistence. And as it happens, it's the quiet ones and other cutthroats who are easier to intimidate than to placate, which, to be honest, is quite justified - this is the kind of people who fundamentally do not understand kindness.

Well, exceptions sometimes happen, making fun of those who once chose to suppress them morally and procedurally, but those are particulars. Whisper himself at one time personally tightened an enchanted mithril thread around the throat of his superiors. It was a nice couple, even to the point of lusciousness. They lived happily and friendly and made Whisper's life more complicated, but they died on the same day, just like in a fairy tale. He hung that thread on the wall in his lair, put it in a mahogany frame, and was not lazy to take the trophy with him every time he had to move. He had a very good day, a very good day.

Now, the task was even more difficult, even though he had grown up since then, had become even more mature, had accumulated dirt on all his own and part of other people's superiors, and had become a true Hero of his native Empire. If his first instructor, who trained the bastards and superfluous sons and daughters gathered all over the empire and who got nothing but good heredity and a one-way ticket from their relatives, had seen this day, he would have died of rupture of all internal organs at once. It was a pity that he had long since passed away. Either Eyes had killed the old sadist, who over the years had been humiliating and maiming rather than teaching, or some of his grateful students had done it. Whisper was even upset; he had long ago prepared a personal portion of poison for the rotten bastard, even though he preferred to work with steel. He really wanted the bastard to suffer before he died. And so he went away, as it were, softly, almost benignly, the bastard.

His thoughts of the past and the past did not prevent the lurker from continuing on his way, looking around diligently but not at what was happening. He was well protected from the fleur, even on his own, and he was packed in amulets. Some of them he'd taken off with indignation as too noisy, but some of them suited even him, though there weren't many of them. Fleur wasn't frightened, nor was he frightened by the madness going on around him. Whisper hadn't been afraid since he was a child, which didn't prevent him from cultivating a paranoid caution that bordered on cowardice.

Having reached on the chosen path, if not perfection, then at least recognition, the newborn Hero of the Mute Strangle moved from the category of an extremely elite, but still, a resource that will never be on a par with the true masters of lives and fates, to the ranks of the previously despised and hated by him masters of this cursed life. As a dishonorable murderer should, he changed his attitude very quickly. It was difficult to live without flexible moral principles in his trade, and much more useful was the complete absence of them. Recognition of merit, officially issued awards and nobility, the opportunity to live as you wish, not as necessary, and other benefits of the newfound nobility somewhat dulled Whisper's bloodthirstiness but did not diminish his skill nor his readiness at any moment to turn into an adept of crystallized violence of the highest grade.

He was still making enemies in droves and was only a little slower to put those enemies in the grave, which affected his paranoia and fears for his skin. By the time this whole mess started, Whisper was seriously considering swinging to the neighboring continent. Gradually, even the benefits of the Eternal were beginning to outweigh the problems he regularly brought to the ruling dynasty. Yes, each of his kind cost another province and not the poorest, but Whisper was the most problematic of them all, the most insolent and crazy. It was his origin and training. He had not come from the best instructors of the liquidators of the Eternal Eyes. His path had begun and continued for too long in the ranks of, in fact, punishers and executioners, who were sent on those missions where the most important thing was not the elegance of the massacre of the enemy of the Empire but its showiness and bloodiness, torture and brutality. They had bred a foolish madman on their head.

Whisper was no fool, realizing that any other holder of his level would have long ago had a lot of allies, debtors, and loyal servants, being literally a state in itself. Even the fortieth step of elevation was already a rank, honor, and position. But all he had was a level, the direct patronage of the First Prince and, unspoken, of his all-powerful father, and a mountain of piled corpses behind his back and under his feet. He did not want to join the pyramid of power, deliberately rejecting such an option, because he did not want to fight with the master intriguers on their field, did not want to learn another science, to start again as an uncomprehending idiot pupil.

He just wanted to eat the best food in the world, fuck noble ladies with pedigrees longer than a troll's dick, send everyone to fuck, and get nothing for it. Whisper realized sooner or later such an attitude would bring the situation to a crisis, but he was firmly convinced years of such a high were worth the future problems. In general, he was not mistaken, except he missed the moment of escape. The route and the new personality were ready, and the preparations for failure in the main plan were scattered in the caches, but it was necessary to run away a little earlier. And not from the infuriated High Lords, not from the Emperor disappointed in the tame dog, not from the evil ass-crawler Eyes, and not even from all of them together. The bordello freaks came to visit, turning the whole doomed city into a bordello at once.

Aren't they bitches?

Despite the vastness of his talents, Whisper was not a spy but a killer. A killer whose primary purpose was to cut off lives, not to get into every orifice. He'd say what orifices and who he'd prefer to infiltrate, but that wouldn't scare the devils. It would get them riled up. And yet, and yet... Among the available resources of the Empire of Ages, only he was suitable for this role. Only he could do it. Only he, he was told, could infiltrate the center of the devil formation, leave a package there, and return. Whisper didn't doubt for a second he'd been lying about the return. As soon as the commanders were satisfied that the Rays had been delivered, or at least that he'd gotten them close enough, they'd be blown up with him. Then, those who activated them would be given orders, titles, and governmental favors, and maybe he'd get a monument to spit on. In general, he flatly refused to put on the beacon transmitter not only because the connection could be traced with an almost complete guarantee.

The Dispersed Form is replaced by the masterly puncture of the Black Needle, tightening space and then releasing it back, the fleeting movements of traceable energy flows, the impossible curves of a body that is now blacker than darkness itself... the fluttering silhouette of Whisper passes between the signal threads, torn apart and glued together again, disintegrating into blobs of oil-colored abomination, only to evaporate into a barely discernible smoke so diffuse that even the solid walls of the signal fields perceive it as a mere fluctuation, unable to identify the threat.

Hundreds of chain dogs, leashed by maimed souls do not notice his movements, because as long as Whisper remains in the form of Mad Smoke he, as a person and entity, simply does not exist. His strongest trick, an absolute trump card achieved through the highest rate of class attribute, five very specific titles, and a full ritual gift, mirrored in status by a rare talent. It is not a combat talent, but Distillation of Blackness does not become less valuable, allowing the mind of a Madman to take in more gifts of the preternatural Darkness than even a Hero can handle.

Oh, so many there were who envied him. So many offered him gold, favors, slaves, and even power if only he would reveal the nature of his trump card! And all of them left with nothing because Whisper only gritted his teeth in a parody of a smile, not intending to enlighten anyone except perhaps Prince Varudo or his crowned father. Only those two didn't ask, or maybe they'd already figured it out and realized there was no clever trick. It was just that two of the three Whispering classes had the same class attribute - Blackness. Sure, he had invested in his development and had not been squeamish about rituals and sacrifices, leaving the affiliated Eyes of the Blackness-affiliated blacksmiths with a fortune, but the point was precisely the obvious. Two classes developed a single attribute, allowing him to reach one hundred and fifty pure attributes of Blackness by level forty-three - a high bar even by heroic standards, giving him a mythical active-passive invested gift that was the natural outcome of his achievements.

For Whisper, the very notion of closed doors or sealed rooms disappeared, for as deadly as the smoke form was in its concentrated state, in its dispersed state, it was practically undetectable. This, by the way, was very annoying and caused mountains of bewilderment in the ranks of all sorts of experts in planar sciences because it contradicted the well-known postulate that Darkness in its pure form was not particularly strong in secrecy. Something about that was true because the smoke form really wasn't as stealthy as his enemies seemed to think it was... and yet not as invisible as they thought.

Like any other technique based on the power of Madness, his smoke gave a very distinctive flash on the sensors, but in its diffused form, it could only be detected in the middle of a clear field where no other magic existed or had ever existed. Then yes. The slightly elevated background of blackness would be obvious even to a not particularly gifted sensor, let alone the aces of their craft. But when Whisper seeped into the private chambers of some impudent and free-thinking lord, that blackness did what Darkness was known for: it absorbed and contaminated, merging so much with the residual traces of protective fields and signaling magic that it was lost behind them, remaining completely unregistered. As his few friends from the same Eyes had told him, Whisper was even rumored to be not an adept of Madness but a much rarer mirror-user, only cleverly disguised. It was for that particular trait that he was considered, yes.

The black smoke crept slowly and unsteadily through the devils' mutilated space, flowing around the prisoners and captives, crawling past the phantom bodies howling in ecstasy, drifting vaporously into every crevice, bypassing the few creatures that might have noticed it. It wasn't difficult, but Whisper wouldn't call such a walk a simple task, even though he liked to brag about his accomplishments to those who had the right permissions. Or not, but he could be slaughtered for the sake of secrecy. Advancement required absolute concentration and the full exertion of all his strength, but it was all of it, not just from above. He hadn't taken human form for about fifteen minutes now, only occasionally allowing himself a few seconds of existence to dissipate again as a smoke front. At such times, he was especially vulnerable to the fleur surrounding him, but the amulets kept the pressure on for those seconds he couldn't protect himself.

Each transformation from smoke to flesh and back again required an inordinate amount of effort. And not because of the transformation. He had practiced that so long ago that he almost didn't feel the heaviness of using it anymore. All his equipment changed shape time after time, but to make it turn into a material of smoky blackness without losing its structure or breaking in a dozen ways was a task for a mage rather than a killer, but he had no choice. Half of his equipment, including some of his own blood-paid and earned toys, had already fallen into disrepair, and it was only by a miracle the magic in them had simply disappeared rather than discharged into the bearer or the surrounding space. He could not think of a clearer sign than that, except that he could simply step out into the creatures' gaze and say, "Here I am, bitches." By good, he had to go to this case almost naked, in the simplest clothes or a specially selected set of enchanted things designed for the smoke form. But these sets, of which there were four in Whisper's stash, could not protect him from the fleur, and the Rays were still the most unpleasant burden.

He protected them like his own balls because if the container was damaged, he would know about it after the fact, long after the moment of atomization in the solar corona. The insulating vaults he'd been given were of better quality, an alloy of several dozen materials refined by essential forging as if it was helping to turn itself to smoke and back again afterward, but it still took effort. In a different position, Whisper would have long ago stuffed the beams into some storeroom, camouflaged it somehow, and taken off, blowing it up a little afterward. Such a puff of smoke, as one of his halfling acquaintances would say, would wipe out the lion's share of creatures. But, bitch, he can't. All the central nodes of the trade mission turned into a temple of Lust were protected too tightly, so tightly that even the Ray would only scorch them, scorch them, but not penetrate them - almost absolute isolation, albeit with sacrificial energy. It was clearly the brainchild of a fusion of the merchant' existing defenses with mass sacrifices, and Whisper wanted to shake the throats of those of the Eyes who'd missed the preparation of such a thing. It would take a large-scale ritual to activate the blanks, but before that, it would take a long, long time to infuse the blanks with blood and pain, which even the richest moneybags were not supposed to have.

The old hitman knew a lot about victims because of his association with special publics and classes tied to the Dark, so he was confident enough in his judgments, just as he was confident that the leadership of those faggots in stylish uniforms had sold out to the Hell cocksuckers, if not in its entirety, then a significant part of it. The news had gotten out, and he had been a little involved, having shortened a couple of seemingly proven operatives on their heads at the very beginning of this mess.

Yeah...

What one think about when there is nothing to think about. The smoky form had a peculiar effect on his thinking, as if the smoke were something else instead of him, which made it seem as if Whisper had something else in his head as well as Whisper. And the more one exhausted oneself with the form, the longer one stayed in it, and the more closely the two became intertwined, never to be completely disentangled afterward. At first, the coming Madness was almost imperceptible, but it came more and more often in old age. Strange and illogical impulses, whispers, and cries audible only to the gut but not to the ears, obsessive muttering and howling somewhere out there, not in the body itself, but still much closer than even in the guts. It wasn't only out of laziness that Whisper had almost stopped working in earnest. Not only. And no matter how much he denied his fear, it was moments like this, when he wasn't sure if Whisper was still in the smoke, that made him uncomfortable, wanting to go back in time and choose another path, another gift, rather than the Distillation of Blackness that had taken too much from him.

His thoughts were jumping more and more, but his predetermined goal as the red thread was sliding along the direction of the weightless smoke, passing over another creature, pensively inhaling the Lust-scented air, as if sensing something unclear. The thought was simple: get inside the most secure part of the perimeter. If not in the ritual hall itself, where, if the clever people of the Eye of Tactics were to believe, the process of pairing the Eternal and Hell was taking place at least somewhere close. So, three Rays activated under the devil's protection would illuminate everything and everyone, disrupt the ritual, and maybe save them all.

The change of vector of the smoke's existence is marked by another flash of pain in the now absent body, even deeper than in the body, near the very soul. The work goes on at a breakneck pace, with no expectation of further exploits. Even if he completes his sabotage, the battle for the Eternal is over for Whisper. He will not have enough strength to participate in further massacres. He will have to hide in some dark corner and wait for the cruelest consequences for his body. If he does not succeed, there will be no continuation, which is obvious.

It was impossible to get close to the ritual hall, and it was impossible for Whisper or any of the masters he knew personally or through rumors. There was not even a fold of space, not a shift of realities, but a complete cutting off and closing, which, as the assassin, who was well versed in such things, thought, was considered impossible even at the expense of sacrificial pumping. The ritual was a thing in itself. There were no doors, only sealed and fastened walls, which were not even guarded by guards. It would be possible to break through by force only after extremely long dances, and it would be impossible to do it without being noticed. After circling, almost hitting a particularly sensitive creature with a dozen dicks for noses, Whisper pushed the smoke to another point.

The second attempt was somewhat more successful, though it also failed. The center of the convergence of closed fields was also well guarded, and there was a full guard of elite creatures, but still, the level of protection was much lower. Probably, if the old man, wrinkled from age and the Darkness harmful to his body, had decided to sacrifice himself like a hero from the old days, he would have had a chance to take this center. With a bit more luck, he would have been able to hold off almost the entire elite surrounding the convergence for a moment, exposing them to the Rays. It was a pity, of course, that Whisper wasn't such a Hero, but he had his own story, not a story of legend, and even if there was a place for heroism in it, Whisper would stay away from that place with all his might.

He coughs up blood as he comes back out, feeling the black, thick slurry from his mouth, vaporized by the protection of his amulets. He'd better not leave a drop of his blood here, or they'll find and trace it easily. The amulets let out a wave of cool breeze, like a spring breeze blowing in through an open window, blowing the dust off old furniture, taking away all the dirt and filth and the evil voices of the mad monsters hiding inside you. Fleur almost doesn't care. Fleur can't disturb Whisper because there's too much Darkness in him for Lust to find a place. The old man feels that a little more and he will cease to be a man, that a little more stay in the smoky non-body and the end, but it is too late to retreat. He will not have enough strength for the way back, even if we put aside the discontent of the guardsmen dying under the walls of the mutilated stronghold. They would not forgive him for the blood spilled in the empty sacrifice, and to escape from the cauldron into which the devils had thrown them would not work because there was nowhere to go.

After allowing himself an extra second. It's an insanely long, recklessly risky time. He disintegrates again into streams of thick and viscous blackness, marking a few more of the amulets that had fallen into disrepair from the jump between forms, growing thinner and thinner until he dissipated altogether. He barely makes it in time because one of the creatures emerges from the blink right where he'd nearly vomited his Darkness-dissolving innards onto the solid stone floor. The flash of some activated technique and the howl of a burning soul, captured by the entire essence of the smoke happy, and therefore somewhat frightening even in such a state, pass by the consciousness. Contract magic, which forces any invisible person, even the most skillful, to manifest before the eyes of the contract holder, is useless now. In distilled form, Whisper has no body to manifest it, and there is no Whisper at all.

Whisper liked the arsenal, if you could call it a place to store combat souls temporarily extracted from their bodies and turned into disposable bombs and anchors for the attacking techniques. The large and relatively open hall could not be completely enclosed, for when this launching system sent more and more projectiles over the horizon, the devils were forced to open a window in their defenses. Yes, they weren't ordinary barriers that required a two-way closure. They could hit through them without removing the protective field, but it still left a vulnerability that was insignificant to humans. The Distillate took that hint of the existence of a path, the marked direction of the release of ecstatic souls screaming from here and there as if it were an invitingly open gate. Well, well, slightly open. What does it matter if the essence does not change?

Whisper entered the perimeter with the next batch of prisoners and ordinary townspeople, among them a couple of cultists, who were either punished or rewarded by being sacrificed. You'd never know it. They were always happy to do anything. Under the melodious and synchronized moans, something reminiscent of the singing of the temple hymn, the people in the center of the hall gradually dissolved like sugar cubes in hot water, never ceasing to spin in an extremely primitive and fascinating at the same time round dance. The dancing was equally skillful, though Whisper doubted that a typical coal burner could do such pirouettes in his normal state. The bodies flowed downward in a honey-colored slurry, going down hollows in the stone floor to become the basis for the formation of pseudo-flesh. Some of the creatures would be repaired and healed in this way. Some of them would be given a new body if the old one was broken but couldn't be killed. But even when the body was completely transformed into this shit stinking of colors and pure pleasure, the dance did not stop. There was still a ghostly silhouette of the dancer, who immediately began to fuck the nearest similar silhouette, which had completely given up its flesh.

One after another, the ghostly couples, less than a third of whom were of different sexes, soared up to the ceiling of the hall, turning into two sparkling balls the size of apples, circling each other as if they were still dancing. And lo and behold, the barrier opened again, and a dozen or two paired sparks flew off on different trajectories. Even before entering the creatures' stronghold, Whisper had seen these projectiles, had seen them turn from small sparks into huge clumps of rotten-golden flame, and had seen what was left of those caught in the flames.

So that's how they do it...

The point was found, and there was no strength to look any further. Now, the only thing left to do was to form the body back, take off the Rays, activate them, and, in some unknown way, make sure nobody would notice these Rays while Whisper was doing the legwork. It was no longer necessary to hide in the escape, or rather, not that critical, and there was still a chance to escape quickly if at least half of the path could be traveled before he was spotted. But just as Whisper was about to embark on the final stage of the diversion of the century, if not the millennium - and let there be a bastard who could pull off something cooler than that! - another creature appeared in the center of the hall.

It appeared not in a blink or any other familiar form of teleportation but like an obscene inscription on a freshly painted fence, slowly and gradually, as if it had not been transported but reborn right here, on this very spot. Even without his Hero status, Whisper had no doubt she was a Legend. Judging by the way it looked around, the creature could smell, if not the presence of the distillate, then the shaking in the energy background. And this despite all the bacchanalia that was going on in the hall, where any sensory equipment, any kind of sensitivity, would rather burn out the sensor's brains than help to read the energy background!

The devil looked like a tall and, in every sense, charming blue-skinned and absolutely bald maiden, quite human in height and even covered with some hints of clothing. Like a very lecherous parody of the nun's robe of Fiat the Merciful. She stood silently in the middle of the ritual as if listening to something she alone could see. The other creatures controlling the monstrous dance of doomed souls reacted to the appearance of Caressing Lightness, whose level Whisper's eyes could not read but were stopped by a commanding gesture. The creature continued to stand. She continued to stare into nowhere with a blank stare of violet eyes, not shifting or doing exactly nothing.

The presence of Legend within the walls of the representation turned into a ritual knot was obvious, but their number remained unclear until now. Tacticians simply had no reliable information and for seers to look there meant voluntarily giving their souls to Lust. Nevertheless, Whisper knew for certain this was not one of the Legends who was busy with the ritual, nor was it one of the Legends who held the barriers and disturbed the stormtroopers with flurry attacks without being seen.

With a crystal-clear realization, Whisper realized she could see him. She knew there was someone here in this room who shouldn't be. Was his defense against the seer, developed by rituals and a couple of class skills and gifts, too weak, were his amulets out of order, was the bitch herself too skillful? None of that mattered because the creature wouldn't go anywhere until she found what had disturbed her so much. Whisper, tired and unprepared for this encounter, could neither deceive nor disguise himself better, and there was no point in waiting. Time was playing against the man who was falling deeper and deeper into Madness. He could either retreat, which would not work, and there was no strength for another attempt, or throw himself into a hopeless fight.

Whisper despised heroic ballads about glorious death in battle, preferring to stay alive, even if disgraced and defeated, but when he was cornered, which happened, those who cornered him realized too late how dangerous a cornered garbage rat was. To die by gnawing so that he would be remembered for a long time. A farewell fireworks display, so to speak, for a pleasant memory.

This time, he does not conceal his presence, nor does Whisper have any hope of a surprise attack. If the creature somehow senses him even now, the very thought of an attack will be obvious to it before it forms. That's why the burly thug puts all his energies into one swift attack, a decisive blow to a vulnerable point assassins of his level are famous for. For all the riskiness of this, if I may say so, plan, what Whisper conceived was not suicide or self-sacrifice because there were still chances to retreat, no matter how elusive they were.

Forming the Distillate into combat form was quick, even if you had to concentrate the smoke scattered throughout the ritual dance hall into something more acceptable. As it was said, he wasn't hiding at all, but the reaction of the Legend, who had figured him out, surprised and discouraged him. First and foremost, by its absence. She couldn't help but notice him, but instead of a sharp attack on a counter course, instead of trying to cut him off at the moment of transition of forms, for which he was ready but not ready enough, the deviless simply turned on her toes and stared thoughtfully at the figure, as if woven from black and thick smoke, which filled the clothes that spread apart. The maddened face, the craggy muzzle of the Darkness-marked old man, seemed neither frightened nor in any way apprehensive.

No matter how crazy Whisper seemed in such a state, the planar infection had not cut his mental acuity as comprehensively as it might seem. So he analyzed the situation with the same quickness, honed by many dirty and bloody affairs, with which he was accustomed to meet the change of environment and other surprises. If a creature like this does something incomprehensible, it's bad, and if it doesn't take advantage of a seemingly obvious weakness if it misses a moment that can't be missed, then things are bad.

Whisper attacks, fangs lengthening and foaming, teeth falling to the ground, replaced by new teeth more suited to the Madman, and the realization that the next ten years will be spent in purification rituals and prayers for his soul, for which the Warrior's clerics will have to pay a fortune. The Warrior is one of the few Gods that recognizes the right to sacrifice endowments to win a worthy battle, and if that battle doesn't turn out to be one, Whisper will eat his shoes... and his hat... and his liver.. and the sound of the clap of one hand, he will eat, eat, eat, eat, eat!!!!

Even in the state of Madness, he doesn't attack a waiting abomination, sweet and stinking that sweetness worse than a cesspool, instinctively sensing a sneak attack. Whether it's a contractual confinement, a reverse damage transfer, or something even more skillful, built on a typical devil's non-obvious ruse, it doesn't make much difference. If he was allowed to strike such a tempting first blow, then the consequences of his Legend does not fear, does not fear, does not wait, does not know, does not green, does not sing, does not warm, does not thaw, does not dare, does not wind, does not...

It was not even an instant but a ridiculous stretch of time, the kind of time used to measure the river of Law in battles like this one, where those for whom a second is Eternity converge. The mangled, twisted at impossible angles figure of the old man oozing black slime and equally black smoke leaps forward and rushes to attack under the sweet and approving smile of the blue-skinned beauty, ladder, messenger, hand, tit, to change the vector of the jump in an indistinguishable feint, finding itself next to one of the creatures responsible for the continuity of the dance, gari, mari, zari, zari, vari. In a strike of two paired daggers, more like short swords, which had already grown into the flesh of the foul flesh and fused with the bones, the abomination, which had not even tried to react, split into two halves.

A step. A flash of ink smoke so thick that the sight of it blew out the eyes of several random prisoners brought in for the ensuing dance. Like a drop of ink caught in a glass of crystal clear water, the smoke splits into a dozen streams, each of which splits again, and at the tip of each stream waits a lump of pure Madness, pulsing and shrinking in readiness to become a Whisper. He is dead at this moment, dissolved in Madness and given to it, but at every moment of existence, he is ready to rise from any lump, any point of convergence, to emerge and continue the fight and slaughter.

It emerges and continues, throwing three containers that isolate the death hidden in them into the center of the hall in another attack, which began to glow with an unbearable stream of rays. Another creature falls to the stone of the hall, already rotting and lumpy with blackness-chewed scraps, followed by a second, a third, and a few mortals who just happened to be so tasty, sad, vile, fast, and daring to get in the way of his daggers.... no, not daggers, claws, bone and iron blades, already fused to his body to the end.

The slipping mind, balancing on the verge of total immersion in Madness, remains an indifferent observer of blatant unprofessionalism. The killer's tricks are useless, and a fair fight, even if he is an ace, is not for fight with the Legend. You have to give Madness the maximum possible and on top of the limit of unacceptable so the fighter is, in fact, an already vilified creature, not a human. It works. The creatures simply die under the Madman's blows, causing vile laughter, hysterical roaring and bleating, incoherent mumbling, and hoarse howling. It works so well that the mind, tired of everything that has fallen on it this day, does not immediately understand, does not notice the obvious, generally speaking, thing until the last.

No one's fighting back.

Not a single creature tried to defend life, deflect blows, dislodge the body, use blink, or give the wounds they received to the souls they captured. Whisper would be the last to underestimate himself, and in such a pitiful state, almost giving himself over to the Darkness became many times more dangerous. But not so much so that such powerful creatures could do nothing to him. And he was not so mad that for those few seconds, he forgot about Legend, who had never tried to attack him as if the very possibility of trying to attack the bitch had been erased from his Darkness-soaked brain, rain, rain, rain, pain, plain!

In the same way, Whisper had somehow forgotten to stop fighting and retreat the instant the Rays' imminent detonation became apparent. But that truth, ruth, fuss, slipped from his mind. It was very difficult to affect a Madman mentally or even through fleur, and that was why he was a Madman, but Whisper had not yet dived fully into the Darkness, and there was an entire Legend against him. Three rays would make the Legend sad, bad, fed, led.

Legend leisurely and calmly retreats a step farther from the frozen Whisper as if not worried by what is happening. The foggy degenerate, who had already lost even a ghostly chance to regain his lost appearance and essence, only chuckles in response to the realization of the futility of existence - he can't leave in time either, so he'll die with her.

Before the world was flooded by a flash of gold that burned all matter and energy, Whisper had time to see a mirror in the hands of the Legend, a mirror set in a solid emerald. This mirror displays all the colors and dyes of the world... Displays, but mixes, blends into something one, and the surface of the image shows a marvelous beauty of a web of marvelous patterns - truly marvelous, not a fleur illusion, a lustful deception. At the moment, when all of them, including Legend, who never tried to defend herself, is vaporized into nothingness, he recognizes his own reflection there, in the depths, the foreignness, the flatness of that mirror.

A reflection of his real self - old, mottled with scars, wrinkles caused by the degradation of mortal flesh, the marks of curses and contracts ripped from his body, tired and dying. Sees what he was and what he has become, and then the soft and cruel embrace of the Sun takes away even this, this, this, this, this, this...

...and the mirror broke....

A reflection of his real self, no longer young, scarred, and blackened with the black mesh of veins soaked in foulness, the marks of contracts once given, tired and wasted. He sees what he was and what he has become, and then the soft and cruel embrace of the Sun takes away even this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this...

...and the mirror broke....

A reflection of his real self, a man of thirty, no longer a young man, scarred and blackened with a black mesh of veins soaked with foulness, the marks of contracts once given, tired but still glittering with mad fire in his empty eyes. Sees what he was and what he has become, and then the soft and cruel embrace of the Sun takes away even this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this...

...and the mirror broke....

A reflection of her real self - a woman of thirty years old, not the first youth, whose body shows scars that have not been removed by cosmetic magic, and somewhere even a fine black mesh of veins soaked in bad veins, patterned contract, and battle tattoos, tired, but still glittering with crazy fire in her cunningly squinted eyes. Sees the person she was and the person she has become, and then the soft and cruel embrace of the Sun takes away even this, this, this, this, this, this...

...and the mirror broke....

A reflection of her real self - a young woman of about twenty-five years of age, though youth is deceptive, with not a single scar on her body removed and hidden by cosmetic magic, a frightening and tantalizing black network of veins soaked in filth hidden beneath the noble whiteness of perfect skin. But the patterned contract and battle tattoos are visible, the tired and sensual face of a beauty as deadly as the Darkness itself. One sees who she was and who she has become, and then the soft and cruel embrace of the Sun takes away even this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this...

...and the mirror broke....

A reflection of her real self - a young girl of twenty years old, though youth is deceptive, whose frankly and even lewdly dressed body showed not a single scar cleaned up and hidden by cosmetic magic, a frightening and tantalizing black network of veins soaked in filth was hidden beneath the noble whiteness of perfect skin. But the patterned tattoos are visible, the contented and sensual face of a beauty as deadly as the Darkness itself and as vicious as the deepest Hell. One sees who she was and who she has become, and then the soft and cruel embrace of the Sun takes away even this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this...

...and the mirror broke....

A reflection of her real self, a young girl of about twenty, whose victim-bought youth was truer than any deception, whose lecherously dressed, almost naked body showed not a single scar, and whose frightening and tantalizing black network of foul veins was hidden beneath the noble whiteness of perfect skin. But the patterned tattoos are visible, the contented and sensual face of a beauty as deadly as the Darkness itself and as vicious as the deepest Hell. One sees who she was and who she has become, and then the soft and cruel embrace of the Sun takes away even this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this...

...and the mirror broke....

And when it broke, it shattered into hundreds of blackening shards, releasing a mesmerizing web that bound not even the mind, not the soul, but reality itself, as if wrapping it in a cocoon, sealing that bag with the rustle of dreams long forgotten and never happened, mixing those dreams with reality, until it became impossible to distinguish one from the other, until the dream became reality and reality became a long-forgotten nightmare. A nightmare that was stupid, scary, and never happened at all.

...Forming the distillate into fighting form was quick, even if it meant concentrating the smoke scattered throughout the ritual dance hall into something more acceptable. When she came out of stealth mode, she was already in full parade, as if she were going to a ball or an evening in some fancier boudoir. A perfect body with a form worthy of the best masters of beauty, almost devoid of distortions from excessive use of Darkness could make another Ascetic stutter in the middle of a word and choke on his saliva. Whisper's non-human appearance showed only black lips without any lipstick, and equally black nipples, though the latter were now, to her displeasure, hidden under her combat uniform and amulets. However, Lala knew exactly what Whisper's body was like under her clothes, even if she didn't take into account the fact that her abilities allowed the bitch to look under her clothes without much effort.

Given the level of Lascivious Lightness, she could do more than that, as she had demonstrated more than once during their merry games, as she had back then in... as she had a thousand times before, so often that it was lazy to remember. Some would say regularly sharing a bed with a devil of any Vice, not even necessarily Lust, whose representatives were known to be the most attractive looking among the inhabitants of Hell, was sheer madness. Well, the adept of that Madness would only smirk. Lala's amusements and contrivances were a hundred times better than anything Whisper had known and tasted in her life. The lecherous and unaccustomed to living in the future murderer took everything from life, not accepting half-measures, giving herself to her chosen Vice.

It was a pity she couldn't choose something tied to Lala's service as the third class. She would have picked the sweetest and not particularly onerous terms of the deal in exchange for a soul after death. They had known each other for so long that it seemed like a lifetime. However, Whisper had no luck in choosing the devil class. Whether it was something that prevented it, whether it was that they didn't want to raise suspicion in the ranks of the big-eyed faggots, or whether it was all of these things together - they didn't want to remember about it now.

Instead of boring bickering and thinking, Whisper bypasses the tall devil, dragging the next batch of future dancers to the place of their new birth, pressing his favorite creature in a tight embrace, and sinking into the unbearably sweet lips with a greedy kiss. The contact drug covering the blue skin of the deviless, more like even a fleur curse laced with a body-synthesized stimulant, begins to fog the mind, causing an instant and uncontrollable orgasm. Her eyes roll back, her consciousness falls into a trance, and Whisper can still hear Lala's words, but she can't distinguish them. She would probably take advantage of the situation again and put some particularly humiliating trigger in the minds of her friend and maid so the two of them could laugh about what had happened.

She opened her mouth and licked the blue-skinned creature's breasts, making her combat kit soaked through. The first thing Whisper did was to remove the still-working amulets. First of all, there was no need to ruin the valuable things that were damaged by the fleur techniques, even if the bearer of the amulets had fallen for those techniques. Second, even if regular glimpses of consciousness during the next rewriting of her brain give an absolutely gorgeous bouquet of sensations, you can damage the psyche. Without amulets, Lala would not allow permanent traumas unless she wanted to make them part of the fun and with them, too. There was no need to complicate her friend's work. She was already loaded to the brim. Even if we don't count the fact that the master of working with consciousness is now, besides the depraved game of "make Whisper a whore with a new set of fetishes," busy with the recovery of thinking after a particular dose of Madness, there is still the invasion of the Eternal. Yes, that blue mistress appreciates her wacky toy, but a job remains a job, something the assassin with Whisper's background couldn't be unaware of.

"You could have warned me, you sweet fucking bitch." When the ability to speak and think her thoughts, not whispered ones, returned to the killer, the first thing she did was to take offense at her friend, twisting her nipples at the same time. "I've got three Rays in the isolation cells, and if you weren't here, I'd blow your whole gang."

A snap of her fingers, an uncontrollable orgasm, and for the next three minutes, Whisper couldn't get her tongue off Lala's buttocks as if it were attached with alchemical glue. At the same time, for some reason, she couldn't even think of anything but the deviless' blue ass. Literally the only thought in her head. She loved such jokes with memory cleansing and hyperfixation on something primitive and depraved, sometimes spending long days in a simple state if she managed to contact Lala for such a long time. But there was no time for that now. Whisper suspected that the Guard tacticians had a way to activate the Rays remotely.

"Time is warped in this room, dearie." The words of a legendary-level devil are hammered into the personality of those who hear them. "The crowned cutie has raised so much silt from the bottom of the River that even I can access something. As for the Rays? Well, will my babe refuse the blue tits to fulfill her little request?"

The cutie didn't refuse, though the part of her consciousness, which, under the influence of the opened behavioral command, was the last to shut down, vowed that Lala would lick for this setup for several hours continuously and would also pick up a few particularly juicy ones among the captives. Ideally, she'd help her reeducate a dozen or two bastards Whisper knew from her work. The assassin didn't mind betraying the Empire for the sake of her friend, but at least for the sake of decency, she could have been offered payment instead of being bent on suppressing her will! That's at least ungentlemanly! And then Whisper's entire essence seemed to blink to become completely normal again.

"All for blue tits." Whisper repeated with a dreamy smile, adjusting her harness and activating the amulets she was wearing again. "Sweet blue tits."

Leaning against Lala one last time, Whisper made an obscene gesture to the creatures around her to leave the distillate state and head back to her former companions. After all, it was necessary to activate the Rays so the unique things would not be wasted. The farewell fireworks would turn out to be great even the narrow-eyed assholes from the Empire of Arms would appreciate it, and they were good at pyrotechnics.
* * *

If Beaumont de Gravignet had been asked what it was that had helped him to react, what had allowed him to get there in time, he would have found it difficult to answer. But after thinking about it, he would simply admit the most trivial reason - a congenital pessimist, everywhere seeing only the worst possible outcome, he did not believe that the chain dog of the imperial retinue would be able to cope with his last assignment in every sense. Just as everyone around him did not doubt Whisper, cursed by many noble and powerful families, would not return, Beaumont was clearly unwilling to accept the idea that the bastard could at least die in a useful way.

And so, when the eye-burning glow of the three Enclosed Rays, which were in a state of shedding, appeared directly above the headquarters of the combined assault group, sheltered by the barriers of several portable altar complexes, the warrior, always ready for the worst, did not hesitate even for the fraction of an instant, for which the rest of his companions were confused. They, too, were strong, cunning, and ready for anything, but such a sudden and unpremeditated attack, hidden beneath another series of attacks from the enemy's unceasingly well-coordinated fire, made them lose even a shadow of a chance for successful counteraction. And how could one counteract a strategic enchantment of such a level that was about to unfold, if any reasonable and not-so-reasonable high-level person would start not to counteract, but to save their own ass.

Many of them had a chance of surviving the sun's wrath, for there were no weaklings here. A quick escape, a super-powerful shield, giving absolute protection for at least a couple of seconds, an artifact with similar properties, or something else. The All-seeing and All-mighty ruler of the universe bestowed her children with various abilities, and the more steps you pass on the endless ladder created by her, the more difficult it is to interrupt this path. But even if the strike fist is saved, even if the strongest are saved without losing anyone just by the theory of chances, the strike group itself will cease to exist. Mercenaries, guards, guild fighters - they didn't send here meat. They sent here experienced fighters, but even the twentieth step won't help where you need to have at least the fortieth step to survive.

Beaumont de Gravigne could still retreat, but he had no chance of surviving the day, at least no chance of surviving the day as himself. He had read the tactician's briefs. He knew why this stronghold of Lust needed to be destroyed. He knew what would happen when their ritual was complete. The entire family and the rest of de Gravigne's entourage, not counting a small retinue, were not in the Eternal, as if something had whispered to him not to take them with him this year, leaving them in his native duchy, but you don't have to die for someone. Sometimes, you have to die for yourself, as ironic as that may sound now. Since childhood, the then-young Beaumont was characterized by a strikingly indifferent attitude to his life, time after time putting it on the line. Perhaps it was this that allowed him to rise to the position of a close attendant of the Duke of Wyrd, even marrying his distant relative, moving from the low aristocracy to the high nobility, albeit symbolically at first. Now, he could try to get a status even higher than the current one if he wanted to snatch more, not chew up what the House had managed to get during his life and his efforts.

Fifty-first level and three classes, all of which he had obtained on his own, he had even given the Duke's access to the extraction ritual, which he had wrested from the Emperor for the sake of a loyal servant, to his eldest son. Wasn't that an indicator of his own strength and valor? Of course, even such a level would not be enough to block three Rays, and even so suddenly, without preparation. If there had been two of them, he would still have had hope, but now all he had to do was die. Die in a voluntary and extremely unpleasant sacrifice. Warmaster, Child of War, and Sun Worshipper - not a bad bundle, giving both attack, defense, and magical support more than once allowing him to win hopeless battles. But now, only the last class of the three was important, perhaps not the strongest of the three, inferior to the legendary Child, but the outcome of the battle depended on it.

The Sun Worshipper had neither strong area attacks nor monolithic defense, nor even the bless and auras, so beloved by the solar classes, but he had his trump cards. Or rather, only one, which served as the basis of class power - the ability to redirect free solar power, literally absorbing it from storage devices, from artifact planar pumps, or from other people's charms if their creators were not strong enough, and then using it to cast his charms. Bomon usually kept two insanely expensive bracelets with a stable and quite powerful communication channel through them, pumping out pure power from them and forming his techniques from them. Combined with the Warrior's monolithic defense and the War Child's amazing striking power and maneuverability, the result was an extremely unpleasant opponent for single Heroes or entire armies.

He didn't need the bracelets now. Up there, just above the barrier protecting the stake, there was so much free and uncontrolled power that no body, not even his, Beaumont's body could pass through. And somehow, they dragged those stolen and wrenched from the dead and greedy clutches of the Whisper - and he would not give his things willingly, even to a devil, the greedy scum - through all the signal nets!

He couldn't absorb such a thing, but it would be enough for de Gravigne, who was performing his last feat, to redirect it to the side, ideally to the Grey Chains' farmyard hidden behind a solid wall of stupefying fleur so their accountants would be eternally deficient even in the oblivion where they would be sent for treachery. There was nothing left for Beaumont to do but curse those peddlers with all his soul melting in the rays, just as there was nothing left of Beaumont.

The Child of War's hardened power, which made his body stronger than hardened steel, was enough for him to exist in the center of the triangle of unfolded Rays for almost a second and a half, still managing to capture each of the rays with the Sun Worshiper's tenacious will. It was a classic solar flux, almost like a textbook, executed with suicidal purposefulness. There was no strength and concentration to defend himself from the captured force, and he did not try to defend himself, relying on his survivability and resistance.

A ray is a ray because its essence requires direction and requires a vector of force application. The ray enclosed in the artifact and chained in the artifact lost its direction, which caused such an explosion directed in all directions at once. That's why they tried to blow up such gifts where there were no people who could repeat Beaumont's trick because it was not so difficult to return the purpose and integrity of the lost ray. It's the old pain of planar bombs in general. No matter how powerful an artifact is, it yields to the will of the one who has become affinity with the plan. All other things being equal, if the adept of the plane is really strong, he can, to some degree, be influenced by the affinity power.

Maybe they can still do it.

Maybe they'll win without his, Beaumont's, help.

Even if the strike was not from within but from outside, there was still hope for a direct and mad assault under the cover of the confusion caused by the trio of rays. To break through the barriers, and such a blow would break them, to spite the losses, to break through to the ritual concentration, to die, but to give life to those who will die today too, if they fail. A feat is inevitable simply because there is nothing left for them but a feat.

Already spreading out in a long line of golden radiance, merging with each of the three rays and dissolving in their scorching fury, de Gravignet could make out a barely perceptible shadow, like a cloud of smoke at the edge of his gaze. And then the pain, the unbearable agony of dissolving into the Sun, was joined by the mad agony of pure Darkness, which dug into what was left of Beaumont's body with the blades of two familiar daggers, black with the filth that covered them. Only instead of Whisper's ugly face, some strange girl smiled and kissed him goodbye, looking like someone else, but Beaumont didn't have time to think about it.

He had time for nothing, letting go of the held power and dying in a quick but agonizing agony, even in the face of the agony he had already endured. Most of the power of the three Rays had gone upward instead of raining down on the mortals, making the purple sky overhead fade and then darken, becoming not even purple but dark magenta, as if the Rays had made their way to the wrong place. Not out of the trap of the dome but deeper into the Hell, to its frightening depths. The remnants of the sun's power, which had never been directed upward, swept away both the barriers and the ranks of the unprepared for such a trick, throwing them out of order, killing or maiming the unluckiest and closest to them, which the devils immediately took advantage of.

No one noticed the figure of the strange girl, who looked like a young and not yet disfigured by the Darkness assassin named Whisper, like a kindred and much more pleasant sister who disappeared even before Beaumont died of his wounds.

Rockterm could have sworn that the devils were far better prepared for sabotage using the Rays they'd pulled out of their stash than the people who were supposed to carry out the sabotage. The mere fact of how quickly and unimpeded the power of the Sun leaked upward, falling through the dome into the depths of Hell, was already very telling. One of the most promising Tacticians of the generation was well aware that the creatures needed a full solar corona for half of the Eternal even less than the humans did. They didn't come here to kill everyone and everything but to capture it for their spoiled games, so if the late Beaumont, from whom Rokterm Dostradiv didn't expect sacrifice, hadn't been able to redirect most of his striking power upward, the creatures themselves would have done it.

Alas, they didn't even have to work their asses off with this detail because the humans did everything for them. Perfectly calibrated degree of defeat, just cosmetically perfected in its exceptional coordination - minimum of corpses, minimum damage to the Eternal, but a completely broken formation and defenses, which there was no sense in restoring. The ambush regiment, simply obliged to be in such circumstances, the Armyman did not discern or receive a report of its presence, no. He just knew, at the level where tactical command skills and class ability to read the battle passes into intuitive unmuffled foresight. He wasn't wrong, which was frustrating because it would have been just fine to be fooled, but who would allow it?

The creatures of the first wave were about a hundred in number, all of them of the same type: long and snake-like, resembling a mixture of a ribbon wyvern, a flying lizard, and a cock that had grown wings, paws, and scales. They weren't even strong compared to the Guardsmen gathered in the headquarters. They weren't above level twenty, but they weren't brought here because of their level. They were covered by an overcomplicated illusion, obviously hiding a couple of stronger creatures somewhere in the crowd of little things. The tactician noted the two huge goiters on the body of each hovering dick to add to the resemblance to a known organ and saw them pulsing, realizing the imminent eruption of all that had been stuffed into a hundred creatures. Rockterm believed fervently in the Warrior, the Retributor, and the Merciful One all together. He believed the something poured into the creatures was far more dangerous than the creatures themselves, orders of magnitude more dangerous. And when it rained down on the defenseless Imperial fighters, the defeat would be a foregone conclusion.

Tacticians should not be in direct combat. It is of little use there, and there is almost no combat potential, but at the same time, the owners of this class, having developed far enough on it, are able, when the need comes, to act amazingly fast. The genius of the Dostradiv family was an excellent tactician, albeit relatively young. Therefore, the Chain of Command started so quickly that if he could cast combat spells with such speed, he would be an excellent duelist. Even if the basis of the Chain had been damaged by the sunbath, even if its nodes were partly out, partly atomized, and partly in concussion, the command was simple and clear. It was also inevitable, like the order of a slavemancer - the reverse side of the outstanding Tacticians and Strategists, which is not liked to be mentioned in vain but about which even ordinary soldiers are judging secretly. If the Tactician really wishes, his order will be executed even without the knowledge of the executor, whose body will take action faster than the thoughts of the individual subordinated by the Chain. The direct control of the body at the level of deep reflexes and the subsequent rationalization of what is done under control, executed, and compelled with amazing skill. A very useful thing on all sides, except for those whom the Strategist will decide to sacrifice for the sake of victory and who, in the heat of battle, will not have enough skill to understand that the icy determination and reckless courage of the suicide bomber does not belong to them.

In the case of the current one, there was no such illusion of choice through belief control. The bodies of the two fighters Rokterm had chosen were literally intercepted by him as if he had been working with a good puppet maker. In a different situation, the two Guardsmen who'd been hit by the Rays would have been able to fight off such a message and then glare at the overzealous commander, but now they were out of shape. If they survived, they would understand and give Rokterm a drink, presenting him with the mosaic paintings made of amber, which he used to thank him for.

Because they've all got their skins saved by Tactic now.

By the time the two warriors of level 40+ activated the artifacts they had been given from the Sealed Vault, both of them were already acting solely on their own, finishing what the Tactician had started, getting it done on time thanks to his intervention. The first to make his move was old Pilpin, a superb airman, one of the best in this field among the elite of the capital, and he was known throughout the world as well. It was not often that one met a man who had married a bird folk elder and learned from her the racial wisdom of Aldis'ai, which no one could know better than they. They even say he married for love, but they're lying for sure. Gossipers of the lower class give them a reason to compose a tearful ballad about the big and pure love. No, the couple took such a step for the sole benefit of getting patronage at court on the one hand and knowledge that gives strength and understanding of the class, allowing them to get an even stronger foothold at that court on the other.

The funny thing was that the artifact handed to Pilpin, brought by some summoned material, was not of the nature of Highness but of Hardness, which did not hinder but rather complemented the fighting style of the human mage. And even if it was not possible to make too many direct attacks with this artifact, one of the non-combat techniques was needed right now. Judging by the satisfied grin of the short-cropped and smooth-shaven mage, who even in such a situation remained smarmy, like a court Gigolo, who wove a web of seduction around another rich matron, he also understood it perfectly well.

The hovering cocks were already entering the attack position, puffing up their goiters and generally behaving very, well, vulgar, and generally suspiciously similar to the process of not attacking at all.... but what would you expect from devils? And a second before the forces of mortals are rained down with a rain of not-at-all water, Pilpin attacks, issuing a phrase-activator in one breath, uttering a tongue-heavy speech construct with precisely measured speed.

"[I'mgoingtopluckthewings]!!!!!" The smile on the mage's glossy face would have made one mistake him for some kind of cultist, so happy, satisfied, and mean-spirited, was it.

But the devils, as if in mockery, were no longer looking for new pleasures as soon as the last syllable of the activator sounded. The artifact's charms did not affect those who stood on the ground, acting only on the losers in the air and within the range of the artifact. In the radius of action, flying became simply forbidden at a level close to conceptual. For nothing, oh for nothing, Hardness is considered not the most appropriate plane for dropping hovering opponents to the ground because it's all about the proper application. As in bed art, it's not only the size that decides here but also the skill of use, like that night with that girl whose family was obviously giants because she was tall... and her breasts and hips corresponded to that height and even against its background were huge and so juicy...

Rockterm's amulets interrupt the devils' belated attempt to silence the inconvenienced Tactician, allowing him to enjoy the fruits of his success. Clearly, the very same illusionist who had been covering the hovering descenders. Yes, his, for if it weren't for him, they wouldn't have had time to use the No Fly Zone, for the artifact, like everything associated with the Hardness, accelerated at a relatively leisurely pace, compensating for its insane power. Each flyer was hit by a personalized and unremovable by standard purification Severity of the Mountains, not just pinning them to the ground but also slowing them down, restraining them, and preventing them from using any skills or talents. It was as if it was really turning a crowd of evil creatures into birds with plucked feathers.

The eruption did happen and even covered some of the front ranks, but only partially, which, given the killing power of this billet, can be considered an extremely successful exchange. Under the stream of golden and white slurry, splashing the unfortunate people with the splashing rain, all those who were hit were as if turned into lumps of continuously orgasming flesh. No limbs, no torso, no face, only entrails and brains in a leather sack, lying here and there. The armor, as well as the clothes, dissolved along with the top layers of paving stones, and frantic attempts to use magical protection did not affect the strange slurry at all.

Instead of the disappointed howl that would have been natural after such a failure, the devils responded with a wave of chuckles and giggles that were contagious enough to make all those who heard the chuckles and smirk, giggling like a Guild of Roses lass pretending to be an innocent flower. Tactic too, had to suppress the unmasculine laughter with a painful wave of cleansing magic, becoming a mere observer for an unacceptably long time. It was, as with the laughter, the shadow of a stranger had entered him, the same girl from the velvet-covered building who only looked made eyes and waited idly for the one who had chosen her to approach her.

The good news was that they managed to activate the second artifact anyway, and they also picked the right moment, covering both the dickwings, who were strengthened and almost immobile from the pressure of gravity, and the second wave, which merged with their ranks, consisting of invisible invisibles almost indistinguishable to the eye of Rokterm, who was used to relying on the reports and reports of his subordinates. Carl Buster Don Dygmar attacked like a textbook, applying his gift to the artifact's effect, received from the All-Seeing One for a high-class attribute score, which increased the activated effect by at least half.

"[Bleedin' farts]!" As is often the case with artifacts taken from summoned unheroes, their activators sound just plain plebeian to the point of insulting, but it's hard to feel stupid for even voicing such a stupid phrase if voicing it unleashes a force capable of devastating densely populated neighborhoods or small towns.
222

A stream of red-hot steam, consisting mostly of a highly toxic and sticky substrate, was an ideal weapon against an advancing formation of poorly protected infantry like a horde of greenskins or against the same infantry packed into a tight and confined room like sardines in a barrel. Sweet Pepper has always been at his best when repelling the green menace, sometimes scalding to death even legendary monsters dragged from the ancient forests who came after the orcs to eat human meat. It was a surprisingly useful thing, despite the stupid and humiliating activators, the only disadvantage of which was the extreme stench of steam produced by the artifact. But this toxic cloud was not thrown in the direction of the enemy, like the fire and ferry gnomes, but created a cloud of deadly substance right across the entire area of action, strictly in the zone specified by the user.

The artifactors say this creation opened hundreds of miniature one-way portals leading directly to the Pepper storage tank. Even though outwardly, it looked like a small translucent jar with a murky liquid and a vegetable floating inside that liquid, remotely resembling a super-hot pepper. However, it was a kind of illusion. No, there was both the slurry and something floating in it. Only the scale let down. The folded space inside the artifact contained tons and tons of toxic crap. The "pepper" was a living and, presumably, partially intelligent organism, synthesizing new portions of the crap. It was even possible to set more precise parameters of future toxins for Pepper at a certain level of alchemy or poisoning skill, but even a first-level peasant could use the basic attack. Another reason for Pepper's popularity was that it was a pleasure to raise the young offspring of rich families with him in hand. Even if the All-Seeing One could award him an unpleasant title if he overdid it too much.
Перцовка

The good news has already been announced.

The bad part is how successful the first attack on the hovering inseminators was, pardon Sheila's dumb sense of humor. So much so that Pepper's strike was useless. No, some of the stranded and wingless creatures were literally dissolved, as oblivion was given to some of their flesh-bagged victims, but that was the end of it. The Invisibles, traveling in a scattered wave, used some strange effect that twisted gravity or something else, but the cloud of toxins swiftly drifted upward, where there was now no one. And then there was no time left, and all the devil's power descended upon the people.

They fought back, fought desperately, Rockterm rebuilt the Chain of Command, barriers were reestablished, and the Benefics burned out their essence in an attempt to block the fleur, but there was no way to compensate for the failure. Following the wave of invisible devils came the turn of devils of ordinary, medium strength, but in large numbers and also supported by a couple of really powerful spawns that had broken out of the catacombs. Tactician was sure, and what was sure, he knew for sure, those tunnels they had crawled out of were not there before, and not only on the plans and schemes, they were not there at all. It wasn't the cultists who had dug them illegally, disguising them and leaving them for better times! They'd checked all the approaches before the assault, collapsing all the suspicious voids, but they'd appeared anyway, out of nowhere, without warning or trace in the energy, or someone would have noticed.

As if that weren't enough, the cultists struck from the other side, though they were fewer in number simply because the devils had sacrificed them in the first, most dangerous hours when too few incarnate creatures had arrived in the city. There were almost no incarnated creatures with the cultists, only a few dozen possessed men, who had withered like statues made of wax, like candles, burns from the battles they'd fought. In many ways, a possessed person was weaker than an incarnate. It was more difficult to work with souls, and the most powerful techniques, such as cloth made of sacrificial flesh, would prevent him from using them and would make them uncomfortable. But there were pluses, too, in the form of increased survivability, the ability to transmit more pure power, and the absence of the need to spend souls on defense because clay-like pliable flesh would become a shield and a blade and an accumulator and even ritual support as if all those who used the material for the body participated in the ritual at once.

"Goodbye, my hope for a new medal." Rockterm grimly said, trying to rebuild his defenses just a little, using every trump card he had. "And the mortal world, too, perhaps."

The Last Stand, Tireless Defense, Steel Formation, Hope of Survivors, Reverse Fatigue Transmission - he and all other holders of similar classes or at least one-time gifts give out what they have indiscriminately, without proper application of minimal effort, putting all available cards on the table in a cluster. For a moment, it works. The veteran guards and mercenaries, who have gained tremendous strength and have become almost invulnerable to fleur or even direct attacks, throw off the duller and frail cultists, preventing them from splitting the Imperial ranks down the center. Even the elite creatures, though not thrown back, are literally mired in the ranks of the rank-and-file fighters who have become too strong to be brushed aside. The Guards are fighting the creatures that have teleported directly to them, each of which has clearly chosen its opponent in advance, choosing the most convenient victim.

Rokterm Dostradiv still has time to marvel at the fact that the Tacticians and Benefics aren't being attacked and that the devils that have converged with the Guard are holding back more, even losing a couple of their own for not attacking full force, then the last group of reinforcements arrives. About half a dozen of the creatures emerge from a grayish gap in the middle of the street turned into a battle arena, first knocking down any attempts to catch them on their way out with gray dust and attacking them themselves. The tactician instantly changes his directives, trying to reorganize the defenses once more, and he has a chance while all the reinforcing benefits are still in effect before the rollback for temporary power comes. Then a short and seemingly non-threatening deviless walks out from behind the new arrivals, embraced by a pretty cultist whose facial features looked familiar to Rockterm but whose robes didn't look familiar because he'd seen it in person only a short time ago.

What exactly it meant, as well as what happened to the previous owner of the robes of one of the best assassins of the Empire, on whom they all relied so in vain, the Tactician's sharp and amazingly honed mind had no time to comprehend - the deviless sang la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la.

La.
* * *

A shadow veil, a weightless flood comes in a tidal wave, making the reality around it fade, making the glow of the signs on the fleshless stones and the iridescent trill of the petals change every moment. It didn't look like a classic enchantment, making the creature smile orgasmically once more, searching for answers among the many souls it had enamored, finding them not immediately. Rarely, so rarely were Overlords of Loniless born and raised under the skies of Alurei. Even more rarely did they come into power, and rarely did they have to use something like this. No wave of blackness, no dense and searing magical energy of classical sorcery, only a cone of colorless, monochromatic monochrome diverging from the weightless figure swaying at the very tips of his fingers. A cone of command, imposing a bit of the law of Shadow upon the already almost Hell, not attacking directly, but weakening, robbing strength, forcing it to be spent on overcoming effects. It was not a curse or a weakening current, which on him, on his melody in any of its forms, would have not the slightest effect. The monochrome wave will affect even him, will make him recognize this note as a full part of their common symphony, not the grunt of a deaf old man, not the babble of an infant taking up the harp.

There is no way to reflect the resentment of an abandoned child, the broken cry of an orphan left without anyone. Not in the usual way, because there is no properly selected soul now. It is necessary to search for it too deeply, and there is no desire to plunge into the monochrome of the rolling silence the singing of some lights that are more valuable with their music than others, and others will not help. However, as in many similar performances, the weakness of someone else's melody, a melody without sounds and notes, a melody of silence, because Loneliness does not need those who will hear it, lies on the one who called this silence, having to stop to give free rein to the weapon created.

If the boy without a collar, the part he chose, the role he took, is like an empty chord, a gap in the sheet music, a pause between verses, the melody of the girl in the collar is quite different. It is felt, it sounds, and it beats with the rumble of giant drums, behind which one can hear the roar of the fire going on and the crackle of bones bursting in the fire. Where the boy he loves tears up the melody, infusing it with dissonance with his silence and his uncomfortable whispering, devoid of graceful lechery, the girl who has misunderstood his caresses tries to cover his melody with her own, to tear up the score, to mix the notes and burn them in the fire of the absolute All-Burnt Sacrifice. It's worth saying the dissonance caused by the girl is more impressive.

A direct attack, not even with fire, but with the heat that would make the stones covered with signs crumble into nothing and turn the souls caught under it into nothing, was not something that could and should be ignored. It would be nice to clash the two melodies with each other so his own would ring out so piquantly against the background of mutual fading, but this would be prevented by the third member of the miniature orchestra assembled against him, sounding the dull, single note of the mountain flute. Warudo the Eternal sang strictly between hammer and anvil, not even attacking but hinting at an immediate response if the devil tried to change position and clash the allied tunes. Either take them on shields or repel them somehow else, as if telling him his song, sing, my dear, and we'll dance, our dear.

The ringing of petals became for a second close to the heart-wrenching creak of the Stone Bird's throat, forcing the cone of silence to slow as the shock came over the boy's mind, imposing alien shimmers, a wave of heat shuddering as the girl began to experience a melodic orgasm on the move as if dancing along with inaudible amplitudes. Only the child of the Ages, protected by his uncourteous armor, remained motionless, now preparing to protect and cover whomever the devil's hand turned upon. Such a bitter irony, sweeter than the gut honey and love juice of a dying opera prima donna. Implacable enemies have come together in union. He never tires of admiring it; it will not soon bore him, will not soon become a familiar part of the orchestra.

A flash of fiery protuberances glided by in a minor shimmer, cleansing the maiden's mind and body, at the same time melting one of the doors he had left leading to her understanding of the melodies into a wall of steel, closing the tab, rendering it inoperable. He had much more he wished to establish but saw no reason at that moment. So easily rewriting someone else's poem would completely lose the good taste that demands unhurriedness, demands delaying the peak of pleasure as long as possible. But even the crumbs are enough for the attack of pure heat not to choke in its drumbeat but to receive a change of half a tone, a contributed dissonance. He could have beaten back the blow even so, but then the maiden would not have experienced her ecstasy and would not have felt that mixture of oppressive shame, sublime duty, and the barely discernible thrill of longing for continuation. He knew what that trill felt like because he had written it, burning it over and over again.

Heat met with a thin streak of Cold, complete stasis of any movement, absolute freezing, crashing against him like surf against the rock in the deafening cry of a freezing traveler barely audible calling for anyone. The blackening silence presses on, but he manages to rearrange the lights in the proper order, forcing the icy essence of one of his long-ago girls, formerly a boy, back into the depths of him, giving back in return a few of the simplest of lights, quite fresh, taken in this city. Sovereign of Everything and Everyone, even if not everyone recognizes it yet, watches with interest as the fading lights begin to fade in the monochrome visions, not even devoured by the Shadow, but as if fading away from the sudden Loneliness.

So cute it's just hee hee hee.

The mental construct, like an offer of the bargain, is directed towards Flute just for the sake of interest and propriety because the melody demands it, even if the meaninglessness of the deed is obvious. Overcoming the simultaneous Armor of One Battle and the Ringing of Timelessness is possible, but not now, not like this, and not under such conditions. This is not an attempt to change someone else's sonata, to change the Flute to another instrument, but an exceptionally kind and sweet teasing, an offer to go into battle with a direct participant in the murder of the flute's forgotten brother. Like a reproach, a mocking bewilderment as to why the Prince had not yet clung to his enemy. To dignify the good Sovereign with an answer was a heavy burden for the Crown Prince, so he did not even lift it, simply ignored it, and even began to create the Law not in a warning hint but in a direct attack.

The signs on the stones cracked brittlely, and the organ hummed, re-growing where the monochrome silence had erased them along with the stone, pushing away the black and white horror, filling the world with the native and sweet glow of the promised benefits. The oncoming swing of a hand that had become completely transparent for a second was echoed by a sweet-sweet howl, siphoning the air out of the path of the flame-covered maiden. The artless attack was only the first layer, for along with the air, the impact that touched the far reaches of the absent Highness sucked out all the free energy, dulling the flames, disrupting the rhythm, and drowning out the roar of the Drums. The maiden who stumbled on a flat place falls face down into the stone, face into the signs glittering with a simple song, losing more and more flame, gradually being sucked into those signs, preparing to become another drawing on the exhausted paving stones.

Instead of killing the foolish fool running away from his caresses and letting her be reborn once more, Sovereign only covers her with a weightless blanket, as if it were not even silk but spiderweb. Runes and sigils grow on the shroud, merging into something like musical notation, drawing in the remnants of the flames and then transferring to her skin as the most skillful tattoos, moving deeper and deeper into the prisoner's essence. The wave of fire is as predictable as a drummer's part in a march, yet irresistibly strong - at the last moment, the Flute gives the Drums an extra second, taking it away from their attack, missing the moment. The second bought a little more freedom, letting the shroud burn away the broken tattoos along with the skin and, in some places, the flesh, taking the flute melody out of the general chorus again, making him smile wider and wider.

A needle of air, as thin as the hair of a furry caterpillar, as fine and indistinguishable to the eye as the stings of a jellyfish, as a roulade played around a campfire, unheard in the noisy city over the next hill. The needle is so thin that it passes through any defense, turning into a thread on which the predatory retribution will slip, the gnashing of teeth reduced in ecstasy. The first technique is only the beginning of the future embroidery, a point of direction, which is followed by the groaning triangle threads of the source, picking up the key to such a dodgy soul.

It was as if the creature were splitting, leaving behind an extremely real illusion, completing the key work, turning again on the flaming bird, crushing it with the weight of the Hardness, sucking its strength with the curses of the Deep, cursing it with the maddening foulness of the Blackness, replacing one source of power with another, completing the order of beat and rhythm, wasting no fleur or remodeling, crushing it with pure power. This sensation of hers, the gradual realization of her powerlessness and his superiority, coming into resonance with new aspects of her personality, born from the ashes of the past, burned at his will. Making her herself wait for a new blow, a new attack that will crucify her, naked and exhausted, give her what mere mortals, shaded by her power, are incapable of giving. Yes, some would say that the banal worship of power, more suited to Pride than Lust, is too bland, but it is not for them to tell a maestro of his level.

The boy shows great chutzpah by somehow managing to redirect the strings of keys. Yes, yes, to one of the face-paintings that he transferred to the framing of the poets' fountain! It's so ludicrous that it's already offending a bit, frankly. Instead of the accusation of unworldliness comes a successive wave of Sun, Light, and Sky, a burning that burns its way through the monolithic walls of shadows and the reappearing two-colored landscape, a purification that washes away attempts to control reality with shadow magic without affecting the presence of Hell, and a pure peace that slows down not only the body of the one caught in the shadow blue but even his very thinking and reaction. The Sun managed to pierce the defense, dissipating with the chime of bells. Light poured out its truth with a trumpet voice, but Heaven failed. Silence became two-dimensional again, non-existent, escaping its fate. Sovereign was ready to cover the drums with an extremely exciting and cunningly twisted binding contract, at the same time locking the silence in its plane, preventing it from coming out of its shell of perfect protection.

The power of Time was indeed great, as was the depth of the Eternal Dynasty's vaults. Not a single soul in his Domain had ever heard of the used item, nor was it a solitary note in the many reports and bulletins. The little amulet that had ceased to glow imperceptibly, the priceless Light of Unharmed, as the available seers immediately pointed out to him, had gone for a long, long recharge, having served its purpose. Even here, even in the epicenter of his power, this bling made him forget for almost a second the veracity of Prince Warudo's existence. It was as if another tune had been played over his melody, almost the same, but without the chord of the defiant Eternal. And he didn't waste this second, which was much longer for him, for nothing, not by admiring the charms of his future master, no.

Sovereign is forced to cut off both sets of attacks, focusing his essence on the Warudo, who had already prepared his strike. The Prince steps forward in his most normal, not even accelerated stride, bringing the old and crudely chained two-handed blade in his hands up and slightly behind his head in a classic attack stance. A dozen magical blades, each stuffed with different contents, burst into action, the beginning of an overture, nothing more than a first tryout.

Sovereign is forced to cut off both sets of attacks, focusing his essence on the Warudo, who had already prepared a strike. The Prince takes another step forward, ignoring the attacks that never reached him, which were just about to form in his grasp, almost frozen at his fingertips. This time, instead of blades, it is the coherent effect on the reality that comes into play, the promise of all the benefits, the distraction of dozens of small distortions undoing the Law's last instructions.

The loop is dull in its predictability, and it is predictable because it is nearly the strongest of the individual fight songs available to the Eternals. It is said that the eleventh Emperor, Bai Grey, closed himself in such a loop, stopping aging and refusing to die, as well, as it is also said that his victims, fools who caused the ruler's displeasure or losers, could spend many years in the closed loop of time, dying different deaths time after time to brighten the sovereign's boredom. Bai was killed by his grandsons and aged sons, in the only case known to any chronicles, when one Eternal stood up against another - whether they were tired of waiting for their turn to take the throne, or whether time after time Bai, who rolled himself back into the standard, gradually went mad and stopped being human even to the small extent the silly Eternals were used to measure their humanity.

Sovereign is forced to cut off both sets of attacks, focusing his essence on the Warudo already moving in his direction. The Flute is a step closer, and the creature's attack, even though it reached its target, even though it had a chance of overcoming the encapsulation of Time around the cutie, hits the armor, predictably turning to zero. Well, he hadn't counted on it, but it was worth a try. From the side came a dense feather, one of the Drums' crowning techniques, a material Flame, solid and had its weight, burning even the incombustible, but, more importantly, creating at the point of touching a breakthrough into the depths of the primordial Forge, pulling out something that sometimes even she has no desire to pass through her own body. But the Silence. Silence is silent, angry, and motionless, hiding something under the weight of an angry whisper.

Sovereign is forced to break off both sets of attacks, focusing his essence on Warudo, who is already moving in his direction. The feather disappears with the next loop, leaving behind a burned and immediately regrowing shoulder. He deliberately did not waste souls and strength on defense, knowing the spell would not have time to take hold, giving his first blood to the drums, letting the bloodthirsty sadism that had been nurtured in the flames grow. A risk, to be sure, but the kind of humming-sweet risk worth the possible feint from the flute that would weave a feather attack into the loop structure. Warudo is a smart boy, so doesn't even try to be distracted by the deliberately displayed weakness, aiming to finish the technique by concentrating all his energies on one thing. Sovereign's counterattack goes in the direction of unpleasantly, nervously, a strange silence of silence that does not take the opportunity, swaying in its weightless state, somehow already habitually stupidly held on the tips of his fingers, but the wound from the feather does not allow to finish in time, only to probe the essence, to understand what the musician who fell out of the orchestra is busy.

Sovereign is forced to cut off both sets of attacks, focusing his essence on the Warudo, who has overcome half the distance, laughing as a little girl who received a plush knight as a gift for the fifth spring of her birth, followed by the other girls in his power, the same age, the same nature of laughter, only the toys, in their time, were given to each of them differently - a plush knight, a wooden soldier, a straw doll, a wolf cub forged by a skilled blacksmith from the remains of iron. All these toys appear side by side, taking on the flesh of the summoned warriors, not even trying to attack, though they can, but giving each of the three images of their girls. So, it is as difficult to hit him for a moment as it is for a mother and father to strike their sweetly laughing child to death. A combat application of the toys would have looked more spectacular, but there wasn't enough loop time. There were no new blows, though. And even the Flute stopped in place, missing a step.

Sovereign is forced to break off both sets of attacks, concentrating his essence on Varudo, who has taken another step closer. The devil is struck by a thousand fiery sparks, hardly hot, almost harmless, but each touch raises the heat of his own body a little. If he had been made of flesh instead of the music of Lust, he would have boiled from the inside out after the first dozen. But as it was, the Source of the Keys opened wider, releasing the accumulated heat into the still motionless Silence, which did not begin to dodge, not even into a flat state, which began to seriously disturb its future husband and father, wife and mother. What was this sweet creature up to, what chord was he preparing, why did he delay, why did he not strike the weaknesses that were more and more clearly revealed to him? Here is the Shadow, look, lonely and forgotten, look silent and hated, here I am weakening the defense, here I am creating a gap in the control zones adjacent to the body, here is an insufficiently blocked path in the gaze of my seeing, why do you delay, what are you waiting for?

Sovereign is forced to cut off both sets of attacks, focusing his essence on the Warudo who had already begun to strike, realizing with irritation that he had not had time to hack, hack, and gut the response he had almost received. Silence, frozen and ceasing to change form faster than the beating heart of a tropical bird, somehow couldn't help but respond, but the work of the flute, the doom loop tainted by the despair of its creator, had time at the last moment. Very luckily. Warudo the Eternal had deliberately taken the risk, ignoring the danger of weakening the loop, ignoring the dozen attacks sent at him for decency's sake. And the foolish Drum, succumbing for a moment to his sadism, was so eager to see his wounds that she only now ended the batch of sparks, reverting to classic, albeit over-complicated magic. In doing so, attacking with a carpet of fire, becoming a plummet into the fiery depths of Forge, such tired sidewalk stones and the faded signs on them. Even threw a couple of spears in the direction of the nearest petal, and good spears, hiding inside another one, and then another one, and then another one, and then another one, and so on a hundred times. He can't drink at once, redirecting will also have to one by one. He had to signal the petals and extinguish unnecessary trills. No loop could cut him off from his petals. Their melody was the same. He was them, and they had long ago become a part of him.

Sovereign is forced to break off both sets of attacks when the blade is ready to strike the first of the two only necessary blows, almost weaving it into the piquant melody. More than that, the blade is about to touch the body frozen in the loop when the noose rolls back again, only now at the command not of Warudo but of the prisoner himself. Please don't be surprised, dear Flute, dear boy! Who would come to such a battle without his own chronomancers in his petals and right under his heart? Who would do such an unsophisticated folly? Not he, no, not he, but all the others, including Warudo the Eternal, who only at the last moment managed to turn Time, though the devil did his best to prevent it by appearing where he had previously stood, imposing the essence of the loop on his Sovereign.

A light slap knocks off all the fury of the maiden covered with dozens of sharp, fiery spikes, frozen flaming tongues forged from her cruel anger, extinguishing this flame, dropping it on the already much slower stones covered with signs, tearing her heart out of her chest. The flaming Вrums gave him one last death orgasm, burning to the ground and being reborn again, but the melody would not wait for that. Heart clenched in his hands, a hundred ritualists deep in his essence, structures instantly embodied, where the center of the ritual was the equally flaming reagent taken from his hot chest. Curse and attack, the finest work, even if all its genius is spoiled by the haste of creation, in all spectra perceived by the work of the one whose heart became the basis.

Legendary defenses of this sort would have been deceived by this chord, but Warudo's armors, the Duel of the Scoundrel's fame long before it was ruled by the Eternal Dynasty, recognized the trick. It was only a test layer, though, another layer that came much closer than the last. As soon as the shroud of Flame was scattered with sparks, it was reborn from the sparks, only now seeking to incinerate the still-silent Silence in its embrace. The Lust incarnation even had a thought, which had been hundreds of times debunked and verified, as if the summoned had simply decided to set up his allies, watch them die, and then try to finish what they had started, using the knowledge he had gathered about the devil's essence and his presumed fatigue. It was a pity, but such naive and deliberate self-sacrifice to the archdevil who loved him still seemed to him. The sorcerous roundels of the seers had not yet managed to break through the defense strengthened by inactivity and immobility but clearly recognized the truth of the threat. No. Silence was not waiting but was occupied with something too deeply hidden in Solitude to draw an image instantly.

Instead of a prepared attack, let off the leash, laid out on the table too soon, before the preparation was over, instead of a falsified melody, a wrongly taken note... Silence just went back to being two-dimensional, as if it hadn't been doing anything all along. This naughtiness is not just a turn-on. It demands an answer so that the boy will not be allowed to do all sorts of strange things without seemingly doing anything. In a flash of flame, the flame maiden is born with a murmur of windpipes, and her prince is rushing into battle again, speeding himself up so much that he blurs into one silver line, preparing to strike with a cursed blade. The silver line breaks and the prince goes tumbling as the Law abruptly refuses to obey about four steps from the target. Again, the flashes of signs trying to get under the armor, to dig into the pliable flesh, because the armor of timelessness for an infinitely short and immensely long moment faltered, glistened, whistled like a songbird in a cage about to be put into a furnace.

The armor keeps Flute, and the reborn maiden beats a fiery stroke, at the tip of which a storm of Flame is hidden, preventing the Emperor, as he still naively believes, from sinking into the malleable stone of the future. That stone turned into a lustful and lecherous swamp that was ready to take any shape and fill any hole, but the chronomancer stopped himself, paused in relation to the world, and it was necessary to lose at least a heartbeat to open this armor. Instead of opening, the melody changes tone for the umpteenth time that day and flares with its flame, not defeating the alien but letting it in, like putting out a fire with a conflagration. The maiden bends the charms and twists them into the right position, seeking to suppress the attempt, to join in the attack with a force not only her own but also the one opposed to it. Everything is correct, clever, logical, and calibrated, as he expected from her. After so many burnings, her master knows the toy better than she does, even without clairvoyance, anticipating the pattern of actions. Choosing the best of all possible options makes your choices predictable, Drum Girl. That's not graceful. It risks neglecting you.

The stream of flames looped, attacking the monochrome prison of silence building anew as Flute rolled his time back, emerging at the starting position. Flute was wrong. While he was paused, it was the first to arrive at the starting position, leaving an amusing surprise underfoot. The stone shrapnel with dozens of curses on its sharp chips predictably does nothing to the peach clad in his armor, but there, under the stone, a few dozen sparks flash in a mesmerizing rhythm. An old billet, from the days when it was still planned to take a young heir to the dynasty, was discarded for lack of resources and the right manpower. Nine perfectly matched and then refined to the true ideal of the souls of not very innocent maidens, completely suited to the tastes of Warudo the Eternal, as if nine ideal wives, lovers, and affairs, each of which corresponds to its archetype. Their souls are laid bare, their connection serving as a bridge in which there is no direct attack, only pure hypnosis, the alluring rhythm of colored sparks.

Varudo rushes out quickly, almost in time to burn away the sparks of the hidden amulet's spell in time to bring back the sparks of the lockpicks to his heart, but, by that moment, the flaming maiden is thrown aside, bleeding fire and regenerating rapidly, the Flame repairing her torn flesh. Flute is forced to catch his servant, to cover him from a snow spear thrown in pursuit, seeming like a child's toy if it weren't for the distorted faces flickering in a chorus of snowflakes. The Prince panics a little, having correctly interpreted what had happened. His armors did not protect him, though they should have. Every artifact has vulnerabilities in the very nature of how they work, and Sovereign came very close to Duel Scoundrel's.

The monochrome bursts as Silence extinguishes the flame, forced to take another form, changing the essence again, but no longer in time to unravel the intent. Yes, the killing blow from the rainbow-colored astral beam only tears a piece of flesh from the huge Shadow, not threatening the existence of a more tolerable norm. The main thing is done - all three toys do not attack, all three are busy, all three can only appreciate his sketch, and afterward accept their fate.

As the trio breaks the distance in one way or another, the devil himself steps backward, stretching the space so as not to be interfered with, coming within two hundred elbows of the toys. The Source of the Keys opens wide again, releasing three deadly pale orbs of light, not phoned by any power, not perceived by any sense other than the visual. Three constructs, three reasons for the Lord's apparent passivity in this battle, for it was not easy to adjust them to each of the three personally, especially in the case of Flute, but there were no closed doors for him, no paths untraveled, no goals unattainable.

Again, a step. Again, he is in the center of the triangle, again on the line of attack, but no one attacks. All three spheres went out, became matte black, and then turned along the triangle so each cutie got the sphere of the neighbor to the right. And that's it. Now, he can take his time sorting and evaluating them, at the same time restoring the pressure on the Palace. Yes, the petals can cope without the direct participation of Sovereign, but one thing is not to give the Palace a break in a duel of tactical and strategic charms and quite another to win this duel. The second requires attentiveness, the concentration of effort to properly use the available knowledge, the keys to defense learned and brought out by espionage, to uncover known weaknesses, and, of course, not to damage the main prizes, now sitting in that Palace. It is worth it to get the Essences of the Eternal, it is worth it to take them, as this campaign, a small opera, a cute adventure, will immediately pay off, and a little later, after at least a decade or two, will pay off many times over!

And the trio beats in agony, for the essence of his attack is not even an attack, not even direct harm that can be burned in Flame, given to the Shadow, absorbed by mythical armors, or sent back in Time. The essence of the effect is not an attack in the slightest, does no harm, and can even be considered extremely, incredibly useful. In another situation, in another position and not on this day, the same Warudo Eternal would have gladly accepted such a gift and would have paid for it with a mountain of gold and a couple of rarities from the family collection graded no lower than legendary. The design had its origins in the techniques of ritual psychic practices tied to ultra-long-range communication, capable of bridging the distance between continents. Not connected to any planar type, completely isolated, fragile, and requiring extremely fastidious adjustment to each of the participants of the conversation, the node-type communication network was finalized and supplemented personally by Sovereign and a couple of extremely ahead-of-their-time Ritualists and a Seer.

Those two knew exactly what they were getting into. Well, they thought so . They had voluntarily agreed to the contract with Hell, having double-checked it many times and making sure the threat to their souls remained within the limits of what was permissible. Strangely enough, they were not wrong. The Domain of Lust, famous for its mental effects on the personality even stronger than Pride, Laziness, or Despair, received no less, even more, from that contract than the other participants, and so they restrained their impulses to take the contractors themselves. They took them later, years later, when the readiness and constant expectation of some meanness prepared by the cunning creatures had passed. But that was a separate operation, not related to the mistakes in the contract in the slightest.

The connection itself was not a weapon, though the technology was of insane value, so much so that the tune of ringing coins, which could be obtained for it, even now, was given away by a slight regret. There had been plans to sell the development, in no way tied to Hell and its fleur, through its cultists or to the same dark elves, servants of the Dark Mistress, the self-proclaimed, but true to her children, Queen of the Pits, but they had held off. Largely because they had no means of controlling the receipt of payment by a method other than another invasion, and it was a little early for one.

The refinement, the reworking of the cohesive knot, could not be evaluated and was stored by Sovereign personally, tied to dozens of individual souls, weaving its melody into the general so imperceptibly that one would never guess. It was kept just for such situations when it was necessary to attack and win without attacking, threatening, and killing. When it was necessary to spice up the already spicy dish even more.

The Paradigm Shift didn't hurt, but it did something scarier and more delightful. It changed the personality of the participants. Not their memories, not souls, not life experiences, but only their personalities and their understanding of themselves, the nature of the one who was enclosed in the invisible circle. One shift and all three toys changed and remained themselves but became completely different, not as they really are. Not for long, because their power, which had permeated the essence of the whole trio, would bring back what had been lost, squeeze out the alien, and restore what had been taken away! But until that happens, the toys are completely defenseless, deprived of their power. The drums of the Flame do not beat and do not murmur, falling silent and crashing against the wall of Loneliness. The river of Time flows without change until the one who rules it burns in the flames of the Forge. The hateful murmur of the Shadow, hungry for everything, does not reach those lost in the lines of the future and variants of the past.

Each of them was an ace, a consummate master, knowing their blood and their power, their archetypes, exceedingly deeply, becoming akin to them, drawing power from them, refusing to succumb to the temptations of even greater power, to fall forever. Shadow, Flame, Time - just three peaks, subservient to three personalities. But now the personalities have changed, the judgment has changed, the deep and incomprehensible even to themselves song that gives the lonely outcast to know Loneliness. Allows the impetuous and uncompromising maiden not to burn in her Flame. Allows the strong-willed and fearless prince to order the Law. Each of them appeared perfectly prepared to be someone other than themselves. And the habitual roles, the habitual power, the power that requires all-important control over it, felt insecure, unfit, weak. The one who has no hatred for himself and the whole world will not order the Shadow. The one who recognizes half-measures and concessions will not hold the Flame in his palms. The one who does not believe in his power and the right to everything will not dare to subdue the Law.

It will pass. It can't help but pass. It already has. It can hurt, especially with so much power, but the trio is persistent enough, and memory and soul will cope where the character yields, even if there are still some risks. Because of those risks, he, personally and with all his might, helps and protects the kids from themselves, not trying to corrupt or leave anything of himself behind... well, almost not trying. Because only these same fruits can be sweeter than the three forbidden fruits, but they are even more glorious, even more powerful!

Later, when they looked inside themselves. Each of them would notice and realize that this sugary, extremely sophisticated torture had not only kept them alive but had gifted them with some understanding of another's power. Not enough to unlock a new class or change one of the old ones entirely, but still generous enough to leave behind titles, inalienable gifts, and unique skills. Drums will be able to summon Shadow from the glare of their Flame, Flute will begin to not only rule Time but to burn it forever, and Silence will finally realize how truly Loneliness is Eternal.

Only now, they were defenseless. They had already let the devil into themselves simply because they had no way to resist, busy controlling the gut that was bursting out. His threads are already in them. It picked up the keys, already canceling out Shadow Form, Fiery Fesh, and Closed Time. One more heartbeat, and he would be in them. The next beat and they would be his. And even the river of time will not delay this sweet moment, for he is watching the main prize of the battle, Varudo the Eternal, with a striking and astonishing wait, like the howling of the violin, the wailing of the cello, the sobbing of the bone keys and the creaking of the dust-covered trombones.

Hence, he triumphs, infusing, at last, the seed of vice into the longing caresses of the souls of the swee...

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So he missed the moment when Silence burst out, severing the threads of the Source with its clawed paws, tearing forward, right at the devil, who was somewhat confused by such a sudden outburst of willfulness, not expecting anyone to move after the Paradigm had been adjusted and triggered. The other two were already taken. They, already smiling at their dreams coming true before their eyes, already surrendered to him, and he held them close to him, especially Flute, which still had to be re-tuned in time to make the most important part of the future rhythm. A cascade of battle charms, which Silence, which has never fully recovered, cannot dodge, strikes at point-blank range, throwing him off and crippling him. He did not have time, poor thing, to take the plane. The elegant deception played the role, created by falsely singing souls, closed the premonition of the last of the first, dooming him to ...

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That's why he misses the moment when Silence bursts out, tearing the threads of the Source with its clawed fingers, breaking the distance and preparing some powerful attack. The devil's surprise is not feigned, but the counter-strike, simultaneously covering the victims already taken, is executed with the usual perfection, atomizing the impudent into pieces, or rather, atomizing the dupes, the powerful Shadow mutilated by the Overlord. Where did he find one here, inside the Eternal Dome? It must have crawled out of the underground vaults. There were a lot of vivariums there. They could have kept the Shadow on a tether. They could. Closely clutching the lovely Warudo, he prepares such a necessary chord, already ready...

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That's why it skips a mome...

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And the trio beats in agony, for the essence of his ata.....

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Again, a step, again, he is in the center of the triangle, again on the line of attack, but no one attacks. All three spheres extinguished became matte black and turned along the "triangle," so each cutie got the sphere of the neighbor rig...

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Another step, again he was in the center of the triangle, again in the line of attack, but before the spheres went out, Silence came to meet them, literally embracing the devil, losing its human and anthropomorphic appearance as it went, pushing the creature with its shoulder in a way that was not graceful. A swipe of a dagger, a perfectly ordinary dagger of good steel, looking cheap and slightly worn in every spectrum of perception available to Sovereign. Not taking advantage of the opportunity so compulsively given to kill or take the nearly defenseless Silence, the archdevil shifts himself to the side, exposing five layers of armor in front of him at once, as if five ghostly silhouettes had been put on his body. Each of them can cover almost anything, but something so successfully pretends to be nothing, mere steel, can ignore even that, just as Flute blade would ignore this protection.

The Summoned stumbled back, letting both daggers out of his hands instead of continuing the attack, and at the very last moment, when the three binding gifts were already blackened, about to shift, he grabbed his gift with his hand. A two-dimensional, vile, empty, flat hand! And the weapon, invulnerable to any type of attack, absolute in its astonishing cunning, becomes just as flat, goes out of the world to the same place where the lonely Silence went!

For the first time in today's battle, for the first time in decades, if not centuries, a real roar comes from Sovereign's lips, a beastly rage that fills his essence, makes him put aside even Lust because what has so successfully become between him and his Vice is not worthy of that Vice. The Source spins in the rearrangement of the mechanism, changing positions and creating hundreds of figures with its threads. Every single seer ceases to follow the events in the city, focusing on what has and has not happened at the same time, the despicable act of Silence, called, loved, hated, lonely, and now no longer so caressing with its presence this day! He must understand and realize how it happened. Why it did not happen when it's already happened? How had Silence managed to avoid the bonding effect? How had it managed to restore his personality so impossibly quickly after the shift? What Shadow, what facet of his Hunger had given him such a thing? How had he discovered and accepted that facet?

And now, for the multitude of continuously coordinated creatures, Sovereign had fallen silent. In a single beat, he realized and dismantled what had happened, bringing the souls of the seers back to their original positions. With the loss of time. With a weakened efficiency that would go to full peak for many more hours, losing valuable initiative. However, the answer was worth it. Simply because without an answer, even if he won today, Sovereign would not be able to remember this day in peace and would not be able to admit that he had been outplayed.

Now he can.

Can.

Can!

The growl turns into a roar, and that changes to a howl. Whole streams of souls curl around the creature, merging into ribbons, and those ribbons turn into a tornado, in the ocean of which he continues his song, spilling out the accumulated resentment, sadness, and disappointment with an orgasm. He has not understood everything, but enough. Enough to realize - it wasn't the Shadow, it wasn't an artifact, it wasn't a cunning ally, a heroic Companion aiding the silence from afar. It was a classic distortion of reality, so characteristic of pure changelings, of the mighty Carriers of the first of the Laws, and, of course, of the Mirorerrs if they were brave enough to play with such powers.

Somehow, the devil was sure. It was as it had been recently in the White Hall, the Mirror, the Dream Realm, used right now, despite the Shadow-burning body that had lost all flesh, despite the active use of that cold and vile essence of Loneliness. Somehow, truly incomprehensible to both him and all his souls, the boy had used two sources of power simultaneously winning the life, time after time, putting everything on the line, absolutely everything, because the dice would only throw out hundreds because the coin would become a rib time after time because all other options reflected and broke.

Varudo and Sophia stood behind him, leaning tiredly against the stone fading from the touch of a black palm, who had managed to burn out the connection that had not worked, to accept the shift that had not worked here. They didn't just survive. They also accepted those gifts, absorbed them, and gained parts of each other's power, becoming closer to their donor than brothers. He wondered if Warudo would love his toy now that he carried a part of her Flame. He wanted to leave, just to let them survive and see the result. Usually, those gifted with the Paradigm were always taken by it or had been taken before, long before the honor was bestowed. There was no reason or desire to risk revealing such a tempting trump card under which it was so easy to corrupt truly powerful opponents.

Sovereign performs a new bow.

Not like before the battle began.

That bow is devoid of mockery, devoid of free invitation and sense of superiority, devoid of challenge and appeal, the direction of those who saw that bow closer to Lust.

No, now he's promising, he's not playing.

And instantly rushes to fulfill that promise.

The river of souls surrounding the devil's body struck with a lash, striking without bringing its blow to the mortals rallying at the opposite end of the square, who intuitively sensed that now they would not be taken prisoner as intact and whole as possible. The stroke of the lash was marked, followed by countless drops of golden glow, like scales thrown off by a huge snake. Each spark is another deadly effect, from the simplest and most iconic of Hell's blades to far more sophisticated contract magic, planar interactions, or simply deceptions that seek to drown out the white noise of the melody of premonitions and omens.

A fleur danced in a wave, lowering the intensity of the effect on the Palace, giving it a respite, interrupting Sovereign's long game of opening the minds and hearts hidden in the Palace. Some of the servants or servants' sycophants hiding in the corners had already heard his tune and had already let Lust inside despite all the barriers, but there was no way to reach the commanders or the mages behind the artifact defeat complexes. Only half of it had been passed. Now, he would have to start again, but the three who had dared to offend him would flinch when faced with what he had aimed at them.

The greater the fleur, the stronger it is, but the stronger the one who rules it, the subtler its effect, and it can be as subtle as the most caring lullaby, as rough as the heartless doom of the executioner's axe. Desires mature and perish under the oppression of an unruly will, the most bizarre fetishes sprout poisonous thorns, grown out of childhood complexes, secret desires, shameful fantasies, obsessions take away reaction time, indulge in paranoia, and all this under the growing excitement, the desire for love carnal but sincere, shameful but sublime, primitive but elegant. Fleur presses, oppresses, plunges into a trance from which there is no way back, and requires great strength to neutralize, at least partially, already committed. Someone simpler would have fallen just from this, as many of those who tried to stop his coming have fallen recently without even touching the collection of souls singing for him. Only the pure power of the native aspect would have sufficed.

These were not enough. They overpowered, like fools beating their foreheads against the mountainside, only here it was the mountains that broke first, not the heads. The cascade of drops, the surf mark of a river of tainted souls, was met with dignity. Weaker than what each of them could without the distraction of the fleur, but still worthy. One would have failed, two would have tried but fallen, but the three of them managed to resist, to sustain the first note.

The shadow opened its hungry maw greedily, a created breach leading not to those remnants, the despicable scrap of the plane that remained in the embrace of the falling city, but to its true depth. A depth so true that even he didn't want to look there for too long. Something that lived so far from reality would hardly be interested in the tiny window for him, but there was no desire to check. Droplets flow into the bottomless throat of blackness, only multiplying the reluctance to continue this coda, to bait and bait a possible guest. It's his table. He doesn't need other tasters, especially those capable of devouring the whole table in one breath!

The threads of the Keys whip the many-tailed whip, smoothing the universe, taking away the open wound so that it immediately recovers, brought back. The Keys strike again. The Source trembled in anticipation, making the inexorable Time tremble as well. Warudo fails first, ceasing to renew the cyclic loop, simply freezing and solidifying both the rift and the reality around it. With a clap, the soul burned and immediately reborn in the melody of Lust simply vaporizes a chunk of reality along with the rift frozen in timelessness.

The soul-drops do not stand still, do not fly in a straight line, they change their course to a more correct, melodious, proper! Before the carving was even done, they began to circle the rift from above and below, on the sides or diving into soul-droplets' kindred plans. The marks on the stones around the trio are damaged, and the carpet of flesh is gone, but even the remnants are enough to intensify the fleur, to drill through the defenses of their minds, to burst into their heads with a flood of new depravity. Everyone sees his own. Everyone wants his own and, in his fantasies, gets what he wants. A fiery tornado, more likely even a ball, a perfect sphere of Flame, inside which the insolent and foolish try to hide, is covered with multicolored spots, trembles and extinguishes, loses its charge and guiding will. The drops merge into a pattern, thin ribbons, autonomous constructs of pure souls, so equalized by their Lust that they have become a single organism, multifaceted and deadly.

The sphere burns out. It burns a part of the spiritual parasite so that the burned will be reborn again because having become one, the golden slime, the honey golem, has the right to rebirth no worse than Sophia, as long as even one drop of it is alive. It almost embraces the fiery maiden in its clammy embrace, but Warudo, despite all the opposition of the fleur, the ritual signs, and the Source threads climbing to the open skin, manages to freeze the construct. Flute retreats. It manages to retreat only because his armor protects him from almost everything, even the fleur, however skilled and impersonal it may be, unrelated to Sovereign and not under the jurisdiction of mythic armor. Silence again employs the familiar technique, rendering flat not only himself but also what he has touched, sharing the burden of Loneliness with his chosen victim. Souls. Almost all relatives. Almost all volunteers from a cult that has long since died out in voluntary sacrifice perish forever, never to return to the petals. Moreover, even the very attempt to return, even a fraction of them had damaged one of the petals, tearing out several hundred more snuffling silhouettes, the closest to the slots occupied by the stolen ones.

What an amusing trick, what a profound insight into the plane! The summoned boy could have saved that trump card. He had some chance of using it directly against Sovereign. He had, but they were low. He was the Domain. Even if the boy had managed to catch him, to force him into physical intimacy in a not at all desirable sense of the phrase. The creature would have something to repel such an ultimatum, something to respond to, something to prevent the inevitable. A creature made of a hundred souls made identical to each other to a degree greater than the reflection in a mirror had no such argument.

Oh, mirror, mirror!

Sovereign does not understand the method, and it would be irresponsible to seek it now. The search would require too much of what must be invested in other matters, but the basis of the trick is clear. A mirror that has been broken, a reflection that has swapped places with reality - a trick incredibly difficult and just as old. Few can repeat it under the skies of Alurei, few literally. The local mirrors have their own master, their own Overlord, and his will means an awful lot to the dreamers. And even so, it wouldn't be a problem... but it would be bland, sounding like a nonsensical excuse for missing a key, reeking of their weakness, stupidity, and short-sightedness. The Mirror is cunning and insidious, but it's not so dangerous in direct combat because it's bad enough the Mirrorman is forced into direct combat. After all, you can shatter hundreds and thousands of mirrors without finding that one reflection in which you survive.

The knowledge is not alphabetical, not the kind of knowledge taught in magic and adventure guilds or even aristocratic families, but he has it. And right now, knowledge is useless a little more than completely! Dreams he can resist, he can make those Dreams come true and give new ones, only already belonging to Lust, but he feels no Mirror, none at all. Only a Shadow of immense volume and thickness, applied by the willful Silence, a power most unfriendly and dangerous to any devil, from a mere demon to Sovereign himself. Behind this armor, he sees no way to reconcile two planes so opposite nor the mirror that has been shattered time after time with the developments that Silence himself has labeled unfulfilled. It is not difficult to deceive, it is not difficult to interfere in the process of breaking, there are the necessary souls, and one can also try with a pure fleur, but because of the Shadow, absolute, uncompromising, ruthless, ignorant of any Vice, such a fragile and vulnerable looking-glass mechanism cannot be reached, pierced or even felt.

Only to break along with the silence and his Shadow.

A counter-strike, a battering ram of light, forcing Silence to remain in its invulnerability, swooping over him with a thousand blades. A torrent of muddy water, like an avalanche, forced Flute to use the Law again. A gust of icy wind extinguished Flame. And the continuous pressure, with each step, each spell, quickening and quickening. A sea of souls, a cloth shining with lights, sheltering the creature, keeping it safe and preventing it from even thinking of a counter-attack. All three do not think, nor do they try to escape. It is clear to them, as the most obvious of all possible solutions, that there is no escape. It is beneath their feet they have burned the marks on the stones, made them stones again, but all around them, everything is ablaze with multicolored lines, sorcerous symbols, and the foul Lust. They are caged, driven like beasts, and all they can do is nurture their anger, turning to despair and determination to die as late as possible, a tune too familiar to the devils to disturb their own.

Time is replaced by Flame, a cloud of fleeting sparks and the ash they create, covering half the area, even if for a brief moment. The cloud blows away, expels, and presses out of its place, but the nature of the sparks is already fleeting. They exist in a matter of heartbeats, like a single flap of a butterfly's wing. They, too, are Flames. They, too, burn, but only raw power, not destroying the patterns around them but turning a mere crumb of the big picture into nothing. It introduces dissonance, disrupts the integrity of the cell, and makes him spend power to remove the cloud.

Beneath the sparks, the blackness is already hidden, a clump of shadows on the rise. Within which shadows flicker alive. Small, fragile, useless here, they would be nothing if it were not for this cloud if it were not for the suspiciously familiar creature in the depths of blackness, the same one that had served as a deception and victim in the unfulfilled event, taking the blow instead of silence. He responded to the Shadows with the Sun, igniting a huge ball of golden light directly over the square, not only nailing the blackness to the ground, closer to the ritual lines, but absorbing the blows of higher magic sent from the Palace and a couple of other points. Someone realized that his onslaught was weakening, and someone decided to take advantage of it.

The Sun in the miniature burns brightly and evenly. In tact with the souls of its adepts singing with passion, a couple of which still cannot stand it and go deep into the petals to restore their almost burnt essences. Here, the sent ones become three, they are five, here they are nine, and here is the first real death, which will not be corrected after the current melody is over. But the man-made Sun is not just blazing. It absorbed most of the charms that attacked the square and exhaled a huge beam downward, pressing the trio harder and sending the rest of the force over the horizon. A little towards the Palace to remind them of caution and a sense of tact, the rest on the defenseless circles of battle mages and bearers of legendary artifacts who carelessly revealed insufficiently protected positions. The solar stream is followed by other attacks, more sophisticated and correctly chosen. However, they are worse than before - the visionary attacks interrupted earlier have not yet returned to full power, so they have to spend a little more energy, to compensate with superiority where they cannot strike with absolute faith in immediate victory.

The downward-pointing solar hammer is stopped and returned to its starting position, pushed back in Time to a moment when it did not exist. The world flashes, and the river continues its eternal course, taking with it the composition thrown into its waters... to reveal the crystalline anvil hidden within the solar creation. The creation, based on an extremely specific perception of the power of the Earth, is barely phoned at all, and the slight fluctuations it emits are lost amidst the fury of the Sun. The anvil falls downward with the speed of a bullet fired from an elite lead shotgun, but before it comes both, an overwhelming heaviness and a prismatic effect as the rays that hit the druzy crystals refract and return.

The black-and-white world extinguishes crystal magic, slows down the anvil's fall, sucks out its strength and fortress, even the Severity of the Mountains, an indispensable attribute of any high-level Hardness technique, seems to weaken, transferred not to the victims' bodies, but to the whole monochrome world at once, immediately becoming much lighter and more tolerable. A new loop of the Law, and then Warudo the Eternal, the strongest of the three, was the first to use his newly acquired knowledge, the first to understand how to use it. The frozen souls of the great magician, one real and two forged, which he wanted to pay with instead of his own, which even now are trying to overcome the freezing, begin to blaze with colorless and smokeless flames. And as soon as the anvil began to blaze, so did the captive soul, which had been saved at the very last moment, unlike both fakes. A second and Eternity merged into one, turning the crystal into nothing, and this nothing will be unrestored by any other chronomancer, and the same breaking of the mirror would not help a bit. Everything can be burned, even Time, even Death, even Eternity - Sophia knew it, and now Warudo had accepted the new truth.

The execution of those who spoiled his melody continues, without stopping, without giving a break, ignoring any attempts to avoid the obvious, leaving only fruitless fluttering and hope to do something. And the devil is getting closer, walking as leisurely as the flute that chained him in a noose was walking earlier, the glow of the chorus of fires becoming more and more dazzling, more and more golden flames and honey all around. With each step, with each approach of Sovereign, reality gave way, replaced entirely by Hell - the final descent, the stage of stitching together the Eternal and the Domain. It should have happened later, gentler and less hastily, but the resistance of mortals not realizing their happiness has confused too many things. The plan is designed for more than that. It will bear even more losses, more lost ritual points, and more small defeats. The durability of the majestic plan is unimaginable to the primitive mind.

Every moment, mortals all over the city are weakening, prayers that barely work is becoming more and more useless, even those crumbs of planar skill that are still available to weaklings are disappearing, classical magic is failing, rituals are no longer working as they should, stationary defenses are beginning to split into threads, spatial pockets and hiding places are manifesting in the main layer. His loyal and vicious servants only grow stronger, more resilient, and dangerous, even the small visps, which in another situation can be destroyed simply by throwing a purse of iron filings at them.

The trio is already on its last breath despite the fact that they are covering each other, regularly changing places, giving the others a rest, and gathering strength for a new technique. The transition is getting harder and harder for them. Less and less often, they snap back in a sharp counterattack. More and more often, they have to combine forces, and less and less often, those combinations work. Warudo speeds up both himself and the others. The Summoned One takes on his soul all the flux of fleur as the most invulnerable to its nature. Sophia just fries a continuous volcano, giving out such amounts of power that she twice had to burn herself and recreate herself again because of the injuries received from overstraining.

Another wave of droplet sparks, a torrent of honeyed wind throwing the boys and girl who had angered him to the very edge of the square, pinning them against the walls of the nearest building, a jewelry store of sorts. Sovereign is not worried about their escape because there, behind this dilapidated building and then another, slightly more intact, his petal is already placed and moved. He is determined to drive all three of them into it, for neither rebirth nor the ability to become flat nor the armor of the Duel of the Scoundrel will help against such a thing. The latter caused the most trouble, even more than Silence did. Just from Silence, it is more offensive. The armor forces you to attack non-directly, even more non-directly than usual. The souls of dozens of artifactors are blazing with the fire of desired agony, hopelessly burning one after another, but thus weakening the uncomfortable armor, allowing at least so, but to harm the boy who put it on. Flute is the only one who could escape if he took the risk, but he doesn't. He doesn't believe in his chances, fears the trap, and thinks the creature wants to separate them. Rightly thinks it does and really wants to. It would be more comfortable that way. Any of the three of them, even the Prince dressed in mythical armor, even the Silence combining two planar powers, he would defeat in a few beats, and he had already managed to twist the unburnable Sophia into a lecherous knot.

The three of them are still fighting back, but that resistance is over.

Having cornered the three, having brought them to the right position, Sovereign struck the decisive blow, recognizing to himself that now he was almost no longer holding back, just playing sparingly, keeping the most sonorous instruments, trying not to damage the overall melody, not to let falsehoods into it. He used not the strongest tricks in his arsenal, spent souls comparatively weak, of little value, used not the most powerful blanks. And yet he was winning, simply because he was playing to win, not for the sake of more moaning and shouting - and all three of them had nothing to say against that.

He does not need to breathe, but his humanoid body imposes certain obligations and requirements, if you will, which you may not follow, but it is better not to neglect. The gesture is not necessary for him, but for the souls he attracts to the technique he performs, confirming once again that the devil is largely made up of what is stored inside his sonm. The exhalation is accompanied by a flow that induces madness at the mere sight of it, a sea shaft, a moving pile of jumbled translucent bodies, even now never ceasing their orgy, the last and never-ending.

The flow, even by itself, can destroy a large fortress because of the power invested in it, the inertia, and the amount of power constrained in the ecstasizing bodies, but this is only the top of the mountain. Every touch of these bodies binds the toucher to this orgy, to each of the ghostly silhouettes, binds you to them, makes you feel their caresses and desires, love and tenderness, purity and piety, lust, and depravity. One touch will not break them, but the first one will be followed by the second, third, and hundredth. It's not just skin-to-skin contact, not even blade-to-ghost flesh, no. Any enchantment that holds your power is as valuable to the Panopticon of Lust as you are. Kill half of them and disintegrate them with Shadow or Flame, but every small victory is another step toward defeat. And you will join them, unable to resist the temptation, finding a silhouette to your liking, to your taste, and tasting your passion, becoming one of the brightest stars in this sea.

And by entering, by recognizing yourself as part of this masterpiece, by giving your first orgasm, by losing some of your flesh, and by becoming a little more transparent, you will revive those whom you had previously disembodied. This is as far above contract magic as altering reality is above ordinary illusions. One of his most failsafe toys. It's even a shame to have to give all three of them to the Panopticon specifically because they're too colorful, desirable, and delicious. Even he can't take them back once he's given them. There are things, there is a Lust that is beyond Sovereign's control. He will still chew out Flute as the most necessary thing in its pure state, but the other two are no longer his and never will be.

As a finale, the main note of the event, a special structure is woven into the very essence of the Panopticon, which does not allow one to retreat from its path. The literal impossibility of doing anything but trying to defend or destroy, on the level of the world's Laws, and accepted automatically. Neither affinity to the plane, mantle goods, rescue amulets, or evacuation anchors will help. This effect is created by the participants of the orgies themselves, which is their original property, like the property of fire to burn, water to evaporate and freeze, and Lust to conquer.

They understood the nature of the attack, though each in his way and none to the end. They understood, but they refused to accept their fate, hoping for something and not rushing to give themselves willingly, which was not even pleasing, too tiresome. Silence was the first to respond, self-assuredly believing that his Solitude would save him even from this. It could have if he had not prepared the Panopticon beforehand. His trick of breaking the mirror wouldn't save him, either, because he had to want to use it, and if he did, he had to be able to control the moment when reality and the mirror switched places.

The ground blackens, shadows crawling over it and covering it all. The boy puts all the reserve he has, immediately replenishing it and putting in more. Flute again restores the replenishing skill, allowing recovery, and the ground disappears, leaving only a hole in the deep Shadow. This time, the dip is even wider and even more unpleasant. Such a hole, such a window could be peered into by those older than the Ancients. But his trump card is higher than that, where the bodies writhing with passion touch the rift, it closes, dims, and brightens, and the silhouettes themselves do not fall in by a single fingernail. The rollback hits Silence in full force as more and more silhouettes touch the rift filled with the boy's power. He retreats into himself, stops feeding his charms, and tries to deny the Lust that is building up, but the fantasies that burst into him come from the very depths of his subconscious. They cannot be banished or overcome because they are part of you, just elevated to absurdity.

The Flame rained down powerlessly, barely burning the silhouettes rushing at the forcibly motionless victims. The few wounds on them did not heal, but simply disappeared, consumed by Lust and reborn in it, followed by Sophia of Flame falling to her knees and moaning furiously, mixing hatred with ecstasy, floating on the waves of the two opposites. Well, the real Summoned was much more resilient, much more resistant, but she was excused by the time spent in the arms of Sovereign, during which he had managed to put too much into her lovely head.

The walls of stopped time, the self-enclosed segment of history, also remain ignored, for the Panopticon passes through them only slightly slower, not removing the effect but simply not falling under it. They are the Law in a way, what the Laws to them are different, what are the orders of a future Emperor. He has no future. By falling under the dictates of the will, the obligation to accept the Panopticon's challenge, it is as if the victims fall out of the power of anyone else. Even he is now unable to interfere with his creation, only to watch, beginning anew to crush the Palace garrison that had rejoiced, once again taking the assaulting squads, the few remaining agents inside, and the freshly converted traitors under his sights. The keys were almost found, the locks were almost opened, and all that remained was to press on.

He doesn't notice something wrong right away, shamefully missing whole moments before he realizes what has happened. In his defense, the probability of such a turn of events is not only low, but it had seemed to him until today to be strictly negative.

The newcomer appeared just inside the perimeter outlined by the petals, suddenly and wrongly. It was not a needle prick of a blink that pierced reality and connected two points, not a guiding thread of the Trail or an impossibly stretched step along the dusty Road, not even a laceration of forced teleportation that cut the fabric of the universe with blunt scissors. The one who appeared did not arise at a certain point in space but instead pulled space toward itself. And, it would seem, let him, because the guest appeared strictly opposite to the Panopticon, which was surging with waves and a priori falling under its Law. At first, it seemed so to Sovereign, until he looked closer, until he saw, until he understood.

The tall, thin old man of the human tribe, at least outwardly human, inspired no fear, no apprehension, not even desire. Haggard, as if he had been starving for months, resembling an inferior dead man even more than the dead men themselves, staggering faintly in the nonexistent wind. It seemed he could have been killed by the mere presence of not even an archdevil but any devil of any significance. It seemed as if this body, clad in tattered and faded robes, was going to die right now. But the old man stood there, under the weight of the fleur, under the storm of energies, under the gaze of the Panopticon that looked upon him and did not die.

And then there were the chains, partly hidden beneath the ragged cloth and partly hanging openly from the weary body, jingling with rusty links where the rust hid the black, raven-winged metal beneath. Sovereign could have realized in advance who he saw, could have realized, and perhaps would have even had time to take some action. But he had not had the thought, not even the right to think that it was even possible to see this abomination here and now, on this day. The old man raised his head, gazing at the silhouettes of bodies that had long ago given up their eternity with colorless and dim eyes, looked at them, and stepped towards them. The Shadows had already disappeared, the Flames had already stopped raining down fire, and the first of the princes was no longer able to cry out to the River of Time. But even if they had continued their attacks, this degenerate would have stepped through the spell with the same indifferent and indifferent fatalism.

Not because he was invulnerable, not because he wasn't afraid of wounds, and not even out of a desire to die beautifully, but purely from the realization that he wouldn't be able to die anyway.

Step.

Moments are deaf to the pleas of the Law, and the speed of change of event in this battle is such that not even five minutes, not even three minutes, have passed from the first bow performed to this second! Nevertheless, the old man's words are spoken unhurriedly and deafeningly, hoarsely and nightmarishly in their incurable abomination, impropriety, and perdition. Such a thing must not exist anywhere, neither under Heaven nor in the glorious Hell blessed by all Vices. It has no right to exist because it must disappear, disappear without a trace, along with all that it brings to the world!

But the words have been said.

"No man shall pass where Faith has fallen." The words were not loud, but they literally seared into the essence of anyone who dared to hear them, regardless of their desire, and caused the supreme devil the utmost, concentrated hatred.

The sea of mating silhouettes seemed to swoop over the coastal rocks, stopping and trying either to bypass the madman who had stepped forward or to roll back at all, but the construct, its precious Panopticon, was terribly late, not having time to complete the rebuilding, to release the already marked victims, the future brothers and sister.

"Thousands of hopes have faded irretrievably." The glowing silhouettes of the merciful Lust of the fortunate few locked away in the Panopticon are not faded, no, polluted, covered with nasty wounds, putrid stains, touches of the same abomination that fills the old man.

The Panopticon was doomed. Doomed from the start with no chance against the freak stood in its way. The moment the construct incorporated the new member, bound it by an inviolable Law, and imposed a contract that was meant to be a weapon of the construct and not against it, it was over. Because the contract was done, and this one needed nothing more to pass on its contagion. Cursed, forgotten, and deprived of absolutely any rights, hated by the devils even more than by the humans, who are also hated, unable to die in any way, even if he tries his best to cut his life short.

"Thousands of unanswered lights." The Panopticon chokes and tries to act in response. But any transmitted pleasure, all the Lust of the world, the most selective Vice, seems to fall into a bottomless well, not even breaking the old man's step, not even breaking the rotten rhythm of his melody, in which only the tired ringing of corroded chains can be heard.

There is no enemy more fearsome to a devil than the Shadow. Everyone knows that. It is shadow magic that inflicts more damage on the inhabitants of Hell. It is the Shadow that protects against fleur and soul magic better than other shields. It is for the Shadows that any devil is only desirable prey. But this is all nonsense, fleeting and uninteresting, just a law of nature, the dilemma of predator and prey, shepherd and wolf. Some hated all things in their Loneliness, and though their hatred of the devils who dared to experience happiness in Vices was a little stronger than usual, the Shadow saw no difference between them and all other victims if they could even realize such thoughts. The latter treated the former like a deadly predator, vicious, merciless, and utterly boring because a Shadow could not be seduced, only killed by a lethal dose of flair.

What the devils truly hated, regardless of the domain or aspect of the Vice, was now before Sovereign. Whether it was Pride, Agony, Lust, Sloth, Despair, or Malice, it didn't matter. This opponent, these devils, are not so dangerous in battle. It is easier to defeat them, it is easier to fend them off, and it is not difficult to avoid conflict, but no one avoids it because the devils, whose essence is the enjoyment of Vice, perceive the latter as the embodiment of primordial Evil. The evil that cannot be spoken to cannot be argued with or changed. The evil that takes from itself and all those who get in its way is the only thing that devils embody and for which they exist.

Behind the old man's back fluttered lengthened chains, knotted and tentacled against the purple sky, and there, beyond those chains, could be seen... as if through a window to another place, like a gateway without a gate. There are lights like the sparks of his stored souls, so terrible in their distinction. They do not blaze with Vice nor howl in ecstasy, enjoying their position and all its delights. They are not the fires of souls but of Candles lit in innumerable temples that are long gone. The lights of Candles that have long since burned out but have no right to go out completely - dim, tired, and filled with infinite doom.

The Panopticon had fallen, infected, tainted by the same contagion that plagued the other fires, part of no sonm, but of an absolute prison from which there was no escape, in which there was no hope of change, nothing but another man's duty, another man's fate, and another man's death. Before Sovereign of vicious Lust stood the high priest of the dead God, the agent of the will of the infernal creatures into which the divine host, its Servants, Creatures, and Heralds had turned. Before the devil stood not a man but an infernal, a vile demon, rotten and moldy, not knowing happiness and taking it from everyone else. Absolutely unkillable, always resurrecting anew, a creature that had no right to die without the will of God, but no God either, only the memory of him, only his bitter glory.

An Inferno prisoner is easy to defeat. Especially for a devil. Especially given all the hatred the latter has for the former. Infernals can defile naked souls, can absorb and then ignore any amount of fleur, because even if they wish to succumb to it, demons cannot overcome their nature. But direct combat, attacking with techniques and strikes used through the souls, would simply beat the demon into dust, giving victory to the devil. Victory as decisive as meaningless - dying demon will be reborn again, will rise in the garden of the divine that gave birth to him once, even if God is no longer there. They will rise in agony. They rise against their will and continue theit life without purpose and without the will to live. Even the weakest of them are incredibly difficult to kill permanently, and the really strong ones cannot be stopped even by Sovereign. True, in front of him is not a true demon, but only almost become one. And, in order to test his unkillability, devil will spend a great deal of effort, which will probably be the only outcome, which they will both be equally happy.

The panopticon was lost, to the last not believing in its finale, to the last, hoping that embracing each other would save them all from becoming new Candles, new lights behind the nameless bastard's back. To the last, his Law held on, not allowing the devil to help. To snatch his jewel from the jaws of eternal torment. The new enemy was no match for him. Even if he took the side of the rest of the trio, and the trio accepted help, he was still stronger than the four of them, still victorious, even if it was now getting really dangerous. Somehow, even without sight or his intuition, the devil knows and realizes this melody with every fiber of his being, every movement of a petal, every sweep of the thread of the Source - the mortals will accept this help.

And for that, he will destroy them.

He will destroy them all.

Silently, without giving away the theatricality and beauty of the music around them, one creature steps towards the other. Behind the first, all the power of the Domain, all the sophistication of Lust, all the experience of tens of millennia. Behind the back of the second is only his chains, only his agony, and the lights of the Candlelight that is not even here, not in his power, but just visible to their agony in that dungeon where their link to the Infernal has sent them. Behind the back of the first is a superior force that could slay a dozen of these rogues, a superiority of experience and arsenal. Behind the second, three mortals chose between two evils, the alliance with which is more favorable to them. After all, the glorious and magnificent in their stupidity, the endowed have rarely seen evil - what they consider evil - from demons, far less often than from devils, many times less often.

They clash for the third time, and everyone realizes this round will be the last.

Only now, it is not the lonely Shadow with the echo of Dream behind him, not the Flame, not the Law alone that opposes Vice.

Against Vice came out the last competitor, letting the capital defenders take the devil not in a triangle, but in a cross.

Inferno has spoken its quiet and pain-filled but very weighty word.

The last to stand against Vice was Sin.
* * *

If one were to request dossiers from Temple Clerics, inquire about the opinions of Magical Guilds, ask questions of Adventurers, or even buy expensive and completely unofficial agency reports of the Eyes of the Eternal, they would all easily agree on one opinion concerning one very famous person. This opinion is extremely easy to describe with a single statement, a clear conviction that Ereb Fatogg is not a good individual and would be better if he didn't exist. You can't say that the half-breed of an endowed giant and a human warrior, who once abused a defeated opponent, was a bloody maniac, slaughtering everyone around him left and right... because that would be a wild understatement. One of the most notorious, in a bad way, criminals of the continent, who had a great legacy in all its regions, had a reputation so black that many creatures looked like standards of adequacy against his background.

It is worth starting at least with the class, the fully developed main archetype, and the other two that are not inferior to it. Not just a simple Heretic, but an entire Heresiarch, who, according to numerous dossiers collected on the last of the Fatoggs, was one step away from receiving the prefix Great and moving up from the legendary level. Heretic classes were understandably forbidden and frowned upon, carefully monitored, and strictly controlled. A high-level heretic would be accepted in any structure, but at the beginning of their journey, they are tolerated even less than witch doctors and other lovers of tickling someone's insides with a sacrificial dagger. Few people want to quarrel with all the clergy covering the younger generation because even the highest heretics, if they receive patronage, it is completely unofficial, a kind of cover from the top, a non-public designation of immunity.

Some ignorant people believe and even describe such nonsense in their writings that heretics come from clerics who misinterpret the will of their God, misinterpret the Scriptures, and do not do what God expects of them. They believe heresy is equal to the betrayal of the deity, trying to snatch a part of their power and benefits but not paying with Faith and Service in return. The error is understandable and very rational, but it does not cease to be less because the problem lies much deeper.

First, if any cleric began to err too much in his understanding of the doctrine of the Faith, he would quickly be prompted to the correct answer. Whether by colleagues, mentors, or brothers in the clergy or by the celestial themself, whether by a prophetic dream, a word spoken to one of the higher dignitaries, or even a personal appearance, depends on the personality of the deluded one. No, it's not about error, not at all. After all, the heretical classes are one for any religion, for any apostate. At the same time, most of the "lost souls" who have gone too far in their delusion will be punished by the will of the Deity without much effort. They are literally imbued with grace, part of the power of their patron, and therefore, the latter has over them quite clearly marked reciprocal power! We can only exclude the most amazing individuals who would be able to wrest the presence of God from themselves, and those of them, who would be able to fill the resulting void with their power were so few that they can be left out of the calculations altogether.

Secondly, it is not always clerics, priests, novices, and other God's people who are branded heretics by the All-Seeing One. Often humans and non-humans not connected with temples directly or indirectly become heretics. It is not advertised, but becoming a heretic practically does not depend on the attributes or level, only on certain skills, worldview, and character. That's why such revelations are not publicized - heretical classes have power, so there will be those who want to possess this power, especially if it is relatively easy to get it.

The nature of any Heretic, from the weakest and only the first to embark on this long and ruinous path to mastodons like Ereb, is to challenge, deny, and deliberately disbelieve, to renounce the Faith. It is not that Heretics do not believe in the gods, for atheism, or whatever this strange sub-religion is called, which is known only from the testimonies of some of the summoned, cannot exist on Alurei, where the Celestials regularly perform their Miracles. Rather, any Heretic is a fierce anti-theist, believing in the Gods even more sincerely than ordinary clerics but fiercely, to the core, opposing their power over the minds and souls of all those endowed with it.

Heretics, in general, are associated with clerics only because to become one of them, in addition to hatred, contempt, or just antipathy to the Gods in any form, one needs a very good basis of clerical knowledge, reading, and erudition enough to not just understand the sermons of the priests but also to know where their fallacies, understatements or outright falsehoods lie. At least from the Heretic's point of view.

It would be all right if they just hated quietly. Maybe they would muddy the waters, or even slaughter some village dervishes. There are Apostates, Dissenters, and Cursed by the Faith. Those who betrayed the temple can be defeated by the same Templars. The Apostates have lost their patron. They lost divine favor and the right to help, weakened and deprived of almost all of their striking power. Some of them quickly perish at the hands of punitive detachments, some of them change clergy, though they rarely decide to accept renegades and are always watched very carefully, even if not by the gods, so the other priests. Some manage to change class repeatedly, most often to something very, very black, associated with a lot of sacrifices and creaturefication. The passive abilities of a priest do not disappear at the loss of grace, and you can use them in the most sophisticated sacrifices. The vacated space, the void in the soul, where God used to be, allows you to fill yourself with the same Darkness up to your eyebrows. Such people usually do not live too long either, and die as creatures.

Not so with the Heretic. His endowment is untouched and surprisingly strong, rarely allowing his soul to be tainted by corruption. His power is always with him and depends only on him, and these creeps are also amazingly effective. Effective against priests, against clerics, against fledgling Saints, or even against full-fledged paladins, being, in a way, true assassins of divinity. Weaken the divine curse or removed it altogether? Overcome an enemy Miracle during a battle of armies? Protect against the epiphany of divine prophecies? All of these things they could, able to do, and practiced regularly, and there were still many things that classical clerics usually used.

Yes, it was fraught with danger to quarrel with the temples, openly helping such personalities, but any respectable structure wanted to have such a specialist on its staff. Because the temples might one day be out of the way, or there might be misunderstandings between worldly and temple bosses, too small to fight but requiring the intervention of someone who could fix the mischief done by clerics.

By all rights, many heresy bearers weren't touched until they were the first to get in the way, but alas, Ereb was a true Fatogg, the last descendant of an ancient line of prominent warriors destroyed by the Warrior Priests. His mother was far from the first in her line able to swaddle a three-meter tall giant with the shamanic class and immense physical strength to conceive a child strong enough. The Fatoggs had never been numerous, but for over fifty generations, it had never happened that one of those bearing their clan name had not risen at least to the fortieth rung of the Ladder. And when the mighty loners, unwilling to part with their accumulated relics and warrior trophies, were pressed on the subject of the equality of warriors, wished to take by right of blade and strength what the Fatoggs considered theirs when they were all cut down at the root, when the patrons turned away, when the actions of the clerics were not even particularly condemned, the present Ereb Fatogg was born - murderer, instigator, sometimes rebel, mercenary and brigand, sparing no one in his path.

Naturally, they tried to kill him, sometimes even killing him, but it is difficult to kill someone who, after death, resurrects in the same place where he was killed, only full of power and cleansed of any curses. Or resurrects not in the same place but on a pre-selected and unremarkable point, which is very difficult to find even with the help of a developed Seer and supporting circle, and the higher the stage of development, the more such points can be left! A one-time and isolated gift of one of the family's relics, used by the young man at that time right during the storming of the family stronghold, because the young man knew that this very trophy, obtained in the last campaign, was the main cause of the conflict.

Three rebirths for every twenty-five steps, each renewed every three years. Not enough to not fear for life, even if you forget that any form of death denial can be overcome or cheated. But enough to be an extremely tenacious pain in the world's ass. In addition, the Gift had another documented and very unnerving property. Anyone who permanently cut Ereb Fatogg's life short would receive an extremely nasty curse that worked with the Laws of Luck and Fate - fatal bad luck, to put it bluntly. This curse will easily go down the chain from the perpetrators to the beneficiary who provoked the death, spreading through the entire family tree and taking even the possessions and subjects of the murderer, albeit in a weakened form.

In another situation, it wouldn't have been a problem. Even such a gift would have been taken away, redirected to some loser or a willing victim.... or even a special summoned of the right classes. That is, if the curse takes root at all, for the illustrious Ilkhan or the Emperor of Ages are protected at the highest level, there were mythical artifacts of their own. And in the last resort, one could always turn to the temples and the Deities, who would be able to deal with such a challenge to their power.

That wouldn't have been a problem, yes. But Ereb was a Heresiarch of mad power, and it was his curse that even the Incarnation would be able to lift... well, not impossible, after all, God in his own right, but the celestial would ask for it as a full-fledged appearance of himself on the battlefield. There remain all kinds of artifacts and other preparations, without which the rulers would die from the curses of the people they ruined with frightening regularity - count the number of those who cursed, even without class, skills, and abilities of the Malefic, on pure hatred. There were, yes, but no one was tempted to check.

Therefore, when Ereb Fatogg was caught and captured eighty-four years ago, they did not kill him but sent him to imprisonment. The services of such an individual could be useful to the Eternals in the future, and the "prisoner" himself was well aware that he had overdone his last escapades. A chance to sit in a personal dungeon, doing unburdensome work for the Eyes and the Eternal dynasty, would have been a good outcome. Sure, he'd bled the Empire and its loyal Lords, but he'd ignored the Eternals personally. Not out of fear, mind you, the Heresiarch was too indifferent to the status and number of persons he angered. There was simply no point of conflict. No contradictions were found and could not be found. To seek them out for no reason would be too much, even for Fatogg.

The numerous dead and injured subjects, nobles, and vassals worried the dynasty strictly within the framework of lost resources. Kings used people like lemons. Squeeze them and throw them away. Emperors are far above mere kings, aren't they? All the more so because the revenge-seekers had been honestly promised that the prisoner would never see Heaven again while sincerely intending to fulfill that promise. No one was going to release such a figure with such capabilities and no rights, not the Eternal fools. Ereb also knew about it but kept his opinion to himself - unlike the dynasty of chronomancers, he, thanks to the same Gift, did not age, which was ironic, so the descendant of giants had plenty of time to wait.

Basically, he didn't make a mistake, not even a little bit. He waited.

The venerable Ereb's quarters were isolated from the world, a masterpiece of barrier art, creating an extremely secure dungeon with some comfort. And yet, even though Fatogg was not a particularly good sensor, he could not help but sense what was going on in the Eternal City, though now he doubted whether this place should be considered Eternal or whether it had already changed its nature too much. It was not very good to listen to what was going on, but somehow, he did not want to get out of his cell, excuse me, apartment right now. Yes, those first humiliating years when Ereb was regularly reduced to one single life had passed. He managed to get rid of humiliating execution procedures, often not the most pleasant. Many people wanted to make fun of the defenseless Heresiarch.

If Fatogg had decided to break through and escape, he would have had a chance to leave the dungeon and even make his way into the sunlight, but no more. All his revival points had been found and destroyed before his imprisonment. There was nowhere to put new ones, and they would kill him more than once. Moreover, he would be killed all nine times and on the tenth anniversary. Three lives, three attempts of the primary Gift, three more for taking the quarter hundredth milestone, and the last three for the title of Hero. The tenth life, the last, was his own, his own. He was not going to take any risks, preferring to wait, but now, at this moment, when the Eternal was either being dragged through the Astral to somewhere in the Alishan deserts or thrown into the depths of Hell, or something completely unimaginable was done, now it was possible to try. The guards were busy with something, something bloody and painful, if the echoes of battle were to be believed, and the echoes were fading.

Tear out the wall, take on curses and contracts, burn the magical brands on his skin, and disembowel his body, tearing out the trap artifacts sewn into his bones, losing the first attempt. Then, he met with confused guards, clearly not what they expected from the always quiet and calm Ereb, albeit elite but not ready for a battle with him. Even dressed only in simple cloth clothing, he remains a hulking half-giant of enormous stature, with most of the human tribe breathing only a little above his navel. Steps and classes will do the rest, weapons he'll pluck from dead hands, ignore magic and arrows, revive a few more times, and still get out of his confinement. Especially while the guards are busy with someone else. He may not need to wait for the guests. His captors may have been freaks, but they were protecting Fatogg from the wrath of most of the continent, and the attackers may be among those who are angry. In general, Ereb had not yet decided what line of behavior to choose - whether to flee without looking back, to attack the guards weakened by the conflict, to help them against the attackers, or to stand against all of them as a third party.

In the end, the god-hater decided to just wait, preparing for everything. Too much is at stake, and more and more sensations reach him through the protection of the apartment. It seems that he already knows who exactly has come to visit him, as well as guesses the purpose of the visit. He does not want to make a mistake and does not want to lose his last game without even drawing a card, but the prisoner's stamina is enviable. One mistake, one misstep, and the price will become unbearable, but he has already deceived similar "allies" in his life and defeated them when they turned into enemies. He can only hope this time, he will be the first to betray them.

The door to the prison opened.

The bright room, lit by magical lamps, was decorated in pastel colors, with many fabrics, lush pile rugs, tapestries, and paintings. Ereb prized the work of several not particularly popular artists, often asking for their creations for favors rendered. It would have been impossible to ask for anything more serious than that, but at least it was pleasing to the eye. The furniture was made for his size, but there was a normal-sized armchair for possible guests. Ereb Fatogg was sitting in its larger counterpart, covered with a huge woolen blanket, reading, or rather, re-reading the Rights of the Sword for the hundredth time, in one of the rarest and most unapproved editions, even by the Warrior Temple itself.

"Oh, greetings." A chesty and rumbling bass echoed off the walls in the heretic's even and calm tone. "I suppose calling you Lord Bradmore would be a mistake, wouldn't it."

The body melted like a waxen figure in the heat, speaking for itself. He had met with possessed devils more than once, and such characteristic melting was the prerogative of Honeyed Canvas, the iconic technique of devils. In the depths of his soul, sealed by the monoliths of his will and his conspiracies, flashed a grim satisfaction at the fate of the arrogant and vindictive Tirm Bradmore, whom he had not minded killing in a particularly painful way. He was ready to kill many people in this way, but it was easier to list those whom Ereb Fatogg did not wish to die.

"We have met before, dear Ereb." The voice of the possessed man, who had overstretched his vessel and thus lost all his disguise, was the same as his appearance, as gurgling and boiling as if a cauldron of bubbling hot fat were bubbling, and human, in the tradition of the most repulsive of the wild Cushitic tribes. "This meeting is the fourth, in case you were wondering."

He was curious, and what was said was impressive indeed, close to making him nervous. If this thing, which did not hide its nature nearly enough, was already in the place of the annoying and intrusive Tirm, that alone spoke volumes about the danger level of the thing that had already settled into the guest chair, serenely putting a leg over a leg. It looked repulsive, as if something had tried to perfectly pretend to be human, had honed that skill to perfection, had gotten into its role to the end, but now it was as if it didn't notice its injuries, continuing to play even though the makeup and costume no longer fit the role. The mighty body, hidden under the plaid, did not tense up in full readiness only because of Ereb's composure and because he could not have been more collected if he had wanted to. He had only one purely martial class, sharpened for chest-to-chest combat, but he could probably tear this creature apart with his bare hands. But the next ones would come after him, and it would be harder to talk to them.

"Well, honorable word-bearer." Outwardly and mentally, even spiritually, the heretic shows no confusion, no apprehension, no confusion, remaining a monolithic block, an indestructible sculpture of himself. "May your Lust not be extinguished, and may its warm flame warm those who suffer and give them the happiness they deserve, whether they wish to comprehend it or not."

A ritual phrase, and a very old one at that, so old that, apart from Ereb himself, at best half a hundred people on the continent would be able to realize its full depth and subtexts, barely half of them endowed. His eyes are like two dwarf-made telescopic sights, soulless and cold, looking out from under the defensive nozzles of his brow, monitoring the external and internal reactions of his interlocutor. The Heresiarch's eyes see as much as the eyes of a high priest, even without divine assistance. Especially without that help.

"Ah, how nice to hear an old tradition." Gestures, body position, and even movements where the face of the devil-occupied body should have expressed complete admiration and complacency, accepting the play and acknowledging the open dialogue. "They don't talk like that now, not here, alas. The black children of subterranean Darkness prefer to impose their traditions on dialog. It makes it spicy, but so bitter at times is the inability to remember the past."

The beginning of the dialog is great. The devil takes the lead not only defiantly but also in a more subtle way, opening up on his own, actually opening his throat, and taking his time to apply the tricks favored by this tribe. This is more disturbing than trying to bind his mind and soul in a thousand sweet chains because Lust needs something from Ereb. They need it so badly that they're talking to him now, giving him a position of power. It may be foolish to see it as a weakness. It may be easier for a devil of this aspect to seduce and take from a lower position than any other, but the fact itself speaks volumes.

"All claims to the loss of high art, send them to the Great Desert." Ereb allows himself a slight smile, the very designation of it looking surprisingly harmonious on a face seemingly carved of stone and molded of iron. "Her glorious Kings will gladly listen to them and perhaps deign to answer."

It's not even rudeness, but something beyond it, a direct indication of the growing conflict, but at the same time, an indication of the need to speed up, to skip the obligatory exchanges of hints and undertones, in which Ereb will still lose to the devil by definition. And the very reaction, its absence, to such willfulness shows more than it should. The possessed deliberately demonstrates more and more readiness to speak, skipping whole layers of dialog, trying to get to the basis of a possible pact as quickly as possible. He is in a hurry, the creature, in a great hurry, which means that they are being pressed to the limit, which means that something in their invasion did not go as planned. But, at the same time, his very presence in this place is more beautiful than any deceptions, which tells how many other moments have passed strictly as the devils needed.

"My name is Envoy." The word said, even if Ereb guessed almost immediately what type of devil had come to visit him by matching small details like stunning social mimicry and the ability to manipulate his visage to the highest level. "And I able to speak of Him."

One of the inherent qualities of Envoys, which allows them to speak the words of the Lord of the Domain, its Master, its Sovereign, its Ruler, its Lord, its Holder, and its Tyrant, is given very rarely, far less often than new Envoys are created and nurtured. Now, he cannot lie directly, or rather, he can and will, just as he cannot lie with the truth, but he cannot promise Ereb more than the archdevil of the Domain has given him the right to do so. So you have to be triple careful. Such modifications allow one to make instant contracts, taking advantage of the smallest of clauses, forcing you to be very, very careful with your words, as well as with the words of others.

"My name you already know." Ereb again pursues the line of swiftness, the demand not to breed verbal duels, and again, he is indulged. Again, he agrees. "What does the one behind you desire?"

"What do you think, last Fatpgg? What are we looking for here? Why did we show up here and take your city?" Not coming in from afar seems physically impossible for the creature. "You've already figured out exactly what's going on. The defenses of your dungeon have fallen, and it's not hard for someone with your experience to understand what we've done, Executioner of Ristrt."

At least he's not the Pide, who is outrageously turned on deceit and ranting. This one at least somehow shortens what was said. But a reminder of the city, which, with his undoubted participation and help, had gotten to know the aforementioned Pride, even too closely, was quite unnecessary. All the more so because what was happening to the Eternal surpassed what he and several temporary allies from the cultists of the Pride, in close association with some unofficial helpers from Alishan, had done to the aptly named Ristrt. It must be pronounced without declension, gentlemen, if you don't want to be known as rustics and ignoramuses. Like the chant of the Original Temple prayer of a wandering dervish.

"Almost two million souls," Ereb answered in an unreadable tone, not fully understanding what his interlocutor was getting at, having only vague guesses. "Two and a third, if you count the near suburbs and the occasional vagrant. Artifacts. Treasures. Weapons Arsenals, and Guild warehouses. The Palace Reliquary and, if you're lucky, the Library."

"Ah, leave it, Honorable One." The creature waved the creature away, letting its true essence out for a moment. "We have already lost as if not more than you describe. How many of my high brothers and sisters, those whom the All-Seeing One exalts as Legend, have we already lost? How many of the rarest souls have been irrevocably dissolved into our Lust? How much labor and preparation, faithful to the last thought of a toy, how much time has been lost in the end? Our Supreme Coock has fallen, and his cauldron, in which I have had the chance to swim and love new souls, has been emptied and has been eaten out! The Lord of the Leashes is right now fighting for his eternity when one of Jerem's pups turned his beloved maiden against him! No, we will take all you named, but the true goal is far greater. Without it, all the spoils, even if we captured them with far less loss, would be but bitterness on the honeyed molasses of defeat."

Ereb thought, straining all the resources of a mind as sharp as a thread of iron web. What came to mind made him lose face, drop the mask of stony indifference, and realize and confirm his guesses about the scale of what was happening. In fact, what the creature was hinting at was done regularly and regularly interfered with. For that, the devils were known and disliked. It was just this time there was a completely different scale, which, if he had not been hinted at now, Ereb would not have grasped. Not right away, and even then, he would have doubted. He doubted to the last. He wonder if the Eternals themselves realized what fate the devils had in store for them. More likely yes than no because they would have had enough time to think and analyze.

"That is correct, my dear Ereb." The creature smiled with a cracked face, literally tearing the remnants of the muscles still holding together, turning that face into minced meat, and tensed even more than the heretic, preparing to take his reaction. "One of the oldest human dynasties in the world, ruling their domain for centuries and millennia, bound to their land as firmly, as completely as is even possible without becoming a genius of merging with their chosen territory. Imagine their blood, their souls, and their power turning out to be ours. Just imagine."

The barely manifested pressure of the fleur, too quiet to be perceived as an attack or even noticed, too weak to be feared, interferes with the Envoy's voice, seeking to find a gap in Fatogg's consciousness. The creature is ready both to continue the dialog, to begin bargaining, and to instantly attack the stroppy tool unwilling to follow its destined role.

"And you've had a rough time with the Eternals, I see." The dialogue was discarded, the mind locked in a dungeon, the power pulsing through the huge body along with the blood, ready to burst out. "Otherwise, you would speak very differently, far differently than you do now. And dragging the whole Empire after the city is beyond you, neither you nor your Master."

"Were it otherwise, we would not be speaking at all, Ereb Fatogg." The creature, too, would cast off its good-naturedness, grinning its essence, revealing the true Envoy, invisible and indistinguishable, vanishing before your eyes from all modes of perception, leaving only the barest optical image. "I would command, and you would listen and believe. But yes, the casualties are high, too high. We did not believe from the beginning that we would be allowed to take the entire Empire, take and uproot a chunk of the world, skin it up, and annex it to the Domain. Neither would your ascended or other Vices be allowed to take their own or take ours. We were originally preparing for something else, and you know what."

"Oh, yes."

To take the whole dynasty, or at least part of it, for souls. To take advantage of their connection, their right, to claim that right... An empire without capital and a dynasty will be quickly divided, torn between neighbors who have grabbed pieces, freedom-loving vassals, turning the former monolith into a patchwork quilt. But the new states will be too young, their right just being born. The provinces taken by Alishan or the Empire of Arms will still remember the will of other Emperors. And this bridge, this binding thread, the Hellspawn will use it to channel their Lust. And then will begin the greatest seduction in modern history - not even in the time of the war mentioned earlier, when the Great Desert found its undead masters and the enemy was gone, leaving only a multitude of cursed ruins. Back then, the power of Hell was drawn, and the techniques of soul magic were studied, giving rise to many different classes and schools of magic, mostly black and forbidden, but even at the dawn of the fall, the ancient mages destroyed themselves and their world, fed it, not given it to be eaten by creatures.

If Lust takes over, things will become different. In every city, in every village and roadside inn, their whispers will be heard, their tantalizing voices, their barely discernible pressure on thoughts, their enclosed desires, their corrupting fantasies. Some will overcome, some will ignore, some will prevent, but thousands of new cults will spring up like mushrooms after a warm rain. Orgies will become larger and larger, maidens will become more compliant, fantasies will become more varied, private bed comforts will become publicly available, and the intimacy of bodies will be treated more easily than the satisfaction of ordinary hunger. Lust will germinate, change, distort, multiply cults, and increase the general background of the fleur of the territory being seduced until the difference between cultists and the ordinary liberated population disappears completely.

Of course, they will interfere. They will desperately fight back and burn cults and new trends with a hot iron. The new masters of the territory will challenge the right and influence coming from Hell, priestly prayers will flow, and the Gods will not spare any effort, cleansing the territory and relamping the pressure until the power of the captive souls of the Eternal Dynasty is finally exhausted. In turn, the contagion of Lust will flow from the spoiled territory further, climbing into the lands of those who snatched a piece of the remaining decapitated state. And not at once the impact of the creatures will become noticeable. Not at once, it will be understood and deciphered. The method of taking the big through the small, of course, is known, but not in such conditions. It is one thing to corrupt a clan through its patriarch or matriarch, to influence a city or a small barony, but the Empire of Ages is quite another.

If the devils don't rush in.

If they reach the flesh and souls of the Eternal.

If they use them properly.

It's not just a chunk of the continent that will be lost.

Hell will take all of Alurei.

Not immediately, not in a year, not in a decade, or even a century, but after a couple or three centuries, Ereb has a good chance of not recognizing what the world around him will become. Hundreds of devils, each with their independent cults, the lure of Lust, and the thrill of the hunt. A simple plowman who once had a beautiful dream and followed it. A boy or girl who received a small gift and immediately put it to use for the heart of their first love.... and it will be everywhere. Without a basis, without a center of control that can be calculated by the usual methods. It would be pointless to burn out nest after nest if they reappeared.

Mass miracles, molten relics that cover entire cities and provinces that do not burn out the power of Lust but make it harder for it to do its work and prevent it from achieving its goals, will come into play. Ereb will be able to prevent it, even single-handedly. The powerful Heresiarch, Bringer of Trouble, and Cursing Knight will be able to single-handedly tear up area blesses, extinguish prayers, and remove their effects on entire regions at once. And it will take a long time to catch him. In every corner, people seduced by devils will give him shelter and lodging, each of the points of revival will be lost in the territory desecrated by the fleur, and the usual search for these points by the seeing will become a very dangerous occupation. Devils will not be lazy to cover their tools, at the same time hunting for too-open seers. By opening themselves to the vice that covers the land, they will unwittingly scoop up the Lust and succumb to its influence.

"I think I know why you need me." Ereb's face is not so impenetrable now. Now it is simply evil, skewed in a grin so unfamiliar on the always peaceful face that has always been complacent and open since settling in this place. "And what do you wish to offer me."

Anyone who makes a deal with a devil is already a priori a loser, even if it seems to him that he managed to win because the very fact of the deal will take something away, mark something. It's not as if they can't be outsmarted or deceived. The last Fatogg had dealt with Pride and Gluttony, betraying them first, leaving before the deal was exhausted, and the creatures would have taken the last value available in the deal - the Hero of the Cursing Faith himself. There were also episodes in his life with Agony and Despair, though they didn't even come to an initial agreement. There was also that story with Sloth, which could have taken the then not a Hero, but Sloth is so Sloth.

Only now, he would have to not only get dirty but dive into the Vice with his head, not hoping they would ever let him go, knowing for sure they would not let him go, that they would find the keys to him during the time of forced cooperation, while they were working close to each other, back to back. Ereb had long ago said goodbye to the possibility of leading a normal life. He had given it up and then confirmed it with rivers of spilled blood, betrayals, and stabs in the back to everyone. But now he would have to say goodbye to any hopes for anything - such an alliance would not be forgiven. And he would have to betray the first again if he did not want to become a toy in the clutches of devils greedy for new inventions and pleasures.

But first, he would have to betray the whole world, condemning it to a very unenviable fate, and at the same time ensuring himself in case the creatures' plan failed and he was in their ranks. To become an outcast even more, to become even more hated, though it seemed impossible, to doom even those crumbs of humanity that remained in him, making another deal, following his thankless path, leading, as it should, to nowhere. Would he risk it, would he dare, would he leave thousands and thousands of living and breathing endowed to feed the Vice?

Well, that's a weird question.

The whole world had learned long ago that he, Ereb, was a Fatogg, and there had never been any good personalities among the Fatoggs.
* * *

Every phenomenon, every force, has a point of resonance, after which there is a decline, after which anyone or anything overcomes it and leads to defeat, and the quartet that had replaced the trio had come dangerously close to finding that point. Individually, any one of them remained what they were still as a trio, but only by gaining the support of the cursed one did their combined efforts really become enough to create serious tension. Sovereign could still throw every available force into the battle, simply crushing with pure might where pure art was already lacking, but that would be exactly the same defeat they were trying to force upon him with direct combat.

Domain has lost too much, which means he has lost too much. Domain has sacrificed too many, which means he has sacrificed a part of himself. Domain has bet everything on this moment, which means he is also part of this bet. He is the top chip on the playing table, the first and last note of the symphony of Lust, which will either complete the centuries-long plan with a resounding crescendo or equally resoundingly die with the entire bet. The Descent is entering its final phase. The last attempts to attack the ritual points are being pressed all over the city. The mortals who have not yet given themselves up are being driven into dumb defenses, but interrupt the Descent now, and everything will collapse. Even if they manage to keep the Eternal in Hell if they don't let it go back, it won't go to him, but to the other Vices, just as he will go to them, along with everything he has and everything he owns but can't hold.

The boring prose of the universe, from which even behind the thickest fleur, you cannot hide. The right is the one who has the power, who has the numbers, who has the resources. Putting everything, opening the rear and deprived of the right to retreat, he will either gain or lose. But he will lose to the end, to the edge, to the impossibility of getting up again. He will not be allowed to do so in Hell, and an attempt to escape beyond it will meet the wrath of ascended rulers and angry mortals. They are so sweet in their desire to punish any attempt to reveal to them the truth of pleasure. Their melody never hears, never willingly accepts the melody of Vice, whatever he may be. He always has to sing first and whisper the right words, without which no acceptance can begin. No pure and joyful love can happen.

It is the last of the four, the cursed Infernal, so loyal to a dead god that he almost became a demon himself, accepted the burden of Inferno, and renounced everything and everyone for the sake of.... for what? For the mere right to be more miserable than anyone else? The vile thirst to know the torment itself and to transmit it like a contagion to all who dare to touch the carrier of that contagion was the reason why Vice hated Sin, why Hell fought Inferno at every opportunity. It was a pity the renunciates themselves did not often give that opportunity, being too absorbed in their heavy burdens to make a serious impact on the world; only rarely did they break out of their shells, and only rarely did one of them manage to meet the others.

The vitality of demons and their servants knows no bounds and has no analogs. The very nature of Inferno grants the most painful of all possible forms of immortality, unwanted and unsolicited, but very useful in battle if the demon forces that battle. Even the lowest Servant, who has lost his God, distorted by his dead power, is difficult to destroy even for legendary creatures. Not all of them can do it. It is almost pointless, useless, and harmful to destroy truly high Servants or Heralds. They will be resurrected, and in perdition, they involuntarily share their curse with the killer, even if they do not resist.

The old man requires a special approach, a battle tactic suitable for the demon, tied to pure planar damage and minimal consumption of souls, which, from the mere presence of Sin, turn into candle lights that immediately go out, forever carried to the halls of Inferno. It is not difficult to damage the demon with pure attacks, even if it has not yet managed to atomize the old man's body completely. It's his chains. Extremely unpleasant artifact of unknown nature cursed nature, one touch of which also curses, also burdened with someone else's pain, the pain of someone who has nothing to lose, whom it is pointless to comfort, who does not care about all the promises. Even the melody of the old demon-worshipper does not sound like a song, even if it is sweet and sad, but only like the gnashing of teeth and the clanking of chains.

His mere presence forces him to use a minimum of fleur, a minimum of direct mental manipulation, reducing the arsenal to obscenity, to the point of calling this arsenal boring, bland as a wafer! And the others do not help, do not hurry to turn their blows against the demon, fighting with the devil, accepting the old man in their ranks, opening their arms, as if they do not understand what they are doing, who they are helping. Why? Why do they accept Sin but refuse Lust and Vice? Had he not promised enough, had he not yet shown how much better it would be for them to be part of him, part of his melody?

Flute and Drums work familiarly. They have been together for a long time, long accustomed to feeling their partner at their side, honed their interactions in a multitude of drills and sparring sessions, becoming an extension of each other's will. Grinding and clanking were alien to their shared melody as alien it was to Sovereign. They had never worked with them, had never bonded with their song, nor would they wish to, nor would they pass on their pain for no reason. They were all worthy of their strength. They had achieved it by labor and talent, adjusting to each other unbelievably fast, becoming more and more like a single organism, a well-oiled machine, but no talent could compensate for the absence of years of fighting brotherhood.

But there was also Silence, the poisonous stiletto supporting the heavy hammer of Flame, the towering shield of Time, and the lances of Sin, serving as the link that bound them all together, that gave them a guiding will. Consciously or not, but in his hardest battle, the Summoned, the Ultimate of the Heroes, felt the power that elevated the unnecessary soul taken from his homeworld, a soul superfluous in every way, doomed to a gray and empty existence, that made him a Hero. Because, at that moment, plans, attributes, titles, classes, and artifacts were purely secondary. Because he's doing exactly what a not summoned but Summoned One should do - channeling people's passion, giving it a vector, setting the direction of a forest fire.

From the outside, anyone would have recognized it as advanced clairvoyance, which he used to bind them all into one, to screen out attempts to interrupt or infect that bond with Lust, always helping someone else's premonition to know, helping to pinpoint exactly what the other three wanted to do now. If they were real, if they were the Hero and his Companions, now, having gained the support of the fourth member, they would win. They would crush the strong but constrained Sovereign, tear away his defenses, hunt him down, and drown out his melody with their own. He did not realize it at once, but when he did, he laughed a pure and happy laugh. This day had given him something even greater than he had originally wished for. It made him feel mortal again.

It was their lack of coherence, mistrust, and realization that they would turn their weapons against each other if they lost their common enemy. And blood would be shed, Flames would burst, Shadows would wail, and Time would freeze! But the enemy is there, the enemy destroys them, the enemy keeps them, and they live for him, live his moment, his rhythm. They are dangerous. They make the figure of the supreme devil dance across the square of the poets. They give no time or respite and do not let him concentrate his forces into a truly crushing attack.

And yet it's still not enough.

The Flame meets Chill, and its heat is followed by a dozen astral hammers, pounding the remnants of fire sorcery into the shield of stopped time, stone shrapnel piercing a dozen holes in the body of the chained Infernal, forcing the Shadow to cast away many tentacles, to change shape and essence again. The wounds on the old man's body sizzle and sizzle, blackened, not regenerating, but simply refusing to stay in their wounded state. The devil ignores the counterblows of the chains against the shining iron barriers, the attempt to slow down time again. He thinks not only and not so much with his body but with his petals, and they cannot be frozen, cannot be slowed down. The apt and vicious blows with shadow hooks are atomized by the counter outburst of Light and Heaven at once, after which Heaven raises a protective formation, a true bastion, buying time for a new turn.

The bastion rots and rusts under the weight of demonic magic, torn by the claws of the insect-like Shadow, while fireballs white with heat fly through the openings, each one unfolding into something unimaginable, like spherical cages growing into themselves, holding not even fire in the center, but a needle piercing to the very depths of the Forge. Warudo exhaled tiredly, having sped up his Summoned to make sure she had time to accomplish a small feat despite the damage to her health. Blood from her eyes, nose, and ears shows flatly, unquestioningly what she has done was not easy, but Warudo pays the price, and she is ready to pay for it as many times as ordered.

He wraps all the cages in a foggy blanket, like a thick, fleecy plaid that smells like a damp basement and a musty pond. The Mist drinks up the heat, seals up the punctures like a cork, shuts off the power, and extinguishes the technique before it does any serious damage. Yet the burns all over his perfect body remain, though they heal faster than they appeared. The small wounds are not dangerous, but they are offensive. They pepper the melody of battle, let him feel the pain, savor it, win, and overcome it. The answering blow, an inky harpoon from the deepest Abyss, pierces the heart of the still unrecovered maiden, turning her insides to liquid, forcing her to burn again, to sacrifice herself again, to be reborn different again.

Warudo speeds up time, almost without trying to delay Sovereign directly, putting walls of stopped existence in his way, which the devil squeezes through almost playfully, bending not even his body but space to avoid the poke of the mythical blade, rushing forward, but past the little vulnerable prince. He knows the devil has learned to weaken the armor's protection for a few moments, not rushing to check whether the trick is used now or not, but he can't afford to ignore the opportunity, having to take the blows of a new portion of ice and air blades.

The recovered infernal does not allow himself any doubts, already lunging forward and, this time, the counter swing of the light blade, the embodied Truth, about the death of the one who will fall under the truth meets the crossed links of chains, falling into their grip, letting the links wrap around the embodied technique, forcing the detonation of the invested power. The flash burns the old man's upper layers of skin and muscle, to which he reacts roughly nothing, hurting the shadow boy at the same time, causing him to recoil, swinging the pendulum, avoiding the five weaker but throwing blades to curve and try to strike Shadow from the back while the spatial cutter presses in front, churning, and breaking, shredding the fabric of space, its dimensionality and geometry.

The spatial attack disappeared in the graying monochrome world, embodied a few steps away from the humped and twisted, almost pressed to the ground Shadow, and from the blades, he again recoiled, to be taken up by the greedy Flame, even more inflamed. Again, the clue was given only to the rebellious Sophia through clairvoyance. Again, it failed to intercept and distort it, or rather, it did, but the false chosen one somehow saw the difference between deceptions and the only real thought. The old man's gnarled fingers, not at all embarrassed by his loss of sight, reached for the body of the devil, severing the thinning and weakened threads of the Source of the Keys, which had suffered a great deal today.

The creature interrupts the maneuver, retreating again, knowing full well how long it takes to heal the nasty wounds left by the almost insensible touches of the demonist's fingers, how reluctant it is to heal a body woven of honey fleur, to transmit those touches to a soul, and how that transmission tends to infect a dozen neighboring souls, and so on ad infinitum. A counter pile of not particularly powerful but noisy in sensory terms charms makes the entire foursome hesitate, fearing a serious attack embedded in this cloud. And no, not all of them. The old man again applied his strange method of movement, practically unblockable neither by area effects nor even by petals, which turned out to be behind his back, preventing him from breaking the distance and again reducing everything to a bombardment of multiple high-level techniques.

Last time, he had almost burned the old man, forced Sophia to be reborn twice and forced Prince Warudo to roll back time to repair the throat torn out by the blow of a material soul planted in the attacking technique. Silence had broken the Mirror again when it had been torn into fifty pieces by the sun's shackles, not killing him but seriously injuring him, correcting the omission with the next series of charms. The time before last was similar. Only Warudo remained intact, only gaining a bit of fleur as he regained the strength and reserves of a tired Sophia. Each break in distance and transition to suppression was a painful experience for the quartet, but they adapted. They responded to his attacks with their own, and Sovereign had to admit they did quite well. Silence was particularly memorable, able, even without Warudo's help, to become for a few seconds much faster than he should, literally tearing his shadowy body to shreds from the oncoming resistance of the River of Time but creating truly impressive spells. And if Warudo accelerated him, at the same time, Sovereign would have to close the distance to prevent him from using such a trick again. He did not like the intensity, which made the world a wall of blackness and nothing more.

There was a rumbling sound. It was another of the prince's protective amulets, which had thought in vain that the third time the devil's sensory deception was hiding nothing, catching the spit out a stream of dust that dissolved any sorcerous energy. It dissolves artifacts first and foremost, so it might damage the Duel of the Scoundrel, weakened in time by the actions of the souls lurking in its gut. His hands are rapidly turning white, becoming deadly pale as the death of anyone who touches them becomes higher than the Law, and the creature is already striding towards him, breaking into a dash, ignoring the old man who had no time to attack from behind. The enemies are separated. Flute has slowed its pace, dealing with the predatory dust, and Silence and Drums are begging to be embraced. He can already hear it, waiting for the change in melody when the new hands do touch them.

He comes eye-to-eye with Sophia, who resembles a spindle with a myriad of fiery threads wound around it. She whirls around in a leap, only increasing the number of those threads. Not a problem. He is familiar with the technique and knows how to counteract it, but the problem is that there is no Silence around her, though his seers are even now whispering with passion he should be here. The deception is beautiful, brazen, and skillful in equal measure, but there is no time to admire the false chord, having to bend, arching his back in the opposite direction, creating a shield of threads that have become very sharp, covering the Source, now disgustingly vulnerable. The hand of Silence, a clawed paw of shadow form, with these threads is cut into hundreds of pieces, as if meat to a good salad, immediately joining, not allowing the threads to pass inside the body but the inertia of the sudden blow has already lo...

...break...

The hand of Silence, the clawed paw of the shadow form, simply ignored the Source of the Keys, touching the face of the archdevil distorted by resentment and the promise to repay for that, who was able to realize the moment of the broken mirror, but not to react. He had no time to transfer the damage to one of the special defense souls. He was too close to the infernal, not in a hurry to let in his contagion. He corrected himself quickly. Most of the damage was absorbed by one of his lights, dying in the ecstasy he was looking for in life, but the inertia of the blow turned the body crucified in a jump, throwing it straight into the arms of the spindle.

Fire threads not only try to tangle ineffectively the threads of the keys, which in the deactivated state do not exist but also climb into the Istok itself, depriving the body of mobility, wrapping and stinging, increasing the temperature inside the body, giving part of the heat even to the petals, which is already an indicator. Any other legend in such a fiery tangle would burn in a matter of seconds and would have no time to escape. He let out a series of icy exhalations, tossing the horribly crippled maiden, caught in a moment of vulnerability, aside, already reaching for her with the revitalized threads of the keys to give her to the Source she'd carelessly wandered into before she was reborn in flame, unmarked by the insidious threads.

He used the Miracle again to avoid the blade in the hands of the prince, who had returned in time and was standing in the same place as a few seconds ago. They had trampled all over this square, so the Eternal had plenty of places to jump, and he could get into almost any position he wanted. The scoundrel, the sugar sweetheart. At the moment when it seemed that they had separated again without serious damage, the final piece of one of the old man's chains grazed his cheek, leaving an ugly scar on his face and knocking out a few souls once dedicated to Chill, not yet hidden properly back into the depths of his essence. The ugly wound, the loss of sparks dear to his heart and memory, and the general situation cause another heavy breath, an angry exhalation, and with it, the entire area is covered by the mist of Mist, rendering everyone invisible except the owner of the soul that had summoned Mist.

A sphere of fire, created instantly by Sophia, flares up as brightly as the sun, dispersing the Mist and vaporizing the hungry tentacles of fog, too slow to distort distances and directions. From below, the fog is taken in by the black maw of a breach in the Shadow, set strictly along the ground line, finally breaking the already barely functioning signs on the stones turned to rubble and dust. It was strange the reinforcing circuit had survived so long when they had been blowing it apart with their attacks, and Sovereign had been helping them, attacking with no less magnitude himself. Still, the structure's usefulness was not even half exhausted, but all the important actions had already been completely transferred to the petals' work, so there was no need to fear collateral damage. The last attempts to break through the petals with mass attacks of artifacts or magic circles were coming from the Palace and had already stopped. They were now either on the defensive or, more likely, preparing an escape route for the Emperor and a way for the Prince to escape from the battle without losses, leaving his temporary allies to the devil.

That is so cute. It just makes his face tear up with cuteness.

It was as if he would let Varudo leave their dance without finishing the tune. Half of the Time-bound souls had been used in the beginning to cut off that Time, when he hadn't yet come to bow to it, from the rest. Pulling him across the River wouldn't work, not even for the Emperor, not after what he'd already had to endure today, not after the stresses, betrayals, and losses he'd endured.

And the dance continued.

The blade's lunge is met by the same blade, a mirror copy of it possessing even a fraction of the similar effects, throwing Warudo back in a hard parry. The one brings himself back to the striking position and tries to repeat the blow differently but is only met with a trivial leg kick, forcing the creature to lose its souls to turn the physical blow into a conceptual one capable of breaking even the defense of the Dastardly Duel. It couldn't hurt the prince, but it threw him away like a doll thrown by an angry child straight into the arms of the old infernal.

The chains again serve in place of limbs, gently gripping the flying prince and dampening the inertia, preparing to put him on the ground as he simply disappears from the chains' grip to reappear before the devil, now trying to chop off the leg he was kicked with. Sophia took the uncharacteristic role of distance support, attacking with compressed drills of scarlet flame with enviable frequency. Barriers of stiff and overflowing static essences of water and viscous astral veil kept him unburnt but prevented him from striking something worthy. Silence comes in from the side, accelerating again, injuring itself. The creature is forced to attack Warudo, simultaneously ceasing to block the flames and launching generous light attacks at Shadow. Sovereign does not want to let the two accelerations add up to one again. At times like this, Silence becomes an unpleasant foe, almost deafening in its desire to push the melody of Hell as far back into its silence as possible.

The clanking and clanking of chains, the way he and his seers mark the infernal, warns, allows him to stretch his space, avoiding the chains. In doing so, he interrupts the attack on Varudo, instead leaving the illusion of that attack for the prince to defend himself and lose time anyway. The summoned one, however, continues to try to get closer, though the acceleration is already tearing off chunks of his shadowy flesh even larger than the spells managed to hit. The world around him is trying to change again, a chorus of prayers, but all the voices are singing out of tune, all of them sobbing through a choked cry - the Infernal rarely used external attacks, which were almost useless against the devil who hid his cherished souls, preferring to attack at point-blank range with chains or cursed touches, but now the change of tactics was to his advantage.

Warudo floats out of another timeline, either untraced by the devil or not happened in the past, but now his strike is deadly. Taking advantage of the moment of weakened defenses, forced by the need to keep his sparks and their melody safe from the old man's shrieking prayer, Sovereign was unable to interfere. A play with what had happened and what had not come true, which he had expected from the mirror of Silence but not from Flute, the most straightforward of his enemies. Forced to accelerate and renew the forces of his allies, constantly locking himself in an inviolable barrier, continuously using simple but only reliable in such conditions techniques, having neither the strength nor the right to more elegant but unusable in direct combat clan techniques.

And so, he dared, inevitably setting himself up, removing his defenses, putting everything on the attack, and not hoping that the same Silence would save Flute with another mirror. Even if he wanted to, it was not certain he would be able to do so. The forces were too different, the reflection of the river of Time was too far away, and there were too many fine-tunings to make room for another one. In other circumstances, such a risk would have been Flute's last gift, its final note, but right now, it was succeeding... almost succeeds.

The stroke of the blade, harmless but deadly, did not touch the pseudo-body itself, did not touch it, only passed through the bundle of threads of keys, almost blotting out the Istok itself, as if a barber had cut off the ponytail of an eager client. Sovereign felt nothing, nor did his seers notice anything, as if nothing had happened. And he did not know, could not know, whether what had happened, had happened, or had been avoided. In the inactive state, the threads were only images, a visualized intention of control, an instrument of influence and correction, but not a part of the body, whether it was the miniature receptacle of his being that was now fighting the quartet, the petals that were huge and residing in many dimensions at once, or even the entire Domain as a manifestation of Sovereign's will.

So there was no first touch. He dodged?

My thoughts do not prevent me from continuing the dance, playing the music, increasing the tempo, putting into the attacks a share of frenzied evil, underlying concern, or even fear of dying without seeing the finale of this play. Flames are replaced by the greenish glow of Life itself, a vast and all-encompassing Mother that can both heal and turn anyone under attack into a mutated mountain of flesh. The devils love to harness this power, to help stolen souls reproduce particularly traumatic mutations that would otherwise all too easily destroy the changeling. The Life is devoured by the Shadow, and it retreats when he reappears as the Sun, burning through the black flesh of Silence, exposing Flute from under its protection and pouring streams of attacks at the prince. The old man is just recovering again, even his survivability is finite, and he does not try to spare himself. It is almost impossible to destroy demons, but just killing and sending them to rebirth is much easier, although this task is not simple.

But if there had been a touch if the nature of the blade protected the very fact of the touch from any knowledge of it, would he not doom himself by risking where he dared not risk?

He does not know. He has not been able to solve this mystery: what do those touched by the mythical blade in the possession of the Eternals experience?

Or do they feel nothing, not until the very end, which they also do not sense?

Approaching, again a hand-to-hand battle of one against four, and the creature puts on a dozen silhouettes, the embodied souls of the great masters of the fist whose blows bent iron and mithril but who fell before the caresses of Hell. The souls rot, spoiled by the infernal's presence, but for a brief moment of their functionality, before the sparks of the souls become candle lights, symbols of fruitless prayers to nowhere, he withstands the onslaught. He avoids the blade, reflects the claws of Shadow and the blades of flame, and casts aside the chains of Sin.

The chains wound his hands, curse the molasses and honey of his body, the Flames leave burns, and the masters who protect him burn in them even faster than they go into the Inferno, greedily sucking heat and strength from the grip of the Shadow, restraining the unruly time within its bounds. With distinct resentment, Sovereign realizes he is yielding to them. That he, unless he finds a way, will soon lose. Exhausted by the process of Descending, deprived of much of his arsenal thanks to the presence of a rotten and corpulent infernal nearby, constrained by the presence of a Scoundel Duel and a cursed blade, he has adapted too slowly.

Silence, ever annoying but always inferior in danger to everyone except perhaps Sophia, who was already almost his even now, proved to be scarier, more dangerous than originally appreciated, and became heavier, even though previously weighed down. His assistance, control of the battle arena, masterful use of the un-existence combined with supreme clairvoyance, and ability to replay overlooked melodies. All allowed him to tune the ensemble like musical instruments, gradually making his music louder and louder, too loud even for Sovereign. He was used to being in their shoes, used to being the one who adapted, the one who always had plenty of speckled cards, the prepared musical masterpieces, the one who grew stronger with every moment of battle. Now, the supreme devil was on the other side. Now, he was out of time. Now, his opponents were getting better and more coordinated, and he was only retreating and trying to catch up.

That realization, the presence of the creature of Inferno, the hungry attention of the Shadow, the danger of the ruinous blade, the sight of the fire toy that had never been completed - all of it came together in one lump, clumped together and dissolved into an anger that came from deep within. And then the great Sovereign, who remembered other epochs, who saw other worlds, who had glorified his name and his Lust long before each of these four had appeared, did what he was accustomed to do in a seemingly hopeless situation.

He took it by the throat and turned it around.

In one moment, no different from the previous ones, the devil changes tactics, not retreating from the impact of the blade and the fire net, but stepping towards them, covering himself with the barrier and transferring the rest of the fiery strike to the sonm, his whole body meeting the touch of the blade. This time, it was just as insensible, just as silently passing through him as if it were not a blade but a harmless illusion. Until the last moment, he couldn't be sure it wouldn't kill him on the spot. He didn't know, couldn't foresee it. It would have, for the power contained in the Blade of the Second Touch was so great that it would have been enough even for him. This thing had been created to counter his kind, as had been proven in practice many times in the past.

The prince wasn't confused by the fact the touch didn't count. Probably, he, as the one who had the artifact in his hands, knew in advance whether the blade's effect had worked or not. All that mattered was that it had worked. Now, all that was left was to strike again, and there was no need to fear a retaliatory strike, no need to fear death agony, only to survive the Lord's desperate attack, all his Lust woven into a single cacophony. The task was far from easy, for the devil would not have attacked so recklessly if he had no chance of victory.

All four are ready for the finale. They are ready to kill or die, as the case may be. The already tense melody reaches an absolute peak, the pinnacle of love and hate, beyond which there is only fall, only oblivion, and nothing more beyond it. Sophia stands in the creature's way as she has done so many times before. Though she sees, she cannot help but see and feel the threat. Wasting no time in dodging, no longer keeping the spark of souls from the Inferno's foulness, the creature throws all available strength into a deadly attack, a dagger strike at close range.

It had to go to Prince Warudo, the one she lives and breathes for, to cut short the existence of the blade bearer, too dangerous a part, the most dangerous of all. Without the bearer of the two mythical artifacts, the rest of the trio would fall with a guarantee. It was Warudo's defense, his acceleration, his removal of rollbacks for one-time effects or reeling off the flow of a River for the sake of healing that was what Sovereign's power shattered against. Silence is dangerous. He is cunning and careful, but how many more mirrors did he have left? They alone allowed him not even to fight, just not to die immediately, not to become a plaything at the first call, undoing the inevitable time after time. An old fragment of what had once been a High Priest was worth less than that, and without serious cover, he could only fall to ashes and be reborn in agony in the asylum of Sin so close to him. That is, if they let him go at all, for as pitiful as it was, Sovereign was willing to use extreme means for the sake of such an abomination.

The clash is inevitable. It's too late to dodge or break the distance. The prince is ready to strike a second blow, anticipating victory. He expects victory, but he is ready for any trickery. He is ready to retreat if the creature twists again. It's even flattering to have such a sweet enemy whose melody can curve around yours, like two snakes in a mating dance intertwining the non-past and the obligatory future. The Eternal was accustomed to rule. He was prepared to accept the crown and throne. He was to take it when the current Emperor ceded the place to him. Neither pity nor affection is inexcusable to the Emperor. The only thing he can afford to dream of, the only thing he must guard more than anything else, is the good of the Empire entrusted to him as part of the will and legacy of all his ancestors.

Therefore, the decision was made instantly and without hesitation, without pity and regret. They may come later, much later, when the hymns of victory and funeral marches have rung out when the Empire has recovered from the terrible losses and the consequences of the blow missed in the heart. But right now, he was soberly and without the slightest regret sacrificing one whose nature and role was defined for this or a similar moment - to be sacrificed, to give her life and everything else at Varudo's command. She had long warmed his bed, entertained him with conversation, or assisted him in those matters that only the most faithful and the most devoted could be trusted with. He had valued her, perhaps even more than a servant should be valued. A useful tool. But her usefulness had worn out. She had sacrificed too much in this battle, and there was nothing more she could give, nothing more he could take from her but the very last loss.

Under different circumstances, she might have survived more than one ash turning and rising from those ashes. The battle undermined Sophia Flame. She had been broken by Sovereign's games, but the blazing Flame had re-forged what was broken, restored what was lost while still taking back what was whole. She could still fight, but what was needed now was not a battle, but an opportunity, an opportunity to bind the creature, to bind the ancient devil for the moment Warudo needed to touch one more time with the tip of his blade the base of the pseudo-body of the worst enemy of his life. Only to touch, only to touch, even in the most innocuous touch possible, deceptively incapable of harming or at least injuring.

The Summoned One, who would never be the Chosen One, who had had her right to become one stolen from her at the very moment of her appearance under the Heaven of the other world, stepped forward with a full understanding of what she had to do. She didn't want to die, didn't want to die this way, but a command had been given, a mission had been assigned, and everything Sophia was was ready to fulfill what had been ordained. This time, she flared up differently, ignited in a different way than before. There was no transition of flesh into Flame, no direct change of form of existence from creaturely to energetic. Now she was on fire, her flesh sizzling, the burning meat sizzling, the skin tearing away as the United with Flames Primordial Phoenix gave it everything, everything, even that which could not be given.

In this state, unleashing her lethal power, she could, indeed could face the mythical creature directly and closely and resist the first blow, match strength, not skill, but pure power with the Hell creature and lose, not in the same instant, but in the one following the first. It is this pause, this action Warudo needs to complete the blow. Neither Silence nor Sin will come in time, each distracted by a separate maneuver, but he cannot outmaneuver Sophia. Either break off the attack again so that he doesn't have time to retreat when Warudo, who has invested all of his reserves and several one-time effects, strikes in pursuit, or try to break the falsely chosen one, break through her to the boy she's protecting and prevent him from completing the blow, but not in time either.

Sovereign, as was the custom of his tribe, as he had been accustomed to do his entire existence since the moment he became aware of being, did otherwise, not as he was wanted to do. He playing his own game rather than dancing to someone else's music. He does not dodge, does not put up defenses, but only pulls his hands, covered with burns faster than thought, to the flaming hulk of Sophia dying forever. And in touching her, the creature does not harm her, does not try to take control or tear out her already dying soul. He acts differently, thinner, deeper, reaching for something that does not exist and cannot exist, that does not exist anywhere, that was never created, that was incarnated by no one, devoting itself to nothing, reaching for what all over Alurei is called the Control Mechanism.

The eyes on her burned face, the only part of her dying body not yet touched by the Flames, open in shock, pupils dilating, and the heart pierced by her nearly burned hands freezes in a painful realization. In the last moment of her existence, having nothing and having given everything away, Sophia, just Sophia, who even her fiery name was named by others who chose instead of her, looks at the world as free. She sees the archdevil not even trying - not even having time - to dodge, realizes that the counter-attack she has already prepared can drill into the depths of the multidimensional body, burn out the honeyed essence of it, not killing, but leaving a terrible wound that will take centuries to heal, but there will be no such centuries because the crippled and stunned devil will not be able to dodge the new blow of the cursed blade.

He smiles, grinning, his face perfect in ecstasy, letting his finely honed intuition, called upon, working better than any clairvoyance on the eve of death, read him like an open book. Allowing it to remember, to recall all those details, all those times it had been changed, remade at the will of one of the Eternals. At the will of the Emperor, his eldest son, at the whims of temporary controllers or imposed "friends," at the will of anyone but not her own.

Sophia can save her life now. It would not be possible to cancel such an attack completely only to extinguish the flames and, after a long, very long time, to heal the wounds received, which will never heal completely, as well as the self-consciousness burned in dozens of rebirths. But the effect of what the devil had used against her would be over much faster, and then she would return to where she had started, bowing her head penitently and discarding all other thoughts, points of view, proofs...

The Maiden can continue to strike, being already free to perform her one true feat worthy of any legends and myths. To sacrifice everything not by order but by choice, saving thousands of thousands, freeing souls tormented by Lust from eternal captivity. Is this not a fitting finale, the thunderous beat of the last drum, the roar of the siege trumpets? Oh, if she were like Silence tearing his Shadow-distorted body, striving like everyone else here to make it, her choice would not have been obvious. That's what Heroes are. That's what the Chosen are, to be able to sacrifice even themselves for what they think is Right.

But Sophia, the little girl Sophia, summoned and torn from her native walls, who had never known a day of freedom, a superfluous soul that had not been allowed to blossom, a soul that had been spit upon and sullied, defiled by something worse than betrayal, something as soft and invisible as the Lust glorified by the creature, but so hard, tearing a sob from her breast, burning with such resentment that any Flame is but a small fire against it.

She knew what the creature was thinking, knew it in an instant, realized it in a heartbeat when they were frozen against each other, almost in a deadly clinch. She made her decision just as quickly, her mind sharpened by countless battles for the sake of others, her body obedient to its iron will, unbound for the first time by the bridle and saddle she had been wearing before.

Sophia touched the unresisting devil, burning its body even more, using it as a support, pushing back and keeping the creature from burning a few souls, shrinking the distance in its path to the metric of space. To turn around, with a frantic jerk being exactly opposite to the creature, ready to finish it off and celebrate the great victory of Warudo the Eternal, looking at it with a pure and clear gaze of the only eyes that are whole on the whole body, ignoring the agony of the body roasting in such a close Flame. And if the creature only smiled at this look, accepting any choice, ready for Sophia to decide to rid the world of what she considered an abomination, even after all she had realized, the Crown Prince, the first in the right to the throne, shuddered shamefully.

And when the Flame Maiden, almost a naked skeleton, the hulk of a human body, embraced him, strung upward in an attack, he was truly afraid. Because the Scoundrel Duel was locked on Sovereign but not on his most trusted weapon because the weapon was not now under control the protection of a set of armor could perceive the creature's action and nullify the blow of the subdued flayer Sophia. He is Eternal, after all. For him, not having time is not that impossible but rather difficult. He always has Time to react and to try to do something. And when all that was left of Sophia flashed bloody scarlet in place of the charred skeleton, when the fiery claws almost reached his eyes, he did the only thing that could still protect him. Against that, no time rollback would have helped, no escape to the past, and no separation of the timeline would have been possible.

The Scoundrel Duel changed its focus, turning the fatal blow into a harmless stroking, but Sophia's dying soul, already disintegrating into ash, already losing its eyes - the last part of its body that still functioned - saw what it had longed for. For once you change the focus of the Duel, you can never get it back, for only once can you summon an enemy to a hopeless battle against the wearer of this armor. And when the devil's dead grip was on the prince's shoulders, turning him around to face the inhumanly beautiful form of his Sovereign, when he gave another lover a greedy kiss, Warudo the Eternal could do nothing. And if what was still left of Sophia could, it would have smiled, a grin as merciless as the Flame that devours one's flesh knows no pity.

But Sofia's body was gone.

And a moment later, Sofia was gone.

The presence of a chronomancer on a strike team has an amazing effect on its overall combat effectiveness, but the best way to understand the scale of this effect is when the chronomancer is suddenly knocked out of the team. Especially if that chronomancer is one of the Eternal, especially if the opponent of the battle is a mythical creature that wants not just your souls but all of you. Warudo sped up the entire quartet, slowed down the surrounding world, rolled back used one-time skills, restored reserve, and even pulled out from under deadly blows back into the past. The latter, however, did not concern Silence, either because of mutual distrust and equally mutual hatred for each other or because Silence himself could speed up the river for himself, just as well, independently crushing his doom. Nevertheless, even the black-sun Summoned one had the support of the Eternal and depended on it.

And now, with the maiden constantly burning and unburnable but eager to burn Sovereign, giving the Flame her all, with Flute hanging limply over the mess that remained of the Square of the Seven Poets, smiling an unnaturally wide smile and giving himself completely to the kiss that had been bestowed upon him.... now the remaining two couldn't even run away. Because they were exhausted, beaten, and the devil had simply lost some time and souls - all the wounds received were healed, the lost places in the choir and sonm were taken by new lucky ones, and the reserve of such an entity did not exist at all as a concept and could not run out, unable to run out.

With a light touch of his fingers, the creature tosses Flute a little upwards, calling out to the part of himself that was passed on with a kiss, forcing the body that was in a fantasy to use its own blood and seal him in a cocoon of timelessness. The silent boy, a smart, good-looking boy, could have gotten wind of something unnecessary and done the smartest thing for his silly head - just kill Warudo before Sovereign took his gift seriously. And that would be bad. The children had already played enough of their childish rebellion. It was time to go to bed in the cozy crib of Chorus singing its lullaby.

Although, these two missing children will not make it to the Glee Club. One is too tainted by the hunger of Loneliness to spend energy on purification and distillation of his personality, and the other has sold eternity to Inferno and can only be finished by showing incredible pity and mercy. The latter is so scarce in this cruel universe. Who else not to distribute this pity on interest-free credit, as not the kind Sovereign?

Not yet a heartbeat after the disappointing death of his unmade toy, the passionate Sophia, which he had almost finished only to have it broken by the disrespectful Warudo, and the creature was already attacking again. Taking the form of a fish-like Shadow, like a huge shark of the sea, the summoned one accelerates once more. He, having just emerged from another river squeeze, losing in the process many small pieces of black and silky darkness that had torn away from his body, accelerates again. This time, he is no longer torn superficially, no longer tearing away the top layers of morphed flesh that have been converted to energy, which regrow even faster than the next. Now, the wounds the child of the other world inflicts on himself are really serious, deep, as if inflicted with a razor-sharp stiletto, long, like the marks of invisible claws.

With the same haste with which Silence had tried to thwart the combination of Sovereign, a combination which he had deliberately ajar at the last moment, with the same fervor, he began to run away. Truly, knowing the time to run away makes you invincible! True, this truth was not about the guest from another world, who, in good conscience, should have run long before he decided to stop in the city. Or, at least, after that ridiculous scene in the Library, for which he wanted to kiss the funny guy who'd confused all the cards. Not immediately after that very first touch with the mortal who had almost become a Shadow did the devil realize that this was the mirror man he was looking for, who had broken the wish of one of his Messengers, who had almost destroyed the carefully prepared treat with mirrors and dreams, who would not let the one sleeping in the White Altar awaken.

No, directly, he didn't know, couldn't know. Even having read the boy to the bottom, before the moment when he had not yet returned new, it was not easy to see the mirror power in him. Too much had already been taken up by his Loneliness, cutting him off from other sources of power, so densely clogging the essence of the read that someone else might have overlooked one of his archetypes. It was silly, strange, and sweet to have such multidirectional forces instead of classes supporting one direction, but the summoned, the true Summoned, had it all quite often.

In a moment, even before this absurd fight began, the hundreds of voices of Chorus, whispering their words, gathering the fabric of existence into a clear picture, came to the right conclusion, recounting it to their Lord. And a little later, on another mirror broken by the boy, it became finally clear who exactly had so meanly and pleasantly stabbed him in his unprotected back. What a farce, what a tragedy, which grew out of a farce and now turned into a farce again. It is, but the play of one laughing boy who wanted so much that the world should laugh at his cruel jokes! Is this not the pinnacle of irony, the shock of satire? To confuse the cards, to pretend to be the victim, to pretend to be the one who sacrifices himself to laugh at the stupidity of those who believed in the last stand of the little halfling, the always grumpy Pypysh. And afterward, voluntarily became that sacrifice himself, giving up everything that he had so kept, sacrificing again, only now for real. The play for pretense and pretense for the sake of the play. Two sides of a coin, the edge of which became a fight without hope of defeat, the victory which is equal to defeat.

The Shadow, wounded and tormented by its acceleration, is hit in the face by the Shining of Truth, which was created by a whole galaxy of fireflies giving their passion to Vice. Clang-clang, the cage closes, cutting off from the new Truth all that was Truth before. The Shadow hisses and rustles the ashes settling to the ground as the iron-colored spear, born of a great mage's shamefully wrong - albeit only in mortal opinion - love for his child, pierces the center of her body. The devils had once bought this father that they were the only ones who could understand, approve, and fulfill his dubbed abnormal desire. And all so that the steel and iron of his power would now be thrust into its chosen target, turning the mortal who had taken the form of the Shadow into a heavy iron statue of himself - huge, skillfully crafted, and dead, still gleaming with its brilliance under the purple sky...

...break...

And all so that the steel and iron of his power would fall into the gap, the breach, the wound, feeding it with the power of depth of Loneliness. And the creature could swear the blow had been stopped by another broken mirror, one of the last available, if not the last at all, as he could feel it in his gut, but the breach itself had been created from the very fragments of flesh that had been torn alive by the silence. He should be introduced to his fellow members of the Agony Aspect, and they would find much to talk about.

The shadow retreated, coming to a position where the creature couldn't provide a guaranteed kill. It could kill, yes, but it was too costly to kill several times, so each new kill required a new mirror. And then there was the hysterical attack from the Palace, which had obviously realized something in the allotted second, for which Warudo received his kiss on the mouth. He had to redirect his energies to a target even more tempting - a target that simply had to be destroyed, even if it posed no threat at all.

The Infernal was already hitting, a wave of rust cursing at the touch, crushing with the hammer of a forgotten prayer, maiming and mutilating both the one praying and everyone around him, tormenting with a behavioral attack so close to the contract magic favored by the devils, seeking to transfer part of its mutilation to someone else, tearing into pieces with the tentacles of chains rising dozen, two dozen, a hundred! Previously trying to strike close, the infernal could not use all his power, dangerous to the creature to an extent even less than to his temporary allies. But deprived of them, realizing that further restraint is unnecessary, that there is nothing further, he revealed himself in all the ugliness of his curse.

Strong.

Cunning.

Mighty.

Totally harmless.

The chains grew heavier as the stone chips that rose upward stuck to the links, pulling them to the ground, melting them into the remnants of the paving stones, turning them into what they were meant to be - the shackles they had once been made to be. Deprived of mobility, forced to stop, at least for a moment, the old man did not relent, still ignoring the need for defense with contemptuous flippancy, eager to put everything into attack. Behind his back, the windows opened again, keyholes through which the lights of countless Candles peered into reality. Souls that had given themselves to a prayer that could no longer come true. Souls that could only take those who believed in that prayer enough - the last candle lit on the grave of a soul that dared not deny its god.

The flames - now that Sophia is dead, he can no longer worry about control being overrun - burn the space itself, disrupting the windows, making them unstable, and the maddening flicker of the Candlelight becomes shaky, barely able to hurt someone like him. A storm front comes in next, filling every breath of airspace with a force ready to explode, a force that can be countered but is so hard when every movement, every exhalation, every flicker of the eyelashes triggers a cascading reaction, generating new charges. Static accumulates, intensifies, and begins to tear the body and aura of the infernal. Although, he does not care about the integrity of the body. Although he does not care about life and death, but the concentration is disrupted.

Further on, black and unpleasantly shiny, as if cast from frozen oil, needle-nails came into play, fanning into the static front, causing detonation, staining everything around, tearing down the wall of rust and screaming faces, rebuilt in defense, as if created from air turned to wax. The final chord of the final performance is a translucent, slightly greenish blade of natural energy concentrated into an absolute, turning any life into a jumble of flesh and mutated organs.

All this is enough to knock all the defenses of the infernal, to tear his body, to almost turn it to dust, to send him to such a terrible rebirth, next to which the resumption of already three heartbeats as a dead Phoenix is just nonsense and light tingles. But the devil does not need a rebirth. He seeks for the demon only the final destruction and, at the same time, is sure that for this, his enemy is sincerely grateful to him. This, of course, does not affect their apparently divergent goals, as does not prevent them from trying to kill each other, but, of course, Sovereign is pleased that someone will appreciate his help with such sincerity. And if he were the owner of a flimsy organic body rather than a perfect vessel, a multidimensional and self-growing construct of pseudo-flesh, it would probably make him sick, and tears of resentment would come to his eyes. It's hard when the only people who greet you with unwavering relief without any fleur, who understand your actions, are this abomination.

One of the finest souls, a true Heroine, marked by six gods at once, long since lost in her last lost duel, betrayed by those she had once left at home to go to the great war, both in those old times and in the times of today. As she accomplished feat after feat, the whispers of Lust gradually convinced all the loved ones she had left behind, her weaknesses, her carefully nurtured, and therefore vulnerable, the heart of what was best for the Heroine. And she, blessed six times over, found herself so defenseless against those she loved, unable to fight and kill those who had no such doubts.

Long years of forging, melting, and tempering this soul in various fantasies, whole lives lived in illusory worlds woven especially for her, had brought her into contact with Lust, allowed her to forget the pain of betrayal, to find in it pleasant shades, and to learn what she was required to learn. A perfect billet for just one blow, followed by oblivion and, to Sovereign's slight sadness, release from any shackles - even so distorted the divine seals would take the essence of the betrayed from his caressing hands. Release, even if only in perdition. They, these seals, were left distorted but working, so the billet, the bold note of the heroic verse, would work just so.

The old man had already begun to regenerate his body, albeit slowly, albeit not in time, for he had too much to regain, too often wounded. The attack, which is not an attack, looks like a forest bird flitting from the devil's outstretched palm, half of it white as virgin snow on the mountain peaks and the other half black as the bitterness of a betrayed wife and mother. Six blessings, six curses, and six Miracles fused. It could kill even him, Sovereign, the co-master, the possessor of comparable power over other Domain and Vice. It had been created for that purpose, but it was beyond him to let this wretched creature live; it was the devil's whole nature to destroy the demon, which he did not fail to do.

The Damned Herald would probably have resumed even after that.

It was still a high priest, but the key factor was the remnants of humanity, not even the essence, but the traces of its presence, the dead memory of being human in the dead memory of the dead God. And the old man, who had no time to do something, was already disintegrating, embarking on his last perilous journey, came close, having torn his chains out of the greedy stone trap, to the devil, who did not even try to dodge, clung to his hand, which was stained with a posthumous curse, put out in a protective gesture, and fell to the ground with a pile of decayed fabric of his shirt, instantly corroded chains, of which only one link remained intact. ... or maybe that one link was the real one from the beginning? The last to touch the stone with a thud was a carved box, either of strange wood, black stone, bone, or even iron. He didn't want to open it, so he wasn't going to risk it. Whatever the infernal was hiding literally instead of his heart, this trophy, as well as the obvious artifact chain, could wait.

It was the third second since the fall of Prince Warudo, and the Palace had already discharged the last of its resources into the petals, seemingly using even the most dangerous artifacts that required the lives or at least the health of those who activated them. One of the petals faded a bit and turned grayish, losing some of the silhouettes of souls copulating in it under the impact of two effects close in strength to the myth. Another one had a rapidly closing hole that led not through it, opening a view of the Seven Poets' Square, but into the depths of the Domain of which the petals were a part. The second wound was not so dangerous, almost irreversible - even destroyed souls in the petals would rise again if the souls that remembered the caresses of the disembodied, remembered their melodies and rhythms, were intact.

It's an act of desperation, which is not surprising.

The creature gets close to its prey.

Sovereign takes a slave of his.

The control over Warudo's mind allowed him to leisurely turn off the time capsulation, draw him to himself, hold him in a much more tender embrace than last time, brand him with a much softer kiss, taking away his memory, taking away his soul. And afterward, when the power over the soul that had been instantly corrupted and dissected in dozens of ways, that had lived for years in those seconds of dreams and fantasies, had reached the right concentration, when the devil had found that strange power that bound the Eternals into one, that prevented them from antagonizing each other, that allowed them, if necessary, to act as one organism, being in the past, in the future, in the present, in what had not happened and what had not happened.... fumbled and burst into that connection, giving all of himself through the invisible threads, humming his melody to them. Through all the barriers of the Palace, through any amulets and artifactual complexes of individual protection, through any power over Time, a power that could not be rolled back, could not be changed, could not be reflected, and could not be deceived.

Right into the souls of bearing the blood of Eternals who were just under this dome today.

Right into the Emperor's frozen and so cold heart.
* * *

The noise of the surroundings penetrated consciousness as if through a dense woolen blanket, the kind of blanket that one uses on the coldest nights when, for some reason, you are sleeping under the open sky and your heart begs you not to lock yourself in an enchanted carriage, but to enjoy sleeping under the light of colorful constellations. The weather near the Eternal is usually sunny during the day and cloudy at night, for the many mages who spell the weather have long ago selected the perfect algorithm of conditions necessary for the infrastructure of the great city, the greatest of the capitals of the blessed Alurei. Ilkhan-Antar occupies a much larger area, being in fact a multitude of separate towns that once sprang up around a cluster of large oases-towns almost merged. Tanshin, aka Goldilocks, has an even larger population than Eternal, but much of it is made of the world's largest slums. There was Antol, the jewel of Neitmak. There was Zarastron, the pearl of the sea, the legacy of Seinberg's former greatness. There was the Eternal Flower and the Chambers of Stones. There was Great Vartan and Coderga, separated by the ocean. There were many cities, great and stately, beautiful and marvelous, worthy to stand side by side. But for her, it was Eternal, that was the greatest of the great, the most beautiful of the beautiful. That was how she had been raised. That was how she had come to believe, and that was how it would always be.

But there were times when she wanted something strange. She wanted to escape from the city, to go beyond its walls, to go almost to the middle of nowhere, to look at the starry sky, at sunsets and sunrises, to realize the beauty of nature, and once again to know her homeland, the blood from the blood of her ancestors, the blood of their enemies, built on the bones of those who had challenged them and climbed to the top. A minor quirk, albeit time-consuming. The days, weeks, and months of her life are scheduled by her and her Father in such detail that it is very difficult, each time more and more difficult, to find, don't laugh, Time for herself and her own. Too much of her own begins to be swallowed up by the common, and the power she was born with begins to take its toll, to demand reciprocal action.

An aristocrat does not belong to himself. The nobility is bound by as many inhibitions and restrictions as the lowest of mortals, paying for what was bestowed by birth. One has to live as one has been made to live, to develop oneself as one's family needs, to serve those whom one's ancestors served, to love whoever is pointed to, whoever is chosen, to give birth or conceive an heir who will continue on the same path. It is foolish to complain about such unfreedom, just go to the slums and look at those who live "freely," and even then, only because no one cares about them, as long as they do not go against the laws of the Empire.

She had long ago forgotten about her dreams of starry skies and had even bothered to test herself for various influences, having actually learned that her great-grandfather's blood had left a small drop of planar connection to those very Stars. She accepted her Father's will, sought his approval, and longed to be disappointed in her useless daughter, but she was in no hurry to change her life radically. Years ago, the girl had familiarized herself with her probably already appointed fiancé, having prepared for herself and him two vials with a particularly high-quality love potion to ensure mutual feelings if they suddenly did not get along.

And yet it was the heaviness of the camping blanket and the night sky overhead that was the first thing she remembered, even now.

Consciousness came... strangely, not in fragments, but as if in waves, while the memory seemed fragmentary and incomplete, not answering the questions of the present day. Walzea the Eternal remembered her childhood and youth, her first steps and first lessons in controlling the power of the Dynasty, the joy, and fun of walks in the park, the luster of the dressed leather of her hunting suit, the faint hissing of the falling sand of her watch, a watch that was never filled, that never ran out of sand and therefore never needed to be turned over. The last memory tugged at some deep strings in her soul, forcing her to remember more, to rise from her strange state of disassembly, to piece together her shattered and shattered consciousness.

Dust and sand.

Dust and sand.

Under her body, marble, and basalt insulated with magic. It was this material that was used to clad the interior of the Palace. Not any of them, but only those that could not be shown to anyone. They were the best suited, had the right energy, and more easily tolerated the imposition of various auxiliary charms. The palace, yes, the native walls, exactly them, exactly the palace. She remembered the long and short way through the streets of the maddened city that had turned into an arena of battle and orgies. She remembered several consecutive battles exhausting and tiring in equal measure. She remembered Areia Fern covering her. She should be rewarded somehow, seriously rewarded. There was no shame in that. She remembered Squire releasing enchanted bolts from his crossbow now and then. What a name, great Law, what a blank in her head... She remembered battle after battle. She remembered the escape from the Legend who was interested in them, and the gray, dust-soaked Brute of the Road. She remembered how his armor, the faces of sullen and terrible old men depicted on them, began to weep black tears.

She remembered how they'd approached the Palace, how she'd had to summon the power of the Law, the power of the Dynasty, using a loophole left long ago for just such an occasion. She remembered how they had almost been killed. All the traitors, those of the enchanted who could not be brought back to their senses, had been slaughtered then. Their appearance had nearly provoked a massacre, but the combined power of the Wanderer and Walzea had been enough to hold out for a few moments, and then Father had sensed her presence.

Valzea remembered the path through the familiar and completely unrecognizable corridors of the Palace under siege. The Palace was a huge artifact, a complex of them, united into one huge and man-made beast. She knew that it was this monster that her ancestors had once dug out from under the ground, building a city on the ruins and, for a long time, century after century, breathing into the ancient golem or spirit of the place a semblance of its strange life. She felt how now this life was gradually extinguished, how it was spent on confronting that which had sprouted somewhere in the city, which they had bypassed by another road only by miracle and waves of gray dust, literally burying whole alleys, through which they were sneaking. Sneaking through a city that should have been hers, should have belonged to her!

The memory of Sigmund Rooleim's twisted, mangled, wax-stained body, the one that had been pretending to be the old and perpetually irritated and obnoxious old man Sigmund for an unknown amount of time, as it had been explained to her. Always... he hated everyone in general, and she hated him personally, as the mentor and teacher of her second brother, now nameless and forgotten. Nearby, just a little away, lay the body of Artemius, who had been summoned from the most useful ones left near the throne even in the run-up to the war with his desert neighbors, skinned by the Envoy's huge claws. Only this type of devil could pull off such a powerful disguise and such a perfect pretense. A little to the side, not skinned, but as if she had not received any wounds, Violet, also summoned, but with non-combat classes, who had not even had time to develop normally and had never been out in the field. Next to her, as intact as ever, lay Grazio Delterri, her controller and mentor, whose ministry she had been summoned to help because there were rats in the supply ranks, and it was urgent to clean up and execute those who were profiting from the Empire's money. Father, as it often happens, did not want to involve Ezless in this matter, not wanting to give them even more power, especially if they had to work not so much with money flows but with the ways of more primitive commodity exchange, tied to the exchange of services or finished products, not gold. Grazio and Fiala Violet lay side by side now, equal in their deaths. Their souls had been drained from both of them without damaging their bodies and without damaging any of their defenses.

Bodies.

Corpses.

Mutilated and almost whole, killed in the back, or a fair fight, belonging to people and non-humans she knew personally or through dossiers. There, lying scraps of Ardael's retinue of the House of the Night Tree, though it was impossible to find an ambassador among this mincemeat, recognizable only by the tattered clothes and their styles. And also complete strangers. How many they had lost, how many they would not count afterward, how many... How much she believed that there would still be someone to count, there would be this, so false, afterward.

Her father only rewarded her with a fleeting glance, turning fatigue into strength, returning firmness to her arms and confidence to her feet once more firmly planted on the Palace stone. Her retinue, vetted several times, was with her as well, though someone afterward might be executed for incompetence. Allowing a thug unknown to anyone and a suspected treasonous Fern into the central defense node, whatever checks had been made, seemed remarkably irresponsible. Father's eyes stared uninterruptedly at the boorishly smiling traveler for a long, almost heart-stopping few minutes, not even trying to pretend he was calm. Father was reading the very essence, the source of the All-Seeing One's power and gifts, of the one his gaze had fallen upon, and there was little that could be hidden from him here in the heart of the Palace. Father did not like what he saw, but no more than that, he remembered who had brought his blood and his daughter here, understood what threatened him if that blood fell into the clutches of those who desired it, if it fell into the power of the late Ramarz's art.

She was quickly brought into the fold, and even the traveler, as a Law-bound power bearer, was allowed to participate in the common defense, which seemed nonsense even yesterday. The dynasty had enough loyal men with the powers able to work on the back of the Ruling Branch of the family. But that was yesterday, before this terrible massacre inside the defense perimeter, where betrayed and stabbed in the back, seeking to kill but not to survive. The unbearable weight of the Law fell and fell on his shoulders, stretching minutes into hours, accelerating the rollback of battle artifacts and renewing the protection over the Palace, continuing the battle with the spawn of vicious myths.

Then... then something changed. She couldn't remember what it was, but the memory was falling into place, coming back sharp, as a mosaic puzzle. The creature was distracted, lessening its onslaught, giving her seconds that turned into a full twenty-four hours of almost complete safety, for which too much had been said. And her older brother, insufferable and ruthlessly treading on her weakness, on her uselessness, put on his ancient armor and picked up his ancient sword. The Father did not want to send him there, but the power over Time, the power over the Empire, and, accordingly, over the capital of the state gave another power, if not opening a guaranteed future, then quite accurately revealing all its innumerable options. And in those variants, there was only death, death, death, or something even worse.

A trump card was needed, and Warudo was chosen to be it. Varudo, who may not have desired this feat but who could not resist the will of the Father. The Father could not leave the Palace, for he remained the one thing that had not yet allowed the convergence of the Eternal and the devil's domain to take place. Her brother went to the battle, from which he might not have returned, probably would not have returned, despite the many artifacts and amulets of escape, ending up in the arms of the supreme creature. For some time, which became very long by their will, they got a rest, already having one foot in the grave, and moved a few steps away from it.

To step again.

When she felt it.

That moment, that moment.

Moment of touch.

It came from there. From the same depths that Walzea had turned to for the power of the Law. Not from Time itself, for even such a creature could not corrupt the Law not that quickly. It came from her blood. It came with the trill of the violin and the whistling of the flute. It came with a cheerful melody, joy, and happiness that echoed down her belly with the uncontrollable heat of instant orgasm. She laughed and danced. Through the Princess's right and access to the Palace, trying to give her happiness and such a long, long ecstasy to everyone. To all around her. She pressed the boy, Mort, now Volaan, against her, kissing him and forcing him to cum with her, along with Fern, who had already stripped and undressed the awkwardly resisting boy.

The melody led her, keeping her from paying attention to anything while she could still feel her nipples being twisted by someone else's hands, hoping that the same power that was growing the breasts of one of the court maids of honor as flat as the androgynous princess herself would soon reach her. The melody led her until it was replaced by a different kind of pleasure - harder, more demanding, but just as pleasurable and giving new orgasms. The Brute Wanderer showed himself to be a boor again, crushing the jaw of the orgasming princess, from which she had to bring her back to the normal state with Law because she was going to take revenge with a truly imperial blowjob, gnawing off the fondled organ at the end, then restoring it in its original place and repeating this procedure more than once, until she was full.

Instead of caresses, even rough ones came dust and pain, came torment and not pleasant bear hugs, came hundreds of hundreds of charms directed by the Palace and the multitude of court Benefics not yet listening to her melody, not yet dancing with her! Walzea tried to give them orders, but the whip-like, not strong, but terribly confusing blows of fists to the face and cries that they were all fucked up prevented even that little, prevented her from cumming again and forgetting about the nonsense. It was the Benefics who pulled her out, who, among all their effects and benefits, found something to help her come to her senses and share and withdraw what she had been inspired by. It was Wanderer who kept her afloat until she could decide to give up Lust, almost sobbing blood from his half-blind eyes at the end.

Perhaps it was her weakness that saved her. She had only recently, only hours, days if you count the stretched Time, ago when she had gained an understanding of the Law that was truly worthy of the Eternal when she had still been able to push herself away from the not fully accustomed power. But how many of them were there, as useless as she had become yesterday? She didn't want to open her eyes and get up. She didn't want to, didn't want to, didn't want to, please don't, don't, don't, don't. Let her continue not to look, and all this won't happen. Let it not happen!

Arrogant but possessing an excellent sense of humor and always willing to share wine from her personal collection, Sister Wrido, daughter of her Father's now-deceased brother, is one of the few who has always supported the hapless princess.

Not at all arrogant and lifelong weary Waril, a third cousin, however, brought into the ruling line by his outstanding success in mastering the Law, rarely missing a moment to pass a verbal jab at a weaker Walzea.

Uncle Wonnie, missing quite a few vowel letters since his youth due to an incurable injury of his jaw, was nearly cut in two by an Alishan assassin's bone dagger and forced to sit tightly on pain-relieving alchemy for that old wound.

All of the first line and most of the second, all strong enough, all akin to the power of the Dynasty, all Eternal enough, all who were worth anything, who today found themselves in the Eternal, quite all... Only Father, whose strength was so absurdly great that it could not be turned into weakness, survived, and she, unworthy and useless. There were still relatives, not close, distant, very distant, and the rest, almost not relatives at all. The reign of the Dynasty spawned many sidelines, too many, taking full advantage of their bond that would not let a brother go with a blade on his brother. Now that bond had reduced so many of them to the grave... and has it brought so many more? Had that nightmarishly desirable even now melody traveled further, reaching all the remaining still-living kin outside the capital?

Wreedo.

Waril.

Whonny

All of them lying in pools of their juices and semen, embraced by the retinue who heard their melody, orgasming to death until their souls left their bodies and went straight into the jaws of the one who had taken Warudo, on the same path that had always before been their salvation. The Benefics had performed a true Miracle, managing in such a time crunch without the ability to slow down Time, understand the nature of the attack, and attempt to save their lords and rulers. There was no Miracle to attempt success, save for Walzea and Father's tearing orders to everyone around him.

She should have listened, should have participated, helped, and supported, but it was as if her whole body had become a creamy dessert, so soft and delicate that it seemed to spread over every surface. It wasn't even a weakness that hundreds of benefits and cleansing effects would have vaporized without trace or harm, but something humiliatingly close to the state one feels after a visit from an experienced lover, only scarier and more inescapable. Walzea allows herself a few more heartbeats of lewd and deadly tenderness and then begins to rise.

Her body doesn't immediately remember how to move and control those movements, but when she gets the urge, the guardsmen and healers immediately lift her to her trembling feet. Her clothes are restored, either by herself, simply automatically, or by one of the governesses, and afterward cleaned from the effects of an overdose of Lust by holders of the same class. Thoughts come to order, and the will of the true Eternal pushes grief, resentment, and sorrow deep into the recesses of the subconscious. It is not their time - they may have already lost, but the Eternal will leave just as they once came. Proudly and uncompromisingly.

Her father looked bad, very bad, though, before the sneaky and deadly successful attack, she'd thought he couldn't look worse. Not even pale, but grayish-green, like the offspring of a cave goblin, slimmed down to about half his size, aged to the point of near helplessness, with a terrifyingly powerful rollback and a cursed soul-sucking on top of it, he was still Father. The strongest of, the most powerful, able to come out of this battle and pull his daughter and his Empire out of it. The more terrifying, the more painful it was to hear his words, the more she wanted to loop herself somewhere in the past so she wouldn't have to hear them and forget what she'd heard.

"The creature struck me the very first thing it did." The words lacked the power and authority that had been there not so long ago when orders were given to the Guard and retinue, only a tired anger and an equally strong resolve. "My soul is no longer with me, but on its way into the jaws of this abomination. I have managed to freeze it halfway, but I can hold it no longer. I... I will try to destroy my own essence, if not sever the link. but I don't know if I can."

There are no words except for the completely stupid requests to say that it is such a cruel joke and then add that everything will be fine. Walzea, who had regained her mind and begun to think like a Princess again, not like a little whiny girl, understands perfectly well what was said, analyzes it, and puts it in order, but it still hurts and frightens, bitter and sad.

"How is it... how is it, Father?" It was hard to think of a more banal and useless question now when every moment was worth the weight of all Ezless's gold, but the barely regained control was not so solid.

"Into the sonm of the creature, into his soul trap, shall not fall the bearer of full authority." As if he had already accepted his fate worse than death and therefore lost his fear, the Emperor of the Ages continued to speak, ignoring the babbling of his daughter. "The River sees that I have been hard on you. All the gods who left us here see, you have failed me. You have seemed a mistake, a figment of the past that has remained my burden, my burden of guilt. But now there is no choice for me or you. Know, Valzea the Eternal, hear my last words and believe. I will be proud of you, and you will become worthy and find the greatness you have longed for."

She hears, but she doesn't want to listen, she can't and doesn't believe.

She knows what Father is doing. She doesn't fully believe it, but she knows.

"By the will of mine." The strength and power he embodied returned to the voice of the Emperor of Ages. "I name you, daughter of mine, as an extension of my power. I bequeath thee a Law, I conjure thee a Crown, I name thee a Right. Accept thy Power to rule... Eternally. Farewell and forgive us all..."

On Walzea's forehead is something useless to even dream of because the one who could give this Crown to her had long ago been disappointed in her. Power flows into her essence, tormenting and tearing the girl who was not ready for it, the Princess who became Empress against her will, who was never able to say her last words to her father, who never had time to say goodbye to any of them, who remained a useless girl, an empty branch of the main line for every kin. The power flows, changes her, and opens new facets of what she used to know only in theory, only from the diaries and records of those who managed to become the Authority embodied in the Crown and the Throne.

The Empress endured and did not die at the same moment, unable to withstand the onslaught of power pouring into her soul and essence.

But by the time she came to her senses, her father, the previous Emperor Pradius the Merciless, was hopelessly dead, nothing more than an empty body, and the Empress's power, multiplied many times over, made clear another bleak fact: her father had not been able to destroy his soul, nor to push it out of the channel and straight into the archdevil's jaws. And that means that after a couple of minutes, which the abomination will spend on the proper treatment of all her kin that it has taken, a new melody will come, the same one, but different, created and played only for her. And the newly minted ruler, in whose Palace there are no more artifacts left that can even scratch the mythical creature, will not be able to prevent it.

Ironic to be the last Empress to rule for less than an hour.

The brothers, both of them, would have laughed heartily.

Oh, yeah.

There is nothing left of their hearts.

Should she order the guards, who were now on their knees, albeit with a lot of violations of proper ceremonial - in such circumstances more than completely forgivable - to kill her before... before she was taken too? The main thing was not to laugh now, not to giggle, because there were no tears, but the absurdity of the situation could drive her insane even before the creature did.

And they all realized it, too, because Father had been quite clear in his instructions and explanation of the situation. The remnants of the artifacts will be used in time, but there is not even a shadow of a chance of pushing through the creature's defenses, and a hastily organized counterattack has even less of a chance. Walzea continued to keep the constructs her father had created in control, still slowing time, letting her prepare and maybe even die in battle. There was no longer enough strength for more, not after such a drastic enhancement that hurt as much as it elevated. She needs rest, and if it weren't for the fact of maintaining and channeling the already prepared distortions of the Law at no particular cost, she would have fainted, if not dead. The benefics and healers assigned to her are only wasting the reserve because, in her current position, any benefits are washed away by the waters of the River.

"Don't be in a hurry to say goodbye to your life." There's less confidence in the voice and movements of the staggering, knee-shaking thug than there used to be, but there's as much insolence as there was. "If anything, it's never too late to die.... although with these cocksuckers, I guess it might be."

"If it's any consolation, you've earned several executions in a row with your behavior and rudeness towards me." Indifferently and somehow even cheerfully says the Empress, really in no hurry to throw herself on the dagger. "But I you, for repeatedly saving of my emperorship I mercy you. Shall I give you a reward, or will verbal thanks suffice?"

Only a snort of laughter in response, which would have given the valets a shock if they were still alive at that moment. She wondered how long it took him to learn to act so outside the bounds of propriety. That was within the bounds of indecency. You can't do that by accident, masterfully walking through all the taboos and prohibitions of court etiquette. To be so utterly unscrupulous, one would have to know the etiquette better than half the court sycophants.

"It's enough for me to brag in the taverns about how I slapped the Empress, who wanted to suck my dick." The degenerate laughs and seems to have made someone listening to their conversation faint, forcing the guards to take hold of their blades and staff, preparing to kill the idiot. "Titles and orders don't work after that."

"If you really do that, I'll have you drowned in the latrine, along with the whole tavern." It wasn't that she was angry, but this kind of talk, so to speak, made her forget for a moment the ticking timer to her downfall. "But I'll bury you with all the honors, even give you a crypt here at the Palace."

"That's better because I was thinking of ripping all the sharp objects out of your hands, you little brat. Better get ready to kill, not die." The smile that begs for a second smile underneath is pointedly ignored, but one thing she has to admit in all honesty to herself

It's not known whether the Empress of Ages has changed her mind about falling on the dagger, but here's a clear and angry, preternaturally motivated certainty that she will kill this Wanderer first, far better than the doomed fatalism of a suicide bomber.

So the two of them, exhausted and almost dead, waited for the end: side by side but separately.
* * *

The goal had been achieved. The plan had been executed, and it was time to reap the sweet harvest of hard work, to change the tune once again, and at the same time, to pay attention to what was happening in the city that already belonged to him. The souls of those marked by Eternity are already listening to his Chorus, gradually taking the form they wanted, making them shake their heads in brokenness at the impossibility of corrupting them correctly and gradually, savoring every moment, every step to Vice. The devils, their highest representatives, of course, could be amazingly methodical when necessary, and so restrained that they could easily outshine other ascetics. However, few could bring themselves to love such restrictions. Some enthusiasts sought new shades of knowledge in involuntary restrictions, and they did find them, but among those who gave their aspect to Lust, they were few.

The city had all but fallen, even if there were still pockets of extremely vicious resistance that would have to be dealt with by him, personally and in full force, to reduce further losses among the already thinning elite. The inhabitants of the capital themselves were now not so much needed by the domain and its Sovereign, even if it was foolish to give up so many assets in the Bank. With the receipt of the souls of the Eternal, the game will move to a completely different level. There is a good chance that he will have to share the claimed rights with a couple more domains, of course, the most opposite and least conflicting with the Lust aspects. However, it is not in the rules of the devils to give up what they have taken, nor is it in the rules of anyone else, so there will certainly be a use for the inhabitants of the capital and the riches hidden in the city, how else could it be?

The News Bringer was busy fighting the will of the disobedient and boring Ezlesses, who couldn't even give themselves to Lust properly, nor were they particularly inclined to do so. If Sovereign embodied Greed, then such personalities, as all of them were known to be, who took the gold would be the pearl of his collection, but Lust was... well, did not care. The soul was very strong, and you could do a lot with it, but relatively indifferent. The goal, of course, was to prevent Ezless from exercising the right of summoning, and, being honest with his nature, Sovereign doubted too much. He didn't believe they could summon this gilded worm, he didn't believe it was as powerful as it was supposed to be, and he didn't fully believe in the very existence of this entity. It had been summoned a long time ago, it had been awakened from its slumber, it had gathered contradictory information, and if it had encountered devils of any Vice, it had left no witnesses.

The News Bringer was the domain's ultimate weapon. Its blade and striking mace are even more dangerous than Sovereign in direct combat. Not as versatile, lacking artistry and such an obvious ability to tweak and reshape itself to suit a particular enemy, but it was in combat it was very dangerous. Multiple great souls were not used to create the Bringer, nor were incalculable values put into it, which was a deliberate move. The food and fuel of this machine of delivering Sovereign's point of view to the entire universe were ordinary and gray souls, practically nothing distinguished, no one really attracted. They were only the fuel, not the nucleus around which the source of reason, the newborn creature that lives and sings to the melody of the souls it has.

A golem was a golem, no matter how complex and whether created by creatures or humans and Bringer was a golem. The basis of his thinking, if an extremely flexible and constantly learning set of algorithms can be called thinking, was his armor, which was the Bringer. Sitting inside thousands of thousands of souls, giving these armor a semblance of life, were the Bringer - a perfect tandem, primitive to the extreme, empty to the point of obscenity, unsophisticated to the point of hysteria, bland to the point of hatred - the ancient creation was used primarily against other devils, against whom it was an absolute weapon. The wildest pumping of the fleur simply washed away any influences coming from the outside rather than the inside. The armor held the blows of even unconditional divine power, and if the enemy was strong enough that the brute power could not match it... The Bringer was far more complex and cunning than he might have seemed, deadly and adaptable too, though to an incomparably lesser extent than Sovereign.

If his opponent had been a divine Envoy or even an Avatar, the latter would have found something to answer to and would most likely have either defeated his enemy or forced him to retreat in order to summon a full-fledged God, against whom he would also be able to last several cycles of exchanges of blows before falling forever. But it was the Serpent, with all its strange nature and incomprehensible techniques, that became for the Bringer an uncomfortable opponent, which was extremely difficult to drive into the framework of ready-made algorithms. The Serpent did not go into direct combat, acted cautiously, slithering around, baring undoubtedly poisonous fangs, affecting indirectly the very concepts of price and fees, seeking to upset the balance of internal processes of the golem, to cause overconsumption of forces and destruction of the souls contained in the giant creation.

It didn't work out so well. The Bringer was created just like that, as uncomfortable as possible for anyone, with no obvious or non-obvious weaknesses. The effects were damped by the armor, not going any further than the Hell-wrapped steel, as strong as the very foundation of the other plane, as its manifestation. The Bringer made a decision. Weightless by the nullification of weight, it maneuvers between the battle-damaged skeletons of the buildings of affluent neighborhoods. It approached the palace and then moved away again. Both entities were in no hurry to destroy the city. Both were simply waiting for something. The Bringer saw, perceived in the visions of the world enough to not doubt that every movement of the Serpent was taking away part of the Serpent's not the infinite reserve of strength, not weakening it but shortening its stay in its current state. The Serpent was waiting either for help from the Palace or for the moment when the dome would fall or for the second when he would find a way to penetrate through the conceptual defense of the golem, to make it slow down even for a moment and to inject into it his poison, the nature of which has not yet been found out.

The battle had not been in vain. The Serpent's sides and hood were gaping with melted holes left by the Bringer's fists and magic, and newly created gold chains of varying thicknesses were slowly patching the wounds. The Bringer was not injured, but some parts of his armor had faded, as if to lose some of its power, and one of his arms had frozen in a not fully formed battle formation, jamming it and turning it into an ordinary hammer, also dangerous, but not as dangerous as a fleur-powered arcane cannon. The Bringer couldn't physically run out of power. It was too connected to Hell to be a part of it, but if it lost enough souls, it would reduce the quality of its algorithms, becoming slower and dumber, less dangerous.

For now, however, Sovereign cannot interfere, finishing the descent no one else can interfere with, seducing the most precious souls of all that they have just come for, preparing for the second invitation, seeking to take the already almost taken girl, which foolish father transferred his rights before accepting the embrace of Hell and Lust. Perhaps, if it comes out, he will not take her soul from her body, and her father will create a new one so their strange relationship will move to a new level of family understanding. Or, to do it easier, trivially creating a shared melody of the Chorus for both of them so they thought up everything necessary and realized in a fantasy indistinguishable from reality?

Decisions, decisions.

There was no need to intervene in the battle between the two giants - they were both far from winning, but it was more likely that News Bringer would exhaust the Serpent and force him to go back to where he came from. And he came somehow, right under the dome, despite all the obstacles! The bodies and souls of several Ezlesses seem to have been captured, so it's worth asking them more about their family enchantments, as well as gutting them for answers hidden in the depths of their essence.
* * *

Not too far from the battle of the giants, there is another one in which he will have to be the first to intervene because it is here that Lust may lose. Somehow the Master of the Leashes has disappointed his aspirations, his melody faltered, notes missed, so also one of the violins has been inverted into someone else's ensemble! Really funny, and Sovereign smiles a sweet smile, suppressing his irritation, for it is not often that such tricks are used by mortals against devils, not the other way around.

It is to be hoped sweet Silence has not dived into the depths of the Shadow, determined, like a true Hero, to continue the hopeless battle. To break him is wanton to the point of madness, the desire to break the silence with melody is unbearable, and the ring on the boy's finger beckons with its nature as much as the most perfect bait. He had not had time to fully understand the nature of the artifact, to discern every step of its gifts, but even what he had seen was enough to place the unassuming ring above almost any other artifact he had encountered today.

However, this is about the fate of the toy that had failed him. The master of the leashes, the Master of the Brand, to whom he had entrusted the branded ones in his mercy, had failed his Sovereign, had failed him foolishly, had failed him irresponsibly, and now he dared to ask for help. His defeat is obvious. The two of them, Jerem and the one that should have taken the priest of Retribution but became a Creature of Heaven's power, have slowly and inevitably clamped down on the branded one, knocking out both his toys and his retinue of devils, forcing him to fight where he is weakest, in those rules where he cannot deploy the full might of his nature.

The Celestial Maiden soars, crushing blue, reading the future in a straight line from victory to defeat, while the High Priest of Equilibrium circling with point-blank strikes thwarts any attempts to get out of the defense. The River Wanderer, lost in fantasy, is pinned almost to the ground by the coordinated blows of the mages and priests, recklessly wasting the rest of the altar's reserves of goodness, while the Giant Defender, once deceived in his best feelings, barely has time to pick up the ever-increasing number of missed blows. Jerem seeks to seize control of the river waters from the fantasist, to disconnect the connection of wound transmission from the deceived, or to wipe the next branded one into nothing, who remain fewer and fewer.

No, that's really not good.

The leashes will have a new master who is more competent and won't make such embarrassing blunders.

There were other points where Sovereign's help would come in handy. A couple of calibrated thrusts, breaking the formation of mortals, interrupting their melodies, and letting the melodies of his ward toys take over. But this was all far less dangerous, virtually non-threatening, requiring no immediate correction, no swift intervention in another's play. Time was now playing out for the devils. The last drops of strength were leaving the city's defenders, and the city itself was becoming more and more saturated with Hell, turning into an extension of Sovereign's body. The petals didn't just bridge the two pieces of space. They sprouted a multitude of invisible roots, braiding the entire doomed city and binding it to the dome even tighter. Until the two realities became inseparable until what had begun centuries and centuries ago, on the same day the devils had been informed of the nature of the Eternals' blood bond, of their mortal vulnerability, was accomplished.

The creature stood motionless, only the lashing threads of the Source of the Keys, thinned and mostly severed but still able to redirect and compensate for the petals' minor faults. The battle with the trio that had grown into a quartet had been hard. Much harder than it would have been, too much for the devil to be held back by the need to conjure, too much for it to take. Wounds received, billets wasted, souls lost, each of which was so close to him, so begging to be taken back, unable to return. Everything had paid off. All the fruit would be taken from the branches of the world tree, and the new world would receive its message and would know the Lust given to it, but for now, there was time to lament the wounds, to regret the lost opportunities and the mistakes made.

The petals move again, raising hundreds and hundreds of lights, rebuilding and changing the sonm, creating a new Sovereign at the same time, killing the old one. This one, almost dead already, is too exhausted. These wounds are easier to dismantle into component parts with the rest of his pseudo-body and his personality than to sew them up alive without stopping the descent and without distracting from the control of the city. After all, the mental effort can be spent on other, more logical, tactically, and strategically beneficial actions.

For example, - bounce, step, let a column of blackness pass by, raise a shield against a few pins, break the battering ram with a counter-strike of a spiral of lightning, - on regretting that he had not killed the little wretch at once, disregarding the desire to savor the agony of his humanity!

Sovereign looked gloomily, not playing at all, at the Silence that had reappeared before him, at the mask that smiled thoughtlessly with a bloody grin, at the deaf and unyielding emptiness in the clairvoyance as it seemed to seers of his chorus. For the third time, such a picture had become not even a farce but a form of mockery, an abuse of his, the good Sovereign's, sense of proportion. He, of course, was pleased that the boy had come to him, bringing his soul and his strange ring, and his daggers, which had not shown their nature so far, were very much to be studied. And he would have taken it for granted if this child of other heavens had decided to come here as if to be executed, willing to die, but not to give up his foolish principles. With what a pure heart, he would have given the boy a new vision of the world, warmed and comforted him!

But Silence had come here ready to kill and win, despite the fact he had previously failed even in the company of three other allies of equal strength. It was precisely an insult, an impure, bad, and idle insult to the very memory of that passionate battle song he had previously learned by confronting the quartet. How dare he dishonor their memory if he spits on the kindness of the devil who offers him everything? Does he not realize how he is desalinating and emasculating the Lust he had recently given?

Boorish boy.

But he'll cure that.

The creature and what had been human, then become a creature and twisted into something quite absurd, had said nothing and now, only to hear Sovereign's barely audible chuckle, a sneer. A sneer, as if Silence understood something the devil himself could not understand. It was clearly a deception, could be nothing but a deception, but just as then, after the failure at the Library, when he had been forced to speed up the operation, interrupting several crucial moments of the final preparations, beginning to play without a fully assembled orchestra, so now laughter tugged at something inside. And to that something, for its touch, Sovereign responds with mirthful rage and lust, as he always does, proving to the world how perfect he is and how wrong those who did not see his perfection were.

All the tricks of the summoned are accounted for.

All techniques are analyzed.

All tactics are broken down into individual elements that have been countered.

All that's left is to finish this tiresome performance.

Silence attacks first, impatiently and somewhat hastily, hurriedly, as he sees now, having grown accustomed to his manner, finding all its flaws and shortcomings. The man takes a step forward, ending with his already huge crag-like Shadow, the size of a small house, presses himself to the ground and exhales a whole swarm of stinging ribbons running strictly along the line of the ground, leaving behind him only innumerable slashes of reality merging into one large gash. There he was again with these breaches into the depths of the Shadow as if he hadn't learned the lessons of the past, as if he hadn't realized there were no entities at such depths that he could conquer or even interest. And if there were, but that's what he's hoping for, isn't it? Dying in good company is somehow more pleasant for these foolish mortals than enjoying Vice forever in the arms of the same company!

A net of pure Truth fell from above, simultaneously covering the expanding rift and burning the edge of the instantly recoiling Silence aside. He managed to recoil, albeit losing a bit of black flesh, only to run into a multicolored, seemingly iridescent blanket of astral energy that first wrapped itself around the boy and only then detonated, tearing apart... no, not the whole body, but only the dropped upper layers, a very thick shadowy force mixed with the blood and flesh of Silence, but still it was the enchantments, not a piece of body with a soul. The diminished Shadow is more like a headless and very skinny tiger, thin but strikingly swift, as if blurred even for the sight of Myth.

Perhaps it was for nothing that he had changed himself to this particular formation, this particular Sovereign turned into, locked into a stationary duel against the defensive lines rather than a one-on-one battle? But no, that was right. It was more important now to counter the remnants of the Eternal's defenses and open up the Palace if the last of the Dynasty was slaughtered by her guards, unwilling to receive the flow of Lust coming through her. I didn't want to change myself again because it would be a shame to die without having existed even a little, and there was no need to act so radically. The existing supplies would be enough just in case of close attackers.

A Solar Sphere in the path of the skittish figure coming in from the side, another where the shadowy illusion was running, just a silhouette, only very real, of the same animal, a stream of water droplets coming toward it, and a powerful mental, even through the shield of Loneliness, even if barely a wave of order, a web of psionics and fleur, demanding to think about the most shameful intimate experience in life, to experience a stupefying mixture of shame, excitement, and the desire to repeat it. Under such pressure, it is very difficult to act quickly, even if it only partially affects you, and therefore, the spheres are affected at once by the illusion and... The second illusion, under which hid the real Shadow, who received a shower of Rain of Depths, a psionic scream, a fire needle, and finally a dissecting blow of divine Miracle, pumped out of the freshly obtained in the same battle soul of the cleric of Warrior. The last crush Si...

...break...

It's hard to act quickly under that kind of pressure, even if you're only partially affected by it, so the spheres hit an illusion, a second illusion, and the remnants of a third illusion all at once as the true Silence jump out of the last silhouette's fragments, exhales a stream of blackness towards Rain, dodges the fire needle, and contemptuously ignores the attempted psionic influence. Well, this is exactly what was expected. The mirror-smashing trick has gotten tiresome by now, though the interest in the technique of combining such different power origins is only growing and growing.

They stand opposite each other again.

Sovereign is in the middle of the remnants of the square, in the center of the circle outlined with petals, and his toy is closer to the edge, crouching on one knee, resting his hand on the ground, and even without supervision you can see how hard he is breathing there, under his mask. Sovereign is not in a hurry. He understands perfectly well that the boy can still run away and will definitely try to run away if he is crushed. The boy right now is ready to either strike or retreat if the blow fails. He wants to finish. He is sick of it, but the trick with the mirror forces gave up the first note, waiting for the perfect moment to kill, to even shatter reality along with the mirror, - where do these mirrors lie, Sovereign has sifted through half the city to find the origins of the Dream Realm's power, he doesn't hide them in his stomach, does he? - Silence could only retreat, undo the loss, not turn it into a success.

Second first.

Second second.

Second third.

Sovereign is the pinnacle of the ideal of his Vice, and therefore Silence had not even the slightest chance of what he desired. He may combine the qualities of a great deceiver and an excellent seer, but he has a whole Chorus of seers, all different, all diligent, all ready to lay down their souls for the sake of his whims, and therefore, he saw and recognized the deception, the barely visible veil, as if it were a copy of his melody, only without a couple of notes. In fact, that was why Silence sat on his knee because he had to listen to his melody to make the lie as natural as possible.

It didn't work.

The petals shifted, turning in a dozen dimensions at once, changing their position in reality and the position of reality relative to itself-the city under the dome was looking more and more like Hell. And so, new facets of reality control were opening up. Not absolute, but for some purposes, more than sufficient, even excessive, to be honest.

It was not a battering ram, a stream, or even an arrow that struck the petal, but a feather as immense as Heaven itself, a feather of the purest Blue, the purest and most serene he had seen in a very long time, perhaps in his entire existence. The devil had not often encountered creatures of Heaven, Even more rarely had he encountered such strong and, perhaps, problematic ones, as a toy that had escaped from their care, a toy that had hopelessly spoiled itself, a lapdog that had gone off its leash, that had chosen the wrong road, that had disowned its masters, that had repaid their caresses and care with black ingratitude.

The first thing he does is attack the relaxed Silence, who had assumed that Sovereign would be the first to take on the unexpected ally he had hidden rather than the seer himself. What had he hoped for? It was not at all clear to the devil. He spent more concentration not on preparing an attack but on trying to see if there was a clever trap hidden behind the "open throat." Silence proved itself to be a superior inventor of such shtick. The devil picks up the false melody, merges it with the truth, and uses the connection between the liar and his lie, getting through this connection closer to the essence of the disobedient Silence. The one, of course, resists, desperately and angrily, sharply and even a little painfully, but it wouldn't help him... if it weren't for the same ally with innumerable wings, who is clearly being supported by someone, fed directly from Heaven, and the visions sent by the brandishing even point to that someone. When a second feather, this time of a different nature and configuration, is sent flying, the Master is forced to interrupt, almost crushing the boy mentally and morally.

The second feather is also met in the right way, adopted in a slightly augmented petal configuration, and the great devil himself, Lust Incarnate, calms down considerably. The newborn creature is only slightly weaker than he is in strength and in understanding its source of power, but she is a newborn, dangerous, but not yet able to master what her conversion has given her. Giving her at least a couple of months to adjust would make her a more serious foe, especially if on neutral territory, but here, almost in Hell, confronting him, she would not survive this battle, would not hold the advantage.

A dozen charms of various orientations and types of effects, souls burning in the flames of the fleur, barriers and closed fields of various types, forced the winged spawn of Heaven, positioned so high that it was almost touching the dome above the Eternal, to sharply tuck its wings under itself, diving down, closer to the ground and away from the direct targeting of its attacks. The creature maneuvers and uses a very unusual form of foresight, literally aligning its future, going through dozens of lines of probability, hundreds of them, picking one where it will take less damage. The ones where she doesn't have to take any wounds at all, she still doesn't find.

Whether it is a panicked flight or a planned retreat, it accomplishes nothing. Sovereign has already unleashed his full might upon her, again halting the nearly completed and finished descent. From above, multiple honey-gold lightning bolts begin to strike from the surface of the dome, trying to cage the maneuvering bird while Jerem Stayr pounces with renewed vigor on the suddenly emboldened brandishing a useless toy that can't even take care of itself. The city is already in Hell without any "almost," which opens up such abilities to control its surroundings. If you look a little more closely into the sky, without fear of losing yourself in fantasies, you will see that these lightning bolts come not just from the purple sky but from the most fleshy parts of it, as if a piece of one of the petals had appeared in that area. The blade of the very ordinary dagger that had never revealed its secrets to him, flying toward him, prevented him from reaching the trapped celestial creature.

The devil is distracted from the former maiden, giving her some time to recover, returning to Silence that has thrown off the obsession, who has had time to turn around another shadow form, run around his opponent in a wide arc, and catch the dagger thrown earlier - be sure, be sure to study this weapon - back into his hands. To this insolence, Sovereign was already preparing a response. His Chorus had already almost opened up, almost taken the boy who had lost the last layers of his defenses of un-existence. There were literally a few heartbeats left. He could already taste it, already had almost taken him, almost, almost.

Silence tilts his head to the side as if there is no danger as if he does not feel the tentacles of Sovereign's will digging into him, as if the Hell itself is not closing around him, as if the purple sky is not sinking lower and lower before his eyes, in which the fabrics of its petals are increasingly visible. Silence just watches, as if a naughty child who threw mud at a drunken artisan and now waits to see whether the drunkard will run after the skittish boy into the narrow alleyways or will not disgrace himself. He looks as if he has no doubts about the outcome of the future, seeing it completely different from what it should be, and this makes Sovereign very angry, from misunderstanding, from the need to double-check all variants of events through the Chorus for the hundredth and thousandth time, distracting from the corruption of the former Emperor and the preparation of the capture of the current Empress, from the convergence and control of the battle...

And then Silence twitches strangely, emitting a call inaudible to any ear. For Sovereign to understand his hope and laugh at it. No matter how powerful, no matter how special this technique of his, most likely bestowed by a separate one-time action skill, calling for something here and now would not work. The dome's lens and the shroud's proofreading wouldn't allow him to summon anything strong, and he wouldn't be able to break through to the depths of the Shadow, where even the Ancient Creatures could feed, just by cutting the thread of the Call.

// Hell is already here, Boy of Silence. It is only here, and it is not for you to challenge my power. A message thought, flowing into the almost undefended, focused solely on the call, mind of Silence, which now, the creature was sure, not even a mirror could break. Sovereign did not allow himself even a moment's delay, would not waste an ounce of time, immediately after his word - which was also an attack intended to stun and immobilize - sending the most powerful curse of instant death, preparing to remove the soul exposed in death, secretly still expecting another broken mirror.

The mirror didn't break.

But the pain came.

Silence attacks swiftly and artlessly, quite directly, not even trying to hide itself from foresight or intuitive premonitions, sending the body into a dash towards the pseudo-body frozen in agony. In a different situation, Sovereign would have atomized the shadow carcass rushing at him, capable of swallowing the devil's compact vessel in one bite, literally in two bites, because Silence hadn't even put up any defenses, and the creature had long since figured out how to overload his trademark two-dimensionality. But it was only necessary to strain the internal structures of the body, about to strike, just reflexively swing away and then deal with the source of pain as the agony acquired a whole new level and intensified many times.

The analysis is instantaneous, faster than even thought, faster than the realization of the damage, and this analysis brings the consciousness to the brink of madness, allowing it to realize what has happened. Hundreds of souls act according to the algorithms laid down in them. Fleur constructions change the direction and embodiment of existence, create new directives, reshape the personality right on the fly, and adjust the consciousness to new inputs, making it more ready for the cards thrown on the table than before. And understanding comes, fierce and strikingly painful.

The petals.

Its petals, parts of the whole, the foundation and continuations, united and unified the whole Domain into one absolute creation, the first and last chords of the universal melody. They were the most important element, performing most of the influences necessary for the descent. They were the shield, and the weapons, and the tables of account, and the Lord himself. They are one. They are united in a complex system that embodied his Lust for all who recognized his power, given that Lust a direction, and constantly corrected it when needed. The Sovereign and the Domain are one and the same thing, two sides of a coin, while the petals became its edge, the main working tool for modifying the Domain, expanding it, or adding new parts to it.

Silence could not open a working breach within the dome. It was impossible even for someone stronger, comparable in steps of greatness to Sovereign. The Veil and the Shroud were created precisely for the sake of this prohibition. No one would get in, no one would get out, and even the most powerful planar bond would be hopelessly distorted by the effects of the lens. Either you make your way very shallowly to those pieces of other dimensions that are cut off by the dome, or the lens will direct you to such depths of your preferred planar that you can use such a passage only for suicide. Too deep for those living there to be interested in what was happening within the dome, too short-lived were such breaches, closing on their own under the oppression of the veil, and calls and orders to tamed contract creatures of all types simply did not reach their destination.

Silence could not send such a Call to be heard, could not anywhere within the Eternal.

Sovereign believed, knew, and had no doubt that there, beneath the mask, was hidden the sneaky smile of one who had found a loophole in the bondage agreement, who had outwitted the trickster and deceived the deceiver. Otherwise, he would have even admired, maybe even wanted the boy again, changing his mind about killing him and deciding to play at corrupting him again. Otherwise, because right now, the strongest devil of his domain was desperately trying to simply survive, already not caring about overspending on anything, not trying to save on anything.

Silence created rifts not within the city, not under the dome, but in place, the lens did not extend its effect. Right inside the petals. Inside not the Eternal, but the transitional state between Hell and Reality. It had created rifts in the vaults of naked souls, and even Sovereign couldn't think of a better bait for the Shadows. Clairvoyance burned the hard-won visionaries, one by one, giving them up to Lust forever, but in time, in time to calculate each of the cuts within his being, to understand and dissect the mechanism of this trick, making it useless now and in the future.

It was at that moment the hulk of The Shadow, a multi-armed creature with no clear form, burst open, revealing the true form the mortal who had seen the chance of success had assumed. A humanoid, only a finger taller than the devil's central pseudo-body, it resembled a knight clad in solid, slitless armor but with claws on his hands instead of blades, and behind him stretched a weightless cloak of black cloth that made the world fade to gray. The devil had almost made it, but just as recently, Prince Warudo, who had already given him his Time, had almost made it.

The knight slammed into the archdevil that tried to conjure something, ignoring the dozens of individually weak multicolored beams that never coalesced into a common technique, ignoring the wall of pure Sun that appeared before him, pushing through it with its monochrome presence without even slowing down, and then knocked the creature to the ground, with a single claw strike tearing the remaining threads of the source that were trying to wrap around the attacker, grow into him and do something, anything. The pain sobered, sobered by the loss of such an important tool, a complete loss that left not a single thread intact that would otherwise be completely indifferent to attempts to damage them or avoid their embrace. Silence too had studied him and learned much, learned truths unacceptable to know. For some miserable fraction of an instant, the panic of his wounds, of the very tangible threat of being ignominiously lost right now, not even a step away from success, but having already reached it, having taken it in hand, allows him to attack in earnest.

Silence doesn't even try to defend itself, only strikes with clawed hands, clutching its daggers as well, infused with shadow power to the point where they are indistinguishable from the black flesh of the altered form. Blow after blow leaves deep scars, cuts, and lacerations on his body, into which more and more shadow pours and pours, like drops of ink poured into the honey gold of his essence, polluting, weakening, devouring, dissolving it alive, like some insect after being struck by a spider's sting! Hatred boils up with sea foam, and sea foam spews out of the pseudo-body's mouth as if it were the rabid dog in the neighborhood that had eaten a couple of kilos of alchemical powder for cleaning cloth garments. The flow of foam dissolves not only the dirt but everything, even the hand, which the Lord, tormented by the spasms of agony that deprive him of control over his body, tries to block the blows of the claws of silence. It also sweeps away the unprotected bastard, the dishonorable scum who had inflicted such wounds, dishonorable and vile wounds on his perfect body!

...break...

The flow of foam dissolved not only the dirt but everything, even the hand that had been struck, the hand that Sovereign, tormented by the spasms of body-destroying agony, was trying to block the claws of Silence. Sweeping away everything but the snake of Silence that curved, escaping the flood of Void Bubbles and managing to literally gag Sovereign from the opening maw from which the power, or rather the lack of it, of the merciless Edge was being vomited into reality. The billet, which had lost its way out of the container body, became unusable, dissolving part of the face, the lower jaw, and part of the internal structures of an already less-than-perfect body, forcing the soul of the submissive void-dweller to be torn apart by Lust, so long as what had been released did not go further inward to the blackness of Loneliness already there.

Sovereign howls with pain and hatred, trying to understand, trying to find a way to throw off Silence that is methodically beating right into his essence, trying to restore the tempo of the melody, to remove the ominous rustling and crackling of interference that obscures the hearing more and more. The beholders are burning in agony, not even having time to experience in that agony the bliss of eternal orgasm, searching, searching, relentlessly searching for a way out, any way out, any way. Somewhere far away, as if not with him and not for him, the convergence collapses, shaking in the same agony of the cut-off dome. Multiple black lines, so ugly on the multicolored flower of his will, are increasingly clear along the sinister petals of his will. They have appeared and are growing, producing dozens of branches, as if repeating the contour of some tree leaf, and the hungry power of the Shadow is already burning, burning, burning powerless to defend themselves against the threat from within the soul.

The devil could interfere. He could eradicate the aggressive force with a washout stream of Hell energy, which was still more plentiful, even if it lost to the qualitatively pure hunger of the Shadow, which was still more plentiful, but not for long, not for long. He could still interfere. Maybe if the beast that tormented him in the guise of a mortal, in the guise of Shadow, in the guise of Loneliness, which has nothing to offer, which hates any happiness given by Vice from its very essence, let it stop beating even for a moment, even for a moment, even for a moment, even for a moment...

Burning seers, restoring the pattern of events, revealing what he should have noticed, what the hated Silence was really hiding from him and his allies! The chain of events is folding, coming together, stripping away the sticky web of deception, deception too good even for The Shadow, deception that he might have uncovered so easily had he been less preoccupied at that moment with the whole quartet at once. It hurts, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts! Into the petals came through the still narrow gaps the first Shadows, inferior and hungry, dying in the concentrate of the fleur even faster than they had time to take a bite of anything, but they floated along the black ducts of the lines, the areas where his petals had already been polluted, where they are already allowed to stay, and after them the stronger Shadows climb inside, already capable of eating - of eating him, Sovereign of Lust - only growing bigger and angrier, hungrier and still as lonely.

frame-understanding

...into the still motionless Silence, which itself did not begin to evade, did not even move into a flat state, then began to seriously disturb its future husband and father, wife and mother. What this sweet creature was up to, what chord was being prepared, why did he delay, why did he not strike at the weaknesses that were more and more clearly revealed to him ...

This moment.

Moment of truce.

In that instant, Silence began to weave a deception, already then not believing in victory by fair fight, not going to help either Flute or Drums, just as they considered him an enemy, so he did not see them as those who should have lived. Sovereign, through the dying fully and forever seers, sees his pain at the thought of the fiery Sophia, at the thought of the one who could have been in his place, and he could have been in hers. He sees the determination and realization that it is too late to save her, that she is doomed, having already been sent to meet Sovereign and would be taken back only to be slaughtered on the altar, to have her strongest class taken away because the faith that has been in his hands is gone. It was then he began to weave a false cloth, indiscriminately affecting allies and devil alike, still hoping he could win without such risk but not believing such luck for a moment.

The claws of Silence are working with the measuredness of a dwarven steam hammer, driving the devil's base deeper and deeper into the ground, and if the past battle hadn't collapsed all the nearest catacomb tunnels, he could be slipping into them right now, to escape, to get away from the blows, to break the distance so it wouldn't hurt, hurt, hurt! Tissues tearing, the body begins to lose stability, to lose its multidimensionality, the multitude of off-dimensional tissues of honey sweetness losing stability, more and more leaking into it liquid from the concentration of Shadow, mixed with the willingly released blood of Silence. It is so easy to use, to curse through the willingly given blood, it will hurt even despite the protection of the shadow form, and he seizes the opportunity in a fraction of an instant. If only there were not these blows and pain, pain so forgotten and unfamiliar to the highly organized mind!

The Shadow grows new and new limbs, continuing to tear and torment, tear and poison, while the petals are already writhing from the alien power that fills them, from the Shadows crawling inside, eating him alive! Sovereign's agony is so strong that the connection he has established with his toys is hitting them in a chain reaction, weakening and shackling them, exposing them to the blows. The elite and the common meat, the Legends, and the lower visps. All begin to weaken, and the mortals take advantage of it. Jerem shines with Heaven, and the water shakes as the winged creature and its summoner crush the branded one, crushing the remnants of his army, which has already lost the River Fantasist, who never woke up from his fantasies even in death. His deceived Defender is already trembling under the hail of blows that there is no one to deliver and no will to absorb.

Claw strikes.

A poison of shadowy power deep within the body, creeping up on the sonm.

The jaws of the evil and hungry Shadows torment the insides of the petals, kill their very foundation, take his souls from him.

And the maiden, the maiden who was two-faced and now tears off the hands of a master of leashes desperately trying to put up a fleur barrier or a barrier of stigmatizing outgrowths! This maiden, she is the same, he sees, he almost understands, would have understood already, but the pain, but the Shadows, but the jaws, but the souls, but such pain, the thoughts are confused, he loses the thread, the huge domain stops working normally, and he is the Domainю Рe needs to cleanse the existing, to weed out the alien, to overcome the embedded...

frame-awareness

...the petals shifted, making a revolution in a dozen dimensions at once, changing position in reality and the position of reality relative to itself...

understanding-hatred

...it is not a battering ram, a stream or even an arrow that strikes the petal, but a feather of the purest Blue, as immense as Heaven itself....

acceptance-rejection

...picks up the false tune, merges it with the truth, exploits the connection of the liar and his lies, wading through that connection closer to the essence of the disobedient Silence.....

He knew, he knew, it hurt. Need to rebuild the circuit, change shape, it hurt, it stung. He knew, and he was ready. He was the one who had somehow messed with the one controlling the no longer two-faced maiden, forcing the one to give up the battle he was winning, just so he could just apply and aim that feather shot. Mirror, probably, yes, probably hurt. It was exactly the use of a mirror. Someone who kills his death in the reflection would have no trouble using such power to convey just one, Lust, Lust, Lust drowns out the pain, messages.

Silence didn't need an attack. He needed to move the petals and force a change of formation. It was at that moment he used the attack channel created by Sovereign himself, the very attack that the mortal had so set himself up for, letting himself be fooled into believing that the deceiver could not deceive him. He needed to change it again, flood the damage with Hell, etch the Shadows, dissolve them in Lust, and then throw Silence off himself so he wouldn't hit, not tear, tear, tear off shreds. A false melody that became a deception and a trap that nearly killed Silence, he was forced to constantly control. Silence knew, had seen, had seen from the beginning the moment of realignment, the death of one Sovereign and the birth of a new one. It was this process that suggested to him the right path, from his point of view, such a painful, painful path.

Find vulnerability.

Hide the preparation.

Summon an army of Hunger.

Beat, tear, destroy!

Sovereign strikes, slashing, killing his own and others, not forming a technique, but simply spitting out a torrent of Lust-stricken souls right into the face of Silence, right into the black oval and the grinning shadow maw. He no longer looks like a knight but like a multi-armed spider, a twisted and crippled humanoid, still covered by his cloak, covering Sovereign with it, making everything around him gray and useless, alien and cold, not allowing him to act in any wide way, forcing him to spend his strength on overcoming the monochrome, not leaving it for the blow itself. The cloak embraces the devil, clawed hands torturing his body, tearing it apart, and the jaws and claws of the summoned pack doing the same inside the petals.

The stream of souls tears the silence from its place, throws it away, and burns it, even as those souls gray before his eyes, dissolving into indifferent bicolor, dying along with their vanishing radiance. Sovereign configures his essence, not even trying to get up, only to move away from the damage, to retreat, to get rid of the jaws and the pain, and he has already succe...

...break...

The stream of souls almost reaches the silence, but it only opens another breach in the place of its maw, the very wide maw of its shadowy hypostasis, sending all the shining sparks of souls right into that breach, slamming it shut and tears apart again the once so beautiful face of Sovereign, interrupting his desperate attempt to survive, continuing to give only pain, only cold, only his damned Loneliness. The hatred is almost tangible, almost reaching absolute concentration. It seems to the devil that, at this moment, he is ready to change aspect to pure Rage or Fury just to get to the throat of the bastard. He would change at the same moment, reborn and reborn all his toys after him because they too are the Domain, and the Domain is him. He would have been reborn if it weren't for the burning, the jaws, the claws, the pain, the pain, the pain. Why can't he keep up? He's won. He's won, and he's stronger, smarter, and more perfect. He can't lose, not here, not to this, not to him, not to him, not now, not like this, not after all his successes, not after he took Ages by the heart and wrapped that heart in love and obedience!

To hit, to tear back, to torment as much as they had given him, to hit someone not even trying to defend himself...

...break...

Hit the constantly twirling ...

...break...

In continuously dodging and putting up short-lived but very strong defenses, growing them from his own shadow, it is almost impossible. He is too uncomfortable. The devil lacks one single second, less than a second, a heartbeat, only if there were no pain in him, this pain from claws and fangs and jaws and tentacles and paws and jaws and daggers...

Daggers.

Daggers!

Daggers!!!

Already fading, already feeling how he had lost too much, how nearly a third of the total area, volume, and multidimensionality of the petals had been lost, devoured, and eaten away. He was close to oblivion and cessation, closer than ever. He could already see it, understand it, and realize it. The daggers are just pieces of poor quality steel, just ordinary knives, just as he had seen them originally, just once picked up by a summoned bastard, a bastard, a freak, a mutilator, a creature, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts.

He killing him.

Terminates his existence.

With grown claws, supreme planar techniques, the most powerful summons through a terrifyingly strong Call, perfect control of non-existence, honed visionary skills, shattered mirrors, the ability to combine two sources of power without turning into bad-smelling mincemeat or the epicenter of an internal explosion, the natural instincts of a real, not chained Hero that was created to fight their kind.

And with daggers.

Simple.

Iron.

Daggers.

Infused with an inordinate amount of power, but such power can strike as deadly and painful, painful, painful, painful, even without the presence of iron picks, simple instruments of murder, not artifacts of the level of Legend or Myth, but banal and not enchanted instruments of war. The melody is no longer melodic. It reminds of the agony of a musician who is beating in a convulsive fit right in the orchestra pit, next to the rest of the orchestra, and even the conductor is subject to this fit, almost dead, almost frozen in stunned silence under the indifferent gazes of the absent audience.

Hurts, stings, burns, tears, cuts, chews, eats, devours, takes away, sucks, eviscerates, consumes, digests, desiccates...

A hit and miss.

A hit and block.

A hit and a counterattack, stripping him of the shards of his left arm up to the elbow, his right arm already ripped to his shoulder even earlier.

A hit and pain.

A hit and a scrambled hand pierce the side of the silence, pouring a river, an ocean of fleur into the shadow flesh, poisoning it, forcing it to distract and scorch the albeit undirected and hostile force, scorch it and thereby give a moment for its salvation...

...break...

A stab and pain again.

Agony and more agony.

Melody and Lust.

Now, he...

Just a little more and he...

He will cease to be!

No, he could still do it. He could still do it. He just had to redirect the flow of power, no longer burning out the shadow contagion because it had taken too much, but discarding the infected and eaten parts, saving what could be saved. The convergence has failed. The dome is about to fall. The remnants of the petals feel the barriers crumbling, previously unbreakable but now no longer supported by his will, the will of Sovereign. He is now in agony, on the brink of destruction. The gods are tearing the dome, soon to come, and he shouldn't be here by then. No, no, not like that, he must be. He must stay. He must exist, not here, but far from the threat, from the tearing and tormenting silence, from the devouring Shadows of his summoned pack!

Make it.

He needs just.

Make it.

Flee.

Start again.

New Domain.

New Sovereign.

Make it.

Transform and discard.

And he makes it, he makes it, he makes it, he makes it, he makes it, he makes it, he makes it, he makes it, he makes it, he makes it, he makes it, he makes it, he makes it...

...he makes...

...h.. mkes...

...h.. m...s...

..... m......

... ... ... .... . ....

... .... ... ... .... .... . .. ....

. . .... ....

.... ... ... .... . ... ... ... .... .. ....

... ... .. .... . ...

...

...

...

...

.

.

.

Ъ

Author's Note:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vpjNWCegE6qxQNMpqBlOHhHA-aVKoyQ0/view?usp=sharing - Quite a good concept of Taria.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/105EmwyWMtzVb34xH9d98IdGiwFEeweSS/view?usp=sharing - Whisper after the procedure. Remember, kids: playing with Dream is dangerous to life and gender identity!

* * *

122 pages... FUUUUUUUUUUU....

You know, I was planning to make a normal selection of dice because there were so many of them for this and last chapter that they would make a good book by themselves, but then I calculated the amount of effort, time, and nerves to perform such a task... and said "fuck it", after which I decided to limit myself, as in the last interlude, to the usual selection of the best ones. And there won't be many, sorry.

I'm not writing in order, I'm writing what I see first because you can't imagine what a mess my desk is in right now. And, for starters, the title of Most Crit Bastard in Eternal is shared between Shyngys and Warudo, with a slight edge to the latter. In fact, the prince had a lot of crits "upgraded" from bonuses, including generic and artifact bonuses. To the point that he had automatic hundreds on certain types of actions, from accelerating himself and the entire company, to tanking anything that his motherfucking mythic let at him almost at point-blank range. Dishonest Duel is considered such a cheater for a reason, and its bearers had already killed mythic shit-eaters of various types in the past. And in company with the blade... let's just say Sovereign wouldn't be the toughest motherfucker to get fucked by that combination. Well, if he'd been fucked, not the usual.

Shyngys, on the other hand, just roll out the most mind-blowing crit in the interlude. Spent eight bonus units there, of course, but that's still trivia. Three hundred in a row: 100 (97+3 bonuses), 100 (99+1), and 100 (96+4) and then another 71. This allowed him, through all of the Palace's defenses and Sovereign's obstacles to get Valzea out on the Road, giving her time to partially recover from the Sovereign's "hello". This is the same case that was once discussed in the L&M comments, saying triple crit is like seducing a loli archmage.

In fact, the Eternals of the first and most of the second line had no chance after the defeat of Warudo - it was an absolute disaster, simply counteracting the Eternals precisely because of their connection, the one that prevents them from harming each other. Sad, but true.

Now Walzea the Empress has been pulled from the scrap heap, leaving her as effectively the only one left who can lay absolutely firm claim to the Crown. And yes, she's pumped and very much so - if she couldn't withstand the Authority she'd die, it was pretty close to the edge there. Not close enough to waste bonuses, but close. She's stronger now than her Daddy was in her own years (but largely due to getting the Crown, whereas her daddy was counted without it), but weaker than Warudo in those same years. But that one was concentrated Marty.

Also on the ability to throw out a series of successful throws was Tavra the Juggernaut, only it didn't help her. But yeah, she was breathing that stuff for a long time and fell uncharacteristically late.

Now on to the main battle.

As you have realized, MC ate the mirror in the last chapter just for the sake of this demonstration. The mechanics of what happened will be explained in more detail by Kostya in the next chapters, but I think the basis is clear. To the credit of many commentators, they guessed the way of the combination of two planes several times.

Game-mechanically, a Broken Edge is a reroll of the roll that resulted in death/mutilation/another unpleasant outcome, with the same automatic +100 coefficient. You can't roll a pure crit, but you get one "dirty" hundred per roll. And yes, as you can see from the interlude, it's not always enough to get away without damage, and it's not always enough at all.

The four-on-one battle... you just can't imagine what it cost me, what nerves and red eyes. I'll just say that I had to start it over twice because I lost the thread of the narrative and got confused by the numbers, pros, and cons.

Also, funnily enough, in the same chapter, appeared an artifact of Dream nature uses the power of the Broken Edge to the point of absurdity.

The number of bonuses received will have to be described in a separate chapter, very boring, and numerical, but nothing will work here. No matter how you cut it down, everyone got for this battle.

And yes, MC has a new Сhronofix skill because the devil pumped him up a bit. So did the other two, but it didn't help them.

Внимание! Этот перевод, возможно, ещё не готов.
Его статус: идёт перевод

Переведено на Нотабеноиде
http://notabenoid.org/book/80370/559322

Переводчики: Camrad_RIP