“So they’re all gathered together in that temple, recuperating from the exhaustion of the ritual?” asked Ani after Esperanza quickly returned to the group and relayed everything she had seen and heard to them, including the more worrisome parts of what happened. “A ritual that invoked the voice of one of their gods, is that correct, Exalted One?”
“Or at least something pretending to be one of them, yeah,” replied Esperanza with a nod. “The voice has some of the same sort of quality I often felt from the old gods when they communicated with me, though also somewhat different. It definitely took a lot out of all those demon [Clerics] to pull off that ritual though. Even the peak fourth tier shaman looked half-dead by the end of it.”
“So that’s why you want to take this chance to hit them before they could recover, Exalted One?” queried Ani with some concern in her voice. Esperanza had described the strength of the demons gathered in the temple and clearly Ani was worried that their group might not be able to prevail, or at least, not without paying too great a cost.
“We will probably never get this sort of chance again,” admitted Esperanza. “Also, I can’t help but feel that it might not be a coincidence that we happened to run across these demons right as they’re going out to pull off this sort of ritual out in the wilderness. Wouldn’t you agree that this might well be an opportunity we had been guided into?”
“I know it’s risky. That was also why I proposed to go for the shaman myself first. The rest of you only jump in if I manage to take the shaman down,” added Esperanza as she looked around and met the eyes of the gathered group. “I’m the only one amongst us who could return to life, so I should test the waters first myself. The rest of you should hold your lives more dear to yourselves. There is no need to sacrifice yourselves to prove your faith. In fact, I forbid it unless there is truly no other way.”
Esperanza knew that the [Progenies of Yore] would jump into fire if she asked them to. Most of Ani’s group of warriors – including Ani herself – were also faithful enough to follow her come hell or high heaven. She had no wish to waste that faith of theirs, and part of the reason Ani looked so concerned was because Esperanza insisted on taking the riskiest part of the planned strike herself.
The idea of allowing her to go alone into the midst of so many enemies likely bothered the rest to no end, even if they knew that she could not die, at least not permanently.
Still, it was what Esperanza insisted on.
If her gambit worked, it would have removed the greatest threat amongst the demons as a whole with no cost to themselves, as even if she died in the process she would just [Respawn] a while later, either to make her getaway or to continue the assault on the remaining demons. While the plan did sacrifice the element of surprise for the rest of the group, she felt that it was worth it since doing it her way would greatly reduce the risk for the rest of them.
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Esperanza had confidence in her group if they were to take on the demon congregation without the [Grand Shaman] around, as that one demon was her main source of worry. She was afraid that the demon in question might strike down one of her companions – the demon likely had the power to – without any of them being able to do anything about it.
The other four were more physical in nature, and those could be dealt with in other ways, but Esperanza had always been more wary of foes skilled in the Mind or Soul more than anything. They often had more insidious methods that were difficult to guard against or counter, as she herself had often done to undermine opponents that should have been more powerful than herself and come out on top.
Which was why she returned towards the temple-like building, where the demons performed their ritual, on her own a short while later. This time Esperanza adopted the guide of a long but particularly slender serpent, as that sort of shape made it more convenient for her to hide her presence from the sight of the demons on guard.
By that point of time, the four fourth-tier demons who used to be guarding the ritual site in the center of the temple had left and stood guard outside instead, one of them on each corner of the temple, while a group of five third-tier demons remained on guard at the temple’s sole entrance. The demon [Clerics] and [Grand Shaman] were still strewn all over the ritual site trying to regain their strength.
Esperanza looked over the guard setup before she made her decision. She dove towards the forest floor as her body further elongated and thinned until it was barely visible at a glance, appearing almost like a black-colored earthworm that was far too long. In such a form, she dug into the ground and tunneled her way towards the temple’s entrance, her “head” appearing unnoticed behind the demons that stood guard there.
Carefully, she pooled the rest of her body underneath that spot as a single, barely noticeable tendril slithered into the temple complex itself. After she went up the stairs, she noticed the other third tier demon warriors, resting inside the temple in side halls that were likely set up just for that purpose. As Esperanza did everything in her power to hide her presence, none of the demons noticed her passing as she slid past the hall’s doors inside the grooves between the stones that made up the temple’s flooring.
Like that, she inched closer and closer towards the ritual site without any of the demons noticing. Their security protocols were clearly not designed for dealing with shapeshifters who could not only completely cover their presence, but also fit themselves into the grooves between the stones of the floor. Esperanza quietly brought as much of her body as she could along the same pathways, her amorphous form filling up the grooves of the floor over part of the corridor while she observed her surroundings.
When none of the demons were alerted or reacted to her after a while, she climbed up the stairs towards the ritual place, staying at the darkest corner of the stairs where she would not be noticed even if someone watched closely. She had turned the color of her “skin” to match the hue of the stones to further camouflage herself just in case.
Unlike the rest of the temple, the stone floor on the ritual area was smooth, as if it was made from a single gigantic piece of stone, other than the ritualistic patterns carved into it in the center of the region. As such, Esperanza hid herself by flattening her body and matching her color to that of the stone floor as she slowly and carefully flowed around the recuperating demons.
Even the few demons still aware of their surroundings failed to notice her presence as she passed by them, but as Esperanza approached the center region where the [Grand Shaman] was, she paused her advance and stopped as she warily watched the old fourth-tier demon. There was a sort of presence around the old demon that made her feel as if she would be immediately discovered if she came into contact with it.
So instead she gathered her mass around the old demon, just outside the reach of the presence she felt, and waited until the old demon looked distracted while he tried to recover from the ritual’s drain. She dared not wait too long in case one of the demons somehow noticed her or the [Grand Shaman] might recover too much power.
The moment the opening presented itself, Esperanza struck at the [Grand Shaman of Wiles and Guile]