Valariel looked from Cuby, to me, then back to Cuby. “Oh?” he asked.

My spell finished, but as the electric missile sped through the air between us, he simply vanished in a puff of smoke, the missile dissipating harmlessly against the cliff behind him.

“Instant teleports?” I hissed, beginning a Supercharged Psychic Parasite before I could even see where he’d gone.

Cuby answered by tensing as she turned in the direction we’d come from—and I turned to see the devil standing fifteen meters away from us. He pulled a small object from his belt and held it up before him. Then, as if there had been a blade there all along and it was only now catching a beam of moonlight to gleam bright in my eyes, a shaft of silver appeared suddenly to form a long, thin sword.

He began to trace patterns in the air with the sword, and Cuby charged forward, throwing her weapon at him to have it bounce off his black plate a moment later.

Valariel’s spell finished, and a bolt of red light shot forth from his sword and struck Cuby in the chest. She reeled, stumbling in place as her head lolled—she’d been stunned in some way.

I still had a Supercharged Haste stored as a Fragmented Spell, and I still had my Rousing Command, but as Valariel moved to begin attacking Cuby, and his sword broke my Mana Shield in three hits, I held the Rousing Command in reserve. Cuby had Hit Points and this devil was a deceiver—I’d use it when it was needed to seal her damage combo.

But as my Supercharged Psychic Parasite finished its cast, I watched him take away more and more of her Hit Points, his attack speed deceptively fast for someone with so much damage. Cuby was at half by the time she came out of the crowd-control and struck the devil with a Blinding Strike.

My Psychic Parasite hit him a moment later, but I held the Haste in reserve, more interested in using it to bolster Cuby’s defenses than to give us a damage window—and sure that this devil had more tricks.

He proved me right a moment later when I felt a burst of frustration from his mind, which the parasite told me was hyper-intent on Cuby’s health bar. An instant later he was basked in a flash of silvery light, and not only the blind, but also the Psychic Parasite disappeared.

I cursed my lack of Hex of Chains, then loosed my Fragmented Supercharged Haste onto Cuby to try and spare her some of the onslaught of damage—but this meant that our damage window had, essentially, begun.

It wouldn’t matter, I thought as I began to cast a Fragmented Supercharged Implosive Missile, hoping to crack my Moment of Mastery and deliver a potent crit. Cuby had up to three dodges to avoid being shut down. She’d get her damage in.

Then Valariel let out an ear-splitting shriek.

Terror filled me as a physical force, a sudden, overriding shock of fear that changed the nature of the world around me and demanded that I lurch backward from the devil, that I fall and scrabble across the stone-strewn ground….

And then I woke from the fear and, knowing that Cuby’s psychic resistance was meager compared to my own, threw my Rousing Command at her and broke the effect immediately.

She was at 20% Hit Points, and I had nothing to stop him from damaging her. Except….

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I equipped a concussive grenade, cursing the valuable seconds that it took from my spellcasting. Ahead of me, Cuby had struck the devil with a second Blinding Strike and activated her Flurry of Steel—the devil teleported again, further down the pass toward the rampart, but Cuby cleared the distance between them with a Mighty Leap that ended in a Drop Strike, and I followed to close range, resuming my fragmented casting.

A couple of hits and Cuby was dead, but in the two seconds left on her Flurry, and with Supercharged Haste still active on her character for both of those seconds, she had him right where we wanted him.

The blind wore off, and Valariel swung his sword with a familiar flash of light—his own Blinding Strike—but she simply rolled past it and kept striking: once, twice, five times, twelve times her kukris ate at his Hit Points, missing a few blows but hitting more often, dispensing her strikes and whittling his health down to almost 50%.

She rolled again to evade just a simple melee attack, hit him again with her daggers—and then my cast finished. I lobbed my grenade at the attacking devil, and his head snapped to one side, eyes locking onto its arc almost as soon as it was thrown before he simply disappeared in a cough of smoke to appear on the other side of Cuby—at which point I cracked my Moment of Mastery and loosed my Supercharged Implosive Missile.

But while time was slowed to my perceptions, I had to think: were we actually losing to this guy? I knew my missile wasn’t as damaging as Cuby’s whole character, which did a little more, and so a perfect hit wouldn’t kill him. More, he might have miracles to spend, still: and anything as strong as a miracle would put us back. Cuby potentially had one more Blinding Strike or dodge, depending on how she’d played so far, but neither of them would stop him from simply killing her before he died.

I wracked my brain, but couldn’t see how we could bring him down fast enough. She had a grenade and some healing potions, but would that be enough?

I just needed her to disappear for a moment. If she could just vanish, leave it to a one-on-one, I was sure I could trade shots with this fool. But as it was….

The world resumed its ordinary speed as my missile struck Valariel for massive damage, a sound crit that put him down to almost 20%—but I couldn’t celebrate it.

Cuby was going to die.

I started casting an ordinary Mana Shield at her, letting her know it was coming with a quick word in thought-speech. She rolled beneath the devil’s next attack, then another—her dodge must have cooled down—and he barked out a humorless laugh.

He attacked her once more, striking her this time and bringing her below 10%. Then, likely because he’d noticed that she’d run out of defenses, he raised his sword—and his weapon was wreathed in the white light of a miracle.

Oh, I thought, even as my Mana Shield finished. Shit.

Cuby threw a concussive grenade, but he teleported behind her. The explosion went off, loud but useless.

And then he stabbed her through the gut, shattering the Mana Shield and dropping her to 0% before kicking her limp form off his blade.

“No!” I screamed, running toward them.

But Valariel grabbed her by the hair and yanked her up off the ground. “Wait!” he cried, grinning fiercely. “Look!”

Cuby coughed. He drew her close and put his sword to her neck. Blood ran dark from a wound in her belly, black in the dark of the night. He’d brought her to 0%, negating the protection of the system that stopped bodies from being destroyed by sword-blows and magic arrows… but for the first time I’d ever seen it done to a player, he hadn’t killed her.

Just taken her hostage.

His eyes found mine. A pit grew in the bottom of my stomach. “Let’s bargain,” he said, enunciating each word with cold, insisting wrath. “Though I am afraid, Alatar, that your negotiating position is… somewhat reduced since last I made an offer.”

Then he smiled, all anger seeming to leave him in a moment as he became a congenial trader once again. “Wouldn’t you agree?”