“You… You callous bastard!” Luna screamed. She fired off a bolt of writhing flesh, but it was easily deflected. “You’ve doomed us all to die, and for what? Because we made fun of you?”

She threw out another bolt, more out of frustration than any expectation the attack would actually land. Treskur batted it away with a flick of her spear as easily as she had the first, and the bolt dissolved into the air, returning to the unreality from whence it came.

“Luna, I’ve had enough of words,” Treskur declared with an eerie level of calm. She gave her spear a single spinning flourish, and then assumed a ready stance. “Time to fight.”

The northern barbarian charged at her, and Luna…

Luna flew away.

She was prideful, but she wasn’t an idiot. In a fair fight, Luna was certain she could win eleven out of every ten battles against the brute. As an [Eldritch Sorcerer], she could keep Treskur at a distance while pelting the barbarian with spells. Sooner or later, the upstart would falter, and then Luna could close the distance to finish the job. That, or she could even just rain down spells at a distance until the traitor was naught but ash and memory.

So long as it was a fair fight, that is…

And this wasn’t a fair fight.

Treskur — whatever her [Class] was — was obviously a close-quarters fighter with some sort of ice attribute, and this environment was perfect for her. In terms of engagement range, the sharp, narrow halls of the labyrinth put ranged-attackers such as Luna at a severe disadvantage. In addition, the walls reflected only the images of Luna and her fellow fallen, meaning any potential adversaries would see her coming from around corners while she needed to remain ever-vigilant of an ambush.

That wasn’t even the worst of it. In all likelihood, the divinity-strengthened ice probably empowered those of similar attributes, meaning Treskur would likely be boosted to nearly Luna’s own level of raw power. Coupled with the fact that the northern bastard could meld into and out of the walls seemingly at will, Luna’s chances to win a battle against Treskur in this environment was nearly hopeless.

Nearly.

Luna flew down the halls with all the speed of a meteor, tightly rounding every corner to put as much distance between herself and Treskur as she could. She listened for the other former goddess’ pursuit, but heard nothing. The rushing air screeched in her ears, but she still should’ve been able to hear the barbarian’s footfalls. The fact she heard nothing meant that Treskur had either given up or—

A spear shot from the ground before her, and Luna nearly impaled herself upon its icy tip. At the last possible instant, the moonstone sorcerer twisted in flight to dodge around the attack. Righting herself midair, she watched as Treskur emerged from the floor, already preparing a follow up strike.

“No escape,” said the tuskless northerner. She launched a barrage of strikes, but Luna again flew out of range. This time, however, Treskur wouldn’t let her get away so easily.

Two of the humanoid ice creatures sprung from the walls, blocking Luna’s only path of escape. Caught between three enemies within the tight confines of a narrow hall, it would seen she would have to stand and fight.

It would seem.

Treskur and her two subordinates charged in unison, coordinating their attacks to offer no chance of dodge. Outnumbered, flanked, and trapped by her three coordinated attackers, it was impossible for Luna to escape.

So it was a good thing that Luna specialized in the impossible.

“[Abyssal Anchor]!” she shouted.

Just as her stony flesh was about to be pierced by the closest of the ice creatures, Luna disappeared. Calling upon the eldritch magics that suffused her very essence, Luna fell away from reality and into the unreality between existences.

Normally, falling into unreality was a death sentence — or at least whatever the closest equivalent to ‘death’ there was within the timeless, spaceless, alogical not-place that was eldritch unreality — but for Luna, traversing the plane was merely excruciating.

She reappeared the same instant she disappeared, but now found herself within the hall where she’d first been trapped. Beside her was the wall where Treskur had shown her the images of her fellow fallen being hunted down, of Brelumn being murdered. On her other side was the shattered but all-too-sturdy surface of the wall she’d pummeled with her fists, and from it gazed her thousands of reflections.

She was standing exactly where her earlier ‘useless’ attack had dissipated into the air, setting the anchor for her present escape.

Time was of the essence, but Luna took a moment to vomit. Her eyes and tongue attempted to gain sentience and unravel themselves even as the bile was leaving her mouth, but she stamped out their rebellion with pure force of will.

Moving purely on instinct, she tried to take a step forward before she was entirely ready, and found herself nearly falling back into the void. She grit her teeth and stilled both her body and mind to ward off the pull of inexistence.

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Thankfully, no enemies were in her immediate vicinity to take advantage of her void-sickness. If a single ice creature had been nearby, Luna would be dead. It’d been a risky maneuver, but it’d paid off. It likely wouldn’t work a second time, however, because Treskur would undoubtedly now be on the lookout for any new anchors Luna would place from here on out.

It took precious seconds, but Luna took the time to complete her transition back into reality so thoroughly that even the memories of her time in the other were rapidly dissipating. Soon, the only immediate unpleasantnesses she had to deal with were the phantom pains and the army of potentially hundreds hiding within the walls.

“No big deal,” Luna lied to herself. “I’ve been through worse. I’ll make it out of this.”

Even as she recited the unconvincing platitudes, she set to work. She applied every form of non-detection spell she could quickly cast on herself in order to avoid further unwanted encounters, and then she got the fuck out of there before Treskur could return.

Invisible, Luna began flying in a different direction than she’d fled in before. Unsure exactly how perceptive her pursuers could be within their labyrinth, she flew at a more sedate pace, careful to disturb even the air as little as possible.

All this time, the pulses of soul heralding her comrades’ deaths did not cease, but they did slow. Now, instead of overlapping so closely that they were indistinguishable, Luna could feel each and every one of them dying individually. Whether the death slowed because her fellow fallen were actually mounting some level of effective resistance, or because most of them had already died, Luna couldn’t be sure.

She pushed the thoughts from her mind and refocused to the task at hand.

She needed to escape.

Reattaining her rightful place as a goddess via forcing Treskur to nullify the [Inter-Council Accords] was no longer an option, but there had to be another way. Before she could worry about that, however, she needed to get out of this place.

She flew for an hour, navigating the halls of the labyrinth as stealthily as she could, all the while attempting to form a plan. Any plan that got her out would do, but she would prefer one that included killing Treskur.

As she skulked through the halls, Luna formed a mental map of her surroundings and slowly came to suspect that the interior of the labyrinth mimicked the lattice of a snowflake, but extrapolated into a three-dimensional crystal. After only a second hour of careful observations, she confirmed her suspicion and knew that the labyrinth was indeed shaped such that any plane intersecting its center displayed hexagonal radial symmetry. Furthermore, she discovered that the entire labyrinth was roughly the shape of a dome but with an outer layer of crystalline spires and spikes.

In practical terms, all that meant was that Luna only needed to mentally map out one-sixth of the dome, and from that she could know the entirety of its layout.

Better yet, she now knew how to escape the labyrinth. Thanks to her expertise in arcane magic, she knew that all she needed to do was disrupt the nucleation point of the crystal structure, and the whole thing would fall apart. More technically, the labyrinth wouldn’t completely shatter, but it would crack enough that escape routes would almost certainly open up through the currently-impenetrable outer layer of the dome.

Over the course of her covert reconnaissance, Luna had passed by many of her fellow fallen deities, but none had been alive. Blood covered the walls around their still forms. Scattered shards of ice — some still resembling pieces of humanoid forms — littered the floors around them. They had gone down fighting, but ultimately, none that she found had survived.

Now that two hours had passed, the pulses of soul that signaled death had all but ceased. There were still some pulses every dozen minutes or so, but they were growing fewer and farther between. Whether this was because the remaining fallen deities were harder to kill, or if it was because there were simply less of them to kill, Luna didn’t know, and she didn’t want to think about it. All the same, if she hoped to retain any formerly divine allies when this was all over, she’d need to act quickly, or else they would all be dead.

Now, all she needed to do was destroy the core of the labyrinth.

She hadn’t travelled there quite yet, but she knew what lay there…

The Temple to Treskur, and presumably, Treskur herself.

The barbarian was an idiot, but she wasn’t stupid. After two hours of a fruitless chase, Treskur must have realized by now that there was no finding the former goddess of mystery if she didn’t want to be found. Instead of chasing her scent through the halls — not that Luna had even left a scent to begin with — Treskur would be guarding the labyrinth’s greatest vulnerability, knowing that it was only a matter of time before Luna came to face her herself.

Treskur would be waiting for her there, amidst the rubble of the very temple she’d destroyed.

Luna knew where she had to go, but she didn’t go there quite yet. If she charged in without a plan against an enemy that expected her, she would lose, her greater level of raw power be damned.

Treskur currently held the advantage due to the environment and her additional forces. In order to defeat her, Luna would need to deal with both of those factors, but she couldn’t figure out how to subvert the environmental advantage just yet.

As for Treskur’s advantage in numbers, Luna had been there when Treskur had descended into mortality, meaning that the ice creatures couldn’t have been soulbound to Treskur during the initial ambush due to the fact that deities could not tether mortal souls in the same way mortal [Lieges] were able to. Those ice creatures who had died immediately would stay dead, but there was no telling how many were left.

As for the possibility of Treskur tethering the souls of those that remained so that she could revive them indefinitely, so long as Luna never gave Treskur the days required to revive her troops, that possibility didn’t matter.

Ultimately, Luna reasoned that the best way to deal with Treskur’s numerical advantage would be to ignore it completely. So long as she struck swiftly and brutally, Luna could kill the traitor, destroy the core of the labyrinth, and be done with this whole affair before the majority of Treskur’s troops could even get involved.

But once again, a ‘swift and brutal strike’ would require some way of removing Treskur’s environmental advantage…

Pondering over exactly how she was going to go about it, Luna continued to fly slowly through the halls. The residual divinity in the walls gave no hint at diminishing, so simply waiting for the walls to weaken on their own wasn’t an option. As for ritual spells that could get the job done, they would all require preparation and possibly even materials that Luna just didn’t have with her.

As all these thoughts were going through her head, Luna happened upon the hall where laid the corpse of Brelumn, the first to die. She paused to regard him, and a horrible idea entered her mind.

She took a closer look the dead man’s metallic limbs, and a sinister smile crossed her invisible face.

This could work, she thought. Time to play by MY rules, Treskur.