Sergeant Smith gestured surreptitiously, and Sama’s uniform began to mend. It was completely shredded from the crisscrossing claw marks ripping across her chest and face, the tatters all bloody from the wounds... and a whole lot of darker gore that wasn’t hers.

The women watched Sama’s wounds heal with a mixture of respect and desire for such self-healing ability. They’d been healed enough by her not to be alarmed at it, and they had experienced plenty of magical healing, so they knew it wasn’t painless, but Sama was ignoring the four sets of inch-deep gashes that had torn across her face and were slowly closing, oozing dark stuff as they did, as if they didn’t exist, and the mess made of her chest was ignored the same way.

The way that grimm, one of the most dreaded and murderous Fey known to exist, was all chopped the fuck up and burning was kind of impressive, too.

The cultist presence in town was mostly wiped, with any stragglers suddenly finding better things to do elsewhere, or fleeing into the vortex and whatever shit was going on in there.

“Awright, listen up!” Sama began, and was impolitely interrupted.

KRA-KOOM SHRIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEKKKKKK...!

All the soldiers screamed and clasped their hands over their ears, staggering at the closeness of the thunderclap... and the even worse ripping sound going off. Those who’d happened to be looking up were additionally blinded.

Sama coolly turned around and looked up to where the heavens were tearing...

“Welp, a little bit too late,” she murmured to nobody in particular, /sending that off to the boys.

Lily had also sent out word of what was happening by cable, after securing the tower by gratuitously butchering everything inside, and the military and independent fighting teams were rumbling to life. Combatants from nearby cities would be barreling towards this place, ready to fight, but what the cultists here had wanted done was already accomplished.

The fuckers had brought something in from Outside the Shroud, probably using the whole town as a blood sacrifice to do it, utilizing the conflict at the border for the necessary magical instability, and exploiting it just enough to bend the Shroud open for a few moments.

“WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!?!” screamed a very powerful, very deep voice, laden down with slaughter and destruction across eons, carrying over the winds and rumbling of the clouds... in Demonic.

Four of the young women promptly folded and puked on hearing it. Private Gilritz, a cocksure Sorceress with tons of discipline problems, fainted instantly.

Sama just listened to the winds, which seemed to be carrying the voices of the Summoners bound to the magic.

“Your Invincible Lordship! You are the mightiest being walking this planet right now! None can come to gainsay your conquest! We have delivered this world unto you!”

Sama blurted out a guffaw despite herself, eye on the sky, where the Haze was thickening on its own, now that the interfering magic was ended, blackening, swirling...

Forming a Shroudcloud!

“YOU UNMITIGATED FOOL!” There was an explosion of flame from inside the vortex, and something managed a final scream. “YOU HAVE TRAPPED ME HERE, DOOMED ME! DELIVERED THIS WORLD TO ME?!”

Well, it understood its position pretty fast. The Shroud had come down and fixed on it as the most powerful Evil entity present, even if it wasn’t undead.

And that meant, with the Curse of the Sun, it wasn’t going much of anywhere.

That said, it still didn’t know what it was facing here, only that the magic of the Shroud was way, WAY above anything these stupid Summoners had managed...

“Dame Grace,” Sama said in no uncertain terms, “you are standing next to Hilda.” The Paladin, the only one in the company, quickly shifted over next to the only Valkyrie in the company, who happened to be toting a Gritworks Mini-Gun, said hefty toy having buzzsawed through a number of recalcitrant oversized brutes. “The rest of us, our job is to get the two of them close to the source of that voice, where the Dame can put her hand on that chew-toy and Smite, and Hilda can hold the trigger down and burn off thousands of dollars of ammunition as fast as possible.”

Everyone was forming up now, helping the stunned women back to their feet, everyone ignoring the vomit, since they all still wanted to puke.

Screams were coming from inside the vortex cloud, black and puke green-yellow demonfire was exploding this way and that, and roars from no human throat were not quite drowning out the gleeful shrieks from other inhuman throats that had popped up.

“They brought in a demon, a big one, and it’s not happy. So, they are likely to be running.

“Spend your spells on the mortals and fey. If we hit demons, use Force effects, holy effects, and shoot them with something magical. They may not fully appreciate being in a technological universe, so let’s make that lesson their last one.”

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Sir!” they all shouted back. Sama turned around, and led the way into the vortex.

------

The winds from the Ritual they’d undergone were dying down, and the demonic lightning had basically ceased... which didn’t help those ahead as they screamed and ran away.

There was no mercy as the first of the shadows came racing out between buildings blown apart and cratered holes in the ground. Demon-eyed Warlocks, screaming Fey in a variety of mismatched forms who didn’t want their souls eaten, lumbering brutes of various sorts, and of course the screaming Hags who’d done fucked up in their judgement were all coming, and so was a great big source of demonfire looming in the churning fog behind them.

Those fleeing ran into a wall of Nicklebacks and magic. True to instructions, the Casters unloaded on the non-demons, and when the even more inhuman forms of gore-dripping horned skeletons with huge claws, and screaming anthro vulture-things ripping the hapless apart made their appearance, they inherited gunfire and lots of Shards.

Magic resistance left most of the spells useless, to nobody’s real surprise, so gunfire with magical ammo and Nickelback rounds of mixed cold iron and silver from enchanted Weapons started doing their thing. These were Powered; they didn’t have merely basic non-magical Weapons, even if they had to boost them up themselves.

A shellycoat, dressed in a torn and burned parody of a doxie’s outfit, headed right for Sama, claws swiping in a ripping motion to get her out of the way, not that someone Sama’s size couldn’t be run right over.

Sama slid aside, cut with Tremble, and hacked off the Hag’s leg. As she was falling in dismay, Fall planted a bolt in the back of her skull, and she hit the ground and skidded limply, her shrieking terror no longer an issue.

Guns burped autofire, madly fleeing cultists ran into them and died, and Sama watched a big minotaur stagger out of the dust cloud, just before a great burning Whip lashed out of the cloud like a serpent and clipped off its horned head like plucking a flower.

“Brace your Will!” she shouted, and the Fear Aura hit as the balor stepped into visibility.

The lesser girls froze in place in terror on seeing one of the warlords of Demonium in person, unable to process something carrying that much death upon it. Balors rose to their positions on slaughter and carnage, usually of other demons, not something as weak as mortal souls, and the shock to the women’s minds and spirits was simply something most of them could not withstand.

Sama was already darting forwards, moving at speed, Tremble flaring golden and attracting its attention. She was the only thing moving fast in its Fear Aura, after all. The wailing residual screams of all its victims tugged at the back of her mind, and might actually have been effective, if she weren’t immune to the effects of Fear.

And so, she happily didn’t have to blow a Sun Save on it.

Vorpal weapons. Suck!, she thought. One of the things she had made sure to do was get immune to crits as soon as possible, but that wouldn’t stop a Vorpal Weapon’s one-in-twenty chance of simply taking her head off. It was possible to build a Gorget just to stop it, but that was about it.

Dame Grace was pulling Hilda ahead, the former’s Aura of Courage helping dilute the Fear effect, although the Valkyrie’s teeth were still chattering. Just being able to move made them of minor importance, but the key thing was to get within sixty feet.

The demon was a full Twenty, a horrendously deadly opponent, capable of attacking at range and up close, and with instant kills that sucked bad. However, this also meant that it thought itself invulnerable in the face of so many insignificant mortal souls, regardless of their weapons, especially since most of the natives were frozen in terror.

It saw her coming, beat its wings to launch itself at her... and almost fell flat on its face, catching itself in astonishment as she promptly accelerated even faster at the flub.

Even the peerlessly arrogant demon warlord realized something was up as she came in that fast, and struck out instinctively.

Sama watched the blow coming in slow motion, the jagged, lightning-bolt shaped Sword snapping impossibly into perfect alignment. She swore to herself, but did not alter course.

Tremble punched home deep into its gut and tore sideways as Sama ignored its demonfires and wrenched savagely, even as the Sword chopped through her neck with no resistance.

But... that was what reaching Rantha/6 and having Regeneration was all about.

As well as tactile control of your hair!

Her hair was out of the cutting path of the burning Sword as she went by it, underneath its arm and bulk, and it snapped down as her head started flying free. She could control her body with her Vajra, she didn’t actually NEED a nervous system connection. She latched her hair to her body, and her free hand reached up, grabbed her head in mid-air as she made a flip, slamming it down to the stump of her neck, lining up the Vajra, and with four points each of Regeneration and Fast Healing, her head sealed itself back to her body.

She hit the ground, skidding in an arc, and launched herself backwards as the balor staggered at the five-hundred-point hit to its waist that had gone in one side, and ripped all the way through to the other, nearly cutting it in two. It looked back at her in disbelief, just in time to see her hit the ground and turn around.

Its burning eyes bulged in some shock to see her still moving, and her head still attached after it had beheaded her instantly.

Sama burned Vigor, and then the Potion she’d drank well ahead of time and was now roiling in her blood was allowed to discharge. Her Health blew back into the 40’s, sealing her neck tight, and she came back in as the demon warlord turned, drawing its Whip hand back.

Dame Grace and Hilda reached the sixty-foot range where they could ignore its natural armor with a heavy ranged weapon, and the Paladin shouted with utmost fervor, “By the Power of Heaven, DIE!” and helped Hilda squeeze the trigger.

His winged back was wide open, and the Smiting shells, ignoring all of his very substantial Damage Reduction with the Smite’s power, started blowing a long and furious line of damage out of it as the two women held the trigger down.

The kinetic impact was enough to send the already wounded balor stumbling forwards, huge chunks of ectoplasmic flesh getting torn away, glowing rounds blessed with Light chewing right through it. It turned, and lashed its Whip out at them, shrieking with rage.

That happened just in time for it to see that arm go flying off as Sama charged on by. Its burning Whip snapped past the Paladin and Valkyrie uselessly, its clawed hand still grasping the handle.

The line of shells followed the center of its body and walked up its chest to its massively horned head. The demon warlord screamed, clutching at its side and feeling the vivus burning there, realizing what was going to happen, and then the minigun fixed on its face and drilled right in.

The death eruption as its head disintegrated under the Smiting shells filled the whole world. It was a hundred feet in radius, pure annihilating demon fire, enough to wipe both women away completely, blast everything material around it to ash and less, and it swallowed the pair of them.

But not before Sama skidded up and stopped right in front of them.