My surprise seemed to be as genuine as Tia's, who caught the relic with the tips of her leaf-covered fingers, looking very perplexed at what was obviously a magazine brought in by some Summoned. I had been summoned, along with my wallet, credit cards, and even a lighter, and if I hadn't been in the habit of keeping my cell phone on the desk under my arm instead of in my pocket, I would have taken it with me. The librarians, apparently, decided to keep a unique piece of other-worldly creativity, shoving it somewhere deeper.

"What's in there?" Taria sighed bitterly over her burnt boot, putting it back on and trying to peek over the shoulder of Tia, who was slightly slowed by what she saw. "I hope this writing isn't trying to eat you or leave you shoeless?"

Instead of answering, Tia promptly tosses the manga into the corner where some predatory shit had sprouted even before it landed, making a look of utter indifference and the epitome of steadfastness. I didn't even get lazy and spent one of the mirror shards to peek... I mean, to scan Tia for possible damage from the cursed book because it was kept in such a safe container with the rest of the artifacts for a reason. And the fact I managed to accidentally capture the reflection in her pupils, rewind it in time, and see the memory of that reflection, realizing what she had seen in those couple of seconds was just an accident.

However, I also got a little frozen from this accident because, damn, the power of the Japanese drawing industry, as well as its numerous adherents, is infinite! The image of a haughty elfess sitting on a carved chair, almost a throne, in a strict and frank dress and stockings at the same time, resting her perfectly drawn feet in the face of some man, judging by the ears, came out right on the lookout! And the inscription-title "Method of subjugation of a disobedient summoned hero-demon-fighter with the help of hypnotic elven feet" caused me absolutely not heroic half-sneeze-half grunt, in response to which I was showered with an unreadable mixture of emotions, in which the prevailing message was "just try to laugh." Yes, yes, Tia, be strong, my dear, and be glad that I'm not so crazy.

"Honorable, the relic you destroyed is not destroyed." I was just about to finish the scan I needed to run after all, even if I hadn't started it for the sake of it, which is to say, I started it exactly for the sake of it when I was interrupted by Hestia's words. "The ravenous vines seemed to jab into some sort of barrier, and then the recordings just disappeared, as if by teleportation."

Now, we were all looking at the swarming plants, including Taria, who had stopped pouting, and it occurred to me that keeping manga stolen from Earth or a similar world in an isolated high-end container was really unnecessary. And I could keep the amusing cartoon porn in the general section because its role was purely museum-like, and such storage measures were unnecessary.

Well...............

Maybe the Library didn't want to complicate relations with the elves, who were always ready to be offended by such a cultural treasure. But then it would be logical to put it in some deep archive, not under the protection of the highest grade, which would also eat up a lot of money. Storage containers alone probably cost an obscene amount of money. Once again, I checked Tia, who checked herself from all sides, but, apparently, it was necessary to hold this thing not just in my hands but also without direct touch. I found a dozen traces and consequences of fleur poisoning, a couple of unpleasant after-effects from potions, traces of overstretched psychic gift, and magical exhaustion, but there were no curses or mental effects.

Well, it wasn't a mythical cursed artifact, and even if it was, it wasn't instantaneous, right?

Or am I making a fool of myself, and it's all the fault of banal sloppiness? Some VIP librarian ordered to "remove this abomination out of sight and away," and his order was immediately executed, shoving it deep into the fold to lick the ass of the bosses. The same sheets with many years of outdated and now useless dirt are also unworthy of such a powerful defense, and the arrogance and poncey of the local high-level population allow not such overconsumption of useful resources. But then, how did this manga teleport out of harm's way? This is clearly a magical ability, which a sample of narrow-eyed creativity taken from another world should not have.

"Perhaps..." I was going to suggest that we put the panic aside and follow the escape plan, figuring it out at the same time because we'd already lost a lot of time, but the evil, evil *cough* Library didn't let me finish again, turning to swearing. "Fuck your lives!!!"

I met the new blast not with a sphere but with a wall of Manifestation, blocking the blows, changing my form to an eight-meter-long but very flat centipede with tentacles on its back, grabbing the team with those tentacles, and running in the direction where the huge creature had last glimpsed, which was no less blue than the Ancient One's hunger. I put my thoughts about the strange manga aside until a better time, which was about never.

Taking Losius away was quite a problem because it was our company that was out of touch with the defenders, either working out of sight or having their memories wiped clean by those they worked with. Taria managed to whisper into her specially grown shadow ear (Shape could hear with her whole body, but it had to show I was listening) about what it cost her not to slaughter the narcissistic peacock, next to whom, I quote, even Losius would be a champion of modesty, how she was fed up with his prying and undressing looks, how Pierre managed to piss her off with his mere presence, and how quickly she would have killed him if she hadn't needed at least some cover, which a well-powered warrior with epic class could provide. The rest of the story of her adventures and the enemies she encountered took less time to describe and show emotion than this hulking little guy, which made me respect him. It took a lot to piss people off like that. I didn't tell Taria about it, of course.

He was fighting on the steps of the temple of some god, a local incarnation of Justice, to whom the Godfather from Tavimark had begun to pray after the massacre provoked by the expulsion of the Guiding Spiral. The temple was one of the largest points of resistance, and the devils had thrown all their forces at it, which meant there were plenty of defenders, and they were not weaklings. The result was very unpleasant for all of us: our red-haired nobleman took part in the battle to the glory, right to the super glory of the level of the Beatles who started to rock, which was unobtrusively evidenced by such a small detail as the mythical summoned creature connected with him.

No, that's not serious!

Even I started summoning Mythic later than this asshole, and my summons almost fucked me, and his summon not only defended the summoner but didn't even try to kill him! That is, the mere presence of this multi-winged lady, as well as the established connection between the two of them, through which there was a calmness that would have made even other Archlichi pacifists, was a danger. But the winged lady herself kept the connection, covered Losius, and even helped me to communicate with him and coordinate our shared strike against Sovereign.

Friendly.

Tuned.

Myth.

Ready to fucking cooperate!

I get it, I'm genuinely happy that Losius survived and got his own personal piano, a piano factory, an antique piano warehouse, and a small accordion factory, but at that moment, I clearly asked myself a question - which of the two of us is the central character in this fucking story? My arrogance told me that it was me, the obvious sight proved the opposite, and common sense quietly reminded me that I was not a fucking book character in someone's porn story and a thrice fucking Alurai is not a fantasy world with elven princesses on fighting unicorns.

The crux of the problem is the same summoning, which, if I understand anything about summoning planar creatures, is very firmly tied to Losius. No one would ever let a man with such a trump card up his sleeve go free. It's a weapon on a strategic scale. Such a cadre will not necessarily knit under white hands and "either you are with us, or sit on the bottle with your ass until you change your mind" because they are not completely idiots. They will start with attempts to buy, lure, offer everything he wants, and even more. And honestly giving it all in return for service.

But if it does not work, the methods will be applied harsher and harsher, just to get ahead of competitors, who will not hesitate to use such methods. The power of the summon is not equal to personal might and does not give power and connections by its mere presence, forcing it to bend or break. A good Seductress, a master of her craft, or other similar guys can make it so that the personal summon contract does not notice the trick, and the integrity of the brain of the summoner is important but can be neglected. If the connection with the mythical, not legendary creature turns out to be unpredictably strong, partially protecting and making it very difficult to work with the victim's consciousness, then the stubborn young man can always be killed. If not to us, then to no one.

Of course, no one's going to do that right off the bat, if only because it's a little early to be scheming when the city hasn't returned to reality yet, with the mess and the unkilled creatures and their accomplices around, the golden sausage and the infernal tin can at war, at the same time shooting at the library rifts, closing them and trying to get the librarians. And there's a huge mob of Shadows, led by two or three Ancients, who will soon reconfigure my rifts to the proper format and get into this coop with their whole bodies and power. However, it wouldn't be possible to simply approach Losius and say, let's go, there's a cab here to pick you up. No mess would prevent them from noticing some of the details of the "cab drivers." For example, the connection of their personalities with the murder of the nameless prince, for there will be more than one pair of eyes near that temple that will be able to bypass my and Tia's disguises, if not break, then partially bypass. Enough to realize who we are just by circumstantial signs and start making bad moves. It's possible to prevent it, but you need preparation, creation, and creation of the necessary shadows, making templates, and all that - you can't do it in a minute, and you can't do it in ten, either.

Instead of showing up in front of the honorable public, I went around the very shattered but still standing temple, around which the echo of the very bad and colorful death of something extremely strong, in terms of danger comparable to the same Touch, even stronger than it. Reflections of the images of the past battle can be easily collected and decoded. The movie would be glorious, even at once, to submit to the Oscars, but if the masking forces are not enough, it is not up to the movies here, and those are not enough even for the necessary things.

We hid in another building, not even destroyed for the sake of variety, where several families were still hiding in the basement, who had successfully survived the invasion and even had every chance of surviving until its end and the end of the subsequent mess without any losses. There, he regained his body, but he didn't look for a mirror. He immediately transmuted a brass doorknob into a reflective surface, making it flow on the floor. Tia crouched beside me, preparing to take the rollback, while I began to create a connection with Losius, and now, when I was getting worse by the minute, it was not as natural and easy as it had been during the battle.

And at that moment, I was literally on the wings! I was on wings of pure and enthusiastic hatred, anger, and a thirst to kill the bastard before she made me into a female Constantine and made hentai with hentakles. I was motivated beyond belief, and at the peak of my powers, not yet suffering from the effects of the potions I'd taken and a bunch of amplifications from the chronomancy and government magic branches. The Prince, the bitch, could amplify anyone on his land and in his city, even though I was nowhere near his subjects.

We were both battered but still cool visionaries, and setting up communications would be a doable task even without Dream. The mirror class was, if not the ideal means of communication, then something very close to it. In the Empire of Arms, the dreamers were used for super-fast message delivery, in addition to the more obvious espionage, brainwashing, and sleep-killing. It's not really hard to transmit a short image that intentionally appears in the mind, especially if you've done it before and created a whole alphabet of conventional signals.

Here's where the really unusual stuff started to happen.

I'd expected objections, an attempt to keep a useful staff, or to send a stakeout, not to let go and recruit. I was ready to burst into that square in all its splendor, which was risky. The priests of a god whose power is Heaven and the Depths would have found something to counter the Form. And it wouldn't save that they're all battle-weary and partially knocked out. I'm not in the best condition either, and it's getting progressively worse. A full-fledged battle and an attempt to evade the chase could easily exhaust me and kill, not to mention risk the rest of the team, so I was going to act as quickly as possible, ideally by teleporting Losius away with the help of a Shadow that had been properly maimed by Creation.

Instead, Losius simply said he had to go, and, having finished cutting up a small group of sluggishly resisting devils who hadn't been given time to escape from their pseudo-bodies, he turned and ran, making a wide arc just in case, so as not to lead anyone in the direction of our lay. Whether I was too paranoid, whether the people around me were not yet far enough removed from the battle and were doing more important things, or whether I just didn't understand something, but no one followed him! I mean, I couldn't say with any certainty, but the forces I'd thrown in to scan him hadn't found any trackers or other surprises. In fact, a lot of people there, realizing they could do without them, ran to where their loved ones or friends should be.

After a few very long minutes of waiting, during which the Bringer suppressed a few more rifts, slowing the dome's opening again, Asterium came straight at our position, flying through the broken window with a blink. The pal looked brutal, as he was wearing only the bottom of his mask and tattered pants, revealing a view that would have had the girls stacked on top of him if the surroundings had been right, especially with the light illumination from Heaven's not-so-subtle pumping, for speed of movement and to counteract the remnants of the fleur. Not even the heavy and thick half-cloak-half-jacket, taken from the shoulder of some corpse, was helping, just to cover, if not from the stares, then from the small fragments of stone or splinters generously thrown into the air by the battle charms.

The most eye-catching detail, however, was his sword, not the alchemically reinforced iron he carried with him all the time, but a trophy sword, taken for the battle for the Eternal because we didn't give a shit about conspiracy. Previously, the legendary artifact had intertwined the powers of Heaven and Sun, like two strands of magical threads, only in steel. The powers of the two planes did not merge into one, combining into something new. Otherwise, the artifact would no longer be considered legendary. Both planar manifestations acted in parallel, combining only when using the final attack, the very blade extension that could cut fortresses in half. It was a powerful thing that had already saved our lives and souls during the mess in the ritual hall of Touch by killing the evil magical robot secretary.

Now, there was not the slightest presence of the sun's rays, not a single glint of its gold, only a boundless, beginningless, and endless Blue, the quintessence of the Peace that comes at the very last step of any journey, the reward for all the feats or basenesses done - one final, one nature, one truth that admits any other, accepts anyone and gives its embrace to everyone. Even looking at the blade covered with patterns of slightly moving feathers was hard, especially for me, as a shadow man who would not accept anything that infringed on my Loneliness. The rest of us had a harder time, even to the point of possible injury, if the duelist hadn't hidden his blade in the jacket he'd quickly thrown over him. The fabric, by the way, was unusual, very strong without any magic, and decorated with a strange embroidery, not magical, but awakening magic effects due to the pattern itself.

The girls, even Tia for that matter, jolted when the sword was out of sight, coming out of their involuntary trance. This artifact is dangerous. It won't fall into the hands of anyone but Losius. Why am I so sure of that? Well, besides the visible connection in clairvoyance, there was also a trivial understanding. If the artifact had pressed on Losiгы the same way as on us, then he, especially in the case of tight hand-guard contact, would have lost every last bit of his brains.

The celebrant himself glanced at us, assessing our battered but lively condition, first asking the most important question of all:

"Hans?" Because of the broken mask, of which only half remains, and there's something wrong with it, something I didn't put into it when I created it, the voice seems muffled and echoes faintly.

"The bastard is alive." Taria is ahead of me, rushing to be the first to tell me the good news: our company hasn't dwindled yet. "He is resting in a far corner with Blueass."

The mention of Giver gave everyone but Taria a synchronized toothache, though both Tia and I made particularly nasty faces. Leaving the devil, no matter how confident I was in the ring's power, next to an exhausted companion was very inconsiderate. But she could cover him with ease, just as she could pull him out of the problem if someone dangerous came across them. Except, fuck knows what would cross her mind at any given time and what she would see fit and right to do. No, she knows human or, say, elven psychology, thought patterns, and other aspects of manipulation to a tee, being able to adapt and do what's expected of her, but that doesn't make it any easier.

"Then let's hurry," Losius stated the obvious, trying not to shine his celestial light in my direction. "There's not much time."

"I didn't realize. A little more, and we'll be cov..." I answered with sarcasm, already starting to transform my body into a shadow state, but was again interrupted in the middle of the sentence, forcing me to replace it not even with a swear word but with the angry roar of a monster wounded in the ass. "Fucked such a live. Damn!!!"

Another blow from the Bringer trying to thwart the deities was of little use, but it had certain effects. For example, a series of new ruptures in the place of those that had been forcibly closed, or closed not forcibly but deliberately, to prevent the next autonomous spell from entering the Library. This time, it was reflexes, multiplied by the anger inspired by the Form and a slightly floating psyche, which made him not only put up a defense but also hit back. The more so because this particular gap was smaller than the previous two, as well as the distortions it generated.

I still managed to make out the faces of a couple of very surprised guys in their early twenties, dressed in junior staff robes, accompanied by a small crowd of emaciated-looking living dolls that googlers. And then a counter-attack, combining the grayness of the Manifestation, barely visible against the blackness of the multi-component shadow ram, and a handful of small Shadows, modified by Creation and launched into this structure for the sake of multithreading, slammed into the rift and almost broke through it backward. It almost did because the Library's automatic defenses closed the space back up, but the two librarians dragging the spent resource to be sacrificed to power the next ritual structure were atomized by the rift's closing effect. The impact was blown backward.

We didn't see it. Our company was running away. Or rather, Kostik was running away, and the others were sitting on my neck, in Taria's case, literally. I was particularly pleased with Losius, who, of course, had completely disabled the halo of blue, but his sword, even in its sheathed state, even with maximum control and deliberate reluctance to do damage, stung so much that only flakes flew from the Form!

I could literally feel with my whole body that the winged creature connected to the sword was also feeling me. Even though it had been pushed out of the Eternal, despite the action of the dome, or even thanks to it, shoved into the high Heavens, it did not lose contact, continuing to discern something of what was happening.

And she didn't like me, though I won't guess in my heart why.

I guess it's because I'm black - I can't think of any other excuse.

A white suprematist.

We made it to the rendezvous point in time to let the rest of the group greet a slightly fresher Hans and glance in the direction of Giver, who had almost finished merging with the cultist's body and who now looked like an indistinguishable haze, barely above the motionless victim of vice. She merges more and more with her body with each passing second. We had time to exhale, regroup, and prepare for the dash. I had time to start describing my, not surprisingly, slightly suicidal escape plan, and Taria had even started telling a joke. We even managed to congratulate Hans on his new class, which he flaunted with a satisfied smile despite the dangerous situation. I'd noticed before that being the only holder of a perfectly ordinary class in our company was a bit of a weight for him. He'd outgrown his pride and arrogance a long time ago, but it wasn't very pleasant anyway, and here he was immediately promoted and clearly on an epic. This, however, is not surprising if we take into account the constant contact with the legendary artifact, issued for personal use. Here, rather, it is strange this has not happened before.

Anyway, it seemed to me that we were making good time.

It was the past tense that was the key detail.

It seemed.

This time, there was no wave of inaudible rumbling as the barrier broke, no intuition stimulated by the panicked cries of the subconscious, not even a banal sense of danger. It was just that, at some point, all the rifts to the Library quietly and almost without parasitic energy loss collapsed, and in the middle of the barely preserved purple diluted with golden streams, a perfect circle of clear sky was formed. It wasn't particularly large, about half a hundred meters in diameter if I judged the scale correctly; from below, it seemed ridiculously tiny, like a needle prick, and it didn't stay blue for long: they rushed through the open door.

Involuntarily, a picture of another Black Friday arose in my mind. So densely packed into the narrow aisle of careless customers, but the laugh faded on my lips before it had time to emerge. The composition of this crowd involuntarily inspired respect. It was the first time I had seen the Servants of the Gods and their Heralds in person, and I was surprisingly impressed. First, the background and quality of their power combine traits of more than one plane due to the connection with the deity. They were far from the virtuosity with which a celestial could take equal parts of the power of two (or more) planes, mix them, and get a multiplier effect of a stable tone. The same Servants were mixed with Aspects of divinity, only barely seasoned with energy of a different nature. Even so, their efficiency was amazing, causing black envy. I could produce something similar at the expense of masterly control over my planes, thanks to the Overlords' classes of mythical grade, squeezing out of every crumb of power its maximum and a little on top. For those who have simpler classes, even if it is simpler and carries an epic grade, who have magical attributes less than two hundred and class attributes did not get to a hundred and fifty, it is painful to even dream of such a thing.

The Heralds made me realize that I could still beat them one-on-one, especially if I struck first and suddenly, but in a fair chest-to-chest fight, I'd be in trouble if I didn't pull something like that trick of encapsulating mirrors through essentialism. The weakest of them were on the level of very strong Legends, while the strongest reached even full-blown Myths if you can say that about non-human beings, but endowed. They had an eerie power that belonged not to them but to something behind their backs, which was not much weaker than that of the supreme devil.

A fair share of the Celestials clung to the edges of the rift, starting to pull it apart as if taking some chthonic asshole to tear it apart. The rest began to descend on the city, launching such a wave of charms ahead of them, compacted to an incredible force, the embodied Glory of their Gods, that I was very, very glad to be away from the rift.

Part of the heavenly army - though it was closer to the earthly term than to the Alurean realm of Heaven - carried forces familiar from the temple from which I had pulled Losius. Depth and Heaven, the sense of pressing pursuit, recompense for everything, and catching up even after many years, the proclamation of balance and the inviolability of a given word. I could feel it in them. Their appearance, in most cases, resembled that of warriors wrapped in heavy judicial robes, hiding heavy armor under their robes, and holding battle hammers, grimoires of holy writings, or even strange scales like those depicted on the statue of Themis. Other selected instruments of Grimdentrei seemed to be inhumanoid streams of sea water, multi-winged clumps of eyes and feathers, something without body and matter, present only in terms of pure knowledge.

The personal PMC of the honored Retributionist, first of all, flew to the First Temple, on the way not being lazy to arrange laughter of the devils that got under the hand, shooting fleur effects in the square, on the whole blocks, taking full advantage of Heaven's tendency to calm the violent crowds, healing the survivors by the dozens and hundreds. At the same time, the few but very unnerving Servants of Avernair Asyll, revered by elves, some druidic cults, and just a few pagans, nicknamed the Revitalizer, the Life Giver, and a hundred other such epithets, were not distracted at all by the fighting, or rather, the killing. They went straight to wherever the surviving Firstborn were still defending or hiding, apparently intent on evacuating them first and then helping others, if at all.

Elven angels tended toward a "nature" theme, incarnated by all manner of sentient trees, earthy hills with angry faces, soaring wooden idols, almost ordinary humanoids in dumb cloth robes covered with flowers and mosses, clouds of foliage, or wild beasts with eyes shining with unfathomable wisdom. Life, Water, and Earth were the nature of the Life-giver, with the Deep and the Earth caught only at the very edge, the part of her that gives rise to flowery meadows and slumbering thickets. Her servants were more like a guerrilla unit and rescue team than a battering ram of evil paladins, which they were.

There were other Gods who had sent their messengers, showing their participation and the flag, so to speak. But all of that was of little concern against the backdrop of the main driving force behind this protracted party. I had heard many times before that it was the Ascended Warrior, who had no name of his own, who had refused to have one, or who had never lived even a single second as a mortal, who was honored, willingly or unwillingly, by every soldier, mercenary, brigand, thug, murderer, desperately fighting back peasant, at the moment of any battle for the sake of life and victory, who was rightly considered the strongest and perhaps the oldest Deity of all Alurei.

Now, I believed the books and notes my companions had told me, the ones I'd seen through other people's dreams and mirrors. I believed the Warrior was the most dangerous creature in the observable piece of the universe. His power, nature, and essence were battle, fight, slaughter, and merciless massacre. Whether it was for high ideals or profit, whether it was a battle of honor and dignity or a dastardly huddle of desperate scoundrels, whether it was a well-oiled battle under the command of an experienced general or a mad scramble of scattered barbarians, he was War. This creature had never had a High Priest or a High Temple, only the highest adepts, comprising many separate assemblies and clerics, freely in conflict even with each other. The Warrior embodied the truth of exaltation, the annoying maxim that any man or wench who picked up a sword could become on par with the Gods.

The warrior was neither good nor unambiguously evil, neither condemning lies nor meanness, but not laughing at honor and valor, accepting anyone who wanted victory, anyone who was ready to snatch it from other people's hands, who lived and died in battle. In a flash of insight, almost the deepest I'd ever experienced in my entire life, based on titles and my clairvoyance. I realized instantly this bitch would kill me if I ever caught his eye. Because the very nature of a Summoned, who got his power at once and for free, not by wresting it from the world but by taking it in advance to prove his right to it, was like a constant toothache to this creature.

I still haven't quite figured out who came up with Yoke and how.

I still haven't deconstructed the knowledge stolen from the Library, preserved in mirror shards.

But I know for a fact that it was the forceful influence of the Warrior who entered this project, in addition to the other players, that allowed Yoke to turn from a theoretical development into a harsh and real tradition that has been poisoning the lives of losers like me for millennia.

His Guard came swiftly, clearly, pathos and uncompromisingly, carrying behind them the irrefutable radiance of their Truth. Pure Light embodying the truth they wished to be true. The Light that was the fuel, the Sun, whose power and absolute authority over where its rays would fall, and yet the intangible and unplanar concept of the Blade, or rather, any instrument of lethal killing put to work. This Blade, the shadow of which every Servant, Messenger, and Herald carried, was itself a weapon capable of sweeping legendary creatures off their feet. It became very clear why so many forces had been thrown at the destruction and support of the Warrior's temples. Maybe they had all sucked in their methods of countering sabotage and the underlying influence of Vice, but if the guys had gone into battle, it was not certain that the humble me would have been needed.

Warriors, humanoid and not so humanoid, armed and unarmed, naked and clad in armor, no form at all, just the immortal idea of battle. They came, and that made the rest of us sad.

The first to get hit was the Bringer, who started beautifully but ended poorly, which was especially frustrating for the creature of Lust. He simply demolished a couple of legendary Servants with his very first counter-strike, gave a resounding kick with his heavy arm to the four times smaller Herald, who managed to put up a dozen barriers, but without taking any damage, he embodied the idiom of the strong but fucking lightweight hedgehog, and even separated himself from the others by some strange field of negation, giving off such indicators of fleur and Lust that reality itself, space, concepts and abstractions were desecrated. Primitive in appearance but complex in essence, the tin was armored and protected from everything, ignoring almost any damage, and its kicks only seemed like kicks, in fact tearing down any barriers, damaging souls, tearing thin bodies, and destabilizing protective techniques like my Aegis, preventing them from deploying.

The first success was the last. At least two of the Heralds were over a hundred level, and five more were not far behind them, immediately taking the golem in hand and systematically dismantling it for parts. Their odious blades were not blocked by the golem's armor, leaving lacerations on the Bringer's bulk as if from a can opener of comparable size to the Bringer. The point was made by the forgotten Serpent, which was almost comical for its size, shortening its distance from the distracted golem, shrinking in size, and becoming thinner and more flexible to sink its golden fangs into the severed leg.

Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.

I couldn't see. I couldn't even guess what the poison was, what price it was charging its victim, but the Bringer began to fade. Souls began to disappear from its construct, not burning out or disintegrating from overload, but simply vanishing, like money from a bank account after using a card. Hop - they were gone.

The Tin Man had time to tear off his leg, throwing it away like a superfluous part, to give a couple of kicks to the Heralds around him, forcing them to go into short defense, and even began to rebuild himself in the likeness of a turtle, as if a Transformer from a movie or an old cartoon. But not in time. All the Heralds summoned the Sword, thus manifesting the Will of their God, and all that remained of the Bringer were the melted hulks of limbs, and the torso, as well as every single soul, was not left at all. It was such a hole that you could not see the bottom of it. I can say that even without seeing the hole.

The golden viper himself almost got in trouble. The army of Good, which would bring Evil to its knees and brutally kill it, was obviously not happy about the snake's interference and did not restrain itself. The Serpent did not hold back either, receiving only a couple of blows and simply disappeared, considering his payment taken and his obligations fulfilled.

My poor brains were ready to come out of my ears from the whirlpool of energies, but it didn't prevent me from acting because I had to hide my ass in the bushes very quickly. Even without taking into account the presence of the Giver in our company, who at the appearance of the heavenly army almost atomized into components, with difficulty squeezing into her body and now trying not to die together with it, my meeting with these guys is contraindicated. It is absolutely contraindicated, up to the lethal outcome.

Shadow is etched from the body, replaced by an unhealthy amount of Dream, from which the appearance and length of the limbs have flowed again. All the mirrors are brought in by Hans, who woke up abruptly after a couple of area divine buffs, having pulled them out with Trails on my tip. The defense is erected at about the same speed with which I produce bricks at this moment. I'm telling you right away. I put up the defense extremely fast because there were a lot of bricks. I put it up without worrying about reliability, not even particularly concerned about its safety, just to divert attention, directing it away. So far, they are busy not with us but with devils, so it's a little easier.

Honestly, if I'd been allowed to go back in time, even for a few minutes, I would have killed the deviless just out of reluctance to get hit, but now it was too late. The search for the devils' signatures is already underway, and even if I killed her, there would be imprints and death images that would find us even faster, but as it is, she's hiding herself. My original plan was to use her to slip into the Library through one of the rifts. I'd stabilize the passage, and she'd take control of some of the ritualists, opening the way for all of us, and if we were lucky, she died in the process. I've been having a hard time with either planning or the Library lately, always having to twist my brilliant ideas into a tube and shove them deeper, right up against the techniques for safely operating planar energy.

The situation was saved by the Ancients I had summoned, without whom we would all have been found by area search impulses if our defenses hadn't been completed and made too quickly. It's surprisingly difficult to resist Miracles of psychic orientation, and it's constantly necessary to clean up traces of their presence to total zero, which we didn't have time to do. The Warrior's servants did not expect to see three mythical Shadows. From afar, if you didn't look closely, that swath of blackness looked like a pile of Shadows, not half a company of Highs and three Ancients who had turned the rest of the armada into an extension of their wills. In stealth and camouflage, the Shadows would lose to almost no one, if at all.

The Shadows were ruined by their greed and my impromptu move, which I'd given them without expecting or even trying. I deceived them and made them prepare for a fight where they could try to shake up the Armada and get away with their souls. The crux of the problem was that the baffle pledge hanging over them was strong enough that right now if all three decided to back off, the escape would rip everything they'd eaten out of their bodies. And yet two of the three had taken a level each, with one ready to take the second and the third the first. But my deception led them to believe that the chains of the contract were still strong. Although, in fact, if they continued to tear the chains instead of preparing for the inevitable battle, they could have already left quietly, laughing mockingly in the process.

The Ancients were devouring Sovereign's domain, taking advantage of the incredibly convenient bridge, shrugging off most of the devils' attempts to break the link. They should have taken a moment to control the rift instead of devouring ready-made souls, and that would have been the end of the fairy tale. Now, they are stuck in a very uncomfortable position, forced to either defend the breaches, blocked by their bodies, or run away, losing all the fat at the expense of the unfulfilled contract. You can still break the contract and get away with the profits, but you should have done that earlier because now you have to fight.

Neither side of the conflict is accustomed to running from battles, though the Shadows are still closer to the tactic of hit-and-run.

About fifty Legends and three Myths on the side of the creatures, about an equal number of Servants and Heralds, and they clearly underestimated the threat and did not ask for help, even refusing it in an ultimatum form. This is their battle, which was already felt Serpent on his golden skin. You guys went to extinguish the devils and had to fight with the Shadows. For a moment, I felt sorry for these God's warriors, but it was such a gloating pity, say, it sucks to be you. Due to the missing mouth on my body, the laughter came out wrong, but the mirrors reflected and complemented it, causing a reflexive flinch in the entire team and a backhanded smack by Valerium's grip.

"Why are you scaring us, Tin?" Taria looks at my current, almost Nightmare face with no fear at all. "Don't do that!"

Just because of the slight degree of astonishment from such directness, as demonstrated by the dancer, I missed the beginning of the fight a little bit.

Perhaps the Shadows had a good chance of winning. They outnumbered the Warrior faction in numbers and level, though even the Celestials themselves were not creatures but endowed, retaining, as I realized, some of the advantages of those same creatures. In particular, they definitely had something wrong with the materiality of the body, reserve of magic and liquefied Miracle (and what else should I call this divine grace of theirs?) also seemed, from afar, too plastic and replenishable at the level of Legendary monsters, not mortal, albeit high-level assholes. Added to all this is the presence of super high-quality equipment and a strong cohesion that allows them to act in a bundle, helping each other and compensating for mistakes.

In turn, my summons hated each other as much as they hated the enemy, and if it weren't for the unified will of the Ancients, who had turned the bulk of the creatures into their puppets and simply frightened the higher ones, the mythics would have fought alone. But they were not stupid, knowing perfectly well when it was time to get involved in fratricidal slaughter and when it was time to delay sticking daggers in their backs. The Ancients, bulky and shackled by the need to hold the rifts, the Highs on the edge of their vision, waiting for the right opportunity to bite hard and get nothing for it, and the crowd of non-volunteers led by the three centers of will. The celestials, who were not prepared for this battle, lost the first moments of the battle. Ambush attack, after all, is considered the crown jewel of any Shadow.

To the Ascended Guard, the rift looked far more innocuous than to me. The very nature of the Armada helped me, making it clear to me exactly what had taken advantage of the passage. Even I had been cynically deceived by the bastards. What to speak of God's Warriors who had expected a very different outcome? To them, the black cloud of hungry jaws seemed to be a concentration of minutiae, with plenty of Highs and Elders to choose from. Quite a decent enemy, even if with their current lineup they would have crushed it, probably without casualties, unlike the Bringer, who fight back. They were coming to extinguish the Shadows because they were finishing off the one whose eternity the army had come here to protect. The Guards were supposed to fight Sovereign and all his puppets but came to finish off the tired golem (a fatal blow was made not by them!) and the remnants of demoralized devils. For such maniacs - the reason to resent the world and part of its population is weightier than ever.

They were going to crush the Shadows without letting them scatter, and then they were going to clean up Eternal, even if it wasn't as much fun and excitement as they'd seen it before. Whatever maniacs of battle this company might be, they had come here with God's will, and they were going to fulfill it, and fulfill it themselves, without letting anyone else take the glory. Otherwise, Grimmentray's troops wouldn't be healing minds damaged by Lust. They'd be fighting, too.

An encounter with three myths. And I remind you that only two, maybe three, or four of the warlike Heralds made it past a hundred levels. With the support of the very Highest, and so sudden. It can't come without repercussions, Blade or no Blade. It turned out to be equally bad for everyone. Except, perhaps, for me. If I had a chance, I would have rubbed my hands in the typical gesture of a satisfied greedy Jew from a caricature picture. Well, if there were two hands left, but I had to grow some more to fix the mirror constructions.

Why did it turn out badly for everyone?

It would be stupid to think that the Guard of God, who embodies War in all its manifestations, didn't know how to fight the Shadows, didn't know about their tactics and other useful little things that allow them to turn even very strong creatures into new trophies. They understood that the Shadows gobble up the feeding souls of devils that lose resistance. Judging by the indirect images of those mirrors, which I allowed myself to allocate not for camouflage but for observation, the Shadows were getting deeper and deeper into the half-empty Domain, unable to disconnect from the Eternal without Sovereign. But kick the creatures, and they'd start scattering and hiding. And there's no bigger pain in the ass than playing hide-and-seek with the Shadows, who'll give the Eternal and the Servants who've come into it such a Vietnam that they'll be devoured, devouring the remnants of the civilian population and littering the territory with their dens and rookeries.

It was the unwillingness to spend a disproportionate amount of energy and time on catching escaped ones, who would not be pushed into the depths of the plan for a long time after such feeding, that the first attack, coordinated and worthy of the God they served, was aimed at preventing them from escaping. The flash of light covered half of the Eternal with a thin blanket, which in and of itself would sting and wound, if not disembodied, any creature, not necessarily a Shadow. But that was just the flowers, for such damage was only a side effect, the effect of parasitic losses of the main effect of the charms.

On the land marked by His will, new Truths appeared, new Verities, and new Rights, which were immutable and inviolable even for the Highest Shadow. Where the thinnest cover of light had removed any shadows, creating a perfectly flat and evenly shining piece of reality illuminated from all sides, it became impossible to hide. On a conceptual level, it's impossible. It just won't work in any way, that's all. Skills of invisibility, up-to-cheater stealth, special skills, class abilities, diversion of eyes, mental correction of attention, and even diving into another plane with the fall of the body from the material world. All this, in fact, is banned on a separate location of our server. This is crap because I can't call this shit, the nature of which I can't even realize, differently than crap, prevented even the Elders from breaking their way into the native plane and escaping, while the Highest would be forced to slow down and freeze at least for a moment before escaping so they would be guaranteed to be killed when trying to escape from the battle.

It's the case when you realize before you considered yourself a master of skill, knowing how and with what to shake the reality to make it wobble like the chimney of that house, but now, having seen the combined attack of a bunch of Legends, three Myths and direct infusion of God's power. However, I could still miss a couple of those who found it reasonable to disguise themselves and not shine with power... Kostik, be more modest, or you'll get your nose in the air, and it'll hurt to fall. Thank you, damn, Alurei, that if you start thinking yourself cool, you will immediately find out that you are not cool anywhere, you trash!

The canopy worked as intended, illuminating and exposing every single Shadow in and around the square, where they were arranged like chess pieces by the Ancients, ready to slaughter. Ah, yes! The Ancients were lit up, too, as were the many Armada cuts corked by their burly bodies. I'll just clarify one more time. The current Shadow forces in Eternal are not too inferior to the initial forces of Hell who came to storm the capital. Only they are not scattered in the territory, not beaten by the defenders, not demoralized by Sovereign's death. The Shadows are all here, fed up beyond their limits, so buffed by the Ancients who infused them with a bit of their power that even the canopy of the Inevitable Battle only burns and angers them, killing only the smallest of them and not immediately. They are more harmed by the Ancients' "buffs" and power pumping!

And this bunch has just been robbed of any chance of escape.

And at that moment the army of the Ascended somehow amazingly simultaneously realized that of course they were cool and everything, but now they were going to be beaten a little bit.

I'd say they'd be kicked, but I'm not sure about the percentage of Shadows whose forms have legs.

The crash was truly terrifying, especially if you watch from the sidelines. I managed to build some defenses, bring my body back to a humanoid state, and then watch with popcorn, only, again, without popcorn. The mirrors refracted the power of Light, even if with a considerable admixture of grace, holding the echoes of the distant battle, and all the attention of possible observers was focused on the battle itself and the remnants of almost dissolved devilish forces. So we could observe relatively quietly. The background of energies was such that the remnants of glass, walls, skeletal bones, underbones, auric sheaths, souls, and the meaning of life trembled.

Watching this massacre, I clearly understood two things, or rather, I understood a lot of things, but these two facts occupied all my thoughts and feelings. The first: after today, the retinue of the Ascended One will lose a little, partly by being eaten, partly by being disembodied, and partly by receiving long-lasting wounds that will not heal in a reasonable time. The counter-attack on the celestials, who did not expect the quality of the opponents they met at this moment, was really scary, much more dangerous than even I believed. Apparently, the gods had made some kind of contract that forced the others not to interfere with the Warrior's retinue, so they had to deal with it themselves, but they were doing fine.

Second. I literally, with a couple of images, which I have to communicate with the Shadows, organized and guaranteed a massacre comparable to the storming of the Eternal, which under other circumstances would not have taken place. I understand that, and the Ancients, whose anger at me is captured by being Overlord, understand that, and the Celestials have also captured that image, realizing someone brought the Shadows in specifically for them. Well, they think it's for a purpose, and it's just for them. Their patron and lord will realize that when he's going to clean up the pile of shit, his angels got into because of their excessive initiative. Even the System realized it, giving out some new list of messages, which I safely threw aside without reading.

A Warrior is very reverent about the choice of battle, about the right to finish it as it should be finished, and would not help, especially if the enemies of his retinue were God's servants or mortals rebelling against his clergy. But the enemies were creatures who held firmly to parity and threatened to utterly threaten to endanger the Eternal, or rather what was left of it, in the process. That was why the Warrior had chosen to intervene on the side of his fighters, and that was why he had expended a considerable amount of grace in granting the world the Miracle of his Incarnation.

For a moment, the battle stood still.

Froze Shadows.

Froze Divinities.

Every creature and endowed in the city froze.

Froze the hearts in the chests of the still living.

There was a half-squeal, half-whimper from Giver, who was also watching the battle with an expression that was a combination of bliss, pride, and astonishment. Hans and Taria swore quietly, uttering the same swear word in perfect sync, and Hestia and Losius echoed, but not in chorus. Tia was silent, only clutching the hilt of her dagger tightly, the palm of her hand trembling. I was silent, too, less affected than the others, not even trying to use the mirror cloaking system.

It's just useless.

The warrior appeared in person, vaporizing several of the Highs with his first strike, smearing some of the thinned-out controlled swarm of lesser Shadows into dust, and delivering a powerful upward chopping blow in a reverse motion that nearly cut open the Ancient One who had moved farther forward than the others, like a fish. The Shadow wasn't defenseless at all, doing something that looked like a combination of a breakthrough into the depths of the plan and the disintegration of any matter, like a forced Aegis, only applied not to itself but to the area around the enemy's body.

That's what got it through the first swing.

No, no, not a swing. The creature who had come at the call of his flock could not fight lightly, could not fight half-heartedly. Whether he was facing an equal opponent, a superior power, or even an ordinary child who had picked up a dagger, the Warrior made no difference - each was given equal deference, each was equally denied leniency, and each deserved in his eyes to die in battle, the last tribute to his courage to take the fight.

The Ancient tried to back away, shrinking into itself, shedding excess flesh and turning it into fuel for attack, forcing the Warrior to defend. His form was indistinguishable to the eye, cloaked in a halo of glowing Light. If it had been there at all in the first place, but the silhouette seemed to lift the hilt of a giant blade upward, shielding his face from the stream of ink. The light vaporized the thick and fluttering shadow matter, attacking once more with another mighty stabbing motion. The Ancient One's defense carries shades of Aegis. It takes more than that to fully utilize the technique, something this particular Shadow does not have, but its variation on the theme is not much inferior to the original.

The Shadow shrank to a point the size of a soccer ball, becoming closer to the Spiral of Tavimark, a phenomenon rather than an active entity. It was not a ball or even not a hole in space, but a wormhole leading to the deepest layers of the Shadow, simultaneously creating a capsule of refuge for the Ancient who had dived into itself. Without that capsule, which exists for a fraction of a second, it would be disintegrated by the pressure of the force, as if she were plankton at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, but she has a fraction of a second, just enough time for the blade to pass it by.

The Warrior did not pass by, using the tip of his Sword as if following the Ancient, penetrating the wormhole, trying to find the contagion hiding at the bottom of it. The creature jumped into reality as if scalded, though without the "as if," having to interrupt its defenses to avoid being left at the bottom, having destroyed the floating beacon beforehand. I couldn't do that. Too much of a "ball" was not here to affect it in any way.

The third blow, not with a blade but with a touch of the divine fist and a burst of weakly comprehensible magic so thick and dense that the Light in it became harder than Steel, finished the Ancient One, allowing it to leave only a few cuts on his fist. The divine blood dripped down, burning some of the Elders who hadn't been hurt or crushed by his presence, and my inner alchemist overcame the shock of seeing the carnage, demanding to get the reagent somehow. If it hadn't been for the shock and the self-control I maintained, I might have even tried.

The second of the three Ancients, the strongest of them all, tore through the remains of my leash, taking the Armada's structure for itself, and realizing how easy it had been, realizing it could have retreated forever but stayed only because of my false confidence that it wouldn't be able to break away, Ancient Shadow became a thousandfold angrier. The first wave simply tore through the remnants of the servile Shadows turned them into a toothy net with a radius of nearly a kilometer, a blanket of barbed wire, hungry and possessed of a single mind, disintegrating every second but existing enough to take part in the battle and die regardless of its outcome.

A counter-message, a pressure of will, the embodiment of the most unfortunate type of power for shadow power, a new Truth laid on top of the old, and the iron hardness of the Light turned to a heavy round shield, which the shining silhouette closed against the blow, turning sideways to the Ancient One who was spread out. The sword has changed from a double-edged sword into a short Roman gladius or a slightly curved cleaver, but the details are hidden behind streams of Light that hold too much Truth to find Verity. Appearance is unimportant, just as it is unimportant who the Warrior was or could be, because he is in all of us, living in every battle cry, whether it is spoken by a human, an elf, a halfling, or even an orc and goblin.

The pressure on our brains, which could turn an ordinary person, if not into a fanatical believer, then certainly into an unwitting conduit of the War's Will, was caught by the crackling mirrors, bent and sent to the sides, so as not to burn our minds. Giver was silenced with a single glance. Her offer to help was certainly apropos, but the moment the devil's presence manifested, the celestials not busy fighting the Ancients, and the Warrior would come out at us. Right now, our disguise is more of a cosmetic one. The need to do something about the pressurizing presence of an alien entity that imposed its worldview by the very fact of its existence forced us to seriously lose ground in terms of stealth.

The Ancient One grew taller, larger, and larger. Its snake-like body is like that of a deep-sea moray eel and a predatory subterranean worm from Dune. Its patterned threads are visible in shadow vision. These strands of hieroglyphics seemed to reveal the many contracts this creature had made in its time with those who had summoned it or its altered, subjugated, and corrupted brood. If I had bothered and spent enough time, I could have even looked at those contracts closer, learned about them, and gotten juicy information about Alishan's connections (a very distinctive school of magic that was easy enough to recognize through clairvoyance in such a direct encounter) and all manner of planar abominations.

Maybe the urge would come.

No one gave me time.

Taking the net attack on his shield, the Warrior sent a pulse of Light from the shield, burning out a cone-shaped clearing. There was no room for anything but Light. To the deity's credit, he sent the attack not along the ground line, where it would have wiped out many survivors. He sent it slightly over the top so the huge Ancient would be hit by the intentionally bloated growth. The shadow met the attack with dignity, causing the world before it to lose its colors, manifesting the laws of another plane upon it so that the divine will against this wall, no, not shattered, but slowed. This creature was the strongest of the trio and had gained two levels at once, gaining the most, as well as a disproportionate amount of free stats, and was willing not to fight to the death but to snatch a moment to escape.

The creatures struck in synchronization. While the remnants of the Highs, who had also been battered and killed by the battering ram, occupied the Warrior's retinue, the two remaining Ancients scattered like attack dogs, clasping the God on both sides. To be scattered to black ash in the glow of his halo a moment before the attack, turning out to be skillful, living, and animated deceptions. Personally, I thought the Warrior bought it for a split second. Only it didn't help much.

Instead of attacking, both creatures stepped back, pressing themselves to the ground, trying to summon new "troops" through the Armada's rifts, some of which had closed without support from the other side, and some of which had been closed by the mere presence of such powerful bearers of grace. Only now, they were in no hurry to go because there was no such feast as before, and the risks of getting hit had grown disproportionately high. However, the will of two Ancients at once allowed them to give no fucks on the reluctance of small things, and not everyone risked objecting. The two Ancients did not try to escape through the not-very-stable passageways and, apparently, had no hope of doing so.

At the same time as the call, both creatures began to shed shreds of themselves, like dogs shaking off dirt or black sand falling from their bodies. The magic crystallized from the saturation of shadow power, literally magic crystals of planar type, no worse than acid, dissolved and slightly manifested the blockage of Inevitability. Give them a little time, and they'd make a hole and crawl through it. Each of the two plans to do it first leaving the other to be slaughtered.

The warrior swung the cleaver, which thinned and became flexible, taking the shape of a battleaxe, leaving behind a smooth and rapidly growing stroke. A waterfall of light pours out of it onto the remnants of the barely held gateway to the Shadow, as if made up of individual droplets, each of which is a Blade in miniature, taking the form of a variety of weapons, from clubs and axes to wall-breaking battering rams. The shaft of weapons closes the passageways and cuts out the newcomers who have not even had time to get into the city, the reverse movement of the whip disembodies one High, kills the second, severely injures the third and fourth, but the whip is already gone, as the unbreakable shield dissolved in the glare of Light.

The deity slammed his two-handed chaser against the netted ground of Inevitability, and the wave of divine proportions that came from the point of contact with the battleaxe not only repaired the crystal-encrusted barrier but also forced both creatures higher to avoid being burned by the Light. A spit of liquefied shadow power charged with an incomprehensible technique is met by the very same scratched hand, on which a heavy gauntlet appears for a moment, against which the stuff sputtered. The unfamiliar technique is cunning, like a virus or gray goo, being not just a force but holding hundreds of thousands, millions even of worm-like Shadows, only very small, smaller than a speck of dust, which in such numbers even a plan-antagonist would not destroy at once. Before the creatures try to chew their way inside the divine flesh, the palm of his hand ignites the Light as if it were a torch during a night assault.

Its light cancels out the lump of spit-out crap, and the artifact itself, aptly thrown, existing only as long as it is needed and summoned, fends off a second similar attack before it gets halfway through and pierces through the youngest of the Ancients not killing, but maiming, tearing to shreds the very essence of the embodiment of Loneliness, restraining and immobilizing. The spear was replaced by a spear with a broad leaf-shaped tip, long, as if it were a small blade rather than a piercing spear, catching the second creature, albeit with an edge.

Her wound is not serious, but it is painful, and the Shadow rustles with the promise of doom, changing Form, breaking up into a swarm of small creatures bound together but one entity. The swarm beats towards it, manifesting everything in its path, enduring the presence of the halo, aiming at the face of the Warrior hidden beneath the radiance, but the latter only momentarily cast a geyser of light and solar fury, from which attempts at manifestation do not save, the monochrome is scattered in a storm of white and gold, but when the fertile fury passes, a very unexpected picture becomes visible.

The Warrior slashed at the Ancient, whole and united again, with two sickle swords, almost breaking it into three pieces. It pretended to be a swarm, in fact, making one part of it the main part and the rest a sham. But he received two wounds from the long claws growing out of the multi-segmented paws hiding deep within the Ancient Shadow's body. His blood and flesh vaporized the creature's grip, but the wounds themselves were shallow and not dangerous, more like scratches that would heal faster than the mighty heart would beat in his chest.

The shadow can no longer keep its flesh in a superdense state. Both khopesh shatter it completely, and the smallest of the parts changes shape, becoming the same creature, only smaller, trying to crawl away, to retreat, to escape, to break through the shroud of the closing field, but it is too slow, too weakened, and the blow of the blade kills the second of the trio of Myths. A step forward, a full-footed U-turn, behind which one can feel the experience of not millennia, but hardly epochs of death-killing, a blow with a blade that has changed into a very long, even compared to the Incarnation's height, pike. The blow knocked out three of the freshest and most resilient Highs. The weapon changed again, now to an axe and a rough, sharp blow on the last of the three Ancients pinned by an artifact.

Which, for the second time that day, fell to the ground in fine black sand. The creature has turned most of its flesh into the very crystals that have pierced the cover of Inevitability right beneath it, shed its skin like a snake, and slither deeper and deeper into its homeland. The barrier over the city is already more of a formality, and not only God's servants but also the ordinary endowed ones arrive here now and then, whose anxious groups are thrown by point teleporters in considerable numbers. Reaching the Ancient One's home plan, even if injured, was possible. Only the power of the deity, not the fallen dome, stood in the way.

The Warrior's fury at the enemy's escape is inaudible, but it presses harder than gravitational magic, pinning him to the ground and making the mirrors shake, causing them to blacken and crack. And he's not looking for us, but for the Shadow who escaped. Oh, no. I get it, too, because I summoned them all, and there's a connection between us. The Warrior sees something, though, striking with a new spear, more like a short dart, right into the nearly closed escape portal. I'm betting he hit the fugitive, but I'm not sure if he killed it. I don't doubt too much that the Ancient, who was badly wounded by that kick, would be killed by her own. And even if they can't, she'll be licking her wounds for the next hundred years, and she won't be any danger to me, who dared to order her. The other Shadows, who were close to the point of impact from the other side, deserve a little sympathy - unlucky.

Yeah, and Shadows aren't my main problem right now.

Every second of being in the embodied state is worth a lot to a god, more than gasoline for a car with a leaky tank. The stronger the god, the higher the price, and the Warrior had just demonstrated his superiority by decimating three Ancients, at least half a dozen Highs, and an incalculable horde of lower-ranked Shadows. Yes, he had sustained some wounds, but only because his armor, a divine-grade set, in its manifested state, eats grace unmercifully so his Heralds couldn't provide a channel for the Incarnation of not only the Warrior but his armor as well. Even so, his wounds, though bloody, were comparable to a slap or a bruised knee, nothing more.

And he defeated his opponents.

And before being pushed out of the Eternal, whose sky was already almost completely blue, he spent the rest of his Incarnation's strength on a search impulse of you would not believe it, divine power. Separately, the Light, as well as the Sun, were much better suited for the search than the divine conjunction of Heaven and Depth once experienced. I should add, at that time, I had a prepared fortress of the antediluvian type, hundreds of deceptions and billets, which could easily be insufficient. Plus, I left much fewer traces and was in much better condition than now.

The situation was described by one short acronym.

No, I managed to do something, to strengthen something, but I quickly gave up even trying, starting to eradicate Dream from my body, replacing it with Shadow, but realizing I had no time. And I couldn't do it in time. I didn't have a window from the beginning unless you counted the fucked up plan to break through the Library, which now seemed very clever, balanced, and not at all risky. Now, all I had to do was change my body back to my Form, hoping my speed hadn't slowed too much and fatigue hadn't driven me to the grave, grab my teammates with my Grip, then dive deep and hope I could escape. I don't even doubt they'll find me.

And also with all my might I chased away the knowledge that if they had caught up with the fleeing Ancient One, they would catch up with me, especially with the load.

A ring of light, harmless and unthreatening, but so true, so truthful, so revealing, diverged at a speed close to a bullet's flight, creating many smaller rings when the marvelous search equipment stumbled upon something interesting. I had time to say goodbye to my life, but I didn't, spending my measured moments trying to survive and get us all out, even if there was no chance.

Maybe they won't notice me right away, giving me time to escape in the turmoil, and then we can hide more securely.

Perhaps it will be possible to slip a decoy, given that there are no mirrors left at all, all blacked out in complete disrepair.

Maybe the connection between me and the Shadow summoning won't be obvious, so they won't check our echo right away.

After all, Bruce fucking Willis might show up out of a shining portal and start saving everyone indiscriminately!

The motive is that one must fight to the end, even if there is no chance left - a truth that Alurei taught me so well that I will not forget on my deathbed.

I haven't forgotten, for that matter!

The ring of radiance, the will of the invincible Truth, from which there is no escape, for which no convincing lie can be invented, reached us, gave us all a wild headache, almost forcing us to abort our transformation into shadow flesh, and then.... it seemed to dive into the clear water, slid on a wave of sea breeze, flew over us and disappeared over the horizon without touching us even a little. A miracle of the highest caliber was parried by another miracle, perhaps more liquid, but not areal, but pointed, cumulative, and prepared in advance.

When a thin layer of purest sea water ran along the surface of the farthest wall of the living room of the abandoned house, which quickly turned into a portal passage, only very imperceptible even from here, almost without any energy, I really expected that a bald nut would come out of there right now and go to extinguish the terrorists. Then I realized that I was the main terrorist in this story, and I even felt sad. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, the man who stepped out of the crosswalk was not bald.

T.N. Die Hard cinema in Russian was translated as Hard Nut.

He was of medium height, not especially large build, dressed in a lavish and enchanted to the last thread, but rather shabby priestly robe, with the left half of his face turned into a blue-red chop, because of which only one eye was visible because the other one had swollen to a Japanese-Chinese cut, with a level and classes unreadable to my eyes, but emanating Grimmentray's power in many ways stronger than his Servants and even Heralds. Somehow, there was no doubt that through the eyes and a half of the uncle standing before me, soiled in the remains of devils, his God was looking at me, looking very carefully and ready to multiply us all by zero.

He appeared cool. It must be said.

"Greetings." Despite the background and the sense of grace bursting through the body of the man who had come, he didn't let the strength in his voice out. "You did not call me, of course, but I took the liberty of coming uninvited. My name is Jerem Steyr, and I would like to talk."

For some reason, his "I wasn't called, but I came" gave me a strange mixture of deja vu and slight jealousy, as if it was something I should have said, but I couldn't catch the reason for this strange mood. I'll admit that for the first time in a long time, I was thrown off balance right from the start of the conversation. I should have thought of a nice way to take the initiative, but the general weakness, the recent tension, and the coming backlash from my dancing today had knocked me off my game, even if only for a second.

"Hey, what the fuck?" the ever-eloquent Taria replies almost without pause and without any piety to our guest, who had saved our asses instead of frying them on the spot.

Thank you, sweetheart, what would I do without you?

The main thing now was that the priest didn't fuck up in real life because his one eye was looking at the swearing bandit, and at me, and Hestia, and Tia, and at Giver, who was occupying the cultist's body, looking like Lenin at the bourgeoisie, like an engineer at a humanist, like a tech support at a user. The only one he didn't stare at as if through a tank scope was Losius, but even he looked at him with coldness.

Not attacking.

He protected them from discovery and the inevitable battle that had no chance of winning.

I have no idea what he wants from us. But while he's talking, we're not being attacked by a Warrior's coterie. And a single High Priest - if he's not a High Cleric, I'll go to the monastery - if we're in a crowd, we can get even tired ones, even if it's our last feat. In general, he gave a reason for dialog, as well as developed a certain credibility, but I do not believe in his virtue, as I do not believe in the fact that they will let us go just like that. We'll have to be diplomatic and pull out the hard - and what else would they be? - negotiations.

It's okay. Diplomatic is my second name.

And for emergencies, I have Taria.

After all, how could I possibly screw this up?

* * *