* * *

If Beaumont de Gravignet had been asked what it was that had helped him to react, what had allowed him to get there in time, he would have found it difficult to answer. But after thinking about it, he would simply admit the most trivial reason - a congenital pessimist, everywhere seeing only the worst possible outcome, he did not believe that the chain dog of the imperial retinue would be able to cope with his last assignment in every sense. Just as everyone around him did not doubt Whisper, cursed by many noble and powerful families, would not return, Beaumont was clearly unwilling to accept the idea that the bastard could at least die in a useful way.

And so, when the eye-burning glow of the three Enclosed Rays, which were in a state of shedding, appeared directly above the headquarters of the combined assault group, sheltered by the barriers of several portable altar complexes, the warrior, always ready for the worst, did not hesitate even for the fraction of an instant, for which the rest of his companions were confused. They, too, were strong, cunning, and ready for anything, but such a sudden and unpremeditated attack, hidden beneath another series of attacks from the enemy's unceasingly well-coordinated fire, made them lose even a shadow of a chance for successful counteraction. And how could one counteract a strategic enchantment of such a level that was about to unfold, if any reasonable and not-so-reasonable high-level person would start not to counteract, but to save their own ass.

Many of them had a chance of surviving the sun's wrath, for there were no weaklings here. A quick escape, a super-powerful shield, giving absolute protection for at least a couple of seconds, an artifact with similar properties, or something else. The All-seeing and All-mighty ruler of the universe bestowed her children with various abilities, and the more steps you pass on the endless ladder created by her, the more difficult it is to interrupt this path. But even if the strike fist is saved, even if the strongest are saved without losing anyone just by the theory of chances, the strike group itself will cease to exist. Mercenaries, guards, guild fighters - they didn't send here meat. They sent here experienced fighters, but even the twentieth step won't help where you need to have at least the fortieth step to survive.

Beaumont de Gravigne could still retreat, but he had no chance of surviving the day, at least no chance of surviving the day as himself. He had read the tactician's briefs. He knew why this stronghold of Lust needed to be destroyed. He knew what would happen when their ritual was complete. The entire family and the rest of de Gravigne's entourage, not counting a small retinue, were not in Eternal, as if something had whispered to him not to take them with him this year, leaving them in his native duchy, but you don't have to die for someone. Sometimes, you have to die for yourself, as ironic as that may sound now. Since childhood, the then-young Beaumont was characterized by a strikingly indifferent attitude to his life, time after time putting it on the line. Perhaps it was this that allowed him to rise to the position of a close attendant of the Duke of Wyrd, even marrying his distant relative, moving from the low aristocracy to the high nobility, albeit symbolically at first. Now, he could try to get a status even higher than the current one if he wanted to snatch more, not chew up what the House had managed to get during his life and his efforts.

Fifty-first level and three classes, all of which he had obtained on his own, he had even given the Duke's access to the extraction ritual, which he had wrested from the Emperor for the sake of a loyal servant, to his eldest son. Wasn't that an indicator of his own strength and valor? Of course, even such a level would not be enough to block three Rays, and even so suddenly, without preparation. If there had been two of them, he would still have had hope, but now all he had to do was die. Die in a voluntary and extremely unpleasant sacrifice. Warmaster, Child of War, and Sun Worshipper - not a bad bundle, giving both attack, defense, and magical support more than once allowing him to win hopeless battles. But now, only the last class of the three was important, perhaps not the strongest of the three, inferior to the legendary Child, but the outcome of the battle depended on it.

The Sun Worshipper had neither strong area attacks nor monolithic defense, nor even the bless and auras, so beloved by the solar classes, but he had his trump cards. Or rather, only one, which served as the basis of class power - the ability to redirect free solar power, literally absorbing it from storage devices, from artifact planar pumps, or from other people's charms if their creators were not strong enough, and then using it to cast his charms. Bomon usually kept two insanely expensive bracelets with a stable and quite powerful communication channel through them, pumping out pure power from them and forming his techniques from them. Combined with the Warrior's monolithic defense and the War Child's amazing striking power and maneuverability, the result was an extremely unpleasant opponent for single Heroes or entire armies.

He didn't need the bracelets now. Up there, just above the barrier protecting the stake, there was so much free and uncontrolled power that no body, not even his, Beaumont's body could pass through. And somehow, they dragged those stolen and wrenched from the dead and greedy clutches of Whisper - and he would not give his things willingly, even to a devil, the greedy scum - through all the signal nets!

He couldn't absorb such a thing, but it would be enough for de Gravigne, who was performing his last feat, to redirect it to the side, ideally to the Grey Chains' farmyard hidden behind a solid wall of stupefying fleur so their accountants would be eternally deficient even in the oblivion where they would be sent for treachery. There was nothing left for Beaumont to do but curse those peddlers with all his soul melting in the rays, just as there was nothing left of Beaumont.

The Child of War's hardened power, which made his body stronger than hardened steel, was enough for him to exist in the center of the triangle of unfolded Rays for almost a second and a half, still managing to capture each of the rays with the Sun Worshiper's tenacious will. It was a classic solar flux, almost like a textbook, executed with suicidal purposefulness. There was no strength and concentration to defend himself from the captured force, and he did not try to defend himself, relying on his survivability and resistance.

A ray is a ray because its essence requires direction and requires a vector of force application. The ray enclosed in the artifact and chained in the artifact lost its direction, which caused such an explosion directed in all directions at once. That's why they tried to blow up such gifts where there were no people who could repeat Beaumont's trick because it was not so difficult to return the purpose and integrity of the lost ray. It's the old pain of planar bombs in general. No matter how powerful an artifact is, it yields to the will of the one who has become affinity with the plan. All other things being equal, if the adept of the plane is really strong, he can, to some degree, be influenced by the affinity power.

Maybe they can still do it.

Maybe they'll win without his, Beaumont's, help.

Even if the strike was not from within but from outside, there was still hope for a direct and mad assault under the cover of the confusion caused by the trio of rays. To break through the barriers, and such a blow would break them, to spite the losses, to break through to the ritual concentration, to die, but to give life to those who will die today too, if they fail. A feat is inevitable simply because there is nothing left for them but a feat.

Already spreading out in a long line of golden radiance, merging with each of the three rays and dissolving in their scorching fury, de Gravignet could make out a barely perceptible shadow, like a cloud of smoke at the edge of his gaze. And then the pain, the unbearable agony of dissolving into the Sun, was joined by the mad agony of pure Darkness, which dug into what was left of Beaumont's body with the blades of two familiar daggers, black with the filth that covered them. Only instead of Whisper's ugly face, some strange girl smiled and kissed him goodbye, looking like someone else, but Beaumont didn't have time to think about it.

He had time for nothing, letting go of the held power and dying in a quick but agonizing agony, even in the face of the agony he had already endured. Most of the power of the three Rays had gone upward instead of raining down on the mortals, making the purple sky overhead fade and then darken, becoming not even purple but dark magenta, as if the Rays had made their way to the wrong place. Not out of the trap of the dome but deeper into the Hell, to its frightening depths. The remnants of the sun's power, which had never been directed upward, swept away both the barriers and the ranks of the unprepared for such a trick, throwing them out of order, killing or maiming the unluckiest and closest to them, which the devils immediately took advantage of.

No one noticed the figure of the strange girl, who looked like a young and not yet disfigured by the Darkness assassin named Whisper, like a kindred and much more pleasant sister who disappeared even before Beaumont died of his wounds.

Rockterm could have sworn that the devils were far better prepared for sabotage using the Rays they'd pulled out of their stash than the people who were supposed to carry out the sabotage. The mere fact of how quickly and unimpeded the power of the Sun leaked upward, falling through the dome into the depths of Hell, was already very telling. One of the most promising Tacticians of the generation was well aware that the creatures needed a full solar corona for half of Eternal even less than the humans did. They didn't come here to kill everyone and everything but to capture it for their spoiled games, so if the late Beaumont, from whom Rokterm Dostradiv didn't expect sacrifice, hadn't been able to redirect most of his striking power upward, the creatures themselves would have done it.

Alas, they didn't even have to work their asses off with this detail because the humans did everything for them. Perfectly calibrated degree of defeat, just cosmetically perfected in its exceptional coordination - minimum of corpses, minimum damage to Eternal, but a completely broken formation and defenses, which there was no sense in restoring. The ambush regiment, simply obliged to be in such circumstances, the Armyman did not discern or receive a report of its presence, no. He just knew, at the level where tactical command skills and class ability to read the battle passes into intuitive unmuffled foresight. He wasn't wrong, which was frustrating because it would have been just fine to be fooled, but who would allow it?

The creatures of the first wave were about a hundred in number, all of them of the same type: long and snake-like, resembling a mixture of a ribbon wyvern, a flying lizard, and a cock that had grown wings, paws, and scales. They weren't even strong compared to the Guardsmen gathered in the headquarters. They weren't above level twenty, but they weren't brought here because of their level. They were covered by an overcomplicated illusion, obviously hiding a couple of stronger creatures somewhere in the crowd of little things. The tactician noted the two huge goiters on the body of each hovering dick to add to the resemblance to a known organ and saw them pulsing, realizing the imminent eruption of all that had been stuffed into a hundred creatures. Rockterm believed fervently in the Warrior, the Retributor, and the Merciful One all together. He believed the something poured into the creatures was far more dangerous than the creatures themselves, orders of magnitude more dangerous. And when it rained down on the defenseless Imperial fighters, the defeat would be a foregone conclusion.

Tacticians should not be in direct combat. It is of little use there, and there is almost no combat potential, but at the same time, the owners of this class, having developed far enough on it, are able, when the need comes, to act amazingly fast. The genius of the Dostradiv family was an excellent tactician, albeit relatively young. Therefore, the Chain of Command started so quickly that if he could cast combat spells with such speed, he would be an excellent duelist. Even if the basis of the Chain had been damaged by the sunbath, even if its nodes were partly out, partly atomized, and partly in concussion, the command was simple and clear. It was also inevitable, like the order of a slavemancer - the reverse side of the outstanding Tacticians and Strategists, which is not liked to be mentioned in vain but about which even ordinary soldiers are judging secretly. If the Tactician really wishes, his order will be executed even without the knowledge of the executor, whose body will take action faster than the thoughts of the individual subordinated by the Chain. The direct control of the body at the level of deep reflexes and the subsequent rationalization of what is done under control, executed, and compelled with amazing skill. A very useful thing on all sides, except for those whom the Strategist will decide to sacrifice for the sake of victory and who, in the heat of battle, will not have enough skill to understand that the icy determination and reckless courage of the suicide bomber does not belong to them.

In the case of the current one, there was no such illusion of choice through belief control. The bodies of the two fighters Rokterm had chosen were literally intercepted by him as if he had been working with a good puppet maker. In a different situation, the two Guardsmen who'd been hit by the Rays would have been able to fight off such a message and then glare at the overzealous commander, but now they were out of shape. If they survived, they would understand and give Rokterm a drink, presenting him with the mosaic paintings made of amber, which he used to thank him for.

Because they've all got their skins saved by Tactic now.

By the time the two warriors of level 40+ activated the artifacts they had been given from the Sealed Vault, both of them were already acting solely on their own, finishing what the Tactician had started, getting it done on time thanks to his intervention. The first to make his move was old Pilpin, a superb airman, one of the best in this field among the elite of the capital, and he was known throughout the world as well. It was not often that one met a man who had married a bird folk elder and learned from her the racial wisdom of Aldis'ai, which no one could know better than they. They even say he married for love, but they're lying for sure. Gossipers of the lower class give them a reason to compose a tearful ballad about the big and pure love. No, the couple took such a step for the sole benefit of getting patronage at court on the one hand and knowledge that gives strength and understanding of the class, allowing them to get an even stronger foothold at that court on the other.

The funny thing was that the artifact handed to Pilpin, brought by some Summoned, was not of the nature of Highness but of Hardness, which did not hinder but rather complemented the fighting style of the human mage. And even if it was not possible to make too many direct attacks with this artifact, one of the non-combat techniques was needed right now. Judging by the satisfied grin of the short-cropped and smooth-shaven mage, who even in such a situation remained smarmy, like a court Gigolo, who wove a web of seduction around another rich matron, he also understood it perfectly well.

The hovering cocks were already entering the attack position, puffing up their goiters and generally behaving very, well, vulgar, and generally suspiciously similar to the process of not attacking at all.... but what would you expect from devils? And a second before the forces of mortals are rained down with a rain of not-at-all water, Pilpin attacks, issuing a phrase-activator in one breath, uttering a tongue-heavy speech construct with precisely measured speed.

"[I'mgoingtopluckthewings]!!!!!" The smile on the mage's glossy face would have made one mistake him for some kind of cultist, so happy, satisfied, and mean-spirited, was it.

But the devils, as if in mockery, were no longer looking for new pleasures as soon as the last syllable of the activator sounded. The artifact's charms did not affect those who stood on the ground, acting only on the losers in the air and within the range of the artifact. In the radius of action, flying became simply forbidden at a level close to conceptual. For nothing, oh for nothing, Hardness is considered not the most appropriate plane for dropping hovering opponents to the ground because it's all about the proper application. As in bed art, it's not only the size that matters here but also the skill of use, like that night with that girl whose family was obviously giants because she was tall... and her breasts and hips corresponded to that height and even against its background were huge and so juicy...

Rockterm's amulets interrupt the devils' belated attempt to silence the inconvenienced Tactician, allowing him to enjoy the fruits of his success. Clearly, the very same illusionist who had been covering the hovering descenders. Yes, his, for if it weren't for him, they wouldn't have had time to use the No-Fly Zone, for the artifact, like everything associated with the Hardness, accelerated at a relatively leisurely pace, compensating for its insane power. Each flyer was hit by a personalized and unremovable by standard purification Severity of the Mountains, not just pinning them to the ground but also slowing them down, restraining them, and preventing them from using any skills or talents. It was as if it was really turning a crowd of evil creatures into birds with plucked feathers.

The eruption did happen and even covered some of the front ranks, but only partially, which, given the killing power of this billet, can be considered an extremely successful exchange. Under the stream of golden and white slurry, splashing the unfortunate people with the splashing rain, all those who were hit were as if turned into lumps of continuously orgasming flesh. No limbs, no torso, no face, only entrails and brains in a leather sack, lying here and there. The armor, as well as the clothes, dissolved along with the top layers of paving stones, and frantic attempts to use magical protection did not affect the strange slurry at all.

Instead of the disappointed howl that would have been natural after such a failure, the devils responded with a wave of chuckles and giggles that were contagious enough to make all those who heard the chuckles and smirk, giggling like a Guild of Roses lass pretending to be an innocent flower. Tactic too, had to suppress the unmasculine laughter with a painful wave of cleansing magic, becoming a mere observer for an unacceptably long time. It was, as with the laughter, the shadow of a stranger had entered him, the same girl from the velvet-covered building who only looked made eyes and waited idly for the one who had chosen her to approach her.

The good news was that they managed to activate the second artifact anyway, and they also picked the right moment, covering both the dickwings, who were strengthened and almost immobile from the pressure of gravity, and the second wave, which merged with their ranks, consisting of invisible invisibles almost indistinguishable to the eye of Rokterm, who was used to relying on the reports and reports of his subordinates. Carl Buster Don Dygmar attacked like a textbook, applying his gift to the artifact's effect, received from the All-Seeing One for a high-class attribute score, which increased the activated effect by at least half.

"[Bleedin' farts]!" As is often the case with artifacts taken from summoned Un-Heroes, their activators sound just plain plebeian to the point of insulting, but it's hard to feel stupid for even voicing such a stupid phrase if voicing it unleashes a force capable of devastating densely populated neighborhoods or small towns.

T.N. It's a reference to this. Vodka with pepper.

A stream of red-hot steam, consisting mostly of a highly toxic and sticky substrate, was an ideal weapon against an advancing formation of poorly protected infantry like a horde of greenskins or against the same infantry packed into a tight and confined room like sardines in a barrel. Sweet Pepper has always been at his best when repelling the green menace, sometimes scalding to death even legendary monsters dragged from the ancient forests who came after the orcs to eat human meat. It was a surprisingly useful thing, despite the stupid and humiliating activators, the only disadvantage of which was the extreme stench of steam produced by the artifact. But this toxic cloud was not thrown in the direction of the enemy, like the fire and ferry gnomes, but created a cloud of deadly substance right across the entire area of action, strictly in the zone specified by the user.

The artifactors say this creation opened hundreds of miniature one-way portals leading directly to the Pepper storage tank. Even though outwardly, it looked like a small translucent jar with a murky liquid and a vegetable floating inside that liquid, remotely resembling a super-hot pepper. However, it was a kind of illusion. No, there was both the slurry and something floating in it. Only the scale let down. The folded space inside the artifact contained tons and tons of toxic crap. The "pepper" was a living and, presumably, partially intelligent organism, synthesizing new portions of the crap. It was even possible to set more precise parameters of future toxins for Pepper at a certain level of alchemy or poisoning skill, but even a first-level peasant could use the basic attack. Another reason for Pepper's popularity was that it was a pleasure to raise the young offspring of rich families with him in hand. Even if the All-Seeing One could award him an unpleasant title if he overdid it too much.

The good news has already been announced.

The bad part is how successful the first attack on the hovering inseminators was, pardon Sheila's dumb sense of humor. So much so that Pepper's strike was useless. No, some of the stranded and wingless creatures were literally dissolved, as oblivion was given to some of their flesh-bagged victims, but that was the end of it. The Invisibles, traveling in a scattered wave, used some strange effect that twisted gravity or something else, but the cloud of toxins swiftly drifted upward, where there was now no one. And then there was no time left, and all the devil's power descended upon the people.

They fought back, fought desperately, Rockterm rebuilt the Chain of Command, barriers were reestablished, and the Benefics burned out their essence in an attempt to block the fleur, but there was no way to compensate for the failure. Following the wave of invisible devils came the turn of devils of ordinary, medium strength, but in large numbers and also supported by a couple of really powerful spawns that had broken out of the catacombs. Tactician was sure, and what was sure, he knew for sure, those tunnels they had crawled out of were not there before, and not only on the plans and schemes, they were not there at all. It wasn't the cultists who had dug them illegally, disguising them and leaving them for better times! They'd checked all the approaches before the assault, collapsing all the suspicious voids, but they'd appeared anyway, out of nowhere, without warning or trace in the energy, or someone would have noticed.

As if that weren't enough, the cultists struck from the other side, though they were fewer in number simply because the devils had sacrificed them in the first, most dangerous hours when too few incarnate creatures had arrived in the city. There were almost no incarnated creatures with the cultists, only a few dozen possessed men, who had withered like statues made of wax, like candles, burns from the battles they'd fought. In many ways, a possessed person was weaker than an incarnate. It was more difficult to work with souls, and the most powerful techniques, such as cloth made of sacrificial flesh, would prevent him from using them and would make them uncomfortable. But there were pluses, too, in the form of increased survivability, the ability to transmit more pure power, and the absence of the need to spend souls on defense because clay-like pliable flesh would become a shield and a blade and an accumulator and even ritual support as if all those who used the material for the body participated in the ritual at once.

"Goodbye, my hope for a new medal." Rockterm grimly said, trying to rebuild his defenses just a little, using every trump card he had. "And the mortal world, too, perhaps."

The Last Stand, Tireless Defense, Steel Formation, Hope of Survivors, Reverse Fatigue Transmission - he and all other holders of similar classes or at least one-time gifts give out what they have indiscriminately, without proper application of minimal effort, putting all available cards on the table in a cluster. For a moment, it works. The veteran guards and mercenaries, who have gained tremendous strength and have become almost invulnerable to fleur or even direct attacks, throw off the duller and frail cultists, preventing them from splitting the Imperial ranks down the center. Even the elite creatures, though not thrown back, are literally mired in the ranks of the rank-and-file fighters who have become too strong to be brushed aside. The Guards are fighting the creatures that have teleported directly to them, each of which has clearly chosen its opponent in advance, choosing the most convenient victim.

Rokterm Dostradiv still has time to marvel at the fact that the Tacticians and Benefics aren't being attacked and that the devils that have converged with the Guard are holding back more, even losing a couple of their own for not attacking full force, then the last group of reinforcements arrives. About half a dozen of the creatures emerge from a grayish gap in the middle of the street turned into a battle arena, first knocking down any attempts to catch them on their way out with gray dust and attacking them themselves. The tactician instantly changes his directives, trying to reorganize the defenses once more, and he has a chance while all the reinforcing benefits are still in effect before the rollback for temporary power comes. Then a short and seemingly non-threatening deviless walks out from behind the new arrivals, embraced by a pretty cultist whose facial features looked familiar to Rockterm but whose robes didn't look familiar because he'd seen it in person only a short time ago.

What exactly it meant, as well as what happened to the previous owner of the robes of one of the best assassins of the Empire, on whom they all relied so in vain, the Tactician's sharp and amazingly honed mind had no time to comprehend - the deviless sang la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la.

La.

* * *

A shadow veil, a weightless flood comes in a tidal wave, making the reality around it fade, making the glow of the signs on the fleshless stones and the iridescent trill of the petals change every moment. It didn't look like a classic enchantment, making the creature smile orgasmically once more, searching for answers among the many souls it had enamored, finding them not immediately. Rarely, so rarely were Overlords of Loniless born and raised under the skies of Alurei. Even more rarely did they come into power, and rarely did they have to use something like this. No wave of blackness, no dense and searing magical energy of classical sorcery, only a cone of colorless, monochromatic monochrome diverging from the weightless figure swaying at the very tips of his fingers. A cone of command, imposing a bit of the law of Shadow upon the already almost Hell, not attacking directly, but weakening, robbing strength, forcing it to be spent on overcoming effects. It was not a curse or a weakening current, which on him, on his melody in any of its forms, would have not the slightest effect. The monochrome wave will affect even him, will make him recognize this note as a full part of their common symphony, not the grunt of a deaf old man, not the babble of an infant taking up the harp.

There is no way to reflect the resentment of an abandoned child, the broken cry of an orphan left without anyone. Not in the usual way, because there is no properly selected soul now. It is necessary to search for it too deeply, and there is no desire to plunge into the monochrome of the rolling silence the singing of some lights that are more valuable with their music than others, and others will not help. However, as in many similar performances, the weakness of someone else's melody, a melody without sounds and notes, a melody of silence, because Loneliness does not need those who will hear it, lies on the one who called this silence, having to stop to give free rein to the weapon created.

If the Boy is Without a Collar, the part he chose, the role he took, is like an empty chord, a gap in the sheet music, a pause between verses, the melody of the Girl in the Collar is quite different. It is felt, it sounds, and it beats with the rumble of giant Drums, behind which one can hear the roar of the fire going on and the crackle of bones bursting in the fire. Where the Boy he loves tears up the melody, infusing it with dissonance with his silence and his uncomfortable whispering, devoid of graceful lechery, the Girl who has misunderstood his caresses tries to cover his melody with her own, to tear up the score, to mix the notes and burn them in the fire of the absolute All-Burnt Sacrifice. It's worth saying the dissonance caused by the girl is more impressive.

A direct attack, not even with fire, but with the heat that would make the stones covered with signs crumble into nothing and turn the souls caught under it into nothing, was not something that could and should be ignored. It would be nice to clash the two melodies with each other so his own would ring out so piquantly against the background of mutual fading, but this would be prevented by the third member of the miniature orchestra assembled against him, sounding the dull, single note of the mountain flute. Warudo the Eternal sang strictly between hammer and anvil, not even attacking but hinting at an immediate response if the devil tried to change position and clash the allied tunes. Either take them on shields or repel them somehow else, as if telling him his song, sing, my dear, and we'll dance, our dear~.

The ringing of petals became for a second close to the heart-wrenching creak of the Stone Bird's throat, forcing the cone of silence to slow as the shock came over the boy's mind, imposing alien shimmers, a wave of heat shuddering as the girl began to experience a melodic orgasm on the move as if dancing along with inaudible amplitudes. Only the Child of the Ages, protected by his uncourteous armor, remained motionless, now preparing to protect and cover whomever the devil's hand turned upon. Such a bitter irony, sweeter than the gut honey and love juice of a dying opera prima donna. Implacable enemies have come together in union. He never tires of admiring it; it will not soon bore him, will not soon become a familiar part of the orchestra.

A flash of fiery protuberances glided by in a minor shimmer, cleansing the maiden's mind and body, at the same time melting one of the doors he had left leading to her understanding of the melodies into a wall of steel, closing the tab, rendering it inoperable. He had much more he wished to establish but saw no reason at that moment. So easily rewriting someone else's poem would completely lose the good taste that demands unhurriedness, demands delaying the peak of pleasure as long as possible. But even the crumbs are enough for the attack of pure heat not to choke in its drumbeat but to receive a change of half a tone, a contributed dissonance. He could have beaten back the blow even so, but then the maiden would not have experienced her ecstasy and would not have felt that mixture of oppressive shame, sublime duty, and the barely discernible thrill of longing for continuation. He knew what that trill felt like because he had written it, burning it over and over again.

Heat met with a thin streak of Cold, complete stasis of any movement, absolute freezing, crashing against him like surf against the rock in the deafening cry of a freezing traveler barely audible calling for anyone. The blackening silence presses on, but he manages to rearrange the lights in the proper order, forcing the icy essence of one of his long-ago girls, formerly a boy, back into the depths of him, giving back in return a few of the simplest of lights, quite fresh, taken in this city. Sovereign of Everything and Everyone, even if not everyone recognizes it yet, watches with interest as the fading lights begin to fade in the monochrome visions, not even devoured by the Shadow, but as if fading away from the sudden Loneliness.

So cute it's just hee hee hee.

The mental construct, like an offer of the bargain, is directed towards Flute-Warudo just for the sake of interest and propriety because the melody demands it, even if the meaninglessness of the deed is obvious. Overcoming the simultaneous Armor of One Battle and the Ringing of Timelessness is possible, but not now, not like this, and not under such conditions. This is not an attempt to change someone else's sonata, to change the Flute to another instrument, but an exceptionally kind and sweet teasing, an offer to go into battle with a direct participant in the murder of the flute's forgotten brother. Like a reproach, a mocking bewilderment as to why the Prince had not yet clung to his enemy. To dignify the good Sovereign with an answer was a heavy burden for the Crown Prince, so he did not even lift it, simply ignored it, and even began to create the Law not in a warning hint but in a direct attack.

The signs on the stones cracked brittlely, and the organ hummed, re-growing where the monochrome silence had erased them along with the stone, pushing away the black and white horror, filling the world with the native and sweet glow of the promised benefits. The oncoming swing of a hand that had become completely transparent for a second was echoed by a sweet-sweet howl, siphoning the air out of the path of the flame-covered maiden. The artless attack was only the first layer, for along with the air, the impact that touched the far reaches of the absent Highness sucked out all the free energy, dulling the flames, disrupting the rhythm, and drowning out the roar of Sofia's Drums. The maiden who stumbled on a flat place falls face down into the stone, face into the signs glittering with a simple song, losing more and more flame, gradually being sucked into those signs, preparing to become another drawing on the exhausted paving stones.

Instead of killing the foolish fool running away from his caresses and letting her be reborn once more, Sovereign only covers her with a weightless blanket, as if it were not even silk but spiderweb. Runes and sigils grow on the shroud, merging into something like musical notation, drawing in the remnants of the flames and then transferring to her skin as the most skillful tattoos, moving deeper and deeper into the prisoner's essence. The wave of fire is as predictable as a drummer's part in a march, yet irresistibly strong - at the last moment, the Flute gives the Drums an extra second, taking it away from their attack, missing the moment. The second bought a little more freedom, letting the shroud burn away the broken tattoos along with the skin and, in some places, the flesh, taking the flute melody out of the general chorus again, making him smile wider and wider.

A needle of air, as thin as the hair of a furry caterpillar, as fine and indistinguishable to the eye as the stings of a jellyfish, as a roulade played around a campfire, unheard in the noisy city over the next hill. The needle is so thin that it passes through any defense, turning into a thread on which the predatory retribution will slip, the gnashing of teeth reduced in ecstasy. The first technique is only the beginning of the future embroidery, a point of direction, that is followed by the groaning triangle threads of the source, picking up the key to such a dodgy soul.

It was as if the creature were splitting, leaving behind an extremely real illusion, completing the key work, turning again on the flaming bird, crushing it with the weight of the Hardness, sucking its strength with the curses of the Deep, cursing it with the maddening foulness of the Blackness, replacing one source of power with another, completing the order of beat and rhythm, wasting no fleur or remodeling, crushing it with pure power. This sensation of hers, the gradual realization of her powerlessness and his superiority, coming into resonance with new aspects of her personality, born from the ashes of the past, burned at his will. Making her herself wait for a new blow, a new attack that will crucify her, naked and exhausted, give her what mere mortals, shaded by her power, are incapable of giving. Yes, some would say that the banal worship of power, more suited to Pride than Lust, is too bland, but it is not for them to tell a maestro of his level.

The Boy shows great chutzpah by somehow managing to redirect the strings of keys. Yes, yes, to one of the face-paintings that he transferred to the framing of the poets' fountain! It's so ludicrous that it's already offending a bit, frankly. Instead of the accusation of unworldliness comes a successive wave of Sun, Light, and Sky, a burning that burns its way through the monolithic walls of shadows and the reappearing two-colored landscape, a purification that washes away attempts to control reality with shadow magic without affecting the presence of Hell, and a pure peace that slows down not only the body of the one caught in the shadow blue but even his very thinking and reaction. The Sun managed to pierce the defense, dissipating with the chime of bells. Light poured out its truth with a trumpet voice, but Heaven failed. Silence became two-dimensional again, non-existent, escaping its fate. Sovereign was ready to cover the Drums with an extremely exciting and cunningly twisted binding contract, at the same time locking the silence in its plane, preventing it from coming out of its shell of perfect protection.

The power of Time was indeed great, as was the depth of the Eternal Dynasty's vaults. Not a single soul in his Domain had ever heard of the used item, nor was it a solitary note in the many reports and bulletins. The little amulet that had ceased to glow imperceptibly, the priceless Light of Unharmed, as the available seers immediately pointed out to him, had gone for a long, long recharge, having served its purpose. Even here, even in the epicenter of his power, this bling made him forget for almost a second the veracity of Prince Warudo's existence. It was as if another tune had been played over his melody, almost the same, but without the chord of the defiant Eternal. And he didn't waste this second, which was much longer for him, for nothing, not by admiring the charms of his future master, no.

Sovereign is forced to cut off both sets of attacks, focusing his essence on Warudo, who had already prepared his strike. The Prince steps forward in his most normal, not even accelerated stride, bringing the old and crudely chained two-handed blade in his hands up and slightly behind his head in a classic attack stance. A dozen magical blades, each stuffed with different contents, burst into action, the beginning of an overture, nothing more than a first tryout.

Sovereign is forced to cut off both sets of attacks, focusing his essence on Warudo, who had already prepared a strike. The Prince takes another step forward, ignoring the attacks that never reached him, which were just about to form in his grasp, almost frozen at his fingertips. This time, instead of blades, it is the coherent effect on the reality that comes into play, the promise of all the benefits, the distraction of dozens of small distortions undoing the Law's last instructions.

The loop is dull in its predictability, and it is predictable because it is nearly the strongest of the individual fight songs available to the Eternals. It is said the eleventh Emperor, Bai Grey, closed himself in such a loop, stopping aging and refusing to die, as well, as it is also said that his victims, fools who caused the ruler's displeasure or losers, could spend many years in the closed loop of time, dying different deaths time after time to brighten the sovereign's boredom. Bai was killed by his grandsons and aged sons, in the only case known to any chronicles, when one Eternal stood up against another - whether they were tired of waiting for their turn to take the throne, or whether time after time Bai, who rolled himself back into the standard, gradually went mad and stopped being human even to the small extent the silly Eternals were used to measure their humanity.

Sovereign is forced to cut off both sets of attacks, focusing his essence on Warudo already moving in his direction. The Flute-Warudo is a step closer, and the creature's attack, even though it reached its target, even though it had a chance of overcoming the encapsulation of Time around the cutie, hits the armor, predictably turning to zero. Well, he hadn't counted on it, but it was worth a try. From the side came a dense feather, one of the Drums' crowning techniques, a material Flame, solid and had its weight, burning even the incombustible, but, more importantly, creating at the point of touching a breakthrough into the depths of the primordial Forge, pulling out something that sometimes even she has no desire to pass through her own body. But Silence. Silence is silent, angry, and motionless, hiding something under the weight of an angry whisper.

Sovereign is forced to break off both sets of attacks, focusing his essence on Warudo, who is already moving in his direction. The feather disappears with the next loop, leaving behind a burned and immediately regrowing shoulder. He deliberately did not waste souls and strength on defense, knowing the spell would not have time to take hold, giving his first blood to Drums, letting the bloodthirsty sadism that had been nurtured in the flames grow. A risk, to be sure, but the kind of humming-sweet risk worth the possible feint from the flute that would weave a feather attack into the loop structure. Warudo is a smart boy, so he doesn't even try to be distracted by the deliberately displayed weakness, aiming to finish the technique by concentrating all his energies on one thing. Sovereign's counterattack goes in the direction of unpleasantly, nervously, a strange silence of Silence that does not take the opportunity, swaying in its weightless state, somehow already habitually stupidly held on the tips of his fingers, but the wound from the feather does not allow to finish in time, only to probe the essence, to understand what the musician who fell out of the orchestra is busy.

Sovereign is forced to cut off both sets of attacks, focusing his essence on Warudo, who has overcome half the distance, laughing as a little girl who received a plush knight as a gift for the fifth spring of her birth, followed by the other girls in his power, the same age, the same nature of laughter, only the toys, in their time, were given to each of them differently - a plush knight, a wooden soldier, a straw doll, a wolf cub forged by a skilled blacksmith from the remains of iron. All these toys appear side by side, taking on the flesh of the summoned warriors, not even trying to attack, though they can, but giving each of the three images of their girls. So, it is as difficult to hit him for a moment as it is for a mother and father to strike their sweetly laughing child to death. A combat application of the toys would have looked more spectacular, but there wasn't enough loop time. There were no new blows, though. And even the Flute stopped in place, missing a step.

Sovereign is forced to break off both sets of attacks, concentrating his essence on Warudo-Flute, who has taken another step closer. The devil is struck by a thousand fiery sparks, hardly hot, almost harmless, but each touch raises the heat of his own body a little. If he had been made of flesh instead of the music of Lust, he would have boiled from the inside out after the first dozen. But as it was, the Source of the Keys opened wider, releasing the accumulated heat into the still motionless Silence, which did not begin to dodge, not even into a flat state, which began to seriously disturb its future husband and father, wife and mother. What was this sweet creature up to, what chord was he preparing, why did he delay, why did he not strike the weaknesses that were more and more clearly revealed to him? Here is the Shadow, look, lonely and forgotten, look silent and hated, here I am weakening the defense, here I am creating a gap in the control zones adjacent to the body, here is an insufficiently blocked path in the gaze of my seeing, why do you delay, what are you waiting for?

Sovereign is forced to cut off both sets of attacks, focusing his essence on Warudo who had already begun to strike, realizing with irritation that he had not had time to hack, hack, and gut the response he had almost received. Silence, frozen and ceasing to change form faster than the beating heart of a tropical bird, somehow couldn't help but respond, but the work of the flute, the doom loop tainted by the despair of its creator, had time at the last moment. Very luckily. Warudo the Eternal had deliberately taken the risk, ignoring the danger of weakening the loop, ignoring the dozen attacks sent at him for decency's sake. And the foolish Drum-Sofia, succumbing for a moment to his sadism, was so eager to see his wounds that she only now ended the batch of sparks, reverting to classic, albeit over-complicated magic. In doing so, attacking with a carpet of fire, becoming a plummet into the fiery depths of Forge, such tired sidewalk stones and the faded signs on them. Even threw a couple of spears in the direction of the nearest petal, and good spears, hiding inside another one, and then another one, and then another one, and then another one, and so on a hundred times. He can't drink at once, redirecting will also have to one by one. He had to signal the petals and extinguish unnecessary trills. No loop could cut him off from his petals. Their melody was the same. He was them, and they had long ago become a part of him.

Sovereign is forced to break off both sets of attacks when the blade is ready to strike the first of the two only necessary blows, almost weaving it into the piquant melody. More than that, the blade is about to touch the body frozen in the loop when the noose rolls back again, only now at the command not of Warudo but of the prisoner himself. Please don't be surprised, dear Flute, dear boy! Who would come to such a battle without his own chronomancers in his petals and right under his heart? Who would do such an unsophisticated folly? Not he, no, not he, but all the others, including Warudo the Eternal, who only at the last moment managed to turn Time, though the devil did his best to prevent it by appearing where he had previously stood, imposing the essence of the loop on his Sovereign.

A light slap knocks off all the fury of the maiden covered with dozens of sharp, fiery spikes, frozen flaming tongues forged from her cruel anger, extinguishing this flame, dropping it on the already much slower stones covered with signs, tearing her heart out of her chest. The flaming Drums gave him one last death orgasm, burning to the ground and being reborn again, but the melody would not wait for that. Heart clenched in his hands, a hundred ritualists deep in his essence, structures instantly embodied, where the center of the ritual was the equally flaming reagent taken from his hot chest. Curse and attack, the finest work, even if all its genius is spoiled by the haste of creation, in all spectra perceived by the work of the one whose heart became the basis.

Legendary defenses of this sort would have been deceived by this chord, but Warudo's armors, the Duel of the Scoundrel's fame long before it was ruled by the Eternal Dynasty, recognized the trick. It was only a test layer, though, another layer that came much closer than the last. As soon as the shroud of Flame was scattered with sparks, it was reborn from the sparks, only now seeking to incinerate the still-silent Silence in its embrace. The Lust incarnation even had a thought, which had been hundreds of times debunked and verified, as if the summoned had simply decided to set up his allies, watch them die, and then try to finish what they had started, using the knowledge he had gathered about the devil's essence and his presumed fatigue. It was a pity, but such naive and deliberate self-sacrifice to the archdevil who loved him still seemed to him. The sorcerous roundels of the seers had not yet managed to break through the defense strengthened by inactivity and immobility but clearly recognized the truth of the threat. No. Silence was not waiting but was occupied with something too deeply hidden in Loneliness to draw an image instantly.

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Instead of a prepared attack, let off the leash, laid out on the table too soon, before the preparation was over, instead of a falsified melody, a wrongly taken note... Silence just went back to being two-dimensional, as if it hadn't been doing anything all along. This naughtiness is not just a turn-on. It demands an answer so the boy will not be allowed to do all sorts of strange things without seemingly doing anything. In a flash of flame, the Flame Maiden is born with a murmur of windpipes, and her Prince is rushing into battle again, speeding himself up so much he blurs into one silver line, preparing to strike with a cursed blade. The silver line breaks and the Prince goes tumbling as the Law abruptly refuses to obey about four steps from the target. Again, the flashes of signs trying to get under the armor, to dig into the pliable flesh, because the armor of timelessness for an infinitely short and immensely long moment faltered, glistened, whistled like a songbird in a cage about to be put into a furnace.

The armor keeps Flute, and the reborn maiden beats a fiery stroke, at the tip of which a storm of Flame is hidden, preventing the Emperor, as he still naively believes, from sinking into the malleable stone of the future. That stone turned into a lustful and lecherous swamp that was ready to take any shape and fill any hole, but the chronomancer stopped himself, paused in relation to the world, and it was necessary to lose at least a heartbeat to open this armor. Instead of opening, the melody changes tone for the umpteenth time that day and flares with its flame, not defeating the alien but letting it in, like putting out a fire with a conflagration. The maiden bends the charms and twists them into the right position, seeking to suppress the attempt, to join in the attack with a force not only her own but also the one opposed to it. Everything is correct, clever, logical, and calibrated, as he expected from her. After so many burnings, her master knows the toy better than she does, even without clairvoyance, anticipating the pattern of actions. Choosing the best of all possible options makes your choices predictable, Drum-Sofia. That's not graceful. It risks neglecting you.

The stream of flames looped, attacking the monochrome prison of silence building anew as Flute rolled his time back, emerging at the starting position. Flute was wrong. While he was paused, it was the first to arrive at the starting position, leaving an amusing surprise underfoot. The stone shrapnel with dozens of curses on its sharp chips predictably does nothing to the peach clad in his armor, but there, under the stone, a few dozen sparks flash in a mesmerizing rhythm. An old billet, from the days when it was still planned to take a young heir to the dynasty, was discarded for lack of resources and the right manpower. Nine perfectly matched and then refined to the true ideal of the souls of not very innocent maidens, completely suited to the tastes of Warudo the Eternal, as if nine ideal wives, lovers, and affairs, each of which corresponds to its archetype. Their souls are laid bare, their connection serving as a bridge in which there is no direct attack, only pure hypnosis, the alluring rhythm of colored sparks.

Warudo rushes out quickly, almost in time to burn away the sparks of the hidden amulet's spell in time to bring back the sparks of the lockpicks to his heart, but, by that moment, the Flaming Maiden is thrown aside, bleeding fire, and regenerating rapidly, the Flame repairing her torn flesh. Flute is forced to catch his servant, to cover her from a snow spear thrown in pursuit, seeming like a child's toy if it weren't for the distorted faces flickering in a chorus of snowflakes. The Prince panics a little, having correctly interpreted what had happened. His armors did not protect him, though they should have. Every artifact has vulnerabilities in the very nature of how they work, and Sovereign came very close to Duel of Scoundrel.

The monochrome bursts as Silence extinguishes the flame, forced to take another form, changing the essence again, but no longer in time to unravel the intent. Yes, the killing blow from the rainbow-colored astral beam only tears a piece of flesh from the huge Shadow, not threatening the existence of a more tolerable norm. The main thing is done - all three toys do not attack, all three are busy, all three can only appreciate his sketch, and afterward accept their fate.

As the trio breaks the distance in one way or another, the devil himself steps backward, stretching the space so as not to be interfered with, coming within two hundred elbows of the toys. The Source of the Keys opens wide again, releasing three deadly pale orbs of light, not phoned by any power, not perceived by any sense other than the visual. Three constructs, three reasons for the Lord's apparent passivity in this battle, for it was not easy to adjust them to each of the three personally, especially in the case of Flute, but there were no closed doors for him, no paths untraveled, no goals unattainable.

Again, a step. Again, he is in the center of the triangle, again on the line of attack, but no one attacks. All three spheres went out, became matte black, and then turned along the triangle so each cutie got the sphere of the neighbor to the right. And that's it. Now, he can take his time sorting and evaluating them, at the same time restoring the pressure on the Palace. Yes, the petals can cope without the direct participation of Sovereign, but one thing is not to give the Palace a break in a duel of tactical and strategic charms and quite another to win this duel. The second requires attentiveness, the concentration of effort to properly use the available knowledge, the keys to defense learned and brought out by espionage, to uncover known weaknesses, and, of course, not to damage the main prizes, now sitting in that Palace. It is worth it to get the Essences of the Eternal, it is worth it to take them, as this campaign, a small opera, a cute adventure, will immediately pay off, and a little later, after at least a decade or two, will pay off many times over!

And the trio beats in agony, for the essence of his attack is not even an attack, not even direct harm that can be burned in Flame, given to the Shadow, absorbed by mythical armors, or sent back in Time. The essence of the effect is not an attack in the slightest, does no harm, and can even be considered extremely, incredibly useful. In another situation, in another position and not on this day, the same Warudo the Eternal would have gladly accepted such a gift and would have paid for it with a mountain of gold and a couple of rarities from the family collection graded no lower than legendary. The design had its origins in the techniques of ritual psychic practices tied to ultra-long-range communication, capable of bridging the distance between continents. Not connected to any planar type, completely isolated, fragile, and requiring extremely fastidious adjustment to each of the participants of the conversation, the node-type communication network was finalized and supplemented personally by Sovereign and a couple of extremely ahead-of-their-time Ritualists and a Seers.

Those two knew exactly what they were getting into. Well, they thought so. They had voluntarily agreed to the contract with Hell, having double-checked it many times and making sure the threat to their souls remained within the limits of what was permissible. Strangely enough, they were not wrong. The Domain of Lust, famous for its mental effects on the personality even stronger than Pride, Laziness, or Despair, received no less, even more, from that contract than the other participants, and so they restrained their impulses to take the contractors themselves. They took them later, years later, when the readiness and constant expectation of some meanness prepared by the cunning creatures had passed. But that was a separate operation, not related to the mistakes in the contract in the slightest.

The connection itself was not a weapon, though the technology was of insane value, so much so that the tune of ringing coins, which could be obtained for it, even now, was given away by a slight regret. There had been plans to sell the development, in no way tied to Hell and its fleur, through its cultists or to the same dark elves, servants of the Dark Mistress, the self-proclaimed, but true to her children, Queen of the Pits, but they had held off. Largely because they had no means of controlling the receipt of payment by a method other than another invasion, and it was a little early for one.

The refinement, the reworking of the cohesive knot, could not be evaluated and was stored by Sovereign personally, tied to dozens of individual souls, weaving its melody into the general so imperceptibly that one would never guess. It was kept just for such situations when it was necessary to attack and win without attacking, threatening, and killing. When it was necessary to spice up the already spicy dish even more.

The Paradigm Shift didn't hurt, but it did something scarier and more delightful. It changed the personality of the participants. Not their memories, not souls, not life experiences, but only their personalities and their understanding of themselves, the nature of the one who was enclosed in the invisible circle. One shift and all three toys changed and remained themselves but became completely different, not as they really are. Not for long, because their power, which had permeated the essence of the whole trio, would bring back what had been lost, squeeze out the alien, and restore what had been taken away! But until that happens, the toys are completely defenseless, deprived of their power. The Drums of the Flame do not beat and do not murmur, falling silent and crashing against the wall of Loneliness. The River of Time flows without change until the one who rules it burns in the flames of the Forge. The hateful murmur of the Shadow, hungry for everything, does not reach those lost in the lines of the future and variants of the past.

Each of them was an ace, a consummate master, knowing their blood and their power, their archetypes, exceedingly deeply, becoming akin to them, drawing power from them, refusing to succumb to the temptations of even greater power, to fall forever. Shadow, Flame, Time - just three peaks, subservient to three personalities. But now the personalities have changed, the judgment has changed, the deep and incomprehensible even to themselves song that gives the lonely outcast to know Loneliness. Allows the impetuous and uncompromising maiden not to burn in her Flame. Allows the strong-willed and fearless prince to order the Law. Each of them appeared perfectly prepared to be someone other than themselves. And the habitual roles, the habitual power, the power that requires all-important control over it, felt insecure, unfit, weak. The one who has no hatred for himself and the whole world will not order the Shadow. The one who recognizes half-measures and concessions will not hold the Flame in his palms. The one who does not believe in his power and the right to everything will not dare to subdue the Law.

It will pass. It can't help but pass. It already has. It can hurt, especially with so much power, but the trio is persistent enough, and memory and soul will cope where the character yields, even if there are still some risks. Because of those risks, he, personally and with all his might, helps and protects the kids from themselves, not trying to corrupt or leave anything of himself behind... well, almost not trying. Because only these same fruits can be sweeter than the three forbidden fruits, but they are even more glorious, even more powerful!

Later, when they looked inside themselves. Each of them would notice and realize that this sugary, extremely sophisticated torture had not only kept them alive but had gifted them with some understanding of another's power. Not enough to unlock a new class or change one of the old ones entirely, but still generous enough to leave behind titles, inalienable gifts, and unique skills. Drums will be able to summon Shadow from the glare of their Flame, Flute will begin to not only rule Time but to burn it forever, and Silence will finally realize how truly Loneliness is Eternal.

Only now, they were defenseless. They had already let the devil into themselves simply because they had no way to resist, busy controlling the gut that was bursting out. His threads are already in them. It picked up the keys, already canceling Shadow Form, Fiery Fesh, and Closed Time. One more heartbeat, and he would be in them. The next beat and they would be his. And even the river of time will not delay this sweet moment, for he is watching the main prize of the battle, Warudo the Eternal, with a striking and astonishing wait, like the howling of the violin, the wailing of the cello, the sobbing of the bone keys and the creaking of the dust-covered trombones.

Hence, he triumphs, infusing, at last, the seed of vice into the longing caresses of the souls of the swee...

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So he missed the moment when Silence burst out, severing the threads of the Source with its clawed paws, tearing forward, right at the devil, who was somewhat confused by such a sudden outburst of willfulness, not expecting anyone to move after the Paradigm had been adjusted and triggered. The other two were already taken. They, already smiling at their dreams coming true before their eyes, already surrendered to him, and he held them close to him, especially Flute, which still had to be re-tuned in time to make the most important part of the future rhythm. A cascade of battle charms, which Silence, which has never fully recovered, cannot dodge, strikes at point-blank range, throwing him off and crippling him. He did not have time, poor thing, to take the plane. The elegant deception played the role, created by falsely singing souls, closed the premonition of the last of the first, dooming him to ...

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That's why he misses the moment when Silence bursts out, tearing the threads of the Source with its clawed fingers, breaking the distance and preparing some powerful attack. The devil's surprise is not feigned, but the counter-strike, simultaneously covering the victims already taken, is executed with the usual perfection, atomizing the impudent into pieces, or rather, atomizing the dupes, the powerful Shadow mutilated by the Overlord. Where did he find one here, inside the Eternal Dome? It must have crawled out of the underground vaults. There were a lot of vivariums there. They could have kept the Shadow on a tether. They could. Closely clutching the lovely Warudo, he prepares such a necessary chord, already ready...

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That's why it skips a mome...

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And the trio beats in agony, for the essence of his ata.....

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Again, a step, again, he is in the center of the triangle, again on the line of attack, but no one attacks. All three spheres extinguished became matte black and turned along the "triangle," so each cutie got the sphere of the neighbor rig...

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Another step, again he was in the center of the triangle, again in the line of attack, but before the spheres went out, Silence came to meet them, literally embracing the devil, losing its human and anthropomorphic appearance as it went, pushing the creature with its shoulder in a way that was not graceful. A swipe of a dagger, a perfectly ordinary dagger of good steel, looking cheap and slightly worn in every spectrum of perception available to Sovereign. Not taking advantage of the opportunity so compulsively given to kill or take the nearly defenseless Silence, the archdevil shifts himself to the side, exposing five layers of armor in front of him at once, as if five ghostly silhouettes had been put on his body. Each of them can cover almost anything, but something so successfully pretends to be nothing, mere steel, can ignore even that, just as Flute Blade would ignore this protection.

The Summoned stumbled back, letting both daggers out of his hands instead of continuing the attack, and at the very last moment, when the three binding gifts were already blackened, about to shift, he grabbed his gift with his hand. A two-dimensional, vile, empty, flat hand! And the weapon, invulnerable to any type of attack, absolute in its astonishing cunning, becomes just as flat, goes out of the world to the same place where the lonely Silence went!

For the first time in today's battle, for the first time in decades, if not centuries, a real roar comes from Sovereign's lips, a beastly rage that fills his essence, makes him put aside even Lust because what has so successfully become between him and his Vice is not worthy of that Vice. The Source spins in the rearrangement of the mechanism, changing positions and creating hundreds of figures with its threads. Every single seer ceases to follow the events in the city, focusing on what has and has not happened at the same time, the despicable act of Silence, called, loved, hated, lonely, and now no longer so caressing with its presence this day! He must understand and realize how it happened. Why it did not happen when it's already happened? How had Silence managed to avoid the bonding effect? How had it managed to restore his personality so impossibly quickly after the shift? What Shadow, what facet of his Hunger had given him such a thing? How had he discovered and accepted that facet?

And now, for the multitude of continuously coordinated creatures, Sovereign had fallen silent. In a single beat, he realized and dismantled what had happened, bringing the souls of the seers back to their original positions. With the loss of time. With a weakened efficiency that would go to full peak for many more hours, losing valuable initiative. However, the answer was worth it. Simply because without an answer, even if he won today, Sovereign would not be able to remember this day in peace and would not be able to admit that he had been outplayed.

Now he can.

Can.

Can!

The growl turns into a roar, and that changes to a howl. Whole streams of souls curl around the creature, merging into ribbons, and those ribbons turn into a tornado, in the ocean of which he continues his song, spilling out the accumulated resentment, sadness, and disappointment with an orgasm. He has not understood everything, but enough. Enough to realize - it wasn't the Shadow, it wasn't an artifact, it wasn't a cunning ally, a heroic Companion aiding the silence from afar. It was a classic distortion of reality, so characteristic of pure changelings, of the mighty Carriers of the first of the Laws, and, of course, of the Mirorerrs if they were brave enough to play with such powers.

Somehow, the devil was sure. It was as it had been recently in the White Hall, the Mirror, the Dream Realm, used right now, despite the Shadow-burning body that had lost all flesh, despite the active use of that cold and vile essence of Loneliness. Somehow, truly incomprehensible to both him and all his souls, the boy had used two sources of power simultaneously winning the life, time after time, putting everything on the line, absolutely everything, because the dice would only throw out hundreds because the coin would become a rib time after time because all other options reflected and broke.

Warudo and Sophia stood behind him, leaning tiredly against the stone fading from the touch of a black palm, who had managed to burn out the connection that had not worked, to accept the shift that had not worked here. They didn't just survive. They also accepted those gifts, absorbed them, and gained parts of each other's power, becoming closer to their donor than brothers. He wondered if Warudo would love his toy now that he carried a part of her Flame. He wanted to leave, just to let them survive and see the result. Usually, those gifted with the Paradigm were always taken by it or had been taken before, long before the honor was bestowed. There was no reason or desire to risk revealing such a tempting trump card under which it was so easy to corrupt truly powerful opponents.

Sovereign performs a new bow.

Not like before the battle began.

That bow is devoid of mockery, devoid of free invitation and sense of superiority, devoid of challenge and appeal, the direction of those who saw that bow closer to Lust.

No, now he's promising, he's not playing.

And instantly rushes to fulfill that promise.

The river of souls surrounding the devil's body struck with a lash, striking without bringing its blow to the mortals rallying at the opposite end of the square, who intuitively sensed that now they would not be taken prisoner as intact and whole as possible. The stroke of the lash was marked, followed by countless drops of golden glow, like scales thrown off by a huge snake. Each spark is another deadly effect, from the simplest and most iconic of Hell's blades to far more sophisticated contract magic, planar interactions, or simply deceptions that seek to drown out the white noise of the melody of premonitions and omens.

A fleur danced in a wave, lowering the intensity of the effect on the Palace, giving it a respite, interrupting Sovereign's long game of opening the minds and hearts hidden in the Palace. Some of the servants or servants' sycophants hiding in the corners had already heard his tune and had already let Lust inside despite all the barriers, but there was no way to reach the commanders or the mages behind the artifact defeat complexes. Only half of it had been passed. Now, he would have to start again, but the three who had dared to offend him would flinch when faced with what he had aimed at them.

The greater the fleur, the stronger it is, but the stronger the one who rules it, the subtler its effect, and it can be as subtle as the most caring lullaby, as rough as the heartless doom of the executioner's axe. Desires mature and perish under the oppression of an unruly will, the most bizarre fetishes sprout poisonous thorns, grown out of childhood complexes, secret desires, shameful fantasies, obsessions take away reaction time, indulge in paranoia, and all this under the growing excitement, the desire for love carnal but sincere, shameful but sublime, primitive but elegant. Fleur presses, oppresses, plunges into a trance from which there is no way back, and requires great strength to neutralize, at least partially, already committed. Someone simpler would have fallen just from this, as many of those who tried to stop his coming have fallen recently without even touching the collection of souls singing for him. Only the pure power of the native aspect would have sufficed.

These were not enough. They overpowered, like fools beating their foreheads against the mountainside, only here it was the mountains that broke first, not the heads. The cascade of drops, the surf mark of a river of tainted souls, was met with dignity. Weaker than what each of them could without the distraction of the fleur, but still worthy. One would have failed, two would have tried but fallen, but the three of them managed to resist, to sustain the first note.

The shadow opened its hungry maw greedily, a created breach leading not to those remnants, the despicable scrap of the plane that remained in the embrace of the falling city, but to its true depth. A depth so true that even he didn't want to look there for too long. Something that lived so far from reality would hardly be interested in the tiny window for him, but there was no desire to check. Droplets flow into the bottomless throat of blackness, only multiplying the reluctance to continue this coda, to bait and bait a possible guest. It's his table. He doesn't need other tasters, especially those capable of devouring the whole table in one breath!

The threads of the Keys whip the many-tailed whip, smoothing the universe, taking away the open wound so that it immediately recovers, brought back. The Keys strike again. The Source trembled in anticipation, making the inexorable Time tremble as well. Warudo fails first, ceasing to renew the cyclic loop, simply freezing and solidifying both the rift and the reality around it. With a clap, the soul burned and immediately reborn in the melody of Lust simply vaporizes a chunk of reality along with the rift frozen in timelessness.

The soul-drops do not stand still, do not fly in a straight line, they change their course to a more correct, melodious, proper! Before the carving was even done, they began to circle the rift from above and below, on the sides or diving into soul-droplets' kindred plans. The marks on the stones around the trio are damaged, and the carpet of flesh is gone, but even the remnants are enough to intensify the fleur, to drill through the defenses of their minds, to burst into their heads with a flood of new depravity. Everyone sees his own. Everyone wants his own and, in his fantasies, gets what he wants. A fiery tornado, more likely even a ball, a perfect sphere of Flame, inside which the insolent and foolish try to hide, is covered with multicolored spots, trembles and extinguishes, loses its charge and guiding will. The drops merge into a pattern, thin ribbons, autonomous constructs of pure souls, so equalized by their Lust that they have become a single organism, multifaceted and deadly.

The sphere burns out. It burns a part of the spiritual parasite so that the burned will be reborn again because having become one, the golden slime, the honey golem, has the right to rebirth no worse than Sophia, as long as even one drop of it is alive. It almost embraces the fiery maiden in its clammy embrace, but Warudo, despite all the opposition of the fleur, the ritual signs, and the Source threads climbing to the open skin, manages to freeze the construct. Flute retreats. It manages to retreat only because his armor protects him from almost everything, even the fleur, however skilled and impersonal it may be, unrelated to Sovereign and not under the jurisdiction of mythic armor. Silence again employs the familiar technique, rendering flat not only himself but also what he has touched, sharing the burden of Loneliness with his chosen victim. Souls. Almost all relatives. Almost all volunteers from a cult that has long since died out in voluntary sacrifice perish forever, never to return to the petals. Moreover, even the very attempt to return, even a fraction of them had damaged one of the petals, tearing out several hundred more snuffling silhouettes, the closest to the slots occupied by the stolen ones.

What an amusing trick, what a profound insight into the plane! The summoned boy could have saved that trump card. He had some chance of using it directly against Sovereign. He had, but they were low. He was the Domain. Even if the boy had managed to catch him, to force him into physical intimacy in a not at all desirable sense of the phrase. The creature would have something to repel such an ultimatum, something to respond to, something to prevent the inevitable. A creature made of a hundred souls made identical to each other to a degree greater than the reflection in a mirror had no such argument.

Oh, mirror, mirror!

Sovereign does not understand the method, and it would be irresponsible to seek it now. The search would require too much of what must be invested in other matters, but the basis of the trick is clear. A mirror that has been broken, a reflection that has swapped places with reality - a trick incredibly difficult and just as old. Few can repeat it under the skies of Alurei, few literally. The local mirrors have their own master, their own Overlord, and his will means an awful lot to the dreamers. And even so, it wouldn't be a problem... but it would be bland, sounding like a nonsensical excuse for missing a key, reeking of their weakness, stupidity, and short-sightedness. The Mirror is cunning and insidious, but it's not so dangerous in direct combat because it's bad enough the Mirrorman is forced into direct combat. After all, you can shatter hundreds and thousands of mirrors without finding that one reflection in which you survive.

The knowledge is not alphabetical, not the kind of knowledge taught in magic and adventure guilds or even aristocratic families, but he has it. And right now, knowledge is useless a little more than completely! Dreams he can resist, he can make those Dreams come true and give new ones, only already belonging to Lust, but he feels no Mirror, none at all. Only a Shadow of immense volume and thickness, applied by the willful Silence, a power most unfriendly and dangerous to any devil, from a mere demon to Sovereign himself. Behind this armor, he sees no way to reconcile two planes so opposite nor the mirror that has been shattered time after time with the developments that Silence himself has labeled unfulfilled. It is not difficult to deceive, it is not difficult to interfere in the process of breaking, there are the necessary souls, and one can also try with a pure fleur, but because of the Shadow, absolute, uncompromising, ruthless, ignorant of any Vice, such a fragile and vulnerable looking-glass mechanism cannot be reached, pierced or even felt.

Only to break along with the silence and his Shadow.

A counter-strike, a battering ram of light, forcing Silence to remain in its invulnerability, swooping over him with a thousand blades. A torrent of muddy water, like an avalanche, forced Flute to use the Law again. A gust of icy wind extinguished Flame. And the continuous pressure, with each step, each spell, quickening and quickening. A sea of souls, a cloth shining with lights, sheltering the creature, keeping it safe and preventing it from even thinking of a counter-attack. All three do not think, nor do they try to escape. It is clear to them, as the most obvious of all possible solutions, that there is no escape. It is beneath their feet they have burned the marks on the stones, made them stones again, but all around them, everything is ablaze with multicolored lines, sorcerous symbols, and foul Lust. They are caged, driven like beasts, and all they can do is nurture their anger, turning to despair and determination to die as late as possible, a tune too familiar to the devils to disturb their own.

Time is replaced by Flame, a cloud of fleeting sparks and the ash they create, covering half the area, even if for a brief moment. The cloud blows away, expels, and presses out of its place, but the nature of the sparks is already fleeting. They exist in a matter of heartbeats, like a single flap of a butterfly's wing. They, too, are Flames. They, too, burn, but only raw power, not destroying the patterns around them but turning a mere crumb of the big picture into nothing. It introduces dissonance, disrupts the integrity of the cell, and makes him spend power to remove the cloud.

Beneath the sparks, the blackness is already hidden, a clump of shadows on the rise. Within which shadows flicker alive. Small, fragile, useless here, they would be nothing if it were not for this cloud if it were not for the suspiciously familiar creature in the depths of blackness, the same one that had served as a deception and victim in the unfulfilled event, taking the blow instead of silence. He responded to the Shadows with the Sun, igniting a huge ball of golden light directly over the square, not only nailing the blackness to the ground, closer to the ritual lines, but absorbing the blows of higher magic sent from the Palace and a couple of other points. Someone realized that his onslaught was weakening, and someone decided to take advantage of it.

The Sun in the miniature burns brightly and evenly. In tact with the souls of its adepts singing with passion, a couple of which still cannot stand it and go deep into the petals to restore their almost burnt essences. Here, the sent ones become three, they are five, here they are nine, and here is the first real death, which will not be corrected after the current melody is over. But the man-made Sun is not just blazing. It absorbed most of the charms that attacked the square and exhaled a huge beam downward, pressing the trio harder and sending the rest of the force over the horizon. A little towards the Palace to remind them of caution and a sense of tact, the rest on the defenseless circles of battle mages and bearers of legendary artifacts who carelessly revealed insufficiently protected positions. The solar stream is followed by other attacks, more sophisticated and correctly chosen. However, they are worse than before - the visionary attacks interrupted earlier have not yet returned to full power, so they have to spend a little more energy, to compensate with superiority where they cannot strike with absolute faith in immediate victory.

The downward-pointing solar hammer is stopped and returned to its starting position, pushed back in Time to a moment when it did not exist. The world flashes, and the river continues its eternal course, taking with it the composition thrown into its waters... to reveal the crystalline anvil hidden within the solar creation. The creation, based on an extremely specific perception of the power of the Earth, is barely phoned at all, and the slight fluctuations it emits are lost amidst the fury of the Sun. The anvil falls downward with the speed of a bullet fired from an elite lead shotgun, but before it comes both, an overwhelming heaviness and a prismatic effect as the rays that hit the druzy crystals refract and return.

The black-and-white world extinguishes crystal magic, slows down the anvil's fall, sucks out its strength and fortress, even the Severity of the Mountains, an indispensable attribute of any high-level Hardness technique, seems to weaken, transferred not to the victims' bodies, but to the whole monochrome world at once, immediately becoming much lighter and more tolerable. A new loop of the Law, and then Warudo the Eternal, the strongest of the three, was the first to use his newly acquired knowledge, the first to understand how to use it. The frozen souls of the great magician, one real and two forged, which he wanted to pay with instead of his own, which even now are trying to overcome the freezing, begin to blaze with colorless and smokeless flames. And as soon as the anvil began to blaze, so did the captive soul, which had been saved at the very last moment, unlike both fakes. A second and Eternity merged into one, turning the crystal into nothing, and this nothing will be unrestored by any other chronomancer, and the same breaking of the mirror would not help a bit. Everything can be burned, even Time, even Death, even Eternity - Sophia knew it, and now Warudo had accepted the new truth.

The execution of those who spoiled his melody continues, without stopping, without giving a break, ignoring any attempts to avoid the obvious, leaving only fruitless fluttering and hope to do something. And the devil is getting closer, walking as leisurely as the flute that chained him in a noose was walking earlier, the glow of the chorus of fires becoming more and more dazzling, more and more golden flames and honey all around. With each step, with each approach of Sovereign, reality gave way, replaced entirely by Hell - the final descent, the stage of stitching together the Eternal and the Domain. It should have happened later, gentler and less hastily, but the resistance of mortals not realizing their happiness has confused too many things. The plan is designed for more than that. It will bear even more losses, more lost ritual points, and more small defeats. The durability of the majestic plan is unimaginable to the primitive mind.

Every moment, mortals all over the city are weakening, prayers that barely work are becoming more and more useless, even those crumbs of planar skill that are still available to weaklings are disappearing, classical magic is failing, rituals are no longer working as they should, stationary defenses are beginning to split into threads, spatial pockets, and hiding places are manifesting in the main layer. His loyal and vicious servants only grow stronger, more resilient, and dangerous, even the small visps, which in another situation can be destroyed simply by throwing a purse of iron filings at them.

The trio is already on its last breath despite the fact that they are covering each other, regularly changing places, giving the others a rest, and gathering strength for a new technique. The transition is getting harder and harder for them. Less and less often, they snap back in a sharp counterattack. More and more often, they have to combine forces, and less and less often, those combinations work. Warudo speeds up both himself and the others. The Summoned One takes on his soul all the flux of fleur as the most invulnerable to its nature. Sophia just fries a continuous volcano, giving out such amounts of power that she twice had to burn herself and recreate herself again because of the injuries received from overstraining.

Another wave of droplet sparks, a torrent of honeyed wind throwing the boys and girl who had angered him to the very edge of the square, pinning them against the walls of the nearest building, a jewelry store of sorts. Sovereign is not worried about their escape because there, behind this dilapidated building and then another, slightly more intact, his petal is already placed and moved. He is determined to drive all three of them into it, for neither rebirth nor the ability to become flat nor the armor of the Duel of the Scoundrel will help against such a thing. The latter caused the most trouble, even more than Silence did. Just from Silence, it is more offensive. The armor forces you to attack non-directly, even more non-directly than usual. The souls of dozens of artifactors are blazing with the fire of desired agony, hopelessly burning one after another, but thus weakening the uncomfortable armor, allowing at least so, but to harm the boy who put it on. Flute is the only one who could escape if he took the risk, but he doesn't. He doesn't believe in his chances, fears the trap, and thinks the creature wants to separate them. Rightly thinks it does and really wants to. It would be more comfortable that way. Any of the three of them, even the Prince dressed in mythical armor, even the Silence combining two planar powers, he would defeat in a few beats, and he had already managed to twist the unburnable Sophia into a lecherous knot.

The three of them are still fighting back, but that resistance is over.

Having cornered the three, having brought them to the right position, Sovereign struck the decisive blow, recognizing to himself that now he was almost no longer holding back, just playing sparingly, keeping the most sonorous instruments, trying not to damage the overall melody, not to let falsehoods into it. He used not the strongest tricks in his arsenal, spent souls comparatively weak, of little value, used not the most powerful blanks. And yet he was winning, simply because he was playing to win, not for the sake of more moaning and shouting - and all three of them had nothing to say against that.

He does not need to breathe, but his humanoid body imposes certain obligations and requirements, if you will, which you may not follow, but it is better not to neglect. The gesture is not necessary for him, but for the souls he attracts to the technique he performs, confirming once again that the devil is largely made up of what is stored inside his sonm. The exhalation is accompanied by a flow that induces madness at the mere sight of it, a sea shaft, a moving pile of jumbled translucent bodies, even now never ceasing their orgy, the last and never-ending.

The flow, even by itself, can destroy a large fortress because of the power invested in it, the inertia, and the amount of power constrained in the ecstasizing bodies, but this is only the top of the mountain. Every touch of these bodies binds the toucher to this orgy, to each of the ghostly silhouettes, binds you to them, makes you feel their caresses and desires, love and tenderness, purity and piety, lust, and depravity. One touch will not break them, but the first one will be followed by the second, third, and hundredth. It's not just skin-to-skin contact, not even blade-to-ghost flesh, no. Any enchantment that holds your power is as valuable to the Panopticon of Lust as you are. Kill half of them and disintegrate them with Shadow or Flame, but every small victory is another step toward defeat. And you will join them, unable to resist the temptation, finding a silhouette to your liking, to your taste, and tasting your passion, becoming one of the brightest stars in this sea.

And by entering, by recognizing yourself as part of this masterpiece, by giving your first orgasm, by losing some of your flesh, and by becoming a little more transparent, you will revive those whom you had previously disembodied. This is as far above contract magic as altering reality is above ordinary illusions. One of his most failsafe toys. It's even a shame to have to give all three of them to the Panopticon specifically because they're too colorful, desirable, and delicious. Even he can't take them back once he's given them. There are things, there is a Lust that is beyond Sovereign's control. He will still chew out Flute as the most necessary thing in its pure state, but the other two are no longer his and never will be.

As a finale, the main note of the event, a special structure is woven into the very essence of the Panopticon, which does not allow one to retreat from its path. The literal impossibility of doing anything but trying to defend or destroy, on the level of the world's Laws, and accepted automatically. Neither affinity to the plane, mantle goods, rescue amulets, or evacuation anchors will help. This effect is created by the participants of the orgies themselves, which is their original property, like the property of fire to burn, water to evaporate and freeze, and Lust to conquer.

They understood the nature of the attack, though each in his way and none to the end. They understood, but they refused to accept their fate, hoping for something and not rushing to give themselves willingly, which was not even pleasing, too tiresome. Silence was the first to respond, self-assuredly believing that his Solitude would save him even from this. It could have if he had not prepared the Panopticon beforehand. His trick of breaking the mirror wouldn't save him, either, because he had to want to use it, and if he did, he had to be able to control the moment when reality and the mirror switched places.

The ground blackens, shadows crawling over it and covering it all. The boy puts all the reserve he has, immediately replenishing it and putting in more. Flute again restores the replenishing skill, allowing recovery, and the ground disappears, leaving only a hole in the deep Shadow. This time, the dip is even wider and even more unpleasant. Such a hole, such a window could be peered into by those older than the Ancients. But his trump card is higher than that, where the bodies writhing with passion touch the rift, it closes, dims, and brightens, and the silhouettes themselves do not fall in by a single fingernail. The rollback hits Silence in full force as more and more silhouettes touch the rift filled with the boy's power. He retreats into himself, stops feeding his charms, and tries to deny the Lust that is building up, but the fantasies that burst into him come from the very depths of his subconscious. They cannot be banished or overcome because they are part of you, just elevated to absurdity.

The Flame rained down powerlessly, barely burning the silhouettes rushing at the forcibly motionless victims. The few wounds on them did not heal, but simply disappeared, consumed by Lust and reborn in it, followed by Sophia of Flame falling to her knees and moaning furiously, mixing hatred with ecstasy, floating on the waves of the two opposites. Well, the real Summoned was much more resilient, much more resistant, but she was excused by the time spent in the arms of Sovereign, during which he had managed to put too much into her lovely head.

The walls of stopped time, the self-enclosed segment of history, also remain ignored, for the Panopticon passes through them only slightly slower, not removing the effect but simply not falling under it. They are the Law in a way, what the Laws to them are different, what are the orders of a future Emperor. He has no future. By falling under the dictates of the will, the obligation to accept the Panopticon's challenge, it is as if the victims fall out of the power of anyone else. Even he is now unable to interfere with his creation, only to watch, beginning anew to crush the Palace garrison that had rejoiced, once again taking the assaulting squads, the few remaining agents inside, and the freshly converted traitors under his sights. The keys were almost found, the locks were almost opened, and all that remained was to press on.

He doesn't notice something wrong right away, shamefully missing whole moments before he realizes what has happened. In his defense, the probability of such a turn of events is not only low, but it had seemed to him until today to be strictly negative.

The newcomer appeared just inside the perimeter outlined by the petals, suddenly and wrongly. It was not a needle prick of a blink that pierced reality and connected two points, not a guiding thread of the Trail or an impossibly stretched step along the dusty Road, not even a laceration of forced teleportation that cut the fabric of the universe with blunt scissors. The one who appeared did not arise at a certain point in space but instead pulled space toward itself. And, it would seem, let him, because the guest appeared strictly opposite to the Panopticon, which was surging with waves and a priori falling under its Law. At first, it seemed so to Sovereign, until he looked closer until he saw until he understood.

The tall, thin old man of the human tribe, at least outwardly human, inspired no fear, no apprehension, not even desire. Haggard, as if he had been starving for months, resembling an inferior dead man even more than the dead men themselves, staggering faintly in the nonexistent wind. It seemed he could have been killed by the mere presence of not even an archdevil but any devil of any significance. It seemed as if this body, clad in tattered and faded robes, was going to die right now. But the old man stood there, under the weight of the fleur, under the storm of energies, under the gaze of the Panopticon that looked upon him and did not die.

And then there were the chains, partly hidden beneath the ragged cloth and partly hanging openly from the weary body, jingling with rusty links where the rust hid the black, raven-winged metal beneath. Sovereign could have realized in advance who he saw, could have realized, and perhaps would have even had time to take some action. But he had not had the thought, not even the right to think that it was even possible to see this abomination here and now, on this day. The old man raised his head, gazing at the silhouettes of bodies that had long ago given up their eternity with colorless and dim eyes, looked at them, and stepped towards them. The Shadows had already disappeared, the Flames had already stopped raining down fire, and the first of the princes was no longer able to cry out to the River of Time. But even if they had continued their attacks, this degenerate would have stepped through the spell with the same indifferent and indifferent fatalism.

Not because he was invulnerable, not because he wasn't afraid of wounds, and not even out of a desire to die beautifully, but purely from the realization that he wouldn't be able to die anyway.

Step.

Moments are deaf to the pleas of the Law, and the speed of change of event in this battle is such that not even five minutes, not even three minutes, have passed from the first bow performed to this second! Nevertheless, the old man's words are spoken unhurriedly and deafeningly, hoarsely and nightmarishly in their incurable abomination, impropriety, and perdition. Such a thing must not exist anywhere, neither under Heaven nor in the glorious Hell blessed by all Vices. It has no right to exist because it must disappear, disappear without a trace, along with all that it brings to the world!

But the words have been said.

"No man shall pass where Faith has fallen." The words were not loud, but they literally seared into the essence of anyone who dared to hear them, regardless of their desire, and caused the supreme devil the utmost, concentrated hatred.

The sea of mating silhouettes seemed to swoop over the coastal rocks, stopping and trying either to bypass the madman who had stepped forward or to roll back at all, but the construct, its precious Panopticon, was terribly late, not having time to complete the rebuilding, to release the already marked victims, the future brothers and sister.

"Thousands of hopes have faded irretrievably." The glowing silhouettes of the merciful Lust of the fortunate few locked away in the Panopticon are not faded, no, polluted, covered with nasty wounds, putrid stains, touches of the same abomination that fills the old man.

The Panopticon was doomed. Doomed from the start with no chance against the freak stood in its way. The moment the construct incorporated the new member, bound it by an inviolable Law, and imposed a contract that was meant to be a weapon of the construct and not against it, it was over. Because the contract was done, and this one needed nothing more to pass on its contagion. Cursed, forgotten, and deprived of absolutely any rights, hated by the devils even more than by the humans, who are also hated, unable to die in any way, even if he tries his best to cut his life short.

"Thousands of unanswered lights." The Panopticon chokes and tries to act in response. But any transmitted pleasure, all the Lust of the world, the most selective Vice, seems to fall into a bottomless well, not even breaking the old man's step, not even breaking the rotten rhythm of his melody, in which only the tired ringing of corroded chains can be heard.

There is no enemy more fearsome to a devil than the Shadow. Everyone knows that. It is shadow magic that inflicts more damage on the inhabitants of Hell. It is the Shadow that protects against fleur and soul magic better than other shields. It is for the Shadows that any devil is only desirable prey. But this is all nonsense, fleeting and uninteresting, just a law of nature, the dilemma of predator and prey, shepherd and wolf. Some hated all things in their Loneliness, and though their hatred of the devils who dared to experience happiness in Vices was a little stronger than usual, the Shadow saw no difference between them and all other victims if they could even realize such thoughts. The latter treated the former like a deadly predator, vicious, merciless, and utterly boring because a Shadow could not be seduced, only killed by a lethal dose of flair.

What the devils truly hated, regardless of the domain or aspect of the Vice, was now before Sovereign. Whether it was Pride, Agony, Lust, Sloth, Despair, or Malice, it didn't matter. This opponent, these devils, are not so dangerous in battle. It is easier to defeat them, it is easier to fend them off, and it is not difficult to avoid conflict, but no one avoids it because the devils, whose essence is the enjoyment of Vice, perceive the latter as the embodiment of primordial Evil. The evil that cannot be spoken to cannot be argued with or changed. The evil that takes from itself and all those who get in its way is the only thing that devils embody and for which they exist.

Behind the old man's back fluttered lengthened chains, knotted and tentacled against the purple sky, and there, beyond those chains, could be seen... as if through a window to another place, like a gateway without a gate. There are lights like the sparks of his stored souls, so terrible in their distinction. They do not blaze with Vice nor howl in ecstasy, enjoying their position and all its delights. They are not the fires of souls but of Candles lit in innumerable temples that are long gone. The lights of Candles that have long since burned out but have no right to go out completely - dim, tired, and filled with infinite doom.

The Panopticon had fallen, infected, tainted by the same contagion that plagued the other fires, part of no sonm, but of an absolute prison from which there was no escape, in which there was no hope of change, nothing but another man's duty, another man's fate, and another man's death. Before Sovereign of vicious Lust stood the high priest of the dead God, the agent of the will of the infernal creatures into which the divine host, its Servants, Creatures, and Heralds had turned. Before the devil stood not a man but an infernal, a vile demon, rotten and moldy, not knowing happiness and taking it from everyone else. Absolutely unkillable, always resurrecting anew, a creature that had no right to die without the will of God, but no God either, only the memory of him, only his bitter glory.

An Inferno prisoner is easy to defeat. Especially for a devil. Especially given all the hatred the latter has for the former. Infernals can defile naked souls, can absorb and then ignore any amount of fleur because even if they wish to succumb to it, demons cannot overcome their nature. But direct combat, attacking with techniques and strikes used through the souls, would simply beat the demon into dust, giving victory to the devil. Victory as decisive as meaningless - dying demon will be reborn again, will rise in the garden of the divine that gave birth to him once, even if God is no longer there. They will rise in agony. They rise against their will and continue their life without purpose and without the will to live. Even the weakest of them are incredibly difficult to kill permanently, and the really strong ones cannot be stopped even by Sovereign. True, in front of him is not a true demon, but only almost become one. And, in order to test his unkillability, the devil will spend a great deal of effort, which will probably be the only outcome, which they will both be equally happy.

The panopticon was lost, to the last not believing in its finale, to the last, hoping that embracing each other would save them all from becoming new Candles, new lights behind the nameless bastard's back. To the last, his Law held on, not allowing the devil to help. To snatch his jewel from the jaws of eternal torment. The new enemy was no match for him. Even if he took the side of the rest of the trio, and the trio accepted help, he was still stronger than the four of them, still victorious, even if it was now getting really dangerous. Somehow, even without sight or his intuition, the devil knows and realizes this melody with every fiber of his being, every movement of a petal, every sweep of the thread of the Source - the mortals will accept this help.

And for that, he will destroy them.

He will destroy them all.

Silently, without giving away the theatricality and beauty of the music around them, one creature steps towards the other. Behind the first, all the power of the Domain, all the sophistication of Lust, all the experience of tens of millennia. Behind the back of the second is only his chains, only his agony, and the lights of the Candlelight that is not even here, not in his power, but just visible to their agony in that dungeon where their link to the Infernal has sent them. Behind the back of the first is a superior force that could slay a dozen of these rogues, a superiority of experience and arsenal. Behind the second, three mortals chose between two evils, the alliance with which is more favorable to them. After all, the glorious and magnificent in their stupidity, the endowed have rarely seen evil - what they consider evil - from demons, far less often than from devils, many times less often.

They clash for the third time, and everyone realizes this round will be the last.

Only now, it is not the lonely Shadow with the echo of Dream behind him, not the Flame, not the Law alone that opposes Vice.

Against Vice came out the last competitor, letting the capital defenders take the devil not in a triangle, but in a cross.

Inferno has spoken its quiet and pain-filled but very weighty word.

The last to stand against Vice was Sin.

* * *