* * *

Every phenomenon, every force, has a point of resonance, after which there is a decline, after which anyone or anything overcomes it and leads to defeat, and the quartet that had replaced the trio had come dangerously close to finding that point. Individually any of them remained what they were still as a trio, but only by gaining the support of the cursed one did their combined efforts really become enough to create serious tension. Sovereign could still throw every available force into the battle, simply crushing with pure might where pure art was already lacking, but that would be exactly the same defeat they were trying to force upon him with direct combat.

Domain has lost too much, which means he has lost too much. Domain has sacrificed too many, which means he has sacrificed a part of himself. Domain has bet everything on this moment, which means he is also part of this bet. He is the top chip on the playing table, the first and last note of the symphony of Lust, which will either complete the centuries-long plan with a resounding crescendo or equally resoundingly die with the entire bet. The Descent is entering its final phase. The last attempts to attack the ritual points are being pressed all over the city. The mortals who have not yet given themselves up are being driven into dumb defenses, but interrupt the Descent now, and everything will collapse. Even if they manage to keep Eternal in Hell if they don't let it go back, it won't go to him, but to the other Vices, just as he will go to them, along with everything he has and everything he owns but can't hold.

The boring prose of the universe, from which even behind the thickest fleur, you cannot hide. The right is the one who has the power, who has the numbers, who has the resources. Putting everything, opening the rear and deprived of the right to retreat, he will either gain or lose. But he will lose to the end, to the edge, to the impossibility of getting up again. He will not be allowed to do so in Hell, and an attempt to escape beyond it will meet the wrath of ascended rulers and angry mortals. They are so sweet in their desire to punish any attempt to reveal to them the truth of pleasure. Their melody never hears, never willingly accepts the melody of Vice, whatever he may be. He always has to sing first and whisper the right words, without which no acceptance can begin. No pure and joyful love can happen.

It is the last of the four, the cursed Infernal, so loyal to a dead god that he almost became a demon himself, accepted the burden of Inferno, and renounced everything and everyone for the sake of.... for what? For the mere right to be more miserable than anyone else? The vile thirst to know the torment itself and to transmit it like a contagion to all who dare to touch the carrier of that contagion was the reason why Vice hated Sin, why Hell fought Inferno at every opportunity. It was a pity the renunciates themselves did not often give that opportunity, being too absorbed in their heavy burdens to make a serious impact on the world; only rarely did they break out of their shells, and only rarely did one of them manage to meet the others.

The vitality of demons and their servants knows no bounds and has no analogs. The very nature of Inferno grants the most painful of all possible forms of immortality, unwanted and unsolicited, but very useful in battle if the demon forces that battle. Even the lowest Servant, who has lost his God, distorted by his dead power, is difficult to destroy even for legendary creatures. Not all of them can do it. It is almost pointless, useless, and harmful to destroy truly High Servants or Heralds. They will be resurrected, and in perdition, they involuntarily share their curse with the killer, even if they do not resist.

The old man requires a special approach, a battle tactic suitable for the demon, tied to pure planar damage and minimal consumption of souls, which, from the mere presence of Sin, turn into candle lights that immediately go out, forever carried to the halls of Inferno. It is not difficult to damage the demon with pure attacks, even if it has not yet managed to atomize the old man's body completely. It's his chains. Extremely unpleasant artifact of unknown nature cursed nature, one touch of which also curses, also burdened with someone else's pain, the pain of someone who has nothing to lose, whom it is pointless to comfort, who does not care about all the promises. Even the melody of the old demon-worshipper does not sound like a song, even if it is sweet and sad, but only like the gnashing of teeth and the clanking of chains.

His mere presence forces him to use a minimum of fleur, a minimum of direct mental manipulation, reducing the arsenal to obscenity, to the point of calling this arsenal boring, bland as a wafer! And the others do not help, do not hurry to turn their blows against the demon, fighting with the devil, accepting the old man in their ranks, opening their arms, as if they do not understand what they are doing, who they are helping. Why? Why do they accept Sin but refuse Lust and Vice? Had he not promised enough, had he not yet shown how much better it would be for them to be part of him, part of his melody?

Flute and Drums work familiarly. They have been together for a long time, long accustomed to feeling their partner at their side, honed their interactions in a multitude of drills and sparring sessions, becoming an extension of each other's will. Grinding and clanking were alien to their shared melody as alien it was to Sovereign. They had never worked with them, had never bonded with their song, nor would they wish to, nor would they pass on their pain for no reason. They were all worthy of their strength. They had achieved it by labor and talent, adjusting to each other unbelievably fast, becoming more and more like a single organism, a well-oiled machine, but no talent could compensate for the absence of years of fighting brotherhood.

But there was also Silence, the poisonous stiletto supporting the heavy hammer of Flame, the towering shield of Time, and the lances of Sin, serving as the link that bound them all together, that gave them a guiding will. Consciously or not, but in his hardest battle, the Summoned, the Ultimate of the Heroes, felt the power that elevated the unnecessary soul taken from his homeworld, a soul superfluous in every way, doomed to a gray and empty existence, that made him a Hero. Because, at that moment, planes, attributes, titles, classes, and artifacts were purely secondary. Because he's doing exactly what a not summoned but Summoned One should do - channeling people's passion, giving it a vector, setting the direction of a forest fire.

From the outside, anyone would have recognized it as advanced clairvoyance which he used to bind them all into one, to screen out attempts to interrupt or infect that bond with Lust, always helping someone else's premonition to know, helping to pinpoint exactly what the other three wanted to do now. If they were real, if they were the Hero and his Companions, now, having gained the support of the fourth member, they would win. They would crush the strong but constrained Sovereign, tear away his defenses, hunt him down, and drown out his melody with their own. He did not realize it at once, but when he did, he laughed a pure and happy laugh. This day had given him something even greater than he had originally wished for. It made him feel mortal again.

It was their lack of coherence, mistrust, and realization that they would turn their weapons against each other if they lost their common enemy. And blood would be shed, Flames would burst, Shadows would wail, and Time would freeze! But the enemy is there, the enemy destroys them, the enemy keeps them, and they live for him, live his moment, his rhythm. They are dangerous. They make the figure of the supreme devil dance across the square of the poets. They give no time or respite and do not let him concentrate his forces into a truly crushing attack.

And yet it's still not enough.

The Flame meets Chill, and its heat is followed by a dozen astral hammers, pounding the remnants of fire sorcery into the shield of stopped time, stone shrapnel piercing a dozen holes in the body of the chained Infernal, forcing the Shadow to cast away many tentacles, to change shape and essence again. The wounds on the old man's body sizzle and sizzle, blackened, not regenerating, but simply refusing to stay in their wounded state. The devil ignores the counterblows of the chains against the shining iron barriers, the attempt to slow down time again. He thinks not only and not so much with his body but with his petals. They cannot be frozen, and cannot be slowed down. The apt and vicious blows with shadow hooks are atomized by the counter outburst of Light and Heaven at once, after which Heaven raises a protective formation, a true bastion, buying time for a new turn.

The bastion rots and rusts under the weight of demonic magic, torn by the claws of the insect-like Shadow, while fireballs white with heat fly through the openings, each one unfolding into something unimaginable, like spherical cages growing into themselves, holding not even fire in the center, but a needle piercing to the very depths of the Forge. Warudo exhaled tiredly, having sped up his Summoned to make sure she had time to accomplish a small feat despite the damage to her health. Blood from her eyes, nose, and ears shows flatly, unquestioningly what she has done was not easy, but Warudo pays the price, and she is ready to pay for it as many times as ordered.

He wraps all the cages in a foggy blanket, like a thick, fleecy plaid that smells like a damp basement and a musty pond. The Mist drinks the heat, seals up the punctures like a cork, shuts off the power, and extinguishes the technique before it does any serious damage. Yet the burns all over his perfect body remain, though they heal faster than they appeared. The small wounds are not dangerous, but they are offensive. They pepper the melody of battle, let him feel the pain, savor it, win, and overcome it. The answering blow, an inky harpoon from the deepest Abyss, pierces the heart of the still unrecovered maiden, turning her insides to liquid, forcing her to burn again, to sacrifice herself again, to be reborn different again.

Warudo speeds up time, almost without trying to delay Sovereign directly, putting walls of stopped existence in his way, which the devil squeezes through almost playfully, bending not even his body but space to avoid the poke of the mythical blade, rushing forward, but past the little vulnerable prince. He knows the devil has learned to weaken the armor's protection for a few moments, not rushing to check whether the trick is used now or not, but he can't afford to ignore the opportunity, having to take the blows of a new portion of ice and air blades.

The recovered infernal does not allow himself any doubts, already lunging forward and, this time, the counter swing of the light blade, the embodied Truth, about the death of the one who will fall under the truth meets the crossed links of chains, falling into their grip, letting the links wrap around the embodied technique, forcing the detonation of the invested power. The flash burns the old man's upper layers of skin and muscle, to which he reacts roughly nothing, hurting the shadow boy at the same time, causing him to recoil, swinging the pendulum, avoiding the five weaker but throwing blades to curve and try to strike Shadow from the back while the spatial cutter presses in front, churning, and breaking, shredding the fabric of space, its dimensionality and geometry.

The spatial attack disappeared in the graying monochrome world, embodied a few steps away from the humped and twisted, almost pressed to the ground Shadow, and from the blades, he again recoiled, to be taken up by the greedy Flame, even more inflamed. Again, the clue was given only to the rebellious Sophia through clairvoyance. Again, it failed to intercept and distort it, or rather, it did, but the false Chosen One somehow saw the difference between deceptions and the only real thought. The old man's gnarled fingers, not at all embarrassed by his loss of sight, reached for the body of the devil, severing the thinning and weakened threads of the Source of the Keys, which had suffered a great deal today.

The creature interrupts the maneuver, retreating again, knowing full well how long it takes to heal the nasty wounds left by the almost insensible touches of the demonist's fingers, how reluctant it is to heal a body woven of honey fleur, to transmit those touches to a soul, and how that transmission tends to infect a dozen neighboring souls, and so on ad infinitum. A counter pile of not particularly powerful but noisy in sensory terms charms makes the entire foursome hesitate, fearing a serious attack embedded in this cloud. And no, not all of them. The old man again applied his strange method of movement, practically unblockable neither by area effects nor even by petals, which turned out to be behind his back, preventing him from breaking the distance and again reducing everything to a bombardment of multiple high-level techniques.

Last time, he had almost burned the old man, forced Sophia to be reborn twice and forced Prince Warudo to roll back time to repair the throat torn out by the blow of a material soul planted in the attacking technique. Silence had broken the Mirror again when it had been torn into fifty pieces by the sun's shackles, not killing him but seriously injuring him, correcting the omission with the next series of charms. The time before last was similar. Only Warudo remained intact, only gaining a bit of fleur as he regained the strength and reserves of a tired Sophia. Each break in distance and transition to suppression was a painful experience for the quartet, but they adapted. They responded to his attacks with their own, and Sovereign had to admit they did quite well. Silence was particularly memorable, able, even without Warudo's help, to become for a few seconds much faster than he should, literally tearing his shadowy body to shreds from the oncoming resistance of the River of Time but creating truly impressive spells. And if Warudo accelerated him, at the same time, Sovereign would have to close the distance to prevent him from using such a trick again. He did not like the intensity, which made the world a wall of blackness and nothing more.

There was a rumbling sound. It was another of the prince's protective amulets, which had thought in vain that the third time the devil's sensory deception was hiding nothing, catching the spit out a stream of dust that dissolved any sorcerous energy. It dissolves artifacts first and foremost, so it might damage the Duel of the Scoundrel, weakened in time by the actions of the souls lurking in its gut. His hands are rapidly turning white, becoming deadly pale as the death of anyone who touches them becomes higher than the Law, and the creature is already striding towards him, breaking into a dash, ignoring the old man who had no time to attack from behind. The enemies are separated. Flute has slowed its pace dealing with the predatory dust, and Silence and Drums are begging to be embraced. He can already hear it, waiting for the change in melody when the new hands touch them.

He comes eye-to-eye with Sophia, who resembles a spindle with a myriad of fiery threads wound around it. She whirls around in a leap, only increasing the number of those threads. Not a problem. He is familiar with the technique and knows how to counteract it, but the problem is that there is no Silence around her, though his seers are even now whispering with passion he should be here. The deception is beautiful, brazen, and skillful in equal measure, but there is no time to admire the false chord, having to bend, arching his back in the opposite direction, creating a shield of threads that have become very sharp, covering the Source, now disgustingly vulnerable. The hand of Silence, a clawed paw of shadow form, with these threads is cut into hundreds of pieces, as if meat to a good salad, immediately joining, not allowing the threads to pass inside the body but the inertia of the sudden blow has already lo...

...break...

The hand of Silence, the clawed paw of the shadow form, simply ignored the Source of the Keys, touching the face of the archdevil distorted by resentment and the promise to repay for that, who was able to realize the moment of the broken mirror, but not to react. He had no time to transfer the damage to one of the special defense souls. He was too close to the Infernal, not in a hurry to let in his contagion. He corrected himself quickly. Most of the damage was absorbed by one of his lights, dying in the ecstasy he was looking for in life, but the inertia of the blow turned the body crucified in a jump, throwing it straight into the arms of the spindle.

Fire threads not only try to tangle ineffectively the threads of the keys, which in the deactivated state do not exist but also climb into the Istok itself, depriving the body of mobility, wrapping and stinging, increasing the temperature inside the body, giving part of the heat even to the petals, which is already an indicator. Any other legend in such a fiery tangle would burn in a matter of seconds and would have no time to escape. He let out a series of icy exhalations, tossing the horribly crippled maiden, caught in a moment of vulnerability, aside, already reaching for her with the revitalized threads of the keys to give her to the Source she'd carelessly wandered into before she was reborn in flame, unmarked by the insidious threads.

He used the Miracle again to avoid the blade in the hands of the Prince, who had returned in time and was standing in the same place as a few seconds ago. They had trampled all over this square, so the Eternal had plenty of places to jump, and he could get into almost any position he wanted. The scoundrel, the sugar sweetheart. At the moment when it seemed they had separated again without serious damage, the final piece of one of the old man's chains grazed his cheek, leaving an ugly scar on his face and knocking out a few souls once dedicated to Chill, not yet hidden properly back into the depths of his essence. The ugly wound, the loss of sparks dear to his heart and memory, and the general situation cause another heavy breath, an angry exhalation. With it, the entire area is covered by the mist of Mist, rendering everyone invisible except the owner of the soul that had summoned Mist.

A sphere of fire, created instantly by Sophia, flares up as brightly as the sun, dispersing the Mist and vaporizing the hungry tentacles of fog, too slow to distort distances and directions. From below, the fog is taken in by the black maw of a breach in the Shadow, set strictly along the ground line, finally breaking the already barely functioning signs on the stones turned to rubble and dust. It was strange the reinforcing circuit had survived so long when they had been blowing it apart with their attacks, and Sovereign had been helping them, attacking with no less magnitude. Still, the structure's usefulness was not even half exhausted, all the important actions had already been completely transferred to the petals' work, so there was no need to fear collateral damage. The last attempts to break through the petals with mass attacks of artifacts or magic circles were coming from the Palace and had already stopped. They were now either on the defensive or, more likely, preparing an escape route for the Emperor and a way for the Prince to escape from the battle without losses, leaving his temporary allies to the devil.

That is so cute. It just makes his face tear up with cuteness.

It was as if he would let Warudo leave their dance without finishing the tune. Half of the Time-bound souls had been used in the beginning to cut off that Time, when he hadn't yet come to bow to it, from the rest. Pulling him across the River wouldn't work, not even for the Emperor, not after what he'd already had to endure today, not after the stresses, betrayals, and losses he'd endured.

And the dance continued.

The blade's lunge is met by the same blade, a mirror copy of it possessing even a fraction of the similar effects, throwing Warudo back in a hard parry. The one brings himself back to the striking position and tries to repeat the blow differently but is only met with a trivial leg kick, forcing the creature to lose its souls to turn the physical blow into a conceptual one capable of breaking even the defense of the Duel of the Scoundrel. It couldn't hurt the prince, but it threw him away like a doll thrown by an angry child straight into the arms of the old infernal.

The chains again serve in place of limbs, gently gripping the flying prince and dampening the inertia, preparing to put him on the ground as he simply disappears from the chains' grip to reappear before the devil, now trying to chop off the leg he was kicked with. Sophia took the uncharacteristic role of distance support, attacking with compressed drills of scarlet flame with enviable frequency. Barriers of stiff and overflowing static essences of water and viscous astral veil kept him unburnt but prevented him from striking something worthy. Silence comes in from the side, accelerating again, injuring itself. The creature is forced to attack Warudo, simultaneously ceasing to block the flames and launching generous light attacks at Shadow. Sovereign does not want to let the two accelerations add up to one again. At times like this, Silence becomes an unpleasant foe, almost deafening in its desire to push the melody of Hell as far back into its silence as possible.

The clanking and clanking of chains, the way he and his seers mark the infernal, warns, allows him to stretch his space, avoiding the chains. In doing so, he interrupts the attack on Warudo, instead leaving the illusion of that attack for the prince to defend himself and lose time anyway. The summoned one, however, continues to try to get closer, though the acceleration is already tearing off chunks of his shadowy flesh even larger than the spells managed to hit. The world around him is trying to change again, a chorus of prayers, but all the voices are singing out of tune, all of them sobbing through a choked cry - the Infernal rarely used external attacks, which were almost useless against the devil who hid his cherished souls, preferring to attack at point-blank range with chains or cursed touches. Now the change of tactics was to his advantage.

Warudo floats out of another timeline, either untraced by the devil or not happened in the past, but now his strike is deadly. Taking advantage of the moment of weakened defenses, forced by the need to keep his sparks and their melody safe from the old man's shrieking prayer, Sovereign was unable to interfere. A play with what had happened and what had not come true, which he had expected from the mirror of Silence but not from Flute, the most straightforward of his enemies. He was forced to accelerate and renew the forces of his allies, constantly locking himself in an inviolable barrier, continuously using simple but only reliable in such conditions techniques, having neither the strength nor the right to more elegant but unusable in direct combat clan techniques.

And so, he dared, inevitably setting himself up, removing his defenses, putting everything on the attack, and not hoping the same Silence would save Flute with another mirror. Even if he wanted to, it was not certain he would be able to do so. The forces were too different, the reflection of the river of Time was too far away, and there were too many fine-tunings to make room for another one. In other circumstances, such a risk would have been Flute's last gift, its final note, but right now, it was succeeding... almost succeeds.

The stroke of the blade, harmless but deadly, did not touch the pseudo-body itself, did not touch it, only passed through the bundle of threads of keys, almost blotting out the Istok itself, as if a barber had cut off the ponytail of an eager client. Sovereign felt nothing, nor did his seers notice anything, as if nothing had happened. And he did not know, could not know, whether what had happened, had happened, or had been avoided. In the inactive state, the threads were only images, a visualized intention of control, an instrument of influence and correction, but not a part of the body, whether it was the miniature receptacle of his being that was now fighting the quartet, the petals that were huge and residing in many dimensions at once, or even the entire Domain as a manifestation of Sovereign's will.

So there was no first touch. He dodged?

His thoughts do not prevent him from continuing the dance, playing the music, increasing the tempo, putting into the attacks a share of frenzied evil, underlying concern, or even fear of dying without seeing the finale of this play. Flames are replaced by the greenish glow of Life itself, a vast and all-encompassing Mother that can both heal and turn anyone under attack into a mutated mountain of flesh. The devils love to harness this power, to help stolen souls reproduce particularly traumatic mutations that would otherwise all too easily destroy the changeling. The Life is devoured by the Shadow, and it retreats when he reappears as the Sun, burning through the black flesh of Silence, exposing Flute from under its protection and pouring streams of attacks at the Prince. The old man is just recovering again, even his survivability is finite, and he does not try to spare himself. It is almost impossible to destroy demons, but just killing and sending them to rebirth is much easier, although this task is not simple.

But if there had been a touch if the nature of the blade protected the very fact of the touch from any knowledge of it, would he not doom himself by risking where he dared not risk?

He does not know. He has not been able to solve this mystery: what do those touched by the mythical blade in the possession of the Eternals experience?

Or do they feel nothing, until the very end, which they also do not sense?

Approaching, again a hand-to-hand battle of one against four, and the creature puts on a dozen silhouettes, the embodied souls of the great masters of the fist whose blows bent iron and mithril but who fell before the caresses of Hell. The souls rot, spoiled by the infernal's presence, but for a brief moment of their functionality, before the sparks of the souls become candle lights, symbols of fruitless prayers to nowhere, he withstands the onslaught. He avoids the blade, reflects the claws of Shadow and the blades of flame, and casts aside the chains of Sin.

The chains wound his hands, curse the molasses and honey of his body, the Flames leave burns, and the masters who protect him burn in them even faster than they go into the Inferno, greedily sucking heat and strength from the grip of the Shadow, restraining the unruly time within its bounds. With distinct resentment, Sovereign realizes he is yielding to them. That he, unless he finds a way, will soon lose. Exhausted by the process of Descending, deprived of much of his arsenal thanks to the presence of a rotten and corpulent infernal nearby, constrained by the presence of the Duel of the Scoundrel and a cursed blade, he has adapted too slowly.

Silence, ever annoying but always inferior in danger to everyone except perhaps Sophia, who was already almost his even now, proved to be scarier, more dangerous than originally appreciated, and became heavier, even though previously weighed down. His assistance, control of the battle arena, masterful use of the un-existence combined with supreme clairvoyance, and ability to replay overlooked melodies. All allowed him to tune the ensemble like musical instruments, gradually making his music louder and louder, too loud even for Sovereign. He was used to being in their shoes, used to being the one who adapted, the one who always had plenty of speckled cards, the prepared musical masterpieces, the one who grew stronger with every moment of battle. Now, the supreme devil was on the other side. Now, he was out of time. Now, his opponents were getting better and more coordinated, and he was only retreating and trying to catch up.

That realization, the presence of the creature of Inferno, the hungry attention of the Shadow, the danger of the ruinous blade, the sight of the fire toy that had never been completed - all of it came together in one lump, clumped together and dissolved into an anger that came from deep within. And then the great Sovereign, who remembered other epochs, saw other worlds, had glorified his name and his Lust long before each of these four had appeared, and did what he was accustomed to do in a seemingly hopeless situation.

He took it by the throat and turned it around.

In one moment, no different from the previous ones, the devil changes tactics, not retreating from the impact of the blade and the fire net, but stepping towards them, covering himself with the barrier and transferring the rest of the fiery strike to the sonm, his whole body meeting the touch of the blade. This time, it was just as insensible, just as silently passing through him as if it were not a blade but a harmless illusion. Until the last moment, he couldn't be sure it wouldn't kill him on the spot. He didn't know, couldn't foresee it. It would have, for the power contained in the Blade of the Second Touch was so great that it would have been enough even for him. This thing had been created to counter his kind, as had been proven in practice many times in the past.

The Prince wasn't confused by the fact the touch didn't count. Probably, he, as the one who had the artifact in his hands, knew in advance whether the blade's effect had worked or not. All that mattered was that it had worked. Now, all that was left was to strike again, and there was no need to fear a retaliatory strike, no need to fear death agony, only to survive Sovereign's desperate attack, all his Lust woven into a single cacophony. The task was far from easy, for the devil would not have attacked so recklessly if he had no chance of victory.

All four are ready for the finale. They are ready to kill or die, as the case may be. The already tense melody reaches an absolute peak, the pinnacle of love and hate, beyond which there is only fall, only oblivion, and nothing more beyond it. Sophia stands in the creature's way as she has done so many times before. Though she sees, she cannot help but see and feel the threat. Wasting no time in dodging, no longer keeping the spark of souls from the Inferno's foulness, the creature throws all available strength into a deadly attack, a dagger strike at close range.

It had to go to Prince Warudo, the one she lives and breathes for, to cut short the existence of the blade bearer, too dangerous a part, the most dangerous of all. Without the bearer of the two mythical artifacts, the rest of the trio would fall with a guarantee. It was Warudo's defense, his acceleration, his removal of rollbacks for one-time effects or reeling off the flow of a River for the sake of healing that was what Sovereign's power shattered against. Silence is dangerous. He is cunning and careful, but how many more mirrors did he have left? They alone allowed him not even to fight, just not to die immediately, not to become a plaything at the first call, undoing the inevitable time after time. An old fragment of what had once been a High Priest was worth less than that, and without serious cover, he could only fall to ashes and be reborn in agony in the asylum of Sin so close to him. That is, if they let him go at all, for as pitiful as it was, Sovereign was willing to use extreme means for the sake of such an abomination.

The clash is inevitable. It's too late to dodge or break the distance. The Prince is ready to strike a second blow, anticipating victory. He expects victory, but he is ready for any trickery. He is ready to retreat if the creature twists again. It's even flattering to have such a sweet enemy whose melody can curve around yours, like two snakes in a mating dance intertwining the non-past and the obligatory future. The Eternal was accustomed to rule. He was prepared to accept the crown and throne. He was to take it when the current Emperor ceded the place to him. Neither pity nor affection is inexcusable to the Emperor. The only thing he can afford to dream of, the only thing he must guard more than anything else, is the good of the Empire entrusted to him as part of the will and legacy of all his ancestors.

Therefore, the decision was made instantly and without hesitation, without pity and regret. They may come later, much later, when the hymns of victory and funeral marches have rung out when the Empire has recovered from the terrible losses and the consequences of the blow missed in the heart. But right now, he was soberly and without the slightest regret sacrificing one whose nature and role were defined for this or a similar moment - to be sacrificed, to give her life and everything else at Warudo's command. She had long warmed his bed, entertained him with conversation, or assisted him in those matters that only the most faithful and the most devoted could be trusted with. He had valued her, perhaps even more than a servant should be valued. A useful tool. But her usefulness had worn out. She had sacrificed too much in this battle, and there was nothing more she could give, nothing more he could take from her but the very last loss.

Under different circumstances, she might have survived more than one ash turning and rising from those ashes. The battle undermined Sophia Flame. She had been broken by Sovereign's games, but the blazing Flame had re-forged what was broken, restored what was lost while still taking back what was whole. She could still fight, but what was needed now was not a battle, but an opportunity, an opportunity to bind the creature, to bind the ancient devil for the moment Warudo needed to touch one more time with the tip of his blade the base of the pseudo-body of the worst enemy of his life. Only to touch, only to touch, even in the most innocuous touch possible, deceptively incapable of harming or at least injuring.

The Summoned One, who would never be the Chosen One, who had had her right to become one stolen from her at the very moment of her appearance under the Heaven of the other world, stepped forward with a full understanding of what she had to do. She didn't want to die, didn't want to die this way, but a command had been given, a mission had been assigned, and everything Sophia was was ready to fulfill what had been ordained. This time, she flared up differently, ignited in a different way than before. There was no transition of flesh into Flame, no direct change of form of existence from creaturely to energetic. Now she was on fire, her flesh sizzling, the burning meat sizzling, the skin tearing away as the United with Flames Primordial Phoenix gave it everything, everything, even that which could not be given.

In this state, unleashing her lethal power, she could, indeed could face the mythical creature directly and closely and resist the first blow, match strength, not skill, but pure power with the Hell creature and lose, not in the same instant, but in the one following the first. It is this pause, this action Warudo needs to complete the blow. Neither Silence nor Sin will come in time, each distracted by a separate maneuver, but he cannot outmaneuver Sophia. Either break off the attack again so that he doesn't have time to retreat when Warudo, who has invested all of his reserves and several one-time effects, strikes in pursuit, or try to break the falsely chosen one, break through her to the boy she's protecting and prevent him from completing the blow, but not in time either.

Sovereign, as was the custom of his tribe, as he had been accustomed to do his entire existence since the moment he became aware of being, did otherwise, not as he was wanted to do. He playing his own game rather than dancing to someone else's music. He does not dodge, does not put up defenses, but only pulls his hands, covered with burns faster than thought, to the flaming hulk of Sophia dying forever. And in touching her, the creature does not harm her, does not try to take control or tear out her already dying soul. He acts differently, thinner, deeper, reaching for something that does not exist and cannot exist, that does not exist anywhere, that was never created, that was incarnated by no one, devoting itself to nothing, reaching for what all over Alurei is called the Control Mechanism.

The eyes on her burned face, the only part of her dying body not yet touched by the Flames, open in shock, pupils dilating, and the heart pierced by her nearly burned hands freezes in a painful realization. In the last moment of her existence, having nothing and having given everything away, Sophia, just Sophia, who even her fiery name was named by others who chose instead of her, looks at the world as free. She sees the archdevil not even trying - not even having time - to dodge, realizes that the counter-attack she has already prepared can drill into the depths of the multidimensional body, burn out the honeyed essence of it, not killing, but leaving a terrible wound that will take centuries to heal, but there will be no such centuries because the crippled and stunned devil will not be able to dodge the new blow of the cursed blade.

He smiles, grinning, his face perfect in ecstasy, letting his finely honed intuition, called upon, working better than any clairvoyance on the eve of death, read him like an open book. Allowing it to remember, to recall all those details, all those times it had been changed, remade at the will of one of the Eternals. At the will of the Emperor, his eldest son, at the whims of temporary controllers or imposed "friends," at the will of anyone but not her own.

Sophia can save her life now. It would not be possible to cancel such an attack completely only to extinguish the flames and, after a long, very long time, to heal the wounds received, which will never heal completely, as well as the self-consciousness burned in dozens of rebirths. But the effect of what the devil had used against her would be over much faster, and then she would return to where she had started, bowing her head penitently and discarding all other thoughts, points of view, proofs...

The Maiden can continue to strike, being already free to perform her one true feat worthy of any legends and myths. To sacrifice everything not by order but by choice, saving thousands of thousands, freeing souls tormented by Lust from eternal captivity. Is this not a fitting finale, the thunderous beat of the last drum, the roar of the siege trumpets? Oh, if she were like Silence tearing his Shadow-distorted body, striving like everyone else here to make it, her choice would not have been obvious. That's what Heroes are. That's what the Chosen are, to be able to sacrifice even themselves for what they think is Right.

But Sophia, the little girl Sophia, summoned and torn from her native walls, who had never known a day of freedom, a superfluous soul that had not been allowed to blossom, a soul that had been spit upon and sullied, defiled by something worse than betrayal, something as soft and invisible as the Lust glorified by the creature, but so hard, tearing a sob from her breast, burning with such resentment that any Flame is but a small fire against it.

She knew what the creature was thinking, knew it in an instant, realized it in a heartbeat when they were frozen against each other, almost in a deadly clinch. She made her decision just as quickly, her mind sharpened by countless battles for the sake of others, her body obedient to its iron will, unbound for the first time by the bridle and saddle she had been wearing before.

Sophia touched the unresisting devil, burning its body even more, using it as a support, pushing back and keeping the creature from burning a few souls, shrinking the distance in its path to the metric of space. To turn around, with a frantic jerk being exactly opposite to the creature, ready to finish it off and celebrate the great victory of Warudo the Eternal, looking at it with a pure and clear gaze of the only eyes that are whole on the whole body, ignoring the agony of the body roasting in such a close Flame. And if the creature only smiled at this look, accepting any choice, ready for Sophia to decide to rid the world of what she considered an abomination, even after all she had realized, the Crown Prince, the first in the right to the throne, shuddered shamefully.

And when the Flame Maiden, almost a naked skeleton, the hulk of a human body, embraced him, strung upward in an attack, he was truly afraid. Because the Duel of the Scoundrel was locked on Sovereign but not on his most trusted weapon because the weapon was not now under control the protection of a set of armor could perceive the creature's action and nullify the blow of the subdued flayer Sophia. He is Eternal, after all. For him, not having time is not that impossible but rather difficult. He always has Time to react and to try to do something. And when all that was left of Sophia flashed bloody scarlet in place of the charred skeleton, when the fiery claws almost reached his eyes, he did the only thing that could still protect him. Against that, no time rollback would have helped, no escape to the past, and no separation of the timeline would have been possible.

The Duel of the Scoundrel changed its focus, turning the fatal blow into a harmless stroking, but Sophia's dying soul, already disintegrating into ash, already losing its eyes - the last part of its body that still functioned - saw what it had longed for. For once you change the focus of the Duel, you can never get it back, for only once can you summon an enemy to a hopeless battle against the wearer of this armor. And when the devil's dead grip was on the prince's shoulders, turning him around to face the inhumanly beautiful form of his Sovereign, when he gave another lover a greedy kiss, Warudo the Eternal could do nothing. And if what was still left of Sophia could, it would have smiled, a grin as merciless as the Flame that devours one's flesh knows no pity.

But Sofia's body was gone.

And a moment later, Sofia was gone.

The presence of a chronomancer on a strike team has an amazing effect on its overall combat effectiveness, but the best way to understand the scale of this effect is when the chronomancer is suddenly knocked out of the team. Especially if that chronomancer is one of the Eternal, especially if the opponent of the battle is a mythical creature that wants not just your souls but all of you. Warudo sped up the entire quartet, slowed down the surrounding world, rolled back used one-time skills, restored reserve, and even pulled out from under deadly blows back into the past. The latter, however, did not concern Silence, either because of mutual distrust and equally mutual hatred for each other or because Silence himself could speed up the river for himself, just as well, independently crushing his doom. Nevertheless, even the black-sun Summoned one had the support of the Eternal and depended on it.

And now, with the maiden constantly burning and unburnable but eager to burn Sovereign, giving the Flame her all, with Flute hanging limply over the mess that remained of the Square of the Seven Poets, smiling an unnaturally wide smile and giving himself completely to the kiss that had been bestowed upon him.... now the remaining two couldn't even run away. Because they were exhausted, beaten, and the devil had simply lost some time and souls - all the wounds received were healed, the lost places in the choir and sonm were taken by new lucky ones, and the reserve of such an entity did not exist at all as a concept and could not run out, unable to run out.

With a light touch of his fingers, the creature tosses Flute a little upwards, calling out to the part of himself that was passed on with a kiss, forcing the body that was in a fantasy to use its blood and seal him in a cocoon of timelessness. The silent boy, a smart, good-looking boy, could have gotten wind of something unnecessary and done the smartest thing for his silly head - just kill Warudo before Sovereign took his gift seriously. And that would be bad. The children had already played enough of their childish rebellion. It was time to go to bed in the cozy crib of Chorus singing its lullaby.

Although, these two missing children will not make it to the Glee Club. One is too tainted by the hunger of Loneliness to spend energy on purification and distillation of his personality, and the other has sold eternity to Inferno and can only be finished by showing incredible pity and mercy. The latter is so scarce in this cruel universe. Who else not to distribute this pity on interest-free credit, as not the kind Sovereign?

Not yet a heartbeat after the disappointing death of his unmade toy, the passionate Sophia, which he had almost finished only to have it broken by the disrespectful Warudo, and the creature was already attacking again. Taking the form of a fish-like Shadow, like a huge shark of the sea, the summoned one accelerates once more. He, having just emerged from another river squeeze, losing in the process many small pieces of black and silky darkness that had torn away from his body, accelerates again. This time, he is no longer torn superficially, no longer tearing away the top layers of morphed flesh that have been converted to energy, which regrow even faster than the next. Now, the wounds the child of the other world inflicts on himself are really serious, deep, as if inflicted with a razor-sharp stiletto, long, like the marks of invisible claws.

With the same haste with which Silence had tried to thwart the combination of Sovereign, a combination which he had deliberately ajar at the last moment, with the same fervor, he began to run away. Truly, knowing the time to run away makes you invincible! True, this truth was not about the guest from another world, who, in good conscience, should have run long before he decided to stop in the city. Or, at least, after that ridiculous scene in the Library, for which he wanted to kiss the funny guy who'd confused all the cards. Not immediately after that very first touch with the mortal who had almost become a Shadow did the devil realize that this was the mirror man he was looking for, who had broken the wish of one of his Messengers, who had almost destroyed the carefully prepared treat with mirrors and dreams, who would not let the one sleeping in the White Altar awaken.

No, directly, he didn't know, couldn't know. Even having read the boy to the bottom, before the moment when he had not yet returned new, it was not easy to see the mirror power in him. Too much had already been taken up by his Loneliness, cutting him off from other sources of power, so densely clogging the essence of the read that someone else might have overlooked one of his archetypes. It was silly, strange, and sweet to have such multidirectional forces instead of classes supporting one direction, but the summoned, the true Summoned, had it all quite often.

In a moment, even before this absurd fight began, the hundreds of voices of the Chorus, whispering their words, gathering the fabric of existence into a clear picture, came to the right conclusion, recounting it to their Lord. And a little later, on another mirror broken by the boy, it became finally clear who exactly had so meanly and pleasantly stabbed him in his unprotected back. What a farce, what a tragedy, which grew out of a farce and now turned into a farce again. It is, but the play of one laughing boy who wanted so much that the world should laugh at his cruel jokes! Is this not the pinnacle of irony, the shock of satire? To confuse the cards, pretend to be the victim, to pretend to be the one who sacrifices himself to laugh at the stupidity of those who believed in the last stand of the little halfling, the always grumpy Pypysh. And afterward, voluntarily became that sacrifice himself, giving up everything that he had so kept, sacrificing again, only now for real. The play for pretense and pretense for the sake of the play. Two sides of a coin, the edge of which became a fight without hope of defeat, the victory which is equal to defeat.

The Shadow, wounded and tormented by its acceleration, is hit in the face by the Shining of Truth, which was created by a whole galaxy of fireflies giving their passion to Vice. Clang-clang, the cage closes, cutting off from the new Truth all that was Truth before. The Shadow hisses and rustles the ashes settling to the ground as the iron-colored spear, born of a great mage's shamefully wrong - albeit only in mortal opinion - love for his child, pierces the center of her body. The devils had once bought this father that they were the only ones who could understand, approve, and fulfill his dubbed abnormal desire. And all so that the steel and iron of his power would now be thrust into its chosen target, turning the mortal who had taken the form of the Shadow into a heavy iron statue of himself - huge, skillfully crafted, and dead, still gleaming with its brilliance under the purple sky...

...break...

And all so that the steel and iron of his power would fall into the gap, the breach, the wound, feeding it with the power of depth of Loneliness. And the creature could swear the blow had been stopped by another broken mirror, one of the last available, if not the last at all, as he could feel it in his gut, but the breach itself had been created from the very fragments of flesh that had been torn alive by the silence. He should be introduced to his fellow members of the Agony Aspect, and they would find much to talk about.

The shadow retreated, coming to a position where the creature couldn't provide a guaranteed kill. It could kill, yes, but it was too costly to kill several times, so each new kill required a new mirror. And then there was the hysterical attack from the Palace, which had obviously realized something in the allotted second, for which Warudo received his kiss on the mouth. He had to redirect his energies to a target even more tempting - a target that simply had to be destroyed, even if it posed no threat at all.

The Infernal was already hitting, a wave of rust cursing at the touch, crushing with the hammer of a forgotten prayer, maiming and mutilating both the one praying and everyone around him, tormenting with a behavioral attack so close to the contract magic favored by the devils, seeking to transfer part of its mutilation to someone else, tearing into pieces with the tentacles of chains rising dozen, two dozen, a hundred! Previously trying to strike close, the infernal could not use all his power, dangerous to the creature to an extent even less than to his temporary allies. But deprived of them, realizing that further restraint is unnecessary, that there is nothing further, he revealed himself in all the ugliness of his curse.

Strong.

Cunning.

Mighty.

Totally harmless.

The chains grew heavier as the stone chips that rose upward stuck to the links, pulling them to the ground, melting them into the remnants of the paving stones, turning them into what they were meant to be - the shackles they had once been made to be. Deprived of mobility, forced to stop, at least for a moment, the old man did not relent, still ignoring the need for defense with contemptuous flippancy, eager to put everything into attack. Behind his back, the windows opened again, keyholes through which the lights of countless Candles peered into reality. Souls that had given themselves to a prayer that could no longer come true. Souls that could only take those who believed in that prayer enough - the last candle lit on the grave of a soul that dared not deny its god.

The flames - now that Sophia is dead, he can no longer worry about control being overrun - burn the space itself, disrupting the windows, making them unstable, and the maddening flicker of the Candlelight becomes shaky, barely able to hurt someone like him. A storm front comes in next, filling every breath of airspace with a force ready to explode, a force that can be countered but is so hard when every movement, every exhalation, every flicker of the eyelashes triggers a cascading reaction, generating new charges. Static accumulates, intensifies, and begins to tear the body and aura of the infernal. Although, he does not care about the integrity of the body. Although he does not care about life and death, but the concentration is disrupted.

Further on, black and unpleasantly shiny, as if cast from frozen oil, needle-nails came into play, fanning into the static front, causing detonation, staining everything around, tearing down the wall of rust and screaming faces, rebuilt in defense, as if created from air turned to wax. The final chord of the final performance is a translucent, slightly greenish blade of natural energy concentrated into an absolute, turning any life into a jumble of flesh and mutated organs.

All this is enough to knock all the defenses of the infernal, to tear his body, to almost turn it to dust, to send him to such a terrible rebirth, next to which the resumption of already three heartbeats as a dead Phoenix is just nonsense and light tingles. But the devil does not need a rebirth. He seeks for the demon only the final destruction and, at the same time, is sure that for this, his enemy is sincerely grateful to him. This, of course, does not affect their apparently divergent goals, as does not prevent them from trying to kill each other, but, of course, Sovereign is pleased that someone will appreciate his help with such sincerity. And if he were the owner of a flimsy organic body rather than a perfect vessel, a multidimensional and self-growing construct of pseudo-flesh, it would probably make him sick, and tears of resentment would come to his eyes. It's hard when the only people who greet you with unwavering relief without any fleur, who understand your actions, are this abomination.

One of the finest souls, a true Heroine, marked by six gods at once, long since lost in her last lost duel, betrayed by those she had once left at home to go to the great war, both in those old times and in the times of today. As she accomplished feat after feat, the whispers of Lust gradually convinced all the loved ones she had left behind, her weaknesses, her carefully nurtured, and therefore vulnerable, heart of what was best for the Heroine. And she, blessed six times over, found herself so defenseless against those she loved, unable to fight and kill those who had no such doubts.

Long years of forging, melting, and tempering this soul in various fantasies, whole lives lived in illusory worlds woven especially for her, had brought her into contact with Lust, allowed her to forget the pain of betrayal, to find in it pleasant shades, and to learn what she was required to learn. A perfect billet for just one blow, followed by oblivion and, to Sovereign's slight sadness, release from any shackles - even so distorted the divine seals would take the essence of the betrayed from his caressing hands. Release, even if only in perdition. They, these seals, were left distorted but working, so the billet, the bold note of the heroic verse, would work just so.

The old man had already begun to regenerate his body, albeit slowly, albeit not in time, for he had too much to regain, too often wounded. The attack, which is not an attack, looks like a forest bird flitting from the devil's outstretched palm, half of it white as virgin snow on the mountain peaks and the other half black as the bitterness of a betrayed wife and mother. Six blessings, six curses, and six Miracles fused. It could kill even him, Sovereign, the co-master, the possessor of comparable power over other Domain and Vice. It had been created for that purpose, but it was beyond him to let this wretched creature live; it was the devil's whole nature to destroy the demon, which he did not fail to do.

The Damned Herald would probably have resumed even after that.

It was still a high priest, but the key factor was the remnants of humanity, not even the essence, but the traces of its presence, the dead memory of being human in the dead memory of the dead God. And the old man, who had no time to do something, was already disintegrating, embarking on his last perilous journey, came close, having torn his chains out of the greedy stone trap, to the devil, who did not even try to dodge, clung to his hand, which was stained with a posthumous curse, put out in a protective gesture, and fell to the ground with a pile of decayed fabric of his shirt, instantly corroded chains, of which only one link remained intact. ... or maybe that one link was the real one from the beginning? The last to touch the stone with a thud was a carved box, either of strange wood, black stone, bone, or even iron. He didn't want to open it, so he wasn't going to risk it. Whatever the infernal was hiding literally instead of his heart, this trophy, as well as the obvious artifact chain, could wait.

It was the third second since the fall of Prince Warudo, and the Palace had already discharged the last of its resources into the petals, seemingly using even the most dangerous artifacts that required the lives or at least the health of those who activated them. One of the petals faded a bit and turned grayish, losing some of the silhouettes of souls copulating in it under the impact of two effects close in strength to the myth. Another one had a rapidly closing hole that led not through it, opening a view of the Seven Poets' Square, but into the depths of the Domain of which the petals were a part. The second wound was not so dangerous, almost irreversible - even destroyed souls in the petals would rise again if the souls that remembered the caresses of the disembodied, remembered their melodies and rhythms, were intact.

It's an act of desperation, which is not surprising.

The creature gets close to its prey.

Sovereign takes a slave of his.

The control over Warudo's mind allowed him to leisurely turn off the time capsulation, draw him to himself, hold him in a much more tender embrace than last time, brand him with a much softer kiss, taking away his memory, taking away his soul. And afterward, when the power over the soul that had been instantly corrupted and dissected in dozens of ways, that had lived for years in those seconds of dreams and fantasies, had reached the right concentration, when the devil had found that strange power that bound the Eternals into one, that prevented them from antagonizing each other, that allowed them, if necessary, to act as one organism, being in the past, in the future, in the present, in what had not happened and what had not happened.... fumbled and burst into that connection, giving all of himself through the invisible threads, humming his melody to them. Through all the barriers of the Palace, through any amulets and artifactual complexes of individual protection, through any power over Time, a power that could not be rolled back, could not be changed, could not be reflected, and could not be deceived.

Right into the souls of bearing the blood of Eternals who were just under this dome today.

Right into the Emperor's frozen and so cold heart.

* * *

The noise of the surroundings penetrated consciousness as if through a dense woolen blanket, the kind of blanket that one uses on the coldest nights when, for some reason, you are sleeping under the open sky and your heart begs you not to lock yourself in an enchanted carriage, but to enjoy sleeping under the light of colorful constellations. The weather near the Eternal is usually sunny during the day and cloudy at night, for the many mages who spell the weather have long ago selected the perfect algorithm of conditions necessary for the infrastructure of the great city, the greatest of the capitals of the blessed Alurei. Ilkhan-Antar occupies a much larger area, being in fact a multitude of separate towns that once sprang up around a cluster of large oases-towns almost merged. Tanshin, aka Goldilocks, has an even larger population than Eternal, but much of it is made of the world's largest slums. There was Antol, the jewel of Neitmak. There was Zarastron, the pearl of the sea, the legacy of Zeinberg's former greatness. There was the Eternal Flower and the Chambers of Stones. There was Great Vartan and Coderga, separated by the ocean. There were many cities, great and stately, beautiful and marvelous, worthy to stand side by side. But for her, it was Eternal, that was the greatest of the great, the most beautiful of the beautiful. That was how she had been raised. That was how she had come to believe, and that was how it would always be.

But there were times when she wanted something strange. She wanted to escape from the city, to go beyond its walls, to go almost to the middle of nowhere, to look at the starry sky, at sunsets and sunrises, to realize the beauty of nature, and once again to know her homeland, the blood from the blood of her ancestors, the blood of their enemies, built on the bones of those who had challenged them and climbed to the top. A minor quirk, albeit time-consuming. The days, weeks, and months of her life are scheduled by her and her Father in such detail that it is very difficult, each time more and more difficult, to find, don't laugh, Time for herself and her own. Too much of her own begins to be swallowed up by the common, and the power she was born with begins to take its toll, to demand reciprocal action.

An aristocrat does not belong to himself. The nobility is bound by as many inhibitions and restrictions as the lowest of mortals, paying for what was bestowed by birth. One has to live as one has been made to live, to develop oneself as one's family needs, to serve those whom one's ancestors served, to love whoever is pointed to, whoever is chosen, to give birth or conceive an heir who will continue on the same path. It is foolish to complain about such unfreedom, just go to the slums and look at those who live "freely," and even then, only because no one cares about them, as long as they do not go against the laws of the Empire.

She had long ago forgotten about her dreams of starry skies and had even bothered to test herself for various influences, having actually learned that her great-grandfather's blood had left a small drop of planar connection to those very Stars. She accepted her Father's will, sought his approval, and longed to be disappointed in her useless daughter, but she was in no hurry to change her life radically. Years ago, the girl had familiarized herself with her probably already appointed fiancé, having prepared for herself and him two vials with a particularly high-quality love potion to ensure mutual feelings if they suddenly did not get along.

And yet it was the heaviness of the camping blanket and the night sky overhead that was the first thing she remembered, even now.

Consciousness came... strangely, not in fragments, but as if in waves, while the memory seemed fragmentary and incomplete, not answering the questions of the present day. Walzea the Eternal remembered her childhood and youth, her first steps and first lessons in controlling the power of the Dynasty, the joy, and fun of walks in the park, the luster of the dressed leather of her hunting suit, the faint hissing of the falling sand of her watch, a watch that was never filled, that never ran out of sand and therefore never needed to be turned over. The last memory tugged at some deep strings in her soul, forcing her to remember more, to rise from her strange state of disassembly, to piece together her shattered and shattered consciousness.

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Dust and sand.

Dust and sand.

Under her body, marble, and basalt insulated with magic. It was this material that was used to clad the interior of the Palace. Not any of them, but only those that could not be shown to anyone. They were the best suited, had the right energy, and more easily tolerated the imposition of various auxiliary charms. The palace, yes, the native walls, exactly them, exactly the palace. She remembered the long and short way through the streets of the maddened city that had turned into an arena of battle and orgies. She remembered several consecutive battles exhausting and tiring in equal measure. She remembered Areia Fern covering her. She should be rewarded somehow, seriously rewarded. There was no shame in that. She remembered Squire releasing enchanted bolts from his crossbow now and then. What a name, great Law, what a blank in her head... She remembered battle after battle. She remembered the escape from the Legend who was interested in them and the gray, dust-soaked Brute of the Road. She remembered how his armor, the faces of sullen and terrible old men depicted on them, began to weep black tears.

She remembered how they'd approached the Palace, how she'd had to summon the power of the Law, the power of the Dynasty, using a loophole left long ago for just such an occasion. She remembered how they had almost been killed. All the traitors, those of the enchanted who could not be brought back to their senses, had been slaughtered then. Their appearance had nearly provoked a massacre, but the combined power of the Wanderer and Walzea had been enough to hold out for a few moments, and Father had sensed her presence.

Walzea remembered the path through the familiar and completely unrecognizable corridors of the Palace under siege. The Palace was a huge artifact, a complex of them, united into one huge and man-made beast. She knew that it was this monster that her ancestors had once dug out from under the ground, building a city on the ruins and, for a long time, century after century, breathing into the ancient golem or spirit of the place a semblance of its strange life. She felt how now this life was gradually extinguished, how it was spent on confronting that which had sprouted somewhere in the city, which they had bypassed by another road only by miracle and waves of gray dust, literally burying whole alleys, through which they were sneaking. Sneaking through a city that should have been hers, should have belonged to her!

The memory of Sigmund Rooleim's twisted, mangled, wax-stained body, the one that had been pretending to be the old and perpetually irritated and obnoxious old man Sigmund for an unknown amount of time, as it had been explained to her. Always... he hated everyone in general, and she hated him personally, as the mentor and teacher of her second brother, now nameless and forgotten. Nearby, just a little away, lay the body of Artemius, who had been summoned from the most useful ones left near the throne even in the run-up to the war with his desert neighbors, skinned by the Envoy's huge claws. Only this type of devil could pull off such a powerful disguise and such a perfect pretense. A little to the side, not skinned, but as if she had not received any wounds, Violet, also summoned, but with non-combat classes, who had not even had time to develop normally and had never been out in the field. Next to her, as intact as ever, lay Grazio Delterri, her controller and mentor, whose ministry she had been summoned to help because there were rats in the supply ranks, and it was urgent to clean up and execute those profiting from the Empire's money. Father, as it often happens, did not want to involve Ezless in this matter, not wanting to give them even more power, especially if they had to work not so much with money flows but with the ways of more primitive commodity exchange, tied to the exchange of services or finished products, not gold. Grazio and Fiala Violet lay side by side now, equal in their deaths. Their souls had been drained from both of them without damaging their bodies and without damaging any of their defenses.

Bodies.

Corpses.

Mutilated and almost whole, killed in the back, or a fair fight, belonging to people and non-humans she knew personally or through dossiers. There, lying scraps of Ardael's retinue of the House of the Night Tree, though it was impossible to find an ambassador among this mincemeat, recognizable only by the tattered clothes and their styles. And also complete strangers. How many they had lost, how many they would not count afterward, how many... How much she believed that there would still be someone to count, there would be this, so false, afterward.

Her father only rewarded her with a fleeting glance, turning fatigue into strength, returning firmness to her arms and confidence to her feet once more firmly planted on the Palace stone. Her retinue, vetted several times, was with her as well, though someone afterward might be executed for incompetence. Allowing a thug unknown to anyone and a suspected treasonous Fern into the central defense node, whatever checks had been made, seemed remarkably irresponsible. Father's eyes stared uninterruptedly at the boorishly smiling traveler for a long, almost heart-stopping few minutes, not even trying to pretend he was calm. Father was reading the very essence, the source of the All-Seeing One's power and gifts, of the one his gaze had fallen upon, and there was little that could be hidden from him here in the heart of the Palace. Father did not like what he saw, but no more than that, he remembered who had brought his blood and his daughter here, understood what threatened him if that blood fell into the clutches of those who desired it, if it fell into the power of the late Ramarz's art.

She was quickly brought into the fold, and even the traveler, as a Law-bound power bearer, was allowed to participate in the common defense, which seemed nonsense even yesterday. The Dynasty had enough loyal men with the powers able to work on the back of the Ruling Branch of the family. But that was yesterday, before this terrible massacre inside the defense perimeter, where betrayed and stabbed in the back, seeking to kill but not to survive. The unbearable weight of the Law fell and fell on his shoulders, stretching minutes into hours, accelerating the rollback of battle artifacts and renewing the protection over the Palace, continuing the battle with the spawn of vicious myths.

Then... then something changed. She couldn't remember what it was, but the memory was falling into place, coming back sharp, as a mosaic puzzle. The creature was distracted, lessening its onslaught, giving her seconds that turned into a full twenty-four hours of almost complete safety, for which too much had been said. And her older brother, insufferable and ruthlessly treading on her weakness, on her uselessness, put on his ancient armor and picked up his ancient sword. The Father did not want to send him there, but the power over Time, the power over the Empire, and, accordingly, over the capital of the state gave another power, if not opening a guaranteed future, then quite accurately revealing all its innumerable options. And in those variants, there was only death, death, death, or something even worse.

A trump card was needed, and Warudo was chosen to be it. Varudo, who may not have desired this feat but who could not resist the will of the Father. The Father could not leave the Palace, for he remained the one thing that had not yet allowed the convergence of the Eternal and the devil's domain to take place. Her brother went to the battle, from which he might not have returned, probably would not have returned, despite the many artifacts and amulets of escape, ending up in the arms of the supreme creature. For some time, which became very long by their will, they got a rest, already having one foot in the grave, and moved a few steps away from it.

To step again.

When she felt it.

That moment, that moment.

Moment of touch.

It came from there. From the same depths that Walzea had turned to for the power of the Law. Not from Time itself, for even such a creature could not corrupt the Law not that quickly. It came from her blood. It came with the trill of the violin and the whistling of the flute. It came with a cheerful melody, joy, and happiness that echoed down her belly with the uncontrollable heat of instant orgasm. She laughed and danced. Through the Princess's right and access to the Palace, trying to give her happiness and such a long, long ecstasy to everyone. To all around her. She pressed the boy, Mort, now Volaan, against her, kissing him and forcing him to cum with her, along with Fern, who had already stripped and undressed the awkwardly resisting boy.

The melody led her, keeping her from paying attention to anything while she could still feel her nipples being twisted by someone else's hands, hoping that the same power that was growing the breasts of one of the court maids of honor as flat as the androgynous princess herself would soon reach her. The melody led her until it was replaced by a different kind of pleasure - harder, more demanding, but just as pleasurable and giving new orgasms. The Brute Wanderer showed himself to be a boor again, crushing the jaw of the orgasming princess, from which she had to bring her back to the normal state with Law because she was going to take revenge with a truly imperial blowjob, gnawing off the fondled organ at the end, then restoring it in its original place and repeating this procedure more than once, until she was full.

Instead of caresses, even rough ones came dust and pain, came torment and not pleasant bear hugs, came hundreds of hundreds of charms directed by the Palace and the multitude of court Benefics not yet listening to her melody, not yet dancing with her! Walzea tried to give them orders, but the whip-like, not strong, but terribly confusing blows of fists to the face and cries that they were all fucked up prevented even that little, prevented her from cumming again and forgetting about the nonsense. It was the Benefics who pulled her out, who, among all their effects and benefits, found something to help her come to her senses and share and withdraw what she had been inspired by. It was Wanderer who kept her afloat until she could decide to give up Lust, almost sobbing blood from his half-blind eyes at the end.

Perhaps it was her weakness that saved her. She had only recently, only hours, days if you count the stretched Time, ago when she had gained an understanding of the Law that was truly worthy of the Eternal when she had still been able to push herself away from the not fully accustomed power. But how many of them were there, as useless as she had become yesterday? She didn't want to open her eyes and get up. She didn't want to, didn't want to, didn't want to, please don't, don't, don't, don't. Let her continue not to look, and all this won't happen. Let it not happen!

Arrogant but possessing an excellent sense of humor and always willing to share wine from her personal collection, Sister Wrido, daughter of her Father's now-deceased brother, is one of the few who has always supported the hapless princess.

Not at all arrogant and lifelong weary Waril, a third cousin, however, brought into the ruling line by his outstanding success in mastering the Law, rarely missing a moment to pass a verbal jab at a weaker Walzea.

Uncle Wonnie, missing quite a few vowel letters since his youth due to an incurable injury of his jaw, was nearly cut in two by an Alishan assassin's bone dagger and forced to sit tightly on pain-relieving alchemy for that old wound.

All of the first line and most of the second, all strong enough, all akin to the power of the Dynasty, all Eternal enough, all who were worth anything, who today found themselves in the Eternal, quite all... Only Father, whose strength was so absurdly great that it could not be turned into weakness, survived, and she, unworthy and useless. There were still relatives, not close, distant, very distant, and the rest, almost not relatives at all. The reign of the Dynasty spawned many sidelines, too many, taking full advantage of their bond that would not let a brother go with a blade on his brother. Now that bond had reduced so many of them to the grave... and has it brought so many more? Had that nightmarishly desirable even now melody traveled further, reaching all the remaining still-living kin outside the capital?

Wreedo.

Waril.

Wonny

All of them lying in pools of their juices and semen, embraced by the retinue who heard their melody, orgasming to death until their souls left their bodies and went straight into the jaws of the one who had taken Warudo, on the same path that had always before been their salvation. The Benefics had performed a true Miracle, managing in such a time crunch without the ability to slow down Time, understand the nature of the attack, and attempt to save their lords and rulers. There was no Miracle to attempt success, save for Walzea and Father's tearing orders to everyone around him.

She should have listened, should have participated, helped, and supported, but it was as if her whole body had become a creamy dessert, so soft and delicate that it seemed to spread over every surface. It wasn't even a weakness that hundreds of benefits and cleansing effects would have vaporized without trace or harm, but something humiliatingly close to the state one feels after a visit from an experienced lover, only scarier and more inescapable. Walzea allows herself a few more heartbeats of lewd and deadly tenderness and then begins to rise.

Her body doesn't immediately remember how to move and control those movements, but when she gets the urge, the guardsmen and healers immediately lift her to her trembling feet. Her clothes are restored, either by herself, simply automatically, or by one of the governesses, and afterward cleaned from the effects of an overdose of Lust by holders of the same class. Thoughts come to order, and the will of the true Eternal pushes grief, resentment, and sorrow deep into the recesses of the subconscious. It is not their time - they may have already lost, but the Eternal will leave just as they once came. Proudly and uncompromisingly.

Her father looked bad, very bad, though, before the sneaky and deadly successful attack, she'd thought he couldn't look worse. Not even pale, but grayish-green, like the offspring of a cave goblin, slimmed down to about half his size, aged to the point of near helplessness, with a terrifyingly powerful rollback and a cursed soul-sucking on top of it, he was still Father. The strongest of, the most powerful, able to come out of this battle and pull his daughter and his Empire out of it. The more terrifying, the more painful it was to hear his words, the more she wanted to loop herself somewhere in the past so she wouldn't have to hear them and forget what she'd heard.

"The creature struck me the very first thing it did." The words lacked the power and authority that had been there not so long ago when orders were given to the Guard and retinue, only a tired anger and an equally strong resolve. "My soul is no longer with me, but on its way into the jaws of this abomination. I have managed to freeze it halfway, but I can hold it no longer. I... I will try to destroy my essence, if not sever the link. but I don't know if I can."

There are no words except for the completely stupid requests to say that it is such a cruel joke and then add that everything will be fine. Walzea, who had regained her mind and begun to think like a Princess again, not like a little whiny girl, understands perfectly well what was said, analyzes it, and puts it in order, but it still hurts and frightens, bitter and sad.

"How is it... how is it, Father?" It was hard to think of a more banal and useless question now when every moment was worth the weight of all Ezless's gold, but the barely regained control was not so solid.

"Into the sonm of the creature, into his soul trap, shall not fall the bearer of full Authority." As if he had already accepted his fate worse than death and therefore lost his fear, the Emperor of the Ages continued to speak, ignoring the babbling of his daughter. "The River sees that I have been hard on you. All the gods who left us here see, you have failed me. You have seemed a mistake, a figment of the past that has remained my burden, my burden of guilt. But now there is no choice for me or you. Know, Walzea the Eternal, hear my last words and believe. I will be proud of you, and you will become worthy and find the greatness you have longed for."

She hears, but she doesn't want to listen, she can't and doesn't believe.

She knows what Father is doing. She doesn't fully believe it, but she knows.

"By the will of mine." The strength and power he embodied returned to the voice of the Emperor of Ages. "I name you, daughter of mine, as an extension of my power. I bequeath thee a Law, I conjure thee a Crown, I name thee a Right. Accept the Power to Rule... Eternally. Farewell and forgive us all..."

On Walzea's forehead is something useless to even dream of because the one who could give this Crown to her had long ago been disappointed in her. Power flows into her essence, tormenting and tearing the girl who was not ready for it, the Princess who became Empress against her will, who was never able to say her last words to her father, who never had time to say goodbye to any of them, who remained a useless girl, an empty branch of the main line for every kin. The power flows, changes her, and opens new facets of what she used to know only in theory, only from the diaries and records of those who managed to become the Authority embodied in the Crown and the Throne.

The Empress endured and did not die at the same moment, unable to withstand the onslaught of power pouring into her soul and essence.

But by the time she came to her senses, her father, the previous Emperor Pradius the Merciless, was hopelessly dead, nothing more than an empty body, and the Empress's power, multiplied many times over, made clear another bleak fact: her father had not been able to destroy his soul, nor to push it out of the channel and straight into the archdevil's jaws. And that means that after a couple of minutes, which the abomination will spend on the proper treatment of all her kin that it has taken, a new melody will come, the same one, but different, created and played only for her. And the newly minted ruler, in whose Palace there are no more artifacts left that can even scratch the mythical creature, will not be able to prevent it.

Ironic to be the last Empress to rule for less than an hour.

The brothers, both of them, would have laughed heartily.

Oh, yeah.

There is nothing left of their hearts.

Should she order the guards, who were now on their knees, albeit with a lot of violations of proper ceremonial - in such circumstances more than completely forgivable - to kill her before... before she was taken too? The main thing was not to laugh now, not to giggle, because there were no tears, but the absurdity of the situation could drive her insane even before the creature did.

And they all realized it, too, because Father had been quite clear in his instructions and explanation of the situation. The remnants of the artifacts will be used in time, but there is not even a shadow of a chance of pushing through the creature's defenses, and a hastily organized counterattack has even less of a chance. Walzea continued to keep the constructs her father had created in control, still slowing time, letting her prepare and maybe even die in battle. There was no longer enough strength for more, not after such a drastic enhancement that hurt as much as it elevated. She needs rest, and if it weren't for the fact of maintaining and channeling the already prepared distortions of the Law at no particular cost, she would have fainted, if not dead. The benefics and healers assigned to her are only wasting the reserve because, in her current position, any benefits are washed away by the waters of the River.

"Don't be in a hurry to say goodbye to your life." There's less confidence in the voice and movements of the staggering, knee-shaking thug than there used to be, but there's as much insolence as there was. "If anything, it's never too late to die.... although with these cocksuckers, I guess it might be."

"If it's any consolation, you've earned several executions in a row with your behavior and rudeness towards me." Indifferently and somehow even cheerfully says the Empress, really in no hurry to throw herself on the dagger. "But I you, for repeatedly saving of my emperorship I mercy you. Shall I give you a reward, or will verbal thanks suffice?"

Only a snort of laughter in response, which would have given the valets a shock if they were still alive at that moment. She wondered how long it took him to learn to act so outside the bounds of propriety. That was within the bounds of indecency. You can't do that by accident, masterfully walking through all the taboos and prohibitions of court etiquette. To be so utterly unscrupulous, one would have to know the etiquette better than half the court sycophants.

"It's enough for me to brag in the taverns about how I slapped the Empress, who wanted to suck my dick." The degenerate laughs and seems to have made someone listening to their conversation faint, forcing the guards to take hold of their blades and staff, preparing to kill the idiot. "Titles and orders don't work after that."

"If you really do that, I'll have you drowned in the latrine, along with the whole tavern." It wasn't that she was angry, but this kind of talk, so to speak, made her forget for a moment the ticking timer to her downfall. "But I'll bury you with all the honors, even give you a crypt here at the Palace."

"That's better because I was thinking of ripping all the sharp objects out of your hands, you little brat. Better get ready to kill, not die." The smile that begs for a second smile underneath is pointedly ignored, but one thing she has to admit in all honesty to herself

It's not known whether the Empress of Ages has changed her mind about falling on the dagger, but here's a clear and angry, preternaturally motivated certainty that she will kill this Wanderer first, far better than the doomed fatalism of a suicide bomber.

So the two of them, exhausted and almost dead, waited for the end: side by side but separately.

* * *

The goal had been achieved. The plan had been executed, and it was time to reap the sweet harvest of hard work, to change the tune once again, and at the same time, to pay attention to what was happening in the city that already belonged to him. The souls of those marked by Eternity are already listening to his Chorus, gradually taking the form they wanted, making them shake their heads in brokenness at the impossibility of corrupting them correctly and gradually, savoring every moment, every step to Vice. The devils, their highest representatives, of course, could be amazingly methodical when necessary, and so restrained that they could easily outshine other ascetics. However, few could bring themselves to love such restrictions. Some enthusiasts sought new shades of knowledge in involuntary restrictions, and they did find them, but among those who gave their aspect to Lust, they were few.

The city had all but fallen, even if there were still pockets of extremely vicious resistance that would have to be dealt with by him, personally and in full force, to reduce further losses among the already thinning elite. The inhabitants of the capital themselves were now not so much needed by the domain and its Sovereign, even if it was foolish to give up so many assets in the Bank. With the receipt of the souls of the Eternal, the game will move to a completely different level. There is a good chance that he will have to share the claimed rights with a couple more domains, of course, the most opposite and least conflicting with the Lust aspects. However, it is not in the rules of the devils to give up what they have taken, nor is it in the rules of anyone else, so there will certainly be a use for the inhabitants of the capital and the riches hidden in the city, how else could it be?

The News Bringer was busy fighting the will of the disobedient and boring Ezlesses, who couldn't even give themselves to Lust properly, nor were they particularly inclined to do so. If Sovereign embodied Greed, then such personalities, as all of them were known to be, who took the gold would be the pearl of his collection, but Lust was... well, did not care. The soul was very strong, and you could do a lot with it, but relatively indifferent. The goal, of course, was to prevent Ezless from exercising the right of summoning, and, being honest with his nature, Sovereign doubted too much. He didn't believe they could summon this gilded worm, he didn't believe it was as powerful as it was supposed to be, and he didn't fully believe in the very existence of this entity. It had been summoned a long time ago, it had been awakened from its slumber, it had gathered contradictory information, and if it had encountered devils of any Vice, it had left no witnesses.

The News Bringer was the domain's ultimate weapon. Its blade and striking mace are even more dangerous than Sovereign in direct combat. Not as versatile, lacking artistry and such an obvious ability to tweak and reshape itself to suit a particular enemy, but it was in combat it was very dangerous. Multiple great souls were not used to create the Bringer, nor were incalculable values put into it, which was a deliberate move. The food and fuel of this machine of delivering Sovereign's point of view to the entire universe were ordinary and gray souls, practically nothing distinguished, no one really attracted. They were only the fuel, not the nucleus around which the source of reason, the newborn creature that lives and sings to the melody of the souls it has.

A golem was a golem, no matter how complex and whether created by creatures or humans and Bringer was a golem. The basis of his thinking, if an extremely flexible and constantly learning set of algorithms can be called thinking, was his armor, which was the Bringer. Sitting inside thousands of thousands of souls, giving these armor a semblance of life, were the Bringer - a perfect tandem, primitive to the extreme, empty to the point of obscenity, unsophisticated to the point of hysteria, bland to the point of hatred - the ancient creation was used primarily against other devils, against whom it was an absolute weapon. The wildest pumping of the fleur simply washed away any influences coming from the outside rather than the inside. The armor held the blows of even unconditional divine power, and if the enemy was strong enough that the brute power could not match it... The Bringer was far more complex and cunning than he might have seemed, deadly and adaptable too, though to an incomparably lesser extent than Sovereign.

If his opponent had been a divine Envoy or even an Avatar, the latter would have found something to answer to and would most likely have either defeated his enemy or forced him to retreat in order to summon a full-fledged God, against whom he would also be able to last several cycles of exchanges of blows before falling forever. But it was the Serpent, with all its strange nature and incomprehensible techniques, that became for the Bringer an uncomfortable opponent, which was extremely difficult to drive into the framework of ready-made algorithms. The Serpent did not go into direct combat, acted cautiously, slithering around, baring undoubtedly poisonous fangs, affecting indirectly the very concepts of price and fees, seeking to upset the balance of internal processes of the golem, to cause overconsumption of forces and destruction of the souls contained in the giant creation.

It didn't work out so well. The Bringer was created just like that, as uncomfortable as possible for anyone, with no obvious or non-obvious weaknesses. The effects were damped by the armor, not going any further than the Hell-wrapped steel, as strong as the very foundation of the other plane, as its manifestation. The Bringer made a decision. Weightless by the nullification of weight, it maneuvers between the battle-damaged skeletons of the buildings of affluent neighborhoods. It approached the palace and then moved away again. Both entities were in no hurry to destroy the city. Both were simply waiting for something. The Bringer saw, perceived in the visions of the world enough to not doubt that every movement of the Serpent was taking away part of the Serpent's not the infinite reserve of strength, not weakening it but shortening its stay in its current state. The Serpent was waiting either for help from the Palace or for the moment when the dome would fall or for the second when he would find a way to penetrate through the conceptual defense of the golem, to make it slow down even for a moment and to inject into it his poison, the nature of which has not yet been found out.

The battle had not been in vain. The Serpent's sides and hood were gaping with melted holes left by the Bringer's fists and magic, and newly created gold chains of varying thicknesses were slowly patching the wounds. The Bringer was not injured, but some parts of his armor had faded as if to lose some of its power, and one of his arms had frozen in a not fully formed battle formation, jamming it and turning it into an ordinary hammer, also dangerous, but not as dangerous as a fleur-powered arcane cannon. The Bringer couldn't physically run out of power. It was too connected to Hell to be a part of it, but if it lost enough souls, it would reduce the quality of its algorithms, becoming slower and dumber, less dangerous.

For now, however, Sovereign cannot interfere, finishing the descent no one else can interfere with, seducing the most precious souls of all that they have just come for, preparing for the second invitation, seeking to take the already almost taken girl, which foolish father transferred his rights before accepting the embrace of Hell and Lust. Perhaps, if it comes out, he will not take her soul from her body, and her father will create a new one so their strange relationship will move to a new level of family understanding. Or, to do it easier, trivially creating a shared melody of the Chorus for both of them so they thought up everything necessary and realized in a fantasy indistinguishable from reality?

Decisions, decisions.

There was no need to intervene in the battle between the two giants - they were both far from winning, but it was more likely that News Bringer would exhaust the Serpent and force him to go back to where he came from. And he came somehow, right under the dome, despite all the obstacles! The bodies and souls of several Ezlesses seem to have been captured, so it's worth asking them more about their family enchantments and gutting them for answers hidden in the depths of their essence.

* * *

Not too far from the battle of the giants, there is another one in which he will have to be the first to intervene because it is here that Lust may lose. Somehow Master of the Branded has disappointed his aspirations, his melody faltered, and notes missed, so one of the violins has been inverted into someone else's ensemble! Really funny, and Sovereign smiles a sweet smile, suppressing his irritation, for it is not often that such tricks are used by mortals against devils, not the other way around.

It is to be hoped sweet Silence has not dived into the depths of the Shadow, determined, like a true Hero, to continue the hopeless battle. To break him is wanton to the point of madness, the desire to break the silence with melody is unbearable, and the ring on the boy's finger beckons with its nature as much as the most perfect bait. He had not had time to fully understand the nature of the artifact, to discern every step of its gifts, but even what he had seen was enough to place the unassuming ring above almost any other artifact he had encountered today.

However, this is about the fate of the toy that had failed him. Master of the Branded, to whom he had entrusted the branded ones in his mercy, had failed his Sovereign, had failed him foolishly, had failed him irresponsibly, and now he dared to ask for help. His defeat is obvious. The two of them, Jerem and the one that should have taken the Priest of Retribution but became a Creature of Heaven's power, have slowly and inevitably clamped down on the branded one, knocking out both his toys and his retinue of devils, forcing him to fight where he is weakest, in those rules where he cannot deploy the full might of his nature.

The Heaven Maiden soars, crushing blue, reading the future in a straight line from victory to defeat, while the High Priest of Equilibrium circling with point-blank strikes thwarts any attempts to get out of the defense. The River Wanderer, lost in fantasy, is pinned almost to the ground by the coordinated blows of the mages and priests, recklessly wasting the rest of the altar's reserves of goodness, while the Giant Defender, once deceived in his best feelings, barely has time to pick up the ever-increasing number of missed blows. Jerem seeks to seize control of the river waters from the fantasist, to disconnect the connection of wound transmission from the deceived, or to wipe the next branded one into nothing, who remain fewer and fewer.

No, that's really not good.

The leashes will have a new master who is more competent and won't make such embarrassing blunders.

There were other points where Sovereign's help would come in handy. A couple of calibrated thrusts, breaking the formation of mortals, interrupting their melodies, and letting the melodies of his ward toys take over. But this was all far less dangerous, virtually non-threatening, requiring no immediate correction, no swift intervention in another's play. Time was now playing out for the devils. The last drops of strength were leaving the city's defenders, and the city itself was becoming more and more saturated with Hell, turning into an extension of Sovereign's body. The petals didn't just bridge the two pieces of space. They sprouted a multitude of invisible roots, braiding the entire doomed city and binding it to the dome even tighter. Until the two realities became inseparable until what had begun centuries and centuries ago, on the same day the devils had been informed of the nature of the Eternals' blood bond, of their mortal vulnerability, was accomplished.

The creature stood motionless, only the lashing threads of the Source of the Keys, thinned and mostly severed but still able to redirect and compensate for the petals' minor faults. The battle with the trio that had grown into a quartet had been hard. Much harder than it would have been, too much for the devil to be held back by the need to conjure, too much for it to take. Wounds received, billets wasted, souls lost, each of which was so close to him, so begging to be taken back, unable to return. Everything had paid off. All the fruit would be taken from the branches of the world tree, and the new world would receive its message and know the Lust given to it, but for now, there was time to lament the wounds, regret the lost opportunities and the mistakes made.

The petals move again, raising hundreds and hundreds of lights, rebuilding and changing the sonm, creating a new Sovereign at the same time, killing the old one. This one, almost dead already, is too exhausted. These wounds are easier to dismantle into component parts with the rest of his pseudo-body and personality than to sew them up without stopping the descent and without distracting from the control of the city. After all, the mental effort can be spent on other, more logical, tactically, and strategically beneficial actions.

For example, - bounce, step, let a column of blackness pass by, raise a shield against a few pins, break the battering ram with a counter-strike of a spiral of lightning, - on regretting that he had not killed the little wretch at once, disregarding the desire to savor the agony of his humanity!

Sovereign looked gloomily, not playing at all, at the Silence that had reappeared before him, at the mask that smiled thoughtlessly with a bloody grin, at the deaf and unyielding emptiness in the clairvoyance as it seemed to seers of his chorus. For the third time, such a picture had become not even a farce but a form of mockery, an abuse of his, the good Sovereign's, sense of proportion. He, of course, was pleased that the boy had come to him, bringing his soul and his strange ring, and his daggers, which had not shown their nature so far, were very much to be studied. And he would have taken it for granted if this child of other heavens had decided to come here as if to be executed, willing to die, but not to give up his foolish principles. With what a pure heart, he would have given the boy a new vision of the world, warmed and comforted him!

But Silence had come here ready to kill and win, despite the fact he had previously failed even in the company of three other allies of equal strength. It was precisely an insult, an impure, bad, and idle insult to the very memory of that passionate battle song he had previously learned by confronting the quartet. How dare he dishonor their memory if he spits on the kindness of the devil who offers him everything? Does he not realize how he is desalinating and emasculating the Lust he had recently given?

Boorish boy.

But he'll cure that.

The creature and what had been human, then become a creature and twisted into something quite absurd, had said nothing and now, only to hear Sovereign's barely audible chuckle, a sneer. A sneer, as if Silence understood something the devil himself could not understand. It was clearly a deception, could be nothing but a deception, but just as then, after the failure at the Library, when he had been forced to speed up the operation, interrupting several crucial moments of the final preparations, beginning to play without a fully assembled orchestra, so now laughter tugged at something inside. And to that something, for its touch, Sovereign responds with mirthful rage and lust, as he always does, proving to the world how perfect he is and how wrong those who did not see his perfection were.

All the tricks of the summoned are accounted for.

All techniques are analyzed.

All tactics are broken down into separate elements that have been countered.

All that's left is to finish this tiresome performance.

Silence attacks first, impatiently and somewhat hastily, hurriedly, as he sees now, having grown accustomed to his manner, finding all its flaws and shortcomings. The man takes a step forward, ending with his already huge crag-like Shadow, the size of a small house, presses himself to the ground and exhales a whole swarm of stinging ribbons running strictly along the line of the ground, leaving behind him only innumerable slashes of reality merging into one large gash. There he was again with these breaches into the depths of the Shadow as if he hadn't learned the lessons of the past, as if he hadn't realized there were no entities at such depths that he could conquer or even interest. And if there were, but that's what he's hoping for, isn't it? Dying in good company is somehow more pleasant for these foolish mortals than enjoying Vice forever in the arms of the same company!

A net of pure Truth fell from above, simultaneously covering the expanding rift and burning the edge of the instantly recoiling Silence aside. He managed to recoil, albeit losing a bit of black flesh, only to run into a multicolored, seemingly iridescent blanket of Astral energy that first wrapped itself around the boy and only then detonated, tearing apart... no, not the whole body, but only the dropped upper layers, a very thick shadowy force mixed with the blood and flesh of Silence, but still it was the enchantments, not a piece of body with a soul. The diminished Shadow is more like a headless and very skinny tiger, thin but strikingly swift, as if blurred even for the sight of Myth.

Perhaps it was for nothing that he had changed himself to this particular formation, this particular Sovereign turned into, locked into a stationary duel against the defensive lines rather than a one-on-one battle? But no, that was right. It was more important now to counter the remnants of the Eternal's defenses and open up the Palace if the last of the Dynasty was slaughtered by her guards, unwilling to receive the flow of Lust coming through her. I didn't want to change myself again because it would be a shame to die without having existed even a little, and there was no need to act so radically. The existing supplies would be enough just in case of close attackers.

A Solar Sphere in the path of the skittish figure coming in from the side, another where the shadowy illusion was running, just a silhouette, only very real, of the same animal, a stream of water droplets coming toward it, and a powerful mental, even through the shield of Loneliness, even if barely a wave of order, a web of psionics and fleur, demanding to think about the most shameful intimate experience in life, to experience a stupefying mixture of shame, excitement, and the desire to repeat it. Under such pressure, it is very difficult to act quickly, even if it only partially affects you, and therefore, the spheres are affected at once by the illusion and... The second illusion, under which hid the real Shadow, who received a shower of Rain of Depths, a psionic scream, a fire needle, and finally a dissecting blow of divine Miracle, pumped out of the freshly obtained in the same battle soul of the cleric of Warrior. The last crush Si...

...break...

It's hard to act quickly under that kind of pressure, even if you're only partially affected by it, so the spheres hit an illusion, a second illusion, and the remnants of a third illusion all at once as the true Silence jump out of the last silhouette's fragments, exhales a stream of blackness towards Rain, dodges the fire needle, and contemptuously ignores the attempted psionic influence. Well, this is exactly what was expected. The mirror-smashing trick has gotten tiresome by now, though the interest in the technique of combining such different power origins is only growing and growing.

They stand opposite each other again.

Sovereign is in the middle of the remnants of the square, in the center of the circle outlined with petals, and his toy is closer to the edge, crouching on one knee, resting his hand on the ground, and even without supervision you can see how hard he is breathing there, under his mask. Sovereign is not in a hurry. He understands perfectly well that the boy can still run away and will definitely try to run away if he is crushed. The boy right now is ready to either strike or retreat if the blow fails. He wants to finish. He is sick of it, but the trick with the mirror forces gave up the first note, waiting for the perfect moment to kill, to even shatter reality along with the mirror, - where do these mirrors lie, Sovereign has sifted through half the city to find the origins of the Dream Realm's power, he doesn't hide them in his stomach, does he? - Silence could only retreat, undo the loss, not turn it into a success.

First second.

Second second.

Third second.

Sovereign is the pinnacle of the ideal of his Vice, and therefore Silence had not even the slightest chance of what he desired. He may combine the qualities of a great deceiver and an excellent seer, but he has a whole Chorus of seers, all different, all diligent, all ready to lay down their souls for the sake of his whims, and therefore, he saw and recognized the deception, the barely visible veil, as if it were a copy of his melody, only without a couple of notes. In fact, that was why Silence sat on his knee because he had to listen to his melody to make the lie as natural as possible.

It didn't work.

The petals shifted, turning in a dozen dimensions at once, changing their position in reality and the position of reality relative to itself - the city under the dome was looking more and more like Hell. And so, new facets of reality control were opening up. Not absolute, but for some purposes, more than sufficient, even excessive, to be honest.

It was not a battering ram, a stream, or even an arrow that struck the petal, but a feather as immense as Heaven itself, a feather of the purest Blue, the purest and most serene he had seen in a very long time, perhaps in his entire existence. The devil had not often encountered creatures of Heaven, Even more rarely had he encountered such strong and, perhaps, problematic ones, as a toy that had escaped from their care, a toy that had hopelessly spoiled itself, a lapdog that had gone off its leash, that had chosen the wrong road, that had disowned its masters, that had repaid their caresses and care with black ingratitude.

The first thing he does is attack the relaxed Silence, who had assumed that Sovereign would be the first to take on the unexpected ally he had hidden rather than the seer himself. What had he hoped for? It was not at all clear to the devil. He spent more concentration not on preparing an attack but on trying to see if there was a clever trap hidden behind the "open throat." Silence proved itself to be a superior inventor of such shticks. The devil picks up the false melody, merges it with the truth, and uses the connection between the liar and his lie, getting through this connection closer to the essence of the disobedient Silence. The one, of course, resists, desperately and angrily, sharply and even a little painfully, but it wouldn't help him... if it weren't for the same ally with innumerable wings, who is clearly being supported by someone, fed directly from Heaven, and the visions sent by the brandishing even point to that someone. When a second feather, this time of a different nature and configuration, is sent flying, the Master is forced to interrupt, almost crushing the boy mentally and morally.

The second feather is also met in the right way, adopted in a slightly augmented petal configuration, and the great devil himself, Lust Incarnate, calms down considerably. The newborn creature is only slightly weaker than he is in strength and in understanding its source of power, but she is a newborn, dangerous, but not yet able to master what her conversion has given her. Giving her at least a couple of months to adjust would make her a more serious foe, especially if on neutral territory, but here, almost in Hell, confronting him, she would not survive this battle, would not hold the advantage.

A dozen charms of various orientations and types of effects, souls burning in the flames of the fleur, barriers and closed fields of various types, forced the winged spawn of Heaven, positioned so high that it was almost touching the dome above Eternal, to sharply tuck its wings under itself, diving down, closer to the ground and away from the direct targeting of its attacks. The creature maneuvers and uses a very unusual form of foresight, literally aligning its future, going through dozens of lines of probability, hundreds of them, picking one where it will take less damage. The ones where she doesn't have to take any wounds at all, she still doesn't find.

Whether it is a panicked flight or a planned retreat, it accomplishes nothing. Sovereign has already unleashed his full might upon her, again halting the nearly completed and finished descent. From above, multiple honey-gold lightning bolts begin to strike from the surface of the dome, trying to cage the maneuvering bird while Jerem Stayr pounces with renewed vigor on the suddenly emboldened brandishing a useless toy that can't even take care of itself. The city is already in Hell without any "almost," which opens up such abilities to control its surroundings. If you look a little more closely into the sky, without fear of losing yourself in fantasies, you will see that these lightning bolts come not just from the purple sky but from the most fleshy parts of it, as if a piece of one of the petals had appeared in that area. The blade of the very ordinary dagger that had never revealed its secrets to him, flying toward him, prevented him from reaching the trapped celestial creature.

The devil is distracted from the former maiden, giving her some time to recover, returning to Silence that has thrown off the obsession, who has had time to turn around another shadow form, run around his opponent in a wide arc, and catch the dagger thrown earlier - be sure, be sure to study this weapon - back into his hands. To this insolence, Sovereign was already preparing a response. His Chorus had already almost opened up, almost taken the boy who had lost the last layers of his defenses of un-existence. There were literally a few heartbeats left. He could already taste it, already had almost taken him, almost, almost.

Silence tilts his head to the side as if there is no danger as if he does not feel the tentacles of Sovereign's will digging into him, as if the Hell itself is not closing around him, as if the purple sky is not sinking lower and lower before his eyes, in which the fabrics of its petals are increasingly visible. Silence just watches, as if a naughty child who threw mud at a drunken artisan and now waits to see whether the drunkard will run after the skittish boy into the narrow alleyways or will not disgrace himself. He looks as if he has no doubts about the outcome of the future, seeing it completely different from what it should be, and this makes Sovereign very angry, from misunderstanding, from the need to double-check all variants of events through the Chorus for the hundredth and thousandth time, distracting from the corruption of the former Emperor and the preparation of the capture of the current Empress, from the convergence and control of the battle...

And then Silence twitches strangely, emitting a call inaudible to any ear. For Sovereign to understand his hope and laugh at it. No matter how powerful, no matter how special this technique of his, most likely bestowed by a separate one-time action skill, calling for something here and now would not work. The dome's lens and the shroud's proofreading wouldn't allow him to summon anything strong, and he wouldn't be able to break through to the depths of the Shadow, where even the Ancient Creatures could feed, just by cutting the thread of the Call.

Hell is already here, Boy of Silence. It is only here, and it is not for you to challenge my power. A message thought, flowing into the almost undefended, focused solely on the call, mind of Silence, which now, the creature was sure, not even a mirror could break. Sovereign did not allow himself even a moment's delay, would not waste an ounce of time, immediately after his word - which was also an attack intended to stun and immobilize - sending the most powerful curse of instant death, preparing to remove the soul exposed in death, secretly still expecting another broken mirror.

The mirror didn't break.

But the pain came.

Silence attacks swiftly and artlessly, quite directly, not even trying to hide itself from foresight or intuitive premonitions, sending the body into a dash towards the pseudo-body frozen in agony. In a different situation, Sovereign would have atomized the shadow carcass rushing at him, capable of swallowing the devil's compact vessel in one bite, literally in two bites, because Silence hadn't even put up any defenses, and the creature had long since figured out how to overload his trademark two-dimensionality. But it was only necessary to strain the internal structures of the body, about to strike, just reflexively swing away and then deal with the source of pain as the agony acquired a whole new level and intensified many times.

The analysis is instantaneous, faster than even thought, faster than the realization of the damage, and this analysis brings the consciousness to the brink of madness, allowing it to realize what has happened. Hundreds of souls act according to the algorithms laid down in them. Fleur constructions change the direction and embodiment of existence, create new directives, reshape the personality right on the fly, and adjust the consciousness to new inputs, making it more ready for the cards thrown on the table than before. And understanding comes, fierce and strikingly painful.

The petals.

Its petals, parts of the whole, the foundation and continuations, united and unified the whole Domain into one absolute creation, the first and last chords of the universal melody. They were the most important element, performing most of the influences necessary for the descent. They were the shield, the weapons, the tables of account, and Sovereign himself. They are One. They are united in a complex system that embodied his Lust for all who recognized his power, given that Lust a direction, and constantly corrected it when needed. The Sovereign and the Domain are one and the same thing, two sides of a coin, while the petals became its edge, the main working tool for modifying the Domain, expanding it, or adding new parts to it.

Silence could not open a working breach within the dome. It was impossible even for someone stronger, comparable in steps of greatness to Sovereign. The Veil and the Shroud were created precisely for the sake of this prohibition. No one would get in, no one would get out, and even the most powerful planar bond would be hopelessly distorted by the effects of the lens. Either you make your way very shallowly to those pieces of other dimensions that are cut off by the dome, or the lens will direct you to such depths of your preferred planar that you can use such a passage only for suicide. Too deep for those living there to be interested in what was happening within the dome, too short-lived were such breaches, closing on their own under the oppression of the veil, and calls and orders to tamed contract creatures of all types simply did not reach their destination.

Silence could not send such a Call to be heard, could not anywhere within the Eternal.

Sovereign believed, knew, and had no doubt that there, beneath the mask, was hidden the sneaky smile of one who had found a loophole in the bondage agreement, who had outwitted the trickster and deceived the deceiver. Otherwise, he would have even admired, maybe even wanted the boy again, changing his mind about killing him and deciding to play at corrupting him again. Otherwise, because right now, the strongest devil of his domain was desperately trying to simply survive, already not caring about overspending on anything, not trying to save on anything.

Silence created rifts not within the city, not under the dome, but in place, the lens did not extend its effect. Right inside the petals. Inside not the Eternal, but the transitional state between Hell and Reality. It had created rifts in the vaults of naked souls, and even Sovereign couldn't think of a better bait for the Shadows. Clairvoyance burned the hard-won visionaries, one by one, giving them up to Lust forever, but in time, in time to calculate each of the cuts within his being, to understand and dissect the mechanism of this trick, making it useless now and in the future.

It was at that moment the hulk of The Shadow, a multi-armed creature with no clear form, burst open, revealing the true form the mortal who had seen the chance of success had assumed. A humanoid, only a finger taller than the devil's central pseudo-body, it resembled a knight clad in solid, slitless armor but with claws on his hands instead of blades, and behind him stretched a weightless cloak of black cloth that made the world fade to gray. The devil had almost made it, but just as recently, Prince Warudo, who had already given him his Time, had almost made it.

The knight slammed into the archdevil that tried to conjure something, ignoring the dozens of individually weak multicolored beams that never coalesced into a common technique, ignoring the wall of pure Sun that appeared before him, pushing through it with its monochrome presence without even slowing down, and then knocked the creature to the ground, with a single claw strike tearing the remaining threads of the source that were trying to wrap around the attacker, grow into him and do something, anything. The pain sobered, sobered by the loss of such an important tool, a complete loss that left not a single thread intact that would otherwise be completely indifferent to attempts to damage them or avoid their embrace. Silence too had studied him and learned much, learned truths unacceptable to know. For some miserable fraction of an instant, the panic of his wounds, of the very tangible threat of being ignominiously lost right now, not even a step away from success, but having already reached it, having taken it in hand, allows him to attack in earnest.

Silence doesn't even try to defend itself, only strikes with clawed hands, clutching its daggers as well, infused with shadow power to the point where they are indistinguishable from the black flesh of the altered form. Blow after blow leaves deep scars, cuts, and lacerations on his body, into which more and more shadow pours and pours, like drops of ink poured into the honey gold of his essence, polluting, weakening, devouring, dissolving it alive, like some insect after being struck by a spider's sting! Hatred boils up with sea foam, and sea foam spews out of the pseudo-body's mouth as if it were the rabid dog in the neighborhood that had eaten a couple of kilos of alchemical powder for cleaning cloth garments. The flow of foam dissolves not only the dirt but everything, even the hand, which Sovereign, tormented by the spasms of agony that deprive him of control over his body, tries to block the blows of the claws of silence. It also sweeps away the unprotected bastard, the dishonorable scum who had inflicted such wounds, dishonorable and vile wounds on his perfect body!

...break...

The flow of foam dissolved not only the dirt but everything, even the hand that had been struck, the hand that Sovereign, tormented by the spasms of body-destroying agony, was trying to block the claws of Silence. Sweeping away everything but the snake of Silence that curved, escaping the flood of Void Bubbles and managing to literally gag Sovereign from the opening maw from which the power, or rather the lack of it, of the merciless Edge was being vomited into reality. The billet, which had lost its way out of the container body, became unusable, dissolving part of the face, the lower jaw, and part of the internal structures of an already less-than-perfect body, forcing the soul of the submissive void-dweller to be torn apart by Lust, so long as what had been released did not go further inward to the blackness of Loneliness already there.

Sovereign howls with pain and hatred, trying to understand, trying to find a way to throw off Silence that is methodically beating right into his essence, trying to restore the tempo of the melody, to remove the ominous rustling and crackling of interference that obscures the hearing more and more. The beholders are burning in agony, not even having time to experience in that agony the bliss of eternal orgasm, searching, searching, relentlessly searching for a way out, any way out, any way. Somewhere far away, as if not with him and not for him, the convergence collapses, shaking in the same agony of the cut-off dome. Multiple black lines, so ugly on the multicolored flower of his will, are increasingly clear along the sinister petals of his will. They have appeared and are growing, producing dozens of branches, as if repeating the contour of some tree leaf, and the hungry power of the Shadow is already burning, burning, burning powerless to defend themselves against the threat from within the soul.

The devil could interfere. He could eradicate the aggressive force with a washout stream of Hell energy, which was still more plentiful, even if it lost to the qualitatively pure hunger of the Shadow, which was still more plentiful, but not for long, not for long. He could still interfere. Maybe if the beast that tormented him in the guise of a mortal, in the guise of Shadow, in the guise of Loneliness, which has nothing to offer, which hates any happiness given by Vice from its very essence, let it stop beating even for a moment, even for a moment, even for a moment, even for a moment...

Burning seers, restoring the pattern of events, revealing what he should have noticed, what the hated Silence was really hiding from him and his allies! The chain of events is folding, coming together, stripping away the sticky web of deception, deception too good even for The Shadow, deception that he might have uncovered so easily had he been less preoccupied at that moment with the whole quartet at once. It hurts, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts! Into the petals came through the still narrow gaps the first Shadows, inferior and hungry, dying in the concentrate of the fleur even faster than they had time to take a bite of anything, but they floated along the black ducts of the lines, the areas where his petals had already been polluted, where they are already allowed to stay, and after them the stronger Shadows climb inside, already capable of eating - of eating him, Sovereign of Lust - only growing bigger and angrier, hungrier and still as lonely.

frame-understanding

...into the still motionless Silence, which itself did not begin to evade, did not even move into a flat state, then began to seriously disturb its future husband and father, wife and mother. What this sweet creature was up to, what chord was being prepared, why did he delay, why did he not strike at the weaknesses that were more and more clearly revealed to him ...

This moment.

Moment of truce.

In that instant, Silence began to weave a deception, already then not believing in victory by fair fight, not going to help either Flute or Drums, just as they considered him an enemy, so he did not see them as those who should have lived. Sovereign, through the dying fully and forever seers, sees his pain at the thought of the fiery Sophia, at the thought of the one who could have been in his place, and he could have been in hers. He sees the determination and realization that it is too late to save her, that she is doomed, having already been sent to meet Sovereign and would be taken back only to be slaughtered on the altar, to have her strongest class taken away because the faith that has been in his hands is gone. It was then he began to weave a false cloth, indiscriminately affecting allies and devil alike, still hoping he could win without such risk but not believing such luck for a moment.

The claws of Silence are working with the measuredness of a dwarven steam hammer, driving the devil's base deeper and deeper into the ground, and if the past battle hadn't collapsed all the nearest catacomb tunnels, he could be slipping into them right now, to escape, to get away from the blows, to break the distance so it wouldn't hurt, hurt, hurt! Tissues tearing, the body begins to lose stability, to lose its multidimensionality, the multitude of off-dimensional tissues of honey sweetness losing stability, more and more leaking into it liquid from the concentration of Shadow, mixed with the willingly released blood of Silence. It is so easy to use, to curse through the willingly given blood, it will hurt even despite the protection of the shadow form, and he seizes the opportunity in a fraction of an instant. If only there were not these blows and pain, pain so forgotten and unfamiliar to the highly organized mind!

The Shadow grows new and new limbs, continuing to tear and torment, tear and poison, while the petals are already writhing from the alien power that fills them, from the Shadows crawling inside, eating him alive! Sovereign's agony is so strong that the connection he has established with his toys is hitting them in a chain reaction, weakening and shackling them, exposing them to the blows. The elite and the common meat, the Legends, and the lower visps. All begin to weaken, and the mortals take advantage of it. Jerem shines with Heaven, and the water shakes as the winged creature and its summoner crush the branded one, crushing the remnants of his army, which has already lost the River Fantasist, who never woke up from his fantasies even in death. His deceived Defender is already trembling under the hail of blows that there is no one to deliver and no will to absorb.

Claw strikes.

A poison of shadowy power deep within the body, creeping up on the sonm.

The jaws of the evil and hungry Shadows torment the insides of the petals, kill their very foundation, and take his souls from him.

And the maiden, the maiden who was two-faced and now tears off the hands of a master of leashes desperately trying to put up a fleur barrier or a barrier of stigmatizing outgrowths! This maiden, she is the same, he sees, he almost understands, would have understood already, but the pain, but the Shadows, but the jaws, but the souls, but such pain, the thoughts are confused, he loses the thread, the huge domain stops working normally, and he is the Domainю Рe needs to cleanse the existing, to weed out the alien, to overcome the embedded...

frame-awareness

...the petals shifted, making a revolution in a dozen dimensions at once, changing position in reality and the position of reality relative to itself...

understanding-hatred

...it is not a battering ram, a stream, or even an arrow that strikes the petal, but a feather of the purest Blue, as immense as Heaven itself....

acceptance-rejection

...picks up the false tune, merges it with the truth, exploits the connection of the liar and his lies, wading through that connection closer to the essence of the disobedient Silence.....

He knew, he knew, it hurt. Need to rebuild the circuit, change shape, it hurt, it stung. He knew, and he was ready. He was the one who had somehow messed with the one controlling the no longer two-faced maiden, forcing the one to give up the battle he was winning, just so he could just apply and aim that feather shot. Mirror, probably, yes, probably hurt. It was exactly the use of a mirror. Someone who kills his death in the reflection would have no trouble using such power to convey just one, Lust, Lust, Lust drowns out the pain, messages.

Silence didn't need an attack. He needed to move the petals and force a change of formation. It was at that moment he used the attack channel created by Sovereign himself, the very attack that the mortal had so set himself up for, letting himself be fooled into believing that the deceiver could not deceive him. He needed to change it again, flood the damage with Hell, etch the Shadows, dissolve them in Lust, and then throw Silence off himself so he wouldn't hit, not tear, tear, tear off shreds. A false melody that became a deception and a trap that nearly killed Silence, he was forced to constantly control. Silence knew, had seen, had seen from the beginning the moment of realignment, the death of one Sovereign and the birth of a new one. It was this process that suggested to him the right path, from his point of view, such a painful, painful path.

Find vulnerability.

Hide the preparation.

Summon an army of Hunger.

Beat, tear, destroy!

Sovereign strikes, slashing, killing his own and others, not forming a technique, but simply spitting out a torrent of Lust-stricken souls right into the face of Silence, right into the black oval and the grinning shadow maw. He no longer looks like a knight but like a multi-armed spider, a twisted and crippled humanoid, still covered by his cloak, covering Sovereign with it, making everything around him gray and useless, alien and cold, not allowing him to act in any wide way, forcing him to spend his strength on overcoming the monochrome, not leaving it for the blow itself. The cloak embraces the devil, clawed hands torturing his body, tearing it apart, and the jaws and claws of the summoned pack doing the same inside the petals.

The stream of souls tears the silence from its place, throws it away, and burns it, even as those souls gray before his eyes, dissolving into indifferent bicolor, dying along with their vanishing radiance. Sovereign configures his essence, not even trying to get up, only to move away from the damage, to retreat, to get rid of the jaws and the pain, and he has already succe...

...break...

The stream of souls almost reaches the silence, but it only opens another breach in the place of its maw, the very wide maw of its shadowy hypostasis, sending all the shining sparks of souls right into that breach, slamming it shut and tears apart again the once so beautiful face of Sovereign, interrupting his desperate attempt to survive, continuing to give only pain, only cold, only his damned Loneliness. The hatred is almost tangible, almost reaching absolute concentration. It seems to the devil that, at this moment, he is ready to change aspect to pure Rage or Fury just to get to the throat of the bastard. He would change at the same moment, reborn and reborn all his toys after him because they too are the Domain, and the Domain is him. He would have been reborn if it weren't for the burning, the jaws, the claws, the pain, the pain, the pain. Why can't he keep up? He's won. He's won, and he's stronger, smarter, and more perfect. He can't lose, not here, not to this, not to him, not to him, not now, not like this, not after all his successes, not after he took Ages by the heart and wrapped that heart in love and obedience!

To hit, to tear back, to torment as much as they had given him, to hit someone not even trying to defend himself...

...break...

Hit the constantly twirling ...

...break...

In continuously dodging and putting up short-lived but very strong defenses, growing them from his own shadow, it is almost impossible. He is too uncomfortable. The devil lacks one single second, less than a second, a heartbeat, only if there were no pain in him, this pain from claws and fangs and jaws and tentacles and paws and jaws and daggers...

Daggers.

Daggers!

Daggers!!!

Already fading, already feeling how he had lost too much, how nearly a third of the total area, volume, and multidimensionality of the petals had been lost, devoured, and eaten away. He was close to oblivion and cessation, closer than ever. He could already see it, understand it, and realize it. The daggers are just pieces of poor quality steel, just ordinary knives, just as he had seen them originally, just once picked up by a summoned bastard, a bastard, a freak, a mutilator, a creature, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts.

He killing him.

Terminates his existence.

With grown claws, supreme planar techniques, the most powerful summons through a terrifyingly strong Call, perfect control of non-existence, honed visionary skills, shattered mirrors, the ability to combine two sources of power without turning into bad-smelling mincemeat or the epicenter of an internal explosion, the natural instincts of a real, not chained Hero that was created to fight their kind.

And with daggers.

Simple.

Iron.

Daggers.

Infused with an inordinate amount of power, but such power can strike as deadly and painful, painful, painful, painful, even without the presence of iron picks, simple instruments of murder, not artifacts of the level of Legend or Myth, but banal and not enchanted instruments of war. The melody is no longer melodic. It reminds of the agony of a musician who is beating in a convulsive fit right in the orchestra pit, next to the rest of the orchestra, and even the conductor is subject to this fit, almost dead, almost frozen in stunned silence under the indifferent gazes of the absent audience.

Hurts, stings, burns, tears, cuts, chews, eats, devours, takes away, sucks, eviscerates, consumes, digests, desiccates...

A hit and miss.

A hit and block.

A hit and a counterattack, stripping him of the shards of his left arm up to the elbow, his right arm already ripped to his shoulder even earlier.

A hit and pain.

A hit and a scrambled hand pierce the side of the silence, pouring a river, an ocean of fleur into the shadow flesh, poisoning it, forcing it to distract and scorch the albeit undirected and hostile force, scorch it and thereby give a moment for its salvation...

...break...

A stab and pain again.

Agony and more agony.

Melody and Lust.

Now, he...

Just a little more and he...

He will cease to be!

No, he could still do it. He could still do it. He just had to redirect the flow of power, no longer burning out the shadow contagion because it had taken too much, but discarding the infected and eaten parts, saving what could be saved. The convergence has failed. The dome is about to fall. The remnants of the petals feel the barriers crumbling, previously unbreakable but now no longer supported by his will, the will of Sovereign. He is now in agony, on the brink of destruction. The gods are tearing the dome, soon to come, and he shouldn't be here by then. No, no, not like that, he must be. He must stay. He must exist, not here, but far from the threat, from the tearing and tormenting silence, from the devouring Shadows of his summoned pack!

Make it.

He needs just.

Make it.

Flee.

Start again.

New Domain.

New Sovereign.

Make it.

Transform and discard.

And he makes it, he makes it, he makes it, he makes it, he makes it, he makes it, he makes it, he makes it, he makes it, he makes it, he makes it, he makes it, he makes it...

...he makes...

...h.. mkes...

...h.. m...s...

..... m......

... ... ... .... . ....

... .... ... ... .... .... . .. ....

. . .... ....

.... ... ... .... . ... ... ... .... .. ....

... ... .. .... . ...

...

...

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...

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Ъ

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