* * *

Any stationary protection, when reaching and overcoming a certain level of quality, begins to turn the sheltered area into a separate lacuna with its own laws of reality. Of course, most of these changes are very imperceptible, almost cosmetic, even when it comes to really good barriers and fields. It's rather an amusing scientific phenomenon, so interesting to all sorts of researchers or theorists, than something that can be used to one's advantage. In order to really come close to creating a separate reality with your defense, you need to exceed the threshold of legendary. And mythical defenses are mythical because they are only found in myths. This is also a common truth, which is not interesting to anyone but theorists and is difficult to apply for all barrier masters without exception.

Almost without exception.

Among the preserved, obtained, developed, simply stolen, or taken away by force, the knowledge the Eternal Dynasty kept in its power, there were many things the rest of the world had not suspected. And even if they suspected or even knew, they still had no idea how the result they had seen had been achieved. Games with the inalienable Right sleeping in the blood, putting any of them above the Law, do not lend themselves to normal magical theory. That's it.

This was not entirely true, for be that as it may, it was not only Time alone that the Eternals were strong, nor was it only by playing with the constants of reality that they could surprise and defeat. If so, sooner or later, their opponents would have found ways to counteract them, and their dynasty would never have ascended the throne, let alone held it so firmly and for so long, even by the standards of long-lived races. It was to these tricks, stolen or conquered, not directly related to their blood, that the wide circles of spies and analysts attributed the ability to work with protective fields at a height unattainable by ordinary mages.

In some ways, these assumptions were true, but each of the blood-bearing rulers of the Empire of Ages knew that only in some way. Direct manipulation of the Time offered an advantage in Barrier Magic. That is to say, powerful protective mysteries were present in their arsenal, regularly used and time after time, saving the lives of their users, but they belonged to the power of the Dynasty, not classical magic.

The defenses of this estate, poetically named Lone Bird, were not among the Dynasty's power, remaining uncharacteristically strong, powerful, monolithic, and unshakable. Not enough to jump up a grade at once, no, but noticeably better than standard and non-standard types of defense. Some of this was a credit to the more sophisticated crafting techniques, the reagents expended to install the dome of negation, the regular reinforcing and renewing rituals, a whole plethora of combined amulet selections, and a variety of other things. But the basis that made the already excellent armor even stronger was still the power of the Dynasty, just not directly.

The barely perceptible influence that had once been exerted by an ancestor who had long since gone to Eternity had left no trace behind, and even if all the experts were blown away, they would not see any games with the Law. Just, at the moment, when the foundation of the estate - a small palace, if not to be modest - was laid, a stranger's will managed to make all the petals of the future creation unfold simultaneously. They would be activated as synchronously as possible, but there would always be invisible, barely distinguishable gaps - the very nature of the magical rituals that underpinned the protection made it impossible to achieve absolute synchrony.

The Will of Eternity was able to level these tiny "discrepancies" and completely extinguish them, creating not just a masterpiece of magical protection but a true work of art. The Dynasty did not demonstrate any more such successes simply because there was no need for it. Pure mysteries on the power of blood still gave more output, required less effort, and did not require the initiation of outsiders into the family secrets. The Imperial Palace was locked up more tightly, more elegantly, and, most importantly, more securely, while the Lonely Bird remained a monument to a long-ago experiment of one of the ancestors. Successful, but no longer needed. The Dynasty liked to keep the fruits of such deeds. Largely because they often became useful when they were put to new uses, often not in the way the creator had envisioned.

Now, the estate's unique defense system made it possible to ignore the madness going on in the Eternal. There, behind the deceptively thin barriers, which had manifested into reality from an overly concentrated energy storm, a real war was raging, the likes of which the capital of the Empire of Ages had not seen for centuries. Inside the building, there was only silence and tranquility, as if nothing dangerous was going on. Clean floors, silk curtains, parquet of enchanted wood, snow-white walls, and columns of the rarest marble.

She had never liked the latter, for Walzea preferred slightly darker, pastel colors. The gaudy whiteness of the Lone Bird's interior was irritating, and she had no doubt that was why she'd been granted the estate. By the Ruler's will, of course, but she guessed who had wrested that will from her Father. Even the fact that her brother would not be able to demand anything from anyone now was not much consolation. First, he was still a kinsman of the same blood and flesh as Walzea herself, so she couldn't physically hate him, nor vice versa. Secondly, she was lucky enough to have another exchange of barbs with the Second Prince on that unfortunate day, so she didn't go for a walk in the park.

To ignore the need to regularly walk over ancient ruins hidden beneath a layer of stone and earth... is not the smartest thing for someone with Time frozen in their veins. The cunning clan title required regular maintenance, and even a few missed walks wouldn't do much, but to suddenly lose so many useful attributes and a separate ability would be a shame. But she was hurt, angry, and irritated that day. In such a state, trying to meditate, to reach into the essence of something hidden in the ancient stones, could bring more trouble than just missing a walk.

She had missed the meditation. Despite the blood in her veins, she had to answer to the Emperor himself, who listened to her very attentively. Various versions were being worked out, and, Gods be praised, even she would have suspected, if not direct betrayal of the relative who had renounced her blood, then an imperceptible influence on her mind. To subdue someone of their breed is almost unreal, to influence them imperceptibly is extremely difficult, and to exert a one-time influence requires a feat, but... She is the weakest of their generation. She has the worst power over the Law, even inferior to some bastards or representatives of non-hereditary sidelines!

Her mother's blood is too strong in her, not water either, of course, but not Eternity. She had not been conceived in a legal marriage without the proper rituals, and even though at the time of her birth, her mother had already been one of the legal wives, accepted according to all the rules, she knew that Time was so incredibly difficult to turn back. Foreign blood. Strong but unnecessary.

Useless.

* * *

"So this is where the Andorian vase collection, if I'm not mistaken, with sixteen centuries of history, is located, correct?" Her interlocutor asked in a melodious and ingratiating voice, breaking Walzea out of her gloomy thoughts. "I remember when they were buried, the embalmed hearts of the most faithful of the lord's servants were placed in them to bind their lives to the lives of their masters."

As soon as the first traces of the attack appeared, the commander of the estate's guards immediately activated the artifact entrusted to him, luckily having asked Walzea for the right to use it. Trapped in a bubble of stopped time, the mansion and the surrounding area had stubbornly resisted all attempts by the devils to poke their way inside the defenses. And would continue to do so for a very long time, at least for those trapped inside for a long time. The world outside the mansion hadn't frozen, of course, but it had slowed down considerably, allowing one minute outside to be exchanged for two or three minutes inside.

"Yes, umm, undoubtedly, yes..." Walzea had long since didn't listen to the words of her interlocutor, the son of the head of the Golden Feather Guild, by the way. "Totally agree."

Ever since the moment (hours before the emergency) when he had offered her a bet, a deal to tell her more about each of the relics kept in this house than she knew, Princess Eternal had almost stopped following his speeches. It wasn't even about the cataclysm that had happened. It was just that she didn't boast much in the way of knowledge about 'her' collection. But a peculiar excursion through long-familiar corridors allowed her to calm her beating heart and gather her thoughts.

This place was actually used as a kind of repository for things expensive, status, and rare but not carrying true power. Collecting had never been a passion of their kind, but having the means, it was foolish not to spend it on unlocking the possibilities. As foolish as it may seem to try to collect old, almost useless, in terms of effects artifacts of dead and not-so-dead civilizations, many of them were paid for not even in money but in political weight. The High Sects within the Empire of the Arms, for example, were very fond of such things, which to them meant the same status, only much more necessary for the foreigners. In the Eternal, it was possible to boast of having a genuine collection of wooden masks of the Manyno unless at a gala, in front of other collectors. But for the Anointed Monkeys, it was sometimes impossible to get promoted without having enough evidence of antiquity.

The main thing was not to give away something much more valuable, something that held, if not the power, then the key to obtaining it. But that was what the Three of the Library and their never-closing-eye altar, not to mention the hundreds of private filing cabinets and archives, needed to find the real gems hidden among the precious trash.

"And these tablets!" The guy, who turned out to be such a history buff that it was time to give him a degree, so full of knowledge and uncharacteristic for, in fact, a potential supreme accountant at the magic guild, continued talking. "They may seem like nothing, but believe me, if you know that the signs depicted on them will become clear only if you can decipher other messages, left not in the tombs of the highest aristocracy of Anrianon but in the base of the cornerstones that stand on the ruins of the firstborn of each dynasty... Oh, these stone pieces will at once raise their price, if not to their full weight in gold, then to half that amount! Wouldn't you like to know what's really hidden here, almost in plain sight? As a gift from one of the learned of those other writings?"

The young man in whose company she had been so calm, so confident that she did not even want to think about what was going on outside the manor, was now offering Walzea something of real value since such a secret had not been made known before, and only for the right to be in her company. The gift was undoubtedly nice, and as a child of the blood of the Eternal, she accepted such a thing as the absolute norm. But to completely ignore the beautiful gesture would be a bit misguided because he was not just the fifth son of one of the counts but, in fact, the heir to the guild of the first ten, albeit at the bottom of the list.

"To leave such, such, such a gift unanswered..." Walzea tried to find the right words, but the patterns of speech and behavior learned and practiced three hundred times at numerous parties as if did not want to tell her the right manners, the right role, a set of formal and informal signs, denoting easy approval and gratitude. "It will be bad, wrong."

Was it even worth bringing it up? She was kind of building her collection, so she should have... should know most of what he was saying, right? But if she did, why didn't she recognize a word the boy said? And his manners, which at first seemed excessively coarse... He's a bookkeeper, even if he's a very high-ranking one, and in the future, he'll be the second person in Golden Feather. He was a personage enough to be introduced to her and for her to agree to talk to him, but he had never been taught to present himself. Or rather, there had been some lessons, but they had been given late, not allowing him to absorb the realization of his position with milk, so he behaved frankly, not at the level of a conversation with her, the daughter of the Eternal. He confused words, repeated himself, could not form sentences properly, and even allowed the appearance of parasitic words!

Just like her...

Walzea did not press and did not humiliate her interlocutor without reason, though, in another situation, she would have verbally assaulted him so that he would not even look in her direction. In another situation, she would have had to do it so as not to damage her credibility by the very fact she tolerated such eloquence around her. But since today he was a guest, passing some important documents through her (important enough for the donor to be honored to give them to one of the Dynasty, but not valuable enough to allow him to enter the reception room of the Emperor himself), she limited herself only to those jabs, which the interlocutor could not understand due to the lack of those very instincts of social dueling.

The lad, realizing his own eloquence, even made one of the bargains, exchanging historical references for her manners, i.e. lesson of good manners, i.e. why can't she remember, can't she keep track of the conversation, unravel the verbal lace and weave her own into several layers? She can, she used to, she could.....

"'Only the right to call your name, my dear, will be a pleasure to my lips." The attempt to understand was interrupted by her interlocutor's answer, so measured and methodical, like a stream of spring wind in the morning. "Do you agree to such a bargain?"

"Of cou... I mean, yes, I agree." Machinally, Walz.. Az...she shook her head as if trying to catch the feather of a flying bird to catch up with her thought. "Go on, tell me more."

"In these tablets is hidden a part of the so-called free key of inheritance.'" The princess listened attentively, catching every word, but somehow, understanding less and less. "Among the An'Liiith, or rather, among a certain part of their aristocracy, it was customary to leave such things behind to pass on some of their promises, paying for them with a portion of one's inheritance. Having deciphered the tablets, having performed the necessary rituals first on the foundation stone of the family nest and then on the burial place (it is desirable to choose the one where the last of the family is buried, but it is possible to use the family crypt) you take upon yourself a part of the unfulfilled contracts of the fallen house. In return, the one who has tried and passed the test of the ritual will receive a few titles, some of which will be upgraded or even added to if the commitments made are fulfilled."

"This... is that, uh. very helpful?" Hesitantly, the princess tried to get a word in. "I guess?"

"Not so much, but the point is quite different, dearie." Interrupting her babble was a rather smiling young man. "Most of these contracts are either automatically deemed unenforceable due to the centuries that have passed or just as automatically have been long since fulfilled. If one chooses the right ones to accept, one can rise to prominence with almost no risk or effort."

"А... I see." Her words seemed almost a whisper by now, and her body caressed against her will at the caressing hands, the warm touch, the palms slipping under her dress. "I see. Yes."

"Oh, my dear." The interlocutor seemed to brighten even more. "It will be my true pleasure to describe to you the heritage hidden in these tablets. Ah, if I knew a little more about this house, this stronghold, your estate. Would you agree to trade my story for a few of yours?"

She agreed, a boon even in a mind so clouded she had enough of other people's secrets. Her Dynasty's estate was filled to the brim with them. So full, in fact, that it would be easy to find a dozen such stories that could be exchanged for something far more tangible than a few old legends of no direct use. If it weren't for her eloquence, the stiffness that made her shy and stiff in every situation.....

"Uh-huh..." With a slurred tongue and no longer understanding what she had agreed to, the girl confirmed the arrangement.

And then the next one.

And the one that followed it.

And once more.

Deal after deal, where each time she had to pay with something strange, slipping from her memory at once. Like her name had slipped away, like her honed skills had gone, like the knowledge of all-all-all her secrets had evaporated, like the ability to decide, to express one's own will, like the understanding of a written text and the ability to write it had dissolved into a cozy fog, as the ability to walk on two legs had expired with a piercing heat.

Contract by contract.

Deal bu deal.

Toward the end, she didn't understand a word of what was said, only nodding, agreeing, simply because she had forgotten everything else. She had forgotten how to do anything other than agree. A string of saliva flowed from the mouth that opened in an attempt to make a sound. The uncomfortable and stiff clothing was gone, and someone's hands were already wrapping a dainty necklace around her naked neck that looked like a fine collar.

"Well, that's it." The words make no sense, but from the tone of the speaker, she -who is she? - caught contentment and a slight weariness which, if she could have thought of it, could easily have been mistaken for pleasure at the fact of having accomplished a difficult task. "It is even a pity, Vazi, a great pity that you will not understand further. I would give you back some of the benefits, but you are now anyway useless."

Useless.

Useless.

For some reason, this particular set of sounds seemed familiar, somehow prickly and unpleasant, like her bare buttocks touching cold marble. She shuffled her feet and hands, crawling after the unhurried figure, saliva and her juices staining the floor as she continued to replay the silly sounds in her head.

Useless.

Her body demanded something familiar but forgotten, a warm and not burning fire between her legs, but she couldn't remember how to quench the feeling, to fill the void. Incoherent sounds come out of her still-open lips, along with streams of saliva, but the figure pays no attention, already taking the next step in an unknown direction.

Useless.

Useless.

Useless.

* * *

It is generally accepted to consider magical influence to be an act primarily of the mind and only then of the emotions. The complex and subtle mechanisms of magic require more than just the right class abilities, carefully chosen skills, and reasonably chosen marks for achieving attributes. If you want to create something more complicated than a simple torrent of unstructured power, you need some kind of intelligent brain. Or at least not stupid brains, if only your mother called you reasonable in your childhood, and that only on holidays.

There are, of course, other ways, less demanding but also more dangerous. Every scientist will easily tell you that most planar creatures are not luminaries of reasoning, but it does not prevent them from using high-rank spells, sometimes very sophisticated ones. And they will be right because these paths are open to humans, too. The only thing that is needed is to have skills in the class that are far from the first-ranked ones and to win the class, not the last.

Dangerous, harmful, difficult, and, most importantly, still requires, if not a long training (which would not hurt either), then icy cold-bloodedness, monstrous endurance, extreme concentration, and a certain amount of luck. If we talk about the power that sleeps in the blood of the ruling dynasty of the Empire, then there is hardly a more demanding legacy, equally dependent on the depth of understanding, personal strength, training, and, of course, properly conducted rituals, without which even the presence of blood will give almost nothing.

Princess Walzea, not even on the list of numbered heirs, despite her age and direct kinship to the current Emperor, was one of those "empty" bloodlines. Because of her parents' intrigues, unperformed rituals, and the intrigues of her brothers and sisters, the power of her mother's bloodline was in her blood. An old bloodline, only slightly less ancient than the Ruling Dynasty, but still far weaker than that bloodline, inferior in every way. There were crumbs of Eternity's will in her, especially compared to what her father or the First Prince could do. Those crumbs more than allowed her to possess clan artifacts, to walk through territories closed to unrelated people, to access hundreds and thousands of different rituals, and generally made her the perfect bride-to-be... and nothing more, nothing more.

But for all the comparative uselessness of the basis of her ancestral powers on her father's side, a rather amusing detail emerged from the above-mentioned shortcomings. In situations where Father had to carefully weave his influence, to push through reality with his will, while simultaneously creating elaborate constructions based not even on magic but on pure mysticism, she was like those planar creatures. Or unintelligent animals, into the likeness of which she had been successfully transformed by a series of successful, but not for her, deals.

Make a wish, add emotions, a little bit of unformed aspiration, and here is the result. Unpredictable, not always (almost never) exactly as intended, devoid of grace and indestructibility, but still holding the mysteries of the Eternal Dynasty. Walzea wished not to be useless because of the unpleasant emotions associated with the word to her new under-personality. Needless to say, her far-from-outstanding talents could not fulfill such a wish, or she would have used them much sooner.

The flow of will, pure and untainted by coherent thought, made her the same as she had been a few minutes before she met Rorzar of Bradkiss, father's first son and heir, if not to the entire Golden Feather Guild (his astonishing anti-talent for magic had long since become a household name among the capital's nobility and a reason to poke his daddy), then to his financial assets. It took her less than a second to realize the extent and breadth of her troubles. Completely naked, wearing only a finely crafted gold collar, smeared with scented oils from head to toe, kneeling, she heard Rorzar once again speaking to one of the cultists who had penetrated the barrier of the estate (along with the guildmaster's entourage).

"...her death isn't necessary to close the circuit anyway, and she's already useless otherwise. Don't deprive me of my toy, Honorable Devotee, for I too have a right only a little lower than yours!"

The realization that she might well have been sacrificed in time, like most of the servants and guards, passed through her mind with the icy indifference of the north wind. No feelings were aroused by the scene of a mass orgy in which the maids who had arrived with the guild's upbringing merrily laughed as they rode the enchanted guards without regard for their gender. All the damage to the interior of the main living room of the manor, where even one of the columns was almost broken in half, was ignored.

All she heard, all she paid attention to, disregarding the warmth gradually flowing back into her head from the collar-necklace, the soaring sensitivity of her oiled skin, and even her usual caution. The one word that hadn't let her go, perhaps from the very first day of her life, that had become her stigma and curse.

Useless.

Useless.

Useless.

"Useless..." Her lips whispered the word as if tasting it, barely generating a sound, not attracting the attention of the two hotly arguing men. "Useless?"

The second time Walzea asked the question out loud, in a surprisingly soft tone, as if still enchanted by love and desire, she was noticed. Surprise was replaced by incomprehension, followed by a slight shock, followed by shock, followed by backlash from the deals broken by the Law, but he still felt no fear. Perhaps he thought he could handle her, bewitched and collared once again, especially with the support of the traitors gathered in this room. Perhaps the lack of fear was born of some other reason.

Walzea only smiled, getting to her feet.

She was tall, slender in an Elvish way, despite the fully human blood in her veins, devoid of lush forms, which sometimes made her think of herself as flat as a plate of steel armor. She took her grace in her every movement. At that moment, there was little of the desirability in her movements, while there was enough desire for three and a little for a fourth if those four were high-level berserkers. The will manifested itself and realized its majesty, making Walzea's fleeting wish what every Lawmaster's wish should be - a reality.

They are standing in the middle of one of the corridors of the estate along which she had been led in circles, being told the same information over and over again, often information she had bargained from her. They are standing in the same place, but she is once again wrapped in her robes, no fragrant oils have been applied to her body, and the collar-necklace has returned to the pocket of the person who put it around the princess's neck. Walzea stands opposite Rorzar, still and thin, fragile and defenseless, but her smile is more like the grinning mouth of a hungry creature that has already smelled the blood of its prey.

Her enemy, who was obliged to be worse than killed for what he had done, was only beginning to realize once more the changed situation to understand the danger of such a change in the situation. The cultists remaining in the hall, who had noticed the disappearance of the victim and his master, hadn't time to do so. The river of existence, the current of Time, carried them both to the point in space where they had both been. And the first son, who after the recent assassination attempt had been the only son of the old Ramarz of Bradkiss, had time to marvel at the confidence with which the princess, deprived of the lion's share of the power due to her status, smiled wolfishly at him.

Other than surprise, he managed exactly nothing.

The broken treaties had given Walzea back her mind, her memory, and the sacred secrets that had been entrusted to her. In a different situation, it would have been too little, but right now, rising up on the crest of a wave, in a torrent of unbearable anger, resentment, bitterness, and fear, it was as if she were breaking off her chains, reaching somewhere she couldn't before. Still too weak, still unworthy of her Father's high blood, but now a little closer, a little higher, one grain stronger.

Her lips parted, spitting out chunks of words that sounded intolerable to human ears, that were either pointless or simply deadly to utter with a human throat. She wouldn't have risked the attempt before, wouldn't have dared to call out, at least not without first being dispersed by a full star of benefics, without a coherent trio of healers behind her, as she had tried to practice before. Foolishly, as it became clear to her at that very moment - those attempts were doomed to failure before they even began, for without the courage to demand, how dare she ask anything of Time itself?

The words formed into a short, jerky spell, one of the most odious in her kind's arsenal, specifically designed for close combat, for the sake of turning any battle from a battle into an execution, from a confrontation of equals into a brutal massacre. And she was going to carry out the execution, the execution of the bastard who had dared not even to humiliate, not to insult, but to remind her again of her weakness, of her needlessness, of her uselessness.

Rorzar's pupils dilated enough to take up the entire iris of his dark brown eyes, his skin paled rapidly, revealing blue-black veins, and the previously hidden filth of corruption wrapped around him in hard segmented armor, indestructible defense. Unfold them, and even a true warrior would have to try hard to break such armor, even standing his opponent still. Walzea was not a warrior, but the armor had no time to unfold, frozen with the rest of the world.

The eyes of a peddler who had sold himself into a slavery worse than death were darting in orbits. The only movement available to the mind of one caught in her net. They both shifted states, shifted in the flow of an endless river, and only her will hold the victim's consciousness, preventing it from freezing like the rest of the world. Walzea's smile became even more predatory, even more wicked, but Rorzar showed signs of fear for the first time since his feet crossed her threshold.

"Useless?" Once more the princess, whom even the First Prince at this moment would hesitate to call by her full title only in mockery of her weakness, interjects and then answers her own question. "Useless! Useless! Useless! Useless! Useless! Useless!"

Each word is just another confirmation, just another confession of her worthlessness in the eyes of her own and others, filled with pain, fatigue, and a savage rage that sweeps away any vestige of civility. The blood of the Dynasty boils, giving crumbs of true power, but instead, the other blood comes to the aid. The blood belongs to the mother's bloodline. The fist strikes, but how much power is there in the blow of a woman's hand whose mistress, despite all the titles and additional infusions of attributes, focused her development on perception and concentration? The fist strikes not once, but again and again, as if merging its blows, combining them into one. The magic of illusion, the creation of battle doppelgängers that her distant ancestors were famous for, is beyond her reach, having tried to take hold of Eternity but failed. Giving up her mother's power, never receiving her father's power.

Her fist strikes, but instead of illusions, the blows become reality, as if she had struck that blow a thousand times, but at the same time. What is a moment for someone marked by the Law? A thousand blows in a thousand variations, but the result is only one touch - a fragile hand without proven skill in hand-to-hand combat rudely and predictably collides with the defense. There was a hint of relief in the frozen boy's eyes, but instead of shattering her fists into bloody fists, feeding the embodied Lust with that blood, a clumsy and weak blow broke the half-real armor, shattering Rorzar's ribs hidden beneath.

The pain on his face.

The blood on her hands.

The princess did not pay the slightest attention to the fact that she had done the impossible, not realizing the essence of what had happened, only repeating her blows over and over again, crushing the body and bones, releasing blood, and beating away the gut. The body, saturated with sacrificial power, regenerates rapidly, only continuing the torture, not allowing it to pass into the pleasure of pain again and again, making the executed person shudder in agony.

"Useless! Useless! Useless! Useless! Useless! Useless!" The princess has no thoughts, no desires, only rage and an attempt to pour it out somewhere, to spill out the disgusting abomination that had been poisoning her soul for so long. "Useless! Useless! Useless! Useless! Useless! Useless! Useless! Useless! Useless! Useless! Useless! USELESS!"

Each word is a blow.

Each blow is blood.

In a mad rush, without thinking of the impossibility of what she had planned solely because she was incapable of thinking in such a state, Walzea called out, pulling to herself, through space and time, what her late mother had once told her, what no one after her had been able to take hold of, to make it become real.

"The knives!" No longer words, but a cry of summons, an inescapable order, the force which was barely enough, but still enough to summon the desired.

Seventeen identical daggers appeared out of thin air. Translucent, seemingly uncomfortable due to the oddly shaped blade and hilt, it was as if they didn't exist and were at the same time. Each of the artifacts could be equated to a very weak and devoid of any additional trump cards, whose blade ignored any standard defense, and the wounds inflicted by them were extremely difficult to at least close, let alone heal.

All seventeen blades enter Rorzar's body without the slightest resistance, still alive, aware, and feeling everything, but there is no end to the rage. The only thought ringing in her head is that all this is still not enough, too little to pour out even a tiny bit of the heartbreak on him. The will moves each blade individually, widening wounds, inflicting new injuries, and releasing more and more blood from a body that cannot die.

Letting out a wild, not even human-like cry, Walzea shifts her daggers to the nearest pillar, causing the artifacts to neatly undercut the stone pillar at the top and bottom, dropping it to the ground, simultaneously placing the improvised weapon outside the stopped Eternity. Her movements seem the most ordinary to her, only jerky and uncoordinated, but in the frozen world, she makes them in a moment since the moment stopped. The crunching of stone against stone, the sound of crumbs and rubble being crushed, accompanies the movement of the column, which she rolls straight at the cultist who has fallen against the cold stone. The Law's grip on his person had to be loosened a little, but it didn't mean anything - there were too many wounds and too much pain for Rorzar. He is able only to moan and watch helplessly as his feet disappear under the rolling stone. A superbly enchanted stone, whose effect overcomes the almost exhausted regeneration of his body and whose sturdy defenses have no memory left at this point (if the frozen moment can be divided into moments at all).

Her arms and her whole body ache from overstrain. The ancestral gift, both of them are sucking the last juices out of her body. The pressure of the Law is getting stronger, and very soon, it will demand payment, and there will be nothing to pay with. Her chest was hot, a whiff of the legendary First Forge from the dwarven legends had settled under her heart, her palms trembled, her fingers glistened with broken nails, and her fists with battered knuckles. But with such pleasure, Walzea listens to the crunch of the crushing body of Rorzar, who feels everything, understands everything, and can't even die because of his vitality!

Not the Vice.

Not the gifts of the devils.

No one will give her more pleasure than this moment!

The moment when the fallen column finally crushed the ugly man's skull, turning his entire body into something as flat as his sense of beauty, when she fell to her knees without strength, further staining her already blood-red dress... Walzea's smile seemed so genuine at that moment, as she had never smiled at anyone.

The smile doesn't bloom for long.

* * *

It's about the time when the slightly calmer princess starts to think with her head instead of her bloodthirsty heart, realizing that even though she's jumped three times over her head, cutting the dynasty's power gap several times over (still too weak to be fully recognized), she's wasted all her strength on revenge against Rorzar, who almost took her essence. There are no more loyal people in the entire estate, no more guards, but plenty of cultists who are angry with her. The death of the first heir to the head of the apparently rebellious guild would surely offend them to the depths of what was left of their souls.

Disregarding pain and fatigue, Walzea got to her feet and began to run, uneven and wobbly, but running. No, not in the hope of delaying her doom. If she didn't have a chance, she'd rather stop her own heart or point her daggers at herself. Now, her own. Her mother's best weapon, existing only when called into reality by its wielder, was inherited by her. This gift to her seems incomparably more valuable than any other possession. The only pity is that she can no longer maintain them in the real world, having exhausted the summoning limit depending on the skill level of the daggers.

With a tinge of panicked regret, Walzea realizes that even though she had rolled back time, her protective artifacts had already been removed by the time she had rolled back time. She doesn't remember what kind of amulets they were, knowing that she has no defenses and never had any. The essence of the charms used by the murdered peddler obviously works on the memory somehow, and making a deal served as a contract of sorts, allowing the charms to find their way into the very depths of the personality. A deal that makes you immediately forget you ever had the subject of the contract? Whatever she thought of the late Bradkiss, he had not given his soul away for nothing, if she had been taken with such insulting ease.

Walzea realized, with her mind and logic alone, that she, a princess of the Eternal Dynasty, blood from her Father's blood, albeit weak and unloved, simply could not lack a set of legendary defenses at a minimum. Had she thought about it during her conversation with Rorzar, she would have had a chance of breaking the imposed obscuration even sooner... if she had the strength, which is unlikely. Apparently, in addition to the memory work, she was constantly under a masterfully subtle pressure from the fleur of Lust, clouding her and slowing her down, making her look like a cute little fool so Hell wouldn't let her off the hook. In a different situation, it would be little, absolutely not enough, but as a support tool to seal new deals. It was enough for Walzea, who was distracted and literally flowing with passion like a country wench drugged with the potions of a visiting alchemist. In any case, she had no weapons, no protection, no guards, but she had problems.

However, even a partial rollback of the imposed deals was enough to remind her of the known hiding places. She could only hope the cultists had milked this knowledge out of her, but they were in no hurry to open the caches - even if they knew all the keys, it would be too problematic to open them without the blood bearer and her aura signatures. She would have been happy to help open them, even if she had already been transformed, so the hope of finding the stash intact was quite strong.

She didn't have to run far - literally to the nearest room. She managed to burst into it, reach into the base of the massive dresser, and start applying power to the right points in the right order. She was no longer able to open the vault of battle amulets and the emergency jump amulet wrecker. A dozen red and scarlet threads flew into the room after her, binding her body, piercing her skin, infecting her blood with Lust and breaking her bones, turning pain into pleasure, blending them into each other, making her orgasmic, driving the cursed threads even harder.

The Law.

The body is healed, returned to time, and the scarlet-colored threads are back to a somewhat lagging position, just barely flying through the door following Walzea. Another effort, the growing pain in the aching shell. She stops the threads in their flight, at the same time, creating a kind of shield from the zone of timelessness, against which a blot of pale pink mass, soaked in Hell to the point where it is dangerous to just look at it. Even she is running out of time, and before she can make another attempt to reach the hiding place, it's as if a wet cloth soaked in stupefying herbs has been wrapped around her head.

Resetting the impact, Walzea missed the next blow, not even realizing the instinctive urge to rip open her dress and pinch herself hard on her hardening nipples had been imposed from the outside. The reflex switch that made her twist her cherries instead of creating another barrier didn't last long. Exactly until a swift, unnaturally fast orgasm spread through her body with sweet molasses, shutting off the ability to feel her legs. The girl fell to her knees and then to her side, beginning to stretch the effects of the Law, slowing down the world around her.

She couldn't interrupt the events around her again, but the barely discernible shadow of the possessed man flying into the doorway was much easier to perceive. The devil swooping down from the ceiling was like a fly stuck in a jar of honey, losing its speed advantage, but Walzea was moving even faster. Another revert of the fait accompli returns her dress to its original appearance and her legs to their ability to hold her in a standing position, but she still hits lying down. A thin strip of reality, taken out from under the dictates of the Law, was created by her right under the throat of the creature, playing the role of a blade, and with the role of a guillotine, the enemy perfectly coped with himself, simply pounced on the blow at all available speed.

A mortally wounded abomination does not die immediately, but a wounded creature cannot stop the next blow, which speeds up the injured man's time. In another situation, it would have seemed impossible to age an entity invulnerable to such attacks, but Walzea didn't want death by old age. The accelerated flow of the river of time only allowed the mortal wound to take the devil, who had no time to heal, and prevented him from using the healing.

The little-known trick, but in the conditions of time pressure, where any mistake would cost everything, Walzea remembered about it. Although, the practice of using this trick remained only in the pages of family memoirs. The devil's power is in its collection of souls, but by changing the meaning of the Law for the creature itself, it is possible to make the change without affecting that collection. And even if you had a thousand prisoners ready to take your wounds, how could you use them when the river itself divides you?

Walzea doesn't have time to rejoice in her second victory, shuddering under another mental attack, rolling her eyes in delight. The attempt to release the pressure again was met with increasing pleasure. The mind's frame of reference changed again. Trying to call for blood only opened the soul to Lust. Another orgasm stained her underwear with streams of love juice, a smile spread across her face, and any thought of resistance washed away like mud in the rain.

The second attacker does not burst through the doors but enters almost leisurely, nodding hello to Walzea, causing her to be swept away once more on the waves of love's climax. Her eyes roll back, leaving only the whites visible, but the princess can still make out the cautious footsteps of her apparently Mistress, fearing another blade of stasis. Fear was not what she feared, as she bent over her enslaved victim, carelessly turning her back to the frozen red threads. Walzea was not her Father to freeze someone else's sorcery for months of real-time, and for her, especially when she was already exhausted, a dozen seconds would seem like an eternity.

The threads were actually searching for their victim, bypassing the obstacles, but the possessed woman was too close, and the spells, which had regained their speed and acceleration, had no time to avoid the collision, plunging into the creature's body. It would take a long time to break a creature like that, but even so, combat magic, even if it was tilted toward Vice, was still primarily combat magic. Walzea sincerely wanted to warn the cute fiend whose spells had given her her third ecstasy in a row, but her attempt to remember how to speak gave her a fourth.

Crunching bones and muscles, the devil falls to the floor, right next to her decapitated companion, no longer maintaining the effect on the victim. It was not gone but weakened enough for the girl to remember her duty, if not as a princess, then as a decent and well-behaved lady who should not be oozing bodily fluids on the floor of her estate. With a great, no, not effort, but regret, she regained her wits once more, immediately suppressing the urge to utter something from the repertoire of the professional military because a princess should not. Suppressing the urge to bring her heated body to orgasm one more time, despite the recoil, took even more effort than the urge to swear.

She had no time to get up and try to open the unfortunate cache again, which showed a very unpleasant tendency. Complete paralysis of all muscles of the body and even partial suppression of thoughts. She could think and realize, as well as feel a pleasant warmth in her immobile body, but any attempt to even think about activating her skills was met with a soft and fluffy wall of denial. She could bang against it endlessly - it wouldn't hurt, but the result was still zero.

Three more devils came in, silently and without further ado, and began to entangle Walzea's consciousness in layers of sweet and disgusting charms. Her will resisted but quickly waned, and the resistance itself was more symbolic. Exhausted by the nervous breakdown and Rorzar's murder, without the amulet complex, under the direct influence of the fleur - no will could help her. The creatures entangled her quickly and professionally not distracting to play with their prey.

Walzea stares unblinkingly at the companion bent over the thread-tangled creature, relieving the devil of its wounds from the friendly fire. Unwittingly, she notes the servant's burnt clothing and several wounds and burns that have not fully healed, realizing that while Rorzar was playing with her, the guards and servants had surrendered not without a fight despite the sudden and treacherous attack. The unblinking gaze and drying cornea were no inconvenience amidst the rest of the young princess's problems.

Walzea ignored the barely audible thumping and squeaking, seeing it as part of the surrounding madness. But all four of the possessed, including the one who had already recovered from the wounds caused by the threads, reacted nervously, reorganizing themselves into battle formation. So nervously, in fact, that Walzea even managed to shift a little, wiggling her neck... though that was all because she had been stripped of her body paralysis, in return completely unable to think of resistance. The creaking came from an old closet covered in magical carvings and a memorable gift to someone from the dynasty. Though at this moment, Walzea couldn't remember the exact history of this item, even if her memory wasn't gaping with the failures of devil's bargains.

The creak repeated, forcing the creatures to act, exchanging silent signs and picking one of them to come closer. The creature was already ready to open the closet and strike at the servant or even the guard hiding there. Whoever was sitting there didn't wait for a visit, simply kicking the heavy wooden casement open toward the possessed. And while a simple blow with that door wouldn't even slow down a high-level possessed man, it was far from a simple blow.

Together with the door, the creature was hit by a flood of painful gray dust corroding not only the reflexively raised hex barrier but also the body, energy shells, and reality itself. A huge figure in a gray cloak jumped out after the flow of dust, blowing the head of the already dying creature off in passing as it floated above the floor, rapidly approaching the remaining trio.

Another strike of threads very familiarly solidifies into a small sphere of gray dust. A dagger blows the head of the healer, who was unable to react in time, and the wave of dust from that dagger dissolves the possessed woman wounded by Walzea. The last remaining enemy manages to strike with a spear glowing with pink fire, but the bulky man, who had no time to defend himself, is scattered by the same dust... so that a much more graceful figure with two daggers in her hands flies out of the dust cloud as an arrow. She slips out from under the desperate attack like a clerical knife, cutting open both the human body and the devil sitting in it with her daggers. Epic artifacts and enchanted with Light and Dark - such two planar coactions will damage most of the defenses, if not break through, then damage them quite a bit.

The last of her sudden rescuers emerged from the closet, accompanied by the dissipation of the restraining charms. He was a short, stubby young man armed with a large, heavy crossbow. Even without the use of analytical skills, Walzea could see that the third guest was the weakest of the arrivals. The silence had not yet begun to press on her ears, and the dust was just beginning to fall, mingling with the blood and other fluids flowing from the bodies of the possessed.

"I am certainly filled with every gratitude for your feat in saving me, but I would like to know who my saviors are and what they were doing in my closet?" If there was one thing in which the princess could consider herself fully up to the glory of her family, it was the ability to keep her face despite the most absurd and dire situations

The largest of the trio, dressed in a loose gray cloak that concealed what was clearly a very sophisticated armor, looked around perplexed in response to her question as if he had just realized where exactly he had jumped out of a few seconds earlier. After which, he hummed in surprise and nearly caused Walzea's eye to twitch, spitting directly onto the floor. In her presence, in response to her words and thanks! For such a thing, she would otherwise have banished the entire clan of the insolent lunatic without any pity if only to nail the rude man before the rest of her kin found out about such behavior.

"Ugh, bitch!" The savior's voice was hoarse and low, and his accent was deliberately gruff and commoner. "And Becca said something about some fucking Narnia! This is just a fucking brothel in ruins..."

He probably wanted to say something else but did not have time because his profanity was silenced by a woman armed with two daggers, who gave him a trivial slap on the back of the head. The filthy peasant dodged and was even bewildered by such insolence, almost indignantly looking at the female colleague wrapped in the regular combat uniform of the liquidator. The assassin, who wore clothes so characteristic of the elite wing of the Eyes, simply could not fail to recognize Walzea by sight.

"I apologize, Your Highness." It was undoubtedly only the combat situation that kept her from giving a full-fledged etiquette bow. "This is not where we expected to be, as my companion was opening the Road by the Black Mark. Somewhere here, I believe, is the Rorzar of House Bradkiss, by whose life we have come."

At the mention of the Mark, Walzea only began to take the stranger who had saved her life even more seriously. The characteristic feature of the Nightblades or Head Gatherers allowed them to track their victims, catching up with them anywhere if they managed to touch them even once, and without other variables, required a high level and deep understanding of their powers. But a full-blown Black Mark? To develop a class trait to such a limit, it's not enough to take the second rank of the corresponding class, nor is it enough to close it. It takes a whole host of corresponding titles, which are almost impossible to obtain just like that. In the entire Empire, there were no more than five owners of such a rarity, even if we take into account unverified rumors. But in the same Alishan, with its traditionally strongest Nightblades and their derivative classes on the continent, their number was close to a dozen at least. And the brute was obviously not from around here, or he wouldn't have buried himself with his own words...

"Fuck." He spat once more, forcing Walzea's face to lose its icy armor of indifference (from fatigue, of course). "What the fuck was he doing next to the Eternal?"

For the umpteenth time that day, Walzea's mind clicked dryly, forcing her to rise to her feet, ignoring the dust that had inadvertently begun to fall from the cloak's surface. Slowly but as convincingly as possible, she spoke exactly as she was accustomed to speaking to those who had earned her disapproval, which she was ready to objectify into something frightening at any moment.

"I would very much like to have my words heard and my presence considered in your undoubtedly important dialog." Ice in the words, steel in the movements, and a complete disregard for the fact that it was at this very moment that the attitude could have been tempered. "But even more, I wish we could continue this conversation in more favorable circumstances!"

There was such silence that you could hear the blood gushing from the corpses.

"H-how m-many of t-them were l-left here?" The crossbowman, it seemed to Walzea, made no attempt to defuse the situation, but did not even realize that it had become tense. "Hell's s-servants, I me-an?"

However, even without wanting to, he did an excellent job of extinguishing the conflict, reminding everyone that no matter how tense the situation was, it was better to keep oneself in control when surrounded by an enemy, especially if that enemy had "surrounded" the entire city at once.

"Not so much." Anger receded, and Walzea set about ensuring her survival, which was closely tied to the number of those who would come between her and her enemies. "The guards did not surrender without a fight, and if memory serves me correctly, there are almost only ritualists left in the hall, with the last martial artists lying at our feet."

And there was no bragging because she had also participated in the battle, even if you set aside the truth that all the victories of the Empire's subjects were a priori for the sake of her Dynasty. The liquidator, whom Walzea didn't recognize but had either met or read the dossier because something related to this person flashed in her head.

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"Ritual." Eye said briefly and very heartfelt, already moving toward the doorway.

Walzea, who had recovered a bit, called on her dynastic power again, managing to open her stash, grab a bunch of amulets, and pour three potions from the specially marked bottles into herself in the few moments it took for the unexpected allies to react. She was in no hurry to activate the evacuation amulet, sensing that she'd rather be near combat-ready defenders than at a random point within the blazing capital. And if the defenders failed, it was never too late to follow the original plan.

The potions spread through her body, giving her a sense of false omnipotence, bringing back the sharpness of her mind and calming her thoughts. The princess realizes her companions are as exhausted as she is. That's why they allowed themselves to relax impermissibly as soon as they realized there were no more enemies around, that there was an opportunity to exhale a little.

Even considering the Black Mark, which served as an excellent beacon, it would not be a simple task for an adept of the Road, no matter how strong, to break through to a domed manor that was in an altered relationship to the Law. The Road may help its adherents to play with the river, so much so some philosophers say the Road is laid along the River of Time, but not to such an extent. And if they managed to come here after the blood and flesh of Rorzar, crushed and pulverized by Walzea, then something helped them. Perhaps the battle that had passed her enchanted mind had damaged the structure of the barriers, but still, the possibility the ritual she had seen glimpsed was doing something to those defenses remained the most obvious.

The potion-pumped girl creates a sphere, inside which time flows faster, covering the entire group. The Bully immediately stops like a stumbling block, casually changing his grip on his short blades, and the Liquidator (what's her name?) manages to grab the Crossbowman by the collar, preventing him from hitting his head on the edge of the time barrier. Another epiphany helps her realize that the third and weakest of her allies is really the boy he looks like, hence the stupid mistakes, the astounding shortsightedness, and the shamefully slow reaction time.

Without a word, she holds out a pouch of potions to all three of them. The corks of the vials were marked with different colors and symbols, allowing them to understand the nature of the contents without having to open the fragile vessels. She had already accepted the three vials specially designed for the dynasty's blood, while the rest of the vials had been placed there for the servants and the cover squad. Even if all the people loyal to her had died, that was no reason not to share battle alchemy with those who were now replacing their function.

To their credit, they grabbed the gift quickly, without question, dividing the potions among themselves and even managing to assemble a set of compounds for the boy with the crossbow since he was the only one who didn't know the markings. And if Walzea still understands how the markings (not the most standard) know the employee of the Eyes, then the bulky man surprised her with his knowledge. He deciphered the marks even faster than the liquidator.

Silently, she waited for the alchemical acceleration to complete and canceled the dome, accelerating only herself to run and react in line with the two high-level fighters. The kid, though doped up on boosters, was still starting to fall behind quickly, but he was definitely not a force worth lingering for. She would have sped them all up, but they were already moving fast, as elite assassins should, so it would take a disproportionate amount of energy to accelerate them in a not-so-substantial way.

They had met their opponents three-quarters of the way through, and they were unimpressive. The group of five cultists were clearly not warriors, folding under a concerted attack almost instantly. Walzea cloaked herself in immutability, fixing her state in time, becoming almost invulnerable for a few seconds, but apart from a couple of frankly weak attempts at mind-bending and a few drop-like projectiles of violet flame, nothing struck her.

The big guy swept away four of them at once, without even using any skills, just on sheer strength, experience, and skill, cutting two of them open with knives, piercing the third one's temple with a hilt, and simply snapping the neck of the fourth one, throwing the still twitching body towards the fifth one. Cultist gracefully and even somehow dance-like dodged the projectile, almost completing some suicidal technique as he was neatly pierced in the back of the head with two artifact daggers. Walzea, still accelerating, kept up with the couple, so she was in time to catch up with them.

She estimated there should have been at least fifteen cultists and an equal number of enchanted prisoners still in the hall. Instead, they were greeted by a hall drenched in blood and something else (what exactly, they didn't want to think about), with only a single Hell servant standing in the middle. The same one with whom Rorzar had fought over the ownership of his new toy.

Old, wrinkled, with disgusting folds of skin on his sides and belly, like a fat man who had recently lost weight, he was not Lust, but nausea. And apprehension, a very strong apprehension that made Walzea strike without hesitation, without waiting for the beginning of a possible dialog. Alas, the dishonorable degenerate who had come with evil into her home was ready to meet the power of her bloodline. The ritual patterns on her body flashed, manifesting, literally burning their lines into her naked flesh, while the River of Time remained still. The stream of gray dust, which had turned into a thin ribbon, was much better, having managed to get close and overcome three barely visible barriers, but instead of blowing off the old man's head, it only severed his arm at the shoulder.

It was as if the cultist didn't even notice the wound, smiling wickedly. The power around him surged, along with the bloody puddle from the carpet of dismembered bodies. The blood boiled, vaporizing and forming something indistinct, and the flesh on the bodies of the victims and their killers began to melt as if forming a vessel for a possessed person (a good education requires, at times, looking at the most disgusting illustrations in various books). The princess clearly distinguishes the expressions of surprise and blissful relief on the dead faces, preparing a new, far more difficult blow with family power. The smile of the devil's servant becomes unbearably wide, literally tearing facial muscles along the smile.

There was no attack, only a cloud of bloody suspension in the old man's place, and the blood that had risen fell to the ground again, along with the flesh liquefied by the flow of planar power. For a moment, all three of them thought the cultist had overdone it, scooped up too much, and couldn't hold on to the power he'd grabbed in his foolishness.

The Liquidator was the first to realize the trick, throwing two vials of attack potions, trying to burn out the pool of filth, but the success was not much, more cosmetic. The strike of Road's gray power comes next, and it showed at least some results, while Walzea's power was ignored once again. If any of her brothers were here. If at least a member of a side branch of the family were here but had fully mastered the gifts of the dynasty... Against her power, what the damned cultists used was enough - all three of them failed.

Flash.

In the middle of the pool of bubbling masses stands a slightly overweight man in an expensive mantle suit, his black curly hair fluttering in a wind that does not exist here. The princess cannot help but recognize the man she has seen more than once at receptions, balls, and dinner parties - Ramartz of Bradkiss. It is hard not to know the head of the richest of the magical guilds of the capital and probably of the whole Empire of Ages, who has always demonstrated his loyalty to the throne.

Several dozen rune spheres flicker around him, twirling in an unpredictable dance to protect their creator. Ramartz is one of the best enchanters of the generation, and it is almost unreal not to recognize his favorite weapon. On the few occasions when this unconflicted and, according to the impartial dossier assembled by the Eyes, cowardly man has been forced into direct combat, these spheres alone could win a duel or a massive battle.

Each sphere contains a folded space, where a whole mountain of amulets of various types is stored, as well as the main body of a supercomplex and almost intelligent golem-sphere, which uses these amulets independently. The more such spheres work together, the more coherently they help each other, cover weaknesses, and synchronize their attacks.

Ramartz smiles crookedly, wry and evil, but his gaze is not on Walzea for some reason but on the gray-clad hulk with his head tilted to the side. His spheres glow, doing something to the ritual, causing the limbs and faces of gradually incarnating devils to emerge from the monotone flesh-colored carpet. Very, very powerful devils! And still, the same barrier prevented him from attacking the enemy, interrupting the summoning, increasing his chances, and forcing him to fight one-on-one.

"I heard the death of my blood." The mage's words she read from his lips, unable to hear them because of the isolation of the same barrier. "You took my brother's sons. You took my child. You will perish here, and I will give your soul to my Sovereign."

Walzea glanced at the person to whom such a suggestive accusation had been made. She had certainly heard of the attempted murder of Shazan Bostradsky, the Gold Belt merchant. It had been a hot news item in the news bulletins her attendants regularly compiled. She also knew the two merchants were related, albeit indirectly, which made it easy for them to exchange loans, credits, contracts, and other useful things. The trading house of Bostradsky had long been considered something like the second representation of Golden Feather, so connected were their financial flows. What she hadn't heard about was the fact that Rortzach had been present that night when two of Shazan's sons had been killed in an assassination attempt and another seriously wounded along with his father. She hadn't heard, though that information should have leaked out - the Eye was investigating the incident.

However, the Eyes even missed the devil invasion. What's there to say about the presence of an extra witness to one particular crime?

"Well, hello." The accused responded, even throwing off his hood for the cause so the accuser could read his lips. "You're fucked up, too."

He said the last phrase in a tone that was not even a truism but a saying of the Law. Honestly. For a moment, despite her manners and upbringing, Walzea thought this traitorous bastard had really lost his fucking mind. The bastard didn't let her finish the thought, falling to one knee and sending a wave of grayness along the floor, bringing his hands together and squeezing the space around him. It wasn't enough to interrupt the ritual, not even close. All the mistakes were quickly corrected by the Guardian Spheres, which reconfigured the ritual as they went. It was clearly different and purpose from the very beginning. They needed Walzea for something, and she was to be the basis of the ritual. And Ramarz managed to change, rewrite, and finalize it all in just a dozen seconds!

The Princess smiles, realizing the irony of the situation, which has not yet reached their adversary. On their own, neither she nor the strange Wanderer, who, for some reason, had the skills not of a nature wanderer but of a seasoned murderer and criminal, posed any threat to such a defense. Or rather, they couldn't break this defense in time, before the summoning, after which they would be crushed numerically, not inferior qualitatively. Even together, they could not shake the scales so much before. After that episode with her battle madness, potioned to the eyebrows and, most importantly, unable to retreat, Walzea had changed something in the reflection of her Status.

She had spoken those words only once, supported not by a simple but by a double star of Benefics, standing beside her Father, who had given her some of his Time that day for the sake of her development. Then, an attempt to invoke the Law in her words had ended in cardiac arrest and emergency resuscitation, and a final cross had been put on her future, cementing her uselessness forever.

She spits the words out with the blood flowing from the cuts in her throat, left by the words themselves, by the power hidden in them. The spit out not only bleeds but seems to rip out her insides, giving her burning pain and shameful weakness. If she had eaten lunch, she would have defecated under herself by now, so great was the strain on the weak, unaccustomed girl's body.

She did it.

The River of Time makes a small, almost imperceptible bend, a small and insignificant loop compared to the immutability of all things. Right in the place of the ritual, another ritual appears, another carpet of scarlet flesh, only a measly second behind the real one. Or was it the real one that began to rush by the same second? Only her father could answer, as her understanding of the mystery used was barely enough to at least call her on it.

The devils bursting into reality quite suddenly began to manifest themselves at two points at the same time. But where one can easily divide ten gold pieces for two, one cannot divide a mistress for two. Or rather, you can, but either allegorically or with quite predictable consequences for the mistress. Probably, they were really strong creatures, one of the reserve groups, specially detained in Hell to solve urgent situations and not sent to destroy the capital and feast on the souls of its inhabitants. So that one could summon them at exactly the right point rather than hoping to summon them by more conventional methods.

All of them (there were eight, maybe twelve - Walzea wasn't that good a sensor) simply ceased to be because of injuries incompatible with existence. It wasn't just their bodies that were torn apart, but even their energy sheaths, causing the carpet of flesh to begin to ooze with golden honey, mold, and lights of souls released from their greedy grasp. The previously invisible barrier began to crumble with a muffled and wet crunch, and its fragments became recognizable by ordinary vision. The same vision showed that the invisible barrier consisted of the same rippling flesh, only completely transparent and jelly-like as if it were a slime-type monster straight from the sewers.

Her mind and body recoiled, but her ancestral power had already done its job, depriving her opponent of reinforcements, protection, and the feeling of impending victory. Although, the damned peddler was ready to argue with the latter until he was hoarse, unconscious, and splattering his opponents with a thin layer. Having roared something unintelligible (it was roaring, not ritual lyrics), he waved his hands, and all four normal people had no time to think.

The slap of the bowstring and the flight of the enchanted bolt came to nothing, as the projectile was literally vaporized by several super-precise rays of snow-white color fired from three spheres at once. The Wanderer saves the situation by raising a wave of road dust, creating a storm out of it, doubly deadly in the confined space of the once beautiful hall. The wreckage of the furniture begins to age, soaking up the dust of the Road, but neither Walzea nor any of the trio fears to repeat their fate.

Princess is protected by the newly applied timelessness. The liquidator and the boy's clothes flash gray with small pendants of the same kind that shamans like to use. The dust inside them is undoubtedly the same dust, only differently charged and properly attuned. All of them can easily see through the gray veil: the wanderer thanks to the class, a couple of his assistants (still of the trio, he is undoubtedly the strongest) with the help of amulets, and Walzea looked with her eyes in the past, staying in the future. The dust, which was in the same displaced state that displaced everything else, did not exist for her.

The spheres burst into flames, sending a rain of battle magic in the form of multicolored needles and arrows. Primitive enchantments, it would seem, even if executed with diligent quality. One good amulet might well produce the same, just one at a time. In the pocket dimensions of each sphere, these amulets must be stuffed with all the coins available to the head of the richest of the guilds. Therefore, speaking of the rain of battle charms, the girl was not exaggerating - under such a downpour, the dust veil lasts for seconds, rapidly losing density. And the spheres continued to shine, putting barrier after barrier, reclaiming space, and seeking to enclose them all in a multi-segmented cage with no exit.

The wanderer repeats his trick without even thinking of attacking, letting the crossbowman and the liquidator hide under the protection of the gray cloud. The cloud is joined by full-fledged walls, consisting of the same dust but frozen. In time, these barriers were put up, immediately beginning to crumble under the blows of wide and powerful rays - also amuletic, but no longer ordinary charms, but an elite level of them. They are used during the storming of fortresses, when you have already broken inward, under the main domes of defense, but still need to open some of its segments, tearing down the inner doors of arsenals, barracks, or treasury, or even just breaking through the walls directly.

Walzea exhaled.

The swift spells begin to move so slowly that even a lazy fly would overtake them, and the spheres that flicker at breakneck speed, constantly changing order and formation, also fall under its influence. Even after he had found insanely rare means of countering the direct invocation of Time and protected his favorite creations with them, Ramarz could do nothing when the effect was on the river around his position, not on him.

The accelerated reactions of a powerful mage and a cultist pumped with sacrificial energy allowed him to think and react with astonishing speed. But his pupils were still only just dilating with realization, his sensory enchantments only just managing to bring him the knowledge that Walzea had turned to the river of the boundless. As fast as he was, his speed and sphere remained in their normal flow, unlike them.

The huge body of the wanderer moved with startling grace, not at all enchanting, as is the case with blade dancers, but frightening to the point of shuddering. He simply appeared at the edge of the cloud from a flash of gray energy, cleaving the nearly activated enchantments of the multi-node fire net with a dagger strike, and then began to walk forward. The barriers that covered all the dust-free space didn't even break. They just ignored him as if he were walking through.

Black Walk was also an iconic skill for the Nightblade, which hinted even more strongly at the successful guess about the nature of the wanderer's second class. The Black Mark could be an artifact or used with another class, but only a handful of classes could combine it with walking (or something very similar). Not necessarily Nightblades, but all of them belong to this branch of archetypes.

He couldn't attack the mage. He just wouldn't get there, spending too much on each step. So he aimed at the sphere closest to him. He took a step, jumped up, changed his standard dagger to a tenacious hook pulled from under his cloak, and lunged with the new weapon. In such slow motion, it was perfectly visible as the sphere opened like a flower, changing into an attacking form. In this form, it was caught by one of the petals, pulling it closer to itself, immediately exhaling another cloud of dust inside the opened flower, and adding an explosive crystal on top. Another effort, and he simply shoves his target away, using it to get back under the cloud's protection.

At the same time, the liquidator flew into the cloud, using both a jump and a blink to get there before the spheres changed paradigms. A few pieces of priceless alloy fall off a little to the side. It's the petals of the second of the caught flowers cut off by her daggers. It might not destroy the artifact, but it will damage it significantly, even aside from the presence of another crystal in the open "wound," already almost detonated.

Subjectively, it had been at least five seconds for Walzea, about two for her companions, whose blood did not belong to her kind and, therefore, they were only partially accelerated. The damned Ramartz was completing a single movement only now. Hands clasped together, fingers curled in a bone-seal, and then a wave that weaved together notes of Astral, neutral power with equal ease, and a drop of Hell fleur in there, too. The flow of the almighty Time has equalized, but instead of a crushing attack, the cultist is forced to throw back the spheres turning inside out. The toy disabled by the liquidator simply turned off. The one filled with dust, figuratively speaking, vomited its subspace outward. And there was much more inside than a sphere the size of a man's head could take up.

Instead of attacking, the mage is forced to defend himself from detonating cascading amulets, from spatial vortices, and another attempt to distort the flow of Time. He manages to cope, snapping back now and then with new attacks of his spheres, and he is also constantly trying to create some large-scale ritual right on the battered walls of the estate. In direct combat, a mage of his specialization is almost powerless despite his level and all the titles in his Status. As long as he's protected by his creations, interfering with his sorcery - slow, cumbersome, and heavy - is not a task even for battle star.

Spheres create barriers and embody pure energy in a multitude of forms, all sorts of conceptual effects, even if very short-term. Direct attacks may be too simple, but there are many of them. It's all of different natures, of different planes. It's making it harder and harder to defend against them. Dust of the Endless Road is a versatile, powerful, and in many ways unique tool, but even against this tool, one can find countermeasures. Ramarz has taken these measures and picked them up, managing to dampen the distortions of reality with powerful spatial techniques. Each sphere, lovingly reassembled after the last meeting of these two, contains a multitude of anchors that stabilize reality in relation to the Road, weakening the wanderer and giving him no respite.

In a different situation, under different circumstances, two good assassins, supported by a single shooter acting more as ballast than support, would not have been able to resist such power, even without the crushing force of Hell and the corruptions bestowed by its inhabitants. But today, the fourth member of the team was Walzea, who had managed to push herself beyond her limits in a wave of her anger. Ramarz blamed the wrong man for his son's death, the wrong man.

He would defeat Walzea, too, not easily but quickly. The devil's servants had come here for her, even if they were not averse to looting the estate as well as taking advantage of the captive guards, retinue, and servants. She didn't know why a ritualist of this caliber would need blood from her Father's blood, but she could make a hundred guesses, one worse than the other. Ritual, native blood, devils, and a riot in the capital. It was very hard to brew something out of such ingredients that wouldn't be a disaster from the perspective of the Emperor of Ages.

Neither wanderer nor chronomancer could stand alone in this battle, but together... Walzea knew how much someone in possession of her family's mysteries could strengthen a unit, a squad, or an entire army. They retreated, spinning like snakes in a frying pan. The wanderer summoned dust veils to exhaustion, and the Eye assassin diverged with an ignominious death by a thread, but they stood their ground, held their defenses against Ramartz's creations, and were in no hurry to lose this game.

The main recipe for their success was undoubtedly the ability to move and react simply faster than the skillful magical algorithm of the Spheres' pseudo-mind could keep track of. Even a boy with a crossbow under threefold acceleration at the same deceleration of the enemy, demonstrated a satisfactory fighting ability to survive, if not to help in the battle.

Truly, it is not for nothing that the whole world knows the price of the power of the Eternals!

Dozens of signs and figures, as if drawn directly in the air by an invisible brush, emit a Vice strong enough to cripple an unprotected person by its mere presence. But it would not be a mere presence - they are assembled into larger structures, the individual fragments of which are about to form a finished and already completed ritual. The Spheres shining with open colors only cover the magician's work, which he cannot entrust even to such powerful and multifunctional artifacts.

The will of the princess makes some of the signs roll back into the past, and some, on the contrary, take the form they will have when the ritual is completed and triggered. There was no explosion. Only a drop of blood ran down the face of Ramarz, who had time to react. The Great Ritualist and Artifactor had managed to convert the rollback from the ritual into reserve damage and then leveled it to ridiculous amounts. Ridiculous for such a serious setback, not in terms of consequences.

Walzea and her assistants got first blood, even if some might argue about who was helping whom. Ramarz is trying to even the score, moving from economical and deadly accurate strikes with various amulets to battle charms of the highest order. Someone could be happy, say, began to boil, to lose the sharpness of mind, but not Walzea. The girl realized that the head of the guild that had betrayed the Empire was furious before the battle began when he received the news of his son's death, but it didn't make his mind any less sharp, despite the fact Hell's energy had tainted his mind. The change in battle tactics had only come about because the Spheres had erected enough barriers to not worry too much about the defenses.

A stream of wet-green flame, surrounded by a couple dozen glowing white disposable amulet golems fired from the gut of one of the Spheres, ignores the dust's attempts to stop it. Walzea realizes this strange force is too firmly embedded in the world around her, so tightly that even the currents of the river will not carry it away immediately.

All of them, all four of them, accelerated by Walzea to the maximum, simply bypassing the flow of power, allowing the wanderer to knock some of the smaller battle golems to dust, while the cutthroat from the Eyes connects the blades of her daggers, activating the embedded skill and covering them all with a stream of energy bubbling from the conflict. They must be stopped by the barriers, albeit no longer supported by the spheres, which every last one of them focused on constructing the previous attack and suppressing attempts to reach Ramartz.

Walzea nearly drops dead as she restores the reception hall to its pristine appearance. The broken stained glass windows were restored, the streams of flesh and pools of blood were gone, and the breaches in the walls were reversed, including the one left by the swamp fire that had nearly collapsed the entire central wing of the mansion. The barriers were gone, too, of course, but the dust that had almost disappeared during the heated battle had returned. The Wanderer wasn't in the best condition either, but that's no surprise, not after such a strain. If Walzea had rebuilt the hall and broken the formation of the Spheres, he had simply caused the Spheres to freeze for a few seconds, dragging them along the Road in the opposite direction.

Although, no.

Such artifacts are perfectly protected from such an approach. Rather, he turned the Road itself in the right direction, "not noticing" the presence of these artifacts on it. For a brief second, these machines of destruction, even without their masters, capable of killing several hundred advanced warriors without casualties on their part, froze in cocoons of gray timelessness. A fraction of an instant, during which even the wanderer himself would have had no time to do anything.... except to run away.

Walzea intervened just in time, draining the reserve to the very bottom, wringing the family blood to the point where the strained veins threatened to cut into her mistress's flesh. If the previous effort had nearly killed her with the need to perform an overly capacious technique all at once, now simple exhaustion could kill her. Her lips pushed out such a familiar lyric, a painful call, an inescapable command, for the umpteenth time that day, the world around her quivering.

And the second pause for the Spheres suddenly became much longer. Only the second technique, created by the princess, could not be torn by their passive chrono-protection because the artifacts were pressed by the power of the Road, which they opposed. The power of the dynasty's bloodline only affected the wanderer's technique without touching the artifacts directly.

"Hurry up." Indifferently and with surprising even to herself grave calmness, she said, falling to the clean floor again, feeling her limbs grow cold. "Time... always... not enough."

In fact, by the time she had time to say that phrase, the heavy and haggard-breathing Wanderer, the equally tired Assassin, and even the Crossbow Boy had finished what they had started. For all their power and multifaceted defenses, the Spheres were still very fragile creations, even if it was far from obvious. It was just that the multitude of amulets invested in these embodied pockets always managed to cover the fragile arcanomechanisms with suitable protection. At the level of the local Law, they had time. They could not fail to do so.

When there was no defense, even the strength of the exhausted trio was enough to turn expensive toys into equally expensive wreckage. Even the weakest link, in the form of the almost useless young man, managed to prove himself. He broke one of the spheres by hitting it with the steel-covered arcs of his crossbow. It wasn't the smartest decision, but he either believed in the durability of his weapon or simply didn't have the strength for other tricks, perhaps not knowing them at all. The second and third, she thought, were more likely.

The Spheres, deprived of the ability to protect themselves, could not even release the explosion outside, self-destructing without any external manifestations, unless you count strong but low-noticeable spatial disturbances. There was a chance to get a cut of the world's tissue in the place of their heads, but there were no injuries because they worked cleanly enough, and the Road took all these cuts for itself.

If it weren't for the presence of precognitive abilities in the assassin's arsenal (she'd definitely heard of it somewhere, read it in the summaries supplied by the entourage), which gave them the ability to communicate in alternate lines of what had happened thanks to the ability to pick the timing of the conversation and make it not happen, nothing would have worked. There wouldn't have been enough coordination to make it work the way it did. Perhaps she had never heard of such use of precognistics in conjunction with Path adepts and Chronomancers. The Imperial Archives or the Eternal Library might have some writings on the subject, but hardly many. Perhaps, if she survived this adventure, Walzea might even add to those archives. Or rather, the family archives, for there is no reason for the others to know too much about the Ruling Bloodline.

They managed to outplay Ramarz.

He, in turn, outplayed them.

* * *

They hadn't even had time to congratulate each other when Walzea's distortion simply burst. Ramarz, covered with bleeding sores and outwardly aged by several decades, who had not been in vain in his attempt to gain additional power by digesting his own body in planar power, smiled triumphantly. No one was able to comment on the new appearance of the previously lively and smug Hell servant as the bastard performed another ritual. He did it in his own body and then turned it outward before any of the four of them could react.

Walzea, the Brute, and the Assassin simply froze, unable to move - not mental influence, but the most banal stasis, elevated to the absolute. A technique of the kind that, for all the simplicity of the principle invested in it, presents it so comprehensively that no defense can save it. Just as she had done with the late Rorzar, Walzea could only move her eyes and breathe as the gradually regenerating and recovering cultist strode leisurely, in the direction of the three of them. Such a wicked irony...

The lad, miraculously out of range of the barrier, was rapidly breaking the distance, judging by the sound of the crossbow being raised. The mage waved his hand lazily, sending five voluminous figures made of magic sigils toward the troublemaker. The flash of magic, in which Walzea recognized the activation of one of the one-time amulets issued to the "ally," didn't help the poor man much. His hearing, sharpened by music lessons and theater attendance, picked up a shriek that turned into a mate and the sound of flying, followed by the clinking of shattering glass. The young man had been carried out of the mansion through the stained glass window, and it was unlikely that he, at his level, would land alive or even land at all. He'd be smashed against the inside of the protective dome, for sure!

"Well, here we are, getting to the conversation." Ramartz's soft and ingratiating tone couldn't hide the raging venom of first-grade hatred. "And it will be a long conversation, my princess."

With a barely perceptible flash, the stasis began to recede, but it was replaced by hundreds of thin red threads covering her body and clothing, crawling under her skin and into her insides. These threads folded into restraining chains of sigils, streaking across her body in exotic tattooing, penetrating every part of her body, taking control of her muscles, her breathing, her energy, and even her class skills. And after all, no one had ever heard that the Bradkiss had any talents in the field of puppetry!

Was he the one who had been offered such a gift by his masters? Or did their entire house manage to conceal an interest in such an unpleasant and carefully controlled form of magic? It is not easy to become a Puppeteer, and it is impossible to become one who works on living material with the active resistance of the latter without long practice. But if anyone can bestow gifts better than anyone else, it is the Devils, as the most recognized experts in soul magic under the light of the Sun and the gaze of the Sisters.

The princess's body, despite her thoughts and attempts to resist, shifted from foot to foot, following its owner. Walzea did not doubt that her mind would have been shut off as easily as her body, but Ramartz clearly wanted to keep her conscious until the last moment, giving her a taste of the situation. The assassin stood beside the princess and removed the cloth mask from her face, allowing her face to be examined in passing and finally remembering the bulletin in which that face and full name had appeared. She had been declared dead at the hands of Alishan saboteurs, and her murder had even been one of the reasons for the almost-declared war!

"My dear ones, wait, I will show you all that I wish and you wish." The fingers, thin and groomed again, rid of wrinkles and cuts, run over the princess's face, and the body, obeying the puppeteer, kisses those very fingers. "We shall wish a great deal and take even more."

Kissing hands is just plain pettiness on the part of the cultist. There was no poison or curses on his fingers, except for the trivial saturation of his entire body with Lust, but that was just a passive effect of the last stage of corruption. It was just that this degenerate's utterly base desire to humiliate his victim quite succeeded. Had it not been for the loss of control, Walzea might have vomited right there, so vile did Ramarz look after the ritual he'd created inside his own guts. She couldn't be sure about the assassin, but it was hardly a pleasure to watch a body that had submitted to someone else's will happily lick the hand like a dog taking a treat from its master's hand.

He approached the bulky man, gracefully unbuttoning his loose cloak, which concealed many hidden pockets and loops with throwing potions, amulets, and blades. Ramartz lost control for the first time, releasing a look of exasperated anger back into his serene and smug face. Beneath the cloak was a surprisingly finely crafted armor, at once well-armored but still light enough not to stifle movement. It was an odd choice for an assassin, but the wanderer's movements made it almost impossible to suspect that he was wearing such armor, so agile was he for all his bulk and deceptive slowness.

The Wanderer was the only one of them who could not be completely subdued by the puppet technique, only paralyzed. But even this little thing was not in vain for the adept of the Road - the flushed face, the blood flowing from his ears, nose, and eyes, the cramped jaw, and the movement of threads under his skin that could be seen with normal eyes. Even though her body was completely out of control, Walzea felt a chill run down her spine just imagining the sensations the poor man was experiencing.

"Oh, Murderer, how glad I am to meet you." As if to compensate for the incredibly fast recovery of his body to normalcy, a real madness began to dance in Ramarz's eyes, barely restrained behind the barrier of his iron will. "I will plunge you to the bottom and raise you to the heavens, poison your soul to heal it with a new poison, interrupt everything you value, giving you nothing in return that will be more valuable to you than any loss. Thousands of steps you will take along this road, but no traveler will dare repeat them, and you will step and look and pay for every second of the new world that my children did not witness through your fault. And only when there is nothing left of you when you are reborn new, will you take their place, the place of my sons, my favorite boys, and only then, will I be able to know pe..."

...stonk...

* * *

Completely devoted to his dreams, the mage never relaxed his control over the puppet threads for a single moment, methodically squeezing even the thought of resistance out of his victims. Neither the blood of Walzea, the power of the Road, or all the skill of a certified assassin from the Eye's liquidator staff could prevent and compensate for the catastrophic difference in level, class, attributes, and equipment. A Cultist, charged and gifted by their masters up to the top-notch as if for the final battle (because that battle does correspond), could easily compensate for the lack of pure combat experience and non-combat classes. Walzea and her assistants had nothing to compensate for. They went into this battle already tired, wasted, and, in the case of the princess, with the consequences of the previous treatment not completely gone.

An experienced magician who knew the value of himself and his deeds simply could not make a mistake after the victory, no matter how crazy his twisted mind was. But that madness was enough. It was enough to make sure once he was sure there were no other defenders, living or undead, beneath the dome of the estate, he could not pay enough attention to his surroundings. The insanity of it went away quickly, hiding once more in the depths of the violet-glowing pupils, bringing back into place both the caution and paranoia of the mighty head of the great guild. Forgotten, simply because he could not help but be crossed off the list of living nuisances, the crossbowman possessed the composure of a professional hustler or a dazzling amount of luck.

After all, he struck his blow at the one moment when that blow could do something good.

With a muffled and slightly damp crunch, the crossbow bolt slammed into Ramartz's eye, so focused on controlling the ritual and puppetry that he had no energy left for defense. The omnipresent Spheres could have gotten in the way, but they had been knocked out a little earlier. The amulet shields didn't help, as they had been depleted by the opposition to Walzea's attacks and her attempts to freeze Time for Ramartz. The insane thirst to tell the prisoners their fate had prevented him from rebuilding even the most primitive barrier, for it would have been enough to repel such a weak attack anyway.

History has no subjunctive clauses unless you use something incredibly complex and powerful, playing with causality and reality, and so the only thing left to consider is the fait accompli. Somehow, the surviving crossbowman fired. His shot hit its target, and then the primitive burst charms on the bolt activated, turning the top of Ramarz's skull into a bloody suspension.

It didn't kill him.

Not someone with so much Vice in him.

Without realizing it, on instinct, he struck all of his captives with the threads in them, tearing their hearts, piercing their flesh, and killing them despite any attempts to regenerate. In most cases, it would be enough to take the lives of the victims, albeit granting them freedom in death, and then massacre the low-level youth who could barely utilize the advantage gained. Except among the dying was a Chronomancer who simply reversed the state of the body back to a time when it had not yet been affected by the abominable threads.

The second she saves Fern because she doesn't know the thug, and this lady is from Father's controlled agency, and the fact that she fought on Walzea's side disproves most of the suspicions against her. The woman, who had begun to spit out her lungs and had been turned into a sieve of sand by the spells that had pierced her body in multiple places, had healed, regained consciousness, and was ready to support her princess, but it wasn't necessary.

Walzea did not waste her strength on the wanderer, not out of fear for his loyalty or because he was too close to the wounded cultist, but because he was doing just fine on his own. As resilient as Ramartz was, he still hadn't learned how to recover instantly. The wounded area swirled red and began to emanate black fumes, reentering his skull centimeter by centimeter, threatening to get rid of the wound in less than a couple of heartbeats.

The Wanderer made it through earlier.

Despite its name, the Nightblade class has nothing to do with the ministers of the eldest of the Sisters, the Night Guest. These highly unusual individuals are even rarer than high-level adepts of the Road, concentrated in remote temples, small family covens, and among various semi-legal orders. Nightblades, of course, can draw power from the glow of the Guest, but this requires certain titles, most often hereditary, and the class itself most often changes its name to Blades of the Night. In other cases, these assassins receive planar support from the Darkness, which is much more common in the society of professional assassins.

Unlike Witchblades, who go mad, fall into Madness, and routinely turn crowds of peasants to sacrificial material, Blades do not use Darkness directly, rather letting some of it flow through the upper layers of the shell. This greatly reduces the combat potential, the insane striking power that the Darkness and its servants are famous for, but instead keeps the mind and soul relatively intact. Well, longer than usual. And in terms of combat power, the developed Nightsblade also has a lot of trump cards, maybe not so large-scale, but extremely useful in the work on the profile. Assassins, Liquidators, very rarely scouts with a bias towards sabotage - that's the role of such warriors.

Whoever her temporary ally was, no matter how unusual the combination of Darkness and Road might be, he had skills that would have honored almost any cutthroat in the Eyes' department. Walzea had seen them in action a couple of times, both on recordings of crystal illusions and during training sessions with the obligatory sparring, and they were certainly impressive, but the big man was noticeably better.

He struck at once from a very strange stance. At first, it looked as if the threads stirring inside his body had knocked him off his feet, but it was only an illusion. Falling face down onto the floor covered in his blood, the wanderer landed on one knee, without the slightest pause, using his position to gain momentum. The road he never summoned, whether by overexerting himself or Ramartz still managed to block access to the plane. Instead of a gray dust veil, his blades became completely black as if coated in alchemical oil, ready to come off the blades in heavy and thick drops.

The first blow was a classic, bottom-up, straight down the center of the chest to the heart, and the Darkness saturation of the blades allowed him to ignore the ritual marks that flashed across the skin. Even so, Walzea's time-delayed perception allowed her to see how hard the mage's flesh was being cut as if a commoner were trying to cut through a hard block of wood with an old and rusty knife. But the first blow was followed by a second, third, tenth. The assassin's body worked with the smoothness of a machine, and the speed of each piercing was not inferior to that of a mechanical sewing machine of dwarven work.

A moment and the bulky man is on his feet, while Ramarz is thrown back half a step. Step by step, unhurriedly and even a little lazily, if you ignore the streams of blood, almost black from planar lesions, falling under his feet, if you do not realize that Ramarz is actually being dragged forward on the blades of daggers, not letting him fall. And when his body does fall, the sound of the fall comes out wet and slimy, subtly vile. There is no body - just a head that has never recovered, limbs sliced off, and instead of a torso, a set of cut, almost whipped meat and crumbled bones.

The thug is back on his knees, coughing up his blood mixed with dust, getting rid of the remnants of the threads that crippled his gut. With some hesitation, she covers him with the distortion, bringing his body to its proper state. Toward the end, he seems to help her, only from the Road's side, easing the strain on her tired mind.

They won.

They really won.

Walzea was once again amazed at how fast the strange murderer moved despite his size. Here, he was folded in a knot, almost defenseless and dying, and now he was on his feet, wrinkling his scarred and ugly face and shooting his slightly slanted eyes sideways. It's hard to believe that his manners are just a mask, but it's even harder not to. He's shown too much, too much skill for a simple road thug from the border towns.

"And you're not bad." If he wished to bruise Walzea with his showy or not-so-showy disregard, he did quite well, as the princess was not used to such indifference from someone who was not at least somewhat equal to her position. "Good!"

Despite the complete lack of manners or at least banal respect, the girl agreed with the killer's words completely, and to the end, only she would have expressed them a little differently, more gracefully. The lad had saved her life, and the fact he had saved all the others present with her didn't change anything.

"How did you survive, Mort?" Areya Fern came to her senses the slowest, for her wounds were also the most severe, already nearly tearing her shells and threatening to stain her soul. "I mean, I saw you get shot like a dwarven cannon. I didn't even have time to try to help."

Walzea noted in passing the unfamiliar name of the boy who had accidentally (or not accidentally at all) joined their company, but she did not interrupt the conversation for the same reason she had not expressed her indignation to the wanderer. First of all, she was interested in the answer to the question. Second, she couldn't get her body to breathe properly enough to put her thoughts into words.

"T-there's a b-bush of some strange roses o-over there." The young man replied, waving his hand behind his back. "I flew p-past it like I was in hon-ney. It t-took away all m-my speed. I would have been s-splat-tered."

Humming, at the same time noting the restoration of her breathing, Walzea stepped in, not so much out of a desire to enlighten those around her, but to show her presence and ability to participate in the conversation.

"It's an Agamey Rose bush..... was, by the looks of it." With a certain melancholy, Walzea even weaves her phrase in. "A rare plant, nourished by the Heavens themselves, which causes it to create a hemisphere of pure peace around it."

"Excuse me?" A little uncertainly, as if afraid of scolding for a bush, which had been ruined by the sharp break of the said barrier.

"It's all right. I never liked this species, but it was planted on my grandfather's orders, and therefore, the command to replace it could be considered a violation of the will of a past Emperor." The girl answered, for the first time since their acquaintance, allowing herself to use the rights of one of the masters of the Empire and the only mistress of the estate.

Will is intertwined with magic, allowing her to analyze and realize another's power even better than a professional interrogator can. Or at least not worse. She doesn't even try to use this trick on the Wanderer, knowing in advance that he will hide from it because this unknown expert is too good to fall for such a trick. She already knows enough about Areya Fern's skills and status, having already remembered and compared her personality. The boy, however, remained a dark spot that she decided to clear up.

An ordinary Adventurer with a couple of rare titles and one epic one. And also level twenty-two. He's really just random luck to have slipped into this group. Well, or he's just really good at masking his essence. It has been rumored, and some analysts' summaries have confirmed with circumstantial evidence, that covens of Face Stealers remain active even now in each of the continent's existing capitals.

Too weak to seriously hope to survive the attempt to reach the Palace and take refuge there. Not with the need to go through the purple-stained streets. Not with Walzea's fatigue, the bulky man unrestrained by his tongue, and Fern. Whatever the story that had brought them all together, there was hardly any chance of the boy completing it. Unless she leaves him here in one of the hideouts... but she doesn't believe it will end well for the town itself. And even if it did, she wouldn't risk it, either - the chances of freeing the Imperial Palace complex from Hell's grip are far greater than bringing the entire capital city back to reality at once.

"I suppose Your Highness will order you to proceed to the Palace?" The liquidator, who was already taking a breath, clarified, also stroking a not quite indifferent glance at the boy who was embarrassed under their gazes, confirming her familiarity with the emergency guidelines regarding the rescue of the Eternal Blood. She was just as certain of his contribution to their rescue as she was of the probable fate of her soul if that contribution had not been made.

"Quite right, Fern." Walzea far from missed the barely perceptible shiver in the operative's body when the princess spoke her birth name. "But before I demand you do your duty in my name, I am compelled to do a duty of my own."

The deceptively soft tone was replaced at the end of the sentence by a murderous seriousness and steel as Walzea rekindled her self-confidence, realizing how much she was risking. What was more in her actions - practicality and desire to strengthen her defenders as much as possible, or banal gratitude, which even the most callous of people were no stranger to.

"Come." In a voice that brooked no objection, the trueborn Eternal demanded, investing the power of her authority over the land and the people who inhabited it. "Kneel."

In fact, it was quite possible to defy or even ignore the ruler's orders, especially if you had a high level, a strong will, or a lack of patriotism in your soul. Such tricks are much weaker on the subjects of other countries, but the boy was still too weak, having absorbed law-abidingness and reverence for the ruling family from his mother's milk. He could have tried to rescind the order, but he dared not even try, which was not surprising.

What was really surprising was Areya's barely perceptible movement, as if her hand had tried to grip the dagger's hilt at the moment of the crossbowman's order. She can't believe someone with her background would show such sudden concern for someone... It could be suspicious, but for now, Walzea couldn't formalize those suspicions into anything.

"Say your name!" A new order, a new expenditure of energy, at the same time invoking the source that nourishes each of the truly empowered.

"Mort, son of Volaan of the Glassblowers." From the pressure of her presence, the guy's stuttering even went away, which, by the way, has long been documented and is one of the ways to cure such an ailment, only very expensive and rarely used for obvious reasons.

Still, he was a commoner, which, on the one hand, was good and easier for her, but on the other hand, it was much harder in terms of reputational losses. On the other side, leaving the one who saved her soul alive but not gifted for his deed would be even worse for her reputation, even if no one finds out about it.

Screw it!

Carast-Barg might have paid for her favor three hundred times over, even if not only in money but also in deeds, but his deed could not contain a tenth of what the boy had accomplished, even though his whole family had helped him to receive favor from Walzea's hands. If William and his clan were still alive and survived the massacre, she would find something to answer their very likely and partially justified claims.

"In my name, as my Father's daughter, and in His name." The words come out memorized and perfectly placed, but all the princess's will is focused on not getting embarrassed now, and she realizes with surprise how atypically easy the process she started is. "Let thy name be taken away, frozen in my Eternal hands, leaving thee the name of thy Father. Let thy name be the name of thy lineage in remembrance of what has been accomplished. Arise, Volaan de Mort, Esquire, and remember thy Honor, thy House, thy Word, and thy Deeds, which shall never be forgotten."

Giving a regular title wasn't hard, but if you were to bestow it, it should be at the top of the scale. Initially, she'd wanted to show her favor with the title, adding characteristics and slightly increasing his chances of survival. What she hadn't expected was the ease with which the bestowal would go, allowing her to bestow far more than she'd ever thought possible. She'd even done the titling in the Western tradition, with the addition of a prefix to compensate for the possible backlash - Walzea happened to have the most influence in the Western provinces, which translated into such trivialities. But what a result!

Although, if you think about it...

With his level, he not only took part in a battle with a cultist who was clearly over half a hundred steps up the ladder of elevation but also did some damage to him and his artifacts and then made a decisive contribution to the victory, even if by sheer luck. It was really worth a lot. For example, getting a second class while still at level twenty-two, which, of course, happens sometimes, not being some crazy advantage, but it also requires, usually, very serious training with questionable results. Both her brothers and the princess herself preferred to get their classes by the normal method - less risk that way. If one could, for example, reach the second class at least on the nineteenth class to get an extra skill point, one would be much more willing to take the risk.

With a shake of her head, Walzea took a step back from the newly minted Esquire, removing her palm from his shoulder and noting with surprise that her reserve had not sagged. She had been known to give titles to her retinue and sometimes not only titles but also class changes. Always after such manipulations, she needed rest and sometimes a healer. In the case of the healer, of course, only after saying goodbye to the witnesses so no one could see her weakness, but that was not the point.

"Congratulations, Mort." Sincerely, as far as Walzea could tell, Fern was happy for an unexpected companion, only confirming suspicions that the weakling had been attached to the odd couple for a long time now, having become familiar with them. "You'll make a career out of it."

Even the big man mumbled something between profane and approving, leaning against the wall and resting after his labors, staring ahead with unfocused eyes. It was clear here, too. Volaan wasn't the only one getting new ascensions from the fight. The princess also wanted to spend some time looking at the changes in Status, finding no reason to hold back but finding time to ask a question.

"Why did the flow of time in the estate and behind its barrier equalize?" She didn't expect an answer, but she suspected the cause of such a mishap. "Did you notice the moment of transition?"

"Nah, haven't noticed." The wanderer answered, still staring into himself, not taking his eyes off his work. "I was jumping on the Mark, and it came on abruptly, almost suddenly. I'd put it on the motherfucker a long time ago, but the fucking suckers had shut it down almost immediately, almost took it off, and even tried to use it to find me a couple of times, the fucking cocksuckers. If I hadn't been so careful, I could have gotten in trouble. We'd been doing a little bit of havoc, so we had to choose where to get fucked - either where we were already fucked, or by the suddenly shining Mark. As a Witcher friend of mine used to say, "This is shit, and that is shit. These two shit are the kind of shit that made me fucking pull out both of my swords at once".

A couple more leading questions, mostly about timelines, combined with attempts to find out more about where and why this trio had been pinned down, led Walzea to the only logical conclusion.

"Somewhere around the same time, the cultists were killing my retinue, the ones I had with me, and the estate guards." The satisfaction of realizing the deaths of a good portion of the freaks involved in her problems somewhat assuaged the bitterness under her heart at the loss of those loyal to her personally. "Most likely, to trying signal, someone in charge of the ritual halls collapsed the displacement effect. That's why you were able to get here, which is good, no doubt. And bad."

"Bad?" The boy has indeed stopped stuttering, which is also good news since they won't make fun of him and, by implication, her as the one who bestowed the title. "But why?"

"It means that the estate's defenses are only outwardly almost intact and already crumbling like a sugar cookie." Fern plays the role of mentor to the new addition, clearly not for the first time answering her companion's silly questions. "I'm betting the only reason the domes are standing is because none of the devils ever tried to break this place open, knowing who was sent here and why. Please forgive me if my words are too off the protocol, Your Highness."

Walzea, of course, was not going to be snapped by the liquidator's gross breach of etiquette, if only because it would make her look like a petty fool. If she kept silent at the wanderer's passages, as if intentionally playing a tune on her nerves, she would only make herself look like a hypocritical and cowardly fool by getting angry at Fern, who was weaker and in a subordinate position to her blood.

"We rested, and that's enough." Once again, the princess was unable to track the moment when the brute was on his feet, which was not surprising given the difference in classes, but the fact that this moment was clearly not tracked by Fern, who was also adapted to such tasks, was far more disturbing. "We're overscheduled. If we have to go to the Palace, it's time to move our asses now. Get up and fuck off, gentlemen and ladies."

He interrupted her again.

Once again, he did not allow a response to the appeal.

Again, he used the profanity.

And it's in her face!

Acceleration, boosting, covering herself with a barrier, and there she was standing before him. Even if he was stronger, even if she couldn't stand up to him in a fight, even if the other two took her side (which was not confirmed if she were to believe the analysts' reports concerning Fern), she had honor, dignity, self-respect, finally! And to tolerate such an attitude, to keep silent even now, would be a choice even worse than to fall in battle.

She had already opened her mouth, preparing to spout either the words of activation for the family mystery or a demand for a sincere apology, when a shameful shiver ran down her spine and an equally shameful sob escaped her lips. To be fair, her opponent sat up, too, struggling to stay on his feet, his slanted eyes perfectly round.

Walzea, as the eldest of the Emperor's daughters, was well aware of the kinds of things that could be found in the family vault and the consequences of using them. And if it came to the point of using the very thing she had thought of, the situation was certainly dire. Probably under the shadow of multiple barriers, albeit weakened, she had missed something important because it was hard to imagine why her father had activated the Combined Labyrinth.

One of the strongest mythical artifacts in general, it possessed a staggering power that could make any incarnate God think three times before risking to go up against the owner of the artifact. An artifact that could compare a mere lone mortal, if not to God, then to his Avatar. An artifact that was absolutely, utterly, completely useless for anyone who was not alone. Every single activated ability of this toy of ancient civilizations was hitting strictly on the area, with great difficulty distinguishing between allies and enemies.

Father had undoubtedly used the simplest form of attack, the first of the bestowed abilities, open to anyone who would take the artifact in hand while possessing level thirty and a Ruler class of any type. The Great Shuffle allowed one to delineate vast territories, depending on the amount of land under control, to encompass all living and non-living, sentient and non-sentient, empowered and disempowered, and then rearrange them all chaotically.

To use the shuffle in a normal situation would be a disaster on the scale of the Empire because the Emperor of Ages' domain, by the way, is the entire Empire. But now that the Empire has been cut off from the capital by the strongest barrier, the effect of the Labyrinth is covered by Eternal alone. It should be added that many fortified points throughout the city were created and defended with the expectation of possible use of this artifact, which means part of the forces will be able to maintain the fighting order.

And also...

A silly smile crept onto Walzea's face as she realized her father's cunning - it was impossible to cover the entire Empire, just as it was impossible to protect everyone loyal to you from moving. But here was Eternal alone. If one were to boost one's perception with potions, benefits, and rituals at the same time and then fall headfirst into the Emperor's class skills ... There's no way to take full control of the Labyrinth mechanism in such an area either unless you count pockets of resistance and probably concentrations of hidden civilians. Everyone else who will be caught in the streets or in ordinary local battles has a good chance to get to a random point in the city.

Except here's the kicker with this move.

The Humans were unprepared for battle, and even if they kept some battle lines, even if they concentrated in squads near the very pockets of resistance, their organization was nothing compared to the well-oiled and, probably, a thousand times worked out the machine of the invasion. And where those endowed with a greater measure, it would be all the same where to fight for their lives because both here and there around the complete hopelessness. With the creatures, everything is different. Losing cohesion, mixing up the ranks, the routes of assault teams and cleanup groups, they will lose more than the defenders would have lost, and the Emperor is obliged to do everything possible to make sure his subjects are affected as little as possible.

In the confined space of Eternal, he has every chance of knowing success in this endeavor.

Walzea had a strong faith in her Father despite the complexity of family relationships.

The barriers of the estate had withstood, albeit with a great number of gaps, only this time they were easily recognizable. If it hadn't been for Walzea fixing their point in space according to the standard "one second before the shifting wave," if it hadn't been for the wanderer's dust sphere that had managed to cover them only a little after Walzea's distortion, they too would have been scattered to different corners. Judging by this simple truth, Father (or someone from the elder family) had not included the estate in the list of exceptions to the wave. Resentment was replaced by understanding. The guards had signaled before they died, which meant that Walzea was already considered either dead, or worse than dead, or, most sadly, rehired and defiled.

The dust has fallen.

The flow of the river has leveled out.

Volaan hiccupped audibly, barely in time to react to the change of scenery, raising his crossbow into a fighting position, but because of the deafening riot of space, he simply couldn't hold it in his hands and dropped it on the floor, causing the bowstring to come down, spitting its projectile out of the stock. A crossbow bolt embedded in the wall echoed with a dry thud, knocking off the stand of one of the insanely expensive paintings that had been placed in the common room for some unknown reason. A porcelain vase from the early Empire of the Arms shattered into shards, pushed to the stone floor by the falling painting. One and a half thousand gold at least, but this particular one must have been worth a lot more since standing here...

"Sorry." The Esquire whispered, defusing the situation.

"Mda." The Wanderer continued. "I kind of overreacted a little bit, too."

"Yes, and I'm unacceptably agitated by what's going on." Walzea didn't really think so, but the last thing she would do would be to escalate a conflict that she formally won and which she couldn't win in full.

"To the Palace, then." Fern, who had previously remained silent, summarized, returning her daggers to their scabbards. "While the transference wave... if it's what I thought it was, has completely disorganized the devils, we still have a chance."

A minute and a half later, Walzea had already tried on the amulet complex, drank another dose of the potion that would cost her in the future, sent a mental curse to the gutted corpse of Ramarz, or rather what was left of it after being struck by the Darkness, wishing she had the manners to spit on the corpse. Brute, on the other hand, had no manners. He even kicked a piece of the cultist's spleen.

Two minutes later, they were out of the estate and speeding toward the side of the dome that was easiest to pass through without turning to ash, which, by happy coincidence, allowed them to take the shortest route to the Palace. Walzea also noticed the bulky man did not put on his cloak once more, only scattering some of his arsenals in the pockets of his belt. Instead of the cloth cloak, the dust cloak remained on his shoulders.

And it also seemed to her that the frightening faces of the angry old men depicted on his armor looked around too vividly, too anticipatory...

* * *