I wanted to fight these people. Badly. They'd killed my friend, broke my girlfriend's heart, and were just generally dicking in a variety of ways. But...sometimes violence wasn't the answer. Well, sometimes COMMITTING violence wasn't the answer. Them experiencing violence definitely was, hence the deadly traps full of sharp, poisoned spikes.

But the main thing I was taking from this was that sometimes the best thing for the team isn't hitting things with a big stick. Of course, I didn't need to share this wisdom with the enemy. "Hey assholes!" I called to the guards. "I'ma hit you with this stick!" I'd used the bond to stealth my way over here, coming around behind them and barely managing to avoid being caught thanks to abusing my State of Grace, and finally gotten into position.

As one would expect, they didn't take the threat well, and they charged me en masse. There were shouts from inside and several more of them came out. Luckily, insane murder cultists don't have much self control, and are unsurprisingly easy to bait.

Triggering Moonlit Night, I flexed the skill, letting myself remain visible to them, but tweaking it so that they couldn't see anything past me, and then I started to run. State of Grace was still active, so my speed was at a premium, and I bolted off to the side, cackling madly and spitting the occasional Steam Arrow behind me to stir them up. I needed them all focused on me completely.

I led them out and around, not hitting the line of traps horizontally otherwise there'd be a pileup, but not hitting them vertically because tricks aside, no line of people would continuously run into a series of pitfalls. I'd found a bit of a sweet spot. A diagonal that would maximize the number of them who went down and how fast. When I reached the first pit, I flexed the skill again, thickening the fog over the pits and between each of them.

They could se me, but they couldn't see down, or each other. I used Ripple Running, and then I hit the first pit. I stepped onto thin air, the first of them behind me, and his screams were swallowed up by the fog.

Now, as an Ascendant, he may have had some way to counter the fall, but I was banking on three simple things. FIrst, surprise. He didn't know the fall was coming, and it wasn't long. Second, a short fall wouldn't be anything much for an Ascendant to deal with so while it would be shocking it wouldn't be urgent, and third, the venom, which was VERY toxic, as shown by my Belial form's inability to resist it completely.

As expected, I saw the hooded figure hit the spikes, but wasn't able to stop and enjoy the view. Rather than keep going and hope they all slipped in, as a second one dropped in after him, I swerved out. The pursuers readjusted, since they could see me, and since they couldn't see each other, they only saw normal terrain.

This kind of fine control of so many details would have been beyond me before the Temple. I could switch up some factors, turn out the lights, turn them on, but detailed crowd control on this level was straining even my soul a bit, and would have been impossible without my Azure Soul Body.

One by one they dropped in, none of them noticing what was happening as they impaled themselves in the pits. There had been two dozen of the bastards total at the start, and by the time I finished there were only four left. Sadly I'd run out of pits, but while we didn't have time for a long drawn out battle, we DID have time to gang up on and kill a quartet of assholes with vastly superior numbers.

I allowed my friends to see through the fog, and kept the hoods isolated as they got in position, and we took them apart. These guys were murdering assholes, it was in the name, and they had already killed one of us. We didn't hold back. Randall bit one clean in half from ambush, Luggage tore one apart. Bethy walked up and snapped ones neck while Callie held him and Benny tranqued one to distract him while Abel created a giant manifestation of his hand and crushed the guy like a beer can.

No powers to deal with, no attacks. The whole process took less than five minutes, and when I cleared the fog, we were all standing in a field of bodies.

Some of them were still alive, twitching on the spikes like butterflies on a card, and I stared down at the carnage with a sick feeling in my gut. I hated this. I didn't become an Ascendant for THIS. But sometimes you had to what needed doing. While I wasn't one of those 'kill em' all' cultivators, some people WERE. Some people needed to be stopped permanently, and hesitating could get my friends killed. HAD gotten my friend killed.

It was a hard lesson. That just because I didn't want to become like that, didn't mean I would never have to make that call. This was worse than just killing them in battle though. Tricking them to their deaths had saved us time and bloodshed, but it felt more...wrong.

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Callie stepped up, and I felt her open the bond again, flooding me with feelings of love and acceptance and...admiration. For making the hard call when she was still reeling. For being the leader when they needed me. It soothed the disgust I felt for myself. "Come on." I said with a shudder. "Let's get set up for our push into the building. Bethy, we need layouts and a detailed description of who is left and where. Have the others arrived yet?"

She nodded. "Gabe just got back with Callen, they're in the forest with Jessie patching up the stragglers. Albert got away. Travis lost two of his, but there's still five left, and they picked up another dozen stragglers. We THINK we killed their multiplier. They had one filling out their ranks to look imposing. The translocator wasn't there though. Whoever they are they're dangerous, and we would have noticed if they were around. They're either dead or inside with Felix."

Great. Because THAT was what I needed. Still, it was good info, and I nodded, turning to Bethy who was describing a layout to Benny as her eyes glowed. He was drawing up a smallscale map, which I was figuring could only help planning this last entry. Her eyes glowed red, but she didn't look directly at anyone. "Shane!" She called. "He's still going. He's running low on the Lamentation Liquid I think though. We should hurry."

We'd need to use that stuff probably, unless we could decipher the enchantments, which was unlikely given how old and powerful they must be. "Alright. Show me what we've got."

Benny strolled over, proudly holding out his map. He was getting good at those. I wondered if it was considered part of Inventing or if he'd gotten a Cartography Skill. Now wasn't the time for that though. Kneeling down, he set the map on the ground so he had a flat surface. "Alright, it's small, but we do have some approach options."

He pointed at a hallway in the front. "Basic access, going in the front. I'd advise against it. Felix has four of them left with him, and we have to assume one of them is the translocator. Our best bet is to take them all out at the same time, try to prevent any of them from getting a shot off. We have the numbers, but if we do that we're going to be cutting it close. I wish we had a way to time the portal, even though..."

My head snapped up. "We do!" I glanced at Nat. "I wish that the portal would settle on the right exit as soon as we take down Felix." If we did it that way, I'd be able to ensure he was done for without worrying about screwing up our way home. "As for payment...Felix was the one responsible for Perit's death. Can I make his defeat a condition of the wish on both ends?"

Nat's eyes bore a hole in me. "Yes." She said coldly. "But I don't want him defeated. Kill him. I want his life as your payment." With a nod, she took my hand, the familiar purple electricity running through me. While we weren't REALLY supposed to do this as allied candidates, I was pretty sure the whole 'six new gods might come into being' thing counted as exigent circumstances. As for the price...

I'd already made peace with the bloodshed, and Felix was not a good guy. If it meant getting my people home, I'd do it. "Alright, so we need to hit them all at once. That opens up the front entrance as a means of access again, but we need someone strong on that. The rest of them will be distracted, but you need to be able to move fast and put them down hard. Is Callen in any state for that?" I asked my sister, who had been watching the proceedings with a slightly worried frown.

"He can make it work." She said solemnly. "I can hit them from this passage." She pointed to a back tunnel that come off in the next room. "I have some serious instantaneous damage potential. And this lets out near where she marked one of the sentries."

I nodded. "Bethy, you turn into an army of winged cats, so you can use the vent your squirrel has been entering through. You're on one of the two closest to the portal. Probably that one of them is the translocator, so hit HARD and fast. No mercy. If he sees you he could swap you right through the rotating portal as it changes. You'd be screwed."

Abel nodded. "I can go through the vents too. Spatial lubrication. I'll hit the other one with Mel. We should be able to take him down without being noticed in the chaos. I take it you're on Felix?"

"Well I have to be." I said wryly. "His life is payment for that wish. Don't worry. I won't give him time to run. Just have everyone else on standby ready to hit the portal. If anyone gets left behind...they're unlikely to get out of here anytime soon." Being stuck in this shithole sounded like pure awful to me.

Benny cleared his throat. "I'm going to help with Felix. I've been on the bench most of this trip, and I spend months training for this shit. Celine can stay with Jessie and the others, but I'm with you on this." I glanced at Callie, who was looking at me resolutely. Three of us then. I should have known she wouldn't let me do this without her. We were partners after all.

"Fine." I said with a sigh. "So me, you, and Callie. Let's catch everyone else up on the plan and get in position. We don't have much time to do this. The wish won't matter if we don't manage to time it right. We have to put Felix down so we can get gone. That means we're moving out in ten or fifteen minutes, tops. I know its tight but talk fast."

We also needed to warn the higher rankers. Even if this didn't work, they might have backup plans for raising the other gods. This was just a single team from a huge organization, and as much as it would be nice to assume that stopping them would save the universe, it seemed unlikely they wouldn't have any redundancies after so long planning. Hell the whole god flesh thing was unexpected. They had to have had another method for raising the fragments. Hopefully they'd be stuck using that one.