Interlude Forgiveness - 3 (Patreon)

There were many temples on the territory of Eternal, dedicated to various deities, from light and neutral to semi-official and, in fact, illegal shrines of dark entities, not always even of divine nature. But among all of them, the pearl of the collection, the diamond among the simple crystals, stood out as the First Temple of Grimmentray. One of the most revered among the common people, the Lord of Heaven and Water, Guardian of Balance and Justice in all its manifestations, Patron of Righteous Retribution. This Ascended One had perhaps the most balanced and effective clergy on the continent. Not the strongest and not the most numerous, but the most effective.

Warriors worshipped those who bore War, peasants and farmers also prayed, mostly to their Gods, merchants were ready to sell their faith, and it was regularly bought from them.... But paying homage to the whole pantheon at once, Grimmentray was undoubtedly the first to be remembered. This was largely due to a competent, as those summoned from other worlds would say, PR campaign. Priests, adepts, and novices of this entity happily enlisted in armies, fought on the Alishan border, went on adventurers, did not get out of lairs or tombs, and crushed orcs and goblins. In general, they did mostly good and easily publicized things.

The main trump card of all servants of Grimmentray was one of the miracles rarely used by other gods. Any of the priests or paladins fulfilling a request to restore justice, punish a villain, or settle a quarrel were never charged for it. It was their "superiors" who paid them, increasing their rate of gaining steps and even giving them, albeit rarely, free attributes for each success. Other entities could and did do this as well, but few reached that scale in their philanthropy.

Needless to say, there were as many good detectives, excellent lawyers, or excellent diplomats among the Grimmentray clergy as there were fighters. These men and women occupied a niche not only as champions of justice, whom those in power would certainly not tolerate if they were completely intransigent. But they also played the role of judges and masters of conflict resolution. They were the ones to go to when war and blood were not wanted, but it was impossible to solve a contradiction without outside and preferably authoritative intervention.

In general, even the Emperor of the Ages listened to the High Priest Jerem Steyr, and among the aristocracy, merchants, adventurers, and other strata of the population were plenty of those who sincerely and gladly donated "for the temple." Any quarrel or contradiction is a disturbance of balance, and the servants of the one whose essence was to allow such a disturbance did their job perfectly well. It cannot be said that they were not corrupt, that they did not take bribes or commit evil. All of that was available, and more on top of it. But, you know, it's hard to screw up too badly if the skills granted from above and strengthened by the class allow you to feel the edges of the conflict very subtly, to realize what and who is ready to sacrifice and what to concede, at the same time knowing where and when it's not worth it to press because it's dangerous.

Situations when a cleric of the Grimmentray took bribes from both sides of a dispute and afterward brought to consideration a variant equally satisfactory to both sides and in such a way that each of the parties was sure it was their bribe had worked, happened with great regularity. In the multifaceted Empire of the Ages, with its many internal contradictions, in which even the Emperor got involved once in a while, keeping neutrality in many matters, His priests had firmly occupied the niche of an alternative judicial system. So firmly that they were practically fused with the state apparatus, which had its disadvantages and advantages.

Yes, whether willingly or not, clerics meddled with the mechanisms of state administration, and as a result, they regularly had to be cuffed and brought down from Heaven to sinful Earth. It is important to remember the cleric is faithful, first of all, to their Deity and only then to all others. But there was a feedback loop, too, giving its benefits. By order of the Emperor, clerics did a lot of things up to and including calling the Incarnation, and this Incarnation solved the problems that only gods could deal with. In favor of the Empire of Ages, of course.

Alishan had its clerics, but for them, summoning something comparable to the Incarnation was every time a separate dance around a multitude of interested parties, exhausting the treasury and wasting reserves. On the other hand, they had enough trump cards of their own, and the Alishans, despite the very high level of religiosity of the population, rarely counted on divine help in battles and even more rarely used it. But the very possibility of incarnate Grimmentrey kept the eternal neighbors from thinking of incarnate someone from their dark pantheon in the same way because their gods would most likely not fight seriously, while Grimmentrey, for whom the Empire was more than just one of the countries, could very much.

Among the celestials this champion had earned, despite his relative youth compared to the other Deities, the fame of a notorious badass who did not run from battle, did not spare his strength, and chased both his colleagues and every kind of abomination up to the mythical without fear of backstabbing the ill-wishers who would attack a weakened colleague. And yet he demanded much less, receiving his prayers and sincere faith not through huge donations and mass temple rituals but through the consequences of his and his clergy's actions.

His First Temple, located in the center of Eternal, could rightfully be among the ten most fortified buildings of the entire capital, and therefore, the attack of the devils became for its defenders not a hopeless battle but just a battle, albeit a hard one... at least at first. The clerics, who had lost the lion's share of their strength, were not the only defenders of this place because there were enough ordinary warriors for whom the reinforcement of holy magic was important, but they could tickle someone's insides with an enchanted blade without it. Then again, a prayed place, even if it had lost its connection to the Deity, allowed holy magic to work and its users not to be too afraid of massive blows to the mind performed by the streams of vicious fleur.

Let's also add to this bubbling cocktail the guards, mercenaries, and ordinary soldiers who came to the rescue and reasonably flocked to the most convenient position for defense. Like steppe bulls huddled together under a monstrous thunderstorm. Endowed, for the devils are fodder, became a kind of analog of that very herd. Yes, they were prey for such creatures, but a crowd of herbivores rushing at you could trample you if you were a predator three hundred times over.

Attempts to attack with traitors and saboteurs also did not work as effectively as the cult and their masters would have liked. Among the clergy and simple specialists close to the temple, many were able to declassify the disguise and thwarted the attempts of sabotage. Now that they knew exactly what to look for, and the terrible power of the Shroud no longer interfered with attempts to foresee, the game was played according to different rules. At least the second player knew of the existence of this game and could make his moves with the presence of the enemy in mind. The traitors had managed to damage a few small altars, weaken a couple of defense blocks, and even disable some of the domes of the temple barriers, but it was too little to break the back of the resistance.

As water erodes sandcastles. So, the devils attacking First Temple acted, letting a small crowd of low-ranking cultists or even enchanted townsfolk lead the way so the elite creatures following could strike. Without a decisive assault, in which casualties were inevitable, the monstrously skilled freaks, who specialized in long-range magical combat, had time to knock out a few targets and retreat almost effortlessly. The devils had plenty of meat, as well as the ability to recruit new volunteers.

Quite quickly, they realized they could waste their prey, killing it against the marble walls and pillars of the First Temple for a long, long time. And the waves of meat disappeared. But the number of elite creatures increased, not allowing themselves to be caught, keeping their distance, and from this very distance shitting on the defenders like a flock of extremely angry pigeons, at the same time preventing reinforcements from approaching the temple and getting under the protection of its walls. The First Temple was surrounded and cut off. The creatures maneuvered efficiently, either evading retaliation or forcing them to expend so much energy that the prayed sanctity would run out faster than the creatures. The mid-low level devils, who were slowly preparing their assault rituals and attacking formation, were also trying to hit with massive blows from the temple, but they didn't have much success. There were enough of those in the temple that no dome could completely deprive of their strength, but the creatures deflected or blocked their attacks with remarkable ease.

The appearance somewhere in the Poets' Square area of something all sensors and commonplace logic perceived to be nothing more or less than a whole archdevil made a very oppressive impression on those gathered in the temple, but no more than that. The walls still protected and also calmed the presence of Jerem Steyr in his place, quite capable and, more importantly, ready in case of confrontation with the mythical creature, to put everything available in himself and the temple altars in one attack. Even such a powerful creature would not be easy after such a thing, nor would it be pleasant.

That was probably why the creature didn't make a serious attempt to attack them. It only gave a double blow with a cloud of ash soaked with screaming souls and some strange rain of acid-green color, which suppressed three of the remaining domes and a considerable part of the segment barriers. However, the guild mages present on the spot, together with the temple specialists, managed to restore two of these barriers, almost with the help of shit and sticks. The two Linharms brothers, both mages with different classes but specializing in the maintenance of magical protection systems, rejoiced at their success like little children, and maybe not only at their success but also at the new titles that the All-Seeing had bestowed upon them for such a professional feat.

Then there was the use of the Labyrinth. Thanks to the communication between the major defense centers provided by the Palace, as well as thanks to the restored barriers, it passed without the slightest harm to the defenders, which gave not only hope but also ways of its realization. The creatures were astonishingly quick to put back together the battle orders destroyed by the spatial artifact. Apparently, they had perfectly tuned communication systems between them, but some of the reinforcements managed to make their way to the temple. In fact, they were pushed by a foot, having teleported all several hundred army blades and a dozen elite guardsmen straight from the Palace. Along with them, ordinary civilians who had been led out of the trap by the Labyrinth's action and sent closer to where they could be helped poured into the temple.

A few of the Lust-soaked losers were successfully purified, even with weakened prayers, and those who couldn't were simply turned to ashes without ceremony with the madmen. The Cultists were also getting the same treatment, but there were no professional spies among them, brought in by the chaotic paths of the Labyrinth... or there were none, or none were to be found. The main creature was engaged in a fierce magical duel with the Palace, not too much inferior to the combined power of the mages gathered there and the Emperor and his Heir, and at the same time, it was dispelling the enchantments holding the huge rift in the purple skies, freeing its army.

The temple was left almost to itself, thanks to which the first sprouts of optimism, for a long time, began to sprout in the hearts of the defenders, but this almost idyll did not last long. Rather, it even ended too hastily and unpleasantly quickly. It ended with a synchronized and combined strike of at least a trio of legendary creatures, which together covered the temple with a cloud of silvery pollen, under which the defenses began to crumble. Whatever souls, artifacts, billets, or even native abilities of devils did not provide the effect of pollen, but this substance not only acted as a very strong negator of both ordinary magic and divine miracles but also intensified due to the absorbed and recycled power, threatening to reach the mortals who were under the barriers and let them be used for material.

The mortals responded comparably, producing something almost similar in type of effect, also based on a material component with the highest magical content. The greenish-colored smoke, smelling of freshly cut hay, was almost harmless, and one could suffocate in it only if there was nothing else to breathe. However, the alchemical genius was perfectly able to bind together any other alchemical manifestations. The stuff used by the devils was not pure alchemy, of course, but it still operated according to similar principles, based on banal essentialism, only self-sustaining and as if variant. It was as if all this dust possessed a kind of mind that adjusted its state to a particular food.

The churchmen's alchemy did a satisfactory job of dealing with the pollen, but it had no chance to reincarnate the devoured defense, and even the unique individuals gathered here couldn't make a second rapid recovery. The devils, in fact, wanted exactly the same result, immediately launching their next attack.

The attack looked like a completely black ball, resembling a huge stain that absorbs light with its mere presence. And this ball rolled towards the central gate of the temple complex with the speed of an arrow just released. And it was not released by anyone, but at least by a master archer, and not even from a simple bow. As soon as the surface of the ball touched the hallowed stones of the gate, it opened up and turned inside out, releasing hundreds of spiky tentacles that immediately clung to all surfaces and began to pull them into the depths of the ball. The tentacles were doing their job so well that it felt as if they were pulling not stone and other matter but space itself, which had begun to stretch and twist into a bagel from this unscrupulous attitude.

After a second, during which no normal counterattack was possible (unless you count the many primitive charms that were sucked into the blackness like everything else), only a spherical hole in the ground remained instead of the gate and the nearest sections of the wall. The wind rushed up, filling the vacuum. The remnants of the defenses crackled, deprived of a whole segment of their structure, and dozens of simpler charms, area attacks, and point attacks began to strike inside the breach, thinning the defenders and preventing them from interfering with the assault.

This time, the elite were covered not by outright meat but by quite "average" combat units of the Devil Army, covering them in return. The Legends acted as the tip of the spear, the striking base of the unstoppable hammer. Three of them were actually on the front lines, constantly transferring their wounds to their allies or their sonms, while a couple more were frozen almost under the very dome of the alien sky, attacking in conjunction with several magic circles supported right in the air. The long-range artillery at such a distance lost accuracy, but it saved on defense since no one was getting to them, and those who could be too focused on defense.

Once again, it seemed that the battle at the temple was already lost when the biggest fish in the pond, the man whose opinion is listened to by everyone. Jerem Steyr came to the threshold of his temple, his home, perhaps, without hiding behind barriers and barricades, as if ignoring all attempts to hurt him. And everyone who could afford it tried to hit the figure shining with righteous anger.

Accompanied by a dozen clerics, also glowing with their anger at an intensity directly related to clerical position and levels, he seemed oblivious to the fact that every single servant of God in this city was about to be critically weakened. The hands clasped together in a gesture of prayer opened, and the last words of the proclamation were finally spoken, after which three things happened at once.

Abruptly and decisively, the entire retinue of the High Priest was teleported back under the temple walls, rescuing them after they had given up too much power and could no longer defend themselves. A couple of them never made it out. One of them was hit by the combined impact of the two legends, and the other was torn apart by a spatial vortex due to a sudden change in the dome's frequency. Clearly, some of the most agile creatures had done their best, having calculated and outplayed the mortal portalists.

The enchanted arrow, fired by some cultist with a bow but more the size of a ballista, shattered. The customized projectile, created and molded of pure magic specifically for Jeremus, only shook him a little, not causing a scratch. The magic of the arrow, unable to overcome the Miracle protecting the target, only flared up impotently, further cluttering the surrounding space with toxic magic.

The prayer of the staunchest champion of justice - pardon the pun, justice of that title was rarely argued with, despite the champion's love of all sorts of semi-legal financial machinations for the benefit of the temple - released all the souls in the sonms of ordinary creatures, at the same time cleansing the cultists' shells of vice. And since these cultists had willingly let Lust into themselves, given themselves over to it, and gained strength from it, without it, their bodies, with all their gifts and battle mutations, began to experience certain difficulties in remaining combat-ready or at least alive.

One of the three Legends of the attacking spear came out of a planar jump based on the Flame and almost reached the cleric's face with a long tongue with a thickening at the end, but only barely held back a shrill groan when that tongue and one of its working limbs were swept away by a stream of shining Blue sea water. Another Legend approached with the usual leap, resembling a humanoid toad covered in growths and sexual organs, but the strike of its paws, despite its strength and the obviously complex poison on its claws, faded into the glow surrounding the priest. The third of the legends, as well as a good dozen "ordinary" elite creatures, approached but did not dare to get into close combat. Instead, they applied four types of planar energies at once and some conceptual contractual effect on top of that, forbidding one to leave a certain area of space under the threat of losing one's soul.

They had no way of knowing why their target had so easily gone for a hopeless and stupid fight instead of intelligently using the available advantages and defending the temple. But the creatures were well aware they would not have a better opportunity to take out such a strong figure, especially if the figure did complete what it had set itself up for. Jerem could relatively easily take down any of the Legends here in a one-on-one fight, even when you factor in the effect of the dome on Grimmentray's most loyal servant, acting at barely a third of the strength. He would not yield to two creatures at once, and the trio had a chance to wear them down with constant maneuvers, selling his life and soul at a high price.

But against three legendary-level creatures in close proximity, two of their equals, only hitting from a distance as well as under the dome effect and supported by smaller devils... Even he couldn't survive in such a position, especially since he had just completed one prayer and was already running out of time to cast another Miracle of comparable power. The creatures attacked the priest at his moment of weakness, under the gaze of hating and rapidly falling into despair humans and non-humans, who were trivially unable to come to the aid of their last hope.

Just as the priest wants it.

The space around the fighters seemed to glow as if reflections of heavenly blue on the surface of the waves of the sea in those days when the sea was almost motionless, only barely touched by light gusts of wind. Following the glare came the ringing of bells, the beat of drums, and the clamor of an angry mob about to burn the captured witch doctor. Came the thunderous bang of the judge's gavel announcing the verdict of the hangman, came the clap of the seal affixed to the treaty of non-aggression between mighty powers. And when they came, the sounds did not go back but seemed to concentrate, causing the glare to become dense, almost blinding.

This artifact should not have been in Jerem's hands because he had, by all possible and impossible reports, sent it, along with one of his most loyal students, straight to the Alishan border, to one of the main border fortresses. But now the artifact was here, against all the information available to the devils, who would surely wish to give some passion to the screwed-up spies. They would if they had any chance of surviving their final Judgment.

The Verdict of Guilt was considered a legendary artifact, even though it was created by Grimmentray, but it was at the very top end of its grade. Even gods do not easily create divine artifacts, as too much would have to be put into them, forever sacrificing part of their essence, giving divinity to something that could not possess it. Nevertheless, the Verdict came very close to that boundary, embodying concepts very close to Grimmentray.

Despite all its power, this thing, which looked like an ordinary holy amulet in the form of two overlapping eights (the main symbol of the Church of Equilibrium), was of little use against those who had nothing to accuse. That is, it was an extremely effective weapon against the vast majority of intelligent and not-so-intelligent entities that inhabit any existing world.

The artifact's power temporarily brought any opponent under the jurisdiction of the Code of Equilibrium, a religious doctrine that gave the Deity power over the souls of those under its influence. Of course, strictly within the framework of the Code itself, which, if you think about it, is pretty clear about situations in which there is nothing to punish anyone. So, any god could give his disapproval to a devil, a murderer, a bribe taker, or just a bad person who prayed little, thought bad thoughts, and did not donate to the temple. The Verdict allowed users to do it better, more accurately, and almost unstoppably by any means.

In fact, the victims of the artifact for some time became as closely connected with Grimmentray as the highest dignitaries of his clergy. That is, if the victims of the artifact are not guilty, then instead of Retribution, they can be given a power boost at the level of the same dignitaries. Take away a hundred enough decent parishioners, after which nine out of ten will die under the Verdict's blow, and the remaining ones will be able to act on the level of those same high dignitaries for a while.

There was only one person in the epicenter of the Verdict's action who could be sure of not fearing his patron's retribution - Jerem himself, though even he shuddered as he remembered his petty and unremitted sins and machinations. It would have been a strange idea to look for innocents among the devils, so the result was positive on all sides (except for the creatures).

Having once gained power over the accused, the divine will immediately intercept the ties between the creatures and the sonm of each of them, granting freedom to some part of the souls and oblivion to others, and then begins to squeeze the ties, tightening them into a tight knot, destroying the bodies and essences of the devils, but allowing itself to begin to influence the situation in the Eternal much more fully.

The simple creatures, even the elite ones, die before they have a chance to escape, but they feel the weight of Justice on them. Two of the three Legends follow suit a second later, becoming the basis for a portal that shines with sea and sky blue. In the area of the temple, the Clerics' powers rapidly recover, making their classes combat-ready once again. Not only Grimmentray clerics but a good portion of the other Deities as well. Albeit at a considerable rate and with losses. The power of the established channel is sufficient to transmit crumbs of strength not only to their flock.

From beyond the smoke and fire-covered horizon comes several attacks from a mythical creature, the main devil of the domain that has come to the Eternal, even distracted from the battle with the Palace for the sake of such an endeavor. Except that even though God is here indirectly, only at the expense of an unstable and at any moment able to collapse channel. He is still God. All three attacks simply dive into the sea wave that came towards them, which for a moment lost its blueness and became unbearably deep, having no bottom.

Alas, the third of the Legends proved to be more prepared. She managed to replace her essence for a second with an imprint of the soul of a truly righteous man, falling out of Verdict's power. Grimmentray atomized the deception almost instantly, but the attack of Sovereign, so distant and close at the same time, delayed his will long enough. Losing two-thirds of the sonm, the creature escaped the fate of becoming a channeling detail, weakening the portal enough. Then Jerem was blown from his position, along with the shards of divine power that had previously been the portal, and then carried through the breach in the defense back into the temple.

The divine portal collapsed as quickly as it had appeared in reality, and a new actor appeared on the scene, only now working on the side of the enemy. It became clear why the devils were so calm and wasteful in slaughtering whole crowds of low-level Cultists and fractured townsfolk - because they weren't slaughtering them. Or rather, not quite for slaughter, not all the way through.

Jerem's eyes saw far beyond what a mere human could see, even without the ability of a full-fledged Hero to discern the levels and classes of those he looked upon. And now he didn't need to make much effort to realize the nature of the devil that had appeared, the very one that had destroyed the portal and nearly breached the High Priest's defenses. Elder over Brended One of the seventy-first stage of power was staring straight at Jerem, not noticing the distance, the dust raised by his flight through the wall, nor the colorful illuminations triggered by the magic thrown into the air.

The creature's level was less frightening than the abilities it had already demonstrated. A wave of Hell- and Lust-blazing bodies, each one belonging to someone who had already been killed, disembodied, or pulverized into a bloody pulp. The sonm of this monstrosity was reversed, directed not inward but outward, allowing it to use the souls at its disposal in unimaginable ways without, by some dark miracle, dividing itself into zero, tearing the sonm and the souls it contained apart.

Hundreds of ordinary townspeople were covered in symbols and stains, oozing ichor and musty honey from every scrap of skin, chained in transparent and unbreakable chains, branded with a stigma that would not let them die. Their bodies were no longer of flesh but of pseudo-matter, exactly the same as that which provided the basis for the bodies of the devils, and their essences were no longer their own. They were still here, still bathed in what the devil had poured into them, but they were nothing more than extensions of his will, an extra limb, a living transmitter and puppet of their master.

The newcomers were hit with magic, crushing them with everything they could, and they could do a lot, even without Jerem, but where a simple man, even if infused with Hell, was frustratingly easy to kill, the branded ones were extremely resilient, taking the damage directly on their souls, distributing it evenly among all their "brethren," and thus reducing it to insignificant amounts. Even just a crowd of several thousand of these unfortunates could be a problem, especially if you do not forget about the usual devils willingly taking advantage of such cover. However, the branded guards were not limited to townspeople and weak cultists.

There were about fifty of them, fifty outstanding sufferers by anyone's standards, whose souls had been languishing for centuries in a fate even more terrible than the usual captivity in the sonm of some devil. Each of them was comparable in strength to an elite creature but with monstrous armor and the ability to ignore techniques, tricks, and magic specifically sharpened against devils.

And among them stood out the main trio, the three strongest chain dogs, the pearls of the collection of the creature that had gathered them, which, despite the appearance of an ordinary humanoid two meters tall. In terms of energy, it was a huge predatory jellyfish with thousands of individual tentacles-maws, where at the tip of each was a separate symbiotic organism of the branded soul and the body generated by the jellyfish. The trio of the strongest symbiotes acted as both defenders and main blades, covering the main body Elder over the Branded Ones, not forgetting to support the crowd of minnows on the attack.

A huge giant, as if molded from blackened iron, covered in a carpet of corrupting tattoos and dressed in spiked armor, with the only difference being that all the spikes were pointing inward. He was clearly a former endowment from a very rare race of giants on this continent, who had mastered the Defender, Master Warrior, and Rock Stronghold classes without losing his skills even in captivity, only enhancing them with the many gifts of Hell. Most of his damage was dragged from the rank-and-file creatures to himself, charged up and back again, literally tearing down barricades, defenders, and magical barriers. He alone, tormented by agony and ecstasy, covered the entire armada of thousands and its owner.

A naked man, clearly having an admixture of the blood of the sea people. He swam carelessly inside a bubble of water a hundred paces in circumference as if he did not notice his condition or the nightmare surrounding him. From the streams of water created by him, now and then, transparent figures of lovely maidens appeared, giving him their bodies and caresses. The prisoner did not even realize he was creating his prisoners and masters out of his power. They were not full-fledged devils, a fantasy come to life, a concentrated Vice filtered through the filter of the River Overlord's soul. His attacks, inflicted not by him but by his phantoms that had long ago conquered the mind of the mage who had created them, unobtrusively blurred, dissolved, and sucked in both magic and miracles, rapidly draining the resources of the temple. The essence of its strange and unusual for this continent power, continuous flow allowed to counteract any, in general, stationary and most of the active defenses.

The third was a maiden... dazzling in her Blue, like a slice of the real Heaven itself, here again under the dome's oppression. Jerem's eyes saw, and though often, too often, he wished he could lower or even turn off his gaze, rarely had he felt such a longing to go blind just to avoid seeing it. She had once been a Heaven adept of monstrous power, far more powerful than Jerem himself, perhaps even if he had requested Grimmentray's help. It was this soul that should have been his doom if the High Priest decided to stand against this dickhead chaser.

He was strong, but he realized he could do nothing to this prisoner. Not even divine power would help, as if she had been prepared right against him for years, if not centuries. Maybe that was the case, but who would know now? He didn't want to ask the devils, if only because of their love of filling any words with mental effects and temptations. He feels his eye sockets squeak as if sand has been poured into them as he turns away, unable to look at the result of the painstaking labor of the most cursed masters of the universe.

If it were not for the temple behind him and the townspeople sheltering there. If it were not for all the color of the clergy that counted on his power in this battle... He would have ignored everything, called upon the power of Retribution, and tried to kill the scum staring right at him through the barriers of battle, even if it was the last act of his life. The man had a chance to win, but only if he had initially traded his life, his being for another's, but it would only be a chance, whereas the creature had a lot more of them anyway.

He could not abandon those who came to the temple for protection.

He couldn't leave them.

Blood and hatred bubbled in his gut as he saw the satisfied and understanding smile of the creature that had timed and miscalculated him. If only he had delayed using the Verdict, he could have hoped to win the fight under its cover. Without the main activating effect, the artifact lost no power, having something to answer and add on top of any enemy trick, but against such a creature, against a trio of his favorite puppets, against an entire army of smaller puppets.... he could only die, giving the Verdict to the enemy for further desecration.

A grind of teeth felt the crunch of stone crumbs in his mouth, followed by a short prayer that carried his words and orders to his companions, leaving them to defend the temple and hold it as long as possible. The creature would not risk a direct assault, no matter what defenses it wore and no matter how insignificant the damage distributed among the branded would seem. Because the temple altar, because the stockpile of battle amulets, and artifacts of the last limit are still there. No, the creature will waste time, almost guaranteed to roll the defenses with minimal casualties, but it will. And then, perhaps, the situation will change, or the Palace will send some more help.

A silly hope, for the Palace, has its problems, but anything is better than doom.

Jerem himself, unable to attack the Elder, soared into the air, whispering another prayer, one line of it, the very first line of the Plea for Justice, the very first line that every church servant memorizes before he even gets a class. Even just the first line of the first of the prayers could do much in the mouth of a High Priest, but now those words were also the activator, triggering the Finger of Punishment, the second of the Verdict's activating effects.

Hovering in the air for a moment, reflexively dispelling the spells that were attacking him, barely dodging the coordinated attack of the more dangerous ones, Jerem caught a glimpse of the legendary devil desperately rushing to break the distance, the last of the trio that had come against him. The one who, in his attempt to escape, had lost his only chance to hide behind the puppets' backs, framing one of them in his place was the most effective move against Finger.

A spear of celestial blue, not even a spear, but a stake, not a wooden one, but one made of pure energy, catch up with the creature despite its attempted blink, the planar barriers placed by the souls, and the effect of damage transfer to the sonm. The legendary creature, though already battered by the Verdict, falls to the ground, writhing in agony, dissolving into blue before his eyes as each of his collector souls was released with his death. A flash of the so familiar, so alien, so twisted, tainted, and betrayed Blue responds with a third of the dolls, removing and taking back the artifact's effects, but there is no way to save his ally - the damage is too severe.

Jerem flew higher, rising to the dome where two more Legends awaited him. He may not be able to fight a creature that is ready to kill him, but he can defeat these two. Perhaps if he does, he can return to help his temple. Perhaps he will have a place to return to.

It was as if the old man, though looking only in his fourth decade, felt again like a little tomboy whose village had been burned down by the slavers, whose family had been either slaughtered or enslaved, who had only to run, hide, and clench his teeth in impotent hatred, cherishing the dream of someday catching up with the villain and paying him back for what he had done. It had been so long since he had felt this powerlessness. He hates it so much.

Hates, unable to forgive himself, that he stayed alive then.

* * *

The battle moved to the courtyard of the First Temple of Grimmentray's, and only there, on the stones, soaked with wonders to the last speck of dust, were the creatures finally slowed down. They continued to press on with the inevitable mountain collapse, snow avalanche, and debris flow, but now they were advancing much more slowly. Junior Drake, His Majesty's Guardsman, rightfully ranked in His Guard, was, like any Guardsman, superbly skilled in tactics and strategy, even if his service rarely involved commanding roles. That was why he could see, and read clearly, the outcome of this battle, a very sad outcome, as he prepared to activate the Last Exhalation amulets, to leave neither soul nor body to the creatures.

His head was buzzing from the regular attempts at compulsion, as he, at the very edge of the defense, was constantly being beaten by everyone who could and would. Fortunately, before they were teleported straight out of the Palace, the entire Guard had been amuletized, and artifact sets had been selected that were perfectly designed to counter the devils. In general, Junior was far more wary of the creatures' fighting techniques and claws than of their favored Vice, though he knew that his overconfidence could prove fatal.

The shield once again shuddered as a series of purple orbs struck it, even if they were not aimed at him but at the Benefics standing far behind him. The shield charms intercepted the direction of the attack even without the guardsman's direct involvement, allowing him to focus on the attack. A flaming blade, sprouting from the hand of a surprisingly ugly devil, slides along the enchanted steel, and the creature laughs and moans as the fatal blow cuts off its second limb, at the same time exposing two mages at once. Ice and wind crush the abomination, forcing it to retreat with a blink, but Junior uses the Hold Position again, dropping it to the stone floor with his shield.

Actually, this skill is meant to be used on yourself so you don't get knocked off your feet by some skill, telekinesis, or whatever. But a fully developed skill gives you a lot more versatility, especially if it's an epic class skill rather than the standard ability of a typical Guardian. Using a Crushing Blow, he cleaves the deviless's body lengthwise, noting in passing the damage to her sonm and rolling to evade the postmortem attack. Fire flared in his loins, blood pounded in his temples, and his thoughts began to drift to the shameful desire to fuck the nearest corpse, preferably still warm, but the artifacts once again calmed his mind and soul with a stream of icy coolness, restoring his sanity.

As he came out of the roll, the guardsman left a long and dangerous-looking wound on the body of one of the branded, as the clerics called them, throwing him away. Though, it should have cut this one and a couple of others behind him in two. An extension of the blade, after all. The creature (or is it a cultist?) screams in ecstasy, regenerating before his eyes, but he is blown away by a trio of glowing arrows glowing from the blessings imposed at the same time disembodied his nearest neighbors as the arrows detonate.

Once again, the shield attracts a stream of battle pulsars, the same as last time, and the owner of the artifact only has to note with concern the glowing edges of the shield, which does not benefit from such intensive absorption of enemy charms. So far, the molten metal with a mix of mithril is not dripping on the ground, but at this rate, it will not take long. Putting his shield under the blows of spears and axes in the hands of branded guards (apparently from those who never managed to reach the temple to join the main forces), Junior blows off one of them and leaves the final dispersal of the body to the cover mages.

The chime of steel tubes - that's what his intuition sounds like to him, and that's what he follows, activating the defense built into his armors and aiding it with his bodily strength, barely holding his shield in his hands when it's nearly pierced by the paw of a huge bear-shifter, also branded, of course. A second blow lands in the open side, and the blade desperately fails to keep up with the thought, but before Junior can say goodbye to his liver (and they said h was sick from drinking!), the branded shifter shatters into three pieces.

Nodding his thanks to the stranger who saved him, he immediately tries to return the favor, covering the obviously out-of-place Brether in a blind mask without eyeholes. Who would fight with a dagger and a sword in such a crowd? The attempt to cover him fails because two creatures, both stronger than the recently killed deviless, try to get to know the Brether better. The guardsman is ready to say a short prayer for the repose of the poor guy who saved him because it can help him in the temple, as it becomes clear that this Brether is not defenseless even in the assault.

His artifact sword glistened in his eyes, forcing him to consider the price of the sword, compare it to his gear, and admit this strip of steel would be as good as his shield, but the Drakes' Loyalty, their family heirloom, was considered a legendary artifact, even though it was weak for its level of quality! And if it were only a blade, the owner had not learned to fight in the streets. Despite his purely dueling skills and techniques, which are of little use in a normal battle, he manages to slice through an opponent even faster than Junior!

No, a worthy son of Drake House has a class suitable for defense, not attack, but he should still be superior to the duelist! It seems the duelist is a hick from the backwoods because he had obviously never heard of this truth and therefore ignored it. The jokes are jokes, but Junior even admires it, even though he prefers only women.

The fiery mane of his hair followed the movements of his torso, which moved pendulously between the ranks of the enemy. And the way his legs danced! An experienced swordsman, he was able to wield a sword at an acceptable level for an aristocrat. He could appreciate this spectacle and feel his inferiority, even though he was of a different class. It seemed that the Brether, dressed in light and deceptively thin rags and leather armor, was in all places at once, keeping the distance, keeping the necessary pauses, and continuously cutting, killing forever with his sword, only occasionally blocking back blows with a much more modest dagger.

Junior took up a position just behind him, acting as a breakwater, covering the duelist from area or magic attacks, intercepting arrows and throwing projectiles, simply drawing them on himself and letting him retreat behind his back if he was seriously pressed. He rarely blinked, either saving energy or simply not wanting to change from one crowd to another since both were equally uncomfortable. But he managed to pass between blows even where he couldn't physically twist as if he were in several places at once.

Superposition?

Dance of the Void?

Something else, unfamiliar and therefore unknown to Junior? More likely the latter because his stances were too non-aggressive for the crown trick of high-class Brethers as if they were designed for dodging in the first place, whereas a Brether above the second stage of class development can move out of the blink so that the blade is already inside someone's guts. It's more like a Duelist, but a very strong one, of some higher variety. It doesn't look like the Phantoms' signature dance, either - there's a very clear energy trail.

Survival became much easier with the two of them, especially when the strange ally began to hit not only with dueling techniques but also with heavenly planar power. It made his mask glow softly and selectively blind the creatures if they got too close. It seemed his acquaintance, with whom they had not even exchanged a word but whom he was ready to get drunk to a pig-crawling state, was one of the temple's fists and not a very publicized one. He was as strong as Junior even without an artifact (and Junior with artifacts), and such people were usually in the public eye unless they made great efforts to achieve the opposite.

"Who the hell are you?" The Guardian grumbles to himself, covering his ally again. At the same time, he finish the second of the two elite creatures that had attacked them earlier, who had already lost five of their eight limbs, even if you don't count the cock used instead of the whip, which had also been cut off.

"Arrived with the relocation wave." The voice of one of the five Coordinators in charge of the defense right now echoed in his ear, apparently deeming the rhetorical question not rhetorical. "Volunteered after passing the defilement test."

So, not a temple fist, after all?

At the last thought, Junior stopped saving his strength because the creatures began to increase their onslaught again, and the two idiots who had unwittingly rushed forward found themselves at the edge of their section, in the middle of a very wide expanse of the inner temple park, in front of a crowd of creatures coming straight at them and without formation support. The Guardian activated Indestructibility, the strongest effect of his shield, and the Duelist stopped restraining Heaven and began to press with it no weaker than he had done before with his impressive swordsmanship, but he hadn't stopped using those Brether techniques either. Junior had to recalculate his ally's strength once more, realizing he had undercounted a lot last time, and now he was getting more and more interesting. The demonstrated was not just Guard level, but captains of the Guard at least!

It might have seemed impossible, and he wouldn't have believed anyone who tried to tell him about it, but they were on the crest of that wave, holding their own against four elite creatures, a dozen weaker creatures, and a crowd of ordinary devils and Hell-enhanced branded ones. Indestructibility reduced the strength of any enemy strike within a fifty-step radius threefold while increasing the strength of the allies' defenses threefold. And the entire walls of the Heavenly Blue provided that protection with a reserve.

The masked red-haired swordsman used these walls to divide the enemy formation, allowing Junior to draw the attention of some of the enemy to attack quickly and suddenly, sometimes right through one of his walls, taking full advantage of the almost all-piercing power of his sword. Only a few times have elite opponents managed to block or deflect the thin blade, but with a second blow, any brether will strike faster than you can be surprised. Not all of those who had fought off the first attempt survived the second strike.

Several more times he said goodbye to his life, as well as the life of a strange ally. He remembered the moment when one of the creatures had sucked in all the blue of the heavenly energy, messing with Junior's head, making him unable to move his hands and feet in space, even though the rest of his body was moving normally. And then, he attacked the redhead with a tentacle that replaced the creature's punching arm, oozing pus, and some hideous curse. Too late, the Guardian realized the same compulsion that had paralyzed him had fixed the Brether's hand that clutched the blade. He had nothing to block the blow, nor could he dodge it with the same blink. And if he'd realized it in time, he wouldn't have been able to change anything.

Brether tossed his dagger into the air, bending his only working arm at the elbow to cover the head where the tentacle was aiming. The thin and almost transparent barrier seemed incapable of stopping an arrow, let alone such a dangerous blow, but the devil's power seemed to sputter as if it had hit an unbreakable wall. The brief moment of invulnerability didn't last long, but Brether's brains were also well protected, recovering almost instantly from the control (without the amulets Junior wore) and allowing him to open the devil's belly with his sword. At the last moment, the creature tried its crowning trick of transferring damage to souls, but it was too invested in the attack, forgetting about defense.

The shriek of the last promise nearly burned out the Guardsman's brains, but the dodger managed to call to Heaven again, covering himself with his thin but terrifyingly dense armor, calling up his barriers anew and continuing to slash the branded ones as if they were slicing vegetables. Junior, who regained control of his body (at the cost of a couple of one-time amulets that had crumbled to dust), was just in time to cover his ally, who was quickly giving up under such an onslaught, giving him time to take a couple of potions from his stockpile. When he shared the supplies with Junior, he wanted to hold his ally against the wall and ask him for a long, long time about which alchemist he was buying from and whether he could get a discount for his comrade in arms.

The mages were already supporting them from behind, the benefics were once again dispersing the complex of blessings on the rank-and-file infantry of the commoners and temple guards who had fallen into line, and the archers were expending arrow reserves, slicing through the ranks of the stalled devils of the rare cultists and the rampaging branded ones. At that moment, when, for nearly the first time since they had broken through the outer circle of defense, they had stopped the enemy's advance, Junior almost believed they would succeed. He believed they would make it until help arrived or until Styre had finished with his enemies upstairs and come down here, closer to them all, showing the creatures why they still feared him in Alishan.

And then they got really serious.

It was easy to understand the nature of the Maiden. It was much harder not to because, at that moment, even one look at the devil's stigmatized victim was enough to put information about her nature into his head. It was also a peculiar attack and very effective against the weak in spirit - even through the protection of the temple and the magic of benefic ordinary citizens were turned off in packs. At best, fainting with mental damage. At worst, almost instant madness in aggressive form, rapid pumping of Lust, and only then death, well if alone.

Each specimen of the main trio was branded differently. The Giant Protector felt pain and received his passion from it, taking all the wounds he could get his hands on. Imprisoned in a watery sphere, the Waterman was in the land of his dreams, not coming to his senses for the need to fight because his fictional dreams were fighting in his place.

Maiden...

Senior of the Branded One had perhaps outdone himself. If there were anyone here with sufficient clairvoyance and analytical skills, he would have guessed the entire domain had been involved in the creation of each of the trio. And the Maiden had proceeded with the help of Sovereign himself, who had lavishly rewarded one of his most loyal and powerful servants for some deed he had done. Well, or punished for the same act. In the ranks of devils, the difference between the first and the second is minimal, and often there is no difference at all because it depends on the state of the devil's essence, not on objective reality.

The main trick of what had been done to the extremely strong and ancient Aldis'ai, who had known every shade of Blue imaginable, was the clear realization of the only important fact that there were two of them, but she was one. It was as if someone had drawn a red line along her perfectly formed body, dividing body and soul into two parts. The first half was the unnamed Maiden, whose mind was virtually untouched and therefore experienced everything a devil captive could experience.

The second part was still the same Maiden, but corrupted, completely subjugated, and experiencing a vengeful and inexpressible pleasure from the torture of her alter ego. If the prisoner of her own soul became stronger, her jailer would become proportionately stronger. If she thought of a cunning plan or trick, the honed mind of the other half - her own mind - would find a way to counteract it. It couldn't even be called a split personality because the victim was in both of her hypostases at the same time. If her perverted part had become a separate entity, acting like a possession, it would have been a hundred times easier, a thousand times less painful - because it would have been someone else.

Maiden was the one who killed.

She was the one who maimed.

She was breaking all her promises.

She killed those she used to cherish.

She did what she swore to prevent.

Indeed, personal Hell for one and only one prisoner, where she was the devil and executioner, paying the price for her weakness and inability to resist control. The thing that branded her didn't even need to give the prisoner Vice. He just enjoyed the spectacle that was ready, never-ending, and never able to end. Watching half of her face smiling happily, enjoying every moment of existence, while the other half just sobbed silently at what was happening, hope long since extinguished in her eyes, giving way to the dull thirst to die at last.

There was no way to die, only to kill.

The streams of Blue and the lightning-fast strikes of the huge energy blades-wings were not just thinning the ranks of the warriors trying to stop the branded warrior. She was simply ignoring all those desperate attempts to block the blow or raise the barrier. The superior concentration of forces, the complete lack of concern for reserves, and the incredible speed, with massive attacks, turned the Maiden into an analog of a very fast and compact dwarven battle tower.

Those who fought her in close combat were certainly not defenseless, at least some of them. They had the strength to block, the agility to dodge, and the magic to mount a truly effective defense, but even the best-equipped fighters could survive one or two of the branded woman's attacks and then followed the example of those who couldn't - they died. The archers, mages, healers, and priests at a distance also experienced the power of the Maiden, who cast surprisingly strong structured spells that tore their defenses like paper. No, they had it a little easier, but there were many more casualties. It was the best of the best who were trying to stop her up close, but there, behind their backs, were those who couldn't be called the best.

It seemed that the devil in control of the branded devils was deliberately withdrawing the allied forces, letting the Maiden make way and thus offset the losses from the temporary success of the defenders. Heaven is one of the pillars of Grimmentray's might, whose temple itself defended and aided its defenders. But it was one thing to fend off Hell's blows, while the kindred and close forces of Heaven simply ignored most of the defenses. From above, a water bubble hovered over the temple complex, raining down river water and washing away the power of the Sea and the Depth, thus destroying the second of the temple's main pillars of strength.

Junior, who had been thrown back about two hundred meters by the Maiden's appearance, was well versed in defense tactics, so he could see the depth of the problems looming over him and all those around him. The term "troll's ass" was a bit mild to describe the position of the endowed in this battle, but nothing else came to mind in a head buzzing with shock. His iron (and mithril) Loyalty saved the Guardian by taking most of the blow, but even the rest was enough to knock the poor man out and cripple him, leaving him unable to get back on his feet anytime soon if it came to his strength.

There were plenty of healers to help him, and casualties among them were not the largest, but no one paid any attention to Junior, trying to survive, regroup, or kill the branded brat. At least one of the three strongest. His bent and bloody armor, extensive fractures, and brief loss of consciousness played their part, causing his senseless body to be mistaken for a fresh corpse and simply ignored. In a different situation, rescuing a full-fledged guardsman would have been a task close to a top priority. Still, he, with all his skills, levels, and artifacts, was a unit useful for survival, even if one set aside the piety of noble blood.

But the moment was lost, and Junior was left to watch helplessly the carnage of the branded one, which even the creatures did not cover because they were afraid to approach. There was a lash of pure blue wrapped around Dortz of House Bontlethord, his fellow officer, who would never repay his card debt. The exhausted amulets and the layer of lightning that covered his body allowed him to break free from the grip of the charms, only to have a dozen extremely concentrated heavenly needles pierce his body in a dozen places. The flap of the wing of the Maiden, who was twisting in place, who at that moment was playfully tearing off the silver ropes of someone's prayer, smeared the Thunderer with his armor.

Junior wouldn't be able to pay his debt to old Broderick, a high-ranking upstart from a family of petty officials, because neither his agility, nor his iron skin strengthened by many well-chosen rituals and potions, nor the unbreakable will of a born warrior saved him when he was caught in the area of rest and literally wiped out by a stream of Blue. Mergellan, a grumpy battle mage from the Black Cup Guild, was killed by a bundle of high-level charms and a hundred feathers from the Maiden's wings.

Mighty and powerful mortals were dying one by one, unable to stop a foe who was now pumping power through her brand to the very tips of her feathers. They would have been killed much sooner if not for his "old" acquaintance, right now dancing around the winged bitch like a hound dog around a bear. No, there were stronger adepts of Heaven among the defenders, even if we don't count the priests from Jerem's retinue (one of them had just been winged up to his eyebrows)! The secret is that the combination of enormous agility, specialization in close combat, powerful magic, and a legendary artifact of the right type was available only in a single copy.

Junior remembered his years of homeschooling, and even in his adulthood he liked to read books, and his position only encouraged him to constantly expand his horizons and qualifications. He knew from advanced courses in higher energy-planar phenomenology that a strong user of energies of a certain plane could, to a greater or lesser extent, suppress weaker colleagues. A powerful shadow user would not let a weak shadow user even move those very shadows, an Overlord of the Flame would extinguish or even completely extinguish his rival's fire, and Warlocks could cut off access to the Darkness for novice self-taught practitioners - all of this was a bygone stage, known constants.

But of all the features of Heaven, one was the most unusual, even absurd in some ways. Heaven was excellent against Darkness, Shadow, Death, and all the elements except Wind. Their adepts could show class to other planarians as well, for some stronger, for some weaker, and for some quite weak. But only one plane out of all of them made the Blue Adept almost powerless, unable to do any damage to his enemy.

Heaven is big enough for everyone.

Ancient as the world itself, the wisdom was not just words but another axiom, an undeniable fact of Alurei's reality. Defended by Heaven against Heaven, even a relatively weak mage could stand in the rain of spells sent by a powerful colleague for a very, very long time. Unimaginably long for such duels, especially when comparing the talents of the two duelists. Yes, the weaker of the pair would not be able to do anything to the enemy, but he would live longer.

For the Maiden, this truth was not a problem. Whoever she had been before her branding, in addition to her fantastic affinity with Heaven, she also had physical power backed by some form of martial meditation or foresight. Those whose connection to Heaven allowed them to block her attacks were killed by hand strikes, wings, or dropped feathers. Those who, while still connected to Heaven, were still warriors were either too clumsy and also died in battle, or their connection to the plan was insufficient. The Maiden's power was staggering. The standard enchantments of her brethren she did not even notice, piercing through them with the same ease as the enchantments of other orientations.

The red-haired Brether rode the yuletide, surviving where others died like cattle in a pestilence, meeting Blues with Blues and dodging everything else with the same strange spatial technique. In the rare moments when the physical attacks of the Maiden's wings or graceful arms got to him, he met them either with a thin and short-lived but terrifyingly strong barrier or with his sword, which radiated pure sunlight, making the branded one at least wary if not retreating.

Small and skittish compared to the very large bird folk Maiden, who had the advantage of flight, levitation, and the ability to fight in three dimensions at once. He kept the defense and even managed to save someone's life and soul, though not often. What really amused Junior, who was slowly recovering from the effects of his concussion, was the devils' actions, or rather lack thereof. Due to the temple's enchantments and the branded woman's magic resonating, none of the devils or other branded people could help the Maiden. This, of course, was not an accident but a deliberate action of the clerics trying and succeeding to separate the Maiden from reinforcements, but it was still funny.

He would have smiled if alone the Maiden hadn't threatened to kill everyone who got in her way, and not in a good way, in a fancy way. The smile was finally killed by another move of the devils, who took advantage of the confusion in the center of the inner park, teleporting a dozen heavily armored creatures right into the mages' ranks, finally breaking both the defenses and Junior's hope of being spotted and taken out. He would be seen, pulled out, treated, and even petted, but not by his own.

With the devils literally under the shadow of the First Temple, staining its floor with the blood and giblets of the defenders, cutting off the forces still holding the park from reinforcements and a route of retreat, the devils had set a bold end to the temple's fate. The amulets of the remaining clerics from Jerem's retinue flashed, carrying those tired, battered, and outnumbered clerics closer to the altar, followed by several more high-level allies and an unknown Brether, who simply had no amulet of salvation because he came from nowhere and served no one, was left almost alone against the Maiden. And about two and a half seconds later, he was left alone. Without reliable cover, the branded one knocked out all the unlucky little things of the human race (and another five beastmen, as well as one hobbit).

This is a shame.

If not Brether, then Junior.

Red was good, so good that he deserved the nickname Red because Baron Kwankentzentrynsky, an outstanding Berserk talent, had been killed by traitors from the servants' staff just as the dome was rising above Eternal. Even after losing all hope, Brether literally inhaled a whole bag of his potions, most of which were in gaseous form, and then began to sell his life for a price that would give even a thirteenth-generation peddler a heart attack.

The wing's strike met the barrier, and the sword's return thrust turned into a cleaving lunge, leaving a long scratch in the immense blue armor of pure energy that had sheltered the two-faced Maiden from the beginning of the assault. The stream of blueness is gently drawn aside, and a dozen ribbons, as if woven from the finest colored silk, wrap around the blurred figure, not even able to touch it. A new attack, a maelstrom from the boundless Blue, turning a veritable well at the bottom of which the Brether falls. The trap that could hold and bind even a young dragon or a legendary devil broke, revealing a thin opening through which the endowed, stubbornly unwilling to surrender, slipped.

To be immediately caught in the grip of a slowing cloud of serenity, which, being torn to shreds, was replaced by another, and then a wingbeat fell upon the block of man (and Junior was sure of his race). The barrier flickered, but whatever power was behind the nature of the skill and the indestructibility had to be paid for with the time of existence. The wing strike was met with a heavenly shield. The shield lasted, if only for a moment, pitiful and short. A moment was enough to meet the slightly weakened blow of a fist with the blade of a sword.

The graceful and fragile palm of her hand, like a winged one whose bones are very light and brittle, grasped the sunblazing blade and squeezed it with a crunch. A flash of Heaven of immeasurable power and an equal flash of Sun nearly burned out Junior's eyes, and when he blinked, it was over. The sword fragments fell to the ground, and the Guardsman, despite the noise of battle, the screams of the wounded, and the curses of the dying, seemed to hear the thin ringing of falling steel.

Brether hangs in the air, taken by the throat by the Maiden, half of her face only silently weeping while the other half smiles the sweetest smile. So sweet that even a devil would wince, especially if from the bottom of their hierarchy. The exhausted and broken-in-all-places guy, part of whose mask also broke off, losing the glow of blue, falls at the feet of the Maiden, who herself bends over the victim and, gyrating in mad passion, sinks her hands into the victim's body, right into the flesh, to the blood and meat.

Junior, horrified, induced, and alien, understands and realizes only because the Maiden herself cries out about it, sobbing without a word but delighting in telling a story amusing from her point of view. The story is that every slain adept of her favorite plane will know the peace of Heaven in a very different way, that her hands can take that peace away, take from the defeated their Heaven. So the former would become stronger, so her brand would become stronger, so the walls of her prison would become indestructible, and the latter would laugh and dance on a long-forgotten hope, of which not only shards but no dust remained.

More and more branded ones entered the hall, devils and still-alive cultists. A Giant encased in torturous armor was tearing a hole in the wall, and the River Overlord (as the tactical guys called him) was finishing washing away the last bits of protective charms from the walls and the ground. Next to the Giant, the Elder of Branded Ones stepped in, looking small but not unattractive. The creature was so fearsome, so powerful, that Junior's heart sank, and his artifacts burned out one by one, preventing him from dissolving in the fleur it brought.

Involuntarily, he turns to the Maiden, cowardly choosing not to look at her master but not taking his eyes off her amusement, as if still mesmerized, having lost his will. Her hands are already in the ribcage of the bloodied lad who seems so young... The thought of the number of rejuvenating elixirs drunk by the Brether does not go anywhere, while Junior tries to convince himself that if he lies there, silent, not moving, he will not be noticed, will be missed, and will live a little longer.

Brether was dying.

Worse than dying.

But at the last moment, when the Maiden had given him some freedom, almost finished taking all that she could take from her victim when she wished to savor his last cry, the desperate cry of a martyr losing Heaven, a frantic curse, a request, a plea, or something else so sweet to the latter and agonizing to the former, he did otherwise. Did not attack, did not try to escape or at least summon his power to kill his own essence himself, lest he give it up to the branded one in his hands.

At the last instant, he grasped her palms - hard as steel, unstoppable, and impossibly strong - as if to thrust them deeper into his heart and then reached out to the face bent over him, crying and laughing, barely touching it. And instead of shouting, instead of a last attempt to hurt at least by word, if not by deed, he puts everything he still has - and he had enough strength, he had been dispersed by the deadly portion of potions - everything he knows, everything he has managed to understand in these hours, in his last battle ... he gives it all to the simple words, to the last phrase in which he literally puts his soul.

"I forgive You and let You go."

Even if he had been fresh and ready to fight, he would not have been able to hurt the Maiden and would not have been able to leave even a scratch on her body. But here were the words, spoken sincerely, from his whole extinguished heart..... these words were something else, radically different from anything her defenses were used to reflecting.

The Maiden recoiled as if she had not been touched but struck, not with a hand, but with hot steel. But where was ordinary steel for her defense, no matter how hot it was? That touch, which had left a small drop of blood on her perfectly clean and marble-white skin, had touched something else, hidden beneath the skin, beneath the indestructible layer of Blue, beneath her very Brand. Something long forgotten, not clear, and seemingly impossible.

Half of her face takes on a look of purest shock, opening her lust-rimmed eyes in an expression of disbelief as pure as the clearest spring water, as pure as the blue of the Heaven that submits to her. But it is the other half, the one at the helm, the one who makes the decisions, the one who creates the web of torture and torment for the other half. The jailer never understands, never has time to realize, because the first half, the true half, and, in pride as mighty as  Elder of Branded Ones 's mighty cruelty, unbroken to the end, has changed for the first time in centuries and millennia.

Tears are still flowing, but they are different tears, filled not with anguish, but with relief. Filled with that which is also part of the nature of every adept of Heaven.

Serenity.

Liberty.

Redemption.

The devil is mighty, and his reaction speed would leave almost any of those accustomed to being the epitome of speed themselves far behind. He would easily make time and manage to thwart, intercept, obfuscate, and destroy the plan of a mere man not even a hundred years old. If he had not wished to see perhaps his favorite sight. If he had not been forced to control the entire pack of his most loyal dogs, which had expanded and multiplied several times thanks to the multitude of captives. If only he, knowing full well of such a trick, had made himself believe for one brief moment that such an outcome was even possible.

The first had a brief moment of free will and action. She had no chance of escape, for the strength and skill of her hated master were more than enough to put the shackles back in place. The brand still remained on her soul. Nowhere disappeared the second, just a little thrown aside. All the foolish man had managed to give her was a brief moment of hope, followed by more despair when that hope, rising from the dust, would turn to dust again.

She had no chance, but like so many individuals of comparable character and outlook, individuals who had achieved all that she had attracted the Hell envoys to her soul, individuals who had managed to prove to the world, to prove to themselves, that they were but the Heroes of their own story.... like all of them, she was accustomed to ignore the impossible. And no centuries of torture, the worst of which even a devil would find it hard to imagine, none of the innumerable orgies that drove her mad, had ever managed to extinguish her will. They could have, they could have, but the devils themselves did not want to lose such a sweet toy.

If she had not been turned to the Elder above the Branded Ones with her back turned, covered by her wings like a blanket, he would have seen a sight he had never seen before, a sight to which there may be no witnesses left under the Heavens of this world. The Maiden smiled, with both halves of her face, closed her eyes, and called to Heaven, giving herself to them as she had not been able to give herself to them on that ill-fated day when she had been branded.

Most of the little things that had managed to get into the park, no matter if they were other branded or ordinary devils, were literally vaporized, but even the people got a lot, making the few who knew almost shit their pants. Because devils are scary, disgusting, horrible, nightmarish, and generally so bad that the worst can't be invented, but few people in the world will be indifferent to this feeling. The feeling that somewhere nearby, just a few steps away from you, a true Heroine, as old as she was strong, is giving her soul to the plane, willingly and gladly.

Heavenly creatures are a very rare sight, so rare that most of the world either doesn't know about them or only knows about them from stories and book descriptions. The nature of Heaven is such that planar infestation with it passes without much consequence, well, if you compare it to the same elements or the cursed Darkness. The fall of a dedicated Heaven into its class rarely ends in destruction and casualties. Unless you count those who get too close. Hungry for serenity, able to get it at any moment in their native Blue, the newly minted creatures simply leave, ascend into their own Heaven, and never return.

A fate, indeed, as unenviable as any other becoming the spawn of a plane, for it cannot be a good choice to convert a creature, whatever that creature may be. Nevertheless, if the choice is between falling into Heaven and eternal life in the hands of your hospitable master and those to whom he or the other you will give you to play, the choice for even the most ardent follower of the Purity of Being is obvious.

The Maiden had struck a parting blow. She had fouled her captors. She had dissolved the other into her soul, giving her the peace she still craved as part of herself. You can't fool yourself, and as much as the latter enjoyed the torment of the former, they both realized that both were equally miserable. The Maiden broke free, rapidly dissolving into the serenity she had waited so long for, but she still had a few seconds before she fell. She still had her memory and her duty. She was rightfully a Hero, rightfully had gained her power, and even now, hardest of all to stop remembering, to re-experience, to stop being and ascend, she still remembered her promises. In another situation, she would have forgotten them. She would have allowed herself weakness. She would not have risked the chance she had been given, the Miracle she had acquired without divinity.

But they were forgiven.

Sincerely from the bottom of their heart, they forgave them both, forgave them for everything that one had done, for everything that the other could not prevent, forgave them for the strength of the one and the weakness of the other. If it had not been for that forgiveness, for the pity, the understanding, the sympathy she had seen so much of as she took Heaven from one wretched man after another she could not remember all those faces. It was only by forgiving them both, only by taking away the control of others, that her two halves were given a chance to become one, to become united, and in that unity to acquire the will to resist. The will to take one single step together, to do it together because one half of the soul could not leave the other half.

In the last seconds of clear consciousness, keeping not even her thoughts but her goals set for herself, she bends over the ground. Her body grows, and her enormous, for an Aldis'ai, more than two meters tall, became a full three, and then three and a half, reaching the four mark. Her two loyal wings opened, grew, and multiplied, enveloping her figure in a multitude of wings covering her rapidly losing shape. And yet she manages to grasp the hilt of the broken blade, to draw all its shards to herself with her sheer will. The Maiden's power burns out all the remaining Sun from the artifact's dual essence, leaving only Heaven, filling the pieces of metal with it, concentrating it enough for it to merge back together to become a new, completely different blade.

Same blade, same shape, but now there is only Heaven and nothing else.

She runs the blade of the sword across her palm, doing her best to cut the skin and make herself bleed blood that no longer resembles blood. It was only empty stubbornness and the memory of forgiveness, the debt she'd hung on herself, perhaps the only one she could afford to pay, that only kept her from such a welcome oblivion.

The blood saturates the blade, flowing into it, solidifying on the blade and hilt in the finest pattern, like a multitude of intertwined wings, sky-blue and seemingly even moving. Screaming and overcoming the Heaven pulling her more and more into its embrace, the Maiden raises the blade, which in her hands looks like a child's toy, thrusting it right where the now frozen heart of the boy who had forgiven her, who had forgiven them, used to beat. A heart given, a heart lost, a heart sacrificed for their freedom, allowing them to become her again.

Strike complete.

Blade to the heart.

And heart for the blade.

The second burst of heavenly blue is as powerful as the first. However, it does far less damage to the devils simply because all targets in the immediate radius have already been disembodied, and the farther enemies are protected both by the outer walls of the temple complex and by their own barriers, which were hastily raised and pumped with maximum power after the first burst. The stormtroopers were preparing to repel the Grimmentray's power, but the prepared tricks against pure Blue also helped not badly, just a little worse.

Somewhere up above, under the dome, there was a death cry of ecstasy from one of the Legends, which even a very tired Jeremus Styre had found a solution for, but the Elder over the Brended Ones, who was sheltered behind the giant's power and his barriers, as well as about half of his elite retinue, lackeys, and assistants, paid little attention to it. They had only just survived the attack, survived the Blue Flash, survived not without difficulty, even if the risks were not very high. Still, a stream of pure power, no matter how dense it was, was just a force without control and without a circle of mages to formalize it, losing almost all danger. Especially if you apply those barriers that pure power can not destroy.

When the glow fell, revealing a view of the suddenly remarkably clean inner park, from which most of the corpses and some of the still living had been vaporized. The Elder was faced with a sight that made the devil accustomed to getting orgasmic pleasure from anything, eager for any outcome, shamefully confused, literally not knowing what he should be experiencing. But with each passing second, he was leaning toward a very special type of frenzy, characteristic only of Hell's inhabitants. Mad anger at the one who had dared to deprive him of his rightful passion, of the ecstasy that the universe itself had given him.

A man stood in the center of the park, which was now devoid of all vegetation and resembled a clean, flattened, and as if melted, then smoothed and tamped. His fiery red hair contrasted sharply with his pale skin, which was barely covered by the scraps of clothing that left only a part of the mask that covered half of his face and one eye, his knee-length pants, a piece of his left sleeve, and the toe of his right boot. This man would have seemed unassuming, for there were many more impressive individuals in this temple. What was the pretty Jerem alone, for the branding of whom he had come here as his fourth child?

But it was this degenerate, this worthless, mean, heartless, and cruel mortal who had deprived him of the one whose two faces had for so many centuries given him all the shades of Lust and Despair, so purified, multifaceted, and nurtured that the mere thought of losing them made the Elder of the Branded Ones gush with gut-wrenching anger.

He would have rushed forward, covering himself with his creations, his children, just to pay back this abomination for what he had done, if not... if not for... if it weren't for the blade in his hand. Blue as Heaven, thin as a feather, as if he had become akin to the hand that held it, and without even addressing the sonm and its beholders, the devil knew that no one but the only man in the universe could hold that blade.

If it had not been for the figure hovering behind him, bound to the blade and its master by invisible threads, drawing the right to stay in reality without falling out of it, without being expelled like any creature back to its Heaven, straight from that connection. It was huge in stature, covered with dozens of wings, large and small as if it embraced a man and sheltered him from any hardships. Gave peace and hope.

His Maiden was a Hero, a true Legend of her era.

And she fell, fell willingly and forever.

But the bond, the bond of the blade and its wielder, allowed it to become something more, to retain more than creatures were allowed to have, to retain some of the skills of all her classes by translating them into the creature's talents, to retain some of the intelligence honed with centuries of experience and, of course, to retain some of the memory that had never dissolved into the Blue.

One of the man's eyes was visible from beneath the chipped mask as he watched the Elder of the Branded Ones.

Over his shoulder hovered the Maiden, whose face had become a mask, as if molded of stone, on which the eyes could not be distinguished.

But the devil knew she was looking, and looking at him too.

The creature was ancient, incredibly ancient, and remembered things that the human mind could not handle. The creature thought in different categories, having nothing in common with the thinking of mortals and the endowed. What was going on in the mind of this entity could not be put into words or images without losing oneself in these streams of molasses and honey. One glance of the creature would be enough to kill and rebirth, one touch to change and forge, one breath to seduce and corrupt. Around it stood branded servants. Around it were kin ready for battle. Next to it stood a giant reshaped into something impossible that would take on all the wounds and blows, all the hardships and pain.

But when a man took a step forward, an ordinary human step.

The winged figure, frozen behind his shoulder, silently moved forward.

A powerful creature that had long ago outgrown the rank of a mere Legend, one of the ten or even five strongest entities of its domain, that had subjugated and branded Heroes, other Legends, and Heralds of the Divine, that could single-handedly take over an entire country... The smile, the joyous grin adorning the lips of Elder over Branded Ones trembled.

And he suddenly, as if against his own will, took a step backward.

* * *