Interlude: "Farewell" - 3 (Patreon)

* * *

The golem got to his feet with a heartbreaking squeal, holding the legendary artifact with his only surviving hand, using it instead of a crutch. In addition to the missing arm, one of his legs had stopped bending, and the other was bending even too willingly but in the wrong direction. Whatever that spatial-gravity effect of the collapsing type was - not that Barai could even pronounce the term in his normal state - but the machine was badly banged up. The fall was slowed down because the Hammer was designed to jump from mountain peaks directly at the enemy, landing in the middle of the infantry formation and causing all sorts of mayhem.

The golem survived and even functioned, but that was it. If this set of bolts had landed a bit away from the crushed creature, it would have killed him, while the pilot would have regained his balance and connection with the control circuit. Again, he survived. Again he was forced to pilot a crippled and almost incapacitated bucket with gears and bolts. Again, he was surrounded by creatures and something worse than death. Only now, he was alone. There was no second golem covering his back. There was no clear and pure, like ice water in a mountain stream, the feeling of the presence of an experienced Guider nearby that would back him up in attack and support him in defense.

Remembering how that battle in the cursed Stone had ended, his few remaining teeth ached with impotent anger. Remembering the long interrogations, the mentalists who twisted his head and memory, the suspicion and contempt he had been subjected to, remembering how he got used to his prosthetics for months, how he realized that he would no longer be a normal person or even a man... Once again, he desperately wanted to howl or stick his dagger in his sternum. But he was already speaking in foul language, speaking continuously, not caring at all about the mountain speech, just not being silent because he was afraid to turn off at the same moment from the maddening migraine and burning in the energy sheath. And he didn't even have a dagger at the moment - even his clothes, not to mention his weapons, had to be thrown out to get into the cabin designed for an imperial undergrowth.

Even then, fighting with the rest of the brigade, covering for a bent old fart without an eyebrow, he still didn't feel other people's backs, still fought alone, on the very front line. He didn't want to. He didn't recognize the bastards who despised him as having even a shadow of a right to cover that back. And even alone, he was worth a lot. Even alone, he was writing his legend, his own story by the fire of the family hearth, even if he would never have that family and the hearth had long since burned out. He was not going to run away from death but let the bastards try to bring him death on a plate, and he would feed them with all the hospitality of the mountains!

Finally getting the golem to relative combat readiness, standing on its columnar legs without risking a comical fall, Barai assessed his surroundings. The toxic and smoking stain of the crushed creature remained directly beneath him - even as he fell, he noticed exactly who it had fallen on, adjusting his landing a bit with the weight control amulet. That's jewelry work of Amuletist. He could pass his exams in forgotten Stavrosk right now, if he didn't get killed faster than a squeal. The family of that jackal who had once forced him into voluntary exile to sit in Stone still didn't mind letting Barai bleed. And he's completely innocent, he's done nothing wrong!

There were plenty of smaller creatures around, but they were now writhing in agony and foaming honey-colored foam along with the cultists. They'd caught a kickback from the common charms the crushed one was using, or something like that. He'd heard something similar before, and that was why he should be careful about telepathic and sympathetic communication and the creation of unprotected magical circles - if the foundation was knocked out, all the supports would fall. Wow, he had landed his ass so well, just exemplary. Now he would have to crush the assholes who hadn't come to their senses, find some strength for the jackals, and then get some rest - he felt, realized, and knew how close he was to the edge, after crossing which the burned brains would flow out of his ears.

Now, a little more.

And get rest.

Rest...

* * *

The creature could have appeared quite silently, as it had demonstrated earlier, but it chose to let him know of its arrival with the sound of a bubble bursting. A very large soap bubble, the popping of which was heard through all the barriers and his own heavy breathing, as if it were seared into his already tired mind. The creature, a corpse-eating brat of a cave slug, stretchy and flexible, like a condom made of alchemically treated sheep's guts, smiled so joyfully that he wanted to rejoice with it.

The awkward swing of the hand clutching the hammer ended with a whip-like blow from the arm that had lengthened as far as it could go. The limb wrapped around the weapon, around the golem's creaking, malfunctioning joint mechanisms, depriving the Hammer of the Empire of the hand on its only remaining arm and the legendary weapon all at once. The creature's grip smokes and bubbles like heated rubber, but promptly recovers again, taking on a look bright and ridiculous. So many colors, so many colored lines that it made his eyes water, and his mind couldn't keep up with the actions of the Legend that had already defeated him once. Barai had a serviceable and almost undamaged Hammer and some kind of cover at his side, but now there was nothing, only the desire to finish it as quickly as possible, as well as the realization of the futility of this battle.

A second blow, a third, a fourth, and then the golem didn't move at all, having lost all its limbs. Or rather, the legs remained, but the pacing joints were broken, turned in the wrong directions, the center of mass was displaced, all the amulets were hopelessly discharged, and the pilot himself could not even make this junk at least twitch. A piece of junk that was a masterpiece of mechanics only a few long hours ago.

Humming a tune to itself, the creature shifts its focus to the mortals who have just realized that the situation has changed twice. The creature is busy, very busy, with its own important errands, but it can spare a second to address the situation in this area. With feet stepping over the ground damp from its proximity to the lake, barely perceptibly sinking into the ground, the devil attacks, taking whatever second it can spare for the task at hand.

A slap, like a damp cloth against a stone wall, followed by the extinguishing of life at the very center of the human formation. Their hydromancer and druid fell dead, only to disintegrate into hundreds of neat cubes near the ground. Working with space has been Stretch of Proximity's specialty, for from its inception it has been able to obtain those souls that are metric and position-bound. The sonm he collected gives him incredible mobility, putting this devil in the role of someone who can catch up and take, guaranteed to retreat with the taken, avoid punishment and strike again, at the most convenient moment.

A slap. As if with the palm of a hand on viscous clay, followed by dozens of bright, bright lights in the middle of a line of defenses that had not yet realized the danger, capturing the eyes and plunging people into a sweet sleep, filling dreams with the tender caress of Lust, so that when the mortals woke up, they would immediately follow their new masters. Such control is unreliable and may not work, but a few hours or even a day of wet dreams will ensure that the surviving cultists and stormtroopers will be able to recover from the setback and finish what they started.

Having finished with the fleeting business, the devil leisurely, but at the same time within a dozen seconds, opens the defenses on the defeated golem, revealing the control cage and the man lying in it, twisted, maimed, so ridiculous in his despair. Perhaps Stretch will take him personally, comforting him and showing him a new truth, but not by healing him or putting planar symbiotes in place of his missing limbs, no. He will show the cripple how pleasant it is to be a cripple, how powerlessness can turn into pleasure, and then he will help him, in response to his requests and pleas for help, he will finally deprive the impudent fugitive, who had to follow him through half of Eternal, of all his limbs, deprive him of his eyes and hearing, deprive him of tactile sensations and smells. And only when only a piece of flesh, wandering in its desires and passions, deprived of everything and gaining everything, will he consider the mortal to have paid for his insolence.

Yeah, it's better that way.

That's more correct.

Graceful.

First, just a few touches, to melt despair into interest, anger into thoughtfulness, emptiness in the place of missing parts into pride in their absence. Then to spread that pride, to change its tone, to excite desire, to send a few servants that will only inflame passion, to turn mutilation into the source of lust, to engender thought, the intention to mutilate the body more, for the sake of passion mental and spiritual. What a song, what a mercy on his part, for the sake of this it is even worth spending a few souls, worth giving a commission to the nearest servants. Especially since the servants are here, not yet on their feet after the rollback, one could cover them with a fleur because their past shepherd had already found his last pleasure, so he would not ask for what he had taken, even if he had dared to defy Stretch earlier.

To bend over, squatting, to let the legs tuck up, to fold themselves in rings into two tense springs, to prepare the fleur that took shape, that objectified the intention....

The man stares straight into Legend's face, his eyes reddening from bursting blood vessels. The sight of the bands and patterns covering the body of Stretching Proximity is blinding and maddening. The man wheezes, losing the last vestiges of self-control, a mortal not yet aware of his happiness, still daring to fear, daring not to desire what his Legend has called happiness.

"I'm coming to you... Hestia..." Somehow the foolish and so naive cripple believes he's about to die as if something in the back of his mind forbids even thinking that the devils would choose to take him as a prisoner in any situation.

"No, darling." With a sugary drawl, the devil stretched out his words, bending so low he was almost ready to kiss his victim, resting one hand on the wet and quicksilver dirt around the site of their battle. "You're coming to me."

The creature moves not only quickly but also suddenly and completely unpredictably to both the eye and anyone's premonitions. It bent over its victim, and a moment later, its lanky body spread out like a giant frog on springs instead of legs, bouncing away from its victim.

Instantaneous, rapid, unpredictable... and useless.

The action was purely physical, with no magical overtones or effects on space. The devil was sure it would be enough to avoid something that the souls of intuits languishing in the sonm sobbed out loudly, interrupting their eternal orgy for the sake of that sob. The devil was right all around, for there were few things that would make him wrong. His actions were enough to avoid danger by repeatedly breaking the distance with a practiced movement.

The environment let him down, the support of his feet, which had somehow, quickly turned from the firm and trod, albeit wet, ground into sticky and shaky mud, from which this rubber shit could not push off properly. The leap was not merely calibrated. No. It was correct - the tension of pseudo-muscles, the energy put into the movement, allowed to push off not only from the mud but even from the water if there was a need. But the power invested in the movement seemed to go into the greedy mouth of the softened earth, absorbed into it without a trace.

The graceful pirouette turned to the ridiculous slip of a duck caught on ice, delaying the creature for a fraction of an instant, no more. It was just long enough to catch the legendary hammer that had been thrown by someone else's hand and knocked out of the hands of the destroyed golem. Without activated skills, this weapon wasn't dangerous enough to kill someone like Stretch of Proximity with a single blow. But the devil was willing to swear by his sonm, his place in the general Choir, and the Sovereign's favor that the power in this throw was not inferior to that of the golem holding the hammer earlier!

The creature was simply swept away, carried away with the hammer, forcing it to literally wrap itself around the hammer, burning from touching a foreign artifact. The creature, which had lost its hardness and turned into a viscous lump of tar, managed to avoid being torn apart without even spending a single soul or taking any damage. Except, of course, for the moral damage caused by the interrupted conversion, and it was hard to think of a better, worse insult to the devil.

Stretch blinked after two heartbeats, having already traveled a couple of kilometers in flight, breaking a dozen trees with his body and entering the low parabola of the flight path. If he hadn't acted, he would have flown for a long time, even if not to the edge of the dome, but still far away, so strong was the blow he received. Alas, except for physical strength, this blow could not damage anything, only by touching the legendary artifact.

A different Legend would have been forced to expend strength, suffer a soul or two of damage, or even suffer a serious wound, a torn piece of flesh and aura. Fortunately, Stretch was sent to fight golems because crushing blows of any power were harmless to him due to his chosen pseudo-body form, being reduced to nothing by cushioning. This time, the devil appears out of nowhere without a sound, without making a beautiful gesture to warn of his arrival, and there is no need.

Coming out of teleportation in the middle of the same clearing, next to the mortal pilot who had not yet realized what happiness he had lost, the creature leans the Beast Crusher against the stationary machine, feeling the viscous structure of its body bubbling where the artifact's magic had come into conflict with its flesh. His feet sink deeper and deeper into the mud, which is no longer mud, but a swamp sprouting rapidly in the middle of a forested area. A shaky cold came out of nowhere, sensitive receptors picked up the putrid stench of stagnant water and swamp slime, and visibility was reduced by wisps of greenish and noxious fog drawn in from the lake.

Unusual but undoubtedly familiar.

With a curling laugh, Stretch meets a log, a fallen tree trunk that seemed to fly out of nowhere, simply teleporting it to the side, stepping a little to the side, missing a stone the size of a greyhound flying from another direction. Mud and swamp magic let go of feet reluctantly, with effort, and the swampman's deceptively weak attempt to pull magic from the devil's body could also become dangerous. Dodging another throw of stone, Stretch sends a spatial slash and a stream of mind-softening and inviting flare to the presumed location of the enemy. Not that he hoped to induce the enemy into a dialog, during which he would weave his mind into a full-fledged web, but what if it would at least make him relax his disguise a little?

The devil had certainly accomplished something, the cut had touched someone, but neither pain nor pleasure was captured by the souls of the sensors and a couple of empaths were released into the outer line of the sonm. The main thing was that the previous blow had made it clear that there was someone somewhere over there, and the creature was quite good at hitting spatial distortions over areas. The iridescent trill of wine bottles bursting in the frost poured into the mind along with the poisonous wine of the spilled fleur, slowing and looping any thought, turning any genius into an idiot, capable only of instinctive action, but not of normal thinking. Combined with the tearing and shredding of space, the combination was one of the creature's crowning tricks.

Three strong souls and one of the gems of his collection temporarily drop out, forced to rest after the strain. A few more souls disintegrate with a disappointed sigh, deprived of the torture of pleasure forever but having taken the damage not received by the more important captives. The devil shifts once more, conducting a substitute teleportation between himself and the empty space, exactly the same moment he began his attack, now watching the result from the sidelines.

Swamp magic was an unpleasant school, awkward and overly crude, lacking the devils' favorite finesse, but it wasn't hard to fight against. More amusingly, the very sensation of the presence of the Swampmaster and, from the looks of it, either a telekinetic or a very oddly evolved Juggernaut seemed wrong to his seeing souls. The force was used even more crudely than usual, primitive to the extreme, but with amazing control. It was as if the attacker was not a human being but some kind of monster or even a very intelligent behemoth.

The essence of the legendary devil catches glimpses of other people's feelings but has yet to decipher them. This saddens even more than the interrupted grace that left his chosen cripple without Stretch's attention for a few more minutes. Wanting to take not only the maimed boy but also the girl who had attacked him. Yes, he was almost completely sure of the gender of the sudden guest. He could sense it with all his being. Alas, he had to kill her but not take her. He had no time and no strength either. Stretching gave all himself to work with the fabric of reality and not to the fleur webs, yielding in the art of seduction to the multitude of his fellows. The role imposed by the Master himself was, as usual, as sincerely loved by him as it was hated to the brink.

The yellowish mist evaporated instantly, visibility improving again, revealing a perfect circle about a hundred paces in radius, where a light haze seemed to quiver, like hot air or a desert mirage. If it weren't for a leaf of some tree instantly pulverized into something even less than dust, ceasing to be after entering the quivering zone, this lie might have been believable. It was impossible to admire his work, even though Stretch was sure the fogging effect had taken its toll on his opponent's mind without the slightest resistance, but he didn't sense her demise, as if the hard-won technique had been wasted. So, either there was a mind-unbound disturbing amulet with a teleporting effect, which he hadn't noticed activating despite his relationship with space, or there was someone else who had managed to pull his ally out of the death zone, or...

The devil put two barriers at once: a pure energy barrier and a space-distorting one, so both of them would disintegrate at the touch of the legendary hammer. Two truths became immediately clear to the devil. It is simple and even somewhat exasperatingly offensive. The first truth was that artifact hammers should not be left unattended, even if they burn the hands when touched by everyone except the walking golem to which the hammer was tied. His opponent, on the other hand, also gets her hands burned, but they heal even faster than they char. The second truth is even simpler. The stupefying simplicity could not deprive the creature, who is already dumber than the hammer she is trying to break its skull, of its mind.

Despite the tantalizingly transformed body, the swamp ogre was not hard to recognize if you could look with the right eyes. The devil himself might not have been able to do it, but his seers did it well enough to earn him fleeting praise. Such creatures don't have many brains, and in battle, they don't use even those crumbs. Pure killer instinct guides the hunter's impulse, pushing the body along the perfect route. Yes, this particular specimen is clever, very clever, but remains ogre, stupid, and not burdened by this stupidity, and therefore invulnerable to the crowning trick of Stretching.

He wished he knew the name of the one who had done this to an unintelligent monster. Such a mortal, whoever he was, the all-good Lust was already waiting, regardless of his or her desire. A continuously pulsing connection, the decreed will of Sovereign that coordinated them all this day immediately responded to unasked questions, infusing Stretch's essence with available imagery. The wildly passionate huntress flashed in the vaults of memory, flashed at the point of external control, in the stretching ritual, just before that ritual was destroyed and complete silence ensued.

Thoughts and reflections do not interfere with the action. They pass even faster than the hammer brought down on the devil's head. The blow is artless and lacking in skill, for it strikes the ogre the same way it would strike an ordinary log, but it is still a dangerous blow, deadly fast. The hammer itself can only crush the easily bendable body, but the inertia of the blow will throw Legend straight into the arms of the greedy mire, which has already completely taken over the area. It would be easy for him to stand in the air, hovering over the edge of the pool, but if he were pushed into it, it would be too costly to maintain his defenses.

The devil bends, taking advantage of the little time the two barriers bought him, twisting so the blow only shook his beautiful form, pushing him aside rather than down. A burned spot of boiling tar remains on his side as some of it burns away in the evil aura emitted by the artifact, but he manages to escape the danger zone.

Only for the green adorableness to unclench her appetizingly fried-smelling hand, releasing the hammer after him. Black and blue burned in patterns on her arms and enormously bewitching chest, binding space, making it viscous and unruly, preventing teleportation or blinking. It could have been dangerous, but not for Stretch, who easily overcomes the obstacle by moving slightly to the side and then, with another blink behind her back, lengthening his arm and turning it into a whip. A swipe, a whip, and a bloody streak run down the ogre's back, into which the charged and concentrated fleur almost succeeds in infusing.

Another flash of ritual patterns burned away the poison of the devil aspect, and the wound closed even faster than he had managed to do so. A moment and the monster's back is hidden in the newly risen yellowish mist, and the pseudo-body structure is once again being strained by the very presence of swamp magic. The devil has no doubt that the green-skinned beauty has already taken the Crusher back into her hand because, with such regeneration, she doesn't even need the bind much. It was good that she couldn't use the artifact's techniques without the same bind. The same Inner Shiver that the honorable Uraz had used to kill many giants would be dangerous even for his super-flexible body.

The creature cast a disappointed glance at the gradually sinking ruined hull of the Hammer of the Empire, so invitingly open as if the ogre hiding in the natural backdrop of its native biome had forgotten about it. Hunting by decoy is certainly more complicated than the usual tactics of swamp ogres, even if the devil isn't an expert at it to know for sure. But he knows that a modified and decorated ogre is far from ordinary, just as he knows that when he takes his prey, Stretch of Proximity will put his back to a naughty little girl waiting in ambush, even if only for a brief moment.

Ah, what disappointment in his stump of a boy he feels at this moment! The simplest thing in all creation is to give himself into the hands of a good devil, and he cannot even accomplish that!

There is still something and someone to fight with. There's something to crush regeneration. It wasn't hard to cheat primitive, albeit wildly powerful, defense rituals, especially if they were hastily drawn on the skin, and there were ways to nullify the swamp presence, leaving the green-skinned child of nature and savagery defenseless before his deeds. But there had been too many battles today, too much the creature had already spent, and there was still much to be done to fight in this battle that, for the most part, neither he, nor Domain, nor Chorus, nor Sovereign needed. It's not worth it, not worth it.

Another disappointed sigh, a fleeting goodbye to the boy who had failed to live up to expectations, followed by the quiet sound of a soap bubble bursting, with which Stretch of Proximity leaves the battlefield not defeated but not victorious either.

Whimpering in the ruins of the guesthouse, an almost engaged couple determined to kill their other half.

The remnants of the cultists who hadn't regained consciousness were dying in the mire, while the ones who had managed to wake up earlier were quietly and imperceptibly snapping their necks with huge hands that appeared out of nowhere.

Cursed and blessed dreams are seen by mortals enchanted with fleur magic.

Slowly, the broken golem sinks into the swamp.

And complete silence, as if the drawn-out battle had never happened.

However, if someone decided to search this place properly in the hope of looting and trophies, they would never find the legendary Monster Crusher.

* * *

The blade formed high up, almost under the very top of the dome that covered the city, assembling from smaller fragments. It was as if countless blood-red plates, seemingly tiny from such a distance, were being assembled into a single structure. The blade only superficially resembles an ordinary one-handed sword, more like an overly long dagger. It is only the thinnest scarlet sheath, the emptiness inside of which is rapidly filling up with what the blade has to bring within itself. Perhaps such a blow is stronger than the usual legend, and it is hard not to recognize the Blade of the Rose, sung in so many tales, right now showing its most iconic effect.

From below, this creation, still only beginning its slow downward movement at first, is covered with all its might. They protect the sky even more than they protect themselves. Almost the entire left wing of the Imperial Guard, the fists of the magical orders, the adventurers of the highest ranks. All of them were not whipping boys. Even the regular guards, the whipping boys of this battle, had been left out of the Hell ritualists' positions on the outskirts. Here, near the source of the fleur, only the most prominent individuals could keep their minds untainted, but even they needed amulets and benefits, of which there were plenty.

The attack was stalled, the creatures too well entrenched, turning the trading post of the Grey Chains, the Gold Belt Guild, the second of those belts to defect to the devils years and years ago, into an impregnable fortress. The Imperials could have laid down everything here, but they would have achieved only depletion of the defense formations and a small number of knocked-out bastards. That's why they had to switch to positional warfare, now and then repulsing long-range techniques and purifying the minds of those who had been harassed by those techniques. If they couldn't purify it, they took away their minds with their heads - they weren't playing games.

The mythical artifact was supposed to tip the scales, but everyone present had seen that the creatures had enough trump cards of their own to tip the scales at the most unexpected moment. The devils did not disappoint, confirming the worst fears. The unopened Rose, still in the form of a Hollow Blade, was flying faster and faster, ready to touch the devil's defense, to blossom on it, inside it, and wherever it could and could not.

The rose soared, tumbled, foreshadowed..... but it wouldn't move!

This attack needs height. It needs room to build up inertia, to turn its target into nothing. Rosa's strike had razed fortresses and slaughtered Alishan's border towns before, but today, the height of the dispersal played against the empowered. There aloft was a foreign sky through which the creatures, too, could act. Through which their leader could express his will. As if in mockery of the lords of the Law of Time, the archdevil summoned another Law, no less powerful in skillful hands. The crux of the devils' action was neither attack nor defense, no. It was a declaration of Existence. An edict that determines the position of something in space, direction, vector of motion, mass, and many of the things that the foolish summoners of the technogenic worlds call physical constants.

And Rose flew toward the target, aiming to unleash her power on it, falling like an unstoppable battering ram, as inevitable as a Warrior's blow, like a Grimmentrey's sentence, like a tax increase. It fell without moving a hair's breadth closer, gradually losing its murderous power as if it were miles away, compressed into zero, and made absolute. The path was looped, reduced to zero, and multiplied by infinity, which meant it could never end. As long as the effect of the Law was maintained, the blade would continue to fall, still in place.

The endowed continued their hopeless assault. However, the devils could almost earnestly hear their commanders' teeth grinding, seemingly tearing, and soul-stealing music to the essence of the devils who had forced the enemy to waste one of their strongest trump cards. In the improvised headquarters, hidden under several shields, really gritted their teeth, even if the command did not just suspect the uselessness of the use of the Rose but knew exactly about that uselessness. That's why the giant blade was wasted so senselessly because it couldn't be spent otherwise. No matter how it was used, it would have to be activated under the dome, too close to the possession of the archdevil who had already arrived at the party. If they'd been able to use the Rose earlier... but they couldn't, they were too late. Now the only thing left to do was to give away the diamond card for free, hoping to buy back some copper miser for it.

In this case, this miser was the correct use of a little-known fact, which is not difficult to learn about because it is almost obvious, but it is much harder to understand correctly, as the Imperials hoped. Created from pure energy, Rose, this very energy with great speed, pulled out of the environment. In the encapsulated space of the dome, this effect should have become even more noticeable because the volume of free flows is about zero. In fact, the devils first noticed something wrong precisely because before the artifact manifested, there was an exemplary glow on their sensory artifacts and installed fields, not to mention the personal skills of the creatures, a kind of expanding spot of emptiness provoked by the change of ether currents.

Noticed, understood, and prevented.

Missing something different.

* * *

Creating explosive amulets is one of the easiest tasks imaginable for an artificer of any class and focus. Creating an explosion or other destructive effect with the art of creation is extremely easy, even too easy. A fair share of artifactors and amulet makers die from the unexpected triggering of their work. Virtually any action, senseless and chaotic jumble of runes, conflicting enchantments, displaced enchantments, oversaturated drives, or anything similar results in a loud bang. Something stronger, something weaker, something nothing at all, but the point does not change - to destroy is simple, orders of magnitude easier than to create. Thus, explosive toys of any kind are only one step more complicated than non-viable self-detonating structures. All you need to do is encapsulate the effect.

So, it should come as no surprise that simple explosive amulets are common to the point of being obscene and equally unpopular. They can and often do activate without your permission. And yet, among such crafts, there are also masterpieces. Disposable clappers, clapping which knock down low-flying dragons, make plains out of mountains and craters out of plains. It is generally accepted to consider disposable expendable creations a priori as something insignificant, inferior to a reliable and firmly built artifact of reusable use.

The Enclosed Ray, the secret of the production of which had been stolen by the Empire of Ages from Alishan four hundred years ago with great difficulty and loss, was the exception to the rule. For starters, the thing was not disposable, even if only in theory. In practice, the container-activator of the Ray was right in the center of activation, and if he could hold the magic contained in it as long as he wanted, he could not be in the epicenter of its release. There were, is, and will be few things and people that could be in that epicenter without harming their existence.

The Enclosed Ray lived up to its name, being a ray. A single and infinitely pure ray captured and hidden inside a guardian container isolated from everything else. A pure ray from the very heart, the highest Crown of the all-powerful and all-illuminating Sun. When this ray was released, it did not behave like other rays. No. When released, before returning to the Sun, from which it was torn by force, the ray acquires the properties of the Sun, only in miniature. The resulting cataclysm could be argued in terms of destructiveness with many mythical relics, and observers even from great distances saw the flash, burning eyes, and soul felt the shock wave following it, and for a long time observed a mushroom-like cloud in the place where the enemy army used to be. Well, if everything goes perfectly and no one interferes with the activation of the Ray.

Of course, there were different rays, and the number of them also mattered, but still, the use of such means in the capital city would have been considered treason and rewarded with execution. Nowadays, when the chances of defending not even Eternal but the very existence of the Empire shattered by the sudden war were less and less, people had no choice but to use the last resort. Included in the list of those means are three unassuming-looking caskets that look like cylindrical containers the size of a fist. Three Enclosed Rays, three instruments of destruction, each of which could kill not even a city but an unlucky army on the march without the normal cover of the elite. If it weren't for the labor in making them, if it weren't for the danger of a planar breakthrough, and if there weren't well-known ways to offset the effect of the Ray, we'd be fighting with them and their analogs of a different planar nature alone.

Catch an army on the march - there will be no army.

If commanders knew about the attack, or at least suspected it, casualties would likely be avoided or minimized to a tolerable number.

The Empire of Ages and Alishan mutually did not use the Rays, as well as a dozen other things of comparable destructiveness, primarily because they are best used against civilians, against peasants and townspeople unable to defend themselves, who would not be able to fight back. And if you start doing that, pretty soon both the Khan and the Eternals will be left without their subjects, and their lands will be raided by the same Empire of Arms. There are, of course, special types of closed barriers that simply forbid certain types of attacks from being used within the barrier. The Enclosed Ray won't burst into flames, the Flaming Hand won't ignite reality itself, and the Coming of Blackness won't unfold in full force. These barriers were used. They sheltered large fortresses and cities but always kept in mind some nuances.

The nuances were not even hidden in the fact that, with luck, such fields could be either deceived or simply crudely destroyed. It was just that the barriers, complex, costly, and painfully sensitive, did not cover all cities, and even if they did, you could activate a gift under the walls or a couple of miles from those walls. You can strike them in the middle of abundant pastures or wheat fields, where it is simply unprofitable to put up defenses. Soon, the Empire would be left with scorched and desecrated deserts in the place of its breadbasket, while Alishan would be left without many of its cherished oases, which would be even more dangerous for them, children of inhospitable land than for the Empire of the Ages. In the last conflict, they fought to the fullest extent of their souls, even at the end! So much so that the border of the two states is still divided by a wide strip of dead lands and still dangerous epicenters of long-standing effects of high-class shock amulets and special abilities of mythical artifacts.

There were plenty of such places in the interior of every large country. Some of the weapons of such power mercifully left behind only a scorched crater; others, while creating less direct destruction, spread a pervasive blight over the surrounding countryside, poisoning the air and mutating the flora and fauna within a few journeys of the epicenter. Many sages seriously believed the world was still standing only because it was too difficult to create such creations. Whatever the stockpile of the continent's largest hegemons was, it was not enough. Or rather, a lot of it, a lot, enough to inflict tangible damage to the opponent, to hurt him badly, but only that. You can't kill him, just as you can't stop him from using similar tricks against you. Not that this fear prevented anyone from doing so, but at least the external norms of decency continue to be observed to this day.

The three beams that had been taken out of preservation, half of the number available to the Empire, and all of which were in Eternal at the time of the terrible calamity, were put into play not without doubts. At first, the Emperor had rejected the plan, unwilling to risk the city and its inhabitants, but the clearer the prospects of the defenders became, the less insane the plan seemed. So he was given the go-ahead, given the highest authorization, sent all the necessary passwords of confirmation, seals were broken, and powers were given. Now, however, many people wanted to ask whether it was necessary. However, with the appearance of abomination in Poets' Square, orders from the Palace came rarely and only fragmentarily, if not fragmentarily - even all the Time at the disposal of the Ruling Dynasty was no longer enough. The Emperor had given his Will, and now it was up to those who were to carry it out.

And even every single desperate soldier, staff and tacticians, elite guardsmen and wise Order mages, renowned adventurers and honest servants be important to the plan, but the main violin was given not to them, but to the one for whom worldly glory meant nothing. At the moment of Rose's attack, the barriers concealing the stronghold created by the enemy barely perceptibly shook as if an air current whispered nearby, an inaudible rustle, a whisper of doom itself. This Whisper wore a set of equipment of legendary grade, collected from the Palace's reserves specifically for the current task, was of the fiftieth level exactly, was famous for his brilliant record, and was sent here for that very list. His mind had to realize there was no one else who could have tried to fulfill his probably last mission, but he was sure that someone from the kin of the targets he had worked on had helped him.

Whispers of these goals have extinguished much in his long, long career. It is customary for high-level assassins in the service of the state to quarrel with all those who might offer them patronage, from the enlightened Empire to the deepest provinces. So, they would value the patronage of their superiors as much as they value their skin. So they would realize to whom they owe their lives and everything else they still have. Classic, you might say. As long as you are weak and not dangerous to anyone, no one cares about you, but when you achieve something, they start tying you up with fantastic persistence. And as it happens, it's the quiet ones and other cutthroats who are easier to intimidate than to placate, which, to be honest, is quite justified - this is the kind of people who fundamentally do not understand kindness.

Well, exceptions sometimes happen, making fun of those who once chose to suppress them morally and procedurally, but those are particulars. Whisper himself at one time personally tightened an enchanted mithril thread around the throat of his superiors. It was a nice couple, even to the point of lusciousness. They lived happily and friendly and made Whisper's life more complicated, but they died on the same day, just like in a fairy tale. He hung that thread on the wall in his lair, put it in a mahogany frame, and was not lazy to take the trophy with him every time he had to move. He had a very good day, a very good day.

Now, the task was even more difficult, even though he had grown up since then, had become even more mature, had accumulated dirt on all his own and part of other people's superiors, and had become a true Hero of his native Empire. If his first instructor, who trained the bastards and superfluous sons and daughters gathered all over the empire and who got nothing but good heredity and a one-way ticket from their relatives, had seen this day, he would have died of rupture of all internal organs at once. It was a pity that he had long since passed away. Either Eyes had killed the old sadist, who over the years had been humiliating and maiming rather than teaching, or some of his grateful students had done it. Whisper was even upset; he had long ago prepared a personal portion of poison for the rotten bastard, even though he preferred to work with steel. He really wanted the bastard to suffer before he died. And so he went away, as it were, softly, almost benignly, the bastard.

His thoughts of the past and the past did not prevent the lurker from continuing on his way, looking around diligently but not at what was happening. He was well protected from the fleur, even on his own, and he was packed in amulets. Some of them he'd taken off with indignation as too noisy, but some of them suited even him, though there weren't many of them. Fleur wasn't frightened, nor was he frightened by the madness going on around him. Whisper hadn't been afraid since he was a child, which didn't prevent him from cultivating a paranoid caution that bordered on cowardice.

Having reached on the chosen path, if not perfection, then at least recognition, the newborn Hero of the Mute Strangle moved from the category of an extremely elite, but still, a resource that will never be on a par with the true masters of lives and fates, to the ranks of the previously despised and hated by him masters of this cursed life. As a dishonorable murderer should, he changed his attitude very quickly. It was difficult to live without flexible moral principles in his trade, and much more useful was the complete absence of them. Recognition of merit, officially issued awards and nobility, the opportunity to live as you wish, not as necessary, and other benefits of the newfound nobility somewhat dulled Whisper's bloodthirstiness but did not diminish his skill nor his readiness at any moment to turn into an adept of crystallized violence of the highest grade.

He was still making enemies in droves and was only a little slower to put those enemies in the grave, which affected his paranoia and fears for his skin. By the time this whole mess started, Whisper was seriously considering swinging to the neighboring continent. Gradually, even the benefits of the Eternal were beginning to outweigh the problems he regularly brought to the ruling dynasty. Yes, each of his kind cost another province and not the poorest, but Whisper was the most problematic of them all, the most insolent and crazy. It was his origin and training. He had not come from the best instructors of the liquidators of the Eternal Eyes. His path had begun and continued for too long in the ranks of, in fact, punishers and executioners, who were sent on those missions where the most important thing was not the elegance of the massacre of the enemy of the Empire but its showiness and bloodiness, torture and brutality. They had bred a foolish madman on their head.

Whisper was no fool, realizing that any other holder of his level would have long ago had a lot of allies, debtors, and loyal servants, being literally a state in itself. Even the fortieth step of elevation was already a rank, honor, and position. But all he had was a level, the direct patronage of the First Prince and, unspoken, of his all-powerful father, and a mountain of piled corpses behind his back and under his feet. He did not want to join the pyramid of power, deliberately rejecting such an option, because he did not want to fight with the master intriguers on their field, did not want to learn another science, to start again as an uncomprehending idiot pupil.

He just wanted to eat the best food in the world, fuck noble ladies with pedigrees longer than a troll's dick, send everyone to fuck, and get nothing for it. Whisper realized sooner or later such an attitude would bring the situation to a crisis, but he was firmly convinced years of such a high were worth the future problems. In general, he was not mistaken, except he missed the moment of escape. The route and the new personality were ready, and the preparations for failure in the main plan were scattered in the caches, but it was necessary to run away a little earlier. And not from the infuriated High Lords, not from the Emperor disappointed in the tame dog, not from the evil ass-crawler Eyes, and not even from all of them together. The bordello freaks came to visit, turning the whole doomed city into a bordello at once.

Aren't they bitches?

Despite the vastness of his talents, Whisper was not a spy but a killer. A killer whose primary purpose was to cut off lives, not to get into every orifice. He'd say what orifices and who he'd prefer to infiltrate, but that wouldn't scare the devils. It would get them riled up. And yet, and yet... Among the available resources of the Empire of Ages, only he was suitable for this role. Only he could do it. Only he, he was told, could infiltrate the center of the devil formation, leave a package there, and return. Whisper didn't doubt for a second he'd been lying about the return. As soon as the commanders were satisfied that the Rays had been delivered, or at least that he'd gotten them close enough, they'd be blown up with him. Then, those who activated them would be given orders, titles, and governmental favors, and maybe he'd get a monument to spit on. In general, he flatly refused to put on the beacon transmitter not only because the connection could be traced with an almost complete guarantee.

The Dispersed Form is replaced by the masterly puncture of the Black Needle, tightening space and then releasing it back, the fleeting movements of traceable energy flows, the impossible curves of a body that is now blacker than darkness itself... the fluttering silhouette of Whisper passes between the signal threads, torn apart and glued together again, disintegrating into blobs of oil-colored abomination, only to evaporate into a barely discernible smoke so diffuse that even the solid walls of the signal fields perceive it as a mere fluctuation, unable to identify the threat.

Hundreds of chain dogs, leashed by maimed souls do not notice his movements, because as long as Whisper remains in the form of Mad Smoke he, as a person and entity, simply does not exist. His strongest trick, an absolute trump card achieved through the highest rate of class attribute, five very specific titles, and a full ritual gift, mirrored in status by a rare talent. It is not a combat talent, but Distillation of Blackness does not become less valuable, allowing the mind of a Madman to take in more gifts of the preternatural Darkness than even a Hero can handle.

Oh, so many there were who envied him. So many offered him gold, favors, slaves, and even power if only he would reveal the nature of his trump card! And all of them were left with nothing because Whisper only gritted his teeth in a parody of a smile, not intending to enlighten anyone except perhaps Prince Warudo or his crowned father. Only those two didn't ask, or maybe they'd already figured it out and realized there was no clever trick. It was just that two of the three Whispering classes had the same class attribute - Blackness. Sure, he had invested in his development and had not been squeamish about rituals and sacrifices, leaving the affiliated Eyes of the Blackness-affiliated blacksmiths with a fortune, but the point was precisely the obvious. Two classes developed a single attribute, allowing him to reach one hundred and fifty pure attributes of Blackness by level forty-three - a high bar even by heroic standards, giving him a mythical active-passive invested gift that was the natural outcome of his achievements.

For Whisper, the very notion of closed doors or sealed rooms disappeared, for as deadly as the smoke form was in its concentrated state, in its dispersed state, it was practically undetectable. This, by the way, was very annoying and caused mountains of bewilderment in the ranks of all sorts of experts in planar sciences because it contradicted the well-known postulate that Darkness in its pure form was not particularly strong in secrecy. Something about that was true because the smoke form really wasn't as stealthy as his enemies seemed to think it was... and yet not as invisible as they thought.

Like any other technique based on the power of Madness, his smoke gave a very distinctive flash on the sensors, but in its diffused form, it could only be detected in the middle of a clear field where no other magic existed or had ever existed. Then yes. The slightly elevated background of blackness would be obvious even to a not particularly gifted sensor, let alone the aces of their craft. But when Whisper seeped into the private chambers of some impudent and free-thinking lord, that blackness did what Darkness was known for: it absorbed and contaminated, merging so much with the residual traces of protective fields and signaling magic that it was lost behind them, remaining completely unregistered. As his few friends from the same Eyes had told him, Whisper was even rumored to be not an adept of Madness but a much rarer mirror-user, only cleverly disguised. It was for that particular trait that he was considered, yes.

The black smoke crept slowly and unsteadily through the devils' mutilated space, flowing around the prisoners and captives, crawling past the phantom bodies howling in ecstasy, drifting vaporously into every crevice, bypassing the few creatures that might have noticed it. It wasn't difficult, but Whisper wouldn't call such a walk a simple task, even though he liked to brag about his accomplishments to those who had the right permissions. Or not, but he could be slaughtered for the sake of secrecy. Advancement required absolute concentration and the full exertion of all his strength, but it was all of it, not just from above. He hadn't taken human form for about fifteen minutes now, only occasionally allowing himself a few seconds of existence to dissipate again as a smoke front. At such times, he was especially vulnerable to the fleur surrounding him, but the amulets kept the pressure on for those seconds he couldn't protect himself.

Each transformation from smoke to flesh and back again required an inordinate amount of effort. And not because of the transformation. He had practiced that so long ago that he almost didn't feel the heaviness of using it anymore. All his equipment changed shape time after time, but to make it turn into a material of smoky blackness without losing its structure or breaking in a dozen ways was a task for a mage rather than a killer, but he had no choice. Half of his equipment, including some of his own blood-paid and earned toys, had already fallen into disrepair, and it was only by a miracle the magic in them had simply disappeared rather than discharged into the bearer or the surrounding space. He could not think of a clearer sign than that, except that he could simply step out into the creatures' gaze and say, "Here I am, bitches." By good, he had to go to this case almost naked, in the simplest clothes or a specially selected set of enchanted things designed for the smoke form. But these sets, of which there were four in Whisper's stash, could not protect him from the fleur, and the Rays were still the most unpleasant burden.

He protected them like his own balls because if the container was damaged, he would know about it after the fact, long after the moment of atomization in the solar corona. The insulating vaults he'd been given were of better quality, an alloy of several dozen materials refined by essential forging as if it was helping to turn itself to smoke and back again afterward, but it still took effort. In a different position, Whisper would have long ago stuffed the beams into some storeroom, camouflaged it somehow, and taken off, blowing it up a little afterward. Such a puff of smoke, as one of his halfling acquaintances would say, would wipe out the lion's share of creatures. But, bitch, he can't. All the central nodes of the trade mission turned into a temple of Lust were protected too tightly, so tightly that even the Ray would only scorch them, scorch them, but not penetrate them - almost absolute isolation, albeit with sacrificial energy. It was clearly the brainchild of a fusion of the merchant' existing defenses with mass sacrifices, and Whisper wanted to shake the throats of those of the Eyes who'd missed the preparation of such a thing. It would take a large-scale ritual to activate the blanks, but before that, it would take a long, long time to infuse the blanks with blood and pain, which even the richest moneybags were not supposed to have.

The old hitman knew a lot about victims because of his association with special publics and classes tied to the Dark, so he was confident enough in his judgments, just as he was confident that the leadership of those faggots in stylish uniforms had sold out to the Hell cocksuckers, if not in its entirety, then a significant part of it. The news had gotten out, and he had been a little involved, having shortened a couple of seemingly proven operatives on their heads at the very beginning of this mess.

Yeah...

What one thinks about when there is nothing to think about? The smoky form had a peculiar effect on his thinking, as if the smoke were something else instead of him, which made it seem as if Whisper had something else in his head as well as Whisper. And the more one exhausted oneself with the form, the longer one stayed in it, and the more closely the two became intertwined, never to be completely disentangled afterward. At first, the coming Madness was almost imperceptible, but it came more and more often in old age. Strange and illogical impulses, whispers, and cries audible only to the gut but not to the ears, obsessive muttering and howling somewhere out there, not in the body itself, but still much closer than even in the guts. It wasn't only out of laziness that Whisper had almost stopped working in earnest. Not only. And no matter how much he denied his fear, it was moments like this, when he wasn't sure if Whisper was still in the smoke, that made him uncomfortable, wanting to go back in time and choose another path, another gift, rather than the Distillation of Blackness that had taken too much from him.

His thoughts were jumping more and more, but his predetermined goal as the red thread was sliding along the direction of the weightless smoke, passing over another creature, pensively inhaling the Lust-scented air, as if sensing something unclear. The thought was simple: get inside the most secure part of the perimeter. If not in the ritual hall itself, where, if the clever people of the Eye of Tactics were to believe, the process of pairing the Eternal and Hell was taking place at least somewhere close. So, three Rays activated under the devil's protection would illuminate everything and everyone, disrupt the ritual, and maybe save them all.

The change of vector of the smoke's existence is marked by another flash of pain in the now absent body, even deeper than in the body, near the very soul. The work goes on at a breakneck pace, with no expectation of further exploits. Even if he completes his sabotage, the battle for the Eternal is over for Whisper. He will not have enough strength to participate in further massacres. He will have to hide in some dark corner and wait for the cruelest consequences for his body. If he does not succeed, there will be no continuation, which is obvious.

It was impossible to get close to the ritual hall, and it was impossible for Whisper or any of the masters he knew personally or through rumors. There was not even a fold of space, not a shift of realities, but a complete cutting off and closing, which, as the assassin, who was well versed in such things, thought, was considered impossible even at the expense of sacrificial pumping. The ritual was a thing in itself. There were no doors, only sealed and fastened walls, which were not even guarded by guards. It would be possible to break through by force only after extremely long dances, and it would be impossible to do it without being noticed. After circling, almost hitting a particularly sensitive creature with a dozen dicks for noses, Whisper pushed the smoke to another point.

The second attempt was somewhat more successful, though it also failed. The center of the convergence of closed fields was also well guarded, and there was a full guard of elite creatures, but still, the level of protection was much lower. Probably, if the old man, wrinkled from age and the Darkness harmful to his body, had decided to sacrifice himself like a hero from the old days, he would have had a chance to take this center. With a bit more luck, he would have been able to hold off almost the entire elite surrounding the convergence for a moment, exposing them to the Rays. It was a pity, of course, that Whisper wasn't such a Hero, but he had his own story, not a story of legend, and even if there was a place for heroism in it, Whisper would stay away from that place with all his might.

He coughs up blood as he comes back out, feeling the black, thick slurry from his mouth, vaporized by the protection of his amulets. He'd better not leave a drop of his blood here, or they'll find and trace it easily. The amulets let out a wave of cool breeze, like a spring breeze blowing in through an open window, blowing the dust off old furniture, taking away all the dirt and filth and the evil voices of the mad monsters hiding inside you. Fleur almost doesn't care. Fleur can't disturb Whisper because there's too much Darkness in him for Lust to find a place. The old man feels that a little more and he will cease to be a man, that a little more stay in the smoky non-body and the end, but it is too late to retreat. He will not have enough strength for the way back, even if we put aside the discontent of the guardsmen dying under the walls of the mutilated stronghold. They would not forgive him for the blood spilled in the empty sacrifice, and to escape from the cauldron into which the devils had thrown them would not work because there was nowhere to go.

After allowing himself an extra second. It's an insanely long, recklessly risky time. He disintegrates again into streams of thick and viscous blackness, marking a few more of the amulets that had fallen into disrepair from the jump between forms, growing thinner and thinner until he dissipated altogether. He barely makes it in time because one of the creatures emerges from the blink right where he'd nearly vomited his Darkness-dissolving innards onto the solid stone floor. The flash of some activated technique and the howl of a burning soul, captured by the entire essence of the smoke happy, and therefore somewhat frightening even in such a state, pass by the consciousness. Contract magic, which forces any invisible person, even the most skillful, to manifest before the eyes of the contract holder, is useless now. In distilled form, Whisper has no body to manifest it, and there is no Whisper at all.

Whisper liked the arsenal, if you could call it a place to store combat souls temporarily extracted from their bodies and turned into disposable bombs and anchors for the attacking techniques. The large and relatively open hall could not be completely enclosed, for when this launching system sent more and more projectiles over the horizon, the devils were forced to open a window in their defenses. Yes, they weren't ordinary barriers that required a two-way closure. They could hit through them without removing the protective field, but it still left a vulnerability that was insignificant to humans. The Distillate took that hint of the existence of a path, the marked direction of the release of ecstatic souls screaming from here and there as if it were an invitingly open gate. Well, well, slightly open. What does it matter if the essence does not change?

Whisper entered the perimeter with the next batch of prisoners and ordinary townspeople, among them a couple of cultists, who were either punished or rewarded by being sacrificed. You'd never know it. They were always happy to do anything. Under the melodious and synchronized moans, something reminiscent of the singing of the temple hymn, the people in the center of the hall gradually dissolved like sugar cubes in hot water, never ceasing to spin in an extremely primitive and fascinating at the same time round dance. The dancing was equally skillful, though Whisper doubted that a typical coal burner could do such pirouettes in his normal state. The bodies flowed downward in a honey-colored slurry, going down hollows in the stone floor to become the basis for the formation of pseudo-flesh. Some of the creatures would be repaired and healed in this way. Some of them would be given a new body if the old one was broken but couldn't be killed. But even when the body was completely transformed into this shit stinking of colors and pure pleasure, the dance did not stop. There was still a ghostly silhouette of the dancer, who immediately began to fuck the nearest similar silhouette, which had completely given up its flesh.

One after another, the ghostly couples, less than a third of whom were of different sexes, soared up to the ceiling of the hall, turning into two sparkling balls the size of apples, circling each other as if they were still dancing. And lo and behold, the barrier opened again, and a dozen or two paired sparks flew off on different trajectories. Even before entering the creatures' stronghold, Whisper had seen these projectiles, had seen them turn from small sparks into huge clumps of rotten-golden flame, and had seen what was left of those caught in the flames.

So that's how they do it...

The point was found, and there was no strength to look any further. Now, the only thing left to do was to form the body back, take off the Rays, activate them, and, in some unknown way, make sure nobody would notice these Rays while Whisper was doing the legwork. It was no longer necessary to hide in the escape, or rather, not that critical, and there was still a chance to escape quickly if at least half of the path could be traveled before he was spotted. But just as Whisper was about to embark on the final stage of the diversion of the century, if not the millennium - and let there be a bastard who could pull off something cooler than that! - another creature appeared in the center of the hall.

It appeared not in a blink or any other familiar form of teleportation but like an obscene inscription on a freshly painted fence, slowly and gradually, as if it had not been transported but reborn right here, on this very spot. Even without his Hero status, Whisper had no doubt she was a Legend. Judging by the way it looked around, the creature could smell, if not the presence of the distillate, then the shaking in the energy background. And this despite all the bacchanalia that was going on in the hall, where any sensory equipment, any kind of sensitivity, would rather burn out the sensor's brains than help to read the energy background!

The devil looked like a tall and, in every sense, charming blue-skinned and absolutely bald maiden, quite human in height and even covered with some hints of clothing. Like a very lecherous parody of the nun's robe of Fiat the Merciful. She stood silently in the middle of the ritual as if listening to something she alone could see. The other creatures controlling the monstrous dance of doomed souls reacted to the appearance of Caressing Lightness, whose level Whisper's eyes could not read but were stopped by a commanding gesture. The creature continued to stand. She continued to stare into nowhere with a blank stare of violet eyes, not shifting or doing exactly nothing.

The presence of Legend within the walls of the representation turned into a ritual knot was obvious, but their number remained unclear until now. Tacticians simply had no reliable information and for seers to look there meant voluntarily giving their souls to Lust. Nevertheless, Whisper knew for certain this was not one of the Legends who was busy with the ritual, nor was it one of the Legends who held the barriers and disturbed the stormtroopers with flurry attacks without being seen.

With a crystal-clear realization, Whisper realized she could see him. She knew there was someone here in this room who shouldn't be. Was his defense against the seer, developed by rituals and a couple of class skills and gifts, too weak, were his amulets out of order, was the bitch herself too skillful? None of that mattered because the creature wouldn't go anywhere until she found what had disturbed her so much. Whisper, tired and unprepared for this encounter, could neither deceive nor disguise himself better, and there was no point in waiting. Time was playing against the man who was falling deeper and deeper into Madness. He could either retreat, which would not work, and there was no strength for another attempt, or throw himself into a hopeless fight.

Whisper despised heroic ballads about glorious death in battle, preferring to stay alive, even if disgraced and defeated, but when he was cornered, which happened, those who cornered him realized too late how dangerous a cornered garbage rat was. To die by gnawing so that he would be remembered for a long time. A farewell fireworks display, so to speak, for a pleasant memory.

This time, he does not conceal his presence, nor does Whisper have any hope of a surprise attack. If the creature somehow senses him even now, the very thought of an attack will be obvious to it before it forms. That's why the burly thug puts all his energies into one swift attack, a decisive blow to a vulnerable point assassins of his level are famous for. For all the riskiness of this, if I may say so, plan, what Whisper conceived was not suicide or self-sacrifice because there were still chances to retreat, no matter how elusive they were.

Forming the Distillate into combat form was quick, even if you had to concentrate the smoke scattered throughout the ritual dance hall into something more acceptable. As it was said, he wasn't hiding at all, but the reaction of the Legend, who had figured him out, surprised and discouraged him. First and foremost, by its absence. She couldn't help but notice him, but instead of a sharp attack on a counter course, instead of trying to cut him off at the moment of transition of forms, for which he was ready but not ready enough, the deviless simply turned on her toes and stared thoughtfully at the figure, as if woven from black and thick smoke, which filled the clothes that spread apart. The maddened face, the craggy muzzle of the Darkness-marked old man, seemed neither frightened nor in any way apprehensive.

No matter how crazy Whisper seemed in such a state, the planar infection had not cut his mental acuity as comprehensively as it might seem. So he analyzed the situation with the same quickness, honed by many dirty and bloody affairs, with which he was accustomed to meet the change of environment and other surprises. If a creature like this does something incomprehensible, it's bad, and if it doesn't take advantage of a seemingly obvious weakness if it misses a moment that can't be missed, then things are bad.

Whisper attacks, fangs lengthening and foaming, teeth falling to the ground, replaced by new teeth more suited to the Madman, and the realization that the next ten years will be spent in purification rituals and prayers for his soul, for which the Warrior's clerics will have to pay a fortune. The Warrior is one of the few Gods that recognizes the right to sacrifice endowments to win a worthy battle, and if that battle doesn't turn out to be one, Whisper will eat his shoes... and his hat... and his liver.. and the sound of the clap of one hand, he will eat, eat, eat, eat, eat!!!!

Even in the state of Madness, he doesn't attack a waiting abomination, sweet and stinking that sweetness worse than a cesspool, instinctively sensing a sneak attack. Whether it's a contractual confinement, a reverse damage transfer, or something even more skillful, built on a typical devil's non-obvious ruse, it doesn't make much difference. If he was allowed to strike such a tempting first blow, then the consequences of his Legend does not fear, does not fear, does not wait, does not know, does not green, does not sing, does not warm, does not thaw, does not dare, does not wind, does not...

It was not even an instant but a ridiculous stretch of time, the kind of time used to measure the river of Law in battles like this one, where those for whom a second is Eternity converge. The mangled, twisted at impossible angles figure of the old man oozing black slime and equally black smoke leaps forward and rushes to attack under the sweet and approving smile of the blue-skinned beauty, ladder, messenger, hand, tit, to change the vector of the jump in an indistinguishable feint, finding itself next to one of the creatures responsible for the continuity of the dance, gari, mari, zari, zari, vari. In a strike of two paired daggers, more like short swords, which had already grown into the flesh of the foul flesh and fused with the bones, the abomination, which had not even tried to react, split into two halves.

A step. A flash of ink smoke so thick that the sight of it blew out the eyes of several random prisoners brought in for the ensuing dance. Like a drop of ink caught in a glass of crystal clear water, the smoke splits into a dozen streams, each of which splits again, and at the tip of each stream waits a lump of pure Madness, pulsing and shrinking in readiness to become a Whisper. He is dead at this moment, dissolved in Madness and given to it, but at every moment of existence, he is ready to rise from any lump, any point of convergence, to emerge and continue the fight and slaughter.

It emerges and continues, throwing three containers that isolate the death hidden in them into the center of the hall in another attack, which began to glow with an unbearable stream of rays. Another creature falls to the stone of the hall, already rotting and lumpy with blackness-chewed scraps, followed by a second, a third, and a few mortals who just happened to be so tasty, sad, vile, fast, and daring to get in the way of his daggers.... no, not daggers, claws, bone and iron blades, already fused to his body to the end.

The slipping mind, balancing on the verge of total immersion in Madness, remains an indifferent observer of blatant unprofessionalism. The killer's tricks are useless, and a fair fight, even if he is an ace, is not for fighting with the Legend. You have to give Madness the maximum possible and on top of the limit of unacceptable so the fighter is, in fact, an already vilified creature, not a human. It works. The creatures simply die under the Madman's blows, causing vile laughter, hysterical roaring and bleating, incoherent mumbling, and hoarse howling. It works so well that the mind, tired of everything that has fallen on it this day, does not immediately understand, does not notice the obvious, generally speaking, thing until the last.

No one's fighting back.

Not a single creature tried to defend life, deflect blows, dislodge the body, use blink, or give the wounds they received to the souls they captured. Whisper would be the last to underestimate himself, and in such a pitiful state, almost giving himself over to the Darkness became many times more dangerous. But not so much so that such powerful creatures could do nothing to him. And he was not so mad that for those few seconds, he forgot about Legend, who had never tried to attack him as if the very possibility of trying to attack the bitch had been erased from his Darkness-soaked brain, rain, rain, rain, pain, plain!

In the same way, Whisper had somehow forgotten to stop fighting and retreat the instant the Rays' imminent detonation became apparent. But that truth, ruth, fuss, slipped from his mind. It was very difficult to affect a Madman mentally or even through fleur, and that was why he was a Madman, but Whisper had not yet dived fully into the Darkness, and there was an entire Legend against him. Three rays would make the Legend sad, bad, fed, led.

Legend leisurely and calmly retreats a step farther from the frozen Whisper as if not worried by what is happening. The foggy degenerate, who had already lost even a ghostly chance to regain his lost appearance and essence, only chuckles in response to the realization of the futility of existence - he can't leave in time either, so he'll die with her.

Before the world was flooded by a flash of gold that burned all matter and energy, Whisper had time to see a mirror in the hands of the Legend, a mirror set in a solid emerald. This mirror displays all the colors and dyes of the world... Displays, but mixes, blends into something one, and the surface of the image shows a marvelous beauty of a web of marvelous patterns - truly marvelous, not a fleur illusion, a lustful deception. At the moment, when all of them, including Legend, who never tried to defend herself, is vaporized into nothingness, he recognizes his own reflection there, in the depths, the foreignness, the flatness of that mirror.

A reflection of his real self - old, mottled with scars, wrinkles caused by the degradation of mortal flesh, the marks of curses and contracts ripped from his body, tired and dying. Sees what he was and what he has become, and then the soft and cruel embrace of the Sun takes away even this, this, this, this, this, this...

...and the mirror broke....

A reflection of his real self, no longer young, scarred, and blackened with the black mesh of veins soaked in foulness, the marks of contracts once given, tired and wasted. He sees what he was and what he has become, and then the soft and cruel embrace of the Sun takes away even this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this...

...and the mirror broke....

A reflection of his real self, a man of thirty, no longer a young man, scarred and blackened with a black mesh of veins soaked with foulness, the marks of contracts once given, tired but still glittering with mad fire in his empty eyes. Sees what he was and what he has become, and then the soft and cruel embrace of the Sun takes away even this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this...

...and the mirror broke....

A reflection of her real self - a woman of thirty years old, not the first youth, whose body shows scars that have not been removed by cosmetic magic, and somewhere even a fine black mesh of veins soaked in bad veins, patterned contract, and battle tattoos, tired, but still glittering with crazy fire in her cunningly squinted eyes. Sees the person she was and the person she has become, and then the soft and cruel embrace of the Sun takes away even this, this, this, this, this, this...

...and the mirror broke....

A reflection of her real self - a young woman of about twenty-five years of age, though youth is deceptive, with not a single scar on her body removed and hidden by cosmetic magic, a frightening and tantalizing black network of veins soaked in filth hidden beneath the noble whiteness of perfect skin. But the patterned contract and battle tattoos are visible, the tired and sensual face of a beauty as deadly as the Darkness itself. One sees who she was and who she has become, and then the soft and cruel embrace of the Sun takes away even this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this...

...and the mirror broke....

A reflection of her real self - a young girl of twenty years old, though youth is deceptive, whose frankly and even lewdly dressed body showed not a single scar cleaned up and hidden by cosmetic magic, a frightening and tantalizing black network of veins soaked in filth was hidden beneath the noble whiteness of perfect skin. But the patterned tattoos are visible, the contented and sensual face of a beauty as deadly as the Darkness itself and as vicious as the deepest Hell. One sees who she was and who she has become, and then the soft and cruel embrace of the Sun takes away even this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this...

...and the mirror broke....

A reflection of her real self, a young girl of about twenty, whose victim-bought youth was truer than any deception, whose lecherously dressed, almost naked body showed not a single scar, and whose frightening and tantalizing black network of foul veins was hidden beneath the noble whiteness of perfect skin. But the patterned tattoos are visible, the contented and sensual face of a beauty as deadly as the Darkness itself and as vicious as the deepest Hell. One sees who she was and who she has become, and then the soft and cruel embrace of the Sun takes away even this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this...

...and the mirror broke....

And when it broke, it shattered into hundreds of blackening shards, releasing a mesmerizing web that bound not even the mind, not the soul, but reality itself, as if wrapping it in a cocoon, sealing that bag with the rustle of dreams long forgotten and never happened, mixing those dreams with reality, until it became impossible to distinguish one from the other, until the dream became reality and reality became a long-forgotten nightmare. A nightmare that was stupid, scary, and never happened at all.

...Forming the distillate into fighting form was quick, even if it meant concentrating the smoke scattered throughout the ritual dance hall into something more acceptable. When she came out of stealth mode, she was already in full parade, as if she were going to a ball or an evening in some fancier boudoir. A perfect body with a form worthy of the best masters of beauty, almost devoid of distortions from excessive use of Darkness could make another Ascetic stutter in the middle of a word and choke on his saliva. Whisper's non-human appearance showed only black lips without any lipstick, and equally black nipples, though the latter were now, to her displeasure, hidden under her combat uniform and amulets. However, Lala knew exactly what Whisper's body was like under her clothes, even if she didn't take into account the fact that her abilities allowed the bitch to look under her clothes without much effort.

Given the level of Lascivious Lightness, she could do more than that, as she had demonstrated more than once during their merry games, as she had back then in... as she had a thousand times before, so often that it was lazy to remember. Some would say regularly sharing a bed with a devil of any Vice, not even necessarily Lust, whose representatives were known to be the most attractive looking among the inhabitants of Hell, was sheer madness. Well, the adept of that Madness would only smirk. Lala's amusements and contrivances were a hundred times better than anything Whisper had known and tasted in her life. The lecherous and unaccustomed to living in the future murderer took everything from life, not accepting half-measures, giving herself to her chosen Vice.

It was a pity she couldn't choose something tied to Lala's service as the third class. She would have picked the sweetest and not particularly onerous terms of the deal in exchange for a soul after death. They had known each other for so long that it seemed like a lifetime. However, Whisper had no luck in choosing the devil class. Whether it was something that prevented it, whether it was that they didn't want to raise suspicion in the ranks of the big-eyed faggots, or whether it was all of these things together - they didn't want to remember about it now.

Instead of boring bickering and thinking, Whisper bypasses the tall devil, dragging the next batch of future dancers to the place of their new birth, pressing his favorite creature in a tight embrace, and sinking into the unbearably sweet lips with a greedy kiss. The contact drug covering the blue skin of the deviless, more like even a fleur curse laced with a body-synthesized stimulant, begins to fog the mind, causing an instant and uncontrollable orgasm. Her eyes roll back, her consciousness falls into a trance, and Whisper can still hear Lala's words, but she can't distinguish them. She would probably take advantage of the situation again and put some particularly humiliating trigger in the minds of her friend and maid so the two of them could laugh about what had happened.

She opened her mouth and licked the blue-skinned creature's breasts, making her combat kit soaked through. The first thing Whisper did was to remove the still-working amulets. First of all, there was no need to ruin the valuable things that were damaged by the fleur techniques, even if the bearer of the amulets had fallen for those techniques. Second, even if regular glimpses of consciousness during the next rewriting of her brain give an absolutely gorgeous bouquet of sensations, you can damage the psyche. Without amulets, Lala would not allow permanent traumas unless she wanted to make them part of the fun and with them, too. There was no need to complicate her friend's work. She was already loaded to the brim. Even if we don't count the fact that the master of working with consciousness is now, besides the depraved game of "make Whisper a whore with a new set of fetishes," busy with the recovery of thinking after a particular dose of Madness, there is still the invasion of the Eternal. Yes, that blue mistress appreciates her wacky toy, but a job remains a job, something the assassin with Whisper's background couldn't be unaware of.

"You could have warned me, you sweet fucking bitch." When the ability to speak and think her thoughts, not whispered ones, returned to the killer, the first thing she did was to take offense at her friend, twisting her nipples at the same time. "I've got three Rays in the isolation cells, and if you weren't here, I'd blow your whole gang."

A snap of her fingers, an uncontrollable orgasm, and for the next three minutes, Whisper couldn't get her tongue off Lala's buttocks as if it were attached with alchemical glue. At the same time, for some reason, she couldn't even think of anything but the deviless' blue ass. Literally the only thought in her head. She loved such jokes with memory cleansing and hyperfixation on something primitive and depraved, sometimes spending long days in a simple state if she managed to contact Lala for such a long time. But there was no time for that now. Whisper suspected that the Guard tacticians had a way to activate the Rays remotely.

"Time is warped in this room, dearie." The words of a legendary-level devil are hammered into the personality of those who hear them. "The crowned cutie has raised so much silt from the bottom of the River that even I can access something. As for the Rays? Well, will my babe refuse the blue tits to fulfill her little request?"

The cutie didn't refuse, though the part of her consciousness, which, under the influence of the opened behavioral command, was the last to shut down, vowed that Lala would lick for this setup for several hours continuously and would also pick up a few particularly juicy ones among the captives. Ideally, she'd help her reeducate a dozen or two bastards Whisper knew from her work. The assassin didn't mind betraying the Empire for the sake of her friend, but at least for the sake of decency, she could have been offered payment instead of being bent on suppressing her will! That's at least ungentlemanly! And then Whisper's entire essence seemed to blink to become completely normal again.

"All for blue tits." Whisper repeated with a dreamy smile, adjusting her harness and activating the amulets she was wearing again. "Sweet blue tits."

Leaning against Lala one last time, Whisper made an obscene gesture to the creatures around her to leave the distillate state and head back to her former companions. After all, it was necessary to activate the Rays so the unique things would not be wasted. The farewell fireworks would turn out to be great even the narrow-eyed assholes from the Empire of Arms would appreciate it, and they were good at pyrotechnics.

* * *