Two shots rang out in rapid succession, and a set of shockwaves rippled out from the muzzle of her cannon as she lifted her eye away from the scope and peered into the distance.
Her targets, two earth elentals that had each taken the form of stony crystal-veined quadrupeds, were obliterated a mont later, bursting into fragnt-laced plus of hellfire.
Ashtoreth sighed.
"You know sothing?" she asked. "I bet the ancient humans had it real nice. Like, Star Trek levels of nice—except if they built shields, they'd actually do sothing."
"I never watched it," Hunter said.
"I an—no wonder the invasion was so extre," Ashtoreth said. "Of course my father wanted to seal the deal before any of the humans got to the secret cache of gear and teleporters and the giant farm-world that Hell can't even get to."
"Yeah," Hunter said.
"I keep wondering why we haven't seem him use any shards, yet," she continued. "You'd think he would have popped one once he figured out what I was up to. You'd think he'd have had one ready in case things went wrong. More than one!"
"Yeah."
"I wonder if it's politics," she said. "As powerful as my father is, my mother still managed to hide a shard from him. If the other Lords of Hell are doing the sa thing, he probably needs to keep a reserve just to make sure he stays safe, you know?"
"Yeah."
"If he uses a shard, and they know he used a shard, it sort of implies weakness, you know? Shows that he's been thwarted, that he's not all-powerful. And that's not even considering how it's going to look when it gets out that his favorite daughter of this invasion's generation of children betrayed him. Fiendish solidarity is sort of the cornerstone of the Hierarchy of Hell."
"Yeah."
"I guess this is all just wishful thinking," she said at last. "I just want to think he's having a hard ti because of —that Earth isn't a single decision away from a horrific catastrophe."
" too, Ashtoreth."
"And that's just my father," she said. "I swear, if Dazel sses us up, it had better at least be good for humanity."
Hunter was quiet for a mont. "I doubt it," he said at last. "He hid everything he could possibly hide from us for as long as he possibly could." He shrugged. "When people hide stuff that'll start an argunt from you, it's usually because on so level deep down, they know that they'll lose. They're protecting the illusion of knowing what's best."
"You're probably right," she said plaintively. Then, as a point of light began to descend toward them from the clouds, she added, "Sec."
The point of light resolved into so hybridized fire-lightning elental, an extrely fast orb of sizzling energy that approached them by flying along a jagged path.
She conjured a volley of [Hellfire Javelins], launched them, then charged up a [Hellfire Blast] that she launched at the elental as it began to dodge out of the way of the javelins. Within a few monts, it had been consud by hellfire.
"The fire elentals should be harder for you," Hunter said as they were bathed in purple light.
"Well they're definitely the hardest," she said. "But I'm telling you, these ancient humans filled this place with monsters that are easy and stupid." She cupped her hands to her mouth to shout at the plu of hellfire. "I've been training my whole life for this, just so you know!"
Hunter laughed.
They continued to float over the landscape, until Ashtoreth narrowed her eyes at a rock formation below them. "Say… the mana in the rocks down there feels weird. I think sothing might be conducting heat differently—it's pretty obvious with my hellfire."
She charged a [Hellfire Blast], launching at the rocks and observing the results with her magical senses as the flas consud the stone. Then she landed in the midst of the flas, ford her claws, and hefted an oblong piece of stone.
She placed the stone against the ground, then began scrubbing off the outer layer of rock with her claws, crushing and tearing it into gravel that she brushed away with about the sa difficulty as it might take her to scratch an itch.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
Very soon she heard the horrid, ear-splitting screech of tal under her claws as they broke through a layer of caked rust to began scratching at a hunk of misshapen tal.
"Well, would you look at that?" she said, beaming as she held the piece of stone-encrusted tal aloft with one hand. "It's a tal beam!"
"Huh," Hunter said, landing beside her.
"I wonder what sort of structure they built here?" she asked. "You think they had little support gazebos built all through Orchard in case people needed dical attention? It's probably sothing like that. They could have made this even less risky than it already is."
"I dunno."
"You could probably staff the whole place with constructs, too," she said. "It'd take a lot of constructs, but with the resources these ancient humans had, they could manage it. 'Course, you'd still have to give your soldiers a lot of training since they absence of deathly peril would make them turn out soft."
Hunter shrugged. "Didn't make soft."
"Yeah, but you had saving the Earth to motivate you."
"Sure, but mostly that ant thinking about the four or five people that I actually care about."
You guys doing okay? Kylie asked.
"Yep!" Ashtoreth said.
Great, Kylie said. Question, though.
"Uh-huh?"
What's our plan for Matthews, exactly? You're not going to be able to farm up levels without them noticing.
"Definitely not!" Ashtoreth said. "But who cares? Hunter brought up a really good point when he said that we could kill their mothers by the dozens."
Hunter made an uncertain noise. "That's not really—"
I'm not really sure I like where the new plan is going, Ashtoreth, said Kylie. And neither does Frost.
"You guys are together right now?"
No. But if I don't like it, he won't either.
She's right, Frost said. You have a point that our power is a deterrent, but we're still inviting them to escalate and burning a bridge at the sa ti.
"Don't worry—we won't actually nuke any cities."
Okay, said Kylie. But what about in the worst possible outco?
"Worst possible outco, they take out of commission sohow. But Hunter will go on a killing spree of top-level officials."
"They won't be able to hide from ," he said.
Right, so that's our deterrent, said Kylie. But in the anti… what are we doing about access to these two new realms? Are you telling Matthews? Are you letting the scientists in?
"Matthews, I think, will be able to figure it out on his own when I'm persistently truant," she said. "But no, I don't want to tell him. Or let anyone in. I think we should just pull trigger, move everyone you into the new realm so that your ghosts can explore it, and not even try to hide the fact that we're hiding stuff from them."
This is what I ant about burning bridges, said Frost.
"We don't have a choice!" Ashtoreth said. "The choice is whether or not we want to bring them in. And everything they've done so far just goes to show that every inch we give them is an inch they'll use against us. So we shut them out." She shrugged. "I would have thought that the human bossn wouldn't want to be so distrustful of when they've got to rely on , but hey! What do I know? I'm just the fiend who's monarch of Earth and has to find a way to live with all the Earthlings, you know?"
I'm not saying you're wrong, here, said Frost. But this might cause a permanent rift with you and high command. Worse even than what we're dealing with now.
"Eh," she said. "They're the ones who wanted to do it this way, not . But hey, if that's what they want, I know how to play along." She put a hand on one hip. "I'm a fiend. This sort of relationship is my ho turf, you know? So we'll shut them out while we go after our imdiate objectives. Reasonable?"
What are our imdiate objectives? Kylie asked.
"One, find a way into Pinnacle and Diadem—and be sure that we aren't opening the way for Dazel when we do. Two, find the physical location of the archive that's referenced in the [Archive Consult] items that Hunter found. Three, find out what Dazel's been up to." She frowned as she said the last item. "I gotta say, I really hope that the EDA and the Eldunar are ahead on that last item, because we don't have the resources or the connections to search the cosmos for him."
So you want to pop on over and start blanketing the worlds with ghosts? Kylie said. Orchard first, or Core?
"Core," she said. "Find its north, then search along the lines of longitude and latitude that the cache we found exists on. If there are more caches, they might be placed in a grid pattern."
All right. You want to go now?
"Not until I've spoken to Matthews." She frowned. "And I can't do that until I set off a [Hellfire Nova] here."
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