Air howled around her as she sped through the distance between herself and her sisters. She moved fast, but not at full speed: she’d timed her charge to take the 1/8 second that it took her to conjure Wanderschloss.

  Apollo conjured her own greatsword and lunged toward Ashtoreth in response. Haddad, however, hung back much as Ashtoreth had expected she would, bright yellow lightning arced off her wings and horns in the moment before thrusting both her hands forward.

  A bolt of lightning as thick as a treestump suddenly filled the air between them, striking in the moment just before Apollo would have rammed into Ashtoreth with her sword.

  But Ashtoreth had seen the obvious attack coming. The moment Haddad loosed her lightning, she triggered her [Ashtoreth’s Flamefray Barrier], encasing her in a shimmering purple field. The lightning struck the barrier, then was converted into a huge plume of violet hellfire that filled the air around her.

  The barrier meant that Ashtoreth could attack without regard for her own defense, and so she ignored Apollo’s incoming sword to strike out at her sister with a thrust of her own. Apollo had clearly been anticipating some kind of surprise, however, and was spinning away from Ashtoreth as soon as the barrier appeared, abandoning the force of her own blow to twist around Ashtoreth and pin her between both of her sisters.

  Ashtoreth took note of the fact that the [Flamefray Barrier] wasn’t able to un-conjure Apollo’s sword, then took advantage of their new positioning by launching her weapon at Apollo with a [Mighty Strike] that sent her catapulting toward Haddad.

  Apollo blocked the attack with her sword—but Ashtoreth’s [Mighty Strike] was so potent that the force of it sent her sister flying away from her almost as fast as she sped toward the now-vulnerable Haddad.

  Haddad’s eyes widened as Ashtoreth closed the distance between them with the howling sound of displaced air, spreading her wings and forming her claws as she began to conjure Wanderschloss once more.

  She was a good claw-to-claw fighter, Haddad, and had rarely used weapons when they were growing up. But Haddad wasn’t stupid enough to stay to fight Ashtoreth on her own terms, not when she could play for a greater advantage. There was a flash of light and a fizzling noise as Ashtoreth got close, and she spun to see Haddad appearing far behind her, closer to Apollo.

  Instantly, Ashtoreth triggered her [Ashtoreth’s Curious Comet], launching a streak of purple-white light toward the air between them.

  Apollo flew wide to avoid the missile, ignoring it when she saw that it was meant for Haddad. Haddad seemed to be ignoring it as well—until it reached her and she blurred with sudden speed, deftly avoiding it—at which point Ashtoreth detonated it into what was essentially a cloud of hellfire shrapnel, splashing Haddad in the back with a few small bolts of hellfire.

  The harm they would cause was inconsequential. The missile’s real purpose was to give Ashtoreth the intel she would need to kill her sister.

  {Haddad’s [Warp Pool]: 78%}

  She only had a split-second to register the value, but she knew what it meant. Teleporters spent more of their [Warp Pool] both to teleport farther and to teleport into and out of a hostile creature’s proximity. They also tended to over-rely on teleportation for defense. Haddad was the weakest link.

  Her weapon formed in her hand a moment later, and as soon as she was finished conjuring it she began to conjure an array of [Hellfire Javelins], making sure that they all hung in the air between herself and Haddad, hoping to interfere with any further lightning.

  Apollo reached her a split-second after her weapon formed, and Ashtoreth swung hard to block her sister’s weapon with her own. The moment before the weapons met, her vision flared yellow, then white, and a flash of pain engulfed her body as she was struck by Haddad’s lightning.

  She hissed in pain as she felt the force of blocking Apollo’s sword reverberate through her body. The [Hellfire Javelins] that she’d used as a makeshift shield had disintegrated in the bolt of lighting, and while they must have done something to mitigate the spell’s effect, her scorched flesh hardly made it feel that way.

  But she’d survived. Fourteen thousand [Defense] and ten thousand [Vitality] meant that if her sisters wanted to kill her, they’d have to come at her hard and fast.

  And since Haddad would need at least another second to launch another spell… Ashtoreth was free to focus all her attention on fighting her other sister.

  The air around their greatswords roared as they maneuvered their weapons in a bizarre, graceful dance driven by both raw strength and telekinesis. The blades met only rarely as both of them spun and dodged amidst the flurry, each of them fighting as aggressively as they could manage.

  Apollo might have had the higher level, but Ashtoreth could feel that their stats were, if anything, close to equal. Still, something strange happened as she attacked Apollo with all the skill and strength that she could bring to bear.

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  They traded blows… but Ashtoreth lost.

  Within a moment, she’d been beaten back. Apollo slashed a line along her chest and shoulder, then dodged gracefully out of the way of Ashtoreth’s weapon to follow up with a thrust that set Ashtoreth off-balance and had her rushing backward through the air in a scramble.

  Panicking on account of Haddad, Ashtoreth sent her [Ashtoreth’s Bad Touch] at Apollo, doing her best to grin as if her sister had walked right into her trap.

  It worked. Apollo retreated just as Haddad’s lightning engulfed her again, searing her with pain but leaving her alive. She launched her weapon skyward, slamming herself down into the craggy ground beneath her so as to avoid whatever follow-up attacks both of them were going to use once they realized that she hadn’t actually had anything planned.

  Her eyes snapped up to Apollo: a red-white figure with her wings flared, currently gathering a bead of bright red light between her horns.

  How had her sister just got the better of her so easily?

  When it came to melee combat, they’d been close. But she’d been Apollo’s superior even before she’d had an extra year of non-stop training. Hell, she’d even killed archangels. How could her sister possibly have gotten better than her?

  Cold realization struck her as Ashtoreth had a sudden, uncomfortable thought. Was Apollo somehow… cheating?

  And then, in a followup thought that almost came to her as a whine: but she was cheating.

  Thinking that she’d be better served by her cannon than by stronger magic, she began to conjure Rammschloss as she pulled a heart from her locket with a free hand, consuming it to restore some of her [Bloodfire]. But while she expected Apollo to rush in and press her apparent advantage in melee, both her sisters continued to hang in the air above her instead.

  A moment later, she was standing in the midst of a storm of fire and lightning.

  The glowing bead of energy that Apollo had conjured streaked toward her, then burst in the air above her head, creating an explosion that was considerably stronger than Ashtoreth’s second-tier [Hellfire Blast].

  Ashtoreth’s resistance to hellfire, combined with her high [Defense], meant that it wasn’t enough to kill her.

  But the debuff that appeared as the flames washed over her made it clear that killing her wasn’t the point.

  {You are afflicted with a [Cursefire] debuff: you can’t spend [Bloodfire] to regenerate}

  Her eyes widened as she comprehended the debuff, and she made her next decision almost by instinct, immediately spending her [Spellsteal] to remove the debuff and store it as a deployable missile.

  There was simply no way to fight both her sisters if she couldn’t heal. Would Apollo be able to re-apply it?

  Her sisters both stayed in the air about her as her weapon appeared in her hands, and Ashtoreth didn’t fly up to join them, not yet. Instead, she stood and defended herself while they freely rained offensive magic down upon her, both happy to enjoy the current status quo for as long as she was.

  Apollo had spears of hellfire, and Haddad her lightning. For almost two seconds, Ashtoreth simply stood and put her weapon between herself and the oncoming attacks, the stone around her burning with Apollo’s blood-red hellfire as she tanked their shots and healed, consuming another heart even as she conjured a hellfire elemental and had it wait nearby, ready to either draw or intercept fire.

  It was clear that neither of them had realized that she’d dispelled their regeneration blocker, and that they were trying to bring her down with attrition. Again, her high [Vitality] and [Defense] kept her alive—though she couldn’t help but notice that Haddad’s lightning was dispelling any stats she’d stolen with [Energy Drain].

  She tried to shoot Haddad twice with her cannon, but neither shot connected or baited another teleportation: the simple fact was that Haddad was far enough away, and fast enough, to dodge the shots—if barely.

  Her sisters broke the stalemate first, both of them diving toward her in unison when they realized that their strategy wasn’t working.

  Before Apollo reached her, however, Haddad disappeared in a flash of light to reappear only a dozen feet away from her, charging.

  Ashtoreth had expected Haddad’s surprise teleport, but she didn’t expect that Haddad, who had been running away from close-quarters combat for the entire fight, would rush in to take her on with her claws bared.

  Yet even if Haddad was clearly weaker than Apollo, she somehow unleashed the same level of inexplicable skill. Ashtoreth lashed out with a [Mighty Blow], but Haddad blurred again as she moved past the strike and slashed at Ashtoreth with her claws.

  Caught off-guard, there were a few split seconds of desperate repositioning as Haddad unleashed a furious assault… and then she saw Apollo coming in hard, weapon raised, moving too fast for Ashtoreth to block or avoid it.

  With no other options, she used her [Power Tap] to bolster her [Strength] so that she could interpose her own weapon between herself and Apollo, the crash of their swords sending out a light shockwave that stirred the red flames around her.

  She had her hellfire elemental tackle her sister a moment later, giving her the split-second’s distraction that she needed to beat her wings and throw herself backward across the stony plain.

  Her eyes darted from one sister to the next. Haddad had likely spent half her [Warp Pool]—but that was probably all she’d really burnt in terms of their limited-use resources and their ability to protect themselves.

  If she brought her humans in now, it was highly likely that her sisters would simply use whatever they could to kill or capture at least one of them.

  Still, Ashtoreth hadn’t done nearly as well as she’d expected. In just a few short moments, they’d forced her to use almost every single ace she’d hidden up her sleeves. If she fought with the humans, they might die.

  But if she fought them alone, she was dead.