As I approached, I realized why nobody was fighting. Hinterleaf held a gleaming crystal in a raised hand, creating an impenetrable forcefield around the preventers. I could see them talking, but I heard nothing.
When I stood with my friends, I felt Irita’s touch. She clung to my arm. I squeezed her hand firmly, kissed her on the cheek.
“I wonder how long it’ll hold…” Francesca mused, watching as Babangida tirelessly beat his hammer against the barrier.
‘1 wonder who’ll break first—the barrier or Ba?” Yemi chuckled. “They’re done, and they know it.”
“Why don’t they just teleport away?” Irita asked.
“Two options,” Crawler answered. “Either the barrier is impenetrable in both directions, which means they can’t leave it. Or…”
“Or?”
“Or they’re getting ready to do something…”
I heard measured hammer strikes behind me. I turned, saw Gyula casting ‘repair’ on the temple. The structure’s durability had either reached or fallen to three percent—well, while the temple was active, all was not lost.
“Scvth, look!” Irita pulled at my sleeve.
The leaders of the alliance stood in a circle, leaning on each other’s shoulders. Hinterleaf remained in the center, crystal in hand. Suddenly he raised his second arm. A glass flask gleamed within it… He clenched his fist and a viscous liquid like melted gold flowed down his palm. The others pressed close to Hinterleaf, causing the substance to flow onto them too. A moment later, it had enveloped each of them. Then the group sculpture began to melt.
We stood and watched the process open-mouthed—none of us had ever seen anything like it. The barrier fell, and the liquid along with the melted preventers formed a ball around eight yards in diameter, which quickly transformed into the humanoid figure of a giant.
Conjoining of Souls, level 4597 Meld
Separation in: 10… 9…
A second into the existence of the Conjoining of Souls, events began to unfold at lightning speed. The giant, with a combined level of all the melded preventers, smashed through Monty’s chest with its gigantic fist and snapped his spine, then swept away my friends and allies with a single wave of its arm, sent me flying with a kick across the blackened crater and then rushed toward the temple. It took no damage from Reflection for the simple reason that it was immortal. It didn’t even have a health bar.
My health fell into the red zone, but I still flew back to try to stop the monster. The air rushed in my ears and the wind beat my face—I flew with all my strength to make it back, but there was no time…
Mere moments remained until Tiamat’s temple would fall. The scene to follow will go down as one of the most heroic deeds of Dis history. Two seconds remained until the Conjoining of Souls dispersed. The monster took five steps and it was at the temple, but then Gyula stepped out, fired off his crossbow, and… and hit, in spite of the massive level difference! I didn’t know what slowing or microstunning bolt the demon hunter had fired, but the Coiyoinmg of Souls stopped for half a second, then wasted another half a second to sweep away Gyula, and that decided the outcome. The giant failed to hit the temple.
The Conjoiriing of Souls fell apart, dissolving back into the ten preventers. The experienced fighters, still the best of the best, immediately spread out and ran at the temple, avoiding combat. They tried to break through, but now there were nine times fewer of them than us. To avoid killing the wiiole raid if I died, I left the group.
Sleepi7ig Vi7idicatio7i removed the remainder of the preventers’ shields and defensive artifacts, and from that moment we rained down our entire arsenal of abilities on them. Infect fired off slowing songs, making our enemies’ ears bleed. My Ghastly Howl forced them to run around in Fea7\ but not for long: all the preventers had amulets to remove control effects.
Thirty Yoruba soldiers attacked Hinterleaf at once, so I headed for the closest to me—Joshua, leader of the Children of Kratos. I punched his teeth into his throat, then heard the hopeless scream of Nergatosh the vampire ore nearby: “Noo-o-o-o!”
Bomber chuckled, and nothing more came from the fallen Warsong leader but a wheeze and bubbling blood. Our titan warrior had reached such heights that he could one-shot a top player.
Joshua survived a moment longer than Nergatosh, and had just enough time to throw a powerful bomb at the altar. It didn’t explode right away, and Bolo the minotaur from Yoruba managed to jump onto it, covering it with his body. Without the protection of Path of Sacrifice, the explosion obliterated Bolo into a bloody mist, but dropped the temple’s durability by only one percent.
Crawler successfully dealt with Vivian by surrounding her with a wall of flame. Joshua’s spouse screamed in despair, tried to break free, decided to jump over the fire, but died, burning to a crisp.
Yemi lit up the elf dragon fighter Glyph with brown flame as he fought one of the shaman’s dolls. The leader of the Azure Dragons held a swollen green orb in his hand and was trying to reach the temple with it. When he realized he wouldn’t make it, he threw the artifact at Yemi. The mage split into molecules and his doll familiar broke down to dust, but Glyph himself didn’t get any further. By then, Babangida the ogre had just finished thrashing the life out of Colonel and switched to the Azure Dragons leader; he waved his hammer and beat the dragon fighter down
