“HotCat! You’ve come!” She threw her hands around me, crying. Her tears, her trembling lips—none of that mattered as long as her eyes radiated life once again. I looked into them and crashed down, pulling her with me. I was saved only by the reflexes drummed into me while training with Liberty, luck, and the reflection of coming death in Weldy’s dilated pupils.
The scimitar that was supposed to behead us split the air instead, fanning us with a cold whiff. Somehow, Roahildorn had managed to get inside the shield with us and decided to attack. How had I missed her?
“Not so fast, Kitty!” the Steel Guard mercenary said, grinning. “Nobody’s dismissed you yet!”
I got on my feet and aimed my blade at her, preparing to strike her down with Fiery Lightning, but I quickly changed my mind. That was risky. Roa’s armor was glowing with magic. Maybe that was how she had reflected my lightning bolt back in the tavern.
We came together, and she had to race against the clock while dodging the blows of Aelmaris inside a small patch of land surrounded by a dome. Still, I didn’t land even one blow while she rewarded me with a painful jab in the shoulder. A quarter of health in the red, a trauma, bleeding... That’s what I got for missing an attack.
“Not bad, Kitty,” Roa dropped while swinging her weapon. “But that’s as far as it goes.”
She switched from defense to attack, trying to misdirect me with a series of feints that would force me to make a mistake and ultimately kill me. Roahildorn was definitely one of the top blade masters I had met. Still, even she couldn’t consider every circumstance. A chain slashed against her speedy blade, arresting its movements and wrapping around its hilt. Weldy! Out of the blue, she appeared right next to me, springing into action. You go, girl! Cursing, Roa abruptly wrested the chain from her hands, but the timing was already lost. I lunged at her, driving my sword right through her quivering body, and Roahildorn vanished in a flash of light, leaving only a pile of grey ashes.
“Good thinking!” I grabbed Weldy, who was breathing heavily, and pulled her along. “We need to get out of here!”
Around us, hell reigned. I didn’t know what it was that Ananizarte set into motion, but it was a dreadful sight. Fire and darkness: the pillar of flames had grown large enough to reach the ceiling of the hall, emanating waves of a crimson inferno that incinerated everything in their path with coiling tendrils of darkness wreathed above them. In less than a minute, the Shield of Shadows had lost almost a third of its strength. I couldn’t waste any more time.
Onward through the flames, past the gargoyles bursting into stone shrapnel! Faster! The corridor was full of succubi fighting against the arriving Pandas. The hemispheric shield moved with us, knocking them all down like toy soldiers.
Up the staircase, then left. A crowd of Pandorum warriors had put up a shield wall there, raining down magic and steel and immediately stripping us of ten percent of our defense. Fortunately, the surviving succubi broke out of the passage behind us, charging the Pandas, while I used their momentary confusion to crash right into the enemy ranks. The dome threw aside everyone in my path as if it were a tank.
The next room was empty. As I peeked out of it, I barely managed to hide. The clan hall was teeming with Pandas. More and more players kept logging in, appearing in the air every second. Atrocity turned into a frenzied anthill as fresh warriors of Pandorum ran down the stairs and passageways to meet the gleaming crimson fire raging in its depths. I had no idea what Ananizarte was doing, but the floor was still trembling beneath my feet, its vibration permeating the entire castle.
Even if the Shield held out, soon I would get an entire train of pursuers that would kill us as soon as we lost our defenses. I had to distract them somehow, and for that, I had prepared my surprise number three.
I touched the Tiara of Prince Consort and selected the Grand Summoning ability in the interface.
“Hang in there; it’s going to be a little scary,” I whispered in Weldy’s ear as she was shaking.
Scarlet lines of a pentagram flashed on the floor of the hall, and a seven-foot-tall demoness stepped out of the flames, equipped for battle. She looked terrifying, her large purple wings spread out around her, claws in their creases, with her flowing black hair, a serrated moon-shaped shield, and the spiked whip of the Succubus Queen. Unblinking scarlet eyes stared from under her ornate visor.
“You called us, and the Succubate came!” Mara growled in a guttural voice that sounded anything but feminine.
* * *
A day earlier
My room in Karn’s tavern was a great place to think, with nobody ever bothering me. Once again, I picked through my belongings, choosing only the best of presents. One couldn’t visit Pandas without gifts!
All right, then—a purple epic-level skillbook that had cost me almost a hundred thousand gold, a set of protective elixirs that included a carefully preserved mage’s gift, the Dragon Scale Potion...
I didn’t have a lot of time to think. I knew that inside Pandorum’s castle, my plan might easily go off-script. I had to prepare and milk my options for all they were worth.
The legendary Deity’s Proxy archetype, which was given to me by Tormis. An extremely rare thing! I hadn’t found anything about it on the Net except for murky speculations about proxy abilities being
