I gave him the command to step on Mogwai, to keep him trapped beneath his mighty foot. I remembered perfectly well how helpless I was under the dinosaur’s foot in my own time as a legate, and now I needed a few seconds to get out of range of their block. Realizing that I was planning to flee, Eileen threw an energy net at me.
I tore through it with ease, took off into the air, dove at the elf girl, grabbed her around the waist and shot into the sky, dodging between the collapsing walls. Eileen twisted, tore from my grip and cut my face with her blades of Innoruuk, as if growing from her hands. Flying into a rage, I freed my right arm and it back for Hammerfist: Reaper’s Scythes could smell blood, the blade flexed, stretching toward its foe…
But the top of a wall fell down on us with a crash. Feeling the debris dragging me downward and the power of my Flight failing to keep up the many tons of weight, I dropped Eileen and got to work tearing the stone blocks apart with Hammerfist.
One strike, two, and a stone block exploded. Sharp shards scratched my skin, but I paid no attention. Another strike and a second stone block shattered.
I summoned Storm and she flew beneath me like a nightmare shadow, positioning herself so that I landed right in the saddle. Iggy appeared next to us and chittered. Below, the ancient dinosaur crushed the druid’s Resilience mana shield and ran into Equanimity. In a cloud of rising dust, stone shards and debris, I saw the crushed Mogwai attacking the Montosaurus: mighty living roots burst out of the ground and started leaking plague essence. They quickly grew, wove around the dinosaur, reached his neck and strangled him, then pulled downwards. The Montosaurus tried to resist, but soon swayed and began to slowly fall, unable to withstand the druid’s plague-enhanced spell.
Rising up on the dragon, I saw the Depths Teleportation icon turn active and pressed it right away. The next moments happened within the two-second cast. Roaring in anguish, Monty fell on his side; Iggy, sent to deal with Eileen, emitted a Deadly Chirp, threw out pack of parasitic larvae and struck the elf girl with Binding Toxin; Mogwai crawled out from beneath the dinosaur dragging his torn-off legs, found me with his eyes and attacked without hesitation. The beam of Moonlight interrupted my cast an instant before I jumped to Kharinza. I prepared for battle, but a second later Sharkon appeared out of nowhere and buried the druid beneath himself. Eileen, slightly beaten up by the fall, was frozen from Iggy’s stun with one leg raised, arms overhead and face twisted in fury.
We rose higher and I examined the several black craters in the grounds of the castle, which was now reduced to heaps of rubble. And not a single sentient in sight, not counting Mogwai and Eileen. It seemed that initially only they and some third person were there. Probably a legate, maybe Criterror. After regaining her former territory from the goblins and freeing Mogwai, Eileen stayed behind with him to ambush me while the other legate left the location so that Mogwai didn’t lose Immortality.
Leaving Storm, I shot up to about half a mile high to ensure that nobody would stop me from leaving; I recalled my pets before Mogwai could kill them, and activated teleportation…
In my peripheral vision, I saw colossal scaly hands materialize in the air around me:
Innoruuk’s Punishing Hands
The divine hands, black with veins, clenched around me, sending unbearable piercing pain through my body from head to toe. Easily overcoming the resistance of Resilience, this hitherto unknown New God nearly killed me. Only Diamond Skin kept me alive, freezing my health bar an instant before it hit zero.
When the hands parted and disappeared, the god’s voice shook the castle ruins:
“He is yours, my courtesan!”
Innoruuk returned me, a broken and bleeding ball, to the ground. The god’s help seemed to end there, and he disappeared. My eyes were filled with blood, but I saw the interface: the cooldown to summon my pets wasn’t over yet, so I was left alone against two. Motionless and helpless — Innoruuk’s grip had sealed me into something like a cocoon, blocking my abilities. I tried to take off, failed. The minute-long timer of the Innoruuk’s Punishment debuff exceeded the time left on Diamond Skin.
Everything had turned against me. Feverishly calculating my options, I came to one final conclusion: I would die as soon as my invulnerability ended.
No doubt Mogwai, still in panther form, and Eileen thought along the same lines. Also extremely battered, they approached, exchanged glances. The druid nodded to the elf girl and both set about weakening me however they could: Entwining Roots, Confusion, all kinds of damage-over-time spells… Eileen summoned a manticore a little smaller than Sharkon; seeing this, Mogwai summoned a hydra. Neither pet was particularly high-level, but they were just there to make sure I didn’t get away.
The cocoon from Innoruuk’s Punishment fell from me like an old snakeskin. A strike from a powerful clawed paw imbued with plague energy crashed down on my chest, smashing my heart and eliminating any chance I had of surviving. Mogwai roared with glee:
“I expel you from…”
“He’s mine!” Eileen wailed, interrupting him.
You are dead.
Remaining time to respawn 9… 8… 7…
I saw in monochrome, and only where Scyth’s gaze happened to be pointing before death. Something swept the panther off my body. Three lines flashed in the logs,
