Ashtoreth leapt back and conjured her sword as Conquest let out a howl of rage and rushed toward her.

  He’d underestimated her, and both of them knew it. Even when his arrows hadn’t outright killed her, she’d made it seem as if he’d had her on the ropes with just his bow, no horse included.

  If she were being honest with herself, he almost had.

  She had no doubt that he’d called for reinforcements when it became clear that she’d tricked him. She also had no doubt that she hadn’t yet seen how fast he could move, given her certainty that he’d deliberately slowed his earlier dodges of her cannonfire.

  This was all going to get very difficult and very ugly if she couldn’t kill Conquest, and fast.

  She’d killed his companion. He was down an entire aspect. He’d also chosen to engage her in melee, with his swords rather than his bow. If she’d ever get her shot, this was it.

  But she found herself doubting it could be possible even seconds after he rushed forward to engage with her.

  Even with her [Magic] and [Psyche] boosting the power she could wield her sword with, and even with two different overlapping buffs from her boss hearts to increase her speed further, she soon found herself struggling to hold her own against the horseman.

  He was faster than she was with his flight ability, and he was remarkably clever with his two glass blades. One of her most common advantages in melee, her counterforce fighting style, was something that Conquest seemed handily familiar with; her ability to drop her sword and then suddenly lurch forward or back to dodge or strike at him with her claws meant very little against his superior speed.

  She danced backward across the street, but though she moved her sword as fast as she could, his blades grazed her arms and chest over and over. Every time they touched her, she felt a surge of sacred damage ripple through her body, causing her a profoundly deep shock of agonizing pain.

  She was trained to ignore all sorts of pain, of course, but the pain of the soul was different. Each time she flinched against the angelic onslaught, Conquest sought to capitalize on her moment of distraction, so that even when she suffered the slightest nick of one of his blades, she had to fear that the follow-up strikes would end everything.

  Still, she wasn’t completely overmatched. Twice, she struck him with her [Mighty Blow], draining some of his [Dexterity] each time as she drew blood and send him sliding back across the street.

  Neither blow was dead-on, though, and each seemed to matter very little. His [Defense] and tolerance for damage was high, as already evidenced by the fact that he’d taken a [Mighty Strike] straight through the chest without dying. And unlike Set, his blades didn’t decay when they struck her greatsword and were afflicted with a little bit of her spell-devouring hellfire.

  She lost track of the seconds, focusing each moment on trying to land a killing strike or make room for a shot from her cannon while surviving his endless onslaught of blows.

  Then Frost’s voice sounded in her mind.

  Watch out!

  Ashtoreth didn’t stop to think. Instead she launched her sword away from her with a [Mighty Strike], the counterforce sending her up and away from it to crash into a nearby apartment complex, the concrete edifice splitting beneath her and sending clouds of dust gushing out into the air around her.

  A moment later she saw a massive slab of metal that glowed with a blood-red light sail down into the street, strike the place where she’d been standing, then detonate.

  A concussive wave of force pushed her back into the building where she’d been standing, but she knew that Conquest wouldn’t be idle as his ally joined the fray. She’d begun conjuring her scythe as soon as she could, and a moment later she created a burst of hellfire to strip the magic from his arrow as it sailed toward her, at the same time catching a flurry of red motion in the corner of her eye.

  Up! Frost said.

  She launched herself into the air to avoid the arrow, watching as a red blur passed beneath her like a comet, leaving a trail of blood-red flames and the sound of breaking glass in its wake.

  Then she felt the familiar inner warmth of Frost’s aura come over her, increasing her [Defense] and giving her a powerful protective shield.

  She whirled her scythe, conjuring a dozen hellfire javelins and launching them toward where she saw Conquest floating in the air and aiming her bow. The javelins were joined a moment later by a hailfire of blue bullets from Frost’s minigun, and Conquest launched himself into the air, moving away from them.

  The red horseman moved to float beside him a moment later. The rider was massive, a metal juggernaut covered completely in a red suit of plate that looked like it was an inch thick.

  Wait, Ashtoreth said.

  She rose through the air to a height that was just above the top of the building beneath her, joining Frost and Hunter and watching the two of them at a distance.

  We gotta pull out all the stops here, guys, she said in the telepathic bond.

  We’re working on it, Kylie said. Don’t die.

  It figured, Ashtoreth thought to herself. If Dazel had any familiarity with these people, he’d have known how strong they were. And he’d have gotten them working on the strongest possible contingency plan right away.

  They just needed time. The longer they could stare each other down, or trade taunts, the better.

  The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  For now, it seemed the two horsemen agreed with them.

  The horseman, still riding his horse, rose in the air to regard them. They and their horse’s tags read the same as the other’s had.

  {??? — Level 300 ???}

  But Ashtoreth knew exactly who she was looking at. There was no confusing the identity of the red rider.

  A deep, male voice boomed from inside his helmet.

  “I was proud of myself the first time I ever killed one of your ilk, child-spawn of Baphomet.”

  He reached up and removed his helmet, tossing it away where it burst into a tuft of blood-red fire. He was a bald, bronze-skinned man in his late middle age, his face formed of strong lines with a few faded wrinkles. Blood seemed to be dripping from beneath his eyes like tears, staining his cheeks.

  “But time has seen me repeat the deed so much that I shall scarcely celebrate your death.”

  Red fire gathered in his palm, swirling and condensing to form—

  “Uh, okay,” said Ashtoreth as she looked at a black metal replica of her sword, identical save for the cracks that ran its length and seethed with red inner light. She transfigured her scythe into her own massive blade, then gestured apologetically to it, hoping to get him talking more.

  As she spoke, she reached into the bag at her side, grabbing hearts and and consuming them to restore her almost-empty [Bloodfire].

  “So I guess one of us is going to have to change, and since I equipped first—”

  War charged.

  Conquest, both of you! Ashtoreth cried to Frost and Hunter as War shot toward her.

  Hunter and Frost were both capable fighters. What was more, they were good at fighting together and covering each other’s weak points.

  But if Conquest’s skills were any indication, the horsemen were phenomenal combatants, and Frost and Hunter both only had the stats of humans. She had her doubts that together they’d be able to take on a horseman with rider intact.

  As War sped toward her on horseback, she decided to employ the same strategy as she had with Conquest, launching her blade at his horse with a [Mighty Strike] that pushed her out of the path of his charge to slam into the nearby rooftop.

  In answer, he launched his own sword back, his own counterforce pushing himself and his horse cleanly out of the path of her strike.

  Her eyes widened as the blade streaked toward her, suddenly glowing red-hot. But she’d pushed herself against a solid surface for a reason, and she launched herself off the rooftop a moment before the sword impacted the place she’d been standing.

  The sword detonated, and Ashotreth was buffeted by the concussive force of the explosion as the blood-red flames seared her skin and wings.

  She regenerated her burns in short order, noticing that it took a higher-than-usual amount of [Bloodfire] to do so as she formed her cannon and took aim at the riderless red horse speeding away from her.

  She fired, watching her shot streak through the air to strike the armored horse through the belly and sending it tumbling away on its trajectory. In the same moment, she saw War land on the roof of the building below her with a massive assault rifle forming in his hands.

  In fact, she recognized the assault rifle in his hands. It wasn’t exactly the same, but it’s incredibly square, brushed steel action and thick steel barrel were strongly reminiscent of the HRH 7AS14 Legion assault rifle.

  Had Hell’s masters simply stolen all their weapon designs from Heaven?

  There were differences between her greatsword and war’s, but they were slight differences in thickness and overall size, differences that weighted the blade to its wielder’s preference. The simplistic design, with a blade running from the point all along the front of the entire sword and the hilt continuous and flush with the blade’s spine, was the same.

  She lunged toward him, dismissing her cannon to form her sword as he brought his weapon up to aim at her.

  The barrel flared, and Ashtoreth spun in the air as she dove toward him, tilting and moving her wings and tail to cut the air in a way that made her approaching flight path erratic. Still, War’s aim was impeccable; his gun let out three sharp reports as red fire flared from its muzzle, and while two of the shots simply tore holes in her wings, one burst through her shoulder, shattering the wing there and disabling her arm.

  She struck the ground in front of him, dropping her sword and gently pushing it to help her roll past him and come to her feet, slashing at his armor with a clawed hand and doing little more than apply her [Energy Drain] to lower his [Strength].

  He drove the butt of his weapon backward, then pivoted in place and maneuvered the gun through a precise series of melee attacks. Despite his massive weight, he was surprisingly quick, and she found herself weaving to avoid his weapon as often as she lashed out with her claws.

  After a few moments, War let out what might have been a grunt of approval before dismissing his weapon and coalescing his greatsword once more, an action that earned him a few more attacks from Ashtoreth’s claws and a few more applications of [Energy Drain].

  The building shook and creaked beneath them, its roof already unstable from the explosion of his first launched sword.

  The War finished forming his sword, Ashtoreth called her own to her hands, and their fight began in earnest.

  It took her only a few seconds to see that she was handily outmatched.

  It wasn’t just his skill with the blade, it was how he had built compared to her.

  She could eat buffs, and wear down opponents who were strong enough to take multiple hits.

  Thus, the best builds for fighting her were those that didn’t rely on magic and handled her attacks by evading and preventing them rather than tanking and regenerating from them, were fast enough to keep up with her, and had decent dispels of their own.

  The more classic fighter types, whether [Dexterity] or [Strength]-based, were her real weakness because they didn’t have buffs for her to strip away or cast spells that she could eat.

  In normal circumstances, this was great news for Ashtoreth: she was more skilled in blade to blade combat than anyone she’d expected to encounter, especially in the first stages of the invasion.

  War changed all of that.

  Conquest had been impressive with his dual blades, but War was an artist with his greatsword. She did little more than struggle to survive against his incredibly precise, extraordinarily powerful blows, at one time even pushing herself away from her own sword just to take herself out of the path of his.

  But her hope really died when, after she dove past him to reclaim her sword from its place on the ground, he let out a booming laugh and she watched her [Theft of Power] buff disappear.

  Somehow, he had a way to clear her [Energy Drain].

  His aspects were [Armament], [Companion], and by her guess either [Might] or [Protection], unless he could somehow have both.

  Past him, she saw a blur of red streaking toward them. His horse was returning. Her heart sank.

  Truly, War was a match made for her in Heaven.