War launched his sword at her a split-second after she saw his charging horse, and though Ashtoreth managed to twist herself to one side and raise her own blade at an angle to deflect the oncoming weapon, she was still knocked bodily backwards as it connected with her blade and detonated, burning her skin and peppering her arms with shrapnel as the air around her was filled with crimson flame.

  She rolled across the cracked roof of the apartment complex, trying to visualize the position of the horse she’d seen charging in her mind’s eye. She kicked herself up off the cracked tile, using her flight to carry her into the air at an awkward angle so that she could bring her sword around and launch it toward where she hoped War’s horse would be with a [Mighty Strike].

  The flames in the air around her cleared just in time for her to see her sword lance through the air to smash into the horse’s armor, knocking the companion backward as her sword burst into a plume of violet flame.

  She was conjuring her cannon as soon as the sword burst, pulling herself down toward the rooftop as she saw War’s assault rifle forming in his hands. He had to only have two ranks of [Armament Speed], however, as her cannon formed a split-second before his assault rifle.

  For an instant, both of them were aiming at one another down the barrel of their firearms.

  Ashtoreth shot first, but in her desperation to fire before he did, she misaimed: her shot tore through War’s abdomen, sending the massive horseman sliding back across the rooftop.

  Then she stared, her eyes widening, as War remained perfectly steady, seeming for all the world as if he hadn’t noticed the fact that he’d been pierced through by one of her strongest attacks.

  She didn’t wait another split-second to fire again, and it was a good thing; a moment later, as she dispersed her cannon and launched herself backward off the rooftop, the first of War’s shots streaked through the air where her head had been.

  She formed her scythe as she passed over the edge of the tower, replenishing the [Bloodfire] she’d lost to regeneration and her [Mighty Strike] through use of the weapon’s [Bloodfire Well], then diving in through one of the broken windows at the top of the building.

  She converted her scythe into her sword as she flew, smashing through the wood and drywall in her way to bring herself to a point below War. At the same time, she conjured a dozen hellfire javelins, readying them in the air around her.

  But despite her attempt to fly behind cover, War had no issue tracking her with the burst of fire from his assault rifle, and she felt his bullets tear through her wings, one of her thighs, and then her abdomen, each of them carrying the soul-searing pain of sacred damage even if she her absurdly high [Defense] mitigated much of the harm they did.

  She howled in pain as she smashed through a wall and then sent all her javelins into the ceiling just below where she knew War stood. Her hellfire spells didn’t create explosive force, but it didn’t matter; at her level, the heat from that many javelins broke down the structural integrity of the building around her into flash, turning wood to ash, steel to molten slag, and concrete to dust.

  War crashed through the ceiling, a burst of crimson flames marking his position within a cloud of violet hellfire, just as she finished conjuring her sword.

  She struck forward with a [Mighty Blow] as he fell through the air… and watched as he brought his two vambraces together to block the strike, the force of her attack knocking him backward through a nearby wall.

  Again, she stared at him for an disbelieving instant as dust and rubble fell around them and her flames spread through the building. He’d predicted her strike and blocked it perfectly while falling through the air.

  Was this how her sisters felt when they fought her?

  War rushed toward her, his sword forming in his hands, and for another few seconds she fought him, woefully outclassed despite her extremely high stats.

  Ashtoreth had always been the best. In melee combat especially, she’d been unstoppable. Only Apollo had ever come close to her skill level.

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  And she’d known, of course, that in a cosmos filled with uncountable beings, some of them more ancient than she could conceive of, there had to be creatures who could outclass her.

  But it was one thing to understand that truth on a theoretical level, and another thing entirely to encounter the better fighter in the field. War’s skill with the blade was sublime. She would have stopped to admire it if she could have.

  She hissed, striking out at him with all her strength, all her speed, the finest bladework that she could muster. A few glancing blows against his armor was all she gained for it as their whirling, clashing blades demolished the building around them so that they were fighting in a sunlit cloud of dust.

  All the while, she kept her senses open, trying to detect his horse as it came in for another charge.

  But after a few seconds of fighting, she realized it wasn’t coming for her.

  Which meant it was coming for Frost and Hunter.

  Ashtoreth snarled, suddenly launching her blade at War with another [Mighty Strike]. He blocked the shot easily, but the counterforce sent her back, through several remaining segments of the building and out into the sky above the city, where she dove down toward the place where her allies fought Conquest, conjuring her cannon as she flew.

  True to her intent, Hunter and Frost were both handling Conquest near the pool of hellfire that she’d made by killing his white horse. This meant they’d been fighting with the benefits of auras, which granted a huge amount of stats.

  And sure enough, as she sped straight downward to where Frost stood near her pool of hellfire, running along the street with his own conjured assault rifle trained on where Conquest stood in the air above him, Ashtoreth saw a red blur approaching him from behind.

  She snarled, bringing the muzzle of her cannon around and taking a shot at the approaching red blur, striking the horse somewhere in the flank and sending it crashing into a building at street level.

  Then she twisted in the air toward the tower she’d just left, dispersing her cannon to begin forming her greatsword once more.

  She saw War’s own sword just a moment too late: a red blur streaking through the air towards her, trailing dust from where it had blasted through the walls and floors of the apartment complex in its way.

  She tried to throw herself out of its way, but she had no counterforce to aide her because her sword hadn’t finished conjuring yet.

  Fortunately, she’d re-entered Frost’s aura as she’d sped over more than a city block to reach him, and a flare of blue light kept War’s sword from shearing her almost completely in half. The blade exploded a moment later, sending her spinning toward the ground but still leaving her completely unharmed.

  The force of the explosion sent her downward into her pool of hellfire, where she finished conjuring her blade as she landed not twenty meters from where Frost was aiming up at Conquest.

  But the other horseman wasn’t raining arrows down on him, not anymore. He’d risen through the air to float high above them, out of the effective range of Frost’s rifle.

  Ashtoreth’s gaze darted to take in War and his horse, but both of them were also rising up above the city, moving to join Conquest.

  What’s wrong? Hunter asked, hidden somewhere in a nearby building. What are they waiting for?

  They know I can’t fly fast, Frost said. So they’d rather fight in the air.

  Or reinforcements, said Ashtoreth. She conjured her cannon, then began to conjure rounds as she reached one hand into her bag to consume some hearts. Dazel?

  The more time you give us, the better, he answered.

  “Child-spawn of Baphomet!” War boomed down, his voice echoing out across the city. Evidently time was something the horsemen wanted to wait for, too. “You fight better than I expected!”

  Ashtoreth looked up at him, her heart thundering in her ears. It was the second time he’d insulted her by saying her mother’s name, and she was angry enough that she could play along.

  “War!” she screamed, seeming to feel blood rushing to her face, her eyes hot as her voice echoed off the buildings around them. Near her, Frost looked over with apparent concern.

  “How dare you address me as if I am no more than my mother’s child?!” she shouted. “I am the daughter of the Lightbringer, and I will rip your heart from your chest and eat you before your soul has time to leave your body!”

  War laughed. “I gave you your chance, Princess. You made the best of it you could, but it is gone now. You will not get another.”

  He spread his arms, floating down into the saddle of his horse. “You fought us three to two, here. Now it is only fair that we fight you four to three. Don’t you agree, Your Highness?”

  Nearby, Frost cursed.

  The air above their opponents flashed in two seemingly random places, each flash emitting a new horsemen who flew down to join War and Conquest, so that soon they were looking up at all four of them.