Morax Tol hissed, then lunged toward her to unleash a flurry of incredibly fast blows.

Apparently she'd offended him.

Ashtoreth threw herself backward, avoiding the claws that came at her from both sides. She and Morax Tol both knew that while he might not be able to deal a physical blow strong enough to kill her outright, the fight would be over as soon as he got a hold of her or managed to pin her down.

Fortunately, she was small, and strong, and could combine her bodily movements, flight ability, and counterforce telekinesis to move in a wily way indeed. Whatever spell of protection that Morax Tol had likely infused into his glittering armor made actually fighting him a futile endeavor, and so Ashtoreth focused only on defense.

His claws rent the steel where she'd been standing over and over again, and she found herself whirling over and under his tail, launching herself out of the way of his snapping jaws, and forming her claws to haul herself across the ground with incredible speed.

It was fair for him to assume that she might be physically weak, given what powers she'd shown already… but after a few moments of fighting, it must have become clear that he'd didn't have her on the backfoot like he'd wanted. He'd have to fight her in melee for a good while before he'd be lucky enough to pin her down and destroy her.

And so he flared his wings, pulled himself back through the air at the top of the palace, and began to gather another orb of white power between his claws.

Ashtorth squinted at him, then made a decision.

There was no especial danger to the moment at hand. Sure, Morax Tol was an enraged dragon doing everything he could to destroy her, but that was part and parcel of any plan to fight someone to the death.

Frost was on his way. In Ashtoreth's judgement, the momentary distraction that Omega Team could provide would all but ensure he reached her before Morax Tol could roll out his next bombastic super-spell.

She'd intended to trigger their surprise as a way of interfering with anything he did that threatened her life, but apparently she was running ahead of schedule.

Which meant it was time to pull trigger.

Hit it, Sir Gao! she cried.

I read you, came the general's answer, so calmly stated that he almost sounded disinterested.

For a brief moment, there was no sign that anything had happened.

Then the ground lurched beneath them, wavering as it was rocked by a blast from deep within the pyramid.

The platform continued to shake as the first boom was followed by many, many more.

Morax Tol cocked his head at her, dismissed his spell, then made a gesture toward one of the remaining five towers.

But nothing happened. Omega Team had fulfilled its objective.

The sound of both nearby and distant explosions continued to fill the air.

The various armies of Earth had apparently unanimously seen the value in stealthy teleporters. Ashtoreth knew because they'd produced an extraordinary number of them, even compared to the oracle-type champions they'd been building.

And she could hardly blame them. It was teleportation, after all.

With the right guidance, they'd assembled what Hunter had very fondly referred to as a brigade of dark templar. The reference was only halfway accurate: for one thing, only Zeratul could teleport, and only in the second game. For another thing, the humans had given them all tons and tons of explosives.

Quite literally. Ashtoreth could imagine the glimmer that must have appeared in the minds of human commanders when they realized that the various extradimensional space magic items meant that their [Warp]-enabled soldiers could carry many times their body weight in explosive charges.

Omega Team had been nothing but stealthy fighters who, guided by the schematics that the Eldunari Alliance had provided them with, had moved forward as quickly as they possibly could and placed focused charges at select points within the Promenade's understory—the area of the dragon's realm that was devoted to housing slaves and moving resources.

Hunter had been given the hardest job: he'd taken Kylie all the way to the palace, stopping for nobody and nothing. While they'd been sure that some defense or another would eventually spot their stealthy sappers, that would still leave Morax Tol's forces the task of actually stopping them, which was a much more difficult thing to do in the midst of an attack on every front.

It had been the most obvious weakness in Morax Tol's defensive arrangement: one long, defense-studded pathway up to an even more fortified palace. Draconic megalomania compelled him to extend his magical grasp across the whole of his realm, but enchantments functioned much like circuitry: even a small amount of harm to the physical components that made them up—a broken circle, a smudged rune, a crystal out of place—and the whole of the system would fail.

And because their explosives were entirely non-magical, Morax Tol's defenses were unlikely to detect or interfere with them, even if he spotted their sappers. He'd likely learned of Omega Team… but had no idea what they were setting up, not when Ashtoreth was distracting him from taking a closer look.

Plumes of smoke and flames rose from the sides of the Promenade stretching away below them. The ground continued to shake, and Ashtoreth could see more missiles beginning to connect with the towers in the distance.

Morax Tol snarled, the sound laced with more fury than she'd heard from him so far. He snapped at her with his jaws, but she leapt out of the way, then dismissed her Wanderschloss and conjured her scythe-cannon, Wanderstein.

Then, as Morax Tol spared a glance back down at the Promenade as it continued to shake with explosions, she pivoted in place, leapt into the air, and aimed her weapon at the top of one of the remaining five crystal towers, then fired.

The glowing crystal shattered as her armor-piercing round tore through it, breaking it into fragments and then igniting the loose mana that bled from each crystal shard as they were sent flying through the air.

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She'd been right in her assumption: whatever Hunter and the rest of the humans were breaking right now, it had formed a part of the towers' automatic defenses.

Morax Tol rose into the air below her, but he couldn't catch her—at least not in time to stop her.

She pivoted quickly, loosing another round at the next tower, then repeated the process twice more to empty her magazine.

On her fourth shot, he spoke a guttural command, and a translucent white orb appeared around the tower, one much like ones she'd seen on the Promenade.

She converted her cannon-scythe to hellfire, which she then formed into her sword-scythe. Below her, Morax Tol dropped to the ground below and began to conjure another pillar of light.

Ashtoreth, who had been lining up a [Mighty Strike] with her weapon, instead launched it off and to one side to avoid the massive, surging pillar of light, skidding to a halt on the surface of the palace and letting out a sigh as she pulled one of the remaining hearts out of her locket and consumed it.

Another explosion rocked the palace beneath them.

She raised a cupped hand to her mouth. "Check it out, lizard wizard!" she cried. "It turns out humans are like, super good at breaking stuff!"

Morax Tol let out a humorless laugh as he raised both claws to begin gathering a sphere of white light before him. "Brat," he spat. "Silly child; if your father wanted my realm, he might have sent a more forthright spawnling, not some game piece who cannot even see her strings." He voice rose, trembling with anger. "And if I am offended, it is not by you, whelp, but by him."

Ashtoreth rolled her eyes as she conjured her sword and eyed the orb of power. "I'm not a whelp," she said. "I'm Loadsaclocks."

She tried to time her attack well, waiting for the ever-so-slightly noticeable shift in his posture that indicated his spell was finishing. Then she launched her blade with a [Mighty Strike], not trying to dispel the magic with her flames this time but rather simply trying to knock one of his claws enough to make him mis-cast, or at least miss.

At the same time, the counterforce from the strike sent her flying backward, out and into the air around the pyramid—and hopefully out of range of his spell.

But her weapon struck a barrier that appeared before the dragon, then was seemingly snuffed out of the air, vanishing into a few white wisps without a trace the usual hellfire.

She used her [Power Tap] to surge her [Defense] as she sped away from the pyramid, certain that in the face of uncertainty, she needed to keep herself safe.

Morax Tol completed his spell. Lightning lashed out from his claws, chaining to the nearest of the remaining two towers, then to its neighbor, then finally to Ashtoreth.

The world flared white, and again she felt a strange ringing through her entire body, a feeling she'd never felt before in all her training in Hell.

It worried her. What was Morax Tol doing?

Ahead of her, the dragon roared. "Spawnling!" he cried. "Know that when I am finished with you I will pull your mind apart thought by thought to learn how you so easily shrug off the holy powers!"

Ashtoreth stared at him and had a moment sudden understanding as she moved back toward the top of the pyramid. "Ohhh," she said slowly. "That's sacred damage?" She let out a laugh. She hadn't realized it because it was normally blue. "That's what that feels like? It's not even as bad as burning alive!"

I got the first tower he chained to, said Dazel. Gimme a sec.

He truly meant just a second: a moment later, the middle of the tower was blown out, and the whole structure fell inward toward the top of the palace. Ashtoreth grinned. Dazel had even been considerate enough to make sure most of the crystal fragments would land within reach of her.

Great! she said. And not to get greedy, but could you put 'deal with the dragon's flawless invincibility' on the docket as well? I don't really want to rely on just Kylie…

He's abjuring, said Dazel. Negating every attack you make with protective magic. It isn't just high [Defense].

Coulda figured, said Ashtoreth.

There's something else, though, said Dazel. Something strange about it. It's part of his setup… but I don't know how it's working.

Uh-huh, said Ashtoreth. Great. She reached further with her telepathy, speaking to Hunter and Kylie. Keep breaking things! she said. He might be protecting himself with something important down there.

I need to stay close to the top of the pyramid, said Hunter. It's you and the soldiers, Kylie.

Sure, said Kylie. Me and the mana batteries. We'll keep an eye out for a giant portrait of a dragon that takes damage instead of Tollmax, or whatever.

Why Kylie, Dazel said, sounding uncharacteristically pleased. Was that a literary ref—

But at that very moment, Morax Tol's gaze flicked toward Dazel, catching him as he surreptitiously swooped through the air toward the last intact crystal tower. A split-second later, the dragon flicked his tail and a sent an arc of lightning through the air between them, bursting Dazel into a small puff of ether.

Gosh darnit, Ashtoreth thought. Dazel was so absurdly useful that it was easy to forget he basically had a constitution of… a fifth or so.

This whole fight would go so, so much easier if one of his contingencies was 'swarm her with numerous minions to distract and overwhelm her, she thought.

But no; dragons did not like building up enough underlings that treachery became a risk. Morax Tol's plan was to stay atop his pyramid and throw long-range, massively powerful kill spells while protected by his invincibility.

If Dazel wasn't going to be her backup, she'd have to resort to something less subtle.

She landed at the edge of the pyramid's top. The scattered fragments of broken crystal were everywhere, now, and all of them leaked enough mana that they burned with purple flames that rose high and gave off an intense, furnace heat.

She was going need them. She only had four hearts left in her locket, and they weren't potent ones.

Morax Tol reared before her, his black armor glittering as his jaw began to glow with inner fire.

Ashtoreth swiped her sword through the air, filling her [Bloodfire Pool] by absorbing a sizeable fraction of the hellfire burning around her.

Then she conjured a novaheart in the air before her, stowed it in her gauntlet, and began to charge it.

It would be Morax Tol's abjuration and dispel resistance against her… really, really big boom.

He planted both claws and stretched his neck forward, unleashing a massive cone of white fire.

In the same moment, an armored figure thudded to the ground next to her.

Frost had arrived.

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