Come back, Ashtoreth.

  Ashtoreth swept her scythe through the air, harvesting the hearts of dozens of infernals who lay dead in the streets below her, her eyes fixed on the rift in the sky ahead.

  It was night here, but she didn’t know what that meant anymore, which continent she was one.

  You’ve been fighting almost non-stop for more than 30 hours, the voice said. I know you’re trained to deal with sleep deprivation… but you’re too vulnerable to continue.

  Huh? she asked. She honed in on the voice in on the voice in her head and realized that it was Frost. She knew, on some level, that she had to deal with him, make his voice go away.

  I’m closing rifts, she said.

  Stop, said Frost.

  I can’t, she answered. The rifts… she trailed away as she tried to think of what her answer was supposed to be. This was important.

  Ahead of her, a massive demon rounded the corner, tossing a car her way. She flew up out of its path and then burnt the demon’s head to ash with a hellfire javelin.

  Damnitall, Ashtoreth, get back here, said Frost. I can tell just through the telepathy that your brain is turning to mush. You’re exhausted. You can fight, but you can’t think. If your sisters are planning anything, you’re giving them their chance.

  She blinked again. Her sisters.

  They hadn’t found Apollo or Haddad after an entire day of fighting. Frost was right: her sisters were dangerous.

  Okay, she said, shaking her head to keep herself focused. Just one more.

  She closed the rift with a condensed bead of spell-eating hellfire, then began to warp back to their headquarters. Frost said a few more things as she warped, but she heard them only a background murmur. She was tired.

  She appeared in one of the circles back at headquarters, dismissed her scythe, then drank the [Bloodfire] it created.

  Frost was there, waving people back as he grabbed her hand and led her away.

  “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get you to bed.”

  “I needed to close some of the rifts,” she explained.

  “Come on. Let’s get you to bed.”

  But she stopped, looking back toward the room with the circles in it as she realized that somewhere, there were still cities full of humans that died by the second, cities where the rifts were open.

  The invasion was still happening.

  “The people,” she said. “I have to close—”

  “Ashtoreth.”

  She blinked and looked over at Frost. “Oh,” she said. “Okay.”

  He led her into a room with a cot. Dazel was already sleeping on the pillow. She stared down at him for a moment, feeling like something was wrong.

  “Go to sleep, Ashtoreth.”

  “Mm,” she said, lying down. Her sense of her body blurred into what felt like a fuzzy field of softness that fused with the cot below her, and she pulled Dazel close.

  Then something occurred to her. “My jammies,” she mumbled. “I didn’t put my jammies on,” she reached out a hand and formed a claw to adjust her glamour….

  * * *

  “Wake up.”

  She felt a paw prod her face.

  “Mmph,” she mumbled, turning. “How dare you disturb the slumber of a Prin—oh.”

  The world seemed to rush in and fill her thoughts. Earth, the invasion, everything.

  “Did you think you were still in Paradise?” said Dazel. “That’s adorable.”

  Ashtoreth sad up, rubbed her eyes, and stretched her wings. She yawned.

  “Frost wanted me to let you sleep for longer, but I said seven hours would be plenty. I figured you’d want to get up and get right back to it.”

  “Yeah, probably,” she said, looking longingly down at her pillow.

  The invasion was too important. She’d get a little pep in her once she ate a heart or two.

  Speaking of, she called out one of the low-level devil hearts she still had stored in her locket, then took a bite. “I feel like yesterday barely happened,” she said through a a mouthful of stringy, delicious muscle.

  “I don’t know how well you form memories when you’re exhausted,” said Dazel. “But I don’t think it’s very well.”

  She sighed. “You dipped early yesterday.”

  “I was awake for almost 30 hours, boss. That’s not early.”

  “So you woke up before me and have spent a few hours speaking with the human commanders,” Ashtoreth said.

  “You got it,” Dazel said.

  “Ugh,” she said, leaning her face into a palm. “Dazel, what am I going to do about you?”

  “Come on,” he said. “You don’t have anything to worry about from me.”

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  She shot him a look as she took another bite from her heart and munched on it.

  “I’m innocent!”

  “Baloney,” she said with her mouth full.

  “I meant that I was innocent of whatever you’re accusing me of,” he said. “Not generally.”

  Ashtoreth sighed and leaned against the wall.

  “The bossmen really like you,” he said. “Something that I’ll have you know I encouraged—not that it needed much encouraging after you spent almost two days wiping out bastions and saving cities single-handedly.”

  “Good,” she said. “How are the others? Everyone still safe?”

  “Frost is still here,” Dazel said. “Gotta keep his auras where it matters. The trap didn’t work to draw in any other offensives, though—just Yama. Because of that, we’re setting up other nexuses and we’ll probably move him and most of the personnel here to another, more hidden location soon.”

  “Good plan,” she said.

  “Hunter woke up and got right back to the killing again. Kylie’s doing a bunch of other stuff, now, though—she got a lot of the VIPs and they’re giving her orders.”

  Ashtoreth was looking out her window. The house had been conjured in what looked like a basement, somewhere, and she had a view of a bare wall with some pipes running along it.

  She’d spent more than thirty hours fighting.

  She’d fought faster than her boots could teleport her, and eventually they’d assigned humans with [Warp] aspects to teleport to her location and refill her boots for her.

  Dazel had bowed out earlier than she had, citing a need to get some sleep. Without him she’d just been sealing the rifts into the cities. The bastion could reopen them, of course, but that took time. The humans could use that time to secure their cities and form a defense in case the rifts opened yet again.

  As she’d predicted it would, the infernal capabilities had collapsed under the pressure of having things go against their expectations in too many places. It wasn’t just that they hadn’t attacked the human warp nexus, they hadn’t gathered themselves to react with any major strategic offenses.

  Those who weren’t being destroyed by Ashtoreth’s people had stuck to an invasion plan that was obviously no longer viable: seize human cities, form bases of operations all over the globe in the midst of the chaos, and snuff out any organized resistance where they found it.

  But the bastions that came closest to succeeding in their objectives were exactly the ones that Ashtoreth had targeted and wiped away in short order. The places where infernals gained a decisive upper hand and didn’t get a visit from her had gotten a visit from Hunter, instead.

  She stared at the bare concrete wall. They hadn’t found her other sisters. Apollo. Haddad.

  Dazel was still talking.

  “—she’s abrasive, but not willfully contrarian, not like when we met her. I basically told them that as long as Kylie gets to give a little sass, show a little attitude, she’ll work with… uh, boss?”

  “How dare you disturb the slumber of a Princess of Hell?” she whispered.

  “Boss? Look, if I woke you up too early, I’m sorry. I just figured—”

  “It’s fine,” Ashtoreth said. “You did great. I’m sorry I acted disappointed when I learned you’d been helping the humans.” She reached out and gave him some pets and scritches.

  “Uh, ahh, mmm, okay,” he said, eventually leaning into her hand.

  “I’ve got to go gather my thoughts, for a bit,” she said. “And finish my breakfast. Give me ten minutes and we can get back to it. I just… I really need ten minutes or so, okay?”

  “Uh… sure.”

  None of the staff bothered her as she found a stairwell and ascended through it to emerge outside.

  It was night outside. She rose high into the air and looked down at the city around her, then up at where the moon shone in the sky.

  She spent a few minutes just breathing, trying to sort through all the contents of her thoughts.

  Before long Frost floated up next to her.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  Ashtoreth smiled faintly. “I feel like I’ve been waiting forever just to stand in the light of that moon, right there,” she said. “But now that I’m here at last, I keep thinking of Hell. Of home.”

  “Even moving between towns is never easy,” he said. “I can’t imagine that hopping realms at the outset of a war is any better.”

  “Yesterday,” she began. “Or, well… I guess over the last two days, every bastion I destroyed I just kept thinking of Set.”

  “That’s another sister?”

  “The one I killed when I took the nexus bastion.”

  Frost nodded. “That’s perfectly understandable.”

  She stared up at the moon. “I want everything to be better than it is,” she said mournfully. “I wish… I don’t know. I just keep thinking that there has to have been some perfect set of words that I could have spoken to get her or Pluto to stop and think, to realize that they’ll never be happy if they stay slaves to our father’s will. The words would work on them like a spell, or a formula. The words would change them.”

  “I don’t know about that,” he said. “It’s hard, but sometimes you’ve got to wait for someone else to want to change before you can help them change. Sometimes they never do, and that’s what’s hardest of all.”

  “Maybe,” she said. Then she sighed. “Both of them told me that I was our father’s favorite, and they’re right. I always got away with too much, compared to the rest of them. I didn’t learn to be as afraid as they were. That’s why I’m here.”

  “I’m sure it’s not the only reason.”

  “I don’t know what I’m waiting for,” she said, still staring at the moon. “I need to get back to work.”

  “Wait,” Frost said as she began to float downward.

  She stopped and looked up at him.

  “I… look. I think I’m in the same spot you are. I want to say whatever will help you feel better, I do. I want you to feel welcome here, and be happy.”

  “Thanks, Sir Frost.”

  “But I also want humanity to survive,” he said. “If my partner had been forced to shoot her sister in the line of duty, I’d want her to have a lot of time off to help her deal with it. If she never wanted to put on the uniform again, I’d understand.”

  Ashtoreth blinked. “But you need me to keep going.”

  “Yes, Ashtoreth. I won’t lie to you. I can’t just think of your wellbeing and ignore Earth’s.”

  “After everything I did to you, how could I fault you for that?” she asked.

  “I…” Frost seemed to struggle. “Look. Promise me you’ll come talk to me about this again, all right?”

  “Sure thing.”

  “And if you need anything—if you want me to come with you, or you need a break, or a therapist or something… just let me know, all right?”

  Ashtoreth laughed. “Are you worried I’ll break, Sir Frost? Don’t be. I’ve done worse than—”

  But she stopped mid-sentence. Kill my sister.

  Frost’s face seemed to fill with sympathy. “Ashtoreth,” he began.

  But Dazel’s voice inside their minds interrupted them.

  We need both of you down here, right now.

  Frost frowned. What is it?

  An attack, Dazel said. But something’s wrong. They almost killed Hunter.

  Both of them flew down to re-enter the headquarters immediately, rushing down the stairs into the main floors.

  Is he all right? Frost asked.

  Sure, said Dazel. He got away fast enough, but—

  —But how? Ashtoreth asked. Hunter’s level 300 with gear on. He should be next-to-impossible for anything that Hell throws at us to hurt, let alone threaten.

  That’s the thing, said Dazel. They’re level 300, too.

  What? Frost asked. How is that possible?

  That’s not even the worst of it, said Dazel. Ashtoreth… they’re not from Hell.