A sphere of light collapsed inward and enveloped her sister, and a split-second later Set shot into the air above Ashtoreth, spreading her wings.

  Her skin was glowing, now: ripples of white light shone and fluctuated beneath it.

  Ashtoreth saw her and knew what had happened immediately. Set had empowered herself using a life harvest spell. It was the same sort of spell that the devil Gethernel had used back in the tutorial.

  She’d seen it more times since then, of course, both in Hell and on the Deadlight Shard. She’d even eaten a few of the spellcasters who knew how to make it happen. The rest of them had been fed to the other members of the team.

  She knew that even if Set had been in command of millions of soldiers that she could potentially sacrifice, there was only so much power that could be stably packed into a given boon for a given level.

  The ghost town outside also indicated that Set had already done the sacrificing part, clearly not interested in letting Ashtoreth interfere with her plans.

  So she’d stored the power, somewhere. In fact, from the looks of things, she’d killed everyone and then stored hundreds, perhaps thousands of uses of the spell in many different places.

  But how? Where could such energy be stored?

  “Oh,” Ashtoreth said, realizing what her sister had done.

  The rift-making mechanisms, that was where. Each of them was built to store and release the power that would create the massive rifts which moved troops between realms. With the right modifications, they could probably store and release the power of a mass-sacrifice spell in the same way.

  Set had likely composed some story about how her armies needed to teleport away from the plane, then had them step into modified rifts that, rather than teleporting them, had sacrificed them. A pretty horrific way to die, in Ashtoreth’s mind.

  It was technically possible, and even if Ashtoreth couldn’t quite figure out the specifics of how to get it done at that very moment, she was sure that Set must have.

  In fact, Set had likely gotten the whole thing ready, long, long before she knew that Ashtoreth had betrayed them. The whole setup was probably her plan for getting ahead during the invasion: a functionally infinite reservoir of boons that were so powerful she could easily fight her sisters with them.

  It all meant that Asthoreth couldn’t hope to outlast her sister’s superpowered state. It also meant that while dispelling the boon with her spellfire might give her a moment in which to finish the fight, that moment wouldn’t be permanent.

  And both dispelling and stealing the boon would be difficult, given its strength and her sister’s extremely high [Defense] and [Magic] stats.

  Set rose into the air above her, conjuring an array of many dozens of blades made of glowing white light. She raised one of the swords she held, pointing, and the spears launched toward Ashtoreth, each fast enough that it was nothing but a streak of light.

  Ashtoreth conjured her sword as soon as Set began moving, then took aim at her and launched it with a [Mighty Strike], sending the sword screaming through the air toward her sister and sending Ashtoreth backward toward the floor of the huge dome.

  A huge section of crystals shattered from the force of her impact as the water overtop of them was blown away from her. Her sword crashed into the dome above them, blasting through the tile to open a wide hole into the world outside.

  The sudden movement caused by her [Mighty Strike] had thrown herself out of the path of most of Set’s spears of light, which crashed down against the ground in front of her. Still, a few of them had turned fast enough to track her, and these cut into the skin of her arms as Ashtoreth recovered and leapt backward.

  She glanced down at the bloody gashes they’d left as her regeneration closed the wounds, scowling. Set’s magic had made her strong indeed.

  Set conjured another volley of spears as she continued to rise away from Ashtoreth, not engaging her in melee despite the fact that she was still holding two swords.

  It was smart of her, if unfortunate for Ashtoreth. She’d take advantage of her stats to hopefully kill Ashtoreth from a distance, fearful that in melee Ashtoreth would tear her to pieces despite her advantage.

  In fact, Ashtoreth was counting on it.

  The controls! she said to Dazel as another volley of spears came her way. She re-conjured her sword, but this time instead of launching it at Set she launched it backwards, shooting herself toward her sister and letting one of the spears pierce clean through her belly as she did so.

  Set’s eyes widened as Ashtoreth came toward her, and she dove out of the way, clearly anticipating some of king of surprise attack.

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  But Ashtoreth had expected this, and she rushed upward with her flight ability, beating her wings to bring herself through the hole she’d made in the massive dome and into the air above the main tower, another volley of spears crashing harmlessly into the stone tiles around the hole she’d made.

  Air rushed by her as the towers of the bastion stretched out below her, and she conjured her scythe as Set appeared rising out of the hole.

  Set threw another volley of spears at her, but Asthoreth spun her scythe and conjured an equal number of hellfire bursts to burn the spears from the air by using her spellfire to disenchant them.

  As she did so, she channeled more [Bloodfire] through the scythe, conjuring even more hellfire where she’d stricken the spears from the air to make it seem as if her vampiric flames had drawn far more mana from them than they actually had.

  She formed these tufts of hellfire into javelins that she launched at her sister a moment later, and Set created a barrier of light between herself and Ashtoreth’s attacks.

  The javelins struck the barrier, burning a few holes in it but failing to penetrate it.

  Ashtoreth scowled. Her sister’s stats were high indeed.

  Set put more distance between them and launched more conjured missiles, and again Ashtoreth struck them from the sky and made it seem as if she’d gained more [Bloodfire] from destroying them than she actually had.

  She needed Set to realize that the magic composing her light-missiles was being eaten, that Ashtoreth was converting it into power for her own Hellfire.

  Ashtoreth, as usual, had an insane amount of resources when considering her stored hearts. But if Set had converted an entire bastion’s soldiers into fuel for her life harvest spell, she’d have even more. In fact, it wouldn’t be close.

  And as their long-distance, aerial battle raged on, Set was more likely to grow daring… which would be bad for Ashtoreth.

  Ashtoreth needed to convince her sister that she would lose a battle of attrition. She needed to convince her that this was her final strategy: eat Set’s spells and conjure a massive firestorm.

  She surreptitiously ate a few stored hearts just to maintain the deception as they battled, pushing herself to the limit to smite her sister’s conjured light from the air. Set danced around her, faster than she was when it came to flying but unwilling to close the distance between them, launching spells of every shape and from every angle that she could imagine as she probed Ashtoreth for a weakness.

  But she found none.

  Then, as Ashtoreth circled back to fly over the roof of the dome at the top of the central tower, Set did what Ashtoreth had wanted her to do all along: she beat her wings and rushed toward Ashtoreth with both her swords.

  Her charge was almost too fast for Ashtoreth to evade, no doubt propelled by some as-yet-unused movement ability. Ashtoreth threw herself backward, both blades cutting gashes out of her chest and raking their way across her ribs as she landed atop the dome beneath them.

  Set rushed in a moment later, and Ashtoreth flipped away from her, conjuring her sword to meet Set’s twin blades.

  Set’s bladework was as good as it always had been, and her glowing blades whirled, pivoted, and thrusted to push Ashtoreth back across the surface of the dome. She was strong and fast, clever and precise; her knowledge of styles was comprehensive and her execution of all of them was flawless.

  But that had always been Set’s weakness: every one of her movements might as well have been written in a book. If you knew how she fought, she was all too predictable.

  Her incredible boost in power might have given her the upper hand if she’d been fighting the old Ashtoreth, the one she’d known yesterday.

  Instead she was fighting an Ashtoreth who had spent another year in constant combat, who had eaten hundreds of minds that knew all the techniques that Set fought with now.

  With minimal movements from her greatsword, Ashtoreth deflected the omnipresent crashing of Set’s two blades. Her [Mighty Blow], when blocked, dispelled one of Set’s swords because it delivered such a high amount of Ashtoreth’s magic-destroying hellfire.

  Their wings clashed, but Ashtoreth was better at maneuvering through such clashes even if Set was stronger. They each tried to surprise the other with sudden swipes from their claws, but Ashtoreth was too dangerous in extreme close quarters: strength would do nothing for Set if Ashtoreth could grab ahold of her, and she knew it.

  In the end, it was all about catching her sister by surprise.

  She launched her sword away from her with a [Mighty Strike], and an unsuspecting Set’s swords cut into her sides as Ashtoreth shot through her guard and bowled her over, slamming her to the ground.

  Set threw her off a split second later, and Ashtoreth tumbled across the surface of the dome, conjuring her cannon with one hand while she drove the claws of the other into the stone to halt her momentum.

  She didn’t slow her backslide completely, just enough that she could raise her cannon and take a quick aim at her sister.

  Set rose and spun to face her just as she fired a [Draining Round].

  The shot struck her sister in the chest, but instead of breaking a few ribs and launching her backward through the air, it enveloped her in with a second skin of dark energy that faded a moment later.

  It was the only real hit that she’d scored on her sister since her fight began, and she knew she needed to make it count.

  So she used [Theft of Boons] to steal her sister’s buff with her [Energy Drain].

  A sudden jolt of power ran through her, bringing her to her knees as she added a buff of more than 4000 to every stat.

  She’d been hoping to take the buff and finish the fight quickly, but fate had other plans: the momentary jolt that had dazed her had apparently given Set enough time to grant herself another buff, because her sister’s skin was glowing again when Ashtoreth rose to her feet.

  They stared at each other from across the dome, each of them glowing with power. Set’s eyes were wide with fear.

  Nice, said Dazel through telepathy. Gimme a sec.

  Don’t worry, Ashtoreth said. She rolled her shoulders and stretched her wings as she flashed her sister a wide, hungry grin. You’ve got time.