It was a barrier spell, one made by runes that ran along every side of the wall. It would prevent anything from passing through it, and her guess was that it had been placed here to keep them from surfacing near the bridge that led to the castle.
It was also a trap.
The barrier distorted the runes that were carved along the walls of the stone hallway, but she could still read them—she knew that much spellcraft, at least. They described a spell that would channel its energy outward if struck, a spell that would lash out with enough power to destroy them if they were foolish enough to try to force it.
“I’m going to force it!” Ashtoreth announced. “Everyone stand back.”
“Uh, are you sure that’s a good idea boss?” Dazel asked.
“Standard barrier, Dazel. We can disarm it delicately like a bunch of nerds—the boring kind—but that’ll take a half an hour. The first thing you gotta check with a spell like this is whether or not it’ll answer to a more…” She smiled. “Percussive solution.”
“Hold up,” Dazel said, leaping down from her back. “You sure that won’t just break it more?” he asked. “I mean, you didn’t read those runes for very long. Boss?”
She stepped back from the barrier and raised her sword. “Nobody stand behind me,” she said. “Usually when I do this, it breaks some bones.”
“Okay,” Dazel said. “Hold on a sec—no!”
Ashtoreth launched her sword at the barrier with her ordinary telekinesis, then dismissed it just before it struck. She put her hands on her hips and looked down at Dazel, who had cringed as soon as she’d thrown the weapon.
“Dazel,” she chided. “If you knew what the runes meant, you should’ve said so.”
He raised his head, looking from the barrier to Ashtoreth. “Oh.”
“Trying to hide your skill in spellcraft from me?” she asked. She jerked her head toward the symbols glowing along the seam of the barrier. "These are fiendish runes, Dazel. You might be a knowledge demon, but you’re not supposed to know anything about these. Now lower the barrier, if you please—you’ll get it done faster than I will.”
Dazel sighed. “Fine,” he said, padding over to a point where the barrier met the floor.
“I don’t get it,” Frost said. “What’s going on?”
“Oh, Dazel was hoping that I’d know how to disarm the barrier.”
“And you don’t?”
“Oh I do,” she said. “Despite my fighting style, I’ve got a classical fiendish education—I know my runes and enchantments.” She grinned. “I just wanted to know if he knew what they were.”
“I see,” Frost said, frowning.
The barrier vanished. “There you go, boss.”
“Oh. Wow,” she said, looking down at her familiar. “Dazel, that was fast. Were you a prison guard or something, once?”
“Can we just get a move on?” he said.
“Come on,” she said, heading for the stairway that they could now see further down the hallway. “Too bad we didn’t find another hive—I still need two levels.”
“So he’s trying to hide who he is from you?” Frost asked.
“Uh-huh!”
“And you don’t mind.”
She shrugged. “I’ll have to figure out whether to keep him around once the tutorial’s done,” she said. “But until then there’s not much he can do to interfere with us. Whatever he wants, he can’t get it if I’m dead. Hey Dazel, were you a prisoner?”
“I am a lowly demon who lives in the Pit of Sorrow.”
“Sure, whatever,” she said. “Maybe you did a jailbreak. Maybe you’re in the Pit of Sorrows laying low.”
They moved up the stairwell, emerging into a little valley surrounded by steep, lightly forested hills. She couldn’t see the citadel from where they stood, but the haze in the sky reflected a glow that she was sure must be the lava lake.
“Ashtoreth?” Frost said.
She looked over. He was staring at her with a peculiar expression. “Yeah?” she asked.
“You tricked Dazel,” he said.
“Yeah!” she said. She smiled. “It was pretty clever how I pretended I was going to kill us all, if you ask me.”
He continued to stare at her. “Are you hiding something from us?”
“No,” she said. “Sir Frost, why would you ask that?”
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“When we first met, I agreed to go with you because I figured you hadn’t lied to me since I first met you—even when it made you sound insane.”
“Yeah….”
Frost looked away, still frowning, then turned back to her. “What’s the plan, Ashtoreth? What happens when this tutorial is done?”
“I told you,” she said. “We go back to Earth and defend it with all the power we gain here.”
“And that’s the most you can tell me?”
Oh, she thought, realizing that Dazel must have told them something incriminating while she’d been fighting Gethernel’s minions.
But what was it?
“No,” she said. “I can talk for hours about the invasion, if you want. Hell will send its forces in progressively stronger waves as the system allows higher and higher level enemies to attack, but the first wave will still contain a lot of infernals like me—ones who were born to a generation raised for just this invasion.”
“Okay,” he said.
“What else can you tell us?” Hunter said.
She glared down at Dazel. He didn’t want her to be with the humans because they were slowing her down—he’d made that much clear enough. “You,” she accused. “What did you tell them?”
“What?” he asked, backing away. “I defended you! I said you were trustworthy!”
“Forget him,” Kylie said. “Tell us what you want. What will you do when you get to Earth?”
“Fight demons,” she said. “The strongest fighters will be given a chance to compete for a title that will grant them the power to block much of the invasion—something that can either stop or greatly subdue anyone’s ability to warp into Earth.”
“You didn’t tell us what that title is called,” Kylie said. “What is it? ‘Traffic demon’?”
“Well… it’s ‘Monarch,’ actually,” said Ashtoreth.
“Oh,” Kylie said acidly. “What do you know? You didn’t think that maybe you should mention that you want to be the Queen of Earth?”
“It doesn’t matter what it’s called,” Ashtoreth said, flicking her tail nervously. “It matters what it does! I’m trying to help you—I’ll stop almost all of the invasion, and I’ll kill anyone who challenges me for the Monarch title.”
“Even if they’re human?” Kylie asked.
“No, of course not!” Ashtoreth said. “Look, I was born to compete for this title.”
“Oh, so you deserve it, is that it?” Kylie rasped. “You want it, after all. Why shouldn’t it be yours?”
“No!” she said. “But I’ve got a better shot of getting it in the opening stages of the invasion than most humans. Especially when—”
She paused. She didn’t want to tell them about her plan—not yet. Soon….
“Especially what?” Frost asked.
“Other humans can compete for the title of Monarch,” she said. “If one of them is better than me, then I’ll lose it, or at least give it up.”
“Because you won’t have a choice,” Kylie said.
“Hold on,” Frost said. “But what did you mean when you said ‘especially when’, Ashtoreth? What’s going to give you a better shot than all the humans?”
She winced. She’d slipped up, and now there was no getting out of it. Besides, she’d have to tell them eventually—and they’d consider not being told now, in this conversation, as a deception. If even she hadn’t misspoken, she’d have to tell them.
“I was going to tell you,” she began. “But I knew you might not like it….”
“Oh, here it is,” said Kylie.
“Kylie,” Frost said. “You’re not helping.”
“We just gave her 8 levels,” she said. “And now we get to find out that she’s been hiding something?”
“Just let her explain herself,” said Frost. He turned to Ashtoreth. “What did you know we wouldn’t like, Ashtoreth?”
“The tutorial,” she said. “It’s in its own separate, compartmentalized time, right?”
“Yes,” he said slowly.
“Okay well, here’s the thing,” she said. “It would be nice to get back to Earth having beaten the hardest tutorial zone. We’ll have some of the best gear, highest levels, and most powerful abilities. But on a world of billions… those advantages aren’t going to assure us the kind of victory that we need.”
“It’s not good enough that we win?” Kylie said. “That’s what you’re saying?”
“Of course that’s what I’m saying,” said Ashtoreth. “On a scale of billions, random chance will still lead to people and infernals who are stronger than we are even if we have a good lead.”
“Go on,” said Frost.
“I didn’t tell you because I know all of this is overwhelming,” she said, speaking quietly, seriously. “But you see… well, how do I explain? The thing is… I stole something from my mother.”
Nearby, Dazel perked up, his tail curling in the air behind him as he peered at her. She thought of dismissing him, hiding this conversation from him… but decided against it. He’d find out eventually, and he’d be spending the year in here with all of them. Besides: there was really nothing he could do to interfere with her plans.
“I told you before that the system is an entity of order. It parcels power into discrete quantities. There’s a lot of theories as to why—preventing the power from decaying, warding off the entities of chaos… but the point is, the system is an entity. It has its own architecture. Its own desires. There’s… music that can make it move.”
“Ashtoreth,” Dazel said quietly. “What did you take?”
But she was looking at the humans. “What if I told you that I could keep us in this slice of frozen time for longer than a week?” she said to Frost. “If I could remove death by giving us the power to respawn whenever we were killed? If I could add new places, new monsters to fight and train against, but still gain loot and cores from?”
“Ashtoreth,” Dazel said, his voice rising. “Tell me that you don’t have what I think you do.”
“Hell will be limited in levels,” said Ashtoreth. “But there’s a lot of humans and wildlife on earth to farm to get more. I know you hate to hear it, but there will be… breakaway infernals. Enemies all over the world that humanity struggles to deal with. And more than that, their forward demiplanes will be guarded by the next wave of invaders, the higher-level infernals. Fighting the invasion off on Earth is near-impossible, but turning the tide of war and bringing the fight to their positions… it’s both necessary and utterly unheard of.”
“I’m not part of your demon-hunting hit squad,” said Kylie.
“How long, Ashtoreth?” Frost asked.
“We can return to Earth as demigods, compared to what we’ll be fighting,” she said. “We can sweep away their armies before a Monarch is ever named, warp to their demiplanes and eradicate their logistics network—”
“How long, Ashtoreth?”
She sighed. “I want to keep you all here for three hundred and sixty three days.”
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