Kylie's [Runic Warp] dumped them in the middle of the air at the far outer edge of the bastion, just far enough into the circular metal superstructure that they were near the rift generators while still being as distant as possible from the central tower and the command crew.

We're in, Ashtoreth told Dazel.

"There!" she said, pointing at the nearest of the tall, two-pronged rift generators and then diving toward it. She'd already told them the nitty-gritty of what they'd likely be doing once they arrived, and the rift tower was at the center of all of it.

Just moments after they appeared, she saw small specks moving after them through the air: defenders.

It will mostly be flyers in the first minute, she'd told the humans when they were back at the house. But remember, these aren't the infernals who were created for this specific invasion. At this level, these will the guys who have already got an invasion or two under their belt. These guys are serious.

"Watch for teleports!" she said as she conjured several volleys of hellfire javelins and then launched them down toward specified points on the scaffold below.

Her spellfire meant that she could destroy, or temporarily disable some of the enchantments that kept the bastion a functioning machine. It would take a lot of shots to get anywhere, though. The bastions were built with many redundancies, and more than a few of the systems she wanted to target would be safely sequestered in the scaffolding below.

There probably won't be an army assembled outside the first rift tower, she'd told them. But don't let that fool you. Almost every nearby building will be a barracks filled with troops—we just need a way to kick the hornet's nest.

"That one?" Frost asked loudly as they passed over a rectangular building in the shadow of the two-pronged tower.

"Do it!" Ashtoreth said.

A moment later, she heard the loud buzzing of his minigun behind her and saw a line of blue-white bullets streak through the air to the building below. The barracks was only made of metal, and the high-level bullets from the minigun easily cut through the roof of the barracks to rip through anything beneath for at least several floors.

Ashtoreth spared his attack only a moment's glance. Ahead of them and to either side, she could see diabolic soldiers gathering, but keeping themselves at a range of several hundred meters. Waiting.

"Teleports inc!" she said.

She conjured and kept a volley of hellfire javelins as Hunter wreathed his blades in dark fire and drew closer to Kylie, who summoned a set of homing orbs of death energy.

A moment later the enemy appeared all around them: dozens of winged devils with long pikes and plates of polished lamellar armor that seemed to reflect the world around them with an extra sheen.

{Diabolic Starknight — Level 382}

All of them charged or launched spells in the same moment. It was meant to be an overwhelming attack, but it failed within the first second.

First, Hunter grabbed Kylie and teleported them out of the way immediately. Second, Ashtoreth didn't send her javelins after the devils, but rather launched them into the path of the spells they launched, burning them from the air.

That left their melee attackers who were plunging toward her and Frost as their only effective offensive. Two of them were stricken out of the air by twin lashes of shadowflame that Hunter had conjured onto the ends of his katanas, and the rest of them simply missed; Ashtoreth and Frost both knew exactly how the typical diabolic soldier moved.

A moment later and their concentrated attack had devolved into chaos. The starknights were good fighters, but Ashtoreth's people had a profound advantage in the fact that they'll eaten the minds of hundreds of devils. They knew how the enemy moved and fought, knew just where to target and how to evade.

Knowing that she would be their priority target, she abused her ability to guide and direct her hellfire javelins, taking advantage of the fact that all their enemies would pay her extra attention and move to evade her shots.

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She didn't even try to kill them, just constantly kept them on their toes while her allies took advantage of the openings she made. After the initial change, Frost drew his assault rifle and began to tear them from the sky with focused burst of fire. Hunter began his usual trick of teleporting around to dispatch distracted enemies with effortless blows that had absurd [Defense] penetration.

And Kylie, who Hunter had deposited far above the theater of combat, had begun to dump a waterfall of ashes out of her bag and then conjure specters to distract and disable their foes in the sky. Between her minions and Ashtoreth's swarm of javelins, Frost and Hunter were given ample chances for deathblows.

All in all, the fight lasted only a few moments before they were diving back toward the two-pronged tower.

Frost's assault on the barracks had done its job. More enemies were swarming out of the other buildings that surrounded the tower, many of them rising into the air while the others filled the ground below.

Ashtoreth's eyes quickly picked out the largest of them, a hulking demon who was over twelve feet tall, sported a massive set of wings, and was flying despite wearing enough armor to cover several human battle tanks.

{Demonic Commander Viscerectus — Level 398 Elite}

"Hold it," she said, conjuring her cannon and taking aim. She wanted to time everything perfectly, which meant that she wanted a lot of their flyers to be higher in the air when they made a move on the ground.

Her first magazine was loaded with [Energy Draining Rounds].

The commander below her grinned as he rose higher and higher toward them.

"Daughter of Pride!" Viscerectus howled, his course voice laced with amusement. "In all my many years of—"

Ashtoreth launched her first shot in the middle of his sentence, and he raised a gnarled claw with startling speed, deflecting the shot with a red flare of light.

"My—"

Her second shot struck another flare of light, but she could tell by the sudden look of surprise that came over his face that he had only expected one.

The next two struck him in the wings as he dove to one side to try to avoid them. Had they been her [Armor Piercing Rounds], they'd have done little in the way of damage, but these shots simply needed to touch him to steal massive amounts of [Defense].

Viscerectus snarled and conjured a set of three glowing red orbs in the air around him.

Ashtoreth slammed a new magazine into her cannon.

"Go, Hunter!" she cried.

She heard the faint swish of Hunter's teleportation ability from behind her, and she saw her people appear very suddenly on the ground beneath the commander.

Frost, who had drawn his minigun again, began to fire it into the commander's back with abandon.

The sudden injection of sacred damage was exactly what Ashtoreth had been hoping for. He howled and spun to deal with the new intruder—but this was the wrong move entirely. Ashtoreth's first shot from her cannon took him through the neck, sending him pitching toward the ground before her second shot ripped through his ribcage.

He struck the ground, somehow still not dead, and howled as Ashtoreth landed another shot just below his neck.

Then he exploded into violet hellfire.

It had been risky maneuver. Frost, Kylie, and Hunter had been completely surrounded when they'd teleported onto the ground, and the infernals surrounding them had naturally all moved in close.

Had they not managed to kill the priority target within two seconds of their arrival, her people would have been in serious danger.

But they had. A second sun seemed to flare into life below her as the level 398 was converted into energy for Ashtoreth and her team. Every infernal that had charged to converge on them was engulfed in an explosion of hellfire, and moments later they, too, were converted into more fuel for her incendiary attack.

Ashtoreth dismissed her cannon to conjure her sword, then launched it backward with a [Mighty Strike] to pitch herself hard at the ground, quickly moving past the wave of oncoming flyers as they were distracted by the massive explosion below them.

She landed hard against the ground just as the edges of her newly-formed massive pool of hellfire seemed to cease growing. Infernals rushed out of the outermost flames, covered in flames themselves but unfortunately able to survive them.

Still, the drastic increase in temperature meant that their [Defense] was stretched to its limit to protect them, and Ashtoreth launched a volley of hellfire javelins into the flying enemies above them, who easily caught fire in the heat.

At the same time, Frost began to sweep his minigun across the fleeing ground troops, the force of his bullets knocking them to the ground. At their level, the infernals were strong and fast enough to get free of the area in only a few seconds, but he still at least gave them a reason to flee as he brought another dozen of them down.

Then, for a brief moment, all of the enemy forces were in retreat. The flyers above them were rising away to escape the heat of her sudden inferno, and the forces on the ground had all taken cover from Frost's minigun.

Seizing the perfect moment, Ashtoreth raised her gauntleted hand and conjured a hellfire novaheart. A star of pure energy appeared in the air before her, sizzling.

It wouldn't be long now.

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