Dazel leapt into the air and soared away from her as soon as the fight began.

War's horse bounded into the air at an angle.

Ashtoreth ran perpendicular to war, conjuring her cannon into her hands a moment before she saw his own assault rifle coalesce in his hands. She raised her weapon, and he began to move, running in a line and doubtless ready to leap into the air the moment he saw her muzzle flare.

But she didn't fire. Instead she beat her wings, pushing herself backward and away from him as he began to fire upon her, hissing as one of his bullets took her through the wing. She didn't want to spend all her shots trying to hit him at this distance; instead she wanted to give him a reason not to slow down or come any closer.

War kept moving, keeping his distance as his weapon continued to spit bullets. His aim was still excellent, but they were both moving fast, and he struggled to do more than graze her a few times at a distance of over 300 feet.

They were painful, yes. Sacred damage was still agonizing. But her higher [Defense] and her fast regeneration meant that he wasn't going to end the fight, not like this.

Meanwhile, she emblazoned the ground with her [Hellfire Rune], channeling as much of her [Bloodfire] into the ability as she could manage to burn two gleaming purple runes into the floor by investing two-thirds of her [Bloodfire].

To her frustration, she watched as War's horse spotted the runes and peeled away from its initial trajectory, apparently unwilling to perform the typical charge maneuver while War was at a distance and Ashtoreth had set an obvious trap.

She kept flying at strange angles to avoid War's seemingly ceaseless gunfire, then began conjuring an array of hellfire javelins over her head, preparing to launch them at either War or his horse.

This was apparently too much for War, who had no doubt realized that not only was his current engagement style not yielding results, but that her javelins could potentially have a longer effective range than his assault rifle. The Horseman charged, his wings appearing behind him like shards of a stained-glass window as he sped through the air toward her.

As soon as she saw him coming close, Ashtoreth moved to stand nearer to the two runes she'd marked on the ground, quickly scanning the sky to see that his horse was circling high above her. Waiting.

She turned back to War. The medium range that his assault rifle needed to reach its true, deadly potential was also the perfect killing range for her cannon, just close enough that War couldn't be sure of dodging multiple shots in time. And while he might be able to weather her shots and win a battle of attrition against her cannon, a truly absurd feat of strength, his horse certainly couldn't.

She knew from experience that the beasts could be killed, if she put forth the right amount of power.

And so War was cautiously approaching to perform the same pincer maneuver that all his fellows had been so fond of.

He closed the distance between them, putting them both into the deadlier range of one another's weapons. At the same time, his horse dove toward her.

She fanned a hand through the air, filling the space around her with hellfire as she grabbed her cannon with her tail and spun it around her body to aim it at War's horse under the cover of her hellfire.

It wouldn't matter that her deception was obvious, that she'd already used the same tricks on two of War's comrades. He still couldn't see what she was doing inside her fire.

Nonetheless, War and his horse hurtled toward her. Clearly, he knew that if they both just charged her anyway, it wouldn't matter.

A moment later she fired her cannon, and a shot streaked out to bury itself in the red horse's chest, sending the beast off-course to smash into the floor behind its master.

Ashtoreth leapt to one side of her cloud of hellfire as War closed in a moment later, conjuring his sword. Melee combat was a much better angle of approach for him, after all. In normal circumstances, close-quarters combat with him was simply waiting for the killing blow to come. He was too strong, too skilled.

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Her flames roiled around her as she leapt out of his path, dismissing her cannon to conjure her greatsword. Once again she tried to make her movements dramatic, tried to make it obvious using the parts of her that he could see that she was lunging forward, extending her sword in a powerful thrust.

Only this time, that was actually what she was doing. War charged, swinging his sword in a diagonal slash, and Ashtoreth waited for just the right moment to push past his blade with a [Mighty Blow].

The blow did little. He diverted much of its force with his own blade, and the point of her sword collided loudly with the thick metal of his breastplate, dealing him no damage but regaining her some much-needed [Bloodfire] as it applied her [Energy Drain].

War barely seemed to notice the blow, rushing after her a flurry of perfectly executed blows from his greatsword, putting her on the defensive.

She did what she could to fend him off, but just as it had been on the rooftop in Africa, fighting war blade-to-blade was a harrowing, frantic experience. He had his own [Mighty Blow], after all, one that send her skidding back across a dozen meters of polished stone floor when it connected with her weapon.

She conjured hellfire whenever she could to obscure her movements, an adaptation that did a little to help her survive his assault. He might have the ability to conjure his blood-red flames, but he certainly didn't have a [Holy Fire] aspect, and apparently either didn't see a benefit in cancelling out her flames with his own, or couldn't.

But it was only when War's horse had recovered, rising into the air and spinning to face her, that her flames did their real job in obscuring the fact that she'd led War into one of her hellfire runes.

She detonated it just after blocking one of his mighty overhead blows, cracks spidering out from the stone at her feet as she caught his strike on her own sword. Hellfire burst from the ground slightly to the horseman's left, but the surprise assault gave Ashtoreth no openings; rather than flinch or leap away from the blast, War simply raised his sword in anticipation of an attack from Ashtoreth.

All in all, the rune had seemingly barely harmed him. When it was clear that Asthoreth had no greater trick at hand, he charged once again, crossing the distance between them to engage her in melee once more.

Ashtoreth hissed in frustration as their swords collided once more.

Then she launched her sword toward him with her [Counterforce Telekinesis], sliding backward across the floor as she dismissed her sword and began to conjure her scythe.

He'd made it clear that he intended to ignore all her tricks, or at least the ones that stood little chance of killing him. He'd charged into her hellfire, sent his horse after her even when she had her cannon, and otherwise simply tanked all the hits she landed as a result of her deceptions.

It was what she'd have done in his position.

And so it was little surprise when, just as Ashtoreth finished conjuring her scythe, the red horse simply charged her in spite of the hellfire rune emblazoned on the ground beneath her.

She tried not to grin as her scythe fell into her hands and she gained access to her tripled [Bloodfire] pool, then swiped the blade through the air to spend a massive portion of the new [Bloodfire] on replacing her current [Bloodfire Boon].

Her reassignment was simple: she moved 5533 bonus stats from [Defense] into [Magic], halving one to almost double the other.

Then she launched herself backward, out of the way of the horse's charge, just barely avoiding the rushing beast thanks to the extra speed that her higher [Magic] granted her flight.

The Horse collided with the ground just as she used her [Power Tap] to enhance her [Magic] by another few thousand points and detonated her [Hellfire Rune].

Whatever calculations War had done, he'd likely based them on his knowledge of [Armament]. He would have known that Ashtoreth could enhance the power of her runes, and all her hellfire, by pulling out her scythe and gaining a bonus to her hellfire's power that was based on her [Strength].

A massive plume of hellfire erupted beneath War's horse, flash-incinerating its fur, melting its skin, and coating its slick flesh in violet fire. The beast screamed in shocked pain.

Clearly, War hadn't anticipated the extra 10,000 or so [Magic] that came on top of that.

Ashtoreth crouched, then leapt high into the air, using the brief moment before her [Power Tap] expired to take advantage of her high speed and clear the battlefield, then using her heightened range to reach out toward the cloud of hellfire rising above the screaming horse and coalesce a condensed patch of flames that took a vaguely fiendish shape.

Her [Hellfire Elemental].

Minion, she commanded it mentally, go and give that horse a hug.

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