Omega had calculated the team's optimal arrival timing, in the middle of a guard shift. The team was too large to sneak through, and hitting right at the shift rotation would mean two shifts worth of guards geared up for combat. As much as she wished it wasn't true, she knew casualties were likely inevitable no matter how they attempted their assault.

She braced for the worst, and had begun to open the connection at her portal gate. Space warped between the Shades' city and the lower Shaderealm, opening a passageway into the isolated realm. Annabelle and the rest of the survivors made final preparations, and were about to rush through, but then, the portal slammed shut.

TRAITOR. Nyxl had discovered her! But how?

I RESPECTED YOUR DECISION TO NOT RESURRECT XERXES. BUT I STILL INTERROGATED HIM, AND HE TOLD ME EVERYTHING.

You are the most despicable creature in the entire universe, Omega spat. She was the last hope of the survivors, and she had let them down. If she couldn't find a way to get a portal re-opened, the only thing she could do would be to stall Nyxl for as long as possible, do as much damage as possible.

I DIDN'T BELIEVE HIM AT FIRST. BUT, ON A HUNCH, I KEPT YOU UNDER OBSERVATION. AND SURE ENOUGH, AS HE SAID, YOU TRIED TO RELEASE THE PRISONERS.

Omega made another attempt to open the portal, but to no avail.

THEY WILL DIE, IN TIME. BUT FIRST, I'M GOING TO RIP YOUR MIND APART.

Omega came under a staggering mental assault, the likes of which she had never encountered before. She fought back against the attack, but though Annabelle could resist this in her own mind, Omega wasn't in Annabelle's mind. Though her willpower was incredible, she wouldn't hold out for long.

But maybe she could redirect the attack. She quickly went through what she memorized out of Cecilian's magical abilities. Cecilian had used a magical form of telepathy to discuss matters with other Matriarchs without having to leave her own manor, and that channel could transmit psychic energy. In a desperate gambit, Omega contacted another Matriarch, chosen at random, and fell back around the connection, redirecting Nyxl's attack through it.

That stalled the attack for a few seconds until the link shattered (due to the victim's head exploding from trauma, most likely), and the attack resumed at full force. Omega quickly contacted another random Matriarch. And another. And then another.

She thought she picked up on a telepathic message from Annabelle, but was too busy trying to fend off the mental assault. Even though she was redirecting the energy into other Matriarchs as fast as she could, Nyxl's power was starting to overwhelm her.

YOU'VE LASTED LONGER THAN I EXPECTED, Nyxl said. BUT EVERY MORTAL HAS THEIR LIMITS.

Every mortal, except for one, Omega thought. In a last-ditch effort, she tracked Annabelle's connection and redirected the attack there. She couldn't easily show that it was Nyxl's attack and not her own, but surely she would realize that she wouldn't attack herself knowing her own powers. Plus, it was an attack that she wasn't capable of on her own anyways.

The attack's pressure was released for a few key seconds, giving Omega a chance to re-fortify her mental defenses. Then, she flew above the mansion, expecting Nyxl

HOW. DID. YOU. RESIST? Nyxl asked a simple question.

Omega simply sent back the mental equivalent of a laugh. At approximately the same time, Nyxl realized what she had done.

YOU…

I redirected your attack into six other Matriarchs, obliterating their minds to the point where I doubt there will be enough left to resurrect.

Omega prepared to redirect the attack into Annabelle again, in case Nyxl tried it. But instead, Nyxl simply vacated her mind entirely.

Hello, Cecilian. Omega immediately recognized the source of the message, and immediately replied with No, I'm Omega.

Good, Annabelle replied. I've managed to force the portal open, but we've ended up in another Matriarch's mansion, likely due to spatial distortion of some sort. I need directions, fast.

Suddenly, the space around Omega shifted, and a swarm of what seemed to be black orbs appeared out of thin air in the space around the mansion. Had she not gotten out beforehand, she would have been torn apart. The orbs turned into a roiling mass of tentacles that enveloped the manor and destroyed it, before receding and revealing a pitch-black humanoid figure, surrounded by black tentacles that seemed to shift in and out of existence.

"You have delivered a significant setback, Cecilian, " Nyxl said. His real voice was quieter than his mental voice, but she still felt a chilling echo. "For this, your torture will be eternal."

"The same as everyone trapped here, " Omega spat. She called down a firestorm on Nyxl, a cylinder of roiling inferno reaching to the cavern's ceiling.

**********

Omega opened the portal. The survivors charged forwards, with Annabelle's team taking the lead.

But just before Annabelle reached the portal, it slammed shut.

We've been caught. Annabelle realized.

No. NO. Nyxl had found out about the scheme.

Annabelle, partly out of rage and partly out of desperation, charged and fired a distortion beam into the point where the portal had once been. Then, she sustained the beam, and somehow managed to force it open. She flew through into some sort of courtyard, shot up into the air, and took a look at the surrounding area. Even in the darkness, she could tell something was off.

For one thing, the gate was locked. For another, she didn't see anything that looked like an exit portal nearby. And lastly, Omega wasn't here.

"The portal's position changed," Annabelle announced. "This isn't Cecilian's manor."

How could that possibly happen? Darius asked, using Silence's telepathic network for idle theorizing that wouldn't benefit them right now.

Her breaching of hyperdimensional space must have hit a different target, Varos theorized. I think we're lucky to have the portal open at all.

Annabelle reached out for Omega, and opened a telepathic connection with her mental clone. She didn't get a response, at first.

Then, she got blasted in the mind with an incredibly powerful mental attack. It wasn't as strong as the coordinated efforts of the entire Elder council, but it caught her by surprise, actually managing to briefly daze her before she got a handle on it.

Her instincts told her to immediately fire the absorbed energy back at its source, but then realized that the source was Omega. Omega, as a former part of her, would know about her mental defenses, and would be likely to reflect an attack into her because she couldn't handle it herself.

Or, because Omega's mind had already been hijacked.

The attack relented after a few seconds, giving Annabelle a chance to prepare. While she contained the energy and readied it for her own use later, she probed Omega's mind to make sure Omega was still in charge. After verifying that, she asked for directions.

In the distance, Annabelle saw a massive firestorm erupt.

That should be enough of a waypoint. Omega replied. Omega also gave Annabelle a bit of Cecilian's memories, a mental map of the entire city, and Annabelle quickly recognized her current position within that map.

She analyzed that mental map, looked for a few landmarks that Cecilian recognized, and came to a horrible discovery.

We're on the other side of the city, Annabelle realized. Instead of just a quick run from the mansion to the portal, they would need to cross a dozen city blocks to get to safety.

Well, that's a problem. There might be other portals near -the connection dropped out for a moment- your current position, but the exit paths there aren't viable.

Right. If they fled into Garnoth, then in a few minutes they would be taken by portal back to Sanctuary, a place shielded from divinations, a place where they could organize a war effort to fight back against the coming invasion. If they fled anywhere else, the Shades could just pursue them and wear them down, and whatever defenders those worlds had would have a hard time believing her stories, much less fending off the Shades' advance.

But it wouldn't make the longer journey any easier.

Wait, you're also fighting Nyxl there. Between the mental attack and the offensive spell being used as a 'waypoint', it was almost certain Omega was in combat.

I'll draw him off - or die trying, Omega claimed.

Behind her, the rest of the group had gone through the portal, and arrived in about the same state of confusion. They needed to get moving, quickly.

"We've been sent to the wrong portal," Annabelle announced. "It will be a long run to get to our extraction point, but we've prepared for the worst. We will survive this." Annabelle couldn't guarantee it, but acted as if she could to improve morale as much as possible.

"By the light of Helios, we will succeed," the Crusaders announced in unison, as they turned their holy foci into potent light sources, bathing the Shade city in daylight. It took away any advantage of stealth they had, but they didn't have that advantage anyways, not with how large their group was.

Annabelle noticed that even though the city was illuminated, the ground underneath them and the ceiling above them were made of the same pitch-black material, and the buildings were constructed out of some sort of dark metal, with no windows. Normally a lack of windows made sense in a dark cavern, but Annabelle immediately recognized a huge threat, namely snipers shooting out of windows, that wouldn't exist.

The Crusaders completed a second blessing, the blessing of endurance, hopefully enough to allow everyone to sprint straight towards the exit.

But before they could get moving, Annabelle saw a Matriarch emerge from the mansion, right in front of them. Immediately, Annabelle turned Shadebreaker up to full power and fired the railgun straight at her.

A deafening sonic boom shook the cavern, and the impact resulted in a small shockwave, blasting the Matriarch backwards. But the Matriarch's wards were just barely strong enough to keep her from being outright decapitated by the shot.

Then, the Matriarch counterattacked, throwing out a green bolt of death.

Annabelle attempted to dodge, but the bolt homed in on her. It punched through her wards, and delivered its effects.

She knew what to expect on the mental front, and a quick barrier deflected the mental attack. But that wasn't the only effect.

The blast briefly paralyzed her, causing her heart to stop, cutting off blood flow to her brain. Her body went limp, hanging weightless in the air due to Lorso's flight spell.

But in the few seconds she had before she blacked out, she managed to improvise a solution with telekinesis.

She analyzed her own heart, and with a few well-placed pulses, managed to force the still heart to beat, briefly restoring blood flow. But, it took all of her focus to do it, and she sensed the energy she was holding onto from Nyxl's attack start to lose containment.

Not this again!

Annabelle, out of a combination of rage and desperation, ignored it and focused on keeping her heart beating. She kept herself conscious for a few seconds, even as the energy started to seep into her mind.

Then, she felt a burst of warmth, and her heart started pumping blood on its own. Annabelle, no longer required to perform such a desperate maneuver, was able to re-contain Nyxl's energy. She might have been able to survive a breach, but it would not have been a good situation.

So, I can survive a hit, but it's probably not a good idea to try.

Annabelle readied a distortion beam and opened her eyes to aim it, but instead saw the Matriarch dead from a slashed throat and multiple stab wounds, with Darius standing next to her.

"I'm sorry, Annabelle. I should have been faster."

Darius, it's okay. I'm not dead, though that hit came close to doing it.

What happened? Lorso asked.

I'm not sure how the bastard stopped my heart, but I managed to restart it in time. She wasn't sure at what point exactly she would be dead enough for Nyxl to collect her soul, but she wanted to stay as far away from any definition of death as possible.

Now, Annabelle could get back to leading the team to the exits.

"Wait. The Matriarchs don't have any protections on their warding charms," Darius realized. "We can just take and use them right now!"

They don't? Annabelle asked over Silence's telepathic network. That seemed a bit uncharacteristic.

Maybe in their eyes, if they're dead, they've already lost, Varos theorized. Or maybe the artificers didn't have time to protect every piece of jewelry they had to make for them.

"A dozen wards for us, then." Annabelle reached out with telekinesis to strip the Matriarch. She grabbed two rings of protection for herself (to increase her odds of not being shot down by another bolt) and gave the rest to the group.

Annabelle was then fired on from outside the manor courtyard by a gathered group of Shades. Oddly, they were firing pink bolts, bolts that would have no effect even if not for the three layers of warding protecting her.

She looked around, and then used Starsight to scan the area behind the building. They've got us surrounded, about two dozen of them, she reported to the group. We have maybe… half a minute before they work their way through the back of the mansion and fire on us from all sides.

"We need to move!" Diedre announced. "Now!"

Silence charged into the gate, hitting it hard enough to unhinge it. The Shades on that side immediately fired on him, but he was wearing multiple warding charms as well, rendering him immune to their barrage. As he grabbed one Shade, used his body as a projectile to knock over two more, and then body-slammed the resulting pile to crush them, Annabelle took out another three with Shadebreaker. More Shade guards streamed in, but were promptly blinded by the light as the Crusaders went through the gateway next, preventing them from getting a shot off and making them easy pickings for Shadebreaker.

While Annabelle, Silence, the Crusaders, and a few other survivors cleared a path in the front, Darius and Lorso kept the flanks busy.

Darius used his boots to leap over the courtyard's walls, then threw both of his daggers at once, burying them both in the throats of two adjacent Shades, punching through their wards in the process. He recalled the blades and rolled out of the way of a follow-up attack (an unnecessary maneuver given his wards), scored another two kills with thrown daggers, and then recalled his daggers and lunged forwards to plunge them into the chest of a fifth.

At the same time, Lorso made a flyby of the other flank, blasting them with fireballs from above. The fireballs didn't pack enough punch to breach the wards outright, but she was still able to draw fire and create enough of a distraction to keep them from hitting the main group from behind.

"Where are we going?" Diedre asked, shouting to be overheard over the deafening blasts of Shadebreaker.

Annabelle was about to create an arrow out of psychic aura to point the right direction, but realized that concealing their direction of motion might make it harder for the real threats to prepare themselves. Instead, she sent the directions to Diedre with a quick burst of telepathy, repeated it a few times to make sure she understood it, and then had her act as the leader for the rest of the survivors. She told the rest of them to follow her, and then set off at a sprint towards the portal to Garnoth.

As it seemed like the rest of her party could keep the group covered for now, Annabelle looked for secondary targets.

There were four other Matriarchs' manors within three blocks of their current position, eight more along their route. If she could kill them, she would have more than enough warding items to protect the entire group. And, it would be a serious setback to Nyxl's grander schemes.

You saved up that attack's energy, right? Omega jumped into her train of thought.

You want it reflected back through you? Annabelle was saving it for such a moment, expecting the value of a surprise divine-level mental attack to be worth the energy spent containing it.

No. I'm not even sure if it'll work against his alien mind. Instead, I want you to use it to kill any Matriarchs you see. Omega explained how she had redirected Nyxl's mental obliteration attack into several other Matriarchs before targeting Annabelle. Judging by Nyxl's reaction, I don't think anyone hit by it's coming back.

Right. She forgot about Nyxl's capacity for resurrection. Unfortunately, that last Matriarch would be returning.

I'm not sure if there's enough energy in here to take out more than a few of them. But if I combine it with my own energy…

She flew down to one of the mages, the one who said he could conceal a small group, and asked to receive invisibility. The mage replied that she wasn't able to grant total invisibility, but she instead granted a spell that caused her to blend in with darkness more effectively, a very useful boon given that seemingly everything in the city was either black or dark grey.

Then, she flew off towards a pair of Matriarchs' mansions adjacent to each other, boosting her velocity with a surge of telekinesis.

Along the way, she spotted a group fleeing towards the manor. Noncombatants, judging by their behavior and lack of equipment, but still conspirators. Annabelle didn't hesitate as she cut them down with a rapid-fire barrage from Shadebreaker.

Varos, please tell everyone to fire on any civilians they see. Annabelle gave that suggestion as she scanned the building with Starsight and mind-sense, looking for a humanoid female with a terrible fashion sense.

Predictably, the rest of the party was outraged. One, waste of resources. Two, what the fuck? Was the response from Darius.

One, our crossbow-wielders aren't doing much shooting at city guards anyways. Two, all noncombat jobs here are either performing torture on unfortunate victims or creating weapons and equipment for the hunters that capture them. Every dead Shade is one less Shade working on Nyxl's plans.

As much as you'd like to take revenge, our top priority is still getting out of here. But, I suppose we'll take shots at any Shade civilians that get in the way.

Annabelle found the Matriarch, minus her head. It seemed this was one of the Matriarchs Omega got to first. She slammed through the mansion's roof to reach her, stripped her of jewelry, and put it all in her bag of holding.

She leaped back through the hole in the roof, and noticed the other Matriarch hovering in midair, about to blast her.

Hello, now die. She immediately lanced through the Matriarch's mental defenses, and then unleashed a part of the stored energy from Nyxl's attack, enough to rip apart her mind. The Matriarch hung in the air, lifeless and only supported by magic.

Annabelle stripped her in midair, and finished just before more Shades spotted her and opened fire. She flew back to the group, but not before taking a few parting shots with Shadebreaker.

"Special delivery!" Annabelle called out, before she turned the bag over. Nothing came out until Annabelle reached her hand in and sent a mental command to grab everything at once, resulting in all of it being released at once. The group briefly slowed down to haphazardly distribute the new gear.

Annabelle was about to fly off to take down a third Matriarch when she noticed three things.

Firstly, the Shades seemed to still be firing pink stunning bolts. Annabelle quickly recognized the reasoning. They were giving up individual kills and instead attempting to slow the whole group down, forcing them to carry the stunned members' bodies. Annabelle could restore them, but it would take time that she needed to spend on offense.

Secondly, she spotted an organized Shade military force in the distance, a mix of Matriarchs, heavily-armored glaive warriors, hunters, and a few horrifying monstrosities that looked like large dogs with scales and extra tentacles. They were positioned perfectly between the group's current position and the portal to Garnoth, as if they knew exactly where they were going.

Thirdly, she spotted the centerpoint of the city, a massive torture facility, and immediately split off her attention. Even though she knew her primary objective was to fight her way through and escape, she was torn between that and liberating the trapped victims, or at the very least wiping out the facility.

And lastly, she received an urgent message from Omega along the shared channel.

**********

"I'm a god, " Nyxl boasted. "I can change reality the way I see fit. Nothing you have can harm me."

"And yet I'm not dead, " Omega replied.

"You will be." Nyxl leaped, and simultaneously pinched the space above him. His body appeared to elongate drastically as what was ten feet of height from Nyxl's perspective was several hundred from an outside observer.

Nyxl reached Omega's elevation. Omega launched an instant death bolt that, as predicted, did nothing, then attempted to fly away. Nyxl's tentacles briefly coalesced and formed into a single massive tentacle replacing his right arm, and he slammed it down with an incredible amount of force.

Omega hit the ground hard. Cecilian's massive amount of warding charms all triggered against the impact, but they only managed to reduce the impact from being turned into goo into a hard impact that likely still broke some bones.

She couldn't take another hit like that.

Nyxl pinched space again to return to the ground in front of Omega, even as she used flight to get back on her feet. Omega hit him with a lightning bolt, and Nyxl ignored her efforts. She had only one thing left that could do damage.

With her left hand, she channeled a stream of lightning into Nyxl, while with her right hand, she reached into a bag of holding, and gripped a rending glaive that she had requisitioned for 'testing'.

Nyxl charged forwards, converting his right arm into a mace. Omega at first backpedaled. Then, once Nyxl closed in, she pulled the glaive out with a quick motion and launched forwards with her flight. Nyxl swung, but Omega flipped horizontal and flew underneath the swing, while simultaneously swinging the rending glaive to cut into Nyxl's body.

Nyxl shot a tentacle out of his back in an attempt to catch Omega, but she slashed the tentacle with the glaive before it could grab her. She levelled out and looked at the damage she had inflicted.

A gash was now visible on Nyxl's body, glowing with the same multicolored energy that could be seen in holes in the Shaderealm's caverns. He shot out four tentacles into the ground, seemingly to support himself.

"So, you've found something that can hurt me," Nyxl said. "But that was barely a scratch." The wound closed up in an instant, and then Nyxl sent a pulse of... something through each of his tentacles, causing their ends to disappear.

Omega quickly teleported a hundred feet out of the way, just before four tentacles emerged out of thin air and impaled her previous position. The tentacles quickly receded back into nothingness, and then launched another flurry of assaults, assailing Omega from all sides.

Omega used several teleports to gain space, and cut down a few of the tentacles with rending glaives. Nyxl briefly stopped the tentacle assault, but only so he could fire a barrage of energy blasts. Omega dodged some of them, but others pounded her wards.

Omega teleported behind Nyxl, and attempted to impale him in the back with her rending glaive. But as she stabbed forward, space shifted, the distance between Omega and Nyxl enlarging past the glaive's reach. Then, a tentacle shot out of Nyxl's back, slamming Omega into a nearby wall at extreme velocity. Her wards shattered, she dropped the rending glaive, and she felt several bones break.

Omega immediately returned to the air, as broken bones did not impair magical flight. But then, four tentacles shot out of nothingness, each grabbing one of her limbs. She struggled to escape, but the tentacles pulled tight, immobilizing her in midair. She attempted to teleport, but found her magic nullified.

Nyxl calmly advanced on her. "So, was this petty show of force worth it?" he taunted. "You may have cost me several Matriarchs, but it's only a minor setback in this stage of my plans. The pain you suffer will be far worse."

"I live off of pain," Omega replied. "Torture me, and you'll only make me grow stronger."

"I know that to not be true, Cecilian," Nyxl said, with a bit of a laugh. "In fact, your resistance to torture is so terrible, I thought that was your motive for defecting."

Then, Nyxl realized something.

"Wait. This is her doing."

"What?" Omega replied, feigning ignorance. The longer she kept Nyxl talking before she was killed, the more time she gave Annabelle, and the greater their odds of escape.

"Annabelle's done something to you, turned you into her agent."

Omega didn't respond, but Nyxl could tell that he had struck the truth. Or, at least, enough of it to matter.

"In that case, I think I'll make it personal. After I finish off her escape attempt, I'll invade Garnoth first. Now that the archmage protecting it is gone, it'll be easy pickings."

"Even though the world has a low population?" Omega retorted. "I'm not even sure why you even considered invading it in the first place."

Nyxl ignored her argument against invading a world out of spite, and continued his rant. "Did you somehow think that I wouldn't pick up on an unauthorized gateway breach, or on my guards spotting a group of escapees running through the streets?"

Crap, he knew about the actual escape attempt.

Annabelle! Nyxl knows! You need to be ready!

"I know what you're thinking now. You're trying to warn her, but it's not going to work. And even if you did warn her, she wouldn't be able to stop me."

Understood. Give me everything you know. Omega responded by sending back everything she knew about Nyxl from the fight, including this current conversation.

"She's an incredibly strong mage. Almost as strong as Daraken, in fact. But no matter how strong a mage is, they aren't going to beat a god on their own turf."

Omega suddenly had an idea. Gods normally hunted psionics. But was it simply because they had a power that didn't come from a god-

-or was it because they were afraid of them?

"Annabelle's not a mage," Omega said, a statement that immediately got Nyxl's attention. "She's a psion. A wielder of the natural power that the gods don't have any control over."

"No. It can't be-" Nyxl said, with the voice of a villain who was about to have his plans ruined. "There's no way that could happen. All gods are bound by divine law to eliminate those blasphemies the instant they are detected."

"Helios decided to make an exception for her. For me." Omega said, dropping the whole pretense about being separate from Annabelle.

"The prophecy- I'm the first to fall!" Nyxl exclaimed.

"That sounds about right," Omega said, half-bluffing. Maybe, if there was a prophecy, they would actually get to kill Nyxl today. And either way, Lorso would probably have a dozen new conspiracy theories about it if they survived, and half of them would probably be correct.

But then, Nyxl regained his composure. "No. She won't get the chance. I can kill her in an instant, and it will take a lot more than what she had to stop me."

Omega heard a cascade of explosions in the distance, nowhere near the main group. She tried to turn to look in that direction, and thought she saw flashes of blue light. They looked almost like- no, that couldn't be right. They couldn't possibly-

"But first, you die." Nyxl shaped one of his arms into a spear, aimed it against Omega's head, and drew back, preparing to impale her. Omega locked onto Annabelle's mind and prepared to return to her original body before this body was slain.

Suddenly, a high-velocity projectile hit Nyxl dead-center in the chest. It wasn't a shot from Annabelle judging by the angle of attack, but whatever it was, Nyxl was stunned by the blow. He recovered and dodged just before a second shot was fired, and made a dash for cover, dropping Omega in the process. She flew away, glanced in the direction of the shot, and saw a sight she didn't expect to see.

The Alien Combat Patrol had arrived, eight individuals in powered armor, wielding a variety of technological weapons. Even if the Shades and Nyxl weren't aliens (which they probably were, given the Shades' egg-laying and other physiological differences from humans), they were still enemies of humanity. And though the Shades had some pretty powerful gear, ACP's powered armor and advanced technological weapons had them outclassed.

But how much could they truly do to a god?