How I became the Empress of Hell

After meeting up with Judas outside the castle walls, I flew us quickly towards the Hell Gate. The rest of the clan was already assembled outside the massive orange portal, and I landed softly nearby. None of them asked me why I had been held up, instead they greeted me enthusiastically and readied their gear. Emelia ran over to me, pulled my head down, and kissed me passionately. She pulled away slightly, but still remained pressed against me.

“We already grabbed a bounty for a level 38 dungeon, but I had a question for you, babe.”

“‘Sup, gorgeous?”

“It says that Niall is online, and he’s somewhat close by because his name is appearing on the active players list. I wanted to see if you were game to go out and meet the competition.”

I thought for a moment, and then nodded.

“Sure. It will give us a better idea of who we’re dealing with and how we need to handle him. The others already know?”

She nodded, and kissed me briefly before moving to join the rest of the group. 

“Ready to go kick his ass, Allie?”

I held up one hand and closed it into a fist.

“Let’s do this shit!”

---

It didn’t take us long to track the waypoint to Niall’s location. When we finally came to his location, he was fighting a large tiger-looking beast that stood at least 25 feet tall in a barren wasteland pockmarked with craters. A large storm raged overhead, and lightning would periodically strike the large feline. We stood a fair distance away and watched the dazzling magic display in amazement. Whenever the beast would swipe one its paws at Niall, his body would disappear, surge like a bolt of lightning across the ground, and land a few feet away. He reappeared instantly, and let loose a large blast of electric energy. The blast struck the massive animal in its flank and it roared in pain. It retaliated by raking its claws at the nimble mage. He disappeared again, but arced up on top of the beast’s neck. He held his arms outstretched to the side, and a blade made of pure electric energy appeared in each hand. With a swift motion he stabbed each blade downwards into the cat’s skull while a massive lightning bolt surged through the mage and hit the same spot as the blades. Pulses of electricity crackled over the mortally wounded animal, and the mage zapped himself back to the ground as the beast fell behind him. We slowly made our way forward as he knelt down to inspect his kill. 

“That’s close enough, Demonspawn. I may be low on MP, but I still have enough to kick your pathetic asses back to whatever hole you crawled out of.”

Bray, ever-ready with a witty comeback, didn’t even miss a beat before shouting back.

“It looks like the ‘sparklemage’ isn’t worth our time, guys. He may talk a good game, but he probably goes down like a Dollar Store Thor reject when the real pressure is on.”

Niall growled and disappeared. Energy arced across the ground towards us before he reappeared to our right. He pulled his hands back in preparation for a large electric blast, and Emelia acted instantly with a wave of her hand. A large wall of ice rose from the ground in front of the enemy mage, and the large blast of energy struck the wall. The wall exploded and shards of ice rained around us as we pivoted to face him. I stepped forward, and held up one of my hands.

“Alright… Wait. We’re not looking for a fight, but if you keep being a jerk, we’ll take you out without a second thought. Let’s just-”

Even with my enhanced speed I was barely able to dodge out of the way from a lightning blast he suddenly threw.

I was about to move to engage him, but Emelia put a hand on my arm.

“I’ve got this, keep everyone back.”

I nodded to her and ran back to join the others. Emelia waved her hands in front of her body and a thick layer of frost coated her body like a second skin. She took a single step toward the other mage and he held his hands up in preparation for another attack. She laughed and shook her head.

“You’re not going to win. Even at full MP you couldn’t beat me. It’s not too late to stand down and just talk like a reasonable person.”

She knelt down and sat on her haunches. I could practically see the wheels turning in Niall’s mind as he watched to see what she was going to do. When she remained stationary, he charged up a large ball of electric energy and lobbed it at her. It flew quickly at her and she made no attempt to move. Right as the mass of electricity was about to strike her, a wall of ice sprang up and absorbed the attack. The wall exploded towards her as shards of ice sliced across her body. Instead of bleeding from the cuts, crystals of ice formed on her skin. The lightning mage spread his hands out to the sides and started casting a spell. Dark clouds formed overhead, and lightning began striking him over and over. At first I couldn’t figure out why he would be attacking himself with a thunderstorm, but the only thing that made sense was he had some ability that let him recharge his MP every time he was struck with electricity.

After a moment he stopped casting the spell, and the bolts of lightning stopped hitting him while the ominous dark clouds remained overhead.

Niall did his teleportation ability and surged towards Emelia. He reappeared directly in front of her, and swung his arms at her head. The same lightning blades from earlier appeared in his hands and were just about to hit the crouched mage when large spikes of ice jutted out of Emelia’s body and struck her attacker. He had been caught completely off-guard but was still able to teleport backwards out of harm’s way. When he reappeared, his clothing was torn and blood ran down his arm and leg from where he had been hit.

Emelia’s eyes snapped open and she sprang up onto her feet. It was her turn to spread her arms wide, and she started casting a spell. A circle of white appeared around her, and instead of giving her an opportunity to finish casting, Niall began rapid firing small bolts of lightning at her. Several walls of ice, each a few feet thick, rose up from the ground and blocked the attacks. It didn’t take him long to finish breaking through the walls with his relentless assault, but the time it had taken had been sufficient enough for Emelia to finish casting the spell. We all watched with bated breath to see what her spell was going to do, but when a small block of ice appeared a fair distance away from both of them, we gave each other looks of confusion. Niall was just as confused, and teleported backwards in preparation for whatever she had planned.

“Allie, do you want me to kill him or just knock him out so you can do what you want with him?”

“Uhhhh… Just knock him out I guess.”

She nodded her head slowly but otherwise continued to remain completely still. When the enemy mage saw she had no intention of moving, he started recharging his MP again with his lightning storm. I had no idea what Emelia was planning, as she still remained stationary. The air around Niall began to flicker with sparks of electricity as the bolts of lighting continued to strike him from above. As he charged more and more energy, his eyes started glowing with ethereal pale yellow light. He opened each hand widely in front of him, and a massive column of lightning poured out of him and shot towards the ice mage. I had no doubt that the enormous amount of electric energy was designed to kill anything in its path, so I was both curious and concerned with how my girlfriend was going to handle it. I thought for sure she was going to move, or make some motion to block; but she remained rooted to the spot and I saw a little grin creep across her face right before she was completely enveloped by the column of energy.  

When he finally stopped channeling the lightning energy from the storm overhead, the column slowly dissipated and then stopped. All that remained in the spot where Emelia had been standing was a charred impact crater. My heart sank and I was suddenly filled with rage, but after seeing that smirk on her face, I knew something was off.

“Looks like the Elsa wannabe overestimated herself. Come back when-”

As Niall took a step forward, large walls of ice encircled him. There were small enough gaps between each wall where we could still see a little of what was happening. Each wall looked so reflective they appeared to be large mirrors surrounding the lightning mage. He turned and each of his reflections turned with him, and he snarled and threw a lightning bolt at the nearest one. As it struck the surface of the ice, the mirror exploded into tiny pieces, but another identical wall sprang up in its place. He held out his arms to charge up a large spell, and out of each mirror jumped a figure completely made of ice and moved to attack him. He attempted to teleport away, but having nowhere to go and being completely surrounded, he was quickly overcome. All but two mirrors disappeared, and we could see the lightning mage being held by each of the ice creatures. Emelia stepped out of one of the mirrors, shattering it instantly, and walked up to him.

“Well played… but you never stood a chance. Let’s see how you enjoy being the plaything for a demon lord.”

He roared and a large wave of energy erupted out of him, shattered the ice beings holding him, and knocked Emelia backwards onto the ground. He was about to move to attack her when the last remaining mirror shifted and changed behind him into a second Emelia. The one lying on the ground flipped him off and stuck out her tongue, while the other knocked him out with a swift elbow to the back of the head. After they made sure he was down for the count, both Emelias carried him over and dropped him at my feet. We were all speechless and wide eyed, and she laughed at our expressions. She covered him up to his neck in a thick layer of ice that kept his entire body pinned and immobilized.

“So… I did good?”

I rushed forward to hug her, but couldn’t figure out which one to hug. I ended up grabbing both and pulling them into a large tight hug. Each side of my body went instantly numb, and a layer of frost started covering my armor from the contact. They each pulled away from me and giggled.

“Em. That… That was… I thought you… Damn girl! That was fucking incredible!!! I had no idea you could even do that!”

My head turned from side to side and I let out a sigh.

“Alright, which of you is the real one?”

They both giggled again and smiled at me before the one on the right looked at the other and then back at me.

“They both are, technically. My skill [Mirror Image] lets me control both bodies at once. It’s… a little disorienting at first, but it has a lot of uses. I can only do it when I’m using my [Eternal Cold] and [Diamondflesh] skills, though. It’s great for one-on-one combat, but not so good for fighting groups, as it is very hard to focus on more than one thing at a time.”

The others finally came out of their stupor and rushed forward.

“Em, how did you take that huge hit? I thought for sure he took you out…”

“He didn’t actually hit me. He hit an ice clone of me that I was controlling. The spell I cast looked flashy, but all I did was create a large block of ice just big enough to hide the real me inside and just kept overcasting it to make it stronger. While he kept channeling his storm spell, I cast the Mirror Image spell and a few Ice Wall traps around him. After watching him fight that Saberdemon I noticed that he tended to ignore his surroundings and just focus on a single target. I remained stationary the entire time to conserve MP and to avoid being hit by his lightning storm that only strikes moving targets within the vicinity.”

My jaw dropped at the level of strategy it had taken for her to beat him, and a wide smile spread across my face.

“You had this whole thing planned out since the beginning?”

They laughed and shook their heads.

“No. Well… some of it. I made most of it up as I went along. After I created my character I spent a few hours going over all the skills; what they did, how they could be modified, and how they worked in combination with other skills. I had a pretty good idea what he was using and an inkling of how I could counter it, I just needed time to figure out how I would set it all up. If he had really worked at attacking me in close range, I probably wouldn’t have won. I made it seem like I was always protected by ice spikes in the event he got too close, but I didn’t have the MP to keep doing that. It all boiled down to what he thought I was doing instead of what I was actually doing.”

One of them turned and with a wave of her arm, the encased lightning mage rose up off the ground and hovered in place.

“What do you want me to do with this piece of trash?”

I moved up and inspected the Angelspawn Storm Mage up close through the transparent layers of ice. His fair skin looked pale from the cold. He had long black hair that was pulled back into a ponytail, but I couldn’t really make out his body features through the layered brown and white trench coat he was wearing.

“Did you mean what you said about letting my master have him?”

They sighed, and the one not keeping him suspended in the air turned to me.

“No. I was pissed, but after you described what you have to endure almost every time you log in, I wouldn’t wish that on anyone else. I just… I wish he wasn’t such an asshole. He’d be awesome to have on our team, but… not like that.”

I nodded and narrowed my eyes at the imprisoned mage. I stepped forward and smacked him across the face with my hand. He blinked his eyes open from the pain, and looked down. After realizing he was completely trapped, he glanced at Emelia.

“That was… that was impressive. I’ll admit I vastly underestimated you.”

He turned to me and his eyes opened in surprise.

“I didn’t notice before… but… are you the Allexus? As in… the only player who’s a higher level than me?”

I nodded and crossed my arms over my chest.

“Shit… I didn’t think you were real! I thought you were an NPC or something that was just there to make everyone grind harder to try and pass you. It’s too bad you’re a demon though… I’d clan up with you in a second if it was possible.”

I sighed and smirked at him.

“If the ice mage releases you, are you going to try attacking us again?”

He shook his head and laughed.

“No, I may take a few steps back to stop my corruption meter from going up, but I won’t try anything. Even if I did, with your ice mage and you, I’d stand no chance.”

The Emelia holding him aloft gestured with her hand and the ice broke apart and fell to the ground. He landed on his feet and shivered his body a few times and rubbed his hands up and down his limbs. After shaking the rest of the ice shards free from his clothing, he walked about 15 feet and leaned against a large boulder. I gave him a short explanation of my situation, and he listened intently.

“So… if I have sex with you, I could become a demon like you?”

I sighed and rolled my eyes.

“No. Well, technically yes. But… you’d become my master’s servant and would have to subject yourself to his every whim.”

He scoffed and shook his head.

“Yeah… no thanks. I mean, I wouldn’t say no to sleeping with you, but… not if that meant I’d be a sadistic demon lord’s slave.”

A thought occurred to me and I turned to my clan.

“Even if he can’t join the clan… if he entered the castle at the same time as us when we decide to take on my master, could he still join the fight?”

Judas answered quickly, and he spoke loudly enough for Niall to hear.

“Yes. There’s nothing stopping him from attacking your master at the same time we do. He’d have to pay extra attention to his corruption meter with all the demons and Demonspawn around.”

We all nodded and looked over at him.

“Before you ask, I’ll just say, I’m in. I don’t normally clan up… but… you guys kick ass. Just message me when and where and I’ll be there.” 

We exchanged contact info and said our goodbyes. We all crowded around Emelia as we made our way towards the bounty location, praising her display of magical prowess the entire way.