Free The Battle by D. Rus

I turned to Asmodeus. "Let’s begin!"
    I wasn’t afraid of being watched: all potential blabbers had been chased away. Only NPCs were left out in the tiny inner yard: my loyal servants and Asmodeus’ demons.
    Asmodeus smiled promisingly, shook his hands and, reveling in his power, taunted:
    "Fear not, it won’t hurt. A direct flight. No layovers in the Fiery Gehenna! Boom, ready!"
    My heart skipped a beat on the word "boom".
    But "ready" had a different effect. Pain shot through my shoulder. A wave of hatred and fear swept over my consciousness. Tavor’s body was overfilled with raging hormones.
    Unable to balance myself, I fell to my knees. Tavor's body had an odd center of gravity. A foreign mind entered my brain, shutting off my instincts and rapidly taking control.
    My heart raced in fear. I inhaled hoarsely, taking in air into my reluctant lungs, nearly all of my muscles cramping.
    "Goddamn..." escaped my dry lips.
    The sounds of healing magic came from nearby. My loyal clanmates were doing everything within their power to alleviate my suffering.
    Slowly I went from minced meat to a steak well-done, so to speak. Asmodeus moved his hands like a psychic, smoothing out the invisible folds. He said soothingly, "You’ll get used to wearing it. It won’t feel so tight. Now, had you missed, that would have been a real discomfort..."
    "What?!" I stared at him indignantly, distracted from the panoply of new inner sensations.
    Asmodeus shrugged indifferently. "What’d you expect? This isn’t a petty heart transplant. Your soul could have failed to acclimatize. You risk your life even squeezing a zit, with infections and all. Alright, don’t fidget. Your shoulder wound has opened up again, it’s festering. Seraphic adamant, blast it thrice!"
    Asmodeus furiously scratched the star-shaped scar on his neck. I looked at my shoulder. After the healing magic, the wound had dried and closed up a bit. But it was far from being in fighting condition. Shards of bone had pierced the bluish skin and sparkled sugar-like under the infernal sun.
    Damn... I had hit Tavor good...
    "A bad wound," noted Asmodeus. "To ruin such a quality body! It’ll take six months to heal, if it heals at all. You should re-consider how you jab your spear into anything that moves. It’s a heart of a dead god, not some rusty pigpen post!"
    Ignoring his grumbling, I turned to the ear-choppers. "Bandage me up good. Butterfly, make a shoulder belt with that foppish scarf of yours. My arm’s dangling like a flaccid cock."
    The warriors tensed up, but didn’t move. I frowned at them, perplexed. Well, don’t be so pigheaded! Wait... Oh, right!
    Cursing, I turned my dry eyes to the virtual interfaces that I struggled to open. What a cascade of windows! Like I’m in a different game! Epileptics, turn away now or a seizure’s guaranteed.
    The familiar default GUI styling was gone, replaced by a bunch of stupid frames, relief shadow fonts, and useless communication and channel stability indicators.
    The myriad of highlights and the marks of the custom fan mods made my head spin. The forms around me were designated with critical points. HP notifications flickered all around. A paid duel stat log and a PK-counter estimator loaded up from some external database. They were followed by an aggression indicator, favorite attack combo, and much much more. Damn cheater! Be you banned eternally in the Bundle of Nerves’s body!
    When I finally located the private messenger window, I sent the ear-choppers the password, "Thirty-two, orange, Wolf."
    Instantly they rushed over to me, sticking out their shoulders and supporting my reeling frame on all sides. It wasn’t easy. Tavor had changed significantly since I last saw him. The 300-level warrior was like some epic ballad hero: broad as an ox, with a four-hundred-pound iron forged body. Boy, did the bastard fatten up...
    The injured joint would crunch every time black blood spurted from the wound. The ear-choppers