A Real Human Being Chapter 33 (or 33-34, not sure yet)

***Zaudern and Ahnungslos,Natural tornadoes weren’t unknown in the Northern and Central Lands. There were witnesses and records, but due to the rarity, those lay mostly outside of the common wisdom, and more within folk myths. The phenomenon was better known in the south and the eastern islands, but that only made it marginally better known.The calamity that bloomed outside Sturmkamm that night was unfathomable, but not due to its novelty… no, it was the sheer scale of it.The winds picked up in what felt like a single blink, tugging at hair and clothes, whistling past buildings, trees, and mountain trails, roaring as the gusts grew more powerful, but this was merely a backdrop to the whooshing. It sounded like a massive waterfall just out of sight, yet indescribably louder. Then there was its appearance. Even from a few kilometers away, a distance large enough to make most explosions conjured by magic look insignificant, the tornado looked like a colossal funnel-shaped column just close by, jet black and ominous, and it stretched from the ground into the sky, past where the eye could easily follow. Were the city not a dead, abandoned husk, the bulk of it alone would have boggled imaginations.But even all that, many of the people fighting for their lives that night might still have missed, despite the nightvision potions that would easily let them see it.But then, the tornado ignited. Dark crimson flames, reminiscent of glowing arterial blood, bloomed at its base, spreading upwards and growing blue, then orange, then yellow, all of it igniting in a single, shockingly bright flash.Everyone in the city was bathed in the light as if the sun itself had briefly crested the horizon in a crimson dawn.Many battles across the city paused; even the demons and the slaves of the demonic host, the living and the dead alike, were directed by sets of orders that demanded they assess what they were seeing before they could fight on. A brief moment of respite, born out of incomprehension at the scale of what they were witnessing. Near the Rathaus, this was no exception. The demon paused, half-turning in a quick, jerky, lizard-like motion, and Aura’s puppets stilled, their heads turning; their minds were unconscious, but their souls were bound to make decisions requiring thought. Naturally, some of those present recovered faster than others. Which was why the Bürgermeister could only blink, dumbly, when the hand of what some part of him had already dismissed as a corpse grabbed onto his ankle, fingers curling around his greaves with inhuman strength. His gaze dropped, and the realization landed even as he mouthed:“Fuck…” The first to react was the demon, who caught movement in his peripheral vision. The enslaved humans, not having drunk the same nightvision potions as the defenders, would’ve had trouble seeing it as clearly.A human, no matter how bewitched, would have also taken longer to react. But a demon’s psyche was wired differently. When he saw a human not only distracted, but momentarily vulnerable, his instincts screamed at him to pounce, and so, without even having to think, he did. With an easy flick of his hand, Mogel sent another wave of the cursed, condensed crimson light forth. The demon’s attack was fast even by the standards of most combat spells, but normally, one could have at least attempted to move out of the way.That wasn’t of much help to Ahnungslos. The man tried yanking his leg away precisely once before abandoning that idea; the dead elite soldier was no less powerful than he had been alive. Instead, he let go of his shield, leaned down, grabbed the soldier by his cuirass, and hoisted the aimlessly resisting body up in front of himself, upside down due to it still clinging to his ankle, as if it were a pavise or a tower shield.  “Ahnungslos!” Zaudern reacted a breath too slowly; the mental command for his closest golems went out half a second before impact, far too late for that exchange. The wave of crimson hit… and Ahnungslos was shoved back a step, yet looked more confused than anything. Through that confusion, he heard, rather than saw, liquid spilling down, far too much of it; then he saw how the greaves of the man he still held up were starting to… leak?Baffled, he let go, and as the corpse fell, the plate armour shattered across the paved ground like a ceramic cup, fragments scattering as the rest of it fell away… revealing a malnourished-looking mummy beneath, which went on shrinking and bleeding out at an incredible pace even as the Bürgermeister watched.The demon across the grounds merely lowered his hand, floating aside and down, both closing the distance with the man, yet not so close that the warrior-trained human would be provoked into action.“You do think quick on your feet,” he commented, sounding rather casual. “It won’t save you,” he went on in the same breath, “Slaves, you are free to engage,” he added, as if an afterthought.They immediately did.Naturally, the enslaved soldiers weren’t silent; they were deep in their delirium, trapped in literal nightmares, and all they could do was beg for help and mutter their confusion and distress, without ever waking. Some were more vocal, some quieter; for all Neugieri’s skill, she could not alter the original persona of those men. As such, they acted as they would have in a fever, lost in their nightmares, seeing delirious episodes. Only Lord Standhaft himself was silent as the grave; if he muttered any words, no one present caught them.Zaudern, for his part, spared the now-crumbled corpse by the Bürgermeister’s side a single glance before returning his attention to the enslaved elites, who advanced in formation as if baiting the golems into acting first.His expression was stony as he desperately sorted through options, the information about the demon’s magic set aside for now as he tried to think of a way to turn this situation around and… failed to grasp even the beginning of a solution. Zaudern had only a few unique golems and just over a dozen more of a mundane variety assembled in the days leading up to the battle. The numbers were on his side, but that advantage was a technicality at best; he knew it better than anyone else. It wasn’t the capabilities of the golems that were lacking; Zaudern reckoned that any one of them, piloted by a decent mage, could at least stall one of Standhaft’s enslaved men, who were veterans of the war and genuine Central Lands elite soldiers. At least provided those men didn’t just rush past the golem towards the mage to cut him down. That said, Zaudern alone, no matter his skill, couldn’t manually control over twenty golems simultaneously with any degree of precision; he was only human. This was what he found so unnerving about the demon they were facing: this spell that made humans into puppets… was ingenious. All the usual limitations of necromancy and golemomancy just ceased to be, at the cost of the entrapped souls. A magic fitting for a demon. Of course, each golem carried some instructions and emergency command structures for independent actions; the expertise of the best enchanters of the guild had gone into designing those. However, an artificial mind could never compare to a real one. Against the elite warriors, Zaudern could leave any individual golem unattended for ten seconds at best, if he was being optimistic, before a human warrior would start noticing patterns in the golem’s attacks and exploit those to quickly triumph. Even if he meddled in every fight as much as he was able, the soldiers he was stalling would surely find a way to win eventually if they took it slow… at least if the elf’s words were true, and Aura’s servants could indeed perform as if alive even when dead, and all the more so when merely delirious, like they clearly were now.  Some of the unique golems had tricks and engraved spells that weren’t as straightforward to deal with, but how many he could take down with those was a question Zaudern couldn’t answer. Nor did he know how long he would last.That was where he found his thoughts shifting immediately… not winning, stalling for time.Then, there was Standhaft himself, who, in the previous brief exchange, had managed to bisect a pair of golems Zaudern had thrown at him as a distraction. He was clearly on another level compared to his men.And then, there was the demon, but… he could only hope the Bürgermeister would keep that one busy. Zaudern had the dragon-head golem stay focused on him, but ultimately, he couldn’t see a victory if the enemy could chip at these golems from range on open grounds. His musings were cut short; the warriors were close enough now, and the golems’ automatic responses triggered, making them step forth and swing. Zaudern snapped to focus, directing his will towards the fight with grim nervousness. The enslaved soldiers advanced, shields raised where the men still carried them, and for the first minute or so, all that reached Zaudern through the visual feedback of the golem control nodes were probing exchanges: a cut against an iron forearm here, a shield shoved into a stone chest there.Zaudern sank his attention into one of the more basic golems, knowing it was his chance to try and get a feel of the enemy on average. The old enchanter didn’t feel particularly pressured; the golems were durable enough to withstand probing and glancing blows, and shielding their more essential components wasn’t difficult. Attacking properly without breaking formation was another matter. It was as he expected. The problem, as it had been from the very start, was that he could only truly be in one or two fights at a time, and many were happening at once.Somewhere on his left, he felt himself losing control of part of a golem.By the time Zaudern threw his will into the construct, it was already missing a hand; the soldier had stepped inside its guard on a half-beat. The old enchanter wrenched the golem through an improvised shoulder-check that bought a few more moments, but its opponent merely circled back out of reach and waited, and Zaudern could not stay. Two other fights were souring in exactly the same manner.He abandoned the golem to its fate. It held a short while longer on its own, and then its control nodes went silent one by one: arm, leg, core, the soldier taking it apart at the joints like a butcher.Nearby, another of the cheap golems landed a devastating blow, a full mace swing that caved in a soldier’s breastplate along with some of what lay beneath it. The man folded around the impact, straightened, and raised his sword back into a proper guard, not so much as favoring the wound.Nothing quite prepared Zaudern for watching a man with a crushed chest resume his stance.That settled the approach for the night.He had to either target the limbs, or pin those men. Going for killing blows with most golems was useless, his golems had no way to destroy a body quickly. One of the lighter frames at the edge of the melee began to favor its left leg. A hitch in the stride at first, then a faint grinding from the hip joint that grew less faint with every exchange. Its retreats drifted, half a step at a time, towards the scattered remains of the golem that had been taken apart earlier. The beetle golem, directed by Zaudern, positioned itself carefully in the dark beyond that wreckage, lowering its frame just out of that man’s sight.The soldier facing the limping frame did not rush. He was probing and pushing it, clearly testing its ground. Zaudern, who had seen where the exchange was going, was ready.The beetle came out of the dark in three strides and closed its forelimbs around the man’s waist and sword arm when he approached just a bit too close. Those limbs had been designed for gripping and tearing at other golems; they curled the soldier against its underside and locked. The man thrashed with enough strength to rock the whole frame on its six legs. But that didn’t matter much.The limping golem moved back to close the gap, stopping any of the men’s comrades from attempting a rescue.That left eight of the nine humans, at least for as long as the beetle’s hold lasted.It was around then that Zaudern once again reaffirmed his belief that true warriors were freaks. Lord Standhaft was not commanding from behind his men, and he was not dueling one golem or another. At any given moment, four, five, six golems pressed him at once, as many as could physically reach him, and the lord was taking them apart as they came. One of the mass-produced frames swung at him and was opened from hip to shoulder before its swing landed; another managed to seize his pauldron and lost the arm that held it, then its head. He did not seem to hurry, and he never quite stopped walking. No one truly stood still; the whole battle was a mix of exchanges, advances and brief retreats, localized for the most part near the entrance to the garden before the Rathaus.The soldiers, meanwhile, made no move to press the rest of the line any harder, and Zaudern doubted it was needless caution. More likely, it was the same thing that kept him restless. Even if it looked like he could hold up, this could not last, the enchanter knew.Wherever the lord passed, soldiers folded in behind him and sealed whatever gap he had opened, covering his back without a word said or needed. It looked natural, Zaudern thought, practiced, like something these men had done together a hundred times before tonight, in battles far away.Meanwhile, some distance to the side, the Bürgermeister was studying the mummified corpse at his feet with distaste, sparing just a single glance at the remains of the golem that had shielded him from the demon’s crimson light, which, too, was oozing blood. He had looked over just in time, earlier, to see that stumbling, cursed thing shattered by one of the enslaved men.His knowledge of magic was sparse, but he had heard enough stories from adventurers to recognize a ‘curse’. “That’s one gross spell…” Ahnungslos muttered, rubbing the red liquid between the fingers of his gauntlet, before leaning down and picking up his shield from a sizable pool of… blood? “Makes even this puppet show smell like a slaughterhouse.”The demon tilted his head, seemingly in no hurry to engage.“I disagree. But it’s only natural that we would find plenty of unpleasant things about one another. That is the reason we are in conflict, is it not?” the demon questioned rhetorically. The Bürgermeister simply chuckled.“Ah yes, it’s not because your kind is just focused on killing mine for no particular reason or anything.”The demon merely tilted his head.“I speak of one thing; you speak of another. I fail to see the connection. Demons kill humans. Humans kill humans. Demons kill demons. All of those things do happen. However, it bears no relation to the greater conflict between our peoples,” the demon offered. “Fundamentally, just because someone kills your kind does not make that creature your enemy.” Mogel spread his hands in a theatrical gesture. “The true cause for the confrontation between our kinds, rather than individuals, is undoubtedly that there are things we fundamentally despise about one another, things that warrant the complete extermination of the other side.”Ahnungslos merely raised an eyebrow.“Again, I believe you are glossing over the part where your kind unconditionally kills humans. That’s something most men trouble with.”The demon paused, freezing completely, before resuming his movement as if nothing had happened, flicking the human’s point away with an absent-minded gesture of his left hand.“This is precisely what I said, did I not? A thing you despise for causes that are beyond comprehension,” he continued, his eyes meeting those of the Bürgermeister.Ahnungslos couldn’t help it; he chuckled once he realized the demon was not going to elaborate.“Beyond comprehension? Can you not recognize that after one and two comes three? Or, in other words, that if a demon kills your neighbor, it will try to kill you next?” The Bürgermeister sounded casual, his hammer resting at his side, but in truth, he was trying both to think up a way to survive this and to stall for time. He couldn’t see a path to winning this, not with just him and the old enchanter; they needed to last until someone else got here. Every second the demon was willing to talk was a victory. “You speak as if there is some logic to your words, when there is none,” the demon said simply. “A demon killed your neighbor because your neighbor was clearly weaker than the demon. It does not mean that the demon is capable of killing you. Nor does it mean that the demon would be willing to seek you out to kill you,” Mogel explained, seemingly confused as to why he even had to. “There is no causation here; just because a demon would normally be willing to kill a human does not mean it will necessarily attempt to kill you. Especially if you are stronger than that… fellow man of yours. You may not know this, but the main reason an encounter in the wild between a demon and a party of humans of equal strength almost universally turns into a fight is precisely because the demon knows it can’t escape, and so, some strong humans who would otherwise walk away and live out the rest of their lives perfectly well die in an unnecessary battle. It’s absurd, illogical behavior,” the talking monster stated, sounding more like a nobleman in the capital politely complaining about the quality of service at some eatery than an abomination that regularly consumed human flesh. It was then that Albert’s words about demons came back to Ahnungslos, resonating one more time in his mind. The creature in front of him made no attempt to hide his inner thoughts; as far as the Bürgermeister was concerned, Mogel was truthful with him… because, fundamentally, the demon mirrored the sentiment the elf had explained at length. A demon does not understand compassion for anyone, ever, nor does it understand ‘care’. The powerful creature truly could not grasp why a demon killing some other, weaker human would ever be an issue for a stronger one, a human actually capable of killing the demon back. Because the demon could likely never consider a weaker demon being killed by a human to be a thing worthy of his attention or concern. The demon shook his head.“But I do understand in my own way. I don’t understand why demons killing humans is an issue, when dwarves killing humans isn’t, but I do have my own causes for hating your kind that I know you won’t understand. For instance, I despise how a creature like you is the leader of this settlement when you have amongst you someone capable of doing this.” The demon jerked a thumb back over his shoulder, towards where the tornado of fire had long since wound down and vanished.“Is it jealousy?” Ahnungslos asked, mildly curious.The demon tilted his head.“Perhaps to a point. I certainly would like to command someone such as this. But fundamentally it’s the incomprehension. That incomprehension calls for caution, and that caution prompts me to wish you dead.” Mogel shook his horned head. “But it’s a poor example; I believe both of us are quite willing to kill one another as is.” The demon reached for the collar of his doublet, straightening it. “Because of you, I suffered a substantial punishment at Lady Aura’s hand; it’s fortunate that I now have the opportunity to kill you for it.” Despite his words, the demon didn’t sound eager or excited, and even though Ahnungslos wasn’t all that sensitive to such things, he could still feel the demon’s bloodlust. It hadn’t risen at any point, not the way it had when Mogel was briefly insulted in their earlier exchange.It sounded like the demon simply spoke of the weather.Neither the demon nor the Bürgermeister had moved a step. Whatever bloodlust hung in the air between them, Mogel was clearly in no hurry to act on it. For obvious reasons, neither did Ahnungslos.“That said, before we get to it, satiate my curiosity if you will,” the demon requested, as he seemed to try to pry something from under one of his nails, “What was the point of breaching our agreement? Were you not afraid of retaliation, or did you think that a practice such as this is foreign to us?” Mogel sounded genuinely curious. Ahnungslos considered him. The Bürgermeister had trouble understanding why Mogel was so engaged in that conversation and their prior dealings; was he, perhaps, trying to stall for time too? Or was he, for whatever reason, so curious about his motives it kept him up at night?No matter how amusing the thought was, the Bürgermeister felt cautious, knowing something was wrong. Yet, he had no choice but to keep stalling, didn’t he? A direct fight at this moment would lead to a defeat rather quickly.In any case, he figured answering honestly may keep this going longer.“Naturally, I wasn’t afraid of any retaliation. Until just over a week ago, I didn’t know what ‘Greater Demon’ meant, and to sneak you into the city to do your part, I had to make arrangements. I naturally assumed you wouldn’t be able to infiltrate by yourself, nor did I consider that you could be successful with an invading force of any sort,” Ahnungslos replied, his voice dry. “There is no great reason why you have been swindled. It wasn’t for personal reasons or because you were a demon; it’s much simpler than that. It’s just that, as far as I knew, you were in no position to enforce the terms of our agreement, and I saw a way to easily fool you and have you leave without causing a commotion.” He explained it as the most natural thing in the world, which, to him, it was.The demon, unnervingly, didn’t seem in any way angered by the Bürgermeister’s words. He merely tilted his head, his eyes growing distant as if he were analyzing the information.“The caravan that you intercepted, the one with Schleim,” the Bürgermeister continued, “Did you even wonder why it was transporting alchemical supplies and enchanted equipment in these amounts not by the main trade roads, but going practically through the wilderness and remote villages?” he questioned absent-mindedly, seeing that the demon was interested enough, “It was because those were items sold to people I couldn’t openly associate with in any capacity, people who were ready to pay a shiny coin for them. Even a demon should have an idea, no?”Mogel raised an eyebrow.“You mean the rebels in the Civil War?” This wasn’t what they called themselves, but it’s the name they received now, after everything was over and most of them were either on the run or rotting in the ground: “While it’s no doubt a context, I can’t say I particularly care for it.”Ahnungslos nodded to that.“I expect that you wouldn’t. The only reason you even know about the Civil War is probably that it was easier for your mistress to do as she pleased in its shadow, is it not so?” the man asked rhetorically, and continued without waiting for an answer, “But that’s the thing, the reason I made a deal with you in the first place when Schleim somehow managed to bring you into the Valley, instead of just letting you have the bastard to do as you please with, was because I already had channels very eager to pay for things they couldn’t get themselves. I saw an opportunity in you, a pair of hands capable of causing the exact sort of incidents necessary to get the items I needed to make use of the opportunity. I told you that much the last time, didn’t I?” the man once again asked rhetorically. The demon merely stared.It had been his own initiative, listening to the pleading human named Schleim, one of the last survivors of the caravan they slaughtered, who promised that his master could get them more supplies. Mogel detected some genuine belief in his voice, and it made him curious back then.The demon had gone with him alone to try and arrange for those supplies, just as Ahnungslos said… making use of the opportunity that he saw. Lady Aura gave him a dismissive go-ahead; keeping her enslaved humans fresh enough wasn’t exactly a priority, but having items that made them spoil slower was convenient, in her own words.For Mogel, it was one of the rare opportunities to prove his use to his mistress. He had arrived in the valley hiding his nature, and, using a few younger demons he had taken with him, arranged a meeting with the ‘powerful man’ the pathetic, groveling caravan leader insisted could provide. Mogel remembered that Ahnungslos indeed had said the words, that he too was merely ‘making use of the opportunity’. Back then, he openly asked why the human would need to steal from what was essentially himself to sell them the items. Not that Mogel understood in the first place why coins of gold and silver were of any value, but they still had a fair amount accumulated from destroyed settlements and intercepted armies.The explanation Mogel had received from the Bürgermeister at the time was both understandable and deeply confusing; it was because while the human was willing to sell those things, many of his underlings weren’t, and as such the items’ disappearance must be arranged as an accident, so as not to rouse suspicion. Back then, the Bürgermeister explained that this was the only way he would be able to leave with an entire cart full of items he needed without having the adventurers and other defenders of the city on high alert, and advised Mogel not to think too much about it. Following that advice was a mistake he was rectifying now.“I see. You were truthful that you had plans for the wares in the warehouses you had me torch, but you were going to sell them twice. They went to the rebels, then.” Mogel nodded in understanding.Ahnungslos sighed in… disappointment, to the great confusion of the demon.“And this is why I said your kind are innocent like babes in some respect. Mogel, why do you think I sold the merchandise only twice?” The Bürgermeister asked, looking at him with open pity, “The civil war by that time was nearing its end; those rebels I’ve been in contact with had about as much means to enforce our old agreements as your group did. But they needed everything I could get to them, were ready to pay any amount of coin to try to turn things around or at least buy themselves more time to escape with their wealth.” The man chuckled, humorlessly, “In the first place, the only reason you’ve been necessary was that I knew I could do a lot with years’ worth of the Valley Guard’s stocks precisely then and there, especially at such a time, when the war was at its climax. You are asking me where those anti-illness, warmness, and warmeal potions, enchanted trinkets to sharpen swords, and other such crap that armies eat through like no one’s business went? I can’t tell you, because I used a small part of it everywhere I could reach to show my wares and present an option to buy more from me, took the payment in instalments, and delivered precisely nothing I promised. Probably every second town in the Central Lands this side of the civil war had some of those items delivered to them, though they did expect ten times the amount that never arrived since.” He explained, allowing a smile to appear on his face.It was an earnest, easy expression.“Of course, I had an idea of doing something like that before; the way the Guard is organized in terms of bureaucracy is just… well, sufficient to say I had plenty of ways to acquire materials to sell through those braindead idiots. Between you and me, bureaucracy in this city in general is laughable; I could keep ‘cutting the budget’ for the guard while making the money never add up, buy items and potions and enchanted gear through trusted hands through the difference, and resell to rebels for profits that would make any sensible man go mad with greed. But without an asset like you who could fly, follow orders perfectly, and then leave forever and never be trusted at your word even if you did try to reveal anything… well, sufficient to say, I couldn’t just have taken the gamble at the end of the war, and would’ve ended up as just another profiteer who sold to the crown’s enemies through shadow merchants… now I am a hero in a way, a man who robbed those pesky rebels, taking revenge for the crown, and so forth...” The man said as if waving the idea away, while still smiling. Right now, the bulky man looked more like an uncle who was reminiscing about a good day in his past than anything remotely like what he was describing.The soldier Zaudern had been tracking along the edge of the melee finally made his run, peeling wide and fast around the flank, towards the stretch of the gardens where the defensive line looked thinnest.Among the churned soil and the wreckage of the earlier exchanges lay a construct most of the city had last seen in the arena: the Kiln, the students’ tournament golem, five meters of pale segmented stone on dozens of short legs, built in imitation of a centipede, the same golem that had coiled around the guild’s own Hammerfall in the opening bout and cooked the anvil into a lopsided mass of slag. That match had cost it its front segment and cracked three more, and the repairs that Zaudern, Albert, and the guild’s masters had crammed into the few days since was rash work that he would have failed an apprentice for… but the thermal array at its core was intact, the body still moved.So, it did just that.The coils took the running soldier at the knees, whipped up around his sword arm and chest, and then the construct lay its full weight down on him, pinning the man flat against the frozen ground. Even pinned, the strength in him was appalling; through the golem’s acoustic feedback, Zaudern could hear the patched segment joints grinding against the strain.Then he ordered the thermal array into action.Not to burn the man. It wasn’t that heat killed too slowly; heat killed plenty fast, but a dead man was no easier to handle tonight than a living one, and short of incinerating a body whole, killing accomplished nothing at all. Zaudern doubted the Kiln’s array could reduce an armoured soldier to ash before the man’s comrades tore the construct off of him, and he had no wish whatsoever to learn how a man cooked alive would look and sound through the golem’s visual and acoustic feedback. The armour, though, was another matter, as steel answered heat long before flesh gave out, at least steel with this particular defensive enchantment, outdated by three decades or so. Zaudern recognized it; this one was decent at protecting the body beneath from heat, but the outer layer of metal accepted all the heat in return, which he was going to use to his benefit.He held the array’s output at the threshold he wanted and watched as the soldier’s sword glowed angry red, as the armour joints showed a much stronger degradation, elbow and knee glowed, sagged, and fused into shapeless lumps, and then he cut the spell entirely and let the winter air set the slag.What remained was a man welded into his own harness, alive, whole, and unable to bend a single limb; he would keep until a priest could see to him, provided any priest lived that long. Seven of the nine were still fighting.It was while backing the Kiln off its prisoner that the weight of the moment caught up with the old man.He had been twelve when he saw the creature this golem was built to imitate. What he kept of that day, sixty-odd years past, were only fragments: a small frozen lake, the heat reaching his face, a shape of smoke, magma, and liquid fire where the far shore should have been… and a single figure with a staff, standing on the lake between it and three boys.Sixty-some years later, Zaudern was the one behind the monster’s eyes.The joy that rose in him at that thought was entirely inappropriate for the circumstances, but he was beyond caring; he snapped his attention to a pair of golems that managed to press one of the men particularly well…Across the square, the fighting had been slowly drifting towards the corner of the gardens.The gantry that was positioned there was, by the standards of Zaudern’s craft, an embarrassment: the two gravity hammer-arms salvaged from Hammerfall’s remains after the tournament, bolted onto a frame of scrap iron and rough stone in a single night. Somehow it looked even worse than the dragon-head golem. He had fielded the thing mostly because leaving a quality enchantment unused tonight would have been foolish.Two golems body-checked a soldier in sequence, driving him staggering into the construct’s reach; the maneuver cost the first golem an arm, severed cleanly even mid-shove, because his swordwork never faltered, not even off balance. It didn’t matter. The hammer-head came down on his shoulders and pressed, and the enchantment that had been built to crush tournament golems into rubble began multiplying the weight of everything beneath it. The soldier went from staggering to kneeling to flat in the space of a few breaths, cobbles cracking in a ring around him, his armour groaning under the load, and there he stayed, straining against several times his own weight and moving nothing at all.Then, with an explosion of gore and metal fragments, the man was no more.That brought the count of soldiers still moving freely down to six.Somewhere off to the side, the Bürgermeister was still talking, which meant the man was still alive. Zaudern had no attention left over for the words.And underneath the strain sat a fact he could no longer pretend away: his heart was hammering the way it hammered on tournament mornings. He was doing the work he loved most, against the finest opponents he would ever get to face, at the very limit of what he had believed his craft could do… and he was keeping up. An old man of declining health, keeping up. If he survived the night, he decided, he was going to be insufferable about it for whatever time he had left. Besides, it felt good fighting side by side with Albert this time. Even if the elf was kilometers away, they were fighting the same demon, were they not?The thought filled him with more pride than he could ever admit.A pair of soldiers went for the dragon-head golem, and the night stopped being enjoyable for Zaudern.The dragon-head was his only means of threatening the demon, and a finite one. Every golem fielded tonight had been loaded with a set store of mana, and the dragon-head’s store had been budgeted, down to the last shot, for Mogel; the beam was ruinously expensive to fire, and Zaudern fully expected that suppressing a demon of his caliber would take many shots. Every shot spent on chaff was a shot he would not have when the conversation across the square ran out.Once again, Zaudern couldn’t help but be impressed by Ahnungslos’s skill in running his mouth to his own benefit.He could surrender the golem, or he could spend some of the energy he’d been saving for the worst-case scenario. It was no choice at all, in other words.The dragon’s jaw fell open, and crimson light pooled in its throat. Aiming was not the difficulty; the way the golem handled when being aimed was one of the few parts of its design that was beyond reproach. The difficulty was that behind the head and its targets lay Zaudern’s own melee force, packed with his own golems. Ordering them to move aside seconds before he fired was trivial; doing it without telegraphing the shot to the two soldiers was not.A flash, a clap of scorched air, and one of the two soldiers ended at the waist, everything above it gone to ash and glowing char; what remained of him stood upright a moment longer before folding into the melted snow. The second man threw himself aside with a hand’s width to spare and that was enough for two basic golems to catch up to him and tie him up in combat. That left five soldiers still fighting, and their lord.Mogel, for his part, seemed to have finished weighing the Bürgermeister’s story.“For your reference, quite a few humans in Lady Aura’s forces died in a pretty pathetic manner due to the wares you’ve sold us,” Mogel recalled, studying the man in front of him curiously. His words were the truth; spoiled potions and those that were labeled wrong did produce a lot of rather painful deaths. “I suppose you can assign fault to us for not knowing better what spoiled potions looked like, but ultimately you are responsible for men who did you no wrong dying from diarrhea, rotting wounds, and in other rather unpleasant ways.”Ahnungslos just waved the demon off. “Are you trying to see if I am capable of guilt?” The man asked directly; the demon, in response, grew silent, not even attempting to deny it. “Heh, you have no idea what makes a human feel guilt, do you? Those men were dead no matter what I did or did not do back then; even if I was the sort to wake up in cold sweat from the results of my dealings, this incident wouldn’t have been it.” The man explained simply.“A poor example, perhaps. But don’t you feel the guilt for what is currently happening?” The demon asked calmly, “Wouldn’t those weapons and potions be useful now, in the defense of the city?”When the crimson flash washed over the square, Mogel didn’t turn. His eyes did leave the Bürgermeister for a long breath, though, tracking something past the man’s shoulder with what looked like mild, honest interest, before settling back.Ahnungslos merely lifted an eyebrow, fighting down the urge to flinch, before slowly answering the question.“I have arranged for this entire region to be viewed as the one that supported the crown wholeheartedly. We did, in fact, materially support the crown, so the crown would have never attacked us during the Civil War. We showed our loyalty openly, which is already more than some dared to do. Simultaneously, I arranged for a deal with the rebels, who needed highly specialized premium equipment, and I provided it to them,” the man explained. “Which also made us safe from invasion on their part, as conquering us with an army would have stalled the production of the items they were getting now, and which they critically needed. In other words, I have secured the region with no need for the Guard for anything but handling monsters, and they were always overequipped for that work. Any proper army could never have been financed and housed in this city alone, no matter how much the Guard tried to pretend otherwise; I ran the numbers, and what the Guard did was embezzlement through hiring way too many people who were useless for the amount of actual work they had on hand. Indeed, I hadn’t anticipated your mistress appearing, but…” Ahnungslos chuckled, “Would potions and trinkets make any difference at all in this battle, against a creature that could raze a city singlehandedly? Of course not.” The man simply smiled. “I’ve led Sturmkamm and this entire region through the most turbulent time of the century without most people here even getting to know what a war is. Hunger? Bandits on the road? Raids or attacks by foreign armies? Sieges? No one in my region experienced it. Do you know how many great lords across the entire king’s realm can claim this? Tell me, have I done a bad job? Would you have somehow been grateful and not come here if I didn’t give you expired crap instead of what you ordered?” the man questioned, eyes narrowing. The demon considered the Bürgermeister for a few seconds before tilting his head in acknowledgement.“Were I the leader of the warband, I would have to retaliate against you for threatening my authority like this. But we all serve Lady Aura, so naturally, after suffering my punishment, there was no need for such actions. You are correct; us being here has nothing to do with your prior actions; we would have come anyway,” the demon explained, his voice casual.Mogel tilted his head.“I was just curious about how you look at this. I’ve questioned many humans before, though, admittedly, usually at death’s door, and a lot of them tended to feel guilty about the most absurd of things. Perhaps it’s some sort of lunacy humans only have before death,” the demon mused with some idle curiosity. “That said, allow me to ask you one more thing… why did you decide to stay and fight? You are a human closer to demons than most, and you are clearly good at lying. It would have been effortless for you to slip away with your life and even those riches you treasure,” Mogel asked, curiosity in his voice.The smile disappeared from Ahnungslos’s lips.“Me, akin to a demon? Don’t make me laugh. Your kind doesn’t even care about your own progeny.” The man tilted his head. “My firstborn is currently in the capital, studying the trades. My daughter is married to a baron of a neighbouring region. My three youngest and my wife are currently traveling to safety,” he listed simply, shifting his stance somewhat, sensing the conversation coming to a close. “There are things that are natural for humans. Stealing and caring for your own, yourself, and your blood is one such thing. I’ve lied and cheated in circumstances when it’s natural, and I regret none of it; it would have been a sin to have the opportunities I had in front of me and make no use of them. It’s the same logic that allowed me to strike a deal for safety with both the crown and the rebels, from which this region profited. And now I will fight for this city, because that too is only natural,” the man explained, awaiting the demon’s verdict. Lord Standhaft, in the time it took to draw three breaths, undid a fair share of Zaudern’s careful balancing.Tracking his position, keeping golems between him and everything that mattered. The enchanter believed the man to be contained.Until, in one brief exchange with the golems pressing down on him, he cut through one, appeared behind the defensive line… and now he wasn’t.The Kiln, its welded prisoner lying beside it, was a good nine meters from the lord’s path. Standhaft was by its side in an instant.The Kiln’s midsection burst apart around the impact, patched granite, thermal array and all. The return stroke followed while the fragments were still falling, and it opened the construct from end to end, both halves sagging aside, still glowing faintly in the dark.A few shorter strokes cracked the slag welds at the prisoner’s elbows and knees; it looked easy the way he did it, and the entrapped man became a danger once more. The puppet fell in at his lord’s back as if he had never left it.And Lord Standhaft’s helm turned to the enchanter on the backline.The soldiers moved as a spear, their lord at its point, and the order to retreat was enforced by Zaudern’s subconscious before any conscious part of him had composed it; the flat, six-legged golem under his feet was already scuttling backwards.His golems tried to strike at the soldiers moving past and rearrange themselves, but the maneuver was too fast and decisive; now the majority of the army of golems was striking the enslaved soldiers in the back, while Zaudern himself stood to their front.The mage still had some hope that the scuttling golem under his feet could gain enough distance. It wasn’t fast enough.Standhaft closed the distance in a handful of strides and one low lunge, and the longsword came for Zaudern’s ribs……and stopped.A half-dome of pale green light snapped into being around the old enchanter, its rim seated into the edge of the platform beneath him, and the sword’s point ground against it in a spray of white sparks, arrested a forearm’s length from his chest.The first proof of concept alone had taken Zaudern four months, and the workings of that barrier had consumed most of the internal volume of the golem. That was why the construct carried no weapon and no armour worth mentioning, and looked like nothing but a moving platform on six legs; there had been no room left inside for anything except the defensive spells and a place for its maker to stand. The spell itself was akin to the layered defensive barriers that powerful combat mages raised around themselves, with one crucial difference and one crippling one. The array could push the barrier to a strength no human mage could hope to sustain… for mere moments. It worked on the same principle as the shields he had seen a certain elf use against a calamity of fire and shadows. The barrier lived in pulses: a breath of near-absolute protection, then darkness while the lattice re-knit itself, then protection again.This golem was his own, personal prototype that he worked on in his idle hours. Nothing he ever planned to truly use, just… an idle project for a ‘what if’. ‘What if’ he would have to fight one day, after all. What if the ground were to break apart once again, and a monster crawled out? What if he had to face that horror as an adult, with no hero to hide behind?It was an idle thing he worked on year after year, a week at a time at most, for almost thirty years, until abandoning it for a decade more to collect dust in storage.Taking it to the field now felt appropriate.The dome faded as it cycled. Standhaft’s sword was already moving through the gap… and another, weaker supporting barrier arose, this one a constant dome, which stopped the far weaker strike, one with no wind-up to speak of.Yet, the enchanter could see a spiderweb of cracks travel across the crimson surface. What monstrous strength did it take to damage the defensive spell to this extent with a single swing?!Zaudern, for the first time that night, withdrew his will from every other golem on the field, ordering them to keep pushing to try and reach him, with their most aggressive algorithm, and focused his full attention on the nearest golems.The platform’s foreleg snapped up and caught the cut edge-on, iron shrieking along steel as it steered the blade wide of his shoulder. A second leg lashed low at the lord’s knee and found nothing; the man simply no longer stood where the strike arrived. The primary, green defensive dome pulsed alive in time to swallow the answering thrust, faded, and two limbs struck together in retaliation, one high, one low, and forced Standhaft to give ground… as he did, the red dome came down, repairing, before flaring back to life.It was a single step, the first Zaudern had seen anyone take from this man all night.Standhaft settled into a low guard, sword angled across his body, and studied the golem through his helm, no doubt aware his men were now being surrounded by the golems. This might have been the chance… at least if he could last long enough.Zaudern grinned back at him through the light, feeling thirty years younger.“Well then,” the old enchanter breathed, more to his golem than to anyone alive, “Let’s see it.”He gave a command, and the dragon head started to charge, while at the same time the gravity gantry started to move, with two standardised golems which were close enough to summon forth.The hero of the Civil War must have heard them approach, as he glanced back, shifting his stance, and then, to Zaudern’s confusion, jumped, easily vaulting over Zaudern’s mobility golem… and then dashing forth.“Bastard!” the old man cursed, having his mobility golem attempt to strike the dashing knight in the face, only for said knight to pull a ridiculous stunt and fall on his back, sliding across the stone with enough momentum to produce genuine sparks.The man’s sword flashed, burning blue, in what Zaudern recognized as some warrior’s skill, or perhaps even a knight’s spell - and the limb that had swatted at him flew off.The old man still had enough presence of mind to raise the emergency red barrier and… watch it hurl the striking fist back.His eyes widened, even as the barrier, incapable of holding for long, went down.The sword flashed next, and only by some miracle did the old man fall back, the red barrier holding the strike just enough for the longsword to bite deep into his shoulder and arm rather than cut him in two.A second later, the dragon-head’s beam washed over the lord; Zaudern, sitting on the golem’s back, saw the man still bring up his arms and a sword in a defensive guard an instant before being swallowed by the light.The demon stepped aside, and a second beam struck past him and into the building behind, setting off an explosion.Mogel actually turned, staring into the debris. A second later, a man walked out of it, armour red hot, yet his steps measured.“Astonishing resilience,” the demon commented, “Hard to believe Schrägstrich subdued him easily. Then again, he isn’t too far from being a Greater Demon himself, and…” The demon glanced at Ahnungslos. “He must have helped Lady Aura finish off your prized elven hero by now.” The demon studied the Bürgermeister’s reaction with a hawk’s intensity. “That is why you are stalling, aren’t you? You think that the elf can somehow win?” Mogel simply shook his head. “It is pointless; you should not be relying on him to come here and help you; it’s you who should have tried to do your best to defeat me and go assist.”Ahnungslos was slowly inching back, step after step, hammer and shield raised now, as he stared at Standhaft, who was slowly walking towards him - or rather, towards the fight at his back.“Albert is a peculiar one. See, he is actually the soft-hearted type you probably expected me to be throughout our little talk,” the Bürgermeister casually explained. “He knew plenty about your mistress’s spell and knew most of us would simply be fatalities in combat, which was why he elected to face her alone.”The demon tilted his head to the side in what looked like agreement.“He was correct. Nonetheless, it’s the only way to defeat the force assembled against him. I struggle to imagine anyone who can beat what Lady Aura prepared by themselves, bar, perhaps, His Majesty, or some of his Sages,” Mogel explained, floating up. “In any case, I believe this conversation has served its purpose.”The sound arrived as if summoned by the demon’s words: boots on stone in marching step, coming up the main street from the gates, and underneath the rhythm, the begging.The column entered the square in parade order, twenty-five men or so, keeping step as if on a review ground while two dozen voices wept and muttered and pleaded out of turn. None of the pleading ever broke their stride.The Bürgermeister recognized the two men in the front rank at a glance. Entladung, the lord’s army mage, still carried his staff and was murmuring half-drilled commands to himself, “...men, pre-pare… pre… pare…”, in a cracked voice.His face was the only one not concealed by a helm, and Ahnungslos could see the absolute exhaustion on it, deep dark circles under his eyes, unhealthy paleness, slightly hollow cheeks.Beside him marched Braveur, a warrior-trained officer, also easily recognized by the Bürgermeister on account of being an annoying soldier-type, incapable of any subtlety, lacking in brains, and given to demanding things on behalf of his equally narrow-minded lord.At the head of the column walked a demon that looked like a girl of sixteen, perhaps younger, dressed… bizarrely, as if from looted wardrobes. A burgher wife’s fur-lined winter coat, a silk scarf of southern make, and ribbons, ribbons everywhere, through her pale hair and tied in little bows around the bases of two thin horns that swept back along her skull. She was beaming, skipping across the stone without glancing down or around and without the smile shifting once.“Lord Mogel!” she called, waving with her whole arm. “We’re here, we’re here! Please forgive us; they had golems at the gates, and as you ordered, we prioritized trying to get in quietly! It took simply forever!” She skipped the last few steps, glancing around. “Isn’t lord Versklaver with you? Strange, he’s directed me to meet up with you here after taking others with him to fly over directly.” She stopped at a respectful distance and bowed, deep and formally perfect, entirely at odds with everything above her shoulders. “You aren’t cross with me, are you? Say you aren’t!”“Fröhlich,” Mogel greeted, unbothered. “I am not. You are, if anything, timely; the Bürgermeister here was kind enough to keep me entertained while we waited.” The demon gestured towards Ahnungslos the way a host presents a dish. “To be entirely blunt, I had already feared that the entirety of your force had been wiped out. It seems Versklaver has been,” he added absent-mindedly.“Oh!” The girl-demon turned, following the gesture, and her face lit up further, which should not have been possible. “Hello!” She waved at the Bürgermeister too, cheerful as to an old friend across a market square.The demon that had followed her at a slower pace showed no interest in greetings. It was tall and starved-looking, wrapped head to heel in pale ribbons that drifted and swayed around it with no regard for the wind, and only at a second look did it become plain that the ribbons were not cloth; they were skin, peeling off the creature in long, bloodless strips that never quite finished detaching. A single horn bent from its brow like a fishhook.The last demon was built like a cellar door, barely chest-high to the soldiers around it and wider than any two of them together, its dragging knuckles armoured in growths of horn, its jaw fringed underneath with spikes in the manner of a beard.Making use of the opportunity, Ahnungslos retreated further, until he stood side by side with Zaudern’s riding golem.“Old man…” The city’s Bürgermeister spoke, sparing a glance at the enchanter who’d been pouring a potion on his wound. “I know,” Zaudern replied just as grimly, “Keep to the inner circle and close to me; they will target me, and every second longer I can operate the golems is a second longer both of us will live,” the enchanter said, even as his golems were breaking off their encirclement of the remaining six soldiers, converging on the pair instead.“I…” Ahnungslos paused, “I don’t actually have anything to say to you. As a matter of fact, I think I hate how you kept bribing the tax collectors for your guild and dragged my administration through courts, you lingering fucking skeleton.” The old enchanter glanced back at the slightly overweight man, and through his usual frown, a small smile appeared.“The feeling is very much mutual, boar. I did promise that you would only squeeze more gold out of us through my dead body, did I not? Seems like I’ve been a man of my word,” he said sternly. Both men could only afford to have their eyes meet for a second, but broke down chuckling in the most honest amusement they’d felt in weeks before snapping back to attention.Meanwhile, the demons across had a short exchange of their own.“The three of you would be permitted to entertain yourselves when we circle back to the main gate,” Mogel addressed the newly arrived demons, “But for now, stand aside; I will be taking care of these. Soldiers, advance,” he commanded the slaves.Ordered by Aura to obey her subordinates, they did as he wished.Fröhlich pouted.What remained of Zaudern’s golems drew into a circle around the platform, packed as close as their frames allowed, bar some distance to maneuver, and held there. The soldiers came against the ring from three sides at once, never quite shutting up.The difference from before showed within the first exchanges. With a numerical advantage, the golems could hold their own somewhat, but the moment they were outnumbered, it was over. The soldiers no longer needed to read a construct’s rhythm patiently, nor could they afford to in melee this clustered and chaotic; it was simply a matter of showering the enemy with strikes and shielding one another. One of the golems lost both arms in the same heartbeat, to two different swords, and a third man, who had merely been watching, stepped in and caved in its torso.Zaudern felt the connections going dark faster than he could follow, two, then four, and then he stopped counting.The beetle, slowed by its prisoner, had never reached the circle at all. The fresh soldiers found it in the open, and they didn’t bother cutting; four men set their swords into the forelimb joints like levers and cracked the limbs from their sockets, one pair at a time, until the golem lay open on its back with its legs torn out. The prisoner stood up out of the wreck, took a sword from a dead man’s hand, and walked back into the fight.Mogel worked from above.The demon never descended into the melee; he drifted over it, and the crimson light fell from him in waves and beams: narrow crescents that arced down between the soldiers’ shoulders without touching a single one of them, thin rains of darts, once a wide, flat sheet that settled over two golems at the rear of the ring like a thrown blanket. Whatever the light touched began to bleed. Zaudern could feel the mana reserves of the struck golems draining out of them along with the blood; iron browned and flaked as if it had stood decades in the rain, stone went porous and grey, and then the soldiers barely had to swing at what was left.The gantry never got to use its press again. A single crescent folded over the crude frame, and the scrap iron Zaudern had bolted together in one night, with not a single durability enchantment on it, took the curse the way dry ground takes water; the whole structure sagged, bled, and came apart at the connection points in seconds, the two gravity arms landing dead on the cobbles.The dragon-head was positioned in the inner circle next to Zaudern and had kept shooting at the demon, an annoyance at best. Yet now the old enchanter could only grit his teeth; he was running out of shots.Zaudern saw the shape form above him, not a crescent this time, a needle, thin as a spindle, and he watched it wait. It hung there through one pulse of the green dome, through a second, and on the third, as the lattice went dark to mend itself, it dropped through the gap and struck the red dome beneath. There was next to nothing he could do about it. This was the great downside of this formation; he was boxed in by his own golems, with no room for a true dodge. And being able to rely only on conventional defensive magic against a curse… Zaudern already had his suspicion before the red needle ever struck down. This was why he still wrenched the golem aside at the last second, guided more by sheer instinct than any actual reaction.The crimson needle touched the lighter red barrier, and the dome itself began to bleed. To the enchanter’s quiet horror and fascination, the spider-web-like cracks in the hard light of the barrier started to fill up with red liquid that seeped down and through; he felt a drop fall on his cheek.The barrier held for a second, then two, even as Zaudern fell from the sudden movement, trying to steady himself, as he glanced back towards the demon……and the barrier just fell apart, dissolving in the air like soap in hot water. The old mage couldn’t even react in time to the second attack that followed.There was no pain to speak of, which was the first wrong thing. The second was the blood: it welled up through his sleeve in a slow, even seep, from no cut he could find, and the potion he splashed over it did precisely nothing.The ring broke on the western side first, and the Bürgermeister stopped being a spectator.The first man through took Ahnungslos’s hammer under the chin; the enchanted head flared on impact, the crack of it echoed off the Rathaus, and the soldier was thrown back through the breach in the golem formation he had entered by. The second blade he caught on the buckler, and the third, and the fourth, the enchanted rim splintering a little further each time, until a stroke landed on its edge-on and the shield burst apart across his arm. He threw what was left of it into the next man’s face with a foul-mouthed curse, broke that man’s knee with the hammer, and paid for the opening with a cut that found the mail at his side and burst a handful of links.Ahnungslos screamed. Somewhere beyond the fighting, Fröhlich clapped.“Ah, Lord Mogel does like to play around a lot, doesn’t he?” she commented with a smile that any human watching would’ve found a bit too wide. It didn’t help that the smile revealed a thinner, second row of needle-like teeth somewhere down her throat.“This man has openly embarrassed him. He has to do at least this much,” the stout demon said, its voice sounding like a very loud whisper, “That said, it’s not just him playing with those humans. Lord Mogel is conserving mana.”Fröhlich blinked, glancing back at her companion in disbelief.“What could he possibly be doing it for?” Just for an instant, her bright-orange, sunny eyes glanced back towards the spot outside the city… “Surely, Lady Aura won’t need our lowly help, no?”The pair of demons by her side were in no hurry to respond. This was answer enough. The cheerful-looking demon glanced back towards the fight, just in time to see it.The soldiers stepped aside, both at once, without a word, and Lord Standhaft came through the gap they made, approaching Ahnungslos.“Ah,” The man with a hammer said, trying to steady himself, “And this is just Goddess taking the piss…” It was the only thing he had the time to mutter. The first stroke took the hammer from him; the blade went through the haft just below the head, and the enchanted weight that had folded metal all night went ringing away across the cobbles. The second stroke Ahnungslos ate on his vambrace, the last undamaged enchanted thing he carried, and it held, barely, the blow driving him to one knee and leaving the metal creased like tin.“Leave him,” Mogel said, landing very close by. “Handle the mage.”Standhaft’s sword stopped mid-lift and swung away, and the lord turned and walked towards the platform, a few remaining golems throwing themselves at him as he did.The demon stood over the kneeling Bürgermeister with his hands loose at his sides, and one of them was sheathed to the wrist in the condensed crimson light.Mogel struck him, open-palmed, in the chest.The blow itself was almost gentle by the night’s standards; it rocked the man back. The light was another matter. It soaked through the mail like water through a shirt, and the bleeding began at once, welling up through the links where the palm had rested, running from his nose, seeping from the creases of his knuckles inside the gauntlets, far slower than it had run from the soldier who had crumbled to dust in his hands at the start of the night.Mogel took a fistful of the mail at his collar and pulled him up off his knee, one-handed, until only the toes of his boots kept the ground.“Now then,” the demon said, his voice as casual as it had been all night. “Any thoughts you care to share now? I rarely find a human conversation partner so willing, so I am curious if you still feel the urge to talk.”Meanwhile, Zaudern met the lord with everything the platform had left.His left hand had gone slick inside the sleeve, blood dripping from his fingertips onto the deck in a steady patter. It didn’t help that the same shoulder already carried the longsword’s bite from earlier. Somewhere in the press, Entladung’s lightning had started falling on the red dome in flat, even cracks, one after another.The lord struck exactly on the green dome’s dark interval, and the red barrier, dripping blood each time it was engaged, took his full swing and burst, fragments of light scattering and fading before they reached the ground.The green pulse caught the thrust behind it, and by then two soldiers had reached the platform’s flanks, set their shoulders under its edge and heaved. The golem’s legs left the stone, and the dome’s rim, seated into the platform’s edge, tipped with it.Zaudern was jerked from the platform, a sharp exhale leaving his chest, before he fell on the cold ground, hearing something crack.Something slipped out of the old man’s inner pocket. Looking up, he saw it; it was a locket.Barely thinking, he crawled, one push after the other, as he extended his hand…An armoured boot stepped atop the locket, surprisingly, without much pressure. Zaudern looked up, eyes cloudy, and all he saw was Lord Standhaft. His once-decorated armour had its decorations melted together; even its eye sockets had bits of metal solidified, likely partially obscuring his vision.Yet, the old man could swear he saw the dark eyes beneath.“Ah, Goddess,” he muttered weakly, feeling light in the head, “Not like this…” Those were simple, quiet words spoken to no one in particular. A prayer of sorts, in its purest form.The old man had long been disappointed in gods and most men; he expected no one to hear it. But divinities aside, one mortal did. It was with a strike of fire and thundering force that Standhaft awoke from the insidious spider-web of the mental magic woven atop him. His will wasn’t very susceptible to the particular magic Neugieri wove in the first place: he had forgotten what it was like to see dreams back when he was young, first joining, at his father’s side, the war he supposedly became a hero of. For that reason, a blow hard enough to rattle his skull was all it took to wake him.Countless battles, countless decisions, countless hardships forged a will harder than any iron and more fierce than deep underground fires. Yet, even awoken, he found himself feeling weak, his body puppeted, his mind cloudy. He could center himself; it felt like he was in a nightmare, but a familiar one.That was until now, with an old man at his feet, looking up at him, praying.He moved his foot, forgetting that he wasn’t supposed to be able to, seeing a cracked portrait of a young woman in the locket, and an old, callus-covered hand grasping it. He glanced back at the old man at his feet.His shoulder shook.A longsword came down…Zaudern saw it approach, but he didn’t see the sword; instead, he was hearing waves against a distant shore, ever quieting, as warmth kept covering his chest, and the light spots in his vision showed him familiar faces……and struck the stone by the old man’s side.“ME-E-E-E-EN!” The shout that the Lord let out was filled with mana, but it was no spell. Warriors tended to use mana instinctively, mana moving along with their bodies, yet rarely had they gone past that. Forming a spell with intent alone was usually impossible.Making the sound travel with greater force, though, hardly counted as a spell at all.Mogel’s eyes snapped to the side, distracted from the barely moving lips of his toy, his shoulders tensing. “Another one?” he muttered, sparing just one glance at Standhaft’s collar, which stayed dead, “Then Versklaver…” Meanwhile, the Lord glanced around.“HOW LONG… HOW LONG WILL YOU KEEP YOUR EYES CLOSED?” he asked, soldiers turning towards him, swords at the ready; Aura’s set of commands had them move in on one of their own who had broken free, to put him down the way they would an enemy, “HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN? UNDER ME, I SWORE THAT YOU WILL NOT SLAUGHTER THE INNOCENT, YOU WILL NOT BURN AND DESTROY THE LIVELIHOODS, YOU WILL NOT BE DEMONS WEARING HUMAN SKINS! AND LOOK AT YOU!” he questioned, striking the pommel of his sword with his fist, the power behind it strong enough to make everyone in the street feel the ground tremble. “LOOK UPON WHAT YOUR HANDS HAVE WROUGHT!” Braveur stepped forth, winding up a strike…Mogel exhaled, moving his attention back to the fat human in his hands. Luckily, this time the anomaly wasted its breath screaming instead of making use of the opportunity; truly, humans’ ability to talk was their biggest weakness…“WILL YOU MAKE ME ANOTHER LIAR AT COURT, MY FRIENDS, MY BROTHERS AT ARMS, AND YOU, BRAVEUR?!” The sword froze at the upper point of the swing.The puppet’s shoulder shook. “Arrrrrrrrrgh!” With a scream of rage, the man turned around, bisecting the walking corpse closest to him, a soldier with his chest caved in, “FOR STANDHAFT AND THE CROWN!” He let out a shout.At the same time, beneath his helm, Standhaft smiled weakly.He felt the weakness of the wounds he had taken back at the riverside, never properly seen to… and yet, for this, there was strength aplenty.In one motion, he took the sword, turned around, and threw it.The longsword sailed through the air towards Ahnungslos and the demon… who had turned towards the shout just in time to see the blade coming, and began turning to meet it. Mogel’s eyes widened as the sword, meeting his turn, struck him full in the chest instead of his side with such strength that the air crackled behind the throw, and he was carried out of the circle of soldiers and out of sight.Fröhlich frowned. The young demon was unable to quite make out what was going on beyond the circle, so she turned towards the other demons.“What is…” She could only blink, seeing the human mage level a staff at them, golden lightning already dancing at the tip. With no hesitation, she kicked the demon closest to her in front of the spell. That didn’t help, as it chained across the three of them instead.Her mouth could only open in a wordless scream.“FOR STANDHAFT AND THE CROWN!” Entladung echoed; the old battle cry that they’d been forbidden from using, for the fear of the court that Standhaft may be aiming for a crown for himself… came out as natural as breathing, reaching where nothing else could.“FOR STANDHAFT…!”“...AND THE CROWN!”The shouts kept echoing as the men who had woken tore at the puppets by their side, the dead and those who could not wake, their bodies visibly straining with effort, yet all of them moved as one…“Impossible… Lady Aura’s spell is still active… it couldn’t have failed on so many… how could it malfunction so many times…” Fröhlich muttered, her body smoking and refusing to respond to her command, as she saw the mage slowly walking towards her, using his staff as a walking stick… “P-please… I didn’t mean to do anything bad! I am under the spell like you!” she begged, tears falling from her eyes, “I don’t want to die!”Entladung lowered his staff, a point of light igniting at its tip.“I saw you eat the face off of Gewalttätig at the river… he was still alive…” He said quietly. The demon opened her mouth again, and after a moment, her head disappeared as a spear of light splattered it across the paved street. The mage swayed in place.Standhaft, meanwhile, leaned over the old man, reaching into the old man’s waist bag, his hands not showing any strain in their movements. He pulled the cork of a potion he recognized and poured it onto the old man, as he crouched next to him. With two fingers clad in the gauntlet, he lifted the wet, blood-soaked sleeve… the potion didn’t seem to do anything; the bleeding continued.His eyes trailed across the area and towards where Mogel had disappeared.With a single leap, he was outside the ring; with two, at the side of the demon, who was pinned to the wall of a house by the longsword and seemed to be fruitlessly attempting to tear it out.“Still in control of yourself, I see,” the demon noted, and the human took a dagger from his belt, at which the demon merely raised a hand. “No need, see?” he said, and Standhaft could see. The demon’s hand was shedding flakes. Looking closely, he could see his entire body ooze flakes that looked like black dust, trailing upwards, much like a monster struck at the…“Your core is destroyed.”The demon lifted an eyebrow.“You mean my heart? Not destroyed, but yes. I can’t even muster any strength in my limbs nor cast my magic.” He pointed at Standhaft… no, beyond him, “This battle is a draw. My curse will not lift with my death, and you will return to Aura’s service shortly.”At those words, Standhaft felt his hand twitch against his will, as he lifted it in front of him. His brows furrowed.“See?” the demon said calmly, “A draw.”The Lord spared a second to glance at his shaking fist. His lips tightened.Then, with a single motion, he struck the demon’s head. The demon tried to say something. He struck again. Then again. Blood sprayed, yet he struck again. He kept hitting until the skull gave, and instead of a head, there was only dissolving gore and bone.“Men,” Standhaft spoke, turning around, unsurprised to find his remaining soldiers gathered there, “I am sorry.” He had a lot more to say, but he could tell whatever miracle had woken his men was losing its potency. He also could not think of anything he could do. Death would not relieve them of this slavery. Destroying the bodies outright would, but there was no time, nor did he have the heart to dismember those who fought by his side for years, and nothing else was coming to his clouded mind.It seemed the demon was right.He threw one last look towards the old man and a slime of a man who had at least chosen a man’s death. In his mind, he uttered a short prayer, even as he felt his body slipping from his control and the shackles tightening once more.

***Albert,It was for a brief moment that I stood there, giving my undivided attention to the tornado.I felt both Zis and Carbuncle work hard, their cores in motion, and I had to fluctuate my mana quite a bit to hide their activity, but it was doable due to the amount of mana I’ve been radiating openly for once in my life.I did not realize at the time that the moment felt beautiful to me. The sensation of exertion across my body and core, the tension, the fear, the pride in what I can do… all of it worked in tandem. An easy smile stretched my lips. Restraints, hesitation, usual boundaries, all of it was gone. I took a breath, feeling as if I’d been inhaling life itself, and my attention moved back towards the demon of the swords who, not unlike me, seemed prepared for what would come next. I already knew what I had to do. While my creations kept the tornado active, cooking the dragon and trapping Aura with Neugieri on the other side, I had to finish off Schrägstrich; otherwise, this battle was as good as lost.I still felt the tornado’s tug on me, as even Zis didn’t have great enough control to just exclude me from the pull of her winds. Seeing that Schrägstrich was about as far from the vortex as me, I could only conclude that he too was currently keeping himself anchored to the ground with the application of the flight magic. Schrägstrich was also horribly mangled by the spell I unleashed earlier; many of his hands were either missing or dangling limply by his body, and his body itself was shredded, three distinct slashes across his abdomen and chest looked deep enough to damage internal organs… if only those mattered to demons beyond blood loss.The regeneration kept him from bleeding, and he clearly could still move and fight, but to a so-called ‘demon general’, a being who dedicated his whole existence to pushing the martial side of his demonic body as far as possible, even mere cut muscles and appendages must be more hampering than to any demon mage. Especially against an opponent like me, who, as far as he was concerned, still had access to the horrifying fire and wind magic, and he could only guess what else.Barely a second had passed, as we took each other’s measure. Which was why I knew Schrägstrich would mindlessly throw himself into the offense, as he had no other choice, at least not from his perspective.The demon threw itself forward, likely combining the flight magic with the raw power of its limbs.He screamed something, but through the howling of the wind I didn’t hear it, only saw his lips move.If this was Schrägstrich before I landed that hit on him, this might have been my end. He was simply so fast that without my djinn, he would’ve bulldozed straight through any defensive magic I could have created. Now his speed was not so horrifying.The ground exploded from under me and cracked towards the demon. I could see him seeing it; I could see him throwing himself aside, just in time to avoid a colossal boulder that rose from the ground… and promptly tore away from it, getting sucked into the vortex. As would have been the fate of Schrägstrich if he attempted to jump over or push through.He retaliated with another sword swing that extended all the way towards me, which collided with Saphir Grenze, to the demon's visible surprise. That surprise didn’t last, as the spider web-like cracks on the ground spread further, pushing more earth and stone up, forcing the demon to fight for his footing… and allowing me to strike my staff into the ground and start chanting…“Thunder, tree, five to eight…”I could see the panic, the desperation. My mana already saturated the ground between me and the demon; it was under the control of the generic earth-shaping spell at my disposal. I can, with minimal preparations, order those rocks to shape as I please, before the swordsman would be able to react. That effectively made it an instant-kill minefield; an attempt to cross it will send Schrägstrich directly into the air - for a tornado to pick him up and swallow him whole.After our exchange earlier, I knew not to underestimate this demon’s tactical thinking, knew full well that he understood the situation instantly and was weighing his options. Schrägstrich made his decision quickly.He couldn't have known what exactly I was preparing, but he didn't need to; a mage committing to shaping a spell meant a spell powerful enough to be worth the time it took. Standing in place against my fire and wind magic was death, even when I cast them without preparation. Even if he had likely figured out that supporting the tornado strained me in some way, it didn’t mean he could afford to take me lightly. Yet, trying to cross the ground I controlled was death. The only place in this valley where the fight still belonged to him was within melee, and so, the only move left was to carve his way to me before the chant could be completed.A handful of his arms, of those that still moved as he wished, folded together, palms closing one over another around an invisible hilt, and a sword ignited between them. As always, it looked as if a high-pressure water current had materialized between his palms, the mana bursting out of his hands to produce his ‘lightsaber’. This time it was far bigger than any of the blades he had conjured tonight, longer than the demon himself was tall; though that might just be because it was the first time he had shaped a sword of that size slowly enough for me to see. He kept feeding mana into it even as he was raising it for a swing."Converge and root, link…" I muttered, layering the templates even as I ordered the earth between us to rise as a crude shield. I expected to at least slow this down. Schrägstrich swung, and the slash extended, thickening as it travelled. It dropped into the ground and ran across it and……the earth saturated with my mana parted, cut along a straight line together with my control over it.I had no shield capable of stopping that much mana. I knew this within the second it took him to shape this spell.Saphir Grenze would burst, and calling on Zis or Carbuncle for a proper defence would mean letting go of the tornado.I wrenched the staff out of the stone and threw myself aside, flight magic dragging me low over the ground. With my anchoring loosened, the vortex immediately pulled at me, turning the dodge into a clumsy slide across snow and gravel.The slash passed through where I had stood and kept going; I didn't look where it ended.I did, however, raise a Saphir Grenze between myself and the spot where I had stood, expecting an explosion and a barrage of debris… I was right to do so.The demon was already running. He dove into the trench his own strike had carved and dashed along its bottom, mangled arms pressed to his body, the walls of the cut shielding him from the worst of the wind. I instantly knew: his strike had shorn away the saturated layer almost perfectly, leaving me no control over any of the stone he was currently traveling through. He was slower than at the start of this battle, but the dash was still so fast that I knew throwing myself back to make distance was useless… especially with unfinished Judradjim already destabilizing in my hands.The unfinished spell strained between my palms, purple sparks slipping through my fingers, the templates already pulling apart without the final layers to lock them in place. Holding it for a few more seconds was impossible, but… this was fine.Within expectations.I pointed my palm at the demon and released everything I held."Judradjim."The lightning that tore out of my hand was a fraction of what the completed spell would have been, the arcs thin and scattering wide, but at three steps of distance, it should still have been more than enough to burn a demon to cinders. Schrägstrich didn't try to dodge. A new sword ignited in two of his hands mid-motion, and he swung it straight into the lightning, pouring mana into the blade until it destabilized - the same shockwave with which he had answered my Judradjim earlier tonight.For him to be able to meet offensive magic with his own and cancel it was already unbelievable. It showed a level of skill and fine control that I couldn’t boast of with any of my spells. Using the offensive spells as defensive magic and making it look effortless was a level of magical prowess beyond mortal reckoning.The two attacks met and destroyed one another. For a moment, there was only white light and a wave of force that flattened the snow around us, briefly drowning out even the roar of the tornado.Yet, this wasn’t an equal exchange; I already realized the weakness: Schrägstrich’s strikes were, fundamentally, no different from warrior techniques; they required no preparation beyond a proper form… Which was a weakness. To negate Judradjim, he had to halt just long enough to set his footwork and stance for the swing.I had no such weaknesses.The moment the flash dispersed, I dashed through it, winding back my left arm, and conjuring a shadow sword.Some hesitation or surprise would have been appreciated, but Schrägstrich didn’t show any weakness, he never even slowed down. If he didn’t expect me to act as I did, he gave me no indication of that; a pair of his own hands that held the blade he used to defend from the lightning a few moments prior swung upwards, intercepting my own strike, and, were I foolish enough to dismiss my sword, they would have simply cut off the top of my head.Simultaneously, I could feel his bloodlust spiking. This was it; as far as he knew, he had won. Dozens of swords must have ignited in the hands, awakening to motion all across his body, all striking towards me from a multitude of directions…The shadow blade he intercepted held, and this was the moment I’d won. As it meant that he bought my bluff. Were he to attempt to cut through the spell with his own swords in earnest, I had no doubt he would have succeeded. But in this chaos and confusion, the familiar shape of his friend's shadow magic must have made him believe this sword was more durable than it actually was, and that cutting through it would cost him time he couldn’t spare. Which bought me a moment as he shifted his killing strikes to his other arms.…the staff that was pointed squarely at his chest released the quickest spell I had in my arsenal, a thin beam I cast as easily as I breathed.Greater Resonant Soul.The pair of hands that had been cupping the demon's face until now peeled away so he could strike me with them, revealing, probably, the most beautiful face I’ve ever seen. It was handsome and beautiful in equal measures, yet decidedly more feminine, and struck a strange aesthetic balance I would have expected to see in the marble carved by the hands of the great sculptors of the antique world or the Renaissance. I could see the soulful eyes widen, and the open smile, one that must have been mirroring my own, twist slightly, as the demon attempted to shift at least part of his limbs to strike at the beam instead.He had no time; the beam struck his chest.And instantly, Schrägstrich lost consciousness, the swords in his arms dissipating, and a heartbeat later, his hands slapping uselessly against me.Everything since Judradjim took fractions of a second; the whole fight, not more than ten. I stepped back, just for a moment, to take measure of my surroundings, which I’d completely lost track of, and the demon was lifted off his feet and dragged towards the vortex, before lifting in the air and flying towards the torna…I threw myself to the side the moment I managed to pinpoint the buildup of mana.Flames, thick and hungry, struck out of the flaming vortex, washing over the place where I stood a moment ago. I only managed to stay safe by jumping forward, propelling myself with flight magic, and then using the earth to shape a hand and catch me by the ankle. Looking up, I realized at once what had happened; Schrägstrich and I must have aired enough mana for it to sense us.Then, right through the vortex of wind and flame, a head struck out; the beady red eyes spotted me, nostrils flared…  and the beast roared with pain and hatred.It looked different now. The head was the same black glass it had always been… and it glowed.When I first laid eyes on the beast, I noted that it wasn't lit from within, that the red light in the thin edges of its scales was merely the fires of the battlefield passing through them. Back then, it looked more like a creature of living dark glass, ever shifting and likely camouflaged when it was flying against the backdrop of the dark star-filled sky.This was no longer true.The obsidian itself had been heated through. The plates glowed a deep, dull red across their flats, brightening towards every chipped ridge and point, and in the cracks between them, where before there had only been darkness, orange light now ran in jagged lines along its jaw and down its neck… and it pulsed, slow and steady, as if the flesh beneath the glass had turned molten, and I was looking at the beast's burning veins.Whether the heat truly reached its flesh, I couldn't tell. Dragons mostly boasted magic-resistant scales; they were also known to be fairly resistant to temperatures, but not quite immune. Not to the heat of this level. I fully expected the beast to be dead or at least dying by now. There was something else, something off about the very silhouette of the head, its shape not quite matching my memory… yet all I had was a glimpse, and no time to place it.The head withdrew back into the fire.Then the entire flank of the vortex bulged.The dragon tore through the wall of flames, claws first. For a moment, I was surprised the creature was anywhere near the ground at all. It was gargantuan, but a tornado of this scale was a true natural disaster; it should have lifted the beast clear of the ground the moment Carbuncle turned his solid flames back into an inferno.Then I looked closely and understood.The forward legs with their three-talon claws had grown massive, covered with obsidian armour so thick it likely doubled the dragon’s bulk. Then its head appeared; it too had the additional bulk that I didn’t immediately recognize, and the dragon let out a roar before dragging the rest of itself out of the eye of the storm.The tornado was made to hold a blind beast. Blind, it had been wasting its strength in every direction at once, wrenching and heaving and gaining nothing. The mana Schrägstrich and I aired in our exchange gave it a bearing, and with a bearing, it simply committed everything it had into a single direction.Coming to a decision, I cast Greater Resonant Soul on Carbuncle, temporarily taking him out of the fight, while gently patting Zis with my mana, giving her an agreed-upon order to stop.The reason for that was simple: while the dragon was still mostly pinned, every additional second of the tornado drained Zis, and she likely couldn’t sustain the spell long enough to truly finish it off.Besides, she didn’t have to; with Schrägstrich gone, there was no need for a vortex in the first place. Without having to worry about a master swordsman jumping at any opening, I had more efficient ways to deal with the dragon.The vortex melted away like sugar on a stove. Deprived of the will that kept it turning, the column broke apart from the bottom up, the flames thinned, snapped upward, and died, and the roar that had pressed on my ears through the entire battle fell apart into ordinary gusts. All across the slope, burning debris and shards of shed black glass rained into the snow, hissing as they landed.Soon, bigger things will start falling too, I knew.The drag on my body vanished with it. I had leaned into that pull for long enough that my balance had rebuilt itself around it, and I had to correct my footing, like a man stepping off a ship's deck onto a pier.I shifted my attention to my mana and… the situation wasn’t particularly great. At the start of the fight, I revealed the vast majority of my mana, while openly displaying the fluctuations in it typical for mana concealment. That effectively limited me to a ‘pool’ of mana composed entirely out of the energy I wasn’t openly displaying to keep my ruse. The moment I had to spend more than that, the mana signature I was projecting as a show of strength would grow weaker… telling Aura exactly how much mana I actually had. Currently, I still have some energy to safely spend. The majority of powerful spells thrown around weren’t fueled by me after all.But the way this was going, I couldn’t afford to waste any more of my own mana, as after I dealt with the dragon, Aura might be desperate enough to try using Auserlese. By the point that becomes a real possibility, I needed her to have less mana than me. Ideally, I need to at least wound Aura to make her waste hers, as she’s spent nothing this entire fight so far. Doing that, however… might be a challenge.With the wind and flame dying down, the dragon has been revealed in all of its glory. It was entombed in obsidian, which looked to be a literal metric ton of it. Its body was twice as thick due to it; its wings disappeared under its new bulk, and only its limbs and the head were exposed.I noted then that it must be able to create the mineral. It also explained how earlier it used instinctual magic to shoot its obsidian ‘scales’.This beast was smart enough to create what was essentially a heat-resistant armour on top of itself, yet, instead of merely trying to wait it out, it evidently left enough of its head and appendages exposed to attempt to escape its fiery confinement. Now that the creature noticed its newfound freedom, the cracks spread across the upper layers of its shell, peeling off and breaking, as the dragon threw its head back and…【GRAAA――――AAGH‼】 Released a deafening roar.With the tornado gone, I could spread my senses wide once more and attempt to locate Aura and Neugieri.Yet, I could sense neither. The demon likely guessed that I would be targeting her and used the opportunity I had unintentionally created in conjuring that vortex by hiding her mana and slipping out of sight.The dragon didn’t wait for me to think things through, and instead, exploded, obsidian shrapnel bursting from its body like grapeshot in every direction.“Annoying,” I muttered, calling upon Zis and directing the djinn to deflect sizable obsidian scales away from me.Immediately, I flew up and back, awaiting Carbuncle’s awakening and flying out of the dragon’s immediate range, much to its vocal displeasure. I didn’t have to wait long; the fire-dwelling creature let me know it was awake by cheerfully pulsing on my finger with warmth.For a moment, I hesitated.Could I afford to completely empty Carbuncle’s reserves to kill the dragon?I felt like a bear brought to bay. Hounded at every step, having to lash out at full force at each mutt thrown my way, yet no closer to killing the hunter. Would unleashing the next big spell make Aura believe that she had exhausted me, to the point that she could simply use her spell? Would she not be sure, yet without any more powerful pawns, use it out of desperation? Would she instead run away now, with both her dragon and her pet demon general gone?Those developments and countless others would mean my loss. I had estimates and predictions about how things could shape up, but I didn’t know anything for certain. I had no way to force any outcome; from the very start, my victory could have been possible only through bluffs. And yet, looking at the dragon that exploded with obsidian shrapnel, now shedding entire chunks of its armour as it started to reveal its wings… I realized with unpleasant certainty that I can’t do anything more than I was already doing. No last-minute adjustment was there to be made, no new layer to the plans and the deceit beyond what I already implemented and planned for.I have to hope that the opportunity will simply appear. I had to hope for a miracle.“Aura,” I spoke, and a simple spell carried my voice to anyone nearby who could hear. The dragon let out an annoyed roar as it tried to spread its wings faster. “I am tired of playing with your toys.”I brought my left hand up, giving Carbuncle the command, and a ball of fire ignited atop my palm.It grew rapidly, starting with the size of an apple and quadrupling in mass each instant, until it was bigger than Behemoth.Then, after an instant when it stabilized and grew brighter and more vibrant, it started to shrink.Except it wasn’t the flame dying down; the fire was the same, yet it was condensed, pressurized, pulled together to a single spot. I gently had Zis steer the hot air away from my flesh, yet the mana clothes on my body were slowly searing, and the snow was melting in a wide area around.The ball of flame was condensed further and further, and the dragon…【RAAA――――AAGH‼】Naturally, it must have understood what was going to happen.The flame that was now dancing on top of my palm was barely the size of a peanut; it grew almost white, but had blue and purple undertones. It looked almost like a star.I lowered my palm, extending it towards the dragon, from which I had been hundreds of meters away, too far for it to meaningfully be able to attack me in any way.A flash of mana, and I raised Saphir Grenze just in time to block an attack from Neugieri, who revealed her position by trying to sneak attack me from behind and slightly to my left. It failed only because it was exactly what I expected, and because this incredibly complex spell wasn’t, in truth, shaped by me.“Spaltung,” I declared, asking Carbuncle to funnel the flames that he was condensing with such great concentration and effort, just like we’ve practiced. The only reason I even needed to use Resonant Soul on him rather than simply give a command with my mana was that I never had him trained with a command for this move specifically, prioritizing moves that would’ve statistically been more useful. The dragon had mere seconds from the moment I flew away and started to shape the spell; naturally, it could tell it couldn’t reach me, not with his breath, nor with his scales. I would’ve expected it to bulk up once again and try to block the attack, but either Aura ordered it otherwise, or the beast itself had even sharper instincts than I expected. It didn’t even attempt to do so, instead freeing its wings as fast as possible. By the time I released my spell, the gargantuan beast was attempting to lift off into the air, mayhaps hoping it could dodge.The beam impacted it in the chest after it managed to flap its wings once. A white flash, bright enough to temporarily blind even me, washed over the valley.My sight returned a moment later.

The dragon was a single wingbeat off the ground… or, rather, what remained of it had been.There was a hole through its chest and upper shoulder blade. The left wing was gone up to the root, the left foreleg was missing along with a good chunk of the shoulder, and the neck and half of its head were smoldering cinder.I simply looked at the spell that flew into the distance, the beam visible to the naked eye and trailing from my hand, arching due to gravity, before it impacted the mountainside. An explosion bloomed, lifting the dirt, stone, and remains of trees into the air. If I were to hit a mountain peak with it, I knew that peak would be gone.

The sounds reached me one after another, first the explosion from the dragon, second, from the mountainside behind it. I noted a small avalanche it provoked, but seeing that it was across the valley, there was nothing to do about it.I watched as the multi-ton body of a dragon fell to the ground uselessly, oozing thick, arterial blood from the stump that had been its head.Its impact on the ground must have produced quite a tremor; flying as I did, I couldn’t feel it.“Now…” I turned my head towards Neugieri, who stood some distance away, her staff pointed up towards my flying figure. Naturally, Aura wasn’t anywhere near her. “It’s time to deal with you.”I took care not to look the mental mage in the eyes; instead, I merely floated towards her. I pretended my attention was focused on Neugieri, but in truth, I was laser-focused on my mana-sensitivity, trying to find Aura. That coward must be just about to escape with both of her aces gone. I needed to locate her as fast as possible because killing Neugieri was unacceptable, and revealing that I couldn’t harm my professor for whatever reason was almost equally bad, and I would be forced to do one or the other unless I located Aura.I had half the mind to direct Zis to search for her manually, but I couldn’t in truth afford to do that.Carbuncle was tapped out; he was awake, of course, but in no condition to really use magic on my behalf anymore. I needed Zis who was marginally less tired to save her energy, because if Aura were to attempt to flee, Zis would be the one who could boost my flying speed enough to catch up. The wind-djinn, despite being younger, already boasted impressive reserves; I’ve made her that way, which was the only reason why I knew she could still last one more serious exchange, or, in my plans, a pursuit. Neugieri didn’t look afraid, nor angry; if anything, what I glimpsed of her face without properly looking up seemed unmoving. Which either meant that she completely gave up, or was fighting her orders, and as such was under almost manual control of the spell.Yet, even as I floated closer to Neugieri, dodging two other firebolts she threw at me, I couldn’t catch Aura’s trail at all. The time I’d bought myself with those pointless, arrogant gestures of grandeur was running out.Five Kraftstoßs ignited around me as I resolved to take Neugieri down in the next exchange and temporarily bury her in the ground. I saw her shape another flaming bolt, prepare it, and launch it at me, and this time I formed a shield to intercept……it happened when I was weaving Saphir Grenze, to be more precise, when I was halfway through casting it, solidifying the template. No matter the quality of the mage, shaping the spell required attention and time; one can say that in the instance of creating the spell, but before actually releasing it, the mage is at their most vulnerable.The instance when I almost finished crafting the spell was when a familiar source of mana exploded to my left, and a crescent blue blade of mana…Was deflected by the emergency shield Zis conjured in my stead. A moment later, Saphir Grenze appeared, blocking the firebolt, though I saw this with my peripheral vision, my head snapping towards the attacker who would have killed me if not for Zis.“You…” Without a doubt, the demon who was flying at me now was Schrägstrich. Realization arrived a moment later. He didn’t burn in the tornado. I must have released the spell a bit too fast, or shortly after being hit by my curse, he somehow acted to defend himself from the flames and the wind. Unthinkable to me at the time, especially considering how distracted I had been dodging the fire-breathing dragon, but it made sense. True, I’ve cast the Greater Resonant Soul on him, and if I knew my curse, which I did, Schrägstrich should currently be minutes into my memory of being stranded in München airport for two nights due to a storm, but… that didn’t really matter when my enemy was Aura, did it?It seems my deduction was right; even Schrägstrich was under the influence of Auserlese.“Does no one die around here?” I muttered to myself, releasing the force balls towards the demon, and freezing momentarily.Aura’s mana flared; she was… next to the dragon! She was doing something!Was this Auserlese? I had no time! I need Schrägstrich dead yesterday!Thoughts racing, I dove towards Schrägstrich, who must have been hiding next to those boulders around him. Trash still rained from the sky, and the demon, seeing my reaction, kept shortening the distance, flying low to the ground, yet giving himself additional momentum by using his legs when needed. With his physical capabilities, that was meaningful.I’ve expected as much; Schrägstrich’s soul must still believe that he had an advantage up close.He was right to believe it, in a way; against most mages, closing in would have been the correct answer. Earlier, his instincts were sharp enough not to try it against me while I still had my djinns. But the puppet wasn’t as sharp, evidently.So we raced towards the same spot from opposite ends of the cliffside, three hundred meters apart and shrinking, each of us certain of what would happen once we met there.My five Kraftstoß reached him first. He cut two of them out of the air with one sword slash that traveled through the air; the remaining three he destroyed with three sword swings executed in a single breath, letting the force burst against his body without so much as breaking stride.Then, he continued to swing at the air, and the crescents of blue light started coming at me, crossing the distance momentarily.The first energy slash left his swing while the gap was still wide, and I had a whole second to roll my dive around it. The second I met with Saphir Grenze, the shield spun it aside and into the slope. The third should have been the dangerous one, launched at half the distance… it went wide on its own, shearing through a boulder well to my right.I saw the state of him clearly by then. The demon was seared along his entire left side, skin blackened and split, and several more of his hands hung limp; the crescents themselves were dimmer than before, fraying at the edges as they flew.Weaker. Still lethal without a doubt. And I had no time to grind him down from range; the mana by the dragon's corpse kept building, and caution told me I had moments.So when the fourth crescent came, I made my move. I folded my dive steeper and dropped beneath the mana slash; my boots struck the ground at a run, boulders and torn earth obscuring me from the demon for just a moment.I made full use of it."Aschewind."A cloud of flame and ash ignited low over the ground behind me. I threw a second cast further along, then a third, stringing them between myself and the dragon's corpse. Each was relatively small, but at ground level, three of them were enough to cut the line of sight between me and Aura.I focused on Aura’s mana. If she were to fly up, I would use any spells necessary to make sure I wouldn’t be within her sight. The demon cleared the boulders, and the last fifty meters disappeared in a blink. No more crescent slashes; swords were igniting across every hand he had left, which he, somehow, still had plenty of. Quite clearly, he was prepared to focus on the defense as he crossed the remaining distance. I let him commit. I raised Saphir Grenze flat before my chest and, when five steps separated us, I outlined a shape with my mana-string, giving Zis a wordless command. The wind materialized behind him. I knew he must have turned in the last instant.I knew he still wasn’t quick enough.The winds caught the demon, lifted him briefly, overpowering the flight spell effortlessly, and slammed him onto my shield, hard enough that the spinning outer shield started to crack. The wind howled, and the power intensified. Zis began to slash and bite into him.The wind djinn could conjure blades with wind, press with it, grind with it, drill with it… Zis did all of that, to various degrees. I’ve seen the red mist and blood splatter on the ground and around the shield. I commanded Zis to cease just a few seconds later, dismissing Saphir Grenze. The djinn was now about as drained as Carbuncle. A mingled and disintegrating pile of meat dropped into the snow……just in time for me to feel the thundering pulse of mana coming from Aura.I felt it then, her mana dropping substantially… past my current level. I wasn’t sure why or how, but instantly I did as I planned to do before even starting that fight; I started to hide more of my mana below what Aura was displaying, while removing the slight fluctuations from it that were the norm for less experienced mages hiding their mana.Obviously, I knew that I would have to justify such a drop in mana, and glancing at the disintegrating remains of Schrägstrich who still was radiating mana…I directed my palm at his remains."Druckwelle." A wave of force was released, exploding the ground around, but mostly in front of me, and vaporizing what remained of Schrägstrich. Only then did I fly up and……froze, seeing Aura stand next to the obsidian dragon, who once again was on its feet… Its remaining three feet, to be exact. The beast itself lacked any of the rage and bestial fury it displayed before; it merely stood there, half its head and neck still missing, but I recognized it now that I looked closely. Necromancy. Its chest and spine were mostly closed up by bone and flesh, which must have been recreated by necromancy. I’ve recognized none of the templates or weaves but… I wasn’t exactly paying the closest attention, and, besides, it was only natural for a demon to use their own inventions.The dragon’s body was far from restored, but Aura decided to spend a lot of her energy to make the dragon functional again.“Are you done hiding?” I called out to her, floating in the air.The demon looked smug as she floated up and settled atop the dragon’s remaining shoulder, looking back at me.I could see the obsidian of the scales lengthening subtly around her sitting form, and I could bet it could grow into a shield, not unlike my earth-shaping spells, in an instant.“Is there a point for me to hide anymore?” she asked, the smile on her face easy, “I admit, you’ve surpassed all of my expectations by this point, but… It’s over, don’t you see it?” she called out simply, “Throwing around spells of this caliber, you’ve exhausted yourself. Even if you hide your formidable mana for whatever reason… even this bottomless well is starting to dry up, isn’t it?” she gloated before shaking her head, her smile dying down slightly.“What am I even saying? Of course you see it; it’s the reason why you flew to me, and the reason we speak now.” She looked me in the eyes, her eyes cold. “So let’s discuss your surrender, Albert the Accursed.”I scowled but lowered myself carefully all the same, landing a safe distance from the dragon.“And why do you assume I can’t win still?” I asked, my voice growing even, “It’s true that I am not at risk of your spell, but I am confident I will be able to block your vision each time you would prepare to cast it.”Aura chuckled at that, throwing her head back and covering her mouth with the back of her palm.“I? Assume? Goddess, no,” She shook her head as if she just heard something extremely vulgar. By the expression, I immediately recognized that she must have been emulating some noble. “I merely state facts. Your mana isn’t enough to kill the dragon anymore, at least, not while shielding yourself from me…” Her eyes narrowed again, “And you understand that this is your last chance to propose surrender. I suggest you stop this farce while you still can. You know that if you push this fight further, I will have no choice but to kill you.” I realized what she was referring to, a matter of reputation that, amongst demons, decided everything.I was vaguely familiar with the topic from other demons I questioned, but most of what I knew of this was the result of countless sleepless nights when I allowed my thoughts to wander.If I kept fighting, even if Aura enslaved me, killing me would be the only right decision, because even if everyone else who followed her had died, I would remain disloyal and only subservient when convenient, and as such, dangerous. That is different from a demon who decided to surrender to the mercy of the stronger demon, and willingly chose to follow, even under the threat of death. Why… was difficult to explain, but it seemed to be part of the culture demons had.I knew that because this is how the Demon King operated with his own subordinates. “What are your terms?” I asked after a moment, trying my best to think of an exact expression I should be making now.I settled on tense annoyance. I glanced behind me and saw Neugieri slowly approach us.“You submit to my Auserlese and serve me now,” Aura said simply, her tone leaving no room to argue. “Absurd,” I responded, shaking my head. “I will be submitting myself to your mercy after killing a good portion of your army and servants. There can’t be a guarantee that you won’t kill me.”The demon leaned back on her ‘seat’, smiling magnanimously.“That is correct, but there can’t be guarantees in such things, no? It’s a matter of faith.” She shook her head, her finger tracing across the sharp-looking edges of the obsidian armour beside her. “Besides, if you look at this from my perspective, you will realize exactly why I want you. If this fight has proved anything… it’s that without a puppet as strong as you, I will never be able to aspire to be a Sage of Destruction,” she said, her voice growing empty.I instantly realized why. She, a demon, was admitting her weakness. This was as much of a touch of sincerity as a demon was able to extend.“Naturally,” she continued, “I am not planning to be cruel to you. You will serve me, but in doing so you will have countless opportunities to acquire more magics and spells. Between the two of us, we will practically be unmatched, don’t you see?” she proposed, her voice growing deeper, “We both have the same type of magic, the one that lets us accumulate power, and working together we can cover each other’s weaknesses near perfectly.”I considered the demon before me, and while judging anything by her tone, expression, or even words was pointless… I couldn’t dismiss her words easily.I figured the offer was genuine.“The Demon King can’t possibly allow it,” I said after a moment, “You will be simply ordered to kill me, and you will do so,” I lied, at least, to my understanding, and yet it was a convincing chain of events.This must have been a reason why Aura didn’t have other Greater Demons amongst her subordinates in the original story; a ban on doing just that.“I’ve mentioned that Schlacht the Omniscient had a hand in this, haven’t I?” she reminded, her voice growing more sure, “This is as close to His Majesty’s permission as this can get.” Aura sighed, shaking her head, moving one hand aside, as if weighing something.“Think of it like this: on one hand, you can continue this fight with your mana exhausted, against a genuine dragon and me, who will participate most actively. You also need to hope that your pawns have triumphed over my servants, and that no demon will interrupt to help me kill you mid-fight,” she listed, before lifting her other hand, “On the other hand, you can risk a minuscule amount of the Demon King not approving this and forcing me to kill you.” She moved her hands up and down in sync, as if they were scales, before letting the ‘second option’ win and tilt lower, “The choice is rather obvious, isn’t it?”It really was. Yet, keeping my face neutral, I pretended to think it over, sparing another glance to Neugieri, this time even looking her in the eyes… only to see a bloodshot stare full of hatred, and trembling lips. I turned back to Aura.“Naturally, what I know of your spell tells me I won’t be able to break out of it even given time, and you won’t have a reason to heed me after I become yours,” I spoke slowly, “But I would strongly like you to give me access to any demon serving under you, at least to their magic.”Aura nodded simply, yet magnificently. “Granted,” she offered, yet her eyes were glued to me.I made a motion of hesitating before taking a single knee, throwing my staff aside, and lowering my head in submission.“Then I pledge myself to you,” I lied, feeling hot magma travel through my veins.This is it. Yet, this can’t be this simple. I’ve been losing. A step behind this entire fight. This couldn’t be happening; this is way too lucky. I couldn’t believe it…“No,” Aura’s voice made my heart briefly freeze, “Think of this as merely assurance; you will be no servant of mine. I prefer to think of it as the beginning of a true friendship.”I felt it then, her mana blooming, and the spell being shaped, and I couldn’t help it; I looked up.Aura slowly floated towards the ground from the back of the dragon, her clothes fluttering in the wind as she landed, a simple-looking scale in her right hand.I felt her mana shoot at me faster than thought, penetrating deep, past the fake skin, flesh and bone, reaching somewhere beyond.I didn’t grasp it; magic couldn’t touch the Soul, not to my knowledge, but it clung tight, took shape, and floated out of my chest as a black flaming sphere……with utter fascination, I realized what her spell did. I couldn’t move now, couldn’t control my mana properly, because the ritual was engaged, but unlike most, as a demon whose curse was also related to the soul, I knew why. It was because the black sphere she conjured out of my soul was… a replica of my core. My soul was still in place, beyond magic, beyond touch. But she had faked my mind and body, created a duplicate just intricate enough to fool the soul into believing that this little sphere was me too.A similar dark orb left Aura’s own chest, both landing on the scales.“Fascinating,” I muttered, being quite honest.Aura glanced away from the spheres, looking at me and smiled, seemingly genuinely.“Thank you. Your magic was quite spectacular too. Now…” The scales tipped in her favour, making the demoness’ smile widen… and then the scales shook.Slowly, ever so slowly, I recovered enough control over my body to stand up, dusting my pants off.“I wasn’t addressing you, but rather, divine providence,” I explained slowly, glancing up towards the dark sky, at the countless stars above, “All my life I’ve considered that Miracles of God are things mostly of the past and mythology, and that people find coincidences in the smallest of things… yet, standing here now, winning this against all odds… maybe The Lord does nudge things around sometimes. Or maybe I am just feeling emotional for being truly fortunate with my life on the line, for once.”I glanced down, seeing the sheer incomprehension on Aura’s face, and then the metal of the scales creaked.She looked at the scales in wonder and shock, and saw it starting to tilt the other way.“What…” Then the scales tipped to my side, the representation of ‘my soul’ igniting brightly with dark flames, overshadowing Aura’s own. I felt disappointment that my soul was represented as pitch-black as hers by her spell. Yet, disregarded it immediately; after all, it was demonic magic, not a genuine judgement of His; it is merely imperfect.I felt it then, how her spell started to weave around my soul… and around hers. I felt it, the leash that started to form and connect us.And I instantly understood why Auserlese had its weakness. I might not recognize the templates and weaves that were weaving themselves around me now, using my own mana that was somehow hijacked by the ritual, but I recognized the principle.There are several knots that a seaman can tie that serve their purposes in securing objects or the ship itself, yet can be untied by a right application of force. Yet, you can create a knot that can’t be undone in any circumstances.The downside is that such a knot can’t be undone even by the sailor who tied it in the first place.This was Aura’s Auserlese. For the sake of being unbreakable for the victim, the ritual involved her, the spell’s caster, and the one she cast it on.It was, in truth, a beautiful spell. Yet, even its composition and newfound realization caused by experiencing it felt dim compared to the sheer breadth of opportunity presented to me by this victory.This triumph.A smile on my face was far too wide; it showed teeth, but I didn’t even notice, feeling as if I was floating.“No… no-no…!” Her first word was a whisper, the other two hot, angry denials that I interrupted.“Aura, shut up,” I ordered simply, and her mouth snapped shut with visible strength.I didn’t just speak, of course; I also tagged on the framework that tied us, in a way that was hard to explain but felt instinctually right.“Aura, don’t use magic, don’t speak or act in any way unless I command you to, and order Neugieri and the dragon to cease any hostile action,” I ordered, starting to walk across and towards her, throwing a quick look around. The dragon that opened its mouth immediately snapped it shut, and Neugieri’s spell that she started to weave fell apart as well.Despite Aura’s earlier words, I couldn’t see any other demon approaching the battlefield. The dragon, likewise, remained frozen. As I approached Aura, I finished deliberating my options.“Aura, think long and hard. Are there any contingencies to Auserlese or your servants I need to be aware of? Think about what would happen if I ordered you to realise the spell, in detail,” I ordered, giving her a second. Aura’s face naturally remained neutral and frozen. “Nod if you are done.” She nodded.Instantly, I placed my hand on her head and cast Greater Resonant Soul, experiencing the last three seconds in her shoes and seeing exactly what sort of thoughts she had.Snapping out of the vision, I blinked before straightening my posture.“Aura, release control over everyone you enslaved and hold under control,” I ordered, knowing that she can’t release herself no matter what she does. Only I held this power.Instantly, I felt her mana flare, and an invisible wave traveled outwards.The dragon behind Neugieri simply folded over and fell; its soul released, and without the Auserlese that Aura’s necromancy had been built around, it was just a corpse.I immediately turned away from Aura and headed towards Neugieri, who stumbled and cried out, falling to the ground the moment Aura released her.She wasn’t too far, yet when three or so steps separated us, I could see her staff pointed at me.Her mana shaped, and a ball of fire was launched at me.A blue spinning double-layered shield rose, once again dispersing the flame.“Neugieri, calm down; it is over,” I spoke, my voice even, “I know how this must look to you, but I will expla-”“Don’t,” the woman spoke, her voice hoarse, “Don’t take another step,” she said, her voice shaking and full of panic, and hateful, yet fearful eyes looked up at me, “Do… do you truly think me this stupid?! You will kill me, making it look like I died in the fight with demons, and come back a hero, won’t you?!” she asked, her voice breaking down, “I refuse to just let you do this! So many… so many already died because of your games! All of you, you… goddess damned monsters!”I heard her, my mind picking up rather quickly on the versions of events she must have believed… and I had to stop myself multiple times from interrupting her and faking compassion and sincerity.I wanted to, and in those circumstances… it would’ve been excusable, wouldn’t it? Yet, somehow, I figured this wouldn’t be the right choice.“Neugieri, I will not kill you,” I said simply, my voice even, “In the first place, the reason you are alive right now, while a much more powerful demon and dragon are not, is because I could never afford to kill you,” I explained to her simply.I could see her briefly hesitate.“Why? Because of master?” I could see her trying to connect the dots frantically.I merely shook my head.“No, because you are a human… a person. I’ve never killed a human in my life, and I never will,” I said simply, before looking her in the eyes. “The reason for that isn’t easy to believe, and the explanation right now can wait; the people in the city likely need our help. But the words of a demon are cheap; merely think back on what I’ve done so far, where I’ve been sighted, the rumors around where I’ve been. Do they match what you would expect from a demon?” I explained to her, and I could see that she was so shocked and scared she barely heard.Then I felt it. Something slamming across my mind as I studied Neugieri’s face for a reaction and……I felt so sleepy… and so peaceful…My own modified mental shields kicked in just a few moments after, making me wake up and see… Carbuncle floating before me, hissing angrily at Neugieri. I saw the sphere of fire floating pointlessly in front of me.I glanced down at the rings on my fingers; both of them were empty, the stones gray.As if answering the unasked question, something buzzed in my ear, as if a person had blown softly into it, and I turned my head to see Zis, who chirped happily.“Both of you… relax,” I commanded, and even if djinn weren’t intelligent enough to understand me, they were smart enough to recognize intent. I gently patted the head of an angry-looking beetle composed of flames that was blustering and posturing defensively.“You did great,” I said softly, scratching the pleasantly warm, yet somehow smooth flames, specifically under the djinn’s ‘chin’, “But you can rest now,” I coaxed, “You are probably incredibly tired, right?”“Shhhh,” Carbuncle let out a pitiful sound that reminded me of a quiet fluttering of flame; I knew it was its way to show its laziness, and it retreated into my ring, but not before giving a gentle shove to Zis.The bird made of wind whistled annoyedly before burrowing itself into my hair for a ‘hug’.Annoyingly, I knew I wouldn’t be getting her out of there for a while.“What…” Neugieri observed the interaction with shock, “Chimeras? But they don’t even have bodies…” She looked so completely stupefied that she forgot to even be afraid. “They are djinn,” I explained, gently forming a few mana strings to attract Zis’ attention. She was well-trained, so she did glance where I was pointing with my mana, which was Neugieri.She brushed me questioningly with warm currents, and I simply caressed her with my mana a bit in assurance. I had trust in Zis; she was energetic, active, but incredibly kind. She hurt Hexe exactly once by accident, dropping her from a bit too high; ever since that time, she was always so scared around humans. A gentle creature.She disassembled into a gust of wind with barely a form, brushing across Neugieri, making the young woman yelp, before nuzzling up to her cheek, making the girl blink in shock and hold onto a happily whispering bird of wind nuzzling up to her.“Back when I only started to create what is now known as chemerology, I was inspired by the elementals,” I explained softly, “A monster must have a core. It is a given. But elementals proved that a monster doesn’t necessarily need to have its own body,” I shared, showing the woman my hand, fingers spread and rings visible, “Elementals are defined as monsters who use other substances as their bodies. I figured this concept could be taken further with chemerology…” I tapped my rings gently, “By containing the cores in an artificial environment, and carefully selecting the right monsters to shape what is essentially an elemental… that can shape its body remotely.” I closed my eyes briefly.“That is the essence of the djinn. Fundamentally, they are spirits that live in my rings and feel comfortable doing so, though they can sometimes come out autonomously.”Neugieri, who finally managed to placate Zis by scratching at her tummy, stared at me for a few moments.“It wasn’t you who used all those spells… it was those creatures…” She mumbled, glancing at the bird in her hands.“Correct. The capabilities you’ve heard ascribed to me, as well as my motivation for making DAMN are…” I hesitated, “I suppose, are doable, if I am being truthful, but not in the way those two seemed to believe. Much like with everything else, I just played into what they wanted to see; I… wouldn’t have won otherwise,” I admitted, taking a step closer to the woman and seeing her recoil.“Neugieri, I know how this looks to you. I know you are afraid. But there might be people in Sturmkamm that need our help,” I spelled out slowly, “Including Hanseln.” She froze. “I will place a curse that will knock you out for hours and carry you if I have to, but I would rather you not wake up and reveal what I am.”Neugieri looked deeply confused for a moment, before frowning and staring at me.“Why would I play along? You are still a demon!”In hindsight, it was annoying yet strangely satisfying to finally be treated this way.“Correct. And I’ve been a demon for the last few years you’ve known me,” I said, pointing at my chest, “And, again, we have no time. If you decide to reveal what I am, so be it, but do so when you at least have the presence of mind to make it a decision, rather than an action of spite,” I asked, “No matter how justified.”She scowled, but I could see, between Zis being her cuddly self and my own actions, she was taken out of immediate flight or fight just enough to actually give my words some thought.“If we go…” She pointed behind my back, “What do we do with her?”I glanced back towards Aura, who stood there, frozen in place. For a second, I considered it.***Sturmkamm,“Men, heads up!” Standhaft commanded, as he saw the familiar pink-haired demon carrying both the elf and the unfamiliar mage approach in flight and descend on the streets not far away. His men, who were carefully transporting the wounded, placed them down and immediately prepared for a fight…“Stand down,” Albert spoke, stepping forward.His tone was even, as always, as he glanced around.“I still have a few potions on me for the wounded. The story with her,” he gestured with his thumb at the demoness, “is difficult to explain, but in short, her spell rebounded. Right now she is in the same position all of you have been."The Lord rightfully hesitated before he saw the woman by Albert’s side step forward, pressing her hands to her face. “Hanseln!” she shouted, running forward.“Neugieri!” And the knight they found ran back at her.Standhaft hesitated further. The demon’s spell failing on them was proof enough, but…“Was she truly defeated in such a way?” The noble couldn’t help but ask, feeling the divine justice playing its part. “This is fitting.”  He sheathed his sword and felt his men do as he did. After a brief moment of hesitation, he reached for his helm and took it off, as he nodded to the elf, “Albert the Hermit, it is pleasant to see you well… I must offer you my most sincere apologies. It seems you were completely truthful with me after all, and right on all accounts. Evidently, you’ve also risen to the occasion once again, and became a hero,” he stated the obvious, ignoring the two, clearly lovers, embracing between their parties, both desperately checking each other for wounds.It was difficult for him at such times not to smile.“I’ve simply done as I should have,” The elf merely shook his head, stepping forward; the demon that Standhaft, through his haze, remembered to be so boisterous and commanding followed him like a servant, “I am sure there are plenty who martyred themselves tonight.” Albert reached for his bag before levitating it towards the lord, who caught it easily enough. Standhaft considered his words for a moment, but nodded sharply. “Distribute it. We move on,” he commanded sharply to the rest, especially to those pushing the cart with the wounded, as he gestured for Albert to come with him. As the mage approached, he shot a long stare at the demon and spoke quietly, “This demon, I assume, if you brought it, it poses no danger?”“Not unless I order it to become one, or if I am exceptionally careless,” the elf… threatened. Standhaft merely accepted it and moved on; the man clearly was within his right to have his grievances, and considering the circumstances, he would even let the threat to his life go. “I sense Hexe’s mana amongst the wounded. I would like to see her now unless you need me for anything. Do you want Aura to fly someone to the healers faster?” he asked simply.Standhaft considered him before shaking his head.“No, everyone who needs to be there urgently needs to be brought there carefully. I doubt that this abomination can carry them with their beds,” the man stated simply, “Those who needed such attention… are with the Goddess now, beyond any help.” Albert merely nodded. “I see.” His voice sounded quieter. Standhaft understood.Gently, he tapped the man on the shoulder.“I’ve felt what this creature was like. I don’t know how you made the foul magic fail her, but without a doubt, you are a hero today. Especially because she can be tried formally, and brought to justice for her crimes in a rightful manner.” It was when Albert’s eyes met his own that Standhaft paused, even slowing his stride.“That won’t be happening,” the mage said, his voice quiet. “I am sorry.”Standhaft blinked, feeling a pit in his stomach.“You… were you seduced by having someone with this kind of power under you?” Standhaft questioned, his voice growing… both indignant and disappointed, “I expected more of a man of your moral character.”It was only then that Standhaft realized that they both stopped in place; everyone was staring.Albert merely shook his head.“It’s not about her spell. I care little for it. Nor is it about her personal magical power, or anything foolish like her body,” the man explained slowly, glancing around, his eyes for some reason stopping on the woman he arrived with, “I need Aura, because I study monsters. Eventually, I will have to conduct experiments on living demons. The first experiments I will do will likely lead to their death instantly. But the later ones… would require conducting changes that need to be observed. Not over years, or even decades, but perhaps centuries.” The elf looked the human in the eyes. “I can’t do this with a captive demon. The risk of them escaping, or the conditions of the captivity itself contaminating the observation, are too high. Aura, bound by her own magic as she is, is the only one I can make use of for this. This is an opportunity I would never have again, and I can’t overstate it.”Standhaft’s brows furrowed as he stepped forward, genuine anger, for once, ignited in his chest.“You speak of the benefit you will receive, mage, but I don’t care for it. What of justice? What of the evil this creature has wrought? You are going to give it centuries of life when it deserves to be dead yesterday! My men have died here, at her hands,” he said, pointing at the demon, “Your own neighbors who bravely fought today died by her hands! How can you shield yourself from rightful retribution?!”Albert merely met his eyes.“She will serve her penance in the work I will have her do. She will harm no human for the rest of her life, that I can promise. This will be her justice.”Standhaft genuinely couldn’t stand it; he exploded with rage.“On what grounds?!” The mage's mana exploded, making him unconsciously step back.“On the grounds of the fact that I am the one due to whom you can cry about justice in the first place,” The man’s voice grew cold, “On the grounds of being the one who holds her leash, and the one who bested her in combat when you, and the kingdom’s elite, could only die en masse,” he continued, his voice still emotionless as if he was merely talking about the weather. The mage stepped forward.Somehow, for some reason, Standhaft’s instincts made him step back.“Ultimately, Aura won’t die today because I have use for her, and I believe it to be more important than your justice,” the man said, and Standhaft could only stare him in the face, looking for a weakness, a spark of regret perhaps, or anger, or even self-righteousness……he found none of it.“...your kind truly is a sad existence. Even all of this,” Standhaft threw his hand around, “does not touch your heart?” How much misery could one experience, how many centuries to live through, that a man living righteously would be left so apathetic in the face of this horror?Albert didn’t answer.After a moment, the Lord gestured.“We are losing time. We move to the priests,” he commanded the surrounding men, who instantly started to display activity, as he turned back to the elf, “... your woman is at the back, if you even care. Corpses of a few who defended you before me are there too; I thought them your friends but… I am not sure anymore.” Standhaft’s expression twisted. “If somehow seeing them will change your mind, find me.” The knight turned around, and after glancing at his helm with the visor half-molten, placed the helm back on top of his head. “If not, I will pray for your soul, and expect to never see you before me again.”Saying his part, he departed.***Albert,Neugieri didn’t come back to awareness even after receiving tending by the priests. I’ve been told she was merely exhausted and sleeping, and it was nothing to be concerned over.I believed the priests, even if they did stare at Aura, who was silently shadowing me the whole time.Yet, even if I believed them, I had nothing else to do but stay by her side. Standhaft had been organizing things with the remaining leaders, and he clearly didn’t wish to see me now, and until I recovered my mana at least a bit, it would be better not to show my face around him in turn.There was nowhere else I could be but by Hexe’s side.Berg was dead. The dwarf’s spine was severed in the fight with Hanseln, I’ve been told, and the old stubborn fool made it worse by deciding to strike the man one last time.He didn’t die instantly, however; he was a warrior. I’ve spent the last few minutes with the man, by his side on the carriage. I couldn’t grab him and fly him because he was the one heavily wounded but delicate to transport that Standhaft had referred to; transporting him any faster than by a slow cart was impossible.I couldn’t do anything. Not a thing. I’ve dedicated the grand total of three hours to studying Goddess’ Magic before, and… I’ve never even bothered familiarizing myself with Lisch’s work of Living Flesh Knitting beyond the theoretical. There was nothing I could do.I’ve never before held a dying man’s hand. He made me promise a lot of things. He knew that Hanseln wasn’t with him because he couldn’t bear to look at the dwarf, blaming himself, and made me promise to make sure the boy wouldn’t smother himself with guilt. He made me promise to look out for his family. Asked me to make sure the drinks in his tavern were good as long as I lived, in what I believe was a joke.He told me not to blame myself, as if I could. That it was fine, that he was ready for this end, even if I could clearly smell his fear and confusion at his failing body. He spoke of his daughters and wife then, trying to give me messages to pass on to them, but at this point his speech grew mumbled and confused; he seemed to start forgetting where he was and where he stopped. I didn’t interrupt him, letting him speak until he could no more.Zaudern had died before I could ever return to the city. He was afflicted by a curse that forced him to lose a lot of blood, and he was old; his death came swiftly, and was as peaceful as such things could be on the battlefield. It’s too bad that by the time priests applied Goddess’ Magic to him, the man’s body looked as if he had been starved for weeks before his death. That would hurt his family all the more at the funeral.Outside of those two, there was no one by whose side I would prefer to be, so it only left Hexe. For this reason, it was only natural I was here with her.“Mmh…” The woman stirred; I sensed her heart rate change, realizing with some surprise that I could probably tell when someone was awake by such things alone now, “Ah…” Expressive green eyes stared into my own. “Have I… ah,” Her voice was painfully hoarse, and seeing her discomfort, I levitated a mug filled with water to her, and gently, holding the woman up with my left hand, tilted the mug telekinetically to satiate her thirst, “...ah, am I still sleeping?” She tried, but by the awareness returning to her eyes, I could tell the question wasn’t remotely genuine.“Unless the entities in your dreams are smarter than I give them credit for, I doubt it,” I answered drily, before gently pushing the woman who attempted to move upwards back down, “Stay still; priests said your wound shouldn’t be disturbed. Reality is inconvenient like that.”The woman shot me a wry, tired look. “Is that so? And yet, I woke up to such a handsome man holding my hand,” she said dreamily, showing my right hand intertwined with hers. “With such gentleness and of your own volition too!” she giggled, and it sounded childish and genuine indeed.“It is what is done for a patient, is it not?” I replied after a few moments, in truth, knowing full well what I was doing.Emotional care wasn’t something I could provide, but faking it just enough for the woman to feel appreciated was not beyond me.I tried to tell myself I wasn’t doing this because I needed her help in convincing Neugieri.Besides, she isn’t the only one whose hand I held today.“Albert?” I blinked, feeling the woman touch my cheek gently. “You look out of it.”“Mana exhaustion,” I explained quietly, “I helped with the rubble and am still somewhat out of it…” There was also the unfamiliar spell connected to the innermost part that gave me dominion over Aura. Who knew if it also affected me for a time.“In any case, I promised a priest to call for them once you wake.” I reassuringly squeezed her hand. “We will talk. For now, worry about nothing else. You did great, Hexe, better than I could ever ask of you, better than anyone could imagine.” I could see her tear up before she rapidly used the sheet near her neck to clean her eyes. “I… Goddess…” And she started to cry, bringing herself up and embracing me, whispering things about her fears.I could only carefully pat her on the back and stay quiet, electing to give her time; her physical wounds could wait.Patting her on the back, I stared at the walls of this randomly chosen house, the bedroom of which was used to house Hexe, and stared at the small painting on the wall, depicting a ship at sunset, departing towards the ocean, its mast forming a long shadow on the water… in the shape of a cross.And yet, to the crying woman I’ve said nothing.As I was feeling nothing too. ------Author Note: This is a 25k chapter. I may split it in two and post manually in open access, because I think I may need a break now that the arc is all but done. I am happy with what I ended up doing, but the first part of this chapter, the Zaudern segment, was genuinely incredibly difficult, and I don’t think it turned out as good as I hoped even now. Would certainly love to see what you people think.Other than that, everything in those fights had been planned for a WHILE AGO. As in, chapters back. I hope it delivered on everything you hoped to see, and yet was a pleasant surprise. I will also mention that, largely thanks to you guys, I will be getting a laser correction for my eyes within a week. Which is actually one of the reasons for the break, as it would eat up at least a few days while I recover from that. I don’t know how big the break is - I hesitate to call it a hiatus, but I still feel it prudent to warn. Especially if you are only here for the Real Human Being, and considering I made you wait for a MONTH for this chapter. Sorry about that, I just really wanted to finish with all the fighting.