Seren yawned as I made us some more tea, something I felt we could both use right about now. She had begun slouching a little against the armrest and her eyelids sometimes threatened to fall shut now that we took a short recess from my… well, it was pretty much an emotional offloading, wasn’t it?

Whilst my magic worked on getting that ready – something energising for her and something calming for myself, to help me through the last leg of this night – I stroked Fluminix’s scales and gave her little scratches as I looked, or rather stared, at Seren.

“Hm, what is it?” she asked drowsily. “Is it time for you to get to the next part already?”

“No, not yet,” I said softly with a soft little snort and smile. “The tea isn’t ready yet.”

She hummed an affirmative…? It was hard to grasp in her current state.

“Are you sure you want to keep going?” I offered from the comfort of Fluminix’s nest of blankets and pillows. “We could do this tomorrow or some other time?”

“No,” she countered with a sleepy glare. “I don’t want you to chicken out.”

I chuckled self-deprecatingly. “That’s fair.”

As we silently waited for me to float the cups of tea over to us, I kept staring at her. It amazed me that she was still here. After everything I had just told her, after having her foundation shattered, I fully expected her to be done with me. I really didn’t deserve someone like her in my life, caring about me. I didn’t. Not after everything I had done.

“Hey,” Seren said sharply, abruptly, pulling me out of my thoughts. “Where were you going?”

I gave her a strained smile, before sighing. “It’s not. Just lamenting some stuff.”

She snorted. “I bet.”

I almost timed it just right. Her cup arrived in front of her just a few tiny moments after she’d said that.

“I’m so glad your mana is high enough to do something like this,” she said cherishingly, as she carefully took the floating cup.

I snorted a little chuckle as I took my own cup and started nursing it. “I’m glad my utility is appreciated.”

She shot me a half-hearted glare in answer. To which I just smiled my most evil teasing smile.

“Shall I continue, then?” I asked rhetorically.

“Yeees,” she said adamantly, as she sipped on her tea.

“Alright then,” I said playfully, before I took a sip of my own and sobered. “After the events in Luxacra’s capital, I had lost the taste for cold, hard revenge. However, I hadn’t completely given up on the desire to right the wrong.

“There’s a reason why Luxacra was considered to be a mythical place for centuries. It’s only in recent decades that people are coming around to the idea that it really existed.”

“Let me guess, you’re responsible for that?” she asked with a groan of someone who could already see the writing on the wall.

“I did both of those, actually,” I answered with just a little too much pep for something like this. “Over the first several decades since I returned to the world and set off the slow destruction of my brother’s kingdom, I went on a book hunt. I travelled all over in search of books about Luxacra, mentioning the kingdom, or anything else related to it.

“And I destroyed them.

“I destroyed them all. I hunted them all down until there were none left to find.

“Yet, I kept hunting for them, until I was absolutely certain I had completely erased my brother’s kingdom, his greatest legacy, from the annals of history.”

“And you’re not the villain here, because…?” Seren asked leadingly, though with less judgement than she did earlier this night.

“Oh, no, what I did back then was all kinds of bad, awful, evil,” I admitted freely, because, well, I knew I was wrong. I would never deny that. “It’s the biggest reason why I later have worked hard to collect the scattered few stories that had remained in oral tradition, and I made the collection that is now turning the tide I set off. Not that it writes my wrong.

“But back then, none of this crossed my mind in the slightest. When I was finished with my little book hunt, I felt… lost, empty. For years, the empire was my drive, but it was gone and buried. The centuries in my mountain prison left me singularly focused, a focus that had led to the destruction of Luxacra, all of Umbrea’s archaeological history, and the horrific death of hundreds of thousands.

“But now that my brother’s kingdom was no more, I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t go back. I couldn’t face what I’d done. Not back then. I just wasn’t ready yet.

“So, I left this part of the world. I got on a boat and set off for the recently discovered continent of Kanonsa. It turned out to be the start of a new journey for me. Literally.

“I spent the next centuries travelling the world, immersing myself in all of the world’s cultures, learning their stories and collecting them, and trying out every single profession in existence. With the exception of one. I wasn’t into hate fucking and I, just in general, wasn’t in a state of mind for anything sexual, or romantic even, so prostitution was off the table for me.”

I was interrupted by a little chuckle turned a bit strangled at the end, before Seren said, “Sorry, I just can’t picture you as something like a potter or, Gods forbid, a priest.”

I huffed with some inflated pride. “I’ll have you know, I made an excellent priest. When I moved on from it, people were begging me to stay.”

She snorted derisively, but not harshly. “Sure they were.”

“They were!” I said defensively, because they were. For an atheist, I made a superb priest. “Anyway, that doesn’t matter. What matters is that my travels and experimentations led me to the Adventurer Guild and back in the region after all that time.

“The curse-riddled lands of Umbrea had been a plight upon the neighbouring lands for centuries by now, as people were constantly afraid that it might spill past the mountains and bring death to all of Northern Tazarica. Out at sea, things weren’t much better, as the waters around the peninsula were just as deadly to sailors and fishermen as the land was, causing ships to sail well clear of Umbrea. Trade in the region had slowed considerably and Tagseth had once again lost its access to the Mediarene Sea with sea routes disrupted.

“And then, of course, there was the fact that there were untapped resources left to be claimed. Or so many a businessperson or lowly noble thought. With centuries having passed and my book hunt, people had forgotten all about how the peninsula was once inhabited and thriving.

“I started off with my adventuring group across the Mediarene, having met them across Argithea. All of that started when I ran into Iakovos, actually, they were recently excommunicated by the Church of the Holy Light, and a bit at a loss of what to do with their life. I myself was in-between jobs at the moment, having just lost interest in my most recent job experimentation, and was similarly in search for a new vocation.”

“Did they know you were a lich?” Seren asked, interrupting my fond reminisce, so I gave her an annoyed frown. “Just asking.”

“They didn’t,” I answered a bit too curtly, perhaps. “More importantly, we got to talking and we both seemed to like travelling the world – they themself had been stuck in the same town all their life, having grown up in one of the church’s orphanages and sort of… groomed into becoming a priest by the overseeing priest. They turned out to be too extravagant and eccentric for them, so they booted them.

“Anyway, I said to them, jokingly, ‘maybe we should become adventurers?’, something I didn’t really want to, really. Of course, the oblivious idiot didn’t seem to notice and agreed with me, so enthusiastically that I didn’t have it in me to tell them it was a joke. They dragged me off to the local chapter almost immediately.

“When they asked me what I wanted to register as, I told them very dryly, ‘knight’. Because, you know, it seemed funny and I hadn’t actually given it a try before. Of course, they were very sceptical, as I didn’t look anything like a knight, at all. I wore no armour, carried no weapon, and looked physically just like I do right now, lean but not built for prolonged physical strain.

“Anyway, they didn’t turn the both of us down – the idiots – and we got to adventuring, which was… rather boring, actually. Especially early on, lots of running around and doing errands that they could have just hired the local, bored youngling for. Total waste of my skills. I did eventually get myself a nice suit of armour – which should be somewhere at the school, but I haven’t kept track of it – and a shiny sword for all my slashing needs.”

Seren snorted a laugh very loudly. “Sorry, I just…”

She devolved into a laughing mess, which I wanted to ignore but couldn’t, as she was just too loud to keep talking. And I was telling this for her sake, of course.

“Sorry,” she tried again, when her laughter had died down. “The way you described it… It sounds like a child’s fantasy of a knight.”

As she started chuckling again, I grinned back, oddly proud of my past self’s choices. “I know. That’s what I was going for.”

“For real?” she asked incredulously.

“Well, at first, at least,” I said with a nonchalant shrug. “I did dress more seriously later on. Especially after we met Isolde, but that’s getting ahead of things a little bit.”

“Yes, Gods forbid you get on to the good stuff,” she countered with a playful grin.

I rolled my eyes. “Anyway, after a couple of jobs and my shiny new armour, we ran into Seraphina.

“We met her when she was at her lowest, really. She was sitting on a fountain being all mopey and depressed. Her previous group had kicked her out after a mission gone bad. Lots of drama that I’ll spare you, which she didn’t spare Iakovos and me. Damn, did she talk when drunk. She was a really emotional drunk. We merely offered her a meal and a drink to try and lighten her spirit, but she just spilled all of the drama on us, a couple of weirdo strangers.”

“You say we, but you mean Iakovos offered, don’t you?” Seren asked with a teasing grin on her face.

“Obviously,” I answered without missing a beat. “That woman reeked of emotional burden, and I wasn’t in the mood to be her emotional support lich. Regardless, hearing her story, I did have some sympathy for her. She was a skilled markswoman, truly one of the best for miles.

“Unfortunately, on that last mission that had gone bad, her dickwad of a leader messed up hard and she both lost the eye on the same side of her dominant hand, and she got the blame for the mission going bad. Let’s just say that said the man found himself in a naked situation the next morning.”

“What did you do?” she asked curiously.

“I just destroyed all his clothes, armour, weapons and other gear,” I answered with a smirk. “And all his money, of course.”

She smirked back and snorted a little, looking awfully proud of me. Which warmed my non-existent heart.

“Anyway, the one-eyed archer was a great addition, as I was pretending to be a frontliner – not that I ever hit anything but my own armour with my swings – and Iakovos as just a lazy priest casting spells that were more party tricks than something that actually did any damage. So, at least now, we might actually do something truly worth our time as adventurers.

“Naturally, we immediately chose to take on just such a mission with our unearned confidence being through the roof. Well, Iakovos and I were excited, Seraphina was mostly just apprehensive. After all, she was the only one with real experience.

“Once out in the forest, it didn’t take us long to run into trouble. A pack of magical wolves started charging us, so I charged them, and fell face-first into the mud as I stumbled over my own feet. Luckily for me, wolves don’t have a taste for undead flesh. Unluckily for my companions, they did have a taste for living flesh, and they were now without their untrustworthy frontliner.

“So, they ran.

“Once I got back on my feet, I followed after them, but my lack of necessary physique and my determination to not use any magic whilst I was playing hedge knight, hindered my pace significantly. When I caught up to them, though, they were out of breath but otherwise fine. Next to them lay the corpses of those troublesome wolves, and next to those was a knight wearing the absolute shiniest armour I had ever seen on a battlefield. Ever. Period. And I’m ancient.

“The woman occupying the suit of full plate ceremonial armour – all golden and inlaid with gemstones, none of which were real, as that was way too expensive for her – had flowing, perfectly oiled, flower scented, chestnut hair. That hung to about her lower back as she also didn’t believe in helmets. In her words, ‘they mess up my hair’.

“Anyway, that’s how Isolde joined our little group.”

“Another for your merry band of misfits,” Seren commented amusingly.

“Precisely,” I responded with a sly smirk. “It didn’t take long after that for the remaining two misfits to find ourselves in our adventurer group.

“Immediately upon joining us, Isolde took over as leader from Iakovos – which was, admittedly, the best decision ever, as they were too eccentric to lead anyone anywhere but to their doom – and told us that we were fools. Neither Iakovos nor I could argue with that, though Seraphina did try to defend herself, adamantly telling Isolde that she was dragged out into the forest against her will. Which just was painfully untrue. Sure, she whined, complained and dragged her feet, but she never tried to walk off.

“Anyway, the first order of business, according to Isolde was to get our group a healer.”

“Probably something you could have thought of from the beginning,” Seren commented dryly.

“And have them find out I was a lich with their competency? No, thank you,” I countered. “Not that we could find a competent healer, mind you. All the competent ones took one look at us and said, ‘no way, not a chance’. Undeterred, we found the next best thing: a germophobe that got fired for not wanting to clear his patients the way his boss wanted him to.

“Which was done in a ridiculously outdated manner, so I couldn’t blame Kael on not wanting to follow the head healer’s demands. Despite him refusing due to his phobia.

“His joining did mean that I started to cheat on my self-imposed rules, though, as I needed to ward against him and his healing. Especially, his area of effect healing spells. But also his diagnostic spells, as rudimentary as those were compared to those of today.

“Next, we set off to find ourselves a true mage, as Iakovos wasn’t really an offensive mage, more like one that could blind and cause confusion. Not just amongst our opponents.

“It took a few missions before we came across a mage both at least semi-competent and willing to join us. For some inexplicable reason, we ran into a similar problem as when we tried to find a healer. No-one sensible wanted to join us.

“Luckily, we found ourselves another misfit, because what else would have fitted our group? Someone normal and constantly reliable?” I asked rhetorically, which had Seren laughing.

“Thorne was a… reasonably competent mage with a particular little quirk,” I said, as soon as her laughter had died down. “He absolutely loved animals. Couldn’t get enough of them. Couldn’t drag him away from them. We constantly had to convince him the magical animals we had to deal with on missions were really animals at all. At some point, Iakovos had enough and got themselves a spell that was… borderline mind control so we could have Thorne just do his damn job.”

“When you say reasonably competent, do you mean relatively to you? Or in general?” she asked, more to poke fun at me than out of curiosity.

“…Relatively to me,” I admitted hesitantly, which caused her laughter to start anew. I cleared my throat to get her to urge her to rein it in, something she thankfully did. “Anyway, with Thorne in the mix, the group finally gained the composition that took them on the most famous mission of all time.

“And not because we were anyone’s first pick. We were always forced to pick the shittiest jobs, those that no-one wanted to take on but still needed to be done. Those kinds of jobs.

“On the plus side, those tended to be the ones that took us all across the Mediarene region.

“Which brings us to our time south of the Arxine Mountains in the year one thousand and fifty-nine, where we met a curious little Rais from Nurasia. Hanno ben Abdamon was his name. A man of no real import, except for his overly ambitious goal of reclaiming the Desolate Lands – as Umbrea was known colloquially as back then.

“Over the course of all those centuries that had passed since my actions there, many adventurer groups had been tasked into the peninsula, hired by greedy little men like Hanno. I didn’t like him from the moment I laid my eyes on him. All plumb and bejewelled, he reeked of selfishness and untrustworthiness.

“Since so many adventurers had been lost on fool’s errands for so long, the Adventurer Guild had a standing order to strongly discourage any groups from entering the cursed lands. When we heard the little man out, there was some slight difference of opinions on whether or not we should take the job.

“Seraphina was a hard no that would buckle as soon as the majority had voted yes. Kael was a dutiful yes. Iakovos was obviously a yes, as they still appeared to have little to no sense of danger, despite having a decade of experience by now. Isolde abstained, at least until all others had spoken. Thorne voted no, as there were no animals on the peninsula. I remained silent.

“All the while, I had been lost in thought. Torn and tormented. I didn’t know what to say, what to do. My conscience said I ought to vote yes, vehemently so. Whereas my metaphorical heart said no, as it was reeling just being so close to the place I had wanted to forget.

“When my eyes met Isolde’s, I knew it didn’t matter. The woman may be vain beyond vain, but she had a sharp mind and a true skill with a blade. She knew something was up, but didn’t press on it. Instead, she put her vote in, voting yes with a speech that had Seraphina’s vote crumbling into a yes.

“So, we informed Hanno we accepted, and we set off into Umbrea with the goal of finding the source of the curse plaguing the land,” I said with a sardonic smile.

“Which you, obviously, already knew how to find,” Seren easily concluded, before narrowing her eyes at me a threatening way. “Let me guess, you already knew how to break the curse, as well?”

“…I did,” I admitted with a subdued nod.

“For how long?” she demanded.

“Since the year six hundred three,” I admitted weakly, anticipating an incoming burst of outrage.

Instead, she sighed and got up. My eyes followed her as she drew closer, wondering what was in store for me.

I did not expect her to sit down in Fluminix’s nest next to me and pull her in a sidelong hug, resting her head against me and sighing a second time. “Seriously, you make this so hard… But, I think I understand.”

I let out a breath of relief. Relief that evaporated when Fluminix – who was evicted from her comfortable spot when Seren got up – decided to use me as a mattress, resting her upper torso on me and her head back on Seren’s lap. “Oof, do you have to, Fluminix?”

I got a lazy yawn from the infant dragon in return, because why would I get anything else from her? The story about the dragon was over and it was way passed her bedtime, after all.

Seren chuckled next to me, which caused me to turn to face her and ask, “Is my torment really so amusing to you?”

“Yes,” she shamelessly admitted.

“Whatever,” I grumbled, as I resigned myself to my fate as being part of the pile of pilows and blankets that was Fluminix’s nest. “Anyway, the journey into the Arxine Mountains was relatively uneventful. Fremet Pass was overrun by the few, vicious magical animals that dared make their home so close to the miasma that hung over the lands beyond.

“Nothing we couldn’t handle, though.

“Every step of our journey after we crossed into Umbrea, was eerily uneventful. There was nothing. No cities. No towns. No villages. No buildings of any kind, or their ruins. No animals. No trees. No plants. No birds. No insects. Nothing. Miles and miles of rolling hills of nothing but unnatural sand.

“The days we marched through that desolate landscape wore heavy on all of us. For different reasons. For my companions, it was the thought that they could die at any moment. That they ought to be feeling something already but weren’t.

“For me, it was dread. I dreaded what I might find at the end of this journey. I honestly didn’t want to find out what I had left behind. What she might have turned into. If she was still even there to begin with. I hoped she wasn’t. But I knew she would be, for otherwise the curse wouldn’t still be here.

“When we reached the hill that I once upon a time used to call home – more than a millennium ago by now – we found not a hill, but something akin to a caldera. The floor of the cavern in which Fluminix the Elder was imprisoned and starved to death, was still intact, however everything about it wasn’t.

“Up until this point, my companions hadn’t questioned how I somehow knew how to guide them through the desert. But the hill was suspect, and suspicion of me was mounting. Especially when they laid their eyes upon what awaited us in the former cavern, and how I walked towards it whilst they took steps back.

“What was left of the kind knight wasn’t pretty…” I said, trailing off as I struggled with my will to tell her.

“You’ll have to tell me eventually,” Seren said softly, as she stroked the side of my head with her hand in a very calming manner.

“Just…” I started, before thinking better of it. “Never mind, I’ll get on with it.

“A Morganan-type of curse, as the one I had forced upon her, didn’t just twist the soul. It twists their everything. The knight’s flesh had twisted around her bones. Her limbs had twisted and turned so that the front was at the back and her legs stood up whilst her arms were down, with both sets of limbs also being twisted around one another.”

Seren groaned as if she might be sick, so I nudged her with my head in the hopes to give her some comfort, as I continued, “That wasn’t even the worst of it.

“She was still alive.”

Seren pulled me in tighter in our hug and buried her head in my shoulder, causing Fluminix to once again be forced to seek somewhere else to lay down. “Gods, Morgana… I’m starting to think I was better off not knowing… Every time you open up more, it seems I get exposed to new horrors…”

“Sorry,” I apologised, even though I didn’t think an apology was necessary. After all, opening up was something she wanted me to do. She wanted to know the truth about me, which wasn’t always pretty.

She let out a ragged breath and pulled away from me, looking me deeply in the eyes with deadly seriousness. “Promise me this is the last horror you need to unearth tonight?”

“I promise,” I answered truthfully, as I offered her a reassuring smile.

She sat back down beside me with a heavy sigh. “Continue.”

“After I approached the living remains of the knight – still silently screaming, I might add – I immediately ended her suffering by undoing what I had done,” I said.

“How?” Seren couldn’t help herself but ask.

“By destroying the body,” I answered. “It was that simple.”

She lifted herself up so she could down at me with an incredulous look. “Seriously? All that was needed to break the curse and make the peninsula habitable again, was to destroy the body?”

“Yep,” I responded, popping my P. “She wasn’t an undead that had centuries to expand her mana capacity, nor was she conscious enough to be able to cast any protection spells on herself. Not that she would have if she could, I believe. Her agony must have been tremendous.

“Anyway, when I magically destroyed the body without consulting my companions, they were rightfully very suspicious and accusatory. Which only got worse when I took off my helmet and showed them my face, without the illusion that had hidden my real face.

“I’d love to say that we had some words, before we worked things out,” I said with a winch. “We did a lot more before we could work things out.

“They tried to kill me, for one. Multiple times.

“Then there was the silent treatment. Which was very mature of them, but what else could I have expected of that bunch of lovable idiots.

“Then they threatened to report me, so the church could deal with me. Not that any one of them actually moved a muscle in the direction we had come from, because the miasma was still there and would kill them as soon as they stepped outside of the ring of protection I had going around me. Which I told them about, before they could do something stupid like this.

“Then they made demands. Which weren’t unreasonable. Mostly they were things I was already thinking of doing, such as making the peninsula actually habitable again.

“One of them surprised me. Isolde, who was the least aggressive and vocal after my reveal, demanded that I made sure nothing like the curse could have come to pass for as long as I lived.

“She also proposed the rest helped me as best they could. Upon which Iakovos proposed that we start a school together. Not for helpful reasons, but Kael’s endorsement on the grounds of enhancing medical science to account for people like him, to promote magical use in medicine, helped convince the rest of us.

“Which is pretty much the story of how the school got founded,” I concluded, before getting up and stretching my limbs. “And how the school’s motto was formed, as well. Scientia Est Gravitas, Knowledge is Gravity, as knowledge is power, which attracts people, and power is responsibility, which is a heavy burden.”

Seren followed suit, without the stretching, which she replaced with a yawn. “That isn’t all of it, though.”

I rolled my eyes. “Fine. I started teaching whilst I worked on clearing the entire peninsula of the miasma. When that was done and people were gracing Umbrea with their presence again, I switched my focus to the occasional Adventurer Guild work. Added more work to it as the school grew and it needed more food. Secured myself a nature reserve from the get-go, and police it when someone violates it. Herd the occasional cats of the Coalition of Independent City-states of Umbrea. Do some research into random subjects on the side – most of which are never published as they are far, far ahead of mainstream science, and I don’t want to be some leading figure in most fields. I don’t deserve it, either. Am I missing anything else I’ve been doing the past millennium?”

She yawned again.

“I don’t think so,” I concluded with finality. “More importantly, you need to go to bed.”

She yawned for a third time as she took my hand, before tugging me along towards my bedroom. “What are you doing?”

“Taking you to bed,” she replied sleepily.

“Why?” I asked, as we crossed into the bedroom. “I don’t need sleep.”

“Because,” she stated simply, before she unsuccessfully tried to undress herself, so she turned to me instead. “Help me.”

I sighed and relented, before stepping closer and loosening the strings keeping her dress closed. She let the dress slide from her shoulders without hesitation, and turned around to do the same to me.

She cupped my cheek, before sliding that same hand down the side of my neck, over my shoulder, down my arm and into my hand, which she tugged as she stepped back towards the bed. When she reached it, she sat down on it, before climbing on it and looking down on me. With her already towering height and her sitting on the bed, she looked like a giant to me. A beautiful giant.

She smirked down at me. “Having some interesting thoughts?”

“No,” I futilely denied, as she walked backwards on her knees across the bed, forcing me to join her on it.

She chuckled lightly as she pulled me close, before collapsing us both down on the soft mattress that I had barely used since I got it centuries ago. Despite turning me on, she simply pulled the covers over us and curled up against me.

“You evil woman,” I accused half-heartedly.

She hummed a slow acknowledgement. “An evil woman that you love.”

I sighed and pulled her closer. “I do.”

“Me too,” she mumbled and rolled on her back, pulling out of the hug.

I chuckled softly, before curling up against her. “I’m a coward, Seren.”

My words fell on deaf ears, as her slow breathing indicated she had fallen asleep.

I looked up at her sleeping face and felt myself feeling… content, safe. Like I could let go and everything would be alright. So, I clung to her tightly and slowly closed my eyes.

For the first time in over two millennia, I fell asleep.