It… Well, it took me a moment to collect myself again after telling Seren about how my life as a flesh and blood human ended. Having her arms wrapped around me helped. Knowing that she was truly open to hearing my side of the story and maybe, just maybe being able to accept it as the truth? That turned the hug from comforting to warming.

After I had calmed down, we let go of one another and I put my dress back on. However, I didn’t feel like returning to my seat on the couch. It felt too distant. Too much like I was returning to the place I relived my past from.

Well, part of my past.

Perhaps not even the worst part of it, if I was completely honest.

Instead of either the couch occupying Fluminix or the one that Seren sat back down on, I turned to Fluminix’s nest and sat down in it, wiggling myself down between the blankets to make myself extra comfortable.

Whilst the infant dragon jumped off the couch and rushed over to me in indignation – because how dare I steal her nest – Seren chuckled softly and a smile tugged at her lips, one I returned, if more brittle. “Making yourself comfortable?”

“I’m just jealous of Fluminix’s nest and wanted to try it for myself,” I said with a shrug, earning me several insistent head bumps from the dragon in question.

In return, I gave her several head pats, before I hugged her close and let out a lengthy sigh. “I should continue, shouldn’t I?”

“There’s more?” Seren asked curiously, from her spot on the couch. She had moved as close to me as she could, leaning on the armrest to give me her full attention.

I hummed a low affirmative; my gaze turned towards the floor. “Unfortunately.

“And this is a part I’m most hesitant to tell you,” I admitted, as I looked up at her with shame and despair written all over my face.

“You… don’t have to tell me, if it’s too much for you,” she offered carefully.

I shook my head and sank further into the pile of blankets. “No, I have to.”

I took a deep breath and hugged Fluminix closer, much to the infant dragon’s complaints. “So… after I passed out from mana exhaustion, following the completion of the Lich Ascension Ritual, I was only lucid for a short time before my world was plunged into darkness.

“I vaguely remember my brother urging someone to restrain me, as I moved when I began to stir. At the same time, I felt something creep up my body and my lower legs feeling tightened, restricted.

“Something must have hit my head, or they did something to make me pass out, or I just didn’t have the mana yet to fully wake, because I blacked out moments later.

“The next memory I have is of stone creeping over my face, slowly blocking my vision. This time my entire body felt like my lower legs did earlier, tightened and restricted...” I trailed off towards the end, and hugged Fluminix tightly in an attempt to block out the memories I was dragging up on purpose.

It felt like pulling an unmoveable object through an immoveable object.

I closed my eyes, as I continued, “I… was horrified.” I opened my eyes and looked up at Seren with genuine fear in my eyes. “I tried to scream. To claw myself out of my restraints. I tried anything I could to escape. To free myself. But nothing worked.”

I exhaled slowly as I closed my eyes again. “After I was fully encased, I felt I was being moved, but I had no way of knowing where to. I… couldn’t keep track of how long I was transported. All I knew was darkness.”

I took a slow breath and opened my eyes again, tears threatening to once again burst for as I flexed my hand against Fluminix’s scales. “I… I’d like to believe he did what he did because he had no other choice. That he just didn’t have any way to kill me. That the methods were simply just beyond him and his friends. But…”

“You fear he didn’t,” Seren finished for me.

I closed my eyes and hugged Fluminix tightly again, as I remained silent for a moment. “No, I don’t. I don’t think he buried me deep inside a mountain because he had no other choice…

“He went out of his way to pick a location where people would be the least likely to ever find me. He intended for me to remain there for all eternity, alive, aware, stuck in my own mind.”

I heard Seren take a sharp breath and Fluminix wormed herself out of my grasp, but I didn’t pay attention to either of them.

“At first, I was filled with despair. Then my mind drifted off to the final moments of my freedom, and I became filled with rage. Then despair returned again when I realised my fury couldn’t ever be satisfied, as I knew of no way out of my prison. Rage returned when thoughts of my imprisonment overlapped with my final moments of freedom.

“Eventually resignation set in, and I just… stopped thinking. I just let myself be lost in a sea of nothingness. Thoughts drifting by without notice or care.

“Resignation turned into boredom, and I let myself think again. I turned to theory crafting, working on theoretical spell formations. I re-examined the runes and glyphs I was taught, their workings, meanings and placements in spell formations. The usage of material components in ordinary spell casting, and its usage.

“I came up with all kinds of spells, and then interrogated them to see if they might actually work, or were just flights of fancy. I changed the structure of my spell formations countless times to examine if any of it might aid in making them more mana efficient.

“I pondered about the elements, going over everything I had learned about them, everything I wasn’t taught about them, possible further applications and combinations of each of them.

“Sometimes, my mind would drift off again into nothingness. Sometimes, the rage returned, and I plotted countless ways to avenge the death of my family and my brother’s betrayal. Sometimes, my happy memories would drift by. Sometimes, my worst memories would haunt me. Sometimes, I would hallucinate that I was outside and free again, or that I’d never been imprisoned in the first place. Sometimes, I thought that I could move my limbs, phantom sensations that would lead to despair.”

In the absence of Fluminix, I hugged myself tightly, pulling on the surrounding blankets to bury me in their softness. I opened my eyes again and looked at Seren with a brittle smile. “There’s a reason I don’t sleep, Seren.”

Needing to strengthen my resolve, I took a deep breath. “I’m scared of the dark.

“I’m afraid that if I were to let myself drift off, allowing myself to relinquish my consciousness, I will find myself back there again. Trapped underneath that mountain. And all of this,” I said as I gestured vaguely around me. “Everything I’ve done, gone through, achieved. That all of it was just a torturous dream, a lengthy hallucination my brain conjured up to further torment me.”

“That’s…” was all Seren uttered, apparently at a loss for words.

“One day, light returned to my life. Bright, blindingly so. The torchlight of a group of adventurers was more than I had ever thought I’d ever see again. I can’t tell you if the tears that left my eyes back then were from relief, or from disuse.

“What had happened, though, was that the mines in the Arxine Mountains had expanded much deeper and faster than my brother could have ever considered. Miners had stumbled upon an unexpected ward when they were tunnelling, so they had called in a group of adventurers to break through it, in hopes of finding some long-lost treasure.

“Instead, they unearthed me.

“Literally, as I was surrounded by paces upon paces of stone. On their way out, my brother and his friends hadn’t just sealed me in; they had turned me into a battery for a ward and unmade the tunnel with which they had brought me down there. There were no gaps or caverns anywhere near me.”

“Um,” Seren interrupted, before blushing in embarrassment and looking sheepish as I turned my gaze to her. “Sorry, I just have a couple of questions.”

I nodded, and she continued, “Okay, so first of all, you can do that? Use a person as a battery for spells? And I was just wondering what it would have been like for you, to come out of… that, and step back into the world.”

I snorted a soft chuckle, despite the heaviness I felt. “To the first, yes, you can. Everyone gives off a faint mana signature, which stems from mana that naturally leaks out of all magical lifeforms, be they flora or fauna, sapient or not. However, tapping into that natural bleed, requires one to dig deeper into the source. With mana stemming from the soul, in the astral plane, well…”

“Soul magic,” she answered my unspoken question.

I nodded. “Apparently, the ward was set up to use every drop of mana I brought into the material plane to strengthen it. Which would have meant that the ward gained strength as I gained more mana, making it all but impossible for anyone to break through it. In theory, at least. What actually happened was that its strength was proportionate to my will to free myself, and with me having long since resigned myself to my fate, it wasn’t anywhere near as powerful as it should have been.”

She chuckled, a delightful little laugh that lightened my mood. “I can’t believe they failed because they thought too highly of you.”

I scoffed. “Well, I never accused my brother to be a genius.

“As for your second question, weird. It was weird. Especially once I returned above ground. The landscape had pretty much remained the same. The architecture hadn’t changed much.

“But everything was different.”

“Such as?” she asked.

“Surnames were a thing now,” I answered with playful derision. “Dresses were commonplace. Tunics had disappeared for women, and men’s tunics were just a little shorter. Villages weren’t where they used to be. Towns and cities had changed their layout. Temples, or rather churches, rose above the buildings with their towering spires.

“The language people spoke was all weird. It sounded similar to the one I spoke, but at the same time was completely different. The culture was off, some things remained, many others had changed or been added. Knighthood being one of them.

“And then there was the existence of the adventurers,” I said, as I frowned darkly. “Their very existence is an affront to me. It’s a stain on the post-Vesperan world. No-one, especially not a private citizen, should have to risk or sacrifice their lives to keep the world safe from the dominion of magical animals. A total failure of government. States seemed much more concerned with keeping their elite’s bellies well-fed and their residences the pinnacle of luxury, and less with protecting their inhabitants.”

“Aren’t you, you know, one of them?” Seren dared to ask.

“Yes,” I bit back, before sighing and hanging my head. “Yes, I am. If only for the extreme cases, so people’s lives aren’t thrown away more than they already are.”

As she laughed at my despair, I sighed again and shook my head. “Anyway, let me get back to my recounting.”

“I, uh,” I started, before fully remembering where I had left off and immediately became hesitant, averting my gaze. “I didn’t handle the change too well.” I took a deep breath. “I killed them. The adventurers that had freed me. On the spot.”

I heard Seren gasp, but I ignored it for now, needing to keep going or risk not telling this part of my past. “As soon as I was freed, my rage returned. I thought I was face-to-face with my would-be killers again. It didn’t even register to me what I had done until much later.

“After I stumbled out of the mining tunnel, I found myself in a village. The people were all giving me strange looks, twisted looks they appeared to me. Some tried to talk to me, ask me questions, but I neither understood them nor register them. I was blindly trying to orient myself, because I was clearly nowhere close to my former palace.

“As I entered the village square, a knight in shiny white and golden armour walked up to me, much to the chuckles of the guards she had been speaking with. She offered me a steadying hand, one that I allowed. Her golden blond hair and soft features overlapped with my memories of my brother, when we were young and close.

“She led me to an inn, helped me bathe, got me some new clothes – black ones, to match the ruined, black clothes I was still wearing from before I was imprisoned. She talked to me, despite me not understanding her, asked questions that didn’t register.

“When I set off from the village, she followed along for reason I neither understood nor cared about. We crossed the too-familiar-but-different lands together, each step taking us closer to where my home once was. All the while, the knight kept trying to talk to me. She offered me food that I neither needed nor felt like eating. In the villages, towns and cities that we passed through, she talked to the guards, passers-by, stall vendors and shopkeepers.

“We travelled on foot, as the thought of getting horses had never even crossed my mind. She never complained. Kept a light and upbeat tone, however I always felt like there was a sharpness to it. Like I was being interrogated, judged and accused.

“Sometimes, I found myself suddenly standing over her sleeping body, my hands inches from wrapping around her throat. Sometimes, I unconsciously smiled as something she said made me think of a happy memory, or it sounded humorous to me, even if it might not have been so for her. Sometimes, I would chuckle out of the blue. Sometimes, I would throw a destructive spell at something that wasn’t there.

“When the walls of what used to be Vespera came into view, we made camp in the forest outside of it. Not because we couldn’t have reached the city before nightfall, but because I refused to go on for the day; the view of the city not being what it ought to be, to me.

“For once, I answered her question, having unconsciously been learning her language all this time. She sure talked enough for me to learn just about every word. Anyway, when she asked me where we were going – a question I only then realised she had asked me many, many times before – I answered her for the first time. I smiled – thinking it was a warm one, but the fact she automatically reached for her sword and flinched proved otherwise – and told her I was going to a family reunion. I was going to make my brother pay for what he had done, even if it was the last thing I did.

“I didn’t say the last part out loud, though. In fact, I doubt my words were all that coherent. It did calm her down, though, and she cheerfully started talking again. This time about her family, but I quickly drowned her out. After all, my family was there telling me about all the things they wished to be doing, what they hoped I would do the next day.”

“Oh no…” Seren uttered, and when I glanced her way, I saw a horrified look on her face. The traitor Fluminix had moved over to her and was resting her head on Seren’s head now, receiving gentle strokes along the scales on her head from the freckled redhead.

“When we approached the gate the following morning, the guards gave me suspicious looks, as had happened each time we entered some town or city. Dressed in black and the hood of my dark cloak being drawn over my eyes, will do that, I suppose,” I commented dryly in-between sentences. “Anyway, she exchanged some quick words with them, and we passed through without a hitch or inspection.

“Down the main street we went, straight to the cathedral that was built in the middle of the city, along the shore opposite the former Imperial Palace. The towering monstrosity felt like it was staring me down, challenging me. A challenge I was more than willing to take on.

“Over the course of our journey together, I had come to learn that I was buried underneath that mountain for a lot longer than I thought. And even longer than being talked to by the knight led me to believe.”

“How long were you in there?” Seren asked, interrupting me.

“Five hundred and twenty-six years,” I answered more or less automatically. “Learning that it had been much longer than a lifetime, I knew I wouldn’t be able to find my lovely brother inside a palace or another. So, I went to another thing the knight had told me about in her endless barrage of words: the crypt underneath the cathedral.

“When we reached the building, I threw open the doors with the help of some targeted application of magic, blowing them off their hinges and clattering down on the marble floor several paces away from where they used to hang. As I marched down the aisle, the knight turned to the frightened clerics and said something to them that I couldn’t hear. My attention was focused on a specific spot behind the dais.

“When I reached it, I made use of another targeted application of magic and blew the heavy, stone slab that covered the entrance to the crypt asunder and scattering across the floor near it. As I started my descent down, the knight hurried to catch up. After making our way through twisting passages, we reached my destination.

“A stone sarcophagus stood in an alcove hewn out of the rock walls of the crypt, behind it stood a statue of the man occupying the coffin. He looked older than I last saw him, and his features were off, but I still recognised him.

“As I placed my hand on the stony surface of the lid, the knight said something. It sounded comforting, I think? I didn’t really listen, as I instead uttered a small chant in my native tongue. Upon which the man’s remains in the sarcophagus were reanimated and I magically shifted the lid aside so the reanimated remains of my brother could rise.

“Naturally, the knight was shocked, and drew her sword, her hands trembling. Still, she had the courage to ask me why I had come here. As I lowered the hood of my cloak, I grinned back at her, as I told her the same thing I had told her the day before, that I was here for a family reunion.”

“So, you really did do those things,” Seren accused me, in reference to the scriptures-based accusations she levied against me in our fight at the started of the summer. Accusations I refrained from answering at the time.

“I did,” I admitted. “Hence why I didn’t refute them. You weren’t wrong. Just not quite right either.

“I did reanimate my brother, your so-called Great Hero, as well as everyone else whose remains were laid to rest in that crypt. And honestly, if I were to go back, I would do it all over again. He didn’t deserve the legacy he received, just as I didn’t deserve mine.”

She frowned, clearly not amused with my outburst, but at the moment I couldn’t give a rat’s ass.

“When I reanimated and freed the rest of those down there, the knight was truly shaken,” I continued. “As I marched back upstairs, to the central hall of the church – or whatever that is called – with my warband of reanimated royal remains in tow, she followed close behind me, trying to reason with me the whole way. Trying to dissuade me from doing what I was about to do.

“In all honesty, the desperation in her voice stirred a thrill in me, a feeling that this was what all those that had wronged me ought to feel: powerless and at my mercy.

“At the top of the stairs, a gathering of guards and knights awaited me, and I couldn’t help but grin viciously at the sight. The crypt wasn’t the only place where the dead had been laid to rest around the cathedral. Outside was a cemetery. A cemetery whose inhabitants I reanimated and helped free from their buried prisons.

“As the reanimated remains burst through the windows into the cathedral, I ordered my lovely brother to attack along with his descendants. Flavius was smiling the entire time, laughing as he helped make short work of those wearing the colour of the kingdom he had mistakenly founded.

“Or so it seemed to me, at the time,” I added, after catching sight of another worried look on Seren’s face.

“When the guards and knight were taken care of, and reanimated as well, I set off for my former home. Along the way to the palace, the streets stood empty whilst bells rang loudly across the city. The palace, which still looked so much like it used to, was protected by its own wall, but it proved no obstacle to me.

“Inside the palace itself, the king, his family and his entire court were huddled together in the throne room like scared vermin caught in a trap. As I walked through the room towards the dais where the royal family stood together, the members of the court were quick to step aside.

“I tried to tell them the truth. I confronted their own founding myth. Exposed my brother’s lies just as I now have done for you. Albeit with a lot less tact and hindsight.

“They wouldn’t listen.

“The king vehemently denied the accusations and accused me of lying. When I moved to strike the despicable man, with his infuriating golden blond hair, his son stepped between us, wearing a young man’s bravado. So, I had Flavius kill him on the spot and without remorse. An act that my brother seemed to approve of, by the look I saw on his face.

“The action inflamed the king, and he made a desperate attempt to try and kill me. I lost my patience. I couldn’t deal with these people anymore. If they didn’t listen, they might just as well die.”

I hazarded a glance up at Seren again. She looked enraptured, if slightly horrified. When she caught me looking, though, her look swiftly morphed into a disapproving and judgy frown.

“When the dust settled after a very short skirmish, only my undead, I and the knight were left alive,” I continued, as I ignored the fact that her expression turned even more disapproving. “Over the next few days, I searched the palace grounds whilst also making myself at home in the palace. I turned the white banners black, the gaudy furniture and paintings were thrown out and burned, the remodelling done over the centuries was coming undone.

“All of it for the sake of reclaiming what was mine.

“During those days, I didn’t see the knight. Though, I knew she was around somewhere.

“It wasn’t until I found what I was looking for, that she made an appearance again. This time with her sword drawn and righteous fury in her eyes. The same righteous fury that I had seen in my brother’s eyes all those centuries ago. But also not the same. In her eyes I saw something I recognised and respected. She didn’t want to do it, but she knew she needed to out of duty.

“Unfortunately for her, she arrived just a little too late, as before she could strike at me, I finished casting a spell that had the wall explode apart, revealing a pathway down. I stepped inside the cavernous descent and followed it down into the belly of the hill. The knight hesitantly followed after her,” I said, before pausing to take a regretful breath. “I wish she hadn’t. I wish she had struck me down before I went down there. Before I saw what I didn’t want to see.”

“Why?” Seren asked critically. “What was down there? I’m assuming it was where the dragons of the Imperial Family were housed. So, what could have been there centuries after the empire had fallen?”

“What makes you think we housed our dragon down there?” I asked with a sardonic smile.

She rolled her eyes, but still, she smiled as well. “You’re talking to a dragon nerd, remember?”

“Oh, I remember,” I said, as a true smile threatened to tug at my lips. “I promise you, there isn’t a thing about you I have forgotten.”

Whilst she did her best not to blush, I drew back into myself. Something Fluminix picked up on, as she hopped off Seren’s lap and curled herself up around me.

“When we reached the bottom of the pathway and entered the main cavern, I caught a sight that had my non-existent blood boiling,” I started, my eyes low and distant, and my hand absentmindedly running over the infant dragon’s scales. “Down there, in the sealed off cavern, were the remains of a dragon.”

“Fluminix,” Seren realised immediately, causing the one curled up around me to raise her head in question. “The Elder.”

I nodded, though my gaze stayed down and dark, and Fluminix the Younger lowered her head again. “Her skeleton was all that remained of her. Inside a sealed off cavern. It was odd. Wrong. Impossible. My bonded-sister should have been able to free herself from such a prison without a doubt.

“However, she could not have. Around what used to be her ankles, rusted shackles lay.

“I lost it.

“I lost it as soon as I saw that. A fury like none other surfaced and I turned all of that fury to the person closest to me. The knight.

“The knight – whom I later realised was a princess of the very kingdom I set out to destroy – looked at me with shock, before her eyes found the remains and they filled with sympathy. With kindness,” I confessed with remorse. “Because I had already done the unforgivable.”

“What did you do?” Seren demanded with her brows drawn together inquisitively.

“How familiar are you with the term Morganan-type of curse?” I asked in an attempt to delay the inevitable. My gaze anywhere that she wasn’t. I just couldn’t look at her. Not for this. Not for something that I have killed people for doing. I was a hypocrite, plain and simple. And she would finally come to understand that, now with all of my past out in the open.

Just as I was beginning to regret ever opening up to her, she answered with a sly smile, “You know very well magical theory isn’t my forte. But I’m surprised to hear that you named a curse after yourself.”

“With good reason,” I confessed with a wince. “What I did to that woman was… Well, I twisted her soul. That’s the–”

“You WHAT?!” she burst out, rising furiously from her seat. “You claim that you are the victim in some conspiracy against you, get me to feel sorry for you, and now you tell me you twisted someone’s soul?! I…”

As she bit her tongue, figuratively, to stop herself from saying the many, many things she clearly wanted to say, I felt my own anger rise and scowled at her. “I wouldn’t have even been in that position, if not for Flavius’ actions! If he and his friends hadn’t spread lies about me, put me in solitary confinement for five fucking centuries, I wouldn’t have been too torn and broken to even take such a despicable action. He didn’t have to rewrite history to his favour, casting me as evil incarnate, for crying out loud! Do you honestly, honestly believe I would ever do something like twisting a person’s soul if I was in the right state of mind?!”

She scrunched up her face as thoughtfulness and disgust warred with each other. I panted out of fury, indignation and residual exhaustion, as I waited for her to make up her damn mind. Either she believed in me, or she didn’t. If she didn’t, well, she knew where the door was.

Slowly, agonisingly slowly, she sat back down, where she grasped her head in her hands. “…I don’t know what to believe anymore…”

I felt my anger subside as sympathy and my feelings for her took over. However, I didn’t say anything. This was something she had to go through on her own.

After minutes of tense silence, she slowly raised her head and looked at me, the war not over, but subsided. “I… believe you. I want to believe the church’s teachings, but… I know what you’ve told me up until now is the truth. I know you’ve kept your word on that. I just… It’s hard.”

I nodded, understanding the difficulty of the position she was in. “Shall I continue?”

She gave me a pained smile that also seemed to convey how much she still cared about me. “Please.”

I nodded again, before continuing, “A morganan curse twists the soul, forcing open and together the tendrils that tie the soul to the body. It lets mana pour out of the body uncontrollably. However, this isn’t just mana, but also the intent the caster put into it. In my case, I wanted to destroy all. Living, dead, buildings, history, all of it. I wanted it gone and to neither be able to exist.”

“Oh Goddess…” she groaned miserably, burying her head in her hands again. “It’s worse than I thought…”

“Yeah…” I said with a winch. “Not my proudest moment…

“When I came to my senses, the knight was writhing at my feet, silently screaming in pain.”

“There’s just no end to this, is there?” she asked desperately, peeking at me through her fingers.

I winced again, as I continued again, “Not really, but it is for now.”

She sighed in relief, before my words registered and she looked rather pale and apprehensive all of a sudden. “…for now?”

I nodded, doing my best to give her a reassuring smile when I really just wanted to winch again. “Yes. However, to continue with this part of my past, when I came to my senses again, I was shocked at what I had done. I staggered backwards from the agony I had put the knight that was so willing to offer her help to everyone, including someone like me.

“I took a piece of Fluminix the Elder’s skeleton, and ran out of the palace. All my thoughts of reclaiming Vespera and its old borders, forgotten.”

“Truly?” Seren asked dubiously.

I nodded and pointed at the skeleton in a bottle on top of the fireplace’s mantle. “That’s said piece of her, right there.”

“No, I meant, you just gave up on your vengeance just like that?” she clarified with biting annoyance, before her head swivelled towards the fireplace. “Really?! That’s a part of your bonded-sister’s remains?”

I chuckled and nodded. “Yes to both. I re-formed her skeleton, albeit much smaller, when I settled down here, and put it in a bottle for preservation.

“As for getting my vengeance, seeing that kind-hearted knight like that? If that’s what seeking vengeance turned me into? Then I wanted no part of her. I didn’t like what it did to me, at all.”

Her gaze remained fixed on my curious mantlepiece. “Huh…”

I pointed down towards the statue at the centre of the main courtyard. “In case you’re wondering, down there is the knight. Immortalised as she was: a knight willing to extend a helping hand to all who cross her path.”

She turned to face me once again, a considering look on her face. “You’ve put a lot of thought into all of it.”

“What? This recounting of my past?” I asked in confusion.

She shook her head. “No, I mean, the school. What is and isn’t remembered around here.”

I snorted self-deprecatingly. “Hard not to, when it’s always on my mind.”

“Besides, she deserves to be remembered as who she was, not what I turned her into,” I said, as my gaze drifted towards where I knew, by heart, the statue to be with a remorseful look on my face.

“What did happen to her afterwards?” she asked carefully, yet pointedly.

“She became the centre of the curse that wiped all life, present and past, off the face of the Umbrean peninsula,” I said regretfully.