When I regained consciousness, my first point of order was to check if I was still attached to my body. I didn’t need more than a split second to confirm that I was — the searing pain I felt throughout my body was evidence enough.

I opened my eyes only to close them again right away — the searing pre-noon light only intensified the pain. At least I wasn’t buried, I mused. That fucker really blew up his tower. What kind of person does that?

I decided that thinking about Thaos was an exercise in futility, so instead I moved on to more pressing issues, such as getting myself out of this mess. I tried moving, bit by bit. I could wiggle my fingers, and my toes, and I could fully lift my right arm and partially my left. 

I was buried from the waist down, it seemed. Not the worst-case scenario by half.

For a moment I tried weaving Force, hoping to lift the rubble off me, but the splitting headache I felt the moment I grasped for mana made me quickly change my mind. The wards I had prepared before the encounter were amazingly good at protecting you when you were knocked unconscious, but the backlash from having them activate at the same time was something else.

Gingerly, I tried to feel along my usual outgoing Soul threads. I breathed a sigh of relief when I found them still in place — I would not be able to cast anything for some hours, but at least having control of the Dead Legion would give me some leverage.

I just waited there for what felt like an eternity but was likely closer to ten minutes, while the pain slowly abated, when I finally heard a voice call out.

“Ugh… Boss, you there?” Sarah’s voice sounded about as well as I felt.

“I’m here,” I shouted, triggering another wave of pain. I would need to tweak the pain receptors in this body soon enough.

I heard the sound of rubble being pushed around, and I finally opened my eyes again when I felt her shadow looming over me.

“You’re a sight for sore eyes,” I said, happy that the cursed sun no longer shined straight in my eyes.

“You look like someone put you in a washing machine along with a rock and then turned it on,” Sarah declared with a wry smile.

“I’ll have to trust your expert wisdom on that. Can you help me out of here, please?”

She grunted in lieu of an answer and moved to lift the rock that was pinning my left arm down. With both my arms freed and a bit of help, I was finally able to climb out of my rocky prison after an embarrassing few minutes.

“What kind of madman just blows up a tower with them inside it?” Sarah asked once we were clear of the rubble field.

“He teleported right before he blew it up. And he seemed certain we’d survive.”

“Then why blow it up at all? Just for shits and giggles?”

I shrugged, not understanding Thaos’s reasoning any more than her.

“What was that he said at the end? ‘Compliments of the Fox?’” she inquired.

I blinked, finally remembering that detail. I hadn’t had a chance to think about it with the explosion happening. “I’m not certain what he meant, but I suspect it’s related to the god he follows. I’m not familiar with most of the pantheon, but there has to be one who uses a fox as a symbol.”

“So his evil plan was to… hand you over the duchy? That doesn’t make much sense, not gonna lie.”

I sighed. “He’s a servant of a god, and who can claim to understand their games?”

As we walked along the palace wall — we could not re-enter through the remains of the tower — I made a mental call to some of my wights, ordering them to rendezvous on my location. If Thaos had been right about one thing, it was that his plan was on track — at this point I had little choice but to take Ardenburg. Part of it was because of the extremes he had gone to see it happen — if I balked now, I wouldn’t be surprised to see him or his god torch Ravenrock just to force my hand — they seemed adamant for it to happen. But the other part of it was… I kind of wanted to. I could have hidden for half a day, and then ran, with the wights covering for me, or I could have just laid low and snuck out. But I was an Archmage, and I would be lying if I said I didn’t hold a certain level of pride in myself. And running away with my tail between my legs would be a major blow to my pride.

There was also the part where I plainly felt that Duke Illvere had been a complete moron and that the people deserved someone better — and I definitely thought I was better, though that was a low bar to clear. Leonine had been a decent enough choice, which was probably why Thaos had felt compelled to remove her from the equation.

I sighed. All that remained was to put on the evil Dark Lord mask and cow the remaining leadership into submission.

With Kirin and a handful of military officers standing in front of me, all of them radiating the feeling of barely concealed fear, I finally understood why the Adept had blown up the tower — it hadn’t been to attack me or Sarah. It hadn’t even been a glorious (apparent) suicide.

It was kind of obvious in hindsight, given how he’d framed me for killing the duke. With the guardsmen’s testimony of having ambushed me as I was approaching the tower, Thaos has successfully framed me of killing him and blowing up the tower in the process.

He had played me so completely, even though he did seem, in a very odd way, to be trying to help me. I shuddered to think what the man could have done had he been trying to have me killed.

 He would likely have succeeded. I have grown too complacent.

The remaining leadership in Ardenburg easily accepted my claim as ruler, although there would be nobles in other cities that would need to be brought in line. Unlike Ravenrock, which was small enough that the Barony shared the name with its only town, Canneria was home to a number of towns, some bigger than Ravenrock, in addition to the capital of Ardenburg.

I would likely have an insurrection on my hands within the week. Bother.

And now I had living troops in addition to my undead regulars, I mused. Another problem to throw on the increasingly enormous pile of things I had to deal with. No rest for the wicked — that saying rang truer than ever.

I tasked Kirin with the matter of administering the city, since he seemed to have no small amount of experience in the matter. He accepted gracefully, and if he held a grudge towards me for all the… recent events, he did not let it show. It was, perhaps, naïve of me, but I liked the man and still held the hope that he could be made into an ally, if not a friend — I had no love of politicking, and having someone to deal with those affairs for me that I could actually trust would be invaluable.

Varath had disappeared entirely. It seemed that his mind could not handle all the deaths and betrayals the past day had brought. I felt bad for the old man, but I didn’t have spare time to search for him.

Dismissing Kirin, I turned my attention to the officers who remained at attention before me. They kept shooting nervous glances towards the small contingent of wights at my sides — it did make for a pretty intimidating scene, I had to admit.

“I want you to muster all the troops who are willing to bend the knee given the… change in leadership, and have them hunt down and arrest the dissenters. I want the dissenters alive, preferably.” I stressed the importance of not wantonly killing those who didn’t fall in line. I didn’t want more blood on my hands, and given a bit of time and a touch of Mind, I was certain I could get them to see the benefits of siding with me. “After that’s done, keep the men at a ready for the time being. It’s likely we’ll be facing attacks in the upcoming days.”

“Yes, sir!” they saluted. At least they probably wouldn’t give me more problems.

I nodded in return, and they left, sensing the implicit dismissal.

Shaking my head, I sighed as I moved a few paces to sit down in the shade of a great maple tree, on one of the benches that dotted the palace’s inner garden. I was not a fan of what the next few days would have in store for me. I couldn’t even return to my own tower for some time — I needed to stabilize my control over Canneria first, and I couldn’t do that from afar. How long would it be until I could get back to my studies and research? My mind already itched to cast something, but I had yet to recover from the backlash.

I closed my eyes for a moment, enjoying the morning breeze, when all of a sudden a shadow dropped down from the overhanging tree, right on top of me. It took a second for me to realize I had been stabbed through the chest — had it been my old body, my heart would have been completely skewered — and I looked up into the eyes of my attacker to see a mixture of rage and grief.

The last time I had seen Vinara was not even half a day ago, but much had changed in the meantime. I realized with a start that she had actually held some affection for the old bastard.

Questionable taste in men aside, she stared me down with raw hatred and then jumped backward just in time to dodge the greatsword just before it sliced her head off. My wights had needed a moment to realize we were under attack, but their response afterward was prompt and deadly. Still, Vinara was anything but a slouch, quickly turning to a defensive stance and dodging and parrying away the wights’ attacks.

My simple undead minions were many things, but smart was not one of them. Vinara deftly extricated herself from the melee, and turning one final venom-filled glance my way, sprinted away, scaling a wall with a grace that would leave a squirrel shocked, and disappeared from view entirely.

I removed the dagger from my chest, noting the sticky substance coating the blade — some kind of poison, no doubt — and broke into a throaty chuckle that soon devolved into a full-blown laughing fit.

I must have looked absolutely crazy to any onlooker, but I found myself unable to care at all. I laughed at the absurdity of it all — how assassination attempts were my new normal, death and betrayal kept hounding me at every step, and I was being pushed against my will to fill the role of a tyrant. It felt like a bad joke, and I was afraid of what the punchline had in store for me.

Caught up in my own self-pity, I failed to hear the footsteps approaching from the palace.

“Uh, Boss? Are you alright?” I heard Sarah’s concerned voice as her armored boots crunched through the gravel.

“No, I’m not. But there’s nothing to do about it now,” I deflected, somewhat embarrassed to have been discovered in my moment of weakness. “Did you need anything?”

“I was sweeping the palace like you asked, and, well, I thought it’d be best if I started from below and worked my way up.” She twiddled her thumbs nervously, and I motioned for her to continue.

“Well, I found a fully equipped dungeon beneath the palace — and a torture room, gods that was disgusting — and anyway, I found a prisoner. Alive.”

I raised an eyebrow. Well, well, the duke was sicker than I thought. “I feel like you wouldn’t have come here so soon if there wasn’t anything strange about the prisoner.”

“Right. That’s the thing, I can’t confirm since I didn’t wanna risk talking to him but I haven’t seen anyone who looks Asian since I came here, but he does, and his clothes are basically the same as I used to wear, and well,” she took a deep breath to steady herself.

“I’m pretty sure he’s a Hero.”