I arrived over the battlefield as the last embers of light disappeared beneath the horizon. Ludis was nowhere to be seen, thankfully, which boded well for the town. If I had forced him into a temporary retreat with my spell, that would have spared the town a lot of grief.

I could see people still evacuating, while others were helping those who had been trapped beneath rubble — the Archmage's artillery-like strikes had collapsed much of the architecture; it would take a long time for Ravenrock to return to its previous luster.

There was still some fighting going on below, though mercifully, my Legion still held strong. Unbothered by fatigue or what would otherwise be deadly wounds, they were an effective force against the followers of Yain.

The followers had figured out a way to use their wards to kill the wights with less effort, from what I could see, though they still needed to inflict some deep wounds to activate the method. It had kept them from being completely overrun, but the fighting was not going in their favor.

Spotting a large group of crusaders, about to bust down a barricade raised by some grizzled adventurers, I directed the drake to land just behind them. They heard the thundering flutter of the drake's leathery wings, and to their credit, they turned around to face the new threat instantly, but there was little that they could do once the drake's maw unleashed a torrent of fire in their direction.

I grimaced when I saw the outcome — they'd been burned so thoroughly I wouldn't be able to make full use of their corpses. With a thought, I instructed the drake to control its output more carefully; I needed the muscular system mostly intact if I wanted effective troops.

It startled me to feel it reply in the affirmative through our connection. The wights did not have enough free will to acknowledge orders on their own, and I felt a small bit of guilt for enslaving the creature, despite it being only an animal.

The old adventurers hailed me from behind their barricade, waving a word of thanks, and I nodded as I instructed the drake to take flight again.

I surveyed the rest of the battlefield from the sky. There were many isolated pockets of fighting, and wherever I could, I would land and wreak havoc on the crusaders in a flurry of fire and claws. At one point I needed to chastise the drake, making it clear that eating crusaders whole was expressly forbidden.

Every so often I would cast Mind Vision (the unempowered kind, as I was now close enough that the original could pinpoint my nemesis's position) to ensure Ludis would not drop an ambush on me — but it seemed that he had not moved from wherever he had settled, somewhere west of town. Trying to free himself from my spell, perhaps?

Eventually, I was able to spot Sarah as she trampled through a party of crusaders, her bear's charge unstoppable even with magical aid. I landed next to her as she finished off one priest of Yain with her sword, my drake impaling a paladin upon its claw as it landed.

"You have a dragon? How's that fair?" she exclaimed once the fighting was settled, crossing her arms atop the gargantuan bear.

"A drake," I corrected. "And if you want one, you can learn magic and raise it yourself."

She opened her mouth to retort, then raised a finger and spoke, "Actually, whatever." She waved away her raised hand. "I have Winnie, here, and we're perfectly happy together."

"How are you handling the fighting?" I asked, changing the subject to something more productive.

Sarah shrugged. "I'm just running around, looking for things to fight. It's mostly calmed down, though."

"I took care of a few groups on my way here," I said, nodding. "Where's Shiro?"

"Doing the same thing somewhere else," she replied with a shrug. "I was faster on my own, with Winnie, so he took the squad and went the opposite direction."

"Then, keep up the good job clearing out the invaders. I'll deal with Ludis."

She blinked. "He's not dead?"

"He was protected," I said, shaking my head. "But I'll get him this time." My voice was tinged with resolve.

I took to the skies again, leaving Sarah to the grisly business of chopping up invaders, and headed west. As I flew, I passed by the spot where Ludis and I had clashed — he'd made an obvious mark on it. I hadn't noticed it then, on account of dying, but he'd scorched a good chunk of the area at that time — if it was while he burned me, or if he'd lost control of the spell from the pain afterward, I didn't know, but the destruction he'd caused would leave a great scar on Ravenrock.

I was soon past the blackened western gate, following Ludis's trail not far into the forest. I stopped a good distance away from where he sat in a meditative position. He hadn't been able to purge the spike, it seemed, but from here I could see he was getting close.

"If you care about the people, you will end yourself, abomination," Ludis spoke softly, his voice projected by magic through the empty clearing.

I frowned. "And to think I looked up to you..." I murmured, not bothering to amplify my voice as he had; by the startled look on his face, however, he must have picked it up. "The time for talking is over," I declared forcefully this time.

He began to talk, but I didn't allow him the opportunity. I unleashed the spell I had prepared, the Spike willing and eager to follow the trail left by the first, and Ludis's expression turned to pure shock as I attacked him from well beyond my normal range.

He could only wheeze before the Spike bore into his unprotected mind, where I felt it detonate, severing his mind from his soul and body. An instantaneous death, as it were.

I approached the body, a frown blooming on the face. The whole thing felt so... anti-climatic. The power brought by Origin mana was truly an unfair advantage.

Was this why I had been made a Villain? Were the gods afraid of us acquiring this power for ourselves? It would have made sense if not for the fact that I had only stumbled upon it long after my damnation. Or... was it not stumbling? Had I been led to it?

Cursing the Fox for his plots and conspiracies, I shelved the issue for later. My conundrum now was the potentially very useful body before me.

I could do the same thing to Ludis as I had done to the drake. It would be a massive expenditure of mana to keep him alive, but he was an Archmage himself — though his aptitude in Soul was only middling, I thought it possible to teach him to supply his own mana in time.

But he would be a slave, and unlike the drake, he was an intelligent being (despite all evidence to the contrary). Reviving him only to enslave him... the idea left a bitter taste on my tongue.

In the end, I loaded his body on top of the drake, casting a number of spells to preserve his mind, body, and soul intact. I had no reason to challenge my morals, not now — but it was better to be prepared. A contingency, just in case, I told myself, and I almost believed it.

Cleaning up the rest of the followers lasted well into the night, but as the first rays of light broke past the horizon, the town was finally quiet. I walked along the streets, raising each follower of Yain that I could see, as well as whichever wights I could still salvage. There were townfolk strewn about, too, but raising them would have felt like... desecration. Instead, I had my newly raised wights carry them along; it would help the survivors find their deceased kin if I could gather all the fallen in one place.

It was an odd funeral procession of sorts, with me at the front, followed by a sea of tattered, flowing robes and marred armor, most of whom were cradling a body in their arms — and despite it all, it was eerily quiet. We passed by scattered groups of defenders, some grieving, others quietly cheerful to have survived the day.

I had to do a double-take after raising a small group of crusaders. They'd been not far from where Ludis and I had fought initially — close enough to be razed by the Archmage's uncontrolled fire. They were far from the only victims of friendly fire, but from this group, one of them did not wear the usual garb of the followers of Yain, instead wearing some nondescript leathers you'd generally see on a rogue.

By noon, the staggering amount of dead I had gone through threatened to overwhelm me. I had raised several hundred of the crusaders, but more than two thousand still remained. I had to resort to carting them along, unable to keep up the numbers.

Sarah and Shiro found me sometime in the afternoon, their faces somber as they eyed the convoy following behind me.

"How did you find me?" I asked, more to break the silence than anything else.

"You're kidding, right?" Sarah replied. "You're not exactly hard to find with all the..." she gestured at the newly raised wights. "Wait, is that Peters? Fuck."

She ran off towards one of the crusader-wights in the front who was holding onto a younger boy with red hair. Stopping before the wight, Sarah pulled the boy out of the wight's arm, then cradled him as she dropped to her knees."

Shiro sucked in a breath as the scene played out before us, then moved behind Sarah, placing his hand on her shoulder.

"He was one of Leon's kids," she said, voice filled with sorrow, "one of the ones he adopted. He must have been playing outside the compound when this started..."

I wished I could burst into rage at that moment, but all I could feel in that moment was a profound sense of shame. How little attention had I paid to my friend that I hadn't even known he had children? And all the while, he helped me with my own, asking nothing in return. Sarah had only known him for little more than a month, and already knew my best friend better than I ever did.

I had been content to sit in my tower while the world moved on, and all it had earned me was a mountain of corpses.

"I'll take him to Leon," she said simply, waking me from my self-loathing.

"Should I—" Shiro began, but Sarah interrupted him with a curt "No."

She set off at a brisk pace, holding onto the boy as if he would break if she dropped him. Shiro stood unmoving, his hand still in the same position as when he had been holding her shoulder.

"Why did all this happen?" Shiro asked, and for once, I was at a complete loss.

I wanted to scream about nobles and conspiracies. Throw the blame at the feet of the gods and their incessant games. Rage against the cruel hand of fate. But the only thing I could think of was the weight of all these events on my shoulders. I was the common factor here — had Ludis been right to want me to kill myself? Would that have brought less suffering?

But I couldn't tell Shiro all that, and the shame threatened to overwhelm me.

"I don't know," I finally replied, my voice shaking. "But I'm going to make it stop."

Shiro turned around, looking at me with bewilderment.

"They're not going to stop coming. They will poke and prod and they'll get people to come, and if they can't hurt me, they'll just hurt whatever I care for—" I was rambling, at this point, and it hurt to see Shiro's face turn sympathetic. I didn't want sympathy. I wanted it all to stop.

"So I'll take the fight to them. They can't attack me if they're too busy managing their own defenses."

"Uh, I'm not sure that's a good—" Shiro tried, but I continued over him.

"I don't care if it's a good idea or not. I'm done. I am done." I breathed in deeply, taking in the smell of blood and ashes and smoke and rust. "I am done playing by their rules. They wanted a Dark Lord, well," I clenched my fists, enjoying the pain as my nails dug into my palms.

"They're going to get their fucking Dark Lord."