I sat on my stone chair in the first-floor greeting hall watching the merchant spy Honest Broom depart. He had just returned from his trip north and urgently requested an audience to tell me his findings. The shady brown-haired man was still annoying to deal with, but he must have passed through Gold Castle and reported to his mistress before coming here. This meant that anything he told me was by her direction, and I appreciated that this time I hadn’t been inundated with trivial gossip. Sena had ceded Freetoni to Mirktal in a peace treaty. The war was over.

I tapped a finger on the table as I considered many different matters. Matters that had little to do with the war, but would distract me from the thing that tempted me. A week had passed quickly since I left Pyl in the cold cellar beneath the lake. While I understood his interest in the project and looked forward to seeing the results, I felt the need to put as much distance between it and myself as possible. I would check in with him in a week or two to see how his transition went.

The two witches and the seer had been buried nearby, more because I hadn’t designated any specific land to be the cemetery, and preferred that any death mana generated by their corpses be contained to that part of the plateau. The only attendees to the burial were the few living residents that remained from Loralie’s tower and my two assistants.

Those assistants were no longer present. I had given them several enchanted items and tasked them with flying north and then heading east to raise plateaus in Furing to save the people living there. I modified two of the dungeon-core artifacts so that they could only be used for raising land and gifted them both bracelets enchanted with wind elementals so that they could fly there. I also cautioned them to spend little time apart given the way that country was organized. The last thing I wanted to do was be forced to go there myself to pull an assistant out of one of their arenas.

I shook my head, still coming to grips with the fact that the war was over. I hadn’t slept well since returning and found that lack affected my thoughts more than it should. I would flow from project to project and task to task with little attention for the other things that warranted my attention.

I glanced back at the two statues behind me.

Yesterday, I unpetrified my assistant Orwell to determine if he was aware of the things going on around him. I discovered and noted that he was pitifully aware of everything, and helpless to the boredom of his own thoughts. It was a great disappointment to me, as that meant I wouldn’t be able to use a mass petrification to save people from the Pestilence.

He was, however, a lot more forthcoming about himself. Orwell confirmed his status as a spy for the King of Sena and told me all about Rhaela the Red and the assassin who killed Loralie in a desperate attempt to save himself from being petrified again. That was, however, a futile attempt. I gave him a small drop of the age-reversing potion, to confirm how it affected the time he was petrified and was pleased to see that he forgot the whole time as he reversed. It made it easy to turn him back into a statue, though I did place him under a sleep spell before petrifying the man again.

Of course, I already knew that Rhaela the Red was a spy. The day I had stepped forth from the frozen beast crypt, the woman had thrown herself at my feet with screams and tears. She’d begged for mercy, claiming that she was first asked to spy with the promise of removing the bounty on her head—a bounty I was unaware of—and then later coerced into moving more spies into my tower under the threat of exposure. Kine had stood nearby looking displeased and disgusted with the whole matter, and I had locked her into the cell outside my laboratory until I decided what I wanted to do with her.

All these small matters added up to little, though, in face of the End of the Age. Those hydras squirming forth from the hole I unintentionally created worried me. I’d checked on it every night, and didn’t see an end in sight. It was a constant cycle of emerging, eating their dead, impaling themselves, and then dying, only for the next wave to do the same.

I stood and began walking towards Loralie’s tower, something I’d done every day since my return. The guards bowed silently as I passed. The elementals in my moat were still and silent. The only sounds I heard were the wind as it whispered around my tower, and the trickle of water as the moat moved. I had already shifted the entrances to the other towers to be inside the circle. A walkway connected them all to my front door so that anyone who entered or left needed to do so from the guarded front gate.

The sisters of Elora objected to this, of course. Yet a quick reminder that it could be them murdered next, sent them whispering to each other. The dwarves had no issues, though they were strangely silent this week as well. I did see Ram’s wife peek her head out the window once or twice, but couldn’t make sense of her expression. Seeing her, as selfish as it sounds, reminded me of Loralie.

I found that I missed her greatly, despite not knowing her well. I’d hoped to one day have the partnership between Loralie and me that Ram did with his wife. The green magic spell that would allow us to have children was now a bitter thought instead of a hopeful one. There were moments I even felt full of guilt and self-recrimination. Maybe I didn’t even miss her. Perhaps it was the idea of her I missed. The hope of having a true partner died when she did, and I found myself returning to her room even if it was akin to torturing myself.

At least the war was over now, and I could put more focus on the Pestilence. Yet, I found myself angry. Angry at the King. He’d sent spies and assassins, threats, and more. By the time I made it to Loralie’s room, I no longer held the numb state of mind I’d walked through the previous week with. I’d shoved as much emotion concerning her parting as I could into barrels in the back of my mind, but there seemed to always be more pain and anger.

Today, when I walked into her room, I didn’t read through her grimoire or the hidden journal she had kept. I didn’t parse through the different magical items on her shelf. I went straight to the artifact she had crafted. Previously I had seen it and been tempted. With my level of magic, justice or vengeance was always at my fingertips. There was something coldly satisfying, though, with the idea of using the thing she created in achieving it.

That temptation had only grown with each visit, but I had been able to stay my hand each time with the consideration that the many innocent citizens of Sena needed the king in power to stave off the threat of Mirktal. That, even if he was belligerently targeting me for no reason I could fathom—the idea I allied with the Seafolk was laughable at best—he still served a valuable purpose. That his insults and attempts hadn’t harmed me directly, at least not until the most recent one.

Yet, now I held the triangular artifact in my hand, a meticulously crafted weapon that would curse anyone I directed it to with a powerful spell called [Unending Agony], I found that I no longer had a reason to stay my hand. The war was over. The two kingdoms were at peace. Would I regret using this magic? Was I acting out of emotion when I should think it through? I had pondered it all week, without a firm decision. What would happen to the country if I used this? Would I make things worse or better?

Yet, I had done so much for humanity already. I hadn’t asked for much in return. This vengeance was something personal that I wanted. Not a good thing, I knew. I also knew that if the king was willing to target me, there had to be so many others that already fell to his devices. New leadership might be exactly what the country needed. Yet, who was I to make that decision? No.

This was not about the Kingdom of Sena. It was about me and the king. About righting a wrong.

The war was over. The curse was cast.