Immediately, Hirrus did not like where this was going. Rumi and his apparent priesthood had primed these people to submit to the worshipful service of a violent lunatic. For whatever reason, they had become Rumi’s loyal army despite him being a despicable sadist.

And Hirrus had just eviscerated him - and a few hundred others - with undisguised pleasure.

He didn’t mind those who had fled in fear. If anything, he had expected them all to do so. The kneeling was not just unexpected, it was unwanted. They were, in one voice, declaring him their new Rumi. It made Hirrus feel dirty.

Before he could do something rash in disgust, he saw a figure who did not kneel. It was a young girl. The one with the black eye he had freed from the cart before. Hirrus made eye contact with her, and tried to use the sight of her as a reminder. No matter what they thought of him - or what he thought their apparent submission to him represented - he was here to do the right thing.

In his mind, he feared he was a monster, but in his heart, he knew he wasn’t. As the girl made her way across the field to the cart, to free those who were still imprisoned there, Hirrus pointed out to himself that even at his most destructive, when violence ruled his actions, he didn’t blast the cart to a smoldering ruin for the sake of the innocents within.

The fight was over, though.

Finally, Hirrus could stop.

Rumi was dead, and he - and all the people around him, friend and foe - were safe. He could go home. Or, at least, he could lay down his weapons and stop murdering people.

“I need a way to reach GM Dave,” Hirrus said, more to himself than to anyone in particular. The man seemed to know what was going on whenever he arrived, so Hirrus figured saying it out loud might prompt his appearance. “If this is over, then I want to see Dahlia, and be sure she’s okay. I can watch over her until the reset now.”

“No,” Nidra said, though she gave a weak cough, badly wounded as she was from the fight. “This isn’t over yet.”

Hirrus turned around towards her. Confusion and anger warred in his mind for a moment. On the one hand, with Rumi dead, what threat could remain? On the other, what gave her the right to drive him onward? Had he not destroyed enough? Wasn’t his vengeance complete? He’d sprinted along the edge of the abyss between monster and man for too long. If she thought she could drag him off that cliff for her own purposes, she was going to see how important his humanity was to him. How important it was to return to Julissa as a man still worthy of love.

“I promised to answer your questions,” Nidra continued before he could give voice to his complaints. “Once that’s done, you will understand what’s at stake. You will understand what needs to be done for all our sakes.”

Hirrus grimaced. She was right. They had survived, and so she owed him answers. If he didn’t want to take them, then he should have just attacked and killed Rumi when she made the offer. At the very least, the mountain of corpses beneath them was proof that she couldn’t force him to do anything. If she wanted to use him for her ends, she would have to stir him to action with words, not threats.

“What do you want?” Hirrus asked. “Coming to my aid. Delivering me to Rumi. Demanding my survival. Why? What is this all for?”

Nidra grimaced. “I thought you might ease up to that.”

“You’ve seen how I operate,” Hirrus said. He gestured at the field of dead around them with his axe. “Why would you think I would beat around the bush?”

Nidra looked around at his gesture with a grim nod. The camp had been halfway obliterated. No tent still stood and the only survivors were the few dozen who had been cowed to surrender. And the teenage girl with the black eye, who now moved to the cart to free the others still imprisoned there.

“I was an assassin,” Nidra began at last. “I served King Larisa Bors directly. Bound by honor, duty, and my decision tree to follow his orders without hesitation or question. I have slain more enemies to the crown than any other living being. I was - and still am - the best in the world at what I do.”

This wasn’t the answer to Hirrus’s question, but he elected to take a page out of her book. Context clues indicated that - hopefully - this was going to be important information when she got to the point.

“I remember exactly when it began,” Nidra said, her voice suddenly bitter. “One hundred and sixty-six weeks ago. Every week, the king calls me in. One hundred and sixty-six weeks ago, he was surrounded by faces I did not recognize. This week, they were as familiar to me as His Majesty himself. They give King Bors orders to give me, and I am bound to follow them.”

Hirrus was starting to see where this was going. GM Dave had mentioned this group. He had called them some manner of “Shadow Council” and complained that they were a constant thorn in his side.

“I was sent, with a number of my fellows, to Shemil,” Nidra continued, her eyes glazed over with memory. Hirrus wanted to hurry this along to the point, but she had seemed a secretive, tight-lipped person. It was in poor taste to interrupt a person like that when they were finally opening up. “By chance, we were freed from our decision trees by Rumi. He intended to turn us into his personal weapon, but he was not good enough yet. He only got me. Fire and their servants provided me with power - using monsters to teach Arcana so that they could make me the perfect assassin. But nothing could erase the sound of my friends’ screams in my ears.”

“This only partially answers my question,” Hirrus said at last. “But it’s the answer I already have. Killing Rumi was revenge for their suffering as much as self-defense for our existence. What do you want now? What did you need to survive for?”

“What Rumi was trying to prepare me for was not you,” Nidra explained, her gaze sharpening and focusing on Hirrus. “He didn’t know you were coming when my training began. I submitted to his authority for a while, and for a reason.”

“What?” Hirrus demanded. He grabbed her by the shoulder, his hand moving faster than his mind. “What could possibly make you act as his pawn, after what he’d done? What he continued to do?” He turned, looking at those kneeling around him. They had made a point of staying out of his reach, but a number of them were certainly within earshot.

“Because he wanted what I wanted,” Nidra snapped. “He wanted to use me to do what I wanted to do the second I was no longer bound by my decision tree. He was arming me to go to war with the monsters who enslaved our king!” She shook her head. “He wanted to supplant them. Replace them. Make the Kingdom of Hari his own. I only wanted to see those men who ruined my life and destroyed my honor dead and bleeding.” Her knuckles went white. “I wanted to make them scream for mercy. Beg for the end. And then… I wanted to grant it. With my bare hands. Feel the life run between my fingers. See it leave their eyes…”

“But you can’t,” Hirrus said. He looked her up and down. Even just this army had nearly killed her. She had dozens of wounds and was coated in blood. They both were, but it looked like much of what stained her clothes was her own. “You turned on Rumi too early.”

“There were too many of us,” she said at last. “I wanted to turn around and avenge my comrades once the deed was done. I wanted my king free. I wanted my country back. But eventually Rumi’s army grew too large. I couldn’t have stopped them. I would only have been trading one master for another.”

“So you needed me,” Hirrus said. Again, he gestured at the field of corpses. “For this.”

“Yes,” Nidra confirmed.

“That’s why you wanted us to survive. You want my help.”

“Not just yours,” Nidra said. This time she was the one to gesture, and not at the corpses, but at the living who knelt in submission to Hirrus’s power. “Theirs, too.” Her eyes danced with an excitement that worried Hirrus. “Rumi knew I wouldn’t be enough to overcome the Adventurers’ Shadow Council. Not alone. He needed an army. And now we have one. We could train them. Learn Arcana, gain levels, gather equipment. A dozen of us - not just those like us, but those as powerful as us two - could destroy them. Break their hold. Return the world to what it should be.”

“This seems like exactly what we’re supposed to avoid,” Hirrus said. He turned away and started to stop towards Rumi’s half-destroyed cart. “We came here and killed Rumi to keep our existence quiet, so that we would not be obliterated when our time was up. What you’re describing sounds very, very loud. GM Dave is struggling enough to keep us under wraps. I can’t imagine he would be pleased with us for making his job harder.”

“Who do you think pointed me to you?” Nidra demanded. She kicked at one of the corpses, sending a leg flopping away from the body it belonged to. “Who do you think urged me to curb your suicidal sense of justice and get you through this mess alive? This is what GM Dave wants as well! This plan is his as well as mine.”

“Hm.” Hirrus considered that. He had just recalled GM Dave complaining that he couldn’t stop them. It seemed believable that he might have reached out to do exactly that.

The young girl with the black eye was in the back of the cart, freeing the townsfolk who had been locked up inside. The old woman was one of the first she’d managed to unlock, and Hirrus offered her his hand to get her down off the cart and onto solid ground. She didn’t seem all that shocked or surprised by the sight of the battlefield. Hirrus wondered, briefly, at what sort of life she’d lived. Was she a soldier once? Had she seen death on this scale before? Or was she simply too nearsighted to see enough to be nauseated?

“I am not demanding your aid,” Nidra said at last. She sighed heavily. “I’m just asking you. One monster to another. Please, help me make the world a better place.”

Hirrus flinched at that. He stayed at the back of the cart, helping the townsfolk down off of it one at a time. From the man with the missing chunk of scalp to the woman with the broken hand. It wasn’t a far drop, but they were all injured, several of them to the point of infirmity. Helping them was a simple act of kindness. It was the right thing to do.

The whole while, Nidra’s words echoed in his mind: make the world a better place. One monster to another. Make the world a better place.

Make the world a better place.

As he offered his hand to the last - the girl with the black eye - he remembered bringing groceries to Dahlia again and again. He had done it because she was his friend and she needed the support. But more importantly, it was because it was the right thing to do.

It was making the world a better place.

As he walked away from the cart, Nidra followed. Hirrus tried not to, but he found himself remembering Inoha. The place was full of monstrous behavior. There were homeless on the streets while adventurer’s guilds lived in massive mansions filled with immeasurable riches. They roamed the street with impunity, openly attacking people for the crime of being annoying.

And they even attacked their fellows, luring them into dark alleys and beating them for no other purpose but their own satisfaction.

Hirrus took a deep breath as he looked down at Alric’s body. The man had given his life for Hirrus’s shot at Rumi. Alric had suffered at the hands of adventurers just as surely as any non-adventurer. Hirrus was not so naive as to think that breaking this “Shadow Council’s” hold on Hari would make the whole world perfect and rosy. But perhaps the world might be a little better. Perhaps the true king could hold adventurers accountable for how they treated others.

When he turned to look back at Nidra, he could see fear in every line of her face. She had expressed time and again that she didn’t fear him. She believed she could kill him at will, and that he lacked the tools to do the same to her. What she feared was his refusal. She feared facing down her nightmares alone.

Make the world a better place.

“Help me with my unfinished business,” Hirrus said at last. “And I will help with yours in turn.”

“What unfinished business?” she asked, even as relief flooded her body language.

“I need to dig a grave,” he said, kneeling down and scooping up Alric’s body. “He did more for us than any of his kind. A true friend at every step. I owe him every dignity I can offer. And so do you.”