It took me a week to go through the entire mountain of corpses.

This left me with more time to prepare, but, unfortunately, I was at a loss on how to proceed. Despite my stint as an Adventurer, I was primarily a scholar, and I had next to no experience fighting against a mage of equal or greater strength.

For that reason, as soon as I left the cave I summoned the kids for a tactical planning session.

Sarah, however, seemed to be preoccupied with something else entirely.

“Can I have him?” she asked, staring intently at the recently raised brown bear.

“Uh,” I said, taken aback by her request, “sure? What do you even need a bear for?” With a mental nudge, I instructed the wight to prioritize obeying Sarah’s orders.

Instead of replying, her face split into a grin. Turning around, she walked up to the towering undead and leaped onto its back.

“Onwards, my faithful steed!” she bellowed, pointing a finger to the sky, spurring the bear into a slow trudge.

From the sidelines, Shiro cradled his face with his palms, releasing a suffering sigh.

Sarah and her bear did a few laps around the clearing, the bear eventually gaining enough speed to make the ground tremble, until finally, Sarah hopped off with a flourish.

Grin still in place, she turned to me, eying my confused expression. “What? A proper knight is supposed to have a mount, right? It’s about time I got one of my own.”

“That’s… actually reasonable,” I said, “but do you think you can get used to mounted combat before the crusaders arrive?”

She grimaced. “I’m not sure. Maybe. There’s still like, what, four days?”

“Closer to three, but yes.” I had checked in with the spy birds earlier that morning — Ludis was destroying any of them that came too close but I had plenty at my call and it was easy to create more, in a pinch.

“Did the System cheat thing work, at least?” Shiro asked.

I shook my head. “That would have been too easy. Though, the notification from the process did say ‘Nice try,’ so I suspect this System might be more intelligent than you suspected.”

Shiro blinked in surprise at the revelation, and Sarah interjected, “Well, that’s incredibly creepy. I hope it’s not spying when I’m using the toilet.”

“You don’t use the toilet anymore,” Shiro countered offhandedly.

“It’s the principle of it!” Sarah exclaimed, crossing her arms in mock indignation.

“Moving on,” I unceremoniously interrupted their banter. “There’s three days left before our probable collective demise. Do you have any input on how we might prepare?”

“Uh, boss,” Sarah began, a frown appearing on her face, “you might be giving us too much credit. I’m 16 and Shiro’s not even that— “she paused to shoot the boy in question a look before he could interject, “—so I’m not exactly sure what you expect from us. Yeah, sure, we probably know a little more than the average kid from this world, but we’re not exactly military strategists.”

Her sudden speech took me aback, but I had to admit that she was right. I’d come to rely a great deal on the two, though even together they were not even half my age. Still, up until now, the knowledge they brought from their homeworld was giving me a significant edge against the System, and they had yet to be wrong, so far.

“You’re selling yourself short,” I told her. “And both your input is very much valued. If anything, we’re a team at this point, so what you have to say matters.”

“Okay,” Shiro said, though by the look on his face he wasn’t entirely convinced. “So, what exactly are we up against?”

“A single Archmage, specializing in Force magic, as well as about two thousand priests and paladins of the god Yain — as followers of Yain, they specialize in the same thing as their god, namely killing mages.”

“So, your direct counter, and an army of your direct counter,” Sarah summarized.

I blinked at her assessment. “I… actually hadn’t considered Ludis to counter me, but you might be correct.”

“Well, Force is all about blowing shit up, right? While yours is about controlling minions and manipulating people. Pretty obvious rock to your scissors.”

My lips split into a wide grin. “See? Your input is already useful. I actually hadn’t thought of it in terms of countering. Though, I wouldn’t consider the followers of Yain to be at any particular advantage against me.”

She shrugged. “You said they dispel magic.”

“Not exactly, they’re just good at killing mages. But they rely on wards, for the most of it, and generally wards for the more destructive magics. They’ll be evenly matched against the undead.”

“So, that leaves the mage unchecked, right?” Shiro asked.

“Indeed.”

“Let’s take it systematically,” Sarah began, “what is this mage good at and what’s he bad at?”

I was silent for a few moments as I tried to recall what I knew about the man. When I was an apprentice, he had already earned a fair amount of renown as an Archmage — most notably, he had defended his home country against a vastly numerically superior army by himself. At the Academy, people spoke in hushed, almost reverent tones about the One-Man Army, and every young mage hoped to follow in his footsteps.

“I believe he specializes in wide-area attack spells,” I said finally, after some deliberation. It fit with his reputation — and unlike other Archmages of our generation, I hadn’t heard of him ever fighting against strong, single foes. “He might be not quite as strong against a singular opponent. But, as you said earlier since my strategy relies on an army of weak individuals, he counters me pretty hard.”

“Good AoE, weak single target,” Shiro noted from the side, and Sarah nodded in agreement. I rose my eyebrows in question, but Shiro only shrugged. “It’d take too long to explain.”

“What about his weaknesses?” Sarah asked.

I exhaled loudly. “It’s hard to estimate. To say an Archmage’s weakness is their most guarded treasure is the understatement of the century. But, at the same time, it’s hard to be prepared against all Aspects of magic. He will most certainly have brought with him warded artifacts to defend himself from any attacks to his soul, even though those are rare and hard to pull off. He might have overlooked mind, though.” I had kept my mastery of Mind secret, although I had been planning on publicizing it once my paper on raising undead was released. If the thief had kept the paper’s origins under wraps even from the Mage’s Guild, it was possible my secret was still intact.

“What about physical attacks?” Shiro asked. “In video games, mages are usually weak against those.”

I rolled my eyes. “He’s a Force mage. He can, and will nullify any kind of force headed his way, even if it’s the kinetic sort.”

“Hey, just making sure all options are checked,” the boy said with an embarrassed shrug.

“I’m not criticizing you,” I said, pinching the bridge of my nose and releasing a sigh. “I appreciate your help. It’s just…” I trailed off, spreading my arms in a vague gesture.

“Yeah, we get it,” Sarah said. “Anyway, so your ‘in’ might be Mind magic?”

“It looks to be so, yes. I have some ideas for springing it on him, though they will be somewhat… unpleasant.”

“For him?” Shiro asked, confused.

“For me,” I clarified.

“And what if he is prepared against it? Is there any other way to defeat him?” Sarah wondered out loud.

I could only grimace. “In that case, we will all likely die — so, for all our sakes, let us hope he is not.”

I sat on the cliff next to my tower, looking towards the sea as the last rays of sunlight disappeared below the horizon. Tomorrow, my enemies would arrive, but despite the fact that they could spell my end, I felt at peace.

The waves broke against the rocky below, drowning out any other noise that might have pierced the evening. It was, I supposed, the calm before the storm, and at this point, I could do little more than hope that the storm would not uproot everything I had built and everything I stood for.

I had done everything I could to prepare — Leon must have not slept at all for the past few days as we poured over maps and strategies and everything that he was good at while I was not.

If I came out of this alive, I would need many years to repay him for all he’d done for me. And yet, he’d probably refuse out of general principle. Knightly honor and all that.

I smiled, my thoughts turning to him and all my former teammates. I’d be seeing Jenna soon, I hoped. I hadn’t received a reply from her, yet, but I had little doubt she would agree to represent me in court — and I had even less doubt that she could lose. There was a certain ferociousness in the way she pleaded her cases, one that had little to do with her ogre side, although, certainly, towering over everyone else in the courtroom helped.

The others, I hadn’t seen in years. Decades, even. Raina was… Raina, and I couldn’t say I missed her very much, but thinking about Kyrian hurt.

I had kept in touch with Kyrian over the years, sending letters back and forth every few months, but… he was a priest. And soon after my damnation, his replies to my letters stopped coming. Eventually, I gave up trying, but thinking about it hurt.

Another grievance to extract from the gods, I supposed.

As I watched the sun disappear, my eyes sought the south-east. There was nothing but water as far as the eye could see, but there was something important in that direction. I couldn’t see it from here, but a small island laid there, far beyond the horizon. A contingency — one I hoped I wouldn’t need to use so soon, but one that my current plan hinged on, regardless.

I released a long sigh, and slowly lifted myself off the ground. I didn’t need to breathe, not anymore, but I found that going through the motions, still pretending to be alive — it kept me grounded.

I walked slowly along the beaten path that took me home, to my tower. If not for the preternatural control over my body, I would have trembled — I could lie to other people, but I couldn’t lie to myself. I was scared.

I’d accomplished much in my short career, but not as much as I yearned for. There were so many things left to discover, and my thirst for knowledge was unsated.

I didn’t want to die

I climbed the stairs up to the observatory and braced myself for the final night before the showoff. I’d done my preparations — whatever happened, the dice were already cast.

I could see the army approaching through the eyes of a crow, and I saw Ludis glaring at the necromantic construct — at me, by extension. He had given up on destroying the birds once he realized the futility of it. On a whim, I ordered the bird to approach him, landing some meters away from him and then waddling the rest of the way under Ludis’s severe gaze.

To my surprise, he allowed the bird to approach, and for a moment I tried to think of a way to use its proximity to launch a Mind attack on the Archmage.

Before I could figure anything out, he crouched, bringing himself to the construct’s level, and looked it — me — straight in the eye.

“You’re just a broken little bird,” he said, looking thoughtful — and in an instant, his face turned to a vicious frown, “and just like the bird, you will die this day — as will everyone tainted by your vileness.”

And just like that, the bird was disintegrated into nothingness.

Startled by his words, I hurried to pick another bird but felt several of my connections disappear in an instant. Of those remaining, the closest one was a few minutes away from the crusaders, but I had no better choice.

Spurring it to fly to the limits of its ability, I waited anxiously for the army to come into view.

A tense few minutes later, I finally had the answer to the question that gnawed at me: the crusaders had changed their course, heading some way north from their original destination.

Archmage Ludis and the followers of Yain were heading to Ravenrock.