Cheis of Veraleigh was clinically dead for three minutes and fifty-eight seconds, nearly twice her previous record, as her astral self sullenly did the necessary tinkering to repair her ravaged body and brain; when she eventually awoke, groaning and psychically savaged, atop a pile of discarded clothing scraps, she had the progenatrix of all headaches whacking about against the insides of her skull and could feel huge gaps in her mental web of capability where the vanoille had chewed away large portions of both her spellwork and her core identity. Luckily, there didn't seem to be anything she couldn't reverse; she ran a couple of rather carefully-targeted recovery commands (including a much more contemporary and seamlessly-integrating mental backup she'd taken after that nasty business with the Seal of Iron Silence) and breathed a sigh of relief as her acuity restored itself. She felt very much that she deserved a reward; perhaps one of those tiny cakes-on-a-stick they had here. And a few dozen iced coffees. And a pony.

 "Oh good, you're alive," remarked Linduin nonchalantly as he hobbled around the corner, leaning on Galar's shoulder. "I was worried your corpse might sue me, or something."

 Cheis groaned and struggled to her feet. "That or I'm dead, and this is hell, because any respectable afterlife wouldn't bring you to plague me." She squinted at Linduin's scarred face. "Looks like you caught up to the rakshasi."

 Linduin nodded. "If that's what that thing was called, yeah. Luckily glowing white magic spears seemed to be its weakness."

 Galar Kayle was very uncomfortable; he was having a large number of complex feelings about discovering his son to be A) alive, B) significantly more badass and shitheaded than he'd been previously, C) apparently some kind of wizard, or something, and D) possibly involved in some sort of relationship with this chubby, filthy woman wearing an unflattering black robe who was at least fifteen years his son's senior. He coughed delicately.

 "Who's this dude?" Cheis queried, brushing herself off and looking around for further crises. Local property values had obviously gone very much downhill around here.

 Linduin shrugged breezily. "Oh, you remember complaining that I had shitty manners? Well, meet their architect. Cheis, this is my sire, Galar Kayle; Father, meet Cheis of Veraleigh, to whom I am apprenticed." He smirked, watching Galar's reaction exultantly.

 Galar was speechless; his gaze flipped back and forth between the two, his mouth hanging open in disbelief.

 "Doesn't seem to be much of a conversationalist," Cheis observed. "What's he doing hundreds of miles away from Temurin? Wasn't he a clerk in a crappy village?"

 "I was," said Galar, rather stiffly, "until it was destroyed by a horde of undead. After which point I was recruited as a soldier in a war against a giant demon tree and given a knighthood." He left out the bits about becoming a wielder of powerful holy magic, joining the retinue of Death itself, and being dragged across the ocean to this strange and foreign city; he had to leave something for the later bits of the conversation, after all.

 Cheis sniffed approvingly. "Sounds suitably epic. Welcome to the party." She peered around at the massive devastation around her. "Anybody have any clue what happened?"

 Linduin shook his head. "We chased down the bad kitty... a rakshasi, did you call it? And almost the instant we killed it the whole city exploded. I assumed it was your doing."

 Cheis pursed her lips contemplatively. "Nope. I was in this alley, defeating a dark god that ate magic." She turned to look meaningfully at Galar. "That leaves you. Any ideas?"

 Galar blinked, somewhat taken aback by this accusation. "The, ah... demon king, I suppose... was in the harbor. It rebuffed my attack rather handily, I'm afraid."

 "So." Cheis ticked the known events off on her fingers. "We've got a rakshasi that we've destroyed, a vanoille that will no longer plague the realm, a demon king in the harbor, and we killed half the Celi'sa Most High Arcane Council --"

 "We?" Linduin objected. "You got a mouse in your pocket?"

 "You're my apprentice, so you're automatically an accessory at best, likely an accomplice, and possibly also a conspirator." Cheis didn't even slow down. "The survivors are probably fairly pissed at us, especially after I punted the archmage in the testicles." Galar looked incredulous; Linduin just sighed. "Am I missing anything? An evil god of death, maybe?"

 Galar started, then began to raise his hand somewhat sheepishly.

***

 Velinaer stood, swaying occasionally as gusts of wind buffeted him, and stared into space for quite some time. He did, for almost exactly one minute, allow himself to feel the joy and accomplishment of what he had just achieved; saving the world is every nerdy kid's dream, and he had just literally done it, and probably saved the rest of the universe too as a bonus. He savored it, in a very bittersweet fashion, for as long as possible before finally admitting to himself that he didn't really care beyond a smidgeon of professional satisfaction. After all, it wasn't as though he was going to be given a parade, or have a medallion hung on him by an attractive officiant, or even get an insincere congratulatory missive from his supervisor. He was alone -- completely, irreversibly, and utterly alone, and also naked since his clothes hadn't survived the devastation -- and the only person who was going to praise him was himself. He laughed, slightly wretchedly, into the crash of surf as it struck the rubble island on which he stood. What a fucking joke.

 A flash of white light, surprisingly bright in the oncoming twilight of the day's end, caught his attention -- some ambulatory source of illumination was approaching the now-significantly-less-tidy edge of the harbor. Dully, he watched as a smooth and elegant entropic redirection enchantment formed a crude sort of ice bridge atop the water. A bit sloppy, he thought; for good structure you needed to do pillars instead of buoys as anchors, or a good solid wall if you have the available thermics. Then it dawned on him: someone was actually making their way towards him.

 For a brief moment, he was gripped by the irrational but fervent hope that maybe he wasn't alone after all; that someone had, in fact, seen his galactic act of intrepidity and might, in some small way, actually be about to recognize it. But the delusion didn't last long; he looked around glumly and realized that someone was probably on their way here to try to destroy him, as usual. Well, he couldn't blame them. He had pretty much destroyed most of this area in the process of containing the breach, and probably killed a huge number of people, as was typical for him. He applied a focus enhancement to his visual inputs and peered at the three figures making their way across the bridge; yup, they didn't look friendly.

 He pondered trying yet again to make peaceful contact, but his heart just wasn't in it; the very thought of asking to be thanked for saving the world made him feel bitter and petty. He felt a little awkward meeting them without clothes, though. He poked around in the rubble for anything that might make him look a little less naked, but the only thing he could find was a scrap of red sailcloth. Shrugging, he tied it around his neck and shoulders like a cape. Look, mom, I'm a superhero.

 He strode down to the edge of the island and cast his own linear entropy spell; a proper ice bridge, with pylons and nice professional jagged tops, took form and jutted out towards the approaching party. That's what they were, he realized with sad amusement; adventurers, here to destroy the horrible monster that had devastated the town. Well, fuck it, he thought, it wasn't like they were wrong, were they? What did it even matter? He could play Dungeon Lich if he wanted; it wasn't as though anyone was around to make fun of him now.

 He toyed with the idea of actually destroying them if they attacked him, but if his recent travails had taught him anything it was that he really abhorred killing people, and he'd done enough of it accidentally as it was. He'd give them a nice little boss battle, then let them destroy him if they could, or run away otherwise; his outlook on his personal future was pretty bleak at this point. He bestirred himself enough to cast a kinetic inverter around himself, at least; that would stop anything from physically reaching him and protect the little adventurers from his touch of death. He felt as though he was missing something, though. Oh, right. Minions. The heroes had to fight their way through minions.

 He extended his animatory will down through the rubble below him, stopping at what felt like a few dozen hits; he wanted to make them feel like they'd earned this, not actually swarm them under a real undead horde. As the debris at his feet shifted apart to reveal the thirty or so zombies clambering up out of the wreckage, he summoned up a suitably ominous red glow about himself to put a proper mood on things. Look at me, I'm evil. Come and get me.