I was standing there, a bloody headless corpse on the ground, with the head in my hands. Instead of the normal claws, I had made a singly large, and very sharp, titanium blade, which I had used to cut off priest Milton’s head.

His eyes were still wide open, displaying the shock that he must have experienced in the last moment of his life. I looked back up at Nishka who was drawing her sabre. Then to the Unifiers. The easy thing would be killing them all but would leave me with little further options on how to deal with the FUBAR situation I found myself in. All of my own making. Though Milton was certainly a contributing factor.

Knowing that the spell crystals I had embedded around the property for privacy reasons would keep the squadron outside from hearing anything, I made a quick decision to expand my options, I shouted, “Take them alive!”

As soon as I had given my order, I dropped the head and teleported to the nearest Unifier. He had just started to react, drawing his sabre, not expecting it to succeed, because the last time the church had sent men to my Hold, they had been carrying nullifiers, I was a bit surprised when I was able to take hold of his soul and freeze his movements.

With them not carrying nullifiers, everything became much easier. I froze the guards, only allowing them to breathe. I then made a beeline to the plant that Baldur was hiding beneath, shaking like a leaf, mewling in pain.

“Baldur!” Emma screamed, finally reacting, so did the rest of the wives. Storming out of the lake. Only five seconds had passed since the bastard hurt my son. Not daring to pick him up if he was hurt, I gently touched him with the tip of my finger, letting my healing magic flood into him.

He was only a little bruised, nothing broken, but the bastard that hurt my son still got what he deserved. I only wished I could make him suffer for an eternity. Picking up Baldur, I nuzzled him against my cheek. “My brave little protector. You did a good job standing up for your siblings and mother.”

He started purring, but still let out some mewling complaints. I laughed and pulled him away from my face so I could look him in the eyes. “Yes, you lost this time, but the most important thing is that you don’t give up. You’ll just have to become stronger. Being vigilant and courageous is a good start. You need strength and skills to back it up. So you’ll join Maeve and I, understood?”

He nodded and gave a serious meow. That was all he managed before Emma snatched him out of my hands. She gave me a hard look as if it was my fault he had been hurt. “You better clean up this mess of yours.”

She started walking away. I gave a sigh. Emma had been prone to anger since Yathanae’s death when it concerned our kittens. She might be willing to let them get hurt in the normal process of learning. However, if others were hurting them; that was a whole other ballgame.

About a year ago, one of the cooks accidentally stepped on Maeve, as she was running around in the kitchen being underfoot. I had to restrain Emma from hurting the cook. I had apologized to all of the cooks afterwards, so had Emma after some prodding. The cook in question was given the choice to transfer to another position if she wanted. She did not. Instead, she remained and doted on Maeve and the other kids when they found their way into the kitchen.

“So, how do we do this without getting ourselves killed?” I asked, looking at the frozen Unifiers. We would have to act soon because there was a whole squadron outside. My mind was churning out possibilities, all from slaughtering every one of them and declaring open rebellion, into staging a rebel attack on my own Hold. The last one would include killing some of the serfs. Not the best plans, but I was still seething with anger, and I was willing to let the whole world burn, except for my family.

I had started getting my anger under control. I was clear headed most of the time, not as easily provoked. However, once provoked, my anger was destructive and all-consuming. Though it was the first time I had blacked out because of the anger.

All of these thoughts and ideas were like a giant jigsaw puzzle where the pieces changed form and content all the time, a piece was placed on the board. There were many small problems that made up this giant FUBAR of a problem.

What to do with the Unifiers inside our garden?

The Unifiers outside, waiting?

How to prevent the Church from retaliating?

Why did the Church send such ill-equipped men to deal with me? Was it a trap, a test? Or was it just to make me confused? Had it even been the Church that had attacked me in the first place? Was that doubt the purpose of this? I would have Emma contact Ethan, who would then contact Chione and get a report whether it was only my Hold or if it were all of the Holds that were targeted.

My mind was a churning mess, every time I tried something in my mind, it was like it was a bad fit. My judgement was still clouded by my anger. I just wanted to hurt people. Nishka supplied the first correct piece of the puzzle, when she suggested, “Use memory magic to wipe the memory of what happened in here. Alter them to remember an attack by an elven hit squad. Maybe kill one of them, wound the others?”

“I had thought about just killing them all and claim they died in a rebel attack,” I said.

“No. That’s a bad idea, don’t make it the rebels,” Lily said suddenly. “This move is unprecedented, showing them how scared and desperate the King and the Church is. If the rebels make too much of a spectacle right now, they’ll probably double down. You’ll be validating their methods.”

“Won’t they just claim that the methods are working?” Nishika asked.

Lily looked down. “I didn’t think of that.”

Mina butted in. “No, Lily is right. We can’t make the rebels the scapegoats.”

“What if we attack priests in all thirteen High Holds?” I asked. “Make them fear the rebels even more.”

Mina shook her head. “It would work, but the Lords would be scared they would be next. Right now the Church and King are doing something stupid. They’re antagonising the Lords. Make non-violent reminders that the rebels are around. That the methods of the Church aren’t working. Create a schism between the lords and the Church. Maybe rob the Churches and give money to the poorer freemen?”

“Like fucking Robin Hood?” I could not help but chuckle.

“Robin who?” they asked, looking at me strangely.

Emma had rejoined the conversation. “It’s a story from his old world. Some guy prancing around in the forest stealing from the king and rich, giving to the poor.”

“It’s an idea,” I said noncommittally. The idea of giving the money away that I stole seemed wrong. “But what do we do about the damn Unifiers after we change their memory?”

“Illusions, make it seem like Milton is leaving, have him die peacefully in his bed?” Lily suggested.

“Won’t work,” Nathalie said. “Every priest ought to have access to healing magic. There’s no way he would die like that.”

“What then?” Mina asked.

Nathalie looked at me. “You’re thinking about this wrong. You’re thinking about what to do about it. We need to find out what we want to achieve first.”

“Get the Unifiers off our back,” I said.

“Yes, and to do that, we need a scapegoat. But it can’t be the rebels,” she gently prodded me.

“So we do the elven hit squad, I guess.”

“Don’t you have other goals you need to achieve?” she asked gently. “Haven’t you been looking for an excuse to go campaigning in the north?”

“The orcs,” Emma whispered. I just looked at Nathalie. It was like everything solidified and I could clearly see a plan unfurling in my head.

A smile spread across my face. I gave her a gentle hug and a passionate, but restrained, kiss. “Thank you for helping me see straight.”

Still naked I walked towards the house, as I passed the still frozen Unifiers, I said to my guards, “Bring those along, we got some mind blowing experiences for them.”

I heard a groan, make that several groans, behind me.

Twenty minutes later, after a few brain surgeries—okay, memory tampering—opening a portal to Eastside for Nishka and a handful of Wolf Guards, I was ready to put on a performance for the hopefully stupid audience. I had gotten dressed, not because I needed to, I would be wearing an illusion of Milton after all, but he had arrived on horseback. The idea of riding naked in a hard leather saddle was not my idea of—fun.

Milton’s guards had their memories messed with so they believed they had been witnessing an argument between Milton and myself. We would wake them from the stupor with me as Milton storming out of the office, slamming the door.

It went exactly as I had planned. The slam of the door woke the vacant-eyed guards and they had to almost jog to follow with irritated looking Milton. Something I was quite adept at displaying with my illusions because I had seen him leave in such a state so many times before.

“Your Eminence, shall we start rounding up the serfs?” the Commander asked as he followed Milton—me out of the house.

“They’re all fucking serfs here. We’ll start in their cities to the north. Select two platoons to travel with me in his infernal machine, the rest can follow at their fastest pace on horseback,” I explained in Milton’s voice.

“Machine, Your Eminence?” the Commander asked confused.

“A metal carriage that moves without any animals pulling it, the work of the Destroyer I tell you! An unnatural thing!” I ranted and raved, channelling my best delusional priest.

I led them to the station where we commandeered one of the trains. The engineer, a good man by the name of Trevor protested, but I shut him up by backhanding him. I would have to apologize at a later date for that.

Eventually, I was travelling to Fort Kiril with only two platoons and the Commander. When we arrived at the fort, the people there looked a bit spooked when foreign soldiers stepped off the train, when they had been expecting lumber and seafood to arrive with the train. Fort Kiril was on top of a hill, while the train station was beneath it, together with a small collection of houses and lots of warehouses and animal pens. There was also an inn, who mostly served the train engineers and workers.

It was run by Kiril’s widow. My serfs would pay her with wooden chits and I would change it to coin for her. When she and Kiril’s son had arrived, I had given them a hundred golden marks. She had refused them but had agreed to run the inn for me. Whenever she saw me she would get a sad look on her face, which also displayed her resentment for me. I never stayed at the inn.

A group of my troopers, led by a senior squad leader, whose name I could not immediately remember, stepped forward. Not welcoming, but not completely aggressive either. A neutral stance, while one of the men in the back ran off, most likely to get Caspar, who was in command of Fort Kiril at the moment.

“Your Eminence,” the senior squad leader greeted softly. “What can we help you with here at Fort Kiril?”

I waved for the Commander of the Unifier to speak up, which he did, “Every serf will be taken into custody and verified by us. We require your help—”

His words trailed off when he saw that all the troopers in front of him were wearing a collar. He gulped. The squad leader, Delman, I finally remembered his name, got a dark look on his face, I could hear some of the troopers growl. Delman held up his hand and shot a glare over his shoulder, quieting the troopers.

“I think we’ll wait for the Commander to come here,” he said frostily. The troopers behind him glaring at me and the Unifiers. The Unifiers were looking rather rattled, hands constantly straying towards their weapons.

After a few minutes, Caspar finally came riding down. He was bringing another couple of platoons, making the Unifiers really sweat. As soon as he came up, I stepped forward. “Are you the commander in charge of these animals?”

My words brought forth a lot of dark muttering. The commander of the Unifiers looked at me as if I was crazy. Caspar’s nostrils flared, his cheek reddening. The insult was specifically tailored to enrage him. He had come to respect his men, even if they were not pure humans. With an admirable show of willpower, he managed to relax and in a neutral tone ask, “Your Eminence, what are you doing here?”

“Your Lord has sent you orders,” I said disdain and threw a scroll of parchment at him. He unrolled it and started to read. Again, I was surprised by his willpower. He showed no sign of emotion or surprise when he read the document. When he finished he did look questioning at me. With the Unifiers behind me, I quickly signed that everything he read was the truth.

He gave a long sigh and nodded. “Very well, we’ll do as our Lord commands.”

Turning around to look at his men, he spoke in a loud and clear voice, “Our Lord has commanded us to cooperate with the Unifiers. We’ll all go back to the Fort and lock our weapons in the armoury. We’ll hand over control of the armoury to the Unifiers.”

His words were met with dissatisfaction. When the complaints got too loud, he shot the offender a stare. “This is the orders of our Lord. We’ll do it with honour. Trust in the Lord, he has gotten you this far.”

The troopers were not happy, but they obeyed orders. We made our way into the Fort, where everyone except Caspar was disarmed. I had precious few freemen serving as soldiers. Caspar, Charles, Hrothgar, and Isak were the only ones that remained. Alan was a serf. The others that had survived the Bastion or stayed behind at the Hold, had been given a lot of coins and forced to retire elsewhere. They had conflicting loyalties, so I could not use them.

“Commander, stay here with one of the platoons and keep this riffraff under control, I’ll take the other platoon to secure the town of Eastside. They’ve horses there, they might end up fleeing,” I told the Commander.

He looked like he was about to protest, but the stare I gave him was enough to shut him up. Ten minutes later we had “commandeered” some of my horses and were riding towards Eastside. Where Nishka had arranged a surprise for those that rode with me.

Half an hour later we approached the village of Eastside, but no living being was in sight. Well, some of the animals were there, but they did not count. The rest had been moved and would eventually be sent to Sanctuary. The senior squad leader immediately said, “I don’t like this, Your Eminence.”

“What, you think a bunch of serfs are part of the rebellion? Don’t be ridiculous, onward!” I derided the man and spurred my horse on. He must have located his balls because soon he and his men had caught up with me again.

As we rode into the village, I heard one of the men whisper to the soldier next to him, “It’s too quiet.”

“Yes, and where is everyone?” the other guy whispered back. “Look, at that table. Looks like dinner was in the middle of being served.”

Another minute passed as we rode further into the town. Suddenly someone whispered a bit shrilly, “Is that blood on the door?”

We all turned our heads to look in that direction. It was at that moment from the other side that dozens of orcs came rushing at us, roaring their challenge, chucking spears and axes at us. Most of them were illusions.

“Someone, ride for backup!” I shouted and calmly waved my hand. It looked like five of the orcs that were appearing further away had been turned into human torches—orcish torches? The wordplay irrelevant, I was sweating as I was funnelling magic into the massive illusion I was running. There were only seven Wolf Guards with a spell crystal that made them look like orcs. Puny orcs really.

Out of the corner of my eyes, I saw two of the men bolt. With a smile I continued battling illusionary orcs, using beast magic to make the horses buck at inopportune moments, throwing off the soldiers. Within thirty seconds, every soldier except those riding away were dead. I made a spectacle, and when I noticed one of the soldiers look back, I had one of the illusions behead me.

As they crested the hill and were gone, I looked at the prettiest of the female orcs from the ground. “Nice work, Nishka.”

“You’re sure this won’t come back to bite us?” she asked.

“We’ll say they slaughtered all of our people here, those citizens that want to move to Sanctuary can. No one checks the identity of serfs, so they can come back and live here too if they want,” I said, still on the ground. “Make a huge fire, throw in some of the bones from the slaughterhouse. I’ll make a spectacle of the soldiers’ and Milton’s bodies. Where is it?”

“In that house,” she answered, pointing to the house they had rushed out of.

“Good, did you empty the barns as I asked?”

“Yes, and everyone took the personal items of sentimental value,” she replied in a tone that said I better stop asking if she had done what I had asked. I knew she had, it was just a bad habit of a control freak.

“Thanks, Honey,” I whispered, using magic to make sure the others did not hear us. Because it was illusions I had created I could see through them. It stroked my ego to see her blush at the endearment.

They got started creating a huge bonfire, while I set about mutilating the bodies of the soldiers. I remembered finding a history book in the prison library on Vlad the Impaler. That was one sick dude, even if just a fraction of the anecdotes were right. Especially his forest of impaled peasants.

For a moment I considered what effect that would have, that would really sell the need to go on an orc hunt. However, I quickly dismissed it. My people did not deserve that I started to act like a complete lunatic. Not towards them at least.

So I took a page of his book. Every one of the soldiers got stripped. While I was stripping them, I found that one of the soldiers was still alive, if barely. I could not suppress the smile that spread on my face. Just perfect. He was unconscious, so when I healed his wounds I made sure he remained so.

Time was running out so I just impaled everyone. The senior squad leader got the full treatment, impaled in the arse all the way until the wooden stake came out of his mouth. Of course, Milton was the centrepiece.

His body was hacked into pieces, and I found a large cauldron and poured the meat chunks into it. I added other stuff for a wholesome stew, put his head on a stake with a sign underneath it that said in bad human, “Dinner is served.”

I had saved the still alive soldier to last. After everyone else had left, I woke him up. In the background, I had an illusion of the orcish band standing around laughing at him. Calling out insults in orcish.

“They say, you, puny dick, ask if woman,” I grunted in broken human at the man, as I tied his legs to the spit I had prepared. Judging the time, I thought the reinforcements should be arriving in five minutes.

The soldier did not answer me, he just looked around frightfully. He looked confused at his hands tied to the wooden pole his arm and legs were tied to. I gave him a toothy smile. “You, dinner.”

I pointed to a fire that was already burning, He looked at the empty tripods for holding the spit, then to the pole he was tied to. I could see and smell the moment realization happened. A shout went out, one that I had created with illusion. I looked annoyed away from the soiled soldier.

“Shame, your friends, ruin dinner,” I grumbled. He got a relieved look on his face.

“We good hosts, we leave them food,” I said next and hoisted up the pole with him on. He was freaking heavy. Especially when he started thrashing and screaming for the Gods and his mamma to save him.

In the end, I managed to get him hoisted onto the tripods and his screams echoed through the village, as my illusionary raiders cheered. They started throwing torches at different houses, and I set my village ablaze.

To the roar of burning buildings and the tortured screams of a man being slowly roasted alive, I sent the orcs running away. When the reinforcement, which included some of my men I could see. The illusionary orcs were disappearing in the horizon. I had turned invisible and had stayed in the burning village to admire my handiwork.

All of the men, including my own, looked aghast at what had happened. Only Caspar knew what had really gone on. Several of my troopers with spouses and children in the village started crying or cursing up a storm. Swearing vengeance.

‘Shit, I hadn’t thought of that, I need to make restitution for that,’ I thought as I saw my own men going through the anguish I had felt when Yathanae died. ‘Fuck!’

The glee and taste of victory turned sour, made me hate myself. I could not stay to see the aftermath after all. I started teleporting back to Fort Kiril. I had some people I needed to apologize to.