I awoke the next morning to the few remaining soldiers hard at work digging a grave large enough to hold all of the fallen warriors. The Tertiums had been cleared away and left to rot in a pile which was about the most they deserved.

Elmidath was waiting nearby and walked over when she noticed I was awake. Leaning close, she spoke in a low voice. “I told them everything that happened was because of the Ortisfel, try to remember that.”

“You lied to them?”

“What choice did I have? I could hardly tell them the truth. Not if we wanted them to continue helping us.”

From that point of view, she was right, but lying about it all made it feel even worse. Still, what was I to do? If I told them the truth, they’d surely desert us, or possibly attack us on the spot. I had murdered their leader after all, I didn’t imagine they’d be too forgiving about it.

“You’re right, though I’m not happy about it.”

“Neither am I, luckily that’s not a requirement for doing it. And hey, at least we were victorious against the Ortisfel.”

I sighed. It didn’t feel like much of a victory. “Sure, we pushed them back, but for how long? They might be here later today with even greater forces for all we know, and then this would all have been for nothing.”

“They might, and we knew that was a risk going into this. When you’re up against an opponent of unknown strength, you just have to do everything you can and hope it’s enough.”

Somehow I didn’t have a lot of hope left. “Is there any reason for us to believe that what we’ve done is enough?”

“Beyond blind optimism? Not really. Though Tarith being, if not on our side, at least working against our enemies is a positive sign.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that. She is one of them after all, she might be the one that’s attacking us in future.”

“Maybe. If so, then hopefully she can at least buy us enough time for Yurielius to grow to the point where it can defend itself.”

“Whenever that will be.”

From what Yuriel had said, it would only be a few more days, but that felt like a lifetime away at this point. It would give the Ortisfel more than ample opportunity to destroy us and it made me wonder why I ever thought this might work in the first place. I suppose I’d still had hope then.

That, and recognising how little choice we had if we didn’t want to surrender this land to the Ortisfel. Maybe that would have been the smarter choice, there was a much larger world out there that we could have fled to. Surely someone else could deal with the Ortisfel instead of us. I had to stop myself there. Much as I felt all this was unfair, this was no time for self-pity. We’d made our decision and we had to live with it. Whatever the horrible consequences may be.

Elmidath had stood with me in silence while I thought, only speaking when I looked up at the few remaining soldiers. “They think we’re heroes, you know? Isn’t that funny?”

“I guess from their point of view we saved the day when it all seemed lost.”

“We did save the day. It was probably the most heroic thing we’ve ever done.”

“Probably. Do you feel like a hero?”

“Nope. What about you?”

“Neither do I. Maybe that’s what being a hero is like though. It can be hard to see the good you’ve done, when you see how much you could have done better.”

Elmidath moved her lips down into an exaggerated frown. “Wow, I really hope not. If this is what it feels like, I have no idea why anyone would ever want to be a hero.”

“Maybe they just don’t know what they’re in for. We didn’t have much of an idea what awaited us. For this, or pretty much anything we set out to do.”

“I can’t argue with that. It’s been quite a ride.”

It hadn’t been all bad, though it had certainly been mostly bad. I could still look back on most of it and feel more or less okay about it. Maybe the same would happen with the terrible slaughter I’d been party to here. Even if it did, it was going to be a while.

“Do you regret any of it?”

Tilting her head to the side in contemplation, Elmidath traced the line of her chin with a finger. “Sort of? There’re definitely things I could’ve done a lot better and I wish I could change them, but I also know that I can’t. Does that count as regret?”

“Do you feel sad or disappointed by them?”

“Not really. I generally don’t like to dwell on the past too much.”

“I don’t think it counts then.”

“Oh well, it seems a bit silly to get upset about the past. It’s not like we can change it.”

“It does help us avoid making the same mistakes though and teaches us to be more careful.”

Elmidath rolled her eyes. “I’m pretty sure I’m smart enough to manage that without lingering over what’s already happened.”

“Oh yeah, totally. You’re absolutely brilliant, that’s why we’ve made so few mistakes.” I chuckled, momentarily forgetting about the tragedy in the face of Elmidath’s absurd self-assurance.

“Yeah, yeah, I know I don’t have the best track record but I’m new at, well, pretty much all of this. You’ll see, we’re only going upwards from here.”

I took a deep breath and exhaled through my nose as my mirth faded. “That’s not much of an accomplishment; things can hardly get much worse.”

“I wouldn’t bet on that, but I take your point. I will at least get Sarinknell back, I can promise that much. And once I do, I’m sure we’ll make it to even greater heights.”

I couldn’t really imagine what those heights might be right now. Still, if they allowed us to avoid further disasters, then I was all for it. “Show me then. Show me what we can accomplish.”

Elmidath nodded. “I fully intend to. You only need to be patient.”

“Really? That’s the only thing I need to do?”

“Okay, you’ll probably have to do some work as well. If you can manage that.”

“Well, it will be quite outside my usual mode of operation, but I’ll see what I can do.”

The corners of her mouth twitched up in the ghost of a smile. “How kind of you.”

I gave her a mock bow. “I live to serve.”

Though I’d only said it as a silly quip, it actually wasn’t far from the truth. It spoke to just how absurd my life was in this world. But that was enough navel gazing, I needed to do something. Shaking off my lethargy, I got up and went to help the soldiers dig. They didn’t begrudge my presence nor did they welcome it, they simply allowed me to work beside them without comment.

Shifting the dry earth was hard going, made harder by having to use whatever improvised tools we could lay hands on, but I could hardly complain. If anything, the struggle only made me feel like I was doing something useful. The suns were low on the horizon when we finally got all the bodies into their shared grave and covered them.

It felt a little odd to bury them, given the Ortisfel’s dominion over the subterranean realm, but what choice did we have? We could hardly bring them all back to Yueryurn and leaving them out to rot didn’t feel right either. Once the task was done, the soldiers departed, bearing with them only their own equipment and a few weapons of the fallen.

Elmidath hurried out, presumably to stop them. Appearing beside her, I put my hand on her shoulder. “Let them go. They’ve done enough.”

“But they can’t leave now, Yurielius still needs to be defended.”

I stared at the demons’ retreating backs, none of them looked back. “Somehow I doubt they care much about that anymore. Besides, I’m not sure how much of a difference they’d make at this point.”

They were too few in number to stave off more than a handful of foes. I wasn’t sure if they could even manage that much, given how demoralized they must be. It wouldn’t surprise me if they never wanted to fight again after what they’d been through, though I doubted the demons were fragile enough for that. For all I knew, they were far more interested in claiming their lord’s former territory than grieving him.

Shielding her eyes, Elmidath looked up at the suns. “Now what? The Ortisfel’s minions will probably be here soon.”

“Our plan hasn’t really changed. We do what we can to defend Yurielius and hope it’s enough.”

The young demon lord sighed. “Great, another night of waiting and possibly, if we’re lucky, death.”

“That’s what we signed up for, right? We both knew this was going to be hard.”

“Yeah, but somehow that doesn’t make it much easier.”

“That sounds like something I’d say. Are you feeling alright?”

She waved me off. “I’m fine, given the circumstances. Come on then, we’ve got a long night ahead of us.”