My mind was halted a little, and I began questioning my own existence. I’d long since dismissed Agares because I freaked out. An actual underworld devil, under my command? That felt like bad juju, stuff I shouldn’t get involved in, so I sent her ass back to the underworld.

We neared the end of the third month, there was only a handful of students who weren’t yet adepts. Their personalities shifted a lot, especially towards me, but also generally. Many of them were prideful, so much so that between training, I’d even get a few challenges from some of them. They weren’t willing to incur the wrath of the Wizard Guild for walking away from the task appointed by the queen, but they also didn’t believe a necromancer had anything of value to them. They were quickly embarrassed without coming to harm.

In a couple weeks, they all became adepts, and knew a few adept spells as well. I taught all the healers the adept spells, Greater Heal and Dispel. The wizards learned Mana Shield along with their choice of Fireball, Wintry Grave, or Electrostrike, which were all fatal, on humans at least.

For the final night, we had a big feast which didn’t consist of food spiked with magic powder, and we all got hammered and had a good time.

When I stumbled my drunk ass back to my room, I saw a messenger pigeon on the windowsill. Oh, a report? I shrugged, opened the report, and immediately sobered up. I teleported to Perseverance and noticed a bit of commotion going on at ADAS.

Dreadhoof descended and the bit of crowd gathered somewhat ogled at me. I dismounted and walked in a bit to see what was going on. A man was chewing out Perseverance’s Wizard Guild, and from the looks of it, they weren’t able to defend whatever his accusations were.

When the murmurs from the crowd increased, the furious man’s glare fell on me, and I finally recognized who it was – Tina’s father. He pushed the crowd aside and marched towards me, grabbed me by the shirt and slammed me against the walls of the guild. “You!” His voice trembled. “Because of you, my only daughter is dead!”

“Wha—”

“We don’t know that yet!” Adam’s voice cut me off. “She may still be alive! But we can’t delay further.” He made his way through the crowd. “We were ambushed by demons near the south borders.” He leaned in further to speak quietly. “Around twenty of them. Tina told us to run, and, well, I had to do it, because Solina would just get herself killed. And the other two,” he spoke of the knight and healer, “they’re newbies. Anyway, Tina is strong, she might still be alive.”

“I’m going then,” I said, and quickly teleported to the second village to be invaded. The demons seemed to attack south of Reuland, our country, and apparently left the north of Karthaaz, the southernmost human country, alone. I found that rather curious, but didn’t have the time to think about it.

I heard a loud crash and flew towards it. There were three demons surrounding Tina in some rocky rivers. The riverbank was littered with demon corpses, and Tina was as bloody as could be. She trembled, but held fast. Her hand raised, and so did a spike of ice from the ground. It impaled one of the demons and the other one rushed in with a blade. She cast Ice Barrier to protect herself, formed a small spike of ice in her hand and stabbed the demon straight through the eye and head. The last one began to flee, but she aimed her hand at him and some thin icy needles shot forth and struck the demon. His blood spilled forth and some brain matter was seeping out.

Suddenly, another demon appeared out of nowhere, so I immediately cast Binding of Bones. I wasn’t about to let it ambush her. Tina turned around and saw the demon in my spell, then looked around for me and found me floating down to them. I dismounted and immediately healed her numerous wounds with Greater Heal. I patted her head and hugged her. “You did good, Tina.” I tried my best to hold my tears back, but they didn’t listen to me. “You’re safe now.”

“Ah, babe,” she said weakly, “he helped me,” and pointed at the demon I bound. She passed out soon after.

I put a Mana Shield around her and held her up, then mounted Dreadhoof. I didn’t trust the demon just yet so I kept Binding of Bones on and used Telekinesis to bring him with me, then eventually used Camouflage once we got through the portal to Perseverance.

Tina woke up at sunrise the next day, and found me knee-deep in the grimoire, figuratively of course. She pushed the sheets off and sat up. “Deidre.”

I eyed her when I heard my name, and hugged the life out of her. “I was really worried! I’m so glad you’re okay!”

“Yeah,” she rubbed my head, “me too. Listen—”

“That was the Hellfire clan,” the demon who I caught spoke. “They’re taking humans, and no one knows what they’re doing with them.” He laughed. “You really should meet our master.”

I rolled my eyes. Demon this, demon that! Ugh! For some reason, I had my reservations about meeting this master of theirs. “You’re from the Darkviper clan then?”

The demon nodded. “Wait too long, and not even my master would be of much help to you, Lich God.”

I sighed. Perhaps they were right after all. Maybe I could no longer hide behind the walls of humanity and pretend to live life indifferently. I was just Deidre; I was no hero. But Tina’s fight earlier scared me, I didn’t want to endanger her life like that again.

I was strong enough to summon a devil. If I can summon something stronger than the demons on the surface, then dealing with them shouldn’t be that difficult. I was prepared to become a lich and show them why I was feared, but I really didn’t want to make the act of taking a life the norm.

I held onto Tina’s hands tightly and stared down at them. It wouldn’t have taken much more for her to die in that situation. I blamed my own cowardice for it. If I hadn’t bothered to get students and hole myself up in the castle, I’d have been in the group when they went on their quest.

“Alright, Darkviper demon,” I released Binding of Bones, “take me to your master.”