Veronica’s contented smile seemed wildly inappropriate for the atmosphere around her. The cadaver of a man she had savaged to death laid on the ground while his two daughters looked on in horror. The witch paid the pair no mind, giving all her attention to Morgan; which was exactly what he didn’t want. Instinct told him to go immediately, to put as much distance between himself and her as possible. But, as though sensing his intention to run, Veronica vanished from where she levitated.

“Are you happy to be home?” she asked from behind him, her lips almost pressed against his ear.

He tucked and rolled some feet away, his hand cupping his ear as though it had been injured. More on guard than he had been throughout his entire fight with the Dannith sisters; Morgan kept his eyes firmly on the witch. There were monsters, demons, and demigods who could devastate the most fortified cities in Validar in a day. None of them made him sweat as much as the pretty woman smiling at him from astride her broom.

“Your reactions are always so cute,” she said. “You act like I’m going to eat you.”

“You might.”

“Not without a reason.”

“You never need a reason to do anything you want.”

Her smirk grew into a broad grin. Morgan knew her nature too well. That actually made games like this all the more fun for her. It was always better when they stayed a bit jumpy.

“You bitch!”

Quinn’s cry came just before she took a swing at Veronica. When her fist met the witch’s face, it phased through her completely as the witch’s body dissolved into smoke. A fiery blast struck Quinn from the rear, searing her back and sending her screeching in pain to her knees.

“Rude. Just like your father,” Veronica said, now floating a few yards behind her. “Morgan and I were having a wholesome reunion, about to embrace with tears of joy in our eyes, and you interrupted like a dog impatient for her master’s attention.”

‘We were about to what?’ the hero wondered aloud.

“You killed my father!” Quinn exclaimed, her eyes welled up with tears.

“Not intentionally. If he had just stopped resisting, things wouldn’t have gotten so lethal. My work isn’t usually this messy.”

The witch then spotted a small object jetting across the baseball field. It was Renee’s crystal orb returning to its owner. The younger Dannith quickly shot a series of wind spells: blades of air that cut toward her, bolts of wind that jettisoned her way, small whirlwinds that spun about the witch before homing in on her. All of them were eaten away by a transparent barrier that didn’t make itself seen until the spells connected with it. Not a lock on Veronica’s hair was even made to flutter.

“A spellcaster on your level should already know that your magic won’t work on me. You’re just wasting mana.”

“I don’t care if you’re the Dragon Witch! I’ll kill you even if it kills me, dammit!” she screamed, tears streaming down her face.

Veronica sighed and extended a perfectly manicured finger. Renee braced herself for some powerful spell, but all that came from the witch were the words “Sick her, Tito.”

Suddenly, a familiar bark came from behind Renee. When she peered back, a Rottweiler she thought she had killed or at least severely maimed was standing beside her, looking no worse for wear. Tito growled viciously as a ghastly blue flame engulfed him. From the infernal pyre, a demonic hound emerged. Tito was now thrice the size of his original form, coupled with burning blue eyes and pitch-block smoke fuming from the corners of his mouth.

“H-he was a hellhound?!”

Tito pounced at the younger Dannith. Renee tried to defend herself. Were she able to use Quintessence like her sister she might have had a chance, but she could not cast quickly enough to not be snatched up between the hellhound’s fangs. Tito flung her about like a ragdoll before finally sending her flying like she had done to him earlier. She barreled into her sister and the pair were sent skidding across the outfield’s grass together. Tito gave a bark of satisfaction at his revenge. That was not all he had to be pleased by.

“Tito!” Agnes yelled gleefully as she rushed over to him.

Her arms could not wrap around his neck while he was in his current form, but she still gave it an earnest try.

“I knew you’d get her back for blasting you earlier! That’s what she gets for taking cheap shots.”

Tito barked in agreement before reverting back to his previous form, Agnes now able to embrace him properly. Morgan looked in disbelief while watching it all unfold. So many questions had cropped up in quick succession of each other: Why was Agnes’s dog a hellhound? Why was a hellhound on Earth at all when they were supposed to be only found in the Realm of Demons in Validar? Why was Agnes not shocked to discover her dog was a monster from a foreign world? Why was she not shocked by any of the things that were happening before her and operating as if the current events were just everyday affairs for her, like seeing the morning dew when one woke up?

“Shit! It wasn’t supposed to be like this…” Quinn bemoaned, trying to help her sister sit upright. “Why did this all have to happen?”

“Blame your father,” Veronica said, floating down to them. “All I wanted him to do was to give up his scheme of revenge against Morgan, but he refused. He was willing to die for a chance to finally settle his grudge. So he did.”

The sisters looked painfully over to where their father lay. They had never seen his body when he died in Validar. It was said to have burned in the fire he had started when trying to escape imprisonment. As they looked upon his corpse they realized there were some things truly better left unseen.

“Anyway, let’s wrap this up. It’s going to be 5:00 soon, and I have breakfast to make.”

With a snap from the witch’s fingers, smoke and flame began to waft around her. After a few revolutions, it took the form of a dragon’s head, its burning fangs the size of gladiuses. It homed in on the Dannith sisters, about to devour them whole and engulf them in its flame. But a certain hero wouldn’t allow it.

“Fae Barrier!”

A shield of sublime magical energy blunted Veronica’s spell and absorbed it until it dissolved into sparks and cinders. It was the first time that night that his signature ward spell had cracked under another spell’s power. That the witch had cast such powerful magic so casually was a testament of how far beyond as a spellcaster she was compared to the likes of Renee.

Shook looked down at Morgan. “Why are you getting in the way? You know those girls you just saved tried to kill you just a few minutes ago?”

“They aren’t the first. I stopped taking it personal a while ago.”

She sighed. “And here we go. Just how many times has unnecessary mercy blown up in your face, Morgan? Didn’t you try and spare them the first time only for them to attempt to kill you anyway when your guard was down? And here they are, reborn into another world after death, and they’re still trying to kill you. Just cut your losses and kill them. Or, at least, get out of the way and let me do it.”

“Don’t get wrong, I’m not that eager to save them. They were just trying to kill me, to the point of hurting an innocent girl even. You toasting them wouldn’t be the biggest tragedy in Seattle, but…” the hero glanced over to Agnes. “How much death does that little girl over there really need to see?”

“Aw, how sweet. You’re worried about Agnes. Don’t worry; nothing she saw this morning is going to faze her. She’s seen plenty worse. Now, could you kindly move so I could finish those two off?”

Morgan’s brow furrowed. What did she mean by ‘she had seen plenty worse’? And why did this Witch of Oblivion sound so familiar with Agnes. The answer came when the child herself approached and called out to Veronica.

“Mom, it’s fine. Just let them go,” Agnes said.

Morgan’s eyes nearly bulged out of his head. “D-did she just say…“

While he tried to process what he had just heard and the implications of such a thing, Agnes’s mother sighed tiredly at her daughter’s words.

“Agnes, what did I tell you about being ‘soft’? You’ll get taken advantage of by some very suspect people if you keep it up,” the witch said without a hint of irony. “Weren’t these girls trying to kill you along with Morgan?”

“Yeah, but they failed. They never managed to hurt me and never came close to even scratching him. I don’t think their dad could’ve either. There whole family just seems kind of… weak.”

“Even the weak can hurt you if you give them the opportunity.”

Her daughter shrugged. “I just don’t think they’re worth the trouble. Tito already got back at that windy girl, so I don’t care about making them pay anymore.”

Veronica hummed in thought. After a while, she gave her own shrug and seemed to give up on her effort to snuff out the Dannith family in its entirety. Morgan sighed in relief.

“Why?”

He peered back and saw the sisters glaring up at him.

“Why what?”

“Why did you spare us? You think we want your mercy?” Quinn spat.

Though her words dripped with malice, the way she and her sister occasionally twitched due to their injuries betrayed the fear her aggression was trying to hide.

“Don’t get me wrong: If push came to shove and I had to choose between killing you two and protecting that girl, you’d both would’ve been goners a while ago,” the hero said plainly. “But, it looks like that wasn’t really the case.”

The Chosen One was beginning to wonder if in fact Agnes ever needed his protection. At no point in the entire ordeal did she ever show fear; only anger, annoyance, and apathy. If he didn’t need to kill Quinn and Renee to keep her safe, then he simply saw no reason to do so. Despite what the high body count he amassed in Validar might suggest, the hero despised needless death with a passion. And this passion led to his next act of mercy for the morning. Veronica watched him approach the body of Marko Dannith, shaking her head when she realized what he was about to do.

“He just can’t help himself, can he?” she sighed.

The hero stuck a foot under Marko’s stomach and flipped him over. He put both hands on Marko’s sternum and poured a great amount of mana into his palms.

“Titania’s Embrace!”

Above the hero, an ethereal-like maiden manifested. She appeared like a Fae, her butterfly-like wings flapping and her majestic form radiating faerie dust. She sang a single high note before her form dissolved and infused itself into Marko’s body. Morgan then stood up over the mercenary captain, hands in his sweat jacket’s pockets.

After a few moments of stillness, Marko’s body flinched. Then it spasmed. Finally, he jerked himself upright and vomited up blood in the space between his thighs. As he did, several of the scars on his body began to partially seal, his bruises lightened in their severity, and the degree of his burns lessened. His injuries were still far more severe than his daughters, and more severe than any Earthling man could have survived, but he was no longer beyond living.

“Welcome back to the living, Marko. How’s the afterlife here?” Morgan asked.

Marko Dannith, shrewd a man as he was, processed what had just happened in short order. The Chosen One had just saved his life.

“…Fuck!” he spat, wiping blood from his mouth.

“All that mana I just used to drag you back from the other side, and those are your first words? C’mon man, you’re making me look stupid here.”

“Not stupid, but you’re definitely naïve,” Veronica said, her voice alone causing Marko to shudder. “You’re just gonna wind up having to kill him again later. Marko simply can’t accept that he wasn’t one of the Hero Slayers.”

The hero made a face. “The.. Hero Slayers?”

“The Validarans on Earth who were chosen to be the ones who get to try and take your life.”

“…What?!”

Morgan suddenly had so many questions: Just how many Validarans were on Earth? Did they all have a grudge against him? Did they all want to kill him? Who were these ‘Hero Slayers’ who had the esteemed privilege of doing so, and why were the others disbarred from doing so? Who had even developed this alleged system?

“And before you ask: No, I’m not one of them,” Veronica clarified. “And neither are any of the Danniths. Despite this, as soon as they learned you were back on Earth, they jumped at the opportunity to disregard the rules they and all other Validarans have known for years just so they could be the ones to settle their grudge with you. While I couldn’t catch the daughters before they crossed your path, I did find Marko and taught him the hard way what happens to those who don’t follow the rules.”

The Dannith patriarch didn’t say a word. What more could he say? Marko had broken the rules with the assumption that he and his daughters, after a decade of preparation, could defeat the Chosen One. Not only had his daughters been defeated and he had been killed in the attempt, but he had been saved by the very person whose life he planned to take. For a man like Marko Dannith, the infamous captain of the Gray Company, he could do nothing but gaze at the grass stained with his own blood.

“You oughta get a hospital or something,” Morgan said. “Titania’s Embrace is more of a magic bandage than a true healing spell. Your wounds are gonna open back up if they aren’t taken care of in the next few hours.”

Marko gazed up at the hero. The most severe scowl the Chosen One had ever seen came across the captain’s face.

“Quinn, Renee; can you two move?” he shouted.

“Y-yes, father!” Renee answered.

“Well, I can’t. Come carry me.”

Without another word, his daughters complied. They powered through their own injuries and made their way over to their father. Both with one of his arms over their shoulder, they helped him to his feet. Morgan received one final family glare from the Danniths before Renee brandished her crystal orb and conjured a small whirlwind and carry them off into the early morning’s darkness. It was fortunate none of them bothered to look back. Had they, they would have seen the hero giving them a friendly wave off. That sight would have been a little too much for them.

“What are you going to do if they come after you again?” Veronica asked from behind him.

She was merciful enough to leave his ears alone, but her disappearing and reappearing at the drop of a dime still made him as uneasy as ever.

“I’ll beat them again if they do.”

“And what if ‘beating them’ isn’t enough?”

“Then I’ll just have to kill them a second time.”

“Why not kill them now though? I don’t get it.”

“Good thing it’s not for you to get. If I want to kill someone I will, and if I don’t I won’t.”

Veronica sighed and gave up the debate. She knew that a stubborn Chosen One was just a waste of time arguing with.

“Mom, can we go home now?” Agnes asked, approaching with Tito beside her.

“Sure, sweetie. Just hop on mommy’s broom.”

Agnes did so, wrapping one around her mother’s waist to secure her balance. She then tapped her knee to usher Tito onboard. Morgan looked on curiously. Just how was a fully-grown Rottweiler supposed to get on top of a broom that was already carrying two people? The hound barked and jumped after its young master. In mid-jump, a puff of smoke swallowed him and he flew out as a puppy. The little Rottie landed on Agnes’s lap and snuggled up to her.

Tito, it appeared, knew more tricks than the average hellhound.

“Oh! I can’t leave without giving you this first,” said Veronica.

The Dragon Witch performed one of her signature tricks – pulling things from her cleavage out of nowhere. The number of objects Veronica seemed able to cache between her breasts seemed larger than anything any satchel he had owned had been able to carry. Granted, the object she withdrew and presented to the hero wasn’t as ludicrous as some previous artifacts of hers had been.

“An envelope? And it’s addressed to me?”

“You don’t have a phone or computer, so I had to go the vintage route. To keep it pristine, I gave it an enchantment that would make it and its contents invincible, but you’ll have to wait until around evening for the enchantment to wear off.”

“Okay… What’s inside?”

"Something I know you've been looking for. You can thank me now."

"Don't you mean 'you can thank me later'?"

"The last thing you’re going to want later is to thank me.”

“...What does that mean?”

She only giggled in response. A stranger would have been bewitched by such a gorgeous woman's charming reaction, but Morgan was likely the only man on Earth who knew better. It took several years’ exposure to the most notorious of the Witches of the Oblivion for Morgan to develop so thorough an immunity against her charms. Veronica knew this, and it was why her games with the Chosen One were always her most fun.

The Dragon Witch blew Morgan a kiss as she, Agnes, and Tito lifted off together. They all flew off to only God knew where in the Emerald City. After they vanished from view, he examined the envelope he was given more carefully. It smelled of the perfume the witch had been wearing, as anything that sandwiched between a woman’s breasts for however long it was would. It also had in the corner a cutesy little drawing of a witch with the words “Welcome home Mr. Hero~" written beside it. He tried to pry it open but failed, the enchantment protecting its seal proving too strong.

Trying to force it open could have resulted in its contents being damaged, and Morgan didn’t want that. He had countless questions that he was sure whatever was inside the envelope would provide answers for. He was eager, but he could be patient until tomorrow evening. What was one more day’s wait after all to someone who had been away from home for ten years?

Morgan looked toward what he felt was East and saw that the morning horizon was finally starting. He then recalled Linda’s words “George doesn’t leave leftovers”. The hero had few answers to the many questions that had emerged that morning, but one thing he did know was that the appetite he worked up was exceptional. He finally bid goodbye to his hometown for the moment and started back for Tacoma.