I did not have sex with Minifrit that night, because as usual she was annoyingly right about everything. The work was…exhausting. This might be the weirdest therapy I’d ever heard of and probably wouldn’t fly in any doctor’s office on Earth, but the fact remained that it was therapy, and it was a lot more challenging than it was enjoyable. Having flashbacks and panic attacks repeatedly triggered will take it out of you; we just didn’t get that far before I was too wiped out to keep going. I think it was less than an hour, in the end, before she declared that I needed to rest and take time to process everything, and slipped off back to her room. At that point I didn’t have it in me to argue.

I was too keyed up to actually sleep, of course, and oddly not because I’d just had an hour of intermittent foreplay that went nowhere; it wasn’t that kind of keyed up. The traumatic episodes were just…a lot. But on top of that, this crazy idea seemed to be working; at least, it felt like the flashes had grown less intense as we were deliberately setting them off and working through them. Maybe? It wasn’t like there was an objective scale I could use to weigh them, I could only judge using the increasingly frayed emotional sensitivity that was being torn further by this very process. It felt like we were actually getting somewhere, at least.

At that point, it was late enough that when I went down to take a hot bath I had the place to myself. And afterward, I slept more easily and more deeply than I had in the longest time.

The nice thing about the morning after was that Minifrit was a consummate professional. There was no awkwardness, or any indication at all that anything of import had happened between us. Under other circumstances I might have felt insulted, but in this case it was reassuring. No, she just turned up at breakfast, exactly her usual self: politely pushing at me as hard as she could without actually challenging my authority.

“Let me get this straight,” I said, setting down my bowl of porridge, which I’d considered trying to eat with chopsticks to make a point but discarded that idea as way too much trouble. “After all that yesterday, you want me to just sit on my thumbs in this fortress all day?”

“Clearly not,” she said with subdued exasperation. “There is plenty to be done around North Watch which doesn’t involve traipsing through the forest and confronting the cat tribe.”

“They need to be dealt with!”

“Very much so. Specifically, they need to be dealt with in the most effective way possible—by a Dark Lord who is well-rested and at the top of his game. You can take a day to catch your breath.”

“I dunno about that reasoning but I do agree with her ultimate conclusion, Lord Seiji,” Sakin chimed in.

“This is mutiny,” I complained. “I am being ganged up on.”

“Kinda the opposite, if you think about it,” commented Aster, who was tucking into her own breakfast next to me. “They probably have the same opinions as yesterday, but nobody was willing to push you when you were that angry. Best we could manage at the time was talking you down from getting yourself killed in the forest.”

“You, too, Aster?”

She shrugged, smiled, and chomped another spoonful.

“I confess I find myself curious,” Minifrit said, barely short of open disdain as she gave Sakin a look out the corner of her eye. “By what reasoning did you arrive at the same conclusion?”

“Why, how could I turn down such a gracious invitation?” he said sweetly. Even when they agreed, these two just had to butt heads about something. “But yes, Lord Seiji, you’ve been gone from the fortress for a while, and we’ve got a lot of the new faces you’ve gathered up here. Regardless of how your extended maneuvers out there may have tired you out, I think it’s an important moment to make your presence felt around North Watch.”

“Crack some heads and assert dominance?”

I did not miss the wary glances shot my way from several nearby tables.

“Wouldn’t really match up with your leadership style, now would it?” Sakin said airily. “On the contrary, I think it’d best serve to have you around so the new blood can see how positively the old blood reacts to you. You’re pretty popular among the troops for a bandit boss, Lord Seiji. That’s an asset; you should leverage it.”

“Hnh,” I grunted, looking over at Aster. “Well, go on, I suppose you agree with them too?”

“I cannot in good conscience weigh in on this, due to my lack of personal objectivity,” she intoned. “We’ve been stomping around in the wilderness and/or the Gutters for weeks and I really wanna take a day to sit quietly in the castle.”

“No reason you can’t do that while I go talk to the cats,” I pointed out.

She just gave me a vintage Aster Look.

“I’m honestly kind of impressed how you can do that with your mouth full.”

“Lord Seiji.” Minifrit gave me one of her own masterful looks, no-nonsense and yet gently supportive. I really needed to have her teach me how to do stuff like that with my face. “The situation is stable. Take the day, rest yourself and reassure our people with your presence. Then settle the cat tribe when you are at your best.”

I sighed, grudgingly, and poked at my porridge with my spoon. Creamed grains with peppers, spices, and little bits of some kind of pickled meat. It was pleasantly filling and not bland; I was actually somewhat annoyed at how much I’d started to like some of the food here. Once you adapted to the sinus-blasting amount of peppers the Fflyr put in everything, it really wasn’t bad.

“Fine. One day.”

So I took the day off.

At least, that was what it felt like to me, coming as it did when I had an immediate need to address the situation with the cat tribe and my plans closer to Gwyllthean were unfolding in my absence. All of this, though, was according to strategy, and as my advisors had pointed out, it wasn’t as if there was nothing to do around North Watch.

In the early days, yeah, it had gotten downright boring out here at times. Back then it was just me, Aster, and Rocco’s old gang, and we’d kept busy by cleaning and fixing things with the knowledge that the fortress would likely finish collapsing before our meager efforts could finish restoring it. Aster and I would be gone for a couple of days once a week on our Gwyllthean trips, and…that was it.

Somehow, since then, this had become a whole organization. There was a command structure, divisions of labor, and North Watch was always full of voices and activity. With new recruits brought in and some of my earlier ones dispersed through the khora and bandit camps near the city, the fortress’s population still hovered around a hundred, though my total followers numbered close to half again that many. Surprisingly enough, considering we were ultimately a big gang of bandits building up toward an insurrection, the atmosphere around North Watch was cheerful and energetic.

Well, that beat the alternative. Best to enjoy the good times before the next disaster; I didn’t allow myself to believe we were ever too far from another one.

My own role had grown and changed, and ironically I was less free than before. With a larger and less intimate core of followers, more people than I could manage to have personal relationships with, it became necessary to cultivate my image in place of that. For one thing, this meant I could no longer join in the training sessions that were a big part of everyone’s daily activities. Oh, I was still getting training, but in private sessions behind closed doors. I still had the martial skills of a guy from modern Japan who’d been practicing for a couple months; I was going to need much better the longer this Dark Lord thing went on. Right now, most of the people we had giving lessons could kick my ass easily, and that was the problem. You couldn’t have the Dark Lord plowed facefirst into the dirt a dozen times a sparring session in front of all his minions. With just a handful of us who had nobody to talk to but each other, that was funny—a bonding experience, even. When we were a nascent army, it was a hazard to morale.

Which was not to say I was a conventional leader; I’d never have been able to pull that off. I bet most Dark Lords, bandit bosses, or military rulers in general didn’t provide the musical entertainment during lunch and dinner, but fuck it. I’d compromise to the extent of not looking weak for their benefit, but these people needed to get used to me as I was, and they’d pry my guitar from my cold, dead fingers. Happily enough this seemed to improve my popularity. If anybody thought playing for the troops was unbecoming a leader, they were too scared of me to say so.

Which would suffice.

Most of what I ended up doing on my day off was…touring. I stood watch over several training sessions, was shown around areas of the castle that had recently been cleaned out or were in the process of being refurbished, inspected all the defenses. Kasser and Minifrit had been doing very well; the walls were all navigable now, with walkways and barricades of akorshil planks in place of the broken spots. They were also heavily watched—every sentry in immediate view of at least two others at all times, as Sakin had recommended, all carrying alarm horns and with barrels containing healing slimes positioned at regular intervals, as well as bottled light slimes. The new gates still weren’t ready to be hung—Harold was working on the hinges and fasteners, but they were large and we didn’t have any other skilled ninwrights to help him—so the open gateway had improvised defenses in the meantime. Spiked barricades covered the open space, light enough to be moved but sturdy enough to mess up an enemy charge, and four guards in the best armor we could scrape together stood right behind them in the gateway itself, supported by crossbow-wielding sentries above.

I guess Sakin was right about my popularity, given how a gaggle of whoever wasn’t currently on duty kept following me everywhere except when I was receiving reports in private, like my detailed sessions with Minifrit and Kasser on their progress. Junko stuck by my side every minute; Aster, by contrast, barely put in an appearance all day, evidently serious about wanting a break. I guess this was the first time in a while I’d been in a position where she didn’t feel I needed a bodyguard. Others came and went as they had time, though of course I had my usual hangers-on.

There were a few who seemed to feel a loyalty toward me that verged on hero worship, which I found uncomfortable in the extreme, though how that manifested depended on the individual. Kastrin, for example, was quiet, focused, and generally good company; you could forget she was there, until she suddenly came out with one of those sly jokes of hers. She was my oldest fan, always hanging around me since I’d first healed her back in Cat Alley. Ydleth’s company was…less comfortable. After I stood up for her during her embarrassing public to-do with Sicellit she seemed to have decided I was the best thing since wyddh and also hovered around, eager to please. Unfortunately, Ydleth was a little…much.

I didn’t think I was being weird about her…uh, condition. Truthfully I still didn’t know what to make of that and just hoped nobody brought it up again. But no, that aside, she was just kind of unpleasant; I quickly came to see how the usually unflappable Sicellit had so dramatically lost patience with her. Ydleth was loud, pushy, seemed to respect no one and was prone to starting arguments. And unlike certain other people who could be described thus, she didn’t have Dark Lord powers to back it up, nor my trademark blend of musical talent, public speaking skills, and roguish good looks. Fortunately Minifrit usually turned up to peel her away for some task before she wore down my patience too much. The handy thing about Ydleth was that she was consistently on some punishment duty or other.

Nothing was perfect, but all told…it wasn’t a bad day. In the end, I had to acknowledge that Aster and Minifrit—and Sakin, I supposed—had been right. I felt better for having taken time to oversee my people, and they seemed happy to have had me around.

In the quiet wind-down after dinner, I decided on a pure whim to take another quick stroll along the walls, just to stretch my legs a bit before retiring for the night. We hadn’t discussed it, so I didn’t know whether Minifrit planned on another “session” that evening, though if she showed up I’d already decided (somewhat regretfully) that I would have to ask for a rain check. If the whole point of taking a day of rest was to be fully charged and ready to deal with the cat tribe at my very best tomorrow, spending part of the night twisting my psyche into knots would be counter-productive. Even if it did mean getting my hands all over a particularly magnificent set of curves. Traumatic flashbacks just suck all the fun out of everything.

For what might have been the first time that day, I was alone, nobody having latched onto me as people wandered away from the mess hall after dinner. Even Junko had finally left my side, apparently reassured that I wasn’t going to disappear again. Doubtless she was off pestering every sucker in my employ who loved dogs more than they feared the Dark Lord; I was pretty sure Junko had identified every soul in this place who would give her snacks in defiance of my orders.

The sentries greeted me but, to my satisfaction, didn’t divert attention from their duty. They’d had a recent reminder that they were the first line of defense against an invisible assassin; I wouldn’t slack off under those circumstances, either. This job, it seemed was mostly given to the most senior crusaders, women from the first group of Cat Alley recruits, though I noted that Jadrin had also pulled this duty tonight, as well as a lanky fellow I’d recently recruited from one of the bandit camps around Gwyllthean.

My steps slowed as I crossed a particular section of wall, turning to gaze out over the darkened khora forest with its multicolored fonds waving gently against the stars. This was the same spot where I’d stumbled to a halt in my first minutes on Ephemera as I fled from Kasser and Harold, the place where I’d seen the alien forest out there and it had sunk in just how far from home I was. Instead of a shadowed ruin of a fortress, though, this was now a well-lit stretch of wall, swept clean of rubble, with crossbow-holding soldiers sworn to me at either end of this stretch between the tower and the main building. Strange… That had only been a few months ago, but already the memory seemed nostalgic. Given time, filled with experiences, perhaps even the khora could become…

No, khora forests were still weird as hell. I missed trees. I guess I was a little more comfortable with it, though.

“They’re watching us, boss,” Biribo said quietly.

A shiver made its way down my spine and I rested a hand on the battlements, resisting the urge to duck down behind them.

“They?”

“Cats. They’ve put sentries out there in the khora. In perches high up.”

“Are they going to attack?”

“Hmm… Well I can’t read minds, but this looks to me like a defensive posture. We got nine individuals, widely separated, up in rough hunting blinds. That seems more like sentries—not even as many as we have on the walls. And only arranged along the side between North Watch and their village, not encircling us. Also there’s a bigger group of ‘em, way out at the very edge of my senses, but just holding there. If I was planning an attack, this isn’t how I’d start. Looks like they’re just keeping an eye on us. Standing ready in case we make a move.”

“Not unreasonable for them to do,” I murmured, staring out in the deep shadows amid the khora fronds, where apparently there were cat people staring back at me. I couldn’t see them, but on the well-lit walls, I knew I would be easily visible. “Well. I’ll settle them tomorrow.”

“This ain’t gonna be like anybody you’ve dealt with before, boss. They’re just trying to live in the shadow of greater powers. Most likely they’re already afraid of you, and feel cornered. The tribe’s less malicious than a lot of the fuckers we’ve had to deal with, but cornered people do stupid shit.”

“Yeah, I know. We have a lot more to offer each other as allies, and that’s what I’ll emphasize. I probably won’t get out of there without having to make some kind of show of force, but… In the end it comes down to mutual self-interest. Ruling them by force is way too much trouble and I’m not willing to wipe them out. We’ll have to settle on…something.”

He made no reply, just buzzing softly over my shoulder as usual. After another few seconds of contemplation, I resumed my slow course along the wall.

“Lord Seiji,” Kastrin said with a warm smile as I drew close. She was in position just outside the tower door, a sensible assignment for our best shot. “Just taking the night air?”

“One last stretch of the legs,” I agreed. “It’s back to work tomorrow.”

“There’s always something,” she said softly, gazing out into the dark.

“I know you are anyway, but…keep your eyes sharp. Biribo says the cats are lurking out there.”

“I heard,” she nodded. “And suspected, anyway. We’ve never seen them, but there are those tracks that show up in the morning… And we’ve all noticed it, those of us on night duty. Feels like we’re being watched. Sicellit says it’s just tension, but…”

“Sicellit’s probably right, generally speaking, though in this case we actually are being watched.”

“Yeah, well, don’t tell her that,” Kastrin muttered. “There’s no living with her as it is.”

I chuckled, pulling open the tower door. It blocked my view of the forest as I paused just before stepping over the threshold. “Interested in being part of my guard tomorrow when I go see them? I can’t promise it’ll be a safe assignment, but I could use a crack shot on hand in case things go south.”

She turned from her steady perusal of the forest, grinning, and opened her mouth to reply.

“DUCK!” Biribo yelled suddenly.

Neither of us even had time to comply. The arrow whipped out of the darkness and his shout only gave me enough warning to be watching directly when it slammed through Kastrin’s head. She toppled silently off the wall.

To my eternal shame, I was frozen completely by shock for a full second. It lasted until a second arrow hit the door next to me, its head penetrating through the akorshil plank centimeters from my eye.

Warning horns blared from multiple points along the wall; I heard someone scream, and at the other end of the stretch of wall before me Jadrin dropped smoothly to one knee, taking aim between crenelations with her crossbow. She didn’t fire, though, unable to spot a target. More shafts whistled as they came out of the night, shooting over the battlements now that there were no easy targets and apparently just peppering the grounds at random.

I filled my lungs to capacity in one breath and roared with the absolute maximum projection my trained voice could manage, “GET THE KIDS INSIDE!”

“Boss, the main group’s coming closer!” Biribo shrilled. “The snipers are keeping us pinned down so they can attack! Looks like a force of about forty—it’s a full raid!”

I dropped to the floor, lurching to the inner edge of the wall so I could peer over it at the crumpled form at its base.

“Heal!”

I immediately cursed my haste—Healing her with that shaft through her skull would only… But it didn’t matter. The spell failed to activate as it had no valid targets. You can’t heal a corpse.

This was what happened because I took a day off.

Turning, I rushed inside the tower and down the stairs to the base, intercepting the two armed women in there who were trying to run up the same stairs to reinforce the wall.

“No!” I shouted at them. “Get down and cover the gates!”

We burst out into a courtyard in pandemonium. Unarmed people were fleeing inside the fortress or towers, while others bearing weapons rushed forward to join the fray. I saw someone else drop with a strangled scream as an unlucky arrow landed on them. They were still alive, though, so I diverted my attention for the moment.

As I’d expected, the gate was the weakest point. Three of the watchers there had gotten into cover behind the walls, but one was lying behind the barricades with an arrow sticking up from her chest. As I turned to take in the situation, the woman nearest me lunged forward, trying to grab her friend and pull her back into safety. She immediately cried out as she was pinned down by another shaft.

Then Aster was there, charging fearlessly into the open. Greatsword still strapped to her back, she bent and grabbed both fallen sentries, hauling them bodily back into shelter. Two more arrows struck her, sticking in her coat and failing to make any impression on the artifact chain mail beneath it.

“Lord Seiji,” said one of the tower sentries I’d dragged out with me, “what do we do?”

The rage had washed over me before I’d noticed it coming, but this time it brought crystal clarity and heightened alertness, along with an eerie kind of calm floating over the roaring sea of bloodlust. Not the same as the Wisdom perk that shielded me from pain, just… An overdose of adrenaline. And to my own surprise, within its grip I found myself forming a plan.

“Everyone to me!” I shouted. “Those on this side of the gates—don’t cross the gap if you’re over there, get inside the tower and up to the battlements! The rest of you, form up behind me. I want a rank—no, three ranks of archers right behind this point. See where the arrows have fallen? That’s their range, form up within the shelter of the wall and they can’t hit you. You! You and—okay, everybody with a sword come forward. Crossbowmen behind them, shoot through the gaps. When they come through the gates, this is the killzone. You will tear them apart. Aster, take the lead here.”

She was already moving into position next to me, sword in hand. To either side of us, bandits with a variety of swords were spacing themselves out to either side of her, leaving room between them for our archers to shoot through. A hasty line of women and a few men had formed behind them, dropping to kneel with a second line still getting into position at their backs, ready to fire over their shoulders. Others were straggling into place in the third rank I’d called for, loading bolts and preparing to take over when the second rank dropped. Fortunately this was one of the maneuvers Sakin had trained them in. Behind them, more stragglers were rushing forward with healing slimes to treat the wounded.

“This formation won’t hold long,” Aster said curtly.

I knew that, but I’d just had an idea. A wonderful, terrible, Dark Lord of an idea.

“Maybe not against a charge,” I replied. “But when they come rushing in here in a panic, it’ll do. No hesitation, no mercy. When you’re out of ammo, then consider taking prisoners.”

She nodded. “What are you going to do?”

“What I do best. Hold this line, Aster.”

I turned and dashed back into the fortress. Through the front gates, to the side and up the angled staircase. Again, I found myself repeating the run I’d made when I first landed in this fortress—this time with the same urgency as before. Except that instead of fleeing for my life, I was charging toward bloody retribution. Ignoring the shouts of those I passed, I made it all the way up to the door to the observation platform where I had first used spell combination, discovered Immolate, and inflicted it on two men who would somehow, eventually, forgive me.

This time, there was a ladder against the wall, thanks to Kasser’s ongoing repairs, leading up to a trapdoor that opened onto the actual tower roof. My limbs burning with adrenaline and fury, I practically flew up the rungs, punching the trapdoor so hard its latch tore loose, and in the next second I was standing on the flat top of North Watch’s highest tower, looking out over the fortress all around me, the dark forest spread out at my feet, the shape of the mountain rising up in the distance behind.

Still, my enemies were invisible, snipers hidden among the fronds while those moving forward to attack properly hadn’t yet emerged from beneath their shelter. But I was well out of their range up here, if they could even see me.

I fixed my gaze on one towering khora just beyond the front gates and closest to the walls, one of those with huge spiked plates like a moose’s antlers which sprouted waving fronds. Distantly, it occurred to me I probably should have tested this down there before I’d climbed up here to this vantage; if it didn’t work I had just wasted all that energy and abandoned my forces for nothing. But it should work. They were living things, after all.

I pointed and roared into the night.

“Immolate!”

Oh, it worked all right.

Orange fire rent the darkness as every bit of soft tissue in the huge khora combusted. The gently waving fronds disintegrated immediately, giving way to gouts of seething fire. Every aperture in its shell was lit up like a furnace—no, it became a furnace, a towering structure of armor plates from within which flames spewed in every direction.

My face was twisted in a grin of cruel triumph.

You want blood? You’ve got it.

Immolate! Immolate! Immolate! Immolate! Immolate! Immolate! Immolate! Immolate! Immolate! Immolate! Immolate! Immolate! Immolate! Immolate!

I turned in a complete circle, casting my spell of ultimate horror at every khora in a line around North Watch’s walls. In seconds, we were encircled by a ring of fire, and the forest outside became a very inhospitable place to be. Then, having come back to my starting point, I began igniting more of them in a line away from the gates, creating a swath of pure hell leading straight over the path the raiders would have to take to our gates.

Attack my home? My people? Then you can all fucking BURN. And tomorrow, the rest of them would be next!

Savage vindication gave way to confusion when, suddenly, a khora at which I hadn’t even aimed yet burst into flame.

What? These things were explicitly not flammable; this only worked because of goddess-granted magic. The underbrush might ignite, but other than that the flames couldn’t spread. It wasn’t like a forest of wood and leaves…

But it did. As I watched, confused, more of them went up. It began extending out from us on all sides of the ring; one after another, khora burst alight, fronds dissolving into hungry tongues of flame. And the more it spread, the faster it spread, until my ring of fire was inexplicably racing in all directions past the edge of my vision.

And only then did my stomach plummet sickeningly as I realized what I’d just done.

I remembered Aster casually explaining, on that first walk into Gwyllthean, that khora plantations could only be cultivated on islands where they grew wild; that they spread through underground root networks. Kasser, excitedly telling me that North Watch stood in what he called a “tangle,” an area where multiple different khora species intermixed. He’d been so happy at being able to harvest materials from so many kinds.

They weren’t trees; they weren’t like trees, except maybe aspens. Or mycelium. Each free-standing shell was only the surface part, one node of a vast organism spreading across the island beneath its surface. Of multiple such beings.

I had just sent the effects of my Immolate blazing through every one of them, and it wouldn’t stop until it covered the entirety of Dount.

My fierce triumph was gone in an instant, and with it the rage, leaving me in mental freefall as I grappled with the enormity of what I had just viciously set in motion.

Dear god, the plantations. There was an unstoppable tidal wave of fire racing toward Gwyllthean—right through the half-gathered harvest. Countless little villages and Clan estates stood right on the edges of khora groves, with no idea they were all about to burn. The beastfolk tribes—not just the cats attacking me, but every tribe’s village. My people were out there, encamped amid the khora and totally unaware of what was about to roar across them. Somewhere out there, Sato was alone in the darkness as it dissolved into fire all around him. Somewhere else, the lone, desperate dark elf who’d tried to help us was the same.

Fuck, I’d just remembered that those root systems ran through the goblin tunnels; the ability to extract reagents from them directly was most of why goblin alchemy was more advanced than the Fflyr’s despite their relative lack of resources. And to the west, where the khora marched into a swamp that became the lake in which stood Shylverrael… All that water was about to flash into steam as the khora themselves began to blaze. Right through the lizardfolk and naga colonies which answered to the Viryan city. The dark elves were going to have…opinions about this.

That was as far as I got in my mental tally of the unfolding catastrophe before I suddenly learned something new: khora had voices.

They came in at the edges of hearing, beginning to appear from beyond both the upper and lower registers of human perception. The noise reminded me simultaneously of whalesong and the subsonic vibrations of an earthquake, at once piercing and booming. I didn’t even know if they normally sang and I just couldn’t hear it, or if they only cried out when they were suffering. If their voices only grew intense enough to be heard when they were in the extremity of pain.

I stood on my tower, surrounded by an endless ocean of fire of my own creation, listening to the island itself wail in agony beneath me, cut through by the constant roar of fire. I could barely hear my own unbidden whisper, in English.

“I am become death, the shatterer of worlds.”

Then, finally, blessedly, the Wisdom perked kicked in and I was floating coldly above it, able to think clearly again.

The immediate situation was…probably resolved. If the attackers hadn’t been wiped out entirely by this, the rest would probably try to escape through the invitingly open gates of the fortress, the only place not actively on fire, only to be cut down by the massed crossbows ready and waiting for them. My plan was working and my people were safe. That was one crisis handled.

There were a whole lot more now unfolding crises I was going to have to start dealing with immediately. First off, I noted that this burn effect was already lasting far longer than Immolate usually did. Was its duration relative to the target’s mass? Interesting. The first thing to—

“Boss.”

Biribo, I observed, was glowing. This I had never seen before. A silver aura blazed around him like concentrated moonlight.

“Wisdom perk unlocked, Dark Lord.”

Fucking Wisdom perks, the rules of this system aggressively refused to make sense. Still, I would take what I could get.

“Good. What did we get this time?”

“Nothing permanent. This one is more of a one-time gift—a perk available only to the Champions of the Goddesses. When a Hero or Dark Lord first unleashes their power on the world in a way that cannot be ignored, they get one…freebie. An unfiltered answer drawn from magic itself, unrestricted by the limits of what a familiar can sense by themselves.”

Yeah…the world would definitely notice this. My carefree days of establishing myself in anonymity were about to come crashing to an end. But if I got a free answer out of it, any answer, to any question… Shit, the trouble was picking one. There was so damn much I didn’t know; prospects flashed across my consciousness almost too rapidly to tally.

“And how long do I have to decide on a question?”

“You don’t pick, boss,” he said apologetically. “It’s assigned to you. That’s the effect of the Blessing.”

Effect of the Blessing, my ass. I was about to see what tidbit Virya thought would produce the most entertaining show.

“For this one, Dark Lord: your enemy. She is here. It was Lady Gray who incited the cat tribe to attack, and she’s with them, out there beyond the walls. Not killed by the fire, but very much vulnerable to it. And tonight, thanks to this perk, there is no artifact or spell or anything that can hide her from me.”

There were so many things that were so much more objectively important than that bullshit, but in that moment? I could only agree with Virya’s choice. Beneath the cold pall of the Wisdom’s emotional protection, beneath the horror and the rage that surged outside this unnatural bubble of calm, there was a thread of satisfaction. I grabbed it like a lifeline.

Finally.

Damage control later; right now?

No more fucking cockroach.

“Bring me to her.”