The Zombie Knight

The battle with Kallmakk went on for days and carried all of them across the vast expanses of the Ardoran continent. Several times, he thought they might’ve left some of the Vanguardians behind entirely, but most of them eventually caught back up and continued the fight.

In the beginning, he didn’t even know the feldeath’s name, but Morgunov eventually ended up explaining quite a bit, during the fleeting moments of downtime that they managed to acquire for themselves in the midst of all the chaos.

Gohvis-Aeha wished he hadn’t been saddled with this mission. Of all the places to be deployed, this had to have been the shittiest one, right? He was virtually certain. If he had more opportunity to meditate and convene with the others, then he would’ve confirmed it. And complained to them, no doubt.

As it was, though, he could only maintain a weak node within the network--and even that ended up getting destroyed repeatedly and needing to be rebuilt each time the fight demanded too much of his concentration.

Voreese followed close behind. ‘Y’know, it’s cute ‘n all, the way you both fuss over each other so much, but perhaps I should remind you that she HAS come out of her shell quite a bit since you two met. And she IS a grown ass woman. With quite a bit of backbone, in my opinion. You don’t need to act like an overprotective babysitter. If the Rainlords were asking her to do something that she didn’t want to do, I’m pretty sure she’d have the lady balls to tell them no herself.’

‘Weren’t you the one talking shit about the Rainlords, not so long ago?’

‘Who, me? Of course not. I would never talk shit about anyone.’

“Hah.” Roman picked up his pace. This damn unnamed tower had so many stairs.

‘Ooh, you’re really worried about her, huh? Wow. What, been too long since you last saw her? A whole three hours, maybe? My, my.’

‘Okay, stop deflecting by making good points. I’m trying to tease you here, and that’s annoying.’

‘Subtle, as always, Voreese.’

‘So are you in love with her, or what?’

Roman shook his head and sighed but didn’t slow down. ‘Voreese...’

‘What?’

‘We’ve discussed this. Several times.’

‘Yeah, so why not add one more?’

‘If only you would stop at one...’

‘Heh. Maybe I would, if you ever gave me some answers that actually satisfied me. Weird, huh? Almost like you’re full of shit or something.’

Roman just ignored her.

‘You’re really not gonna pursue her, just because of some old vow? I think that’s dumb. You’re dumb. Stop being dumb.’

‘Shut up.’

‘No.’

‘It’s not just because of some old vow, and you know that.’

‘Oh, you mean because you don’t want to hurt her? Afraid of going back to your playboy ways and breaking her heart? Well, maybe you could just, y’know, control yourself, instead?’

He sighed again. ‘Which is exactly what I’m doing.’

‘Yeah, but not like that!’

‘Oh, okay. Thanks. You’re really helping me along on my journey of self-reflection and discovery. I’m sure this thing that’s been tormenting me for years will be fixed in no time, now.’

‘Alright, alright. I’m sorry. I just want to see you happy, is all. Genuinely, I mean. Instead of the facade you put up all the time.’

‘This bites,’ said Voreese. ‘Now that we know there’s definitely a secret here, it’s going to bother the shit out of me until we figure it out.’

‘Which could be never,’ said Roman.

‘That is not helping my mental state, right now.’

‘Hmm. Maybe there’s only one switch, and we just have to press it in the right way. Like with rhythmic timing or something.’

‘Ugh, god. You wanna just head back and start pressing it over and over again, hoping to get lucky?’

‘I mean... no. But it’s worth a shot, I guess, considering we have no other leads. I’m not sure going around this giant tower, hoping to get lucky with finding another incredibly well-hidden switch is any better. Especially considering there could be MANY more switches. Hell, they could even be in the other towers, for all we know.’

‘Aw, fuck me. When you put it like that, it seems pretty obvious that we need to enlist some help.’

Roman gave a nod. ‘Sure, but everyone around here has a lot goin’ on. And I don’t know if I want to drag them into some wild goose chase.’

‘Not the kids. I’m sure they’ll love a wild goose chase. Just gotta turn it into a game.’

He scratched his chin. ‘Hmm. That might actually work. And I bet the kids could use the distraction, too. I doubt they’re thrilled about being cooped up down here all the time.’

‘Hah. Spoken like someone who hasn’t been paying much attention to them. Most of the little scamps seem to love this place.’

‘Really? That’s surprising.’

‘Why? There’s so much shit around here to explore, and they have plenty of friends to play with. Gina’s been getting them access to all sorts of entertainment, too. Books, TV shows, movies, video games. You name it, they’ve probably got it.’

‘Damn. Gina’s been doing all that? I did think she seemed busier than usual, lately.’

‘Yeah, some of the Rainlords asked her to assist them with setting up a makeshift academy for the kiddos while they’re stuck here. Don’t want them to fall behind on their educational development because of all the bullshit goin’ on.’

‘Sounds like a lot of work to be dumping on Gina. She doesn’t need more on her plate.’

‘Maybe so, but it wasn’t like they forced her into it. She just likes to help out.’

‘Believe me, I know.’

‘You worried she’ll burn herself out?’

Roman let his feet touch the floor, and he started walking. ‘She has a nasty habit of taking care of everyone except herself. I should go check on her, actually.’

Roman pressed the stone a few more times, just to make sure that it hadn’t triggered anything, then he looked around the room anew.

He’d been on autopilot just now as he’d let his mind wander, but with the realization that there was indeed something to be discovered here, he was suddenly eyeing every single stone much more carefully. Surely, there had to be some sort of visible clue.

But no. He still couldn’t see anything. Even upon closer inspection of the one stone that he knew to be some sort of switch, he still saw nothing peculiar about it when it was in its default position.

“Goddammit,” he mumbled. “Who fucking built this shit, huh? It looks completely seamless. No gaps between the stones where the switch is. How’d they even manage to pull that off? That seems impossible.”

‘You’re talking aloud,’ said Voreese, privately.

‘Oh. Sorry.’

The reaper hovered around his shoulder, eyeing the same spot he was. ‘But on second thought, maybe Stasya sneaked this into the building plans. You’re right that this seems suspiciously well-crafted.’

‘If she did, then why didn’t you already know about it?’

‘Hey, it wasn’t like I stuck around her every second that she was building it. She was working on this place for a long ass time.’

‘Ah. And you got bored and went off on your own for a while, didn’t you?’

Voreese made no response.

Which was strange enough to make Roman pause and look at her. ‘Voreese?’

Rather than biting back at him with another insult, as he’d been expecting, she shook her head, and her tone turned somber again--even more so than before, in fact. ‘Yes... I did leave her alone.’

Roman was confused. What was she--?

Oh.

‘I’m sure that didn’t have anything to do with her going mad,’ said Roman, trying quite hard to not sound like a sarcastic prick. ‘There’s no sense in blaming yourself, if that’s what’s bothering you.’

But again, Voreese merely remained quiet.

Well, shit.

Now he didn’t know what to say.

He decided to begin blindly pressing stones again. If this one by itself hadn’t done the trick, then there had to be others around here somewhere. Maybe they needed to be pressed in some sort of sequence.

He kept at it for a while, though, and eventually became discouraged when he still hadn’t found a single new switch.

It had taken a while, of course. Years. And even now, he didn’t feel like he’d completed that transformation. Sure, he swaggered around as if he’d figured it all out already, as if every bit of his wealth had been accumulated as a matter of course.

As if dumb luck hadn’t decided most of his life for him.

But he knew the truth. Deep down, he knew. This so-called “empire” that he’d been building for himself--for Voreese and for Atreya, too--it was all still as fragile as a glass flute. It played a pretty tune, true, but one false move, and it would shatter.

Leo had seen right through it. The facade. The veneer of money. For a while now, Roman had been wanting to believe that Leo’s assessment of him had been off the mark--or just an unfortunate coincidence, perhaps--but increasingly, he was coming to the realization that, no, that guy had hit the bullseye.

Which shouldn’t have been so surprising, really. Leo, for all his faults and oddness, was one of the oldest servants in the world. Roman’s amateurish “confidence” must have been plain as day to that guy.

Agh.

Money. When he first got his hands on it, he remembered thinking hard about his plans for it all. About how he wouldn’t be like so many other rich assholes and just hoard it for no reason. About how he would find good uses for it wherever he could. Responsible uses for it.

But that certainly hadn’t been easy. More responsibility meant a more complicated life. And while he hadn’t lost faith in his original intentions, a part of him had a tiny bit more sympathy for those same hoarding assholes that he previously so despised. Saving his money for a rainy day certainly would’ve been easier. And it would’ve come in handy, too.

Egh. Nah. Those guys could still go fuck themselves. In fact, maybe he should--

His hand depressed against a stone, bringing Roman’s attention back to the present.

He wasn’t even sure how many of these rooms he’d been through now--or on what floor of the tower he was, for that matter.

But at least they’d found something. He pulled his hand back, and the stone shifted back into place.

He looked around at the empty chamber--and at Voreese, as well--but nothing appeared to have changed. He pressed the stone again, and indeed, it moved again, but nothing happened.

‘Aw, shit,’ said Voreese. ‘It’s a goddamn puzzle, isn’t it? I hate puzzles.’

Perhaps that was a strange way to look at it. He was technically immortal, after all. He was literally unable to die on his own.

And yet... the more time he spent as a servant, the more tales he heard about servants of the past, and the more he saw of other, older servants around him... the clearer it became to him that things weren’t so simple as all that. Surely, it was no coincidence that, despite the long history of reapers and humanity as a whole, the oldest living servants were still only a few hundred years old.

Voreese fell quiet for a while, and Roman did the same. As he went through the motions of mindlessly checking wall after wall, stone after stone, for some sort of secret passageway, he allowed his mind to wander, again, into the larger questions about this very odd life that he’d found himself living.

About what the future might hold in store for him.

He realized that, if he was being totally honest with himself, this immortality didn’t feel so at all. In his gut, when it came to the subject of death, he had this looming sense of inevitability--much more so than before he’d become undead. Like it might just be around the corner, somehow.

But it didn’t bother him.

Maybe because he’d already felt death once before. Maybe this was just an in-built adaptation that all servants had. He’d have to ask some others about that, sometime. Though, he suspected that Hector might be the exact wrong person to consult. And the Rainlords, too, for that matter. Hmm.

He remembered a time when he’d felt invincible. Multiple times, in fact, both before and after meeting Voreese. Naturally, when he’d discovered his new undead powers as a servant, that had been quite the confidence booster, until he’d learned more about how dangerous the world really was. But it was the times from before that were sticking in his mind, now.

Back when he’d been poor as dirt. Somehow, that hadn’t seemed to affect his confidence at all. Not in those days. If anything, it had emboldened him. Perhaps it had been because he’d had nothing to lose. If his life was already at rock bottom, then the only way was up, right?

All that verve eventually caught up with him, of course, when his life of thievery led him into biting off more than he could chew.

At the time, anyway.

Once he’d revived, he discovered that he could suddenly chew quite a bit more. And his appetite had increased, as well.

With Voreese’s help, his fortune accumulated quickly. Getting back at the rich bastard who’d killed him turned into something much more than just revenge. That score had been unlike any other. And it had allowed him to begin building himself into someone entirely new.

Roman breathed a laugh. ‘Really? The way you’ve been singing her praises, I thought you considered her some sort of angelic being, too pure and good for this world.’

‘Heh. Maybe. Life certainly wasn’t fair to her, which earned her a lot of sympathy points from me. But she was still a flawed human being, like the rest of us.’

Roman stopped for a moment as another question occurred to him, but he thought better of asking it.

Voreese took notice of the abrupt silence, however. ‘Now you’re wondering why I released her, aren’t you?’

He gave the reaper a look and just sort of nodded.

She sighed. ‘To make a very long story short... she went mad.’

Roman said nothing.

‘Thankfully, she didn’t hurt anyone. It wasn’t really that type of insanity. But that also made it a much more difficult decision. For a long time, I thought it would be okay to just let things continue as they were. Madness is a somewhat subjective perception, anyway, right? And if she wasn’t hurting anybody, then what was the harm in just letting her be?’

‘Damn... so why’d you finally decide to do it?’

‘Because I just... couldn’t take it, anymore. For my own sanity, I felt like I had to.’

He nodded glumly. ‘I can only imagine how difficult that must’ve been.’

‘She just wasn’t even there, anymore. The young woman I’d come to know and care for--she was gone. Replaced with constant, incoherent ramblings. I kept thinking that maybe she could come back from it. Or that maybe I was at fault, somehow. Like she’d ascended to a new level of intelligence that my meager mind could no longer comprehend. But no. Eventually, I came to the conclusion that those things were just wishful thinking and that keeping her as my servant was not an act of compassion. And I guess I also worried that, as she continued to grow in strength, she really would become a danger to everyone around her.’

Roman frowned. More questions bubbled up in his mind regarding other servants she’d had over the years, but as he mulled it over, he wasn’t even sure he wanted such answers.

After all, he was on that exact same path, himself. Would hearing about his predecessors in this endeavor help him to avoid a similar fate?

He wanted to say yes. Of course he wanted that.

But in the recesses of his mind, he felt differently. And strongly.

This undead life was borrowed time. He’d known that ever since Voreese made that offer to him.

‘Dunno,’ said Roman. ‘He seems just fine to me.’

‘Oh yeah? Well, then, it must be true, because there’s no way your young, inexperienced ass could be mistaken, right?’

‘Pulling the age card, huh? What a surprise.’

‘Damn right. And I’m not sorry, either. You’ll just have to forgive me if I decide to trust my instincts over yours.’

‘Not like I was expecting different.’ The notion of using brute force was sticking in his mind, and Roman decided to invoke his power just a bit. He slammed the wall with a wave of force, knocking up a thin spray of dust from the floor but otherwise not even making the stones tremble.

‘Getting frustrated?’

‘A bit.’ He tried again, putting more oomph into it.

It made no difference. The wall budged not a whit, nor did any of the individual stones, as far as he could tell.

“Geez,” he muttered under his breath.

‘Feeling inadequate?’

‘Shut up.’

He could’ve put even more power into his next attempt, but he decided to just move on to the next room. He’d be here all night if he didn’t pick up the pace. Hell, he probably still would, anyway. These towers were too damn big.

Which motivated his next question.

‘Why did Stasya make this place so friggin’ huge?’

‘She wanted it to be a hub between the surface and the Undercrust.’

‘Yeah, you mentioned that before, but still, was this size really necessary for that? I mean, the “Warrenhole” as you call it, is only so big. That’d limit how many people could come and go from above and below. There’s no way all this space would be necessary to handle the traffic. And even if it was, she could’ve just added more to the castle later, when it became relevant. But from the way you’ve described it, she didn’t do that, right? She made all this at once?’

‘It took her many years, but yeah. She never stopped work until she was done.’

‘So then why? This just seems so excessive.’

Voreese’s ethereal, avian eyes held on him for a moment. ‘You’re not wrong. In fact, I remember saying something much the same to her, myself. I didn’t exactly appreciate hanging around here, doing jack shit for years, while she toiled away in silence.’

‘How’d she respond?’

‘She told me she didn’t expect me to understand. And that if I was bored, I should leave.’

‘Harsh.’

‘Yeah, she was kind of a bitch, sometimes.’

Roman was getting fed up, but not with Voreese. This was just business as usual. No, he was getting annoyed with this search. All these damn stones looked identical. He decided to try pushing on some of them at random, since there were no discernible marks or clues anywhere.

‘Did you see something?’ said Voreese.

‘Nope,’ said Roman. ‘But I figure, if there’s a secret or something, then maybe it’s so secret that there are no visible hints. Maybe you’ve just gotta know the exact right spot to press.’

‘That’d be a pain in the ass for a normal person to remember, unless they were using it all the time.’

‘Or unless they had a reaper to remember for them.’

‘It sure would help if I could sense through these walls.’

‘That would make Warrenhold much less secure, though.’

‘Yeah, yeah. Stasya knew what she was doing.’

‘Do you ever get claustrophobic in this place?’ said Roman, still trying different stones as he hovered along the length of the chamber. ‘It must feel way different for you compared to being up on the surface, right? Where you can sense stuff in all directions?’

‘Claustrophobic? Nah. But you are right that it’s quite different. Wouldn’t surprise me if some other reapers found this place very uncomfortable. Me, though, I’ve come to find it quite cozy. Nice ‘n safe.’

‘Hmm. S’pose it helps that these walls are borderline unbreakable.’

‘It sure does.’

‘Has nobody managed to punch a hole through one yet?’

‘Not that I know of,’ said Voreese. ‘But I did see Hector testing them on his own the other day. I don’t think he was doing tests with brute force, though.’

‘What kind of tests was he doing, then?’

‘I didn’t actually ask him. Didn’t want to bother him.’

‘Didn’t want to--? Excuse me? Were you unwell? Had you just seen some flying pigs? Had Hell frozen over?’

‘Hah. Actually, I just kind of enjoyed watching him from afar. Seeing what he was getting up to all on his own. You can learn a thing or two about someone by observing them when they think nobody is around.’

‘Oh, so you were stalking him.’

‘I was silently and respectfully observing him! Nothing weird or creepy about it!’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘I mean, are you not worried about him at all?’ said Voreese. ‘That battle with Banda Toro was no fuckin’ joke. I wouldn’t be surprised if it had gotten to him a bit. Psychologically, I mean.’

‘How’d you first find her?’ asked Roman as he scanned the gray stones in front of him, squinting and lifting his lantern up even higher.

‘Heh. I saw her drawing on a big stone monument with a hunk of charcoal. She was just a little kid. Turned out, that stone monument was an important religious symbol in her village, marking passage into the afterlife. She caught hell for that stunt from her parents. Smacked her around like you wouldn’t believe. Tough to watch, even back in those days when child abuse was hardly a concept.’

‘Damn.’

‘That charcoal drawing of hers, though--it had been of fractals. Not that I understood that at the time. Wasn’t until centuries later, looking back, that I realized the significance. But it had been striking enough imagery to make me take notice of this strange little girl who seemed to already be the black sheep of her community. And honestly, I’m not even sure she understood her accomplishment at that time, either.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Stasya was... well, she was probably more brilliant than anyone I’ve ever known--and I’ve known A LOT of people--but at the same time, she was also kinda... stupid, quite frankly. Or at least, that’s what it seemed like to me.’

‘You’ve lost me.’

‘Agh. It was like... she had an intuitive understanding of the world--an ability to perceive patterns and make connections that no one else could. But she had no ability to explain her thought processes. She could solve almost any problem you put in front of her, but she couldn’t teach you how she’d done it. And that really tormented her, I think. Made her feel isolated. On a deep, existential level.’

Roman bobbed his head a little as he tried to imagine that. ‘Hmm. And you called that stupidity? Seems a bit harsh.’

‘In its own way. Social intelligence seems to come easily enough to you, but for some people, it’s a whole different animal. And she struggled with that more than anything else in her life, I think.’

‘...Did you just compliment me?’

‘It’s a shame you’re such a dumbass by every other intellectual metric.’

‘Are you sure your constant insults weren’t what was REALLY tormenting her?’

‘Psh. I was way nicer to her than I am to you.’

‘...That’s still not saying much, honestly.’

‘Oh, quit your whining. You know I love you, right?’

‘Do I?’

‘When you’re not being a dumb bitch, yeah. Of course you know that.’

‘Do you really think we’re going to find anything?’ said Roman.

‘I don’t know,’ said Voreese. ‘That’s the point of searching, my dear boy. To dispel uncertainty.’

‘Okay, but you were the reaper of this place’s creator. So shouldn’t you already know about any hidden areas?’

‘Sure, apart from, y’know, the thousand-year gap between when I last visited and now. Wouldn’t exactly be surprising to discover that one of its many inhabitants since then made some sneaky additions.’

As Roman was about to respond, he lost the balance of his hovering technique and had to catch himself on the floor. “Tch.” He took a moment to regather his concentration and begin hovering again.

‘Maybe you should focus more on your technique and less on running your mouth,’ said Voreese.

‘Oh, well, my mouth’s not actually moving, so I guess it’s fine,’ said Roman.

‘Heh. Feel free to shut the fuck up, anyway, if the mood strikes you.’

‘It doesn’t. Besides, I’m sure you’d just get bored if I did that.’

‘That’s actually true. I just like telling you to shut the fuck up. Don’t actually do it, though. I’ll get upset.’

‘You’re a complicated woman, Voreese.’

‘Unfortunately, brilliance and simplicity rarely go hand-in-hand. That’s always been my problem. Woe is me.’ And she pretended to cry.

Roman decided to ignore that and change the subject. ‘Wanna tell me more about Warrenhold’s genius creator? Stasya Orlov, wasn’t it?’

‘Oh, you remembered. How uncharacteristically intelligent of you.’

‘Somehow, I knew you were going to say that.’

‘And yet you did nothing to preempt or prevent it. You’re just getting lazy now, aren’t you? Or too comfortable, maybe. Guess I’ll have to find some new way to keep you on your toes.’

‘You know what would really shock me? You giving me a straightforward, sincere answer for a change. Truly, I wouldn’t know what to do.’

‘Sounds lame.’

They arrived at a corridor that branched off into multiple rooms. He picked the nearest one, holding up his lantern as he hovered into the darkness.

The chamber proved larger than he expected, almost big enough to be a banquet hall. It was still totally empty, though, so there was no telling what its intended purpose might’ve been. Assuming it even had one.

‘So? What was Stasya like?’

‘The complete opposite of you,’ said Voreese. ‘I really miss her.’

Roman floated toward the far wall. If the point of this venture was to find hidden areas, then he had to inspect the walls thoroughly. Maybe there was a hole or loose stone somewhere.

‘She was a troubled soul, in many ways,’ the reaper went on, unprompted, which surprised Roman. ‘Hated interacting with people. Seemed happiest whenever she could lose herself in her work.’

Roman hovered through the air as he made his way through one of the two still-unnamed towers of Warrenhold. The stony floors were still dusty enough that he could make out visible tracks in them from where people had walked through in recent weeks--and maybe months, judging from the more faded tracks. Those might’ve belonged to the initial survey team that Hector had employed to help him explore and map out the castle grounds.

At the moment, this particular tower was only being used for storage--and only a little. Even when all the Rainlords had been present, this gigantic castle had not felt terribly crowded. The six named towers had been plenty spacious enough for everyone and everything. These other two had only been used for storing materials that were relevant to the castle’s all-important hydroelectric generator, which sat below one of them.

Roman had been internally debating whether they should dub that one the Generator Tower. These things needed names, and it would be fitting. But on the other hand, perhaps it would be better to be more discreet about the location of the generator. The more obvious they made it, the more vulnerable it might be to some form of sabotage in the future.

Yeah.

That’s probably what Hector would say if he broached the subject, Roman decided. The kid was pretty damn concerned about security, he’d noticed.

As he should be, Roman figured. This place had already become a focal point for the safety of the nation, it seemed. If the enemy realized how important Warrenhold was--and how powerful its current inhabitants were--then it was fairly likely that someone would send some manner of infiltrator here, eventually.

Roman intended to be quite vigilant on that front.

As did Voreese. That was one of the reasons why she’d been asking him to pay extra visits to these two empty towers: to make sure there were no secret squatters here. No unexpected visitors. The tracks in the dust were actually helpful to that end. As was he his ability to levitate and avoid leaving tracks of his own.

Plus, it made for decent practice, controlling his power over particle vibrations like this. It required slow, gentle precision on his part. Not like the haphazard flight that he’d grown more accustomed to.

The other reason she’d wanted to visit these towers, however, was because she suspected there were secrets here. Hidden areas that the survey team may have missed.

And to that end, Roman had begun restructuring several of his own companies and organizations in an effort to prepare for the future. Naturally, he’d been hit rather hard by this economic crisis that Atreya had been dealing with, so a restructure had needed to happen, regardless, but he was certainly taking a different approach to it than he would have a year or two ago.

He needed more flexibility. The vast majority of his money was tied up in things. He didn’t like letting it just sit there, doing nothing, when he could instead invest in people who were trying to build things for their communities.

A nice idea, certainly. He’d helped a lot of people that way. Helped create work for tens of thousands of Atreyan citizens, mostly without even meeting any of them.

But now he was thinking that it sure would’ve been helpful if he could’ve freed up more of that cash without having to liquidate entire companies, especially at a time like this when those people needed their jobs more than ever. If he’d invested more into real estate, for example, then he could’ve flipped a bunch of properties and funneled a lot more cash into Hector’s direction during this critical period. Which probably would’ve helped even more people out.

But eh. It was hard to know that for sure. Things were never really so cut and dry, were they? Especially when it came to multi-million troa businesses.

Perhaps he could free up some room with some of his underground workers. Technically, they were criminals, and if he was going keep spending so much time around the new hero of Atreya, it would be risky to keep conducting business via extralegal means; but on the other hand, those businesses were actually the best sources of the “flexibility” that he was looking for. And the criminals he employed would just find work elsewhere if he let them go.

Much worse work, probably. The non-victimless kind. The temptation to which only increased during times like this.

No, it was better to keep those under management. He’d just have to be even more careful than usual.

Thankfully, Warrenhold was a good place to hide. For the time being, anyway. If Hector ever decided to open it up to the public, then Roman would definitely have to leave.

Or disguise himself as a janitor, maybe. That might be fun. Hadn’t done that one in a while.

It was unsettling, to be sure. But also, admittedly, exciting. A mixture of hope and dread. Like he was watching history take shape before his very eyes, every single day.

And increasingly, he questioned his role in things here. A year ago, he and Voreese had been laying their long-visioned plans for building up a new faction of their own. Something that, according to her, would take a century or more before it began to bear any real fruit.

But now, it seemed as though they had been sucked into something entirely different. Voreese, for her part, seemed to have all but forgotten about her previous plan--not that there was any sense of urgency with it, of course. They could always circle back around to it later, Roman supposed.

Assuming they lived that long, of course. Which was kind of the sticking point here.

Their plan, more or less, had been to lay relatively low and accumulate strength, resources, and powerful allies over time. Now, whatever this current plan was--if it could even be called a plan--it seemed to have thrown that first part out the window.

Laying low? Who cared about that?

Sure, Hector and Garovel both came across reasonable enough when they spoke about plans and how to handle whatever the emergent situation at the time was.

But their actions... those told a somewhat different story, Roman felt.

They were just going to keep throwing themselves right into the thick of things, weren’t they? He thought maybe that wouldn’t be the case when they decided to stay here at Warrenhold and not venture off to Vantalay, especially since they’d had multiple motivating opportunities to, but this latest business with Banda Toro had now convinced Roman that Hector was indeed the maniac that he’d been fearing he was.

Damn it all. Roman felt like a dumbass. Why’d he have to go and become friends with a guy like that, huh? Especially right before a gigantic war broke out? Talk about bad timing.

The worst part, though, was that not many other people around Hector seemed to be seeing things the way Roman did. All these reapers and Rainlords. They were ready to do whatever Hector told them. As if he’d been their lord for years, already.

Which meant that, as his friend, Roman had a greater responsibility to not become a yes-man.

To keep his friend balanced.

Where the future of this country was concerned, Roman wasn’t sure there was any more important task than that.

Germal just laughed.

Which only incensed Morgunov further.

But there was no point in voicing it. He hated losing control of his emotions like that and was already regretting it.

No. He was just going to follow through with his promises. And await the day when this smug creature was finally laid low. How thoroughly satisfying that was going to be.

“You’ve fallen silent again,” observed the Liar. “Has our game come to an abrupt end? If so, then ‘tis a shame. Strange as it may sound, I would say that you have indeed answered to my satisfaction. Kehehe. And so it is now your turn, my friend.”

What a piece of shit. In this moment, Morgunov was not sure he had ever hated anyone so much. Anyone--or anything, even.

A disturbance arrived, however, causing sudden havoc with Morgunov’s perception of this empty headspace that they were both trapped in. What in the world was that?

“Ah!” came a new voice. “There you both are! Finally!”

Who was that? Morgunov needed a second to--

“Master?” said Germal.

And Morgunov realized. “Gohvis? How did you find us?”

The Monster of the East ignored both their queries. “What are you two idiots doing? Having a nice chat in some kind of liminal space? How cozy. Meanwhile, I’m trying to prevent a feldeath of darkness from atomizing the pair of you.”

“Oh, the fight’s still going?” said Morgunov. “We thought time was simply moving differently for us in here.”

“It is,” said Gohvis. “I can sense the time dilation. But multiple minutes have still transpired for me outside. Do you realize how long that feels, right now?”

“Ah.”

“Oh.”

“Have you at least managed to talk through your disagreements?” said Gohvis. “This entire fight is pointless. We are all on the same side.”

“If you actually believe that,” said Morgunov, “then Germal’s fooled you even more thoroughly than I thought.”

“Master, please stop interfering. This matter has nothing to do with you.”

“I hate you both so much.”

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