Seeing the Queen of Moths melted down to a pile of blubber made me feel very good indeed. I’d expose Blofm to the memory of it later, if she fancied. I had the impression there’d never been much love lost in that sovereign-subject relationship.

At last, it was just him. His eldritches were dead or gone, and I sent mine home group by group – Mrs. Cuddlesticks was still facing the wrong way, but was otherwise unharmed, at least as far as I could tell. I floated shieldless and entirely unconcerned above the dragon, observing my foe.

Here he was. My captor. My mutilator. A great wyrm, mighty in both sinew and sorcery. A force to be reckoned with, flapping with tattered wings straight out of the pages of story-books and myths.

Lying curled up and broken at my feet. No longer able to scream, nor move. The kind of destruction I’d wrought on him would surely take hours to heal, even for one whose essence was now bound into the shape of a lich. I could see sliced scales, slowly re-knitting.

It was nothing like enough.

“Tell me,” I said, swooping down over his head. “What –”

He released a trail of black smoke from between the heavy, dead lips – a meagre amount, really.

I deliberately dropped into it, sucked it in and breathed it back at him.

“What is the heart of the slave?” I continued once the smoke cleared. “What really made you want me to chase you down like this? I must tell you, I had a bloody good look for it, in there. You seem to be missing a part, though. If you were mine, I’d return you.”

The lip drew back again slowly, but he wasn’t going to try enveloping me in the paltry breath-weapon again.

He just smiled weakly, a few savage yellow teeth glistening there in the corner of his mouth.

“I’d Return me too,” he whispered gloatingly, a deep, almost unintelligible rumble. “Don’t worry. We’ll meet again.”

His eyes closed, but the smile remained on his reptilian face, making him look oddly peaceful in defeat.

“Can I chop off his head, please?”

The question came in a quiet, gruff voice.

I looked over at the armour-clad dwarf stepping out of the shadows between two boulders. He was half-way up the wall of the cavern, a ways over my head, and, if he’d kept himself out of the battle, it wasn’t obvious from the grime on his dark breastplate and greaves – nor from the weary look in his eyes.

“He okay?” I asked inwardly.

“He… is Durgil. A former paladin of Kultemeren. Malas made him speak. He… he no longer trusts the truth. False visions, sent by the dragon, proved the undoing of his whole chapter. They… wow.”

“Wow?”

“They fought hard, Kas. He feels lost. Like he belongs to the darkness now. But we need to get answers out of Malas first. We might not be able to control an undead dragon – or – no, we probably can’t control him… But we can read his surface thoughts, almost for sure.”

I took in the short, stout paladin. Ex-paladin. The warped hauberk devoid of light, of meaning. The tainted sword upon which he so-heavily leaned.

He’s like the rest of us. He broke his vow. He, too, knows what it is to have failed.

“Durgil? I almost feel like I recognise you from somewhere.”

He was silent a moment, then said tersely, “Feychilde.”

“You know me?” I asked.

“We fought together. The Battle of Roseoak. And… Let us say, you have no imitators.”

“Now you’re just trying to make me blush.”

“He didn’t mean it favourably…”

I ignored my telepathic irritants.

“I would very much appreciate the opportunity,” the dwarf pressed, his eyes fixed on the quiescent dracolich beneath me.

“Give us a minute,” I replied, gesturing. “You’ll get your chance.”

Where I pointed, a platform of stone swooped down into view, my brother and sister at the front with the wizard and druid standing right behind them. All four of them were focussed on the near-corpse lying motionless and mountainous beneath me. Orcan and Kirid were wide-eyed, their fingers white on the stony rail ringing the floating platform. I could see the mixture of nervousness and exultation on both of their faces. They had taken an important step here – it would build their confidence, to know that they could really contribute to such a daunting task: the slaughter of a dragon.

And not just any dragon. Prince Deathwyrm himself. It was likely that, by his own accounting at least, Mal Malas had been the most formidable dragon in the whole dimension.

But as the older archmages were drinking in the spectacle, finally getting to see Mal Malas close up, the twins were studying the dracolich. They had little wonder in their expressions; they looked pensive.

“Get rid of his crown.”

When my brother and sister spoke in unison, I happened to be glancing in Durgil’s direction. I saw the way he stared at them for a moment, then shrugged away his curiosity.

Feeling satisfied the dwarf wasn’t about to start causing a scene, I did as my brother and sister requested, setting my boots down on the fallen dragon’s scalp. Standing between the great tree-sized horns, I bent to place my fingers beneath the rim of the cold stone object atop the dragon’s head, and drew liberally on my satyr-strength to lift it.

I was too weak. Had I my right arm, perhaps matters would’ve been different, but to wish was to dream. My footholds weren’t great on the sliding scalp layers, and I braced myself with the wizard-flight to no avail. The force-tendrils were useless for this task, slipping clean through the glossy, jet-black crown, entirely failing to interact with whatever spells it contained. I might as well have tried to swing one of the chains in Firenight Square around my head.

I could get the bintaborax to hurl it to the ground, I mused. Maybe break it…

I wasn’t tired, but my sorcerous muscles were sore after such exertions. I’d find any excuse to avoid opening any more gateways right now if I could. After a brief moment of consternation, I opted to simply take part of the crown into the wraith-state with me. I’d never tried something like this before, but there was no reason to believe it wouldn’t work. The massive jagged ring of stone… the crown… was a garment. It had been designed to be worn, borne. That was the only limiting factor the books talked about. Furthermore, it was clear Malas himself had readily taken it in and out of wraith-states.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Now that I had it right under my nose, I could peer through its substructure. Runes of concealment were to be found everywhere, and the lack of order to the spell-work was actually commendable, practical, in this particular instance. The chaotic nature of the ensorcellment did a great job of hiding the fact it was even ensorcelled at all. Mekesta’s glyphs were scratched all about its sorcerous interior, and those letters were written in ruby-red blood-ink, their author scratching the letters with red nails, not purple claws. This thing was demon-forged –

“Just do it!” the twins cried.

I shrugged and bent again, gripping the crown tight. As I put my power out into the material, I locked myself in place with the wizard-flight once more, and closed my eyes.

Stop looking at it as a massive jagged ring of stone. Start looking on it as a crown. Something I can just lift and toss on the ground.

Perhaps the fall will smash it…

I unconsciously became comfortable with the idea, and then the most miraculous thing happened: the pressure between my straining muscles and the immovable object suddenly lifted off, the left arm rising as if of its own accord. I opened my eyes, preparing to witness the gargantuan black crown slide off his head –

But the whole crown had been affected, not just the section where I touched it. It wasn’t sliding anywhere – I was lifting the entire thing aloft, imbuing it with borrowed wraithiness.

And then it shrank, screaming.

A whirlpool of pure shadow appeared on the air, seemingly within the material, consuming it, yet it was within me – we shared one essence, and as I held in my hand a huge coil of jet-black wind, that wind was part of me. It was swiftly condensed down, its dimensions being slurped away into nowhere.

In less than a heartbeat, I held a circlet fit for the head of a mortal man.

“I suppose, rather than using an eldritch essence to shrink something that big…” I brought it down in front of my face, turning it over in my insubstantial hands, heedless of the sharp points. “It’d be easier to just imbue it with its own size-changing spells?”

The twins gasped together.

“What is it?” I asked, looking back up.

“Cut off his head!” they wailed.

Malas’s eyes flashed open, and in a final gambit, now that he was robbed of his joined eldritches, he tried to open another portal to Nethernum, to wrap himself in it and disappear.

He had to know I could dissipate the gateway more easily than he could build it – it took more energy, but it was faster – they were such fragile things, and he needed one of such incredible surface-area, especially now that he’d been robbed of his size-changers –

But before either of us could enact our sorcerous intentions, the former paladin above us cried out joyfully, and did as he’d been told.

The dwarf didn’t just leap into action – in spite of his stocky frame and heavy armour, he flipped like an acrobat as he sprang down at the dracolich’s neck, bringing his dark sword about in a thousand-degree arc.

I could see nothing overtly magical about the blade, and it was of course far too short to actually behead Mal Malas with a single blow. It would be like trying to decapitate a cow with a dinner-knife, behead a man with a needle.

And yet.

Durgil’s sword seemed to meet no resistance, finding the precise knot that held the flesh together, like the perfect stroke with a chisel through a block of wood, carving the dracolich’s head clean off his body.

I floated clear as the parted mounds of dead flesh fell aside, the head toppling, the severed neck retracting slightly with the release of tension. The vast thing toppled and rolled somewhat before finally coming to a stop in the centre of the cavern-basin.

Now at last I could let Nethernum take its fill.

The remnants of Mal Malas’s spirit came leaking out into the void between two sections of his corpse, purple-grey gobbets of energy desperately trying and failing to take draconic form. One discernible wing rose up from the seething mass of power, then fell back into the glob of ghostliness.

Liches of all forms would regenerate from as little as dust, if the spirit could cling to Materium. He would seek to run and hide, then return in time to feed his corpse energy, little by little reawakening its undead musculature, the reanimation spells crudely stitching his wounds, reattaching body-parts…

There were rituals to prevent it, but I had a blunter tool at my disposal.

I opened a burning amethyst archway, then broadened it with brute strength, gesturing with the crown still held lightly in my fingers.

The spirit of Malas tried to shrink away but he hadn’t even started to gain control of the metamorphosis yet – there was nothing he could do but amorphously cringe as a shrill shadow-wind only I could see and hear came down, bearing the residual shreds of the dracolich off into the farthest-flung corners of the dark dimension.

“The… the truth!…“

His soul’s final, faint whisper was for my ears only. I smiled, with only a trace of regret in me.

Such knowledge. Such power. All of it, wasted on hate.

Once the spirit was gone, I found Durgil there, crouched in the putrid valley between the bloodless boulders of dragon-meat.

“Nice hit! You alright there?” I called down to him.

It looked as though he was inspecting his sword. Did he think he’d damaged it, or was he just as surprised as me at the effectiveness of his attack?

Well, it seems Kultemeren’s still on his side, with or without a paladin-y light-show… “Is he hurt?”

I aimed the last part at the twins’ mind, minds, whatever… When they didn’t reply immediately, I glanced up at them.

They were staring deep into one another’s eyes, lips parted as if frozen mid-word.

“Guys? Guys!” I soared over to them. “Are you okay? Why did you say to finish it?”

They broke their reverie, only to start quivering.

“Kas!” they moaned. “Kas, we have to go. The Incursion… he wanted you to arrive at nightfall, when it would already be too late, and you would… you would…”

A sheet of ice covered the lake of my thoughts. All currents halted.

“When?” I heard my voice saying. “What time will it start?”

“He thinks – thought – the storm hit this morning. It’s supposed to – it’s already happening!”

“Let’s go, then!” I roared, immediately pushing myself up towards the cavern ceiling.

But I moved alone.

“Orcan, refresh his spells! We’ll just slow you, Kas. You don’t need us. You’ve – you’ve got the crown, now…”

I felt it as the cushion of will-locked air surrounding me dropped away, deflating briefly, and then it came back, stronger, firmer than before. I was almost at the roof, and for a moment I halted, hesitated, looking down at the faces of my brother and sister, already distant, difficult to properly discern.

I moved my eyes, looking down at the gleaming black circlet in my hand.

Runes of hiding. Not just mere secrecy: confusion. A bewildering array of protections. Concealment on top of concealment until it was just a mess of lines, extending into the past and the future at oblique angles, the patterns almost indiscernible even this close-up…

Anti-divination…?

“Could it be?” I mumbled, then thought at them:

Is it safe?

“… No. But what is? We can fix you when you take it off.”

I – if I was going to do that I’d take… take the –

“For what it’s worth, yes, you could do with a rhimbelkina or two, from what it looks like they let you get away with. But even five rhimbelkina wouldn’t let you past Everseer, would they?”

I thought, somehow, of Zel.

I… But…

My reservations about joining with demons and donning the crown of Prince Deathwyrm were dwarfed by my concerns about abandoning Jaid and Jaroan this close to our destination. The last time I’d left them, I lost my arm, and we all almost died. The time before that, I was thrown in a cell, cast down into Zyger. I didn’t have a great track record in leaving them behind. And this time, more than ever before, I knew what kind of danger I was heading into. I had some vague sense of just how bad things could be, back home in Mund.

I saw their faces more clearly as they both craned their heads back to look up at me.

I knew it when they met my gaze.

“Back home in Mund.”

Together, the three of us shared it, the whole concept in a single flash.

Sticktown.

Mud Lane.

Mum and Dad’s apartment.

Our bedroom.

The sound of three separate pages in three separate books being turned simultaneously.

Somehow, through the vision, we were bound in that moment, conjoined in our need to know what happened next.

“Turn the page, brother. If one or two or even three of the main characters die, we’ll mourn them, and we’ll move on. You can’t change what’s inked on the next page by refusing to flip it.”

I looked down at Mal Malas’s remains, and I thought of Timesnatcher, and Tanra. Rathal, and Everseer.

You can if you know the authors.

I dropped Malas’s crown on my head, and entered the rock.