He did... Do too much, that is.

It took a week or so, with Sigi's anxiety gradually cooling until reigniting again as she stared into the face of his idea of gratitude. It wasn't a bad one, it was just... A little much.

'Little much.'

Hyperbole was rife in Amistad these days.

“Fuck.” Sigi cursed, feeling as if she'd made a terrible mistake.

“This is amazing!” Micah didn't seem to mind, but he had always looked at Tyr in a unique light, always seeing the best in him. The largest alligator any of them had ever seen, and clearly an awakened beast had been opened at its massive ribs to make for some kind of levitating buffet table in front of their faces. It wasn't the only one either, trophy kills were mounted all over the courtyard in semblance of the world's most disorganized monster hunting exposition.

There was that, and there was the dawning realization that he'd raided Sigi's workshop to put all of her finished products on full display with a massive sign that was printed with the words 'My Wife Sigi Made This – She is the Best' hanging above it.

The bards in attendance played Astrid's music, but unlike her sister – the woman was ecstatic, humming pleasantly to the tune. Each one of them wearing a much too large shirt printed with the worlds 'My Wife Astrid'... One would get the idea.

Campy... That was the word Sigi would use, and to such an insane degree that she remained silent if not for a few choice curses.

It was a wild festival of bright colors, with the moniker of 'My Friends are Awesome and I Appreciate Them A Lot'. A long name, but Tyr didn't have much talent for organizing a proper event. It wasn't bad, but it was insane, and there was no specific theme. On one side of the courtyard dominating the palace grounds was a holographic display larger than any Sigi had seen, showcasing Alex's 'highlights' on the blitzball field. Standing in front of it were a bunch of portly middle aged men sipping ales and arguing with one another about how much better she would've been if she had done this or that. Should've gone bro, should've passed to Garth, why is she using wind magic when an earth cantrip would've been far more efficient in their loss at the Gryphon Bowl?

On the other side was Sigi's 'booth', manned by Valkan and Wilhelm. Both were wearing aprons and showing off her devices to a rapt audience of children and adults alike. Harkon was there, not doing much speaking, rather staring at the machines with twinkling eyes alongside his brother Remus. There were thousands of people at this festival. Even some in Baccian heraldry, but considering the veritable army of men surrounding the palace and at parade rest it was unlikely they were here to try anything.

“Amazing is certainly a word. It seems a bit inappropriate considering the state of things.” Tythas frowned, his display was a little less eccentric, a 'haunted house' claiming that he was the greatest necromancer to ever live. In front of it was a cut-out frame, painted in a caricature of himself waving its arms and doing some bizarre dance. Orlando and the rest of the undead were there in their armor, wearing pink frilly aprons and handing out... What the hell was a chicken nugget? “Can we even afford this? I thought Amistad's finances were performing quite poorly...”

Ella held his arm gently, a young child clutching her hand and looking around in wonder. “He paid for it himself. You have no idea how much he is making these days what with our exclusive trade agreements with the Anu clans and Aelas. Tyr might very well be one of the wealthiest men in the world, if one ignores the imperial treasuries. I'll admit it is uh... Quite ridiculous. I've never known him to spend much on anything but necessities, and this was quite the expense.”

Alex squinted at the massive crowd. All food and drink were free, entry was as well, it was an obscene waste of money. Leaving her asking... “Why?”

Sigi blushed and turned away anxiously, though Alex had no idea what would cause such an uncharacteristic reaction.

Brenn shrugged. His 'place' in the festival took the form of a large gold and silver statue standing five meters at the head. Holding a hammer in one hand and the holy text of Vestia in another. Positioned so that everyone entering the palace in the future would have to pass by it. The workmanship was exquisite but it made him look far more handsome than he was. Tyr had made this of his own hands, though how he'd done so in such a short time was a mystery.

All of the features of that statue were cast with notable artifice from solid metal, his eyes were orbs of white flame and even the words on the page were inscribed with complete authenticity. Glowing with a golden light. They all had a statue, somewhere on the grounds and adopting mixed yet equally dramatic poses. All with an inlaid tablet that listed their lifelong achievements to anyone who pressed a button, along with a very lengthy biography. “Might as well have fun with it, might be good for morale.”

“Indeed.” Magnus laughed, unlike the others he was over the moon to see his own statue. It wasn't as beautiful as Astrid, who was posed with angelic wings behind her back. Levitating with her toes pointed toward the ground and a spear of glossy white held at her side dramatically. But it was Magnus, and it was mighty. Shirtless, his rippling muscles present to all onlookers, hands extended at his sides and burning with fire in his right fist, a rotating swan of ice hovering in the open left. He didn't use water magic of any sort, but it was still quite a sight to look upon. Perhaps he would train more in that discipline to make it so, the concept of fire and ice was novel if not a bit asinine. Like the legendary adventurer Georgio Martinez of Milano. “I just wonder where our patron is?”

“He is not in attendance.” Jura said, looking uncomfortable being surrounded by so many strange people in all directions. While she wouldn't admit it, she was very pleased with her statue that seemed carved of gold veined green marble, Freki on her shoulder and spear in hand. “As far as the people were informed he had nothing to do with the throwing of this party. Said it was all for us, and that he would meet us inside of the palace when the final show takes place.”

“A party's a party, I guess.” Alex plucked a fat peach from the hollowed out insides of that alligator and accepting a flute of strange blue wine that was lit internally with a luminescence from a passing waitress. “Shall we?”

Alex frowned, taking a sip from the flute and immediately recognizing it for what it was.

Why would Tyr be freely sharing the gift of his blood with strangers?

–

Drip. Drip. Drip.

The Bringer of Ash. Left to rot in a dank place of mud and mold. The deuritium spikes driven in between his ribs secured him to the wall and left him in a constant state of agony. There was something different about them, they were oddly shaped and sharpened only at one end. Some were short, some long, and some were curved at odd angles, but they didn't kill him as they should have. Each one was like a worm of cold fire burrowing through his flesh, setting his veins into relief and blackened by proximity to the metal. But just as he thought he might be released from this hell, the healers would come and tend to him. Men in masks depicting a variety of emotions. Kael could not speak, couldn't move, only wait for the small mercy of death. A mercy that he began to fear would never come. The spikes burned and ravaged him, but at the same time he had a feeling they were responsible for his survival all the same.

He heard the door open. More pain come, his flesh to be cut and skin peeled free under the knives of his torturers. There was no sense to that, he had no tongue to speak and no questions were asked to be answered. They came, took a piece of him, and left without a word. Each and every day. They'd given him eyes again, but other than that, it was always to take. He'd stopped shivering in fear of them, broken and lifeless now. The pain nothing more than a faint sensation on his skin, his addled and feverish mind unable to bear it any longer. He was sorry, so sorry, not for what he'd done but because he'd never realized the depth of the consequences that had awaited him. Even the hells had to be a more merciful place than this, beneath the blades of Tyr and the monsters that served him.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

Steady footsteps approached, the blindfold removed. The first thing he noticed was the white hair, the next were the deep blue eyes. A coldness in them that went beyond cruelty. A complete apathy to everything the man was seeing.

Tyr stared, taking it all in. It stank down here, mildew was rife in these mostly unused dungeons, but the foundation for them had always been kept just in case. Mages who broke the law to that extent were typically killed rather than jailed. The other cells were mostly empty, there were a few raving lunatics and after reading of their crimes Tyr had killed them immediately. Smashing their skulls against the bricks walling them in until their mad thrashes stilled and they were left in the hands of Thanatos. The way it should be, there was no suffering on the mortal plain equivalent to what the sinful were given beyond. People could believe there was, but there was decidedly not – the doom that awaited the lowest of them gave the word 'hell' new definition.

Kael Emberwind had been a great man once. Not so long ago, in fact. And before that he had dominated the adventuring industry of his era. A famous man with no small amount of admirers. He'd been beautiful, too. Now all that was left hung opposite Tyr, nailed to the wall with his bones, was a pallid torso of stumps and the uneven stitches used to piece him back together. His eyes were lidless, lips torn free to reveal perfectly straight, white teeth.

Tyr didn't say anything, only extending his fingers to rest on the other man's forehead and probe his mind. The traitor wasn't broken, more like disintegrated until the flat plane of his once sane mind bore the consistency of sand. This was good. A man must be broken before he can be shaped again into something greater, and while the cruelty went far beyond Tyr's concept of what was necessary... He had thought that Kael was better than that. There was no mercy in him for a betrayal of that magnitude. The man had tried to have him killed.

Those who come for the king should ensure they do not miss.

It had been so easy for Hastur to turn these people against Tyr, and it hadn't been out of some plot to truly beat him. Merely using it as a distraction, as all things were, taking something from Huron and leaving.

One hundred and three people, exactly, and one hundred were dead. Only three remained. Urden, Wilhelm, and Kael.

Even Lernin hadn't stood up for Tyr, nor had anyone else really, sans his wives to some lesser degree. They'd watched as he was torn down and killed. Moved on with their lives without an ounce of regret beyond the understanding that they'd killed themselves in the process. Tyr let the ones who had not stood for him remain on their feet, he wasn't vindictive, but those who had actively participated in action against him were dead to a man. Only Wilhelm with his late decision to fight on the right side was left unharmed. Ah, there was Professor Urden as well, but she was nowhere to be found. Wisely, she'd run and managed to stay far afield enough to avoid his hand, and he had no interest in chasing her across the known world. Let her live the rest of her life always looking over her back, he had no stake in knowing or punishing her any longer. They'd do it for him, eventually – she'd live a life marked and hunted.

“Professor.” Tyr finally spoke, as soft as his voice was it was like a whip cracking in Kael's ears, far too loud compared to the whisper of knives slicing into his flesh. He stared at Kael critically, bringing his fingers down from the man's temples after giving him some succor from his madness and returning the missing tongue to him. It hurt, healing appendages no matter how small was meant to be done while a patient was unconscious. And Kael squealed like a pig as the sacred flame filled his mouth, his partially returned sanity bringing the recognition of pain along with it. Leaving him gasping and weeping, begging for mercy, words that Tyr did not hear because he'd had no interest in listening to them in the first place. “A question answered is a piece of you returned, and one step closer to the rest your mind craves. I can take anything, and in that process you will become the man you were before – even better. Redemption, perhaps, because you are of use to me. Understood?”

Kael nodded fervently. That was a question, so Tyr did as he had promised and returned to him his lips so as to make the process of speaking easier on the man. “Why did you betray me? Why did you want me dead, rather than simply expelled?”

“Because I thought it was right.” To cast down the tyrant, to free Amistad from the yoke of an autocrat nobody had asked for. Tyr nodded, and returned the lids of his eyes to him. Two lids for two questions, it seemed fair.

“Do you still wish me dead?” Tyr asked.

“Yes.” Kael rasped. And Tyr returned the smoothness of his flesh to him, taking away all those scars that covered him from head to waist. Kael said this, but he would not try again – he couldn't. Tyr was not here to bring gifts, he was the curse, the Black Book given flesh.

“What is Hastur's final solution?”

Kael shook his head unevenly, eyes betraying confusion, clearly unaware of what Tyr was talking about.

“His plan.” Tyr asked. “What is Hastur doing in Baccia or his ultimate goal? I know now that killing mages isn't it.”

Kael didn't know that answer either, but Tyr was an honest man. The ears had been sliced free of his head, and now they were pink and new again to relieve him of those constantly weeping holes about his skull. This questioning continued, and every time Tyr kept his word in returning a part, not always following any general rule. A whole arm, half a leg, two fingers, three toes. Little by little the abused slab of meat became a man again. It was important, a man went to the underworld the way that he had died. Some said they retained sign of injury throughout all of the afterlife, others that they were born anew. Perhaps it depended on what god had claim of them, as their souls were so often sold to one divine or another.

Right now, Tyr felt quite divine himself. Perhaps he could claim souls like the others and figure out what happened to men without properly manifested shards when they died. Perhaps there was no afterlife for the devolved, but he doubted it, nephilim were finite – once that number reached all would become barren until the cycle turned again.

Kael certainly looked at him like he was, a god, that is. With a flicker of wonderment and terror in his eyes as Tyr's regrew each limb from scratch. Of course, Tyr had no such ability, he had already had Kael pumped with so much of his blood that it was a wonder how he was still alive. The deuritium bones acted as a sort of limiter to the healing factor this gift had given the professor and he was simply removing the blockages and allowing the man's own power to speed up the process.

Naturally it would've come with an insanity inducing agony, but Tyr didn't really care about that. There were consequences to each individual action and Kael had chosen his path, people rarely ever got a second chance. He could die and be judged complicit in regicide, one of the worst crimes of all, that of the kingslayer. Or he could serve a purpose, perhaps find some redemption in his mortal life.

To be a tool. Just like Tyr was.

All men were born with collars.

“Do you love Amistad, Kael Emberwind? The city and it's people?” The man was whole now. Tyr wanted to kill him, that much was common sense. Kael had done a terrible thing in betraying his surrogate motherland, something that couldn't be put into words. Killing Huron was one thing, but reason was another. Selling it out to a most terrible enemy, certainly an enemy worse than Tyr himself. And he was directly complicit in the circumstances ending in Huron's mind being broken and stealing a valuable resource from him.

“Do you?” Kael asked unexpectedly, his throat was still raw. From a lack of water and the dank air, slowly getting used to having lips again. Tyr had asked a question, and a question in return was an answer – so he gave the man some water. Speaking as the once professor chugged it down so fast he began to choke.

“It doesn't matter.” Tyr said. “My motivations for enforcing rule over this city are entirely selfish, but I will save it. Love, compassion, morality, I do not need these things for a place that does nothing for me – I will live by my oath. And Hastur lied to you.”

“I know.” Kael replied with a melancholic rasp. “He said so himself moments before he threw me to your dogs, cursing me for betraying you. I was a fool, but it wasn't so simple as a request that I accepted. I barely remember doing it, it just fell in line with what I thought I should be doing. They have a magician among them who can see into dreams, plant ideas, and I was too unaware to notice. My arrogance made me an easy victim.”

“This does not absolve you of sin.”

“I know that, too.”

“Then serve me. I will ask you, but ultimately you have no choice in the matter, either do so willingly and accept my gifts or see them forced upon you and your mind lost. I will betray my most core belief and make you a slave if you refuse, I have asked and been given leave to do so. Or, right here and now, I can kill you. Three choices, more than generous, and only because I believe you when you say that the choice was not entirely your own.”

“A traitor is no longer a human.” Kael chuckled, though it sounded more like a rattling growl. There was phlegm in his throat, tuberculosis maybe, Tyr's blood was a healing potion but it could have strange effects on any pathogens in ones body. 'Magic syphilis' had appeared in Mikhail and it had taken some time to get it out of the profligate womanizer. Kael's lungs were full of liquid, a potent infection that couldn't kill him unless the bones were removed. “They lose all right as a man, thus I would only be a pet. Not a slave, but I accept your offer to join willingly. Although I hate myself for it, my path is clear to me now and I will serve you faithfully so long as you serve Amistad.”

“It's a bargain then.” Tyr said, tearing the bones out with a wave of his hand and leaving Kael alone with the door open. A pile of loose limbs and pale flesh.

“With the devil.” Kael muttered, groaning in discomfort as his legs touched the hard ground for the first time in months.

"Better the one you know, I suppose."

And so, in betrayal of all expectations, Kael became the fifth of the newly forged paladins of the pit. The judges. The reformation of the dawnguard.