Modessa groaned in frustration. She hadn’t signed up for this. She looked at the desk in front of her, covered in papers. Where hat they even found a desk in the first place?

Her home on Dragon Isle, as it was starting to be called by the residents, minion and non-minion alike, was more than comfortable. Yet, she’d never been a woman to want to settle down and play house.

Sure, she’d agreed to keep watch over Nico’s island while he and Cami were gone. She owed him that much, and it wasn’t like she really had much else to do. She was slowly learning to live with the pain, and as long as she moved slowly, or at least at normal human speed, she rarely had flare-ups. She still instinctively started to activate an ability from time to time, but the debilitating pain which always resulted was quickly breaking those habits.

Now, though, she looked at the stack of paper on her desk. She was proud of smoothly things were running on Dragon Isle. She might not be a natural born administrator, but she always gave her all to anything she did.

Whether it was Bob coming to her to get authorization for the next building project or settling a dispute between Sir Michael and Sir Thomas about the deployment of troops on the island, she handled them all. Sometimes her method involved threats she couldn’t make good on, but of all those on the island, only Cassandra knew the extent to which she was impaired.

She even handled it when Emilio, who was the head servant but seemed to fancy himself as some type of butler for Nico, nearly fell into one of the remaining lava pits deeper in the mountain. The man’s foot was still blackened even after Cassandra’s potions had restored his HP. Apparently, the heat had destroyed the nerve endings and caused it, so he couldn’t feel pain in the foot any longer. That didn’t mean it didn’t look gross, though. Not that she could do anything about it. It would take an amputation and a powerful healer to regrow a new foot in order to deal with it.

She sighed and starting leafing through the reports and such. So far, she’d been paying for everything on her own. She had accrued a small fortune, well maybe not that small, over her adventuring career, but now she was burning through it. Almost everyday more ships arrived with settlers, soldiers, cattle, you named, Amos was having it shipped over. Modessa knew better than to spend any of Nico’s hoard without his permission, but she only hoped that he reimbursed her for at least some of this when he returned.

That led her to thinking about what her role in the future would be. Was Nico going to forgive her? Would he help her? Was he even able to? The questions piled up higher than the documents on her desk.

She let out a sigh. At least security was good. As a former thief, she knew well how to get into a treasure and she was using all that experience to reverse engineer a set of safeguards and security protocols which would make Nico’s hoard thief proof. Anyone wanting to get at the gold would be more likely to succeed with brute force. That was the one thing which they still couldn’t contend with.

The emperor had now sent a total of three hundred soldiers and knights and three battle-mages, although none of the mages were over level 10. Cassandra took care of taking temporary oaths from all the new arrivals. It was the one thing the woman insisted she had to do personally, since Modessa wasn’t a minion.

She left everything else to Modessa. They now had a hundred farming families with more expected and nowhere near enough housing. The one hundred and fifty builders couldn’t keep up with the new arrivals. At least she had a house. Still, the frustrations continued to build.

All of this frustration drove one point home to her more than any other. She missed Galbrecht.

One thing she knew for sure, wherever Galbrecht was, he had to be having a better day than she was. She was certain that if nothing else; he was having more fun that she was.

____________________

If anyone had told Galbrecht that morning he’d jump from the back of one flying dragon to tackle an enemy mage off of the back of another dragon, he would have only laughed. What else could you say in response to something so preposterous?

Yet that was exactly where he found himself. Just as bad was the fact that the man he had tackled was no longer a man. Tolston, should have been dead. He’d seen the man die in the trap Serius laid. There hadn’t been anything left of his body.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

Now, even the wind whistling by him as they rushed to the ground wasn’t enough to push away the smell of death that was all over him. No, not death. Death was a pure and natural part of the life. Even his goddess conceded that death was the natural end of all mortals, and then came judgment.

This was the stench of undeath. Dark necromantic magic must have been employed to restore Tolston. Yet, there’d obviously been a price. Galbrecht didn’t have a spell to detect the exact level of a foe, but he did have a finely tuned sense based upon decades of fighting in dungeons. Tolston was weaker than before. There was no doubt about it.

Once again, Galbrecht had used his Miracle ability. It was a very limited power and perhaps he’d been reckless, but he had only been focused on one thing. If Nico had to fight a dragon, he couldn’t fight an archmage at the same time. So the Paragon of Miseria had done the one thing that all wizards fear more than anything. He’d stripped him of all his prepared magics.

The multitude of spells which were wrapped about the skeletal body which Tolston now indwelled had been exploded by the divinely powered anti-magic. There were so many of them that when they shattered, they left a burst of prismatic light in the air. It had even dispelled the buffs which his allies had cast. That was an unfortunate side effect, but decisiveness was generally what led to victory.

Oddly, the only magic that wasn’t dispelled by the effect was the blizzard which swirled around the white dragon. The winds were cutting and the snow blinding. The force of such a storm had to be magical and yet a legendary level spell which tapped directly into the power of his goddess didn’t dispel it.

Galbrecht pushed the thought out of his mind as he tangled with Tolston, as they were free-falling to the ground a few thousand feet below. The winds of the storm had buffeted them, but now they were past it. Fortunately, Galbrecht’s paladin class based defenses had only increased in power after he reached a legendary level and became the sole paragon of his goddess.

He figured they only had a little more than a dozen seconds left before they hit the ground. He had to make the most of it.

Tolston tried to cast a spell.

Holy Strike

His fist slammed into the skeletal jaw, creating spiderweb cracks up and down the side of the skull.

Tele… the spell fizzled.

He tried again. Slow F…

Another slamming blow broke the mage’s concentration.

Etherea…

This time Galbrecht’s free fist slammed into the skeleton’s side and came back with a snapped rib in his hand.

Galbrecht didn’t care if it was a teleport, a slow fall spell, or something to cause him to become ethereal. There were many ways that an archmage could circumvent the danger of a fall even from this height. The one thing he seemed unable to do was cast while Galbrecht battered his body.

Tolston hissed, “You fool. We’ll both die.”

Galbrecht didn’t respond. He was done talking to evil. It was bashing time now.

With the sounds of the fading blizzard above them, the world around Galbrecht and Tolston was nothing but a silent void, punctuated only by the harsh, icy winds that howled around them, clawing at them as they plummeted. The ground below, a vast expanse of trees and patches of still unmelted snow on one side with the capital on the other side, rushed towards them at a breakneck speed, its image blurring and disorienting amidst the rapid descent.

Galbrecht, driven by a single-minded fervor, didn't relent. Tolston was going to die and stay dead this time. The trick was going to be staying alive himself.

The fiery warmth of Miseria’s divine favor protected him from the biting cold of the air, wrapping him in an aura of gold. Each strike he delivered, while it did little to actually deter the undead archmage in the grand scheme of things, had one purpose – to disrupt. Every blow, every grapple, was calculated to prevent Tolston from voicing the incantations that could save him – or worse, spell doom for the paladin.

In contrast, Tolston's body, a mockery of life and everything Galbrecht’s goddess stood for, was not affected by the chill or the altitude. There was no heartbeat, no breath being stolen by the altitude or the speed. But every shattered bone and splintered fragment disrupted the ancient cadences he sought to voice. It was a battle of sheer wills – well that and attrition. Galbrecht could only wonder if there would reach a point where he had dismantled the skeleton so much that Tolston’s soul would have no choice but to travel to its just desserts in the afterlife.

He had to imagine that would be a truly awful afterlife, given the man’s traitorous nature.

A brief flash of purple light emanated from Tolston’s skeletal fingers, as a cluster of dark, ethereal chains sought to bind Galbrecht. The wizard had gotten a spell off, but the necrotic energies failed to penetrate the radiant blessing of his goddess. He grunted in pain as though kicked, but held on firmly, refusing to let the mage go. The shadowy chains which had tried to extend around him were broken until they dissipated into wisps of smoke.

But even as they clashed and spells flashed, the ground drew ever closer. Galbrecht's armor, resplendent and shimmering, was now streaked with Tolston's shadowy essence. And though Tolston’s undead form was beginning to splinter and break from the relentless assault, his eldritch eyes glowed with a malevolence that would not be extinguished.

Both knew the end was inevitable. Galbrecht just had to time this perfectly.

He twisted the until Tolston was firmly under him. The skeletal body wouldn’t provide any protection from the force of this impact, but in order for his plan to work, the mage had to hit first.

He landed one more blow and felt Tolston’s skull gave in completely. It didn’t extinguish his life force but it bought him the second he needed to cast one of his new Tier 10 spells.

All Encompassing Judgement- Just Rewards

A golden rune suddenly appeared on his forehead and the shattered remains of Tolston’s skull. Everyone within 20 feet of him would fall under the judgment of Miseria. He was throwing his life into the hands of his goddess, but when had he not? This spell was meant to cause her to judge and then properly reward all those within the spell.

Tolston hit the ground. The light was driven from his eyes, and then Galbrecht hit too just as he was casting his final spell.

Second Chance

Both their bodies were shattered by the terminal impact. Hit points can only account for so much. Tolston’s frame was scattered. A dark tendril of necrotic magic reach out from the sky to pull his soul to whatever device was intended to keep it, but a golden light appeared and snuffed out the light.

A soft voice unheard by any mortal ear said, “Not this time.”

At the same time, a second golden light appeared and Galbrecht was left standing in a patch of snow just outside the city walls. He patted himself up and down almost not believing it had worked. Then he just sat down exhausted. “I’m getting too old for this crap.”