For Leo, the moment was frozen in time. He could see, behind Chester, that the Havi Imperium guards were under attack from lightning. Andul was slowly running toward them, axe out. Damian was laughing, clapping, and walking toward them. Neha was frozen, half a step toward Leo, her eyes on Nori’s remains. Hugh was on his side, his leg filled with metal and his life blood spilling onto the street.

Chester took a step forward, his arms pulled back, obviously setting up to simply push the sword through Lily to gut Leo.

“It’th olgkay,” Lily spit out with the blood. As Chester came in, she reached out with one arm and gently poked his face through the slats of his helm.

Chester pulled the sword out of lily and whirled, slashing the air, his back to Leo. Lily collapsed to the ground like a marionette with its strings slashed.

Before Chester could recover from whatever had happened, Leo readied a sword blow to the back of his neck, hesitating and grimacing in agony as the metal in his chest shredded him.

“Nagh!” Lily spat, grabbing his ankle from where she lay in a spreading pool of her own blood on the ground.

Leo stopped, not sure what she wanted. Chester ran at the side of a building, commenting, “You’ll not get away from me that easily.” The hero of the Havi imperium jumped onto the building, his armor forming climbing claws, and he pulled himself up and over, running away.

Lily slumped to the ground. Leo panicked, dropped as well and hit her with a regenerate, thanking all the gods of Toth when it worked.

“Why didn’t you want me to attack him?” Leo asked her.

With her face in the ground, Lily spat blood out and then mumbled. “My power actually worked—I did good, Leo. I saved you and everyone. I wasn’t sure how to touch his skin. But I figured it out, like you would. The illusion will hold until I die or take damage. We can escape.”

Leo remembered her explanation from the guard they had tricked to enter the castle, a few hours and a whole lifetime ago. Of course.

Damian’s cruel laughter came from a few feet away. “Well, that makes the path to beating you abundantly clear.”

Damian raised his hands and fire washed across them. Leo rolled over Lily, blocking her with his body, grunting in pain.

The wall behind them lit on fire.

“Neha, get them out!” Leo screamed. “Lily first, then Hugh!”

Damian sneered. “Well, plan two it is.”

He started toward the building Chester had climbed.

“What’re you going to do, Dad?” Neha cried as she knelt next to them.

“Finish Damian before he can wake Chester,” Leo said, and stood, still in agony from the metal imbedded in his chest.

“Remy!” Leo yelled, and the fox looked up at him and away from Nori’s body. “Curse Damian and then tell Andul and Zun to get everyone to the boats. We only have a bit of time before Chester comes back and we clearly can’t defeat him!”

Leo grabbed the metal where it had cut him and tried to yank it from his chest, nearly blacking out from the agony, but he couldn’t remove it. He could feel himself yanking on his ribs. Did Chester somehow caused the metal to spread around my very bones? The difference between a Level sixteen and a Level Thirty is insane.

Leo hit himself with another regenerate and ran at the wall even as Damian climbed to the top. He was about to leap on it and try and power climb through his pain when he remembered his new powers. He focused, and appeared next to Damian on the roof. He slashed even as Damian washed him with fire.

Damian screamed and stumbled back, his hand missing, and Leo hissed in pain from the burns. But even being burned paled in comparison to the metal imbedded in his chest. Chester is more effective than Damian even when Chester is running away.

Leo took a half second to look around. Chester was multiple houses away, running across the rooftops. To far to save Damian.

The guards were being routed by the dragons, now free. Most were flying away, but all threw one to two lightning breathes as they went, and it looked as if nearly a hundred haviden soldiers were down.

And Lakusi burned. The houses all around them were going up in fire, especially in the alley beneath them. Leo would need to leave soon.

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Damian got ahold of himself and sneered at Leo, but Leo could see the fear in his eyes. “You’ll not beat me so easily,” Damian said, cradling his stump. He reached for a potion at his belt, but Leo shin kicked the belt, shattering them, and Damian stumbled back again.

“I’m a priest of Irkuhkt!” Damian screamed at him. “You can’t fight me! The god of rulers favors me!”

A red aura sprang up, but Leo was even stronger than when he had fought Julrick, and this aura was a pale comparison. He made the first Toughness check with ease.

He slashed at Damian’s neck, as hard as he could, and Damian screamed and held his left arm up to block. It parted at the wrist, dropping on the roof next to his right hand.

Damian stared into his eyes and declared, “Snivel before me, worm!”

Leo made the Intelligence check with ease, Damian’s mind control weaker than Jynessa’, the blood succubus from Stonehaven, had been.

Leo couldn’t help himself from monologuing a tiny bit. This punk had been the source of more anger and frustration to Leo than anyone, Kruegar included, and Leo suddenly felt the need to have the last word. “You’re nothing, Damian. An accident of birth and some paid for assassinations made you King, but it was gold and rank given you by someone else. You tried to fight me with potions you paid for. Then with the power another gave you. Before that, it was with Chester. But you will always come up short, because you’ve never earned anything in your life. Without others, you’re worthless.”

Damian screamed a wordless scream of rage and spit at Leo.

Grimacing in pain, Leo slashed at Damian again, and Damian managed to half dodge, getting a massive cut across his chest. By now, he had backed almost to the edge of the alley again.

Leo feinted high and cut Damian’s leg off, then kicked him in the chest. Damian screamed in terror as he went sailing off and landed in the burning alley.

Leo watched, carefully, even when the fire licked up the side of the building around him. He watched as Damian screamed and struggled, bled and burned. He kept watching once the tyrant had stilled. He watched until he could see the blackened bones of Damian’s corpse.

He would not suffer this enemy to come back again.

But when Leo was absolutely, one-hundred and change percent sure that Damian was dead, he walked to the other edge of the building, grimacing in pain, and teleported to the ground. Then he carefully made his way across the field of the dead—mostly guards but a few dragon juveniles and unfortunate citizens as well—and headed for his boats, as an innocent city burned behind him.

***

At any other time, Leo would have appreciated the placid waters of the lake around their galley and reveled in his victory. But at the moment, he was concentrating on not losing all dignity in front of his men by screaming his head off.

“Tis tha oddest work I’ve ever done, lord,” Andul said, grimacing and he sawed at Leo’s chest. “Also tha worst by far.”

Hugh, Neha, and Zun watched as well. Hugh and Neha had expressions of worry on their face, but Zun was wearing armor still and effectively faceless.

Leo, in near constant agony, didn’t respond to Andul, still focused entirely on not screaming. His chest was open, held that way by metal clamps. Lily—blessedly whole and unperforated again—was constantly pouring healing into him, which also muted the pain somewhat. Andul had used his own Metal magic to try and remove the Metal from Leo’s chest, but it hadn’t worked. So now, he was cutting it off his ribs with a magic blade.

A horrible but short time later, Andul separated the metal around Leo’s rib and then removed the small piece. The rest of it that had been spread throughout his chest came out easily if agonizingly, ripped from Leo’s pectoral muscles which then healed in seconds thanks to Lily.

Covered in sweat, tears, mucus, and blood, but otherwise completely whole, Leo stood from the rowing bench they had been operating on.

Leo noted that Neha was staring at the ground.

“We won,” Lily said, stepping up Leo and smiling. “My mom is safe and fine. Hugh’s mom is, um, safe. The elves want to join us. Most of the dragons flew away, but a few have stayed with us and are asking to join as well. The fleet at Lakusi is either burned or ours, now.”

Leo wanted to agree, to take Lily in his arms and tell her everything would be okay. He wanted to sit next to his daughter and console her over Nori. But one thought dominated his mind, consuming him.

Leo stared deep into Lily’s eyes and shook his head. “We haven’t won. Not so long as Chester is an enemy. He promised me that if I killed Damian, he would come for you and Hugh, Lily. That he would murder both of you. And he can do so, easily. We have nothing that can stop him. I can’t stop him. So this isn’t over, not yet.”

Lily’s smile faltered and faded. “Then, what should we do?”

“I still need to make this right.”

Hugh smashed one clawed fist into his other foreclaw. “Shall we ambush him as a group?”

“And lose again?” Leo asked, walking over and putting his hand on Hugh’s flank. “Or maybe win at terrible cost? It takes one of his light beams, or two sword slashes, for him to kill half our team. Twice that for everyone else. How many do you think he would get before we took him down? I think the answer is ‘all of us,’ but I’ll accept that we might, and I stress might, win. But surely no sane mind thinks the answer is ‘none of us.’”

Everyone was silent for a moment.

Tears leaked down Neha’s face. “What are you going to do then, Dad?”

“Well… I have a plan. Neha, I want you to come with me, since if I die you’ll die anyway. But everyone else, please stay here, and if I don’t make it back, please try and live your lives as well as you can, and carry on as well as you can.”

Lily frowned, then walked over and took his free hand. “We’re not going to leave you.”

Hugh chimed in. “Yeah, you bird. We face it together. Always.”

Andul nodded. “I ken yer plan, milord, to sacrifice yerself for us. But it isn’t the way. We’re going.”

Leo shook his head. “No. I promise all of you, I have no intention of dying. But you can’t come. You’ll decrease the chance of success. I have to go back. I have to end this. And, essentially, I have to do it alone.”

The others stared at him, then at each other, but Leo’s conviction must have shown through.

“Please come back to me,” Lily whispered, but she released him and stepped back.

Leo nodded. I’ll do my best, anyway.