Even after all that, he’s straining against me.

Fruitlessly.

“On your knees, Aubrey,” I snarl.

After another moment of straining, he obeys.

Meanwhile, I’m already actively healing Izahne, but she hasn’t yet regained consciousness.

Even past level 400.

Just what kind of monster is that vampire?

Well, not that it matters. He’s mine now.

Mine from which to get answers.

Mine to torture.

Mine to break, and eventually kill.

The sound of Vivianne’s massive body hitting the ground interrupts my reverie, finally losing enough strength that she’s unable to continue defiantly supporting herself. Breathing heavily, I feel her handful of functioning eyes wave around the room deliriously.

Without moving from my place directly in front of the kneeling elder vampire, I send one of my kin to her side, and project Wave of Restoration from it – focusing my will into a narrower space, altering the Skill to concentrate its power into a much smaller area.

The centipede knight’s body slowly begins knitting itself back together, grotesque tendrils of flesh reaching from severed and crushed portions to pull the missing pieces back to their original places. When the work is done and her body is whole again, she immediately morphs to her humanoid form, offers me a weak smile…

And passes out.

Huh.

I lift Omorth’s shattered body, probing it with my will and ash for any sign of… anything really.

Nothing.

He’s gone.

I silently pull his remains into my dimensional storage and turn my burning gaze again toward Aubrey.

“You were told right, ‘oh dear fool’,” I monologue. “Two gods are a worthy challenge. And though I may be inexperienced, you faced more than two gods.”

I lean toward his face until my disembodied gaze floats an inch from it. “But you made an error. A fatal one, at that.”

“And what was that?” he asks, voice dripping with hostility.

I laugh – an unexpectedly jovial and bell-like tone, echoing across the room as though a chorus.

Without True Sense I wouldn’t have heard Olive mournfully whisper, “Mistress.”

I snap my newly-formed fingers as my body reforms in a wave from my outstretched hand. “Simple. I am not two gods.”

I turn and take a few steps away before spinning again to face him, bending at the waist in an almost playful gesture. “I am more. Oh, I am much more. If you speak only of souls? Yes. I am a cage for who I was, and who I conquered. But I myself, though a goddess, do in fact have myself not only one, but two patrons.”

His eyes widen slightly – but not nearly enough to conceal it.

“And while one demands subservience, the other offers only boons. As you have seen. Tell me, ‘oh fool’… are you familiar with the Domain of Control?”

And his eyes widen more.

I stomp up to him and seize his jaw, forcing his face up toward mine. “YOU WILL ANSWER WHEN SPOKEN TO.”

“N-no. No I am not,” he bleats through clenched teeth.

“That’s what I thought,” I say dismissively as I drop him in a heap on the floor, turning away to idly pace the room. “But that doesn’t resolve my conundrum, does it? No, it certainly doesn’t.”

With a flick of my wrist, I create a floating cushion of darkness littered with stars and promptly let my body flop onto it to impassively recline.

And then I offer him a sinister grin, showing dangerously spiked teeth I’m pretty sure I didn’t have before.

“You didn’t only choose to invade my home and slay my mortals; you see, I could have forgiven some transgressions, though I’d have required equal compensation for your foolishness.”

I sit up and lean toward Aubrey, still sprawled on the ground – after all, I won’t let him do any more than that.

“You attacked my retainers. My followers. MY FAMILY.”

Olive quietly gasps.

“And you will burn for it.”

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I idly wave one hand. “Olive.”

“This one serves,” the fox spirit answers, struggling to hide the emotion in her voice.

“Omorth once commented that the sun burns these imbeciles due to a curse. Is that correct?”

“Is,” she simply answers.

My gaze shifts to a cruel grimace. “Then you, Aubrey, have doomed your kind. Olive, we go to the upper ramparts. We have work to do.”

***

How long has it been since I stood here in the silence, gazing up at the empty sky?

…

Although, now that I look at it…

There are glimmers of light, pinpricks scattered across it as though someone repeatedly stabbed a dark curtain.

But I don’t have time to focus on this. I’m much too busy.

First things first.

Olive. I’m going to speak like this because I don’t want the fool to overhear us. I want him to be fully surprised at his demise.

My maid nods silently.

I want to restore the moon. Is that something we can accomplish?

She pauses for a moment, tipping her head to one side and then the other.

And then she nods, with a brief flash of confusion from our bond.

Why are you confused?

“Told,” she says out loud.

Told?

(She probably means that she was told not to. Most likely, she assumed you knew you could restore it?) Nyx offers.

And Olive nods her head rapidly.

Oh.

(Also you don’t need to use a Skill to talk to us. In your head, remember?)

Right! Huh, I can save the infinitesimally small mana expenditure.

(Ass.)

Anyway. Olive, before we restore it, there is something else I want to do.

She nods again.

And I take a deep breath to gather my thoughts.

This one takes far, far longer than I usually do, but it makes sense considering how complex this is compared to simply telling someone to explode.

But I think I’m finally ready, at least to try.

Supportive feelings ripple across Olive’s bond, and so I begin speaking words that will probably change the planes.

***

And nothing happens. I hear Aubrey – kneeling and now bound with the very chain he’d used against me – chuckle jovially.

I grin up at the night sky.

“It is time. Olive?”

My maid nods, and then steps toward me.

And wraps her arms around me, pressing her lips to mine for some reason.

“Mmf?”

Before I have a chance to struggle, I feel a massive amount of mana drain from me, as well as a further bond between us grow sharply into focus.

As she finally releases me and takes a step back, I realize she’s no longer in her maid uniform. Instead, she’s covered in some kind of animal skins, most of which still have the fur attached. Some even have their outer extremities still attached, like the wolf pelt around her neck like a loose mane.

I feel the strength leaving my body as I collapse to the ground. From the corner of my eye I can see the elder vampire, still smirking, but my blood bond reveals the truth; he’s apprehensive. Something about the situation strikes him as dangerous.

And so it should.

Olive pauses for a moment to gaze down at me, radiating remorse and a little pity.

Why do I know what those emotions are?

Then she turns away, facing the night sky above the castle. In her hand, roots and bones rapidly grow, expanding sinuously into a truly sinister weapon.

A bow.

An enormous greatbow, dripping with lifeblood and bursting with mana and divinity.

She raises it to the sky, drawing her other arm back as a silvery shaft materializes across the weapon’s frame.

And she releases it.

As it flies, I feel the mana rapidly leaving my body.

And hers.

My vision begins to fade out.

(Oh, you idiot.)

I feel someone begin to prop me up to a sitting position, and then wrap their arms around me. “I’m not going to let you die here. You fucking owe me, you got that? Way more than before.”

And I feel her mana begin to channel between us in a smooth circuit, rippling with runic symbols I don’t know.

As my vision begins to clear, I see the glimmering shaft reach the peak of its travel, and it explodes into a shimmering light flooding the sky.

When the flare of lunar energy dissipates, in its place floats a mystifying orb, pockmarked, gazing down on us as if it had always been there.

And Aubrey screams in anguish as his body begins to petrify –first to a chalky white mineral, and then to dust.

I laugh weakly.

The last thing I see before I black out is Olive dropping her bow to rush toward me, silently shouting something with tears streaming down her face as she holds up my limp body.

***

I blink.

…

Above me, the ceiling is rough-hewn lumber, pierced through with wooden stakes for support. I’m laying on what appears to be a pile of animal furs, with more of them piled on top.

I shift slightly… yes, I can move…

Then what happened?

I hear a gasp nearby, and then arms wrap forcefully around me, partially lifting me from my supine position before gently setting me back down, radiating worry.

Worry?

Worry, and relief?

“Olive?” I say weakly.

“Rest,” the shaky voice says near my ear – even though I hear through a Skill, and not my actual ears. “Rest.”

“What happened?”

“Mana,” she says quietly. “Divinity.”

I furrow my brow, which apparently hurts now. I wince lightly.

And that also hurts.

Everything hurts.

“What about mana and divinity?”

I feel her mana gently circulating around and through me. “Drained.”

My mana and divinity got drained, then…

…How?

“Moon.”

At first, I have no idea what the fox spirit is referring to, but then vague pieces of recollections start becoming clear.

The moon.

We restored the moon.

“The vampires?” I ask.

“Curse,” she says quietly against my neck. “Eternal.”

“Where are my retainers?”

She exhales a warm breath. “Here. Recover.”

I pause. “All of them?”

Olive is silent for a moment, a moment that I let her have.

“No.”

“Who is missing?”

“Omorth.”

I nod weakly. He’s dead. I know he’s dead.

But I have his remains, and I have his soul. The only worry is that, if I choose to resurrect him… will he be like the priests, with no memory of anything but his subservience?

…

I can tell that’s not all.

“Who else?” I ask.

“Nerin. Dead.”

I sigh. “Inconvenient. But Nerin was never my retainer.”

Olive lightly huffs against my neck, but somehow I can tell it’s muted, as though she expected it.

“Izahne? Nyx?”

“Here,” she says again. “Recover.”

I see.

…

Which still leaves me with a few important questions.

And so I ask, “How long was I out?”

“Years.”

I blink. That long?

“Recover,” she says emphatically. “Died, almost but close.”

Great.

Well, at least I’m alive, even if I’m incredibly weak and everything hurts.

And then I hear a quiet rapping at the door, followed by a gruff voice.

“You’ve been home for so long now, why do you keep hiding in your room! Your people need you! Can you hear me? Lady Artemis?”

I open my mouth to bark a reply before it registers.

That wasn’t addressed to me.

So I quietly ask, “Olive? Who is Artemis?”

I feel her quietly sigh against me.

And there’s that remorse again.

Quietly, she says, “Identify.”

Saying nothing, I activate the Skill.

[Divine Beast (Foxkin) – Artemis – Mistress of the Hunt (Universal Apex Predator)]

…

I knew my maid was terrifying, but…