"What if I don't want to go with you?" I asked, not exactly feeling up to the whole business of solo questing with the Witch Queen.

Jon stared at me like I was an idiot. "I don't think this is exactly an offer you can refuse, Aaron. Believe me, I understand you wanting to. Personally, I wish you would. I can handle this femme fatale and all her wily ways. Two's company, three's a crowd."

"I thought Three's Company was the name of the TV show," I said, staring. "My dad used to date the woman who did the thighmaster."

Jon stared. "I have so many questions about how the Most Interesting Man in the WorldTM had a son as dull as you."

"Those commercials really are based on him," I said, remembering one of my dad’s stories about how the beer licensed his life’s rights. "That and the Chuck Norris jokes. My dad and Chuck were apparently sparring partners."

Jon raised a wing to ask another question.

"We're going now, or you won't go at all," Susanos said, coldly. "Do you want to defeat Veles or not?"

"I do," I said, pointing to all the devastation around us. "I'd do anything to keep this from happening again."

"Should I blast the woman?" Sparky asked, making a boneheaded statement only matched by some of the things I'd said.

"Nope," I said, patting him on the snout. "All I'm saying is, Susanos, that I think I'm a package deal with my fellows. If we have a chance to defeat Veles then it probably will be a team effort."

"You're talking about defeating the god of evil, not coaching a little league," Jon said.

I frowned, wondering if it would be possible to break Jon of his curse. The problem was that under his status effect, he would probably fight for Susanos against me. I still remembered my time under the control of Mrs. Grubb and while it sounded hilarious, "Haha, a hag woman lures adventurers to screw her instead of investigate all the people she murdered.", it had been objectively terrifying.

Okay, it didn’t sound that hilarious either.

I'd been hanging around Jon for too long.

Maybe it was the fact she'd looked like Jennifer Connolly.

"Which is why I think everyone would be onboard," I replied to Susanos, not really addressing Jon at all.

"Is this because you think I'm going to betray you and you worry that you won't have any backup when it happens?" Susanos asked.

I blinked. I hadn't seen directly addressing that issue coming. "Err, kind of."

Susanos looked bored. "Believe me, Aaron Bartkowski of Michigan, I do not have any interest in you. If I did, i would have killed you now and tried to seize the marks on your wrists. They would elevate me to the status of a petty god should I figure out how to harness their power and slay you. However, I have no interest in being a petty god."

I blinked. "So, your argument is you absolutely would betray me if it was worth your time but I'm too basic for you to stab in the back."

"You are, in simple terms, too underleveled in your gear," Susanos said. "You've moved up considerably but we're talking sixties and seventies versus nearing twenty."

It was weird hearing her use RPG speak. "You'd do well at Epic DungeoneeringTM."

I was presently debating whether to try to fight Susanos now that I'd defeated Belobog. It would have been an objectively stupid move to fight her alone, but I had Sparky at my side and the others were nearby. I might be able to survive fighting her long for the others to join in and if we could beat Cthulhu, I was pretty sure we could beat her. Excepting, of course, that it'd taken throwing a bolt full of magical gunpowder and dynamite at him.

A bigger consideration, though, was that I'd been given a direct task to kill Susanos by the gods. I hadn't suddenly become religious. I liked some of the gods but I liked Jon and Maelor the Black too, but I didn't want to be taking orders from them. They'd pretty much proven they were all manipulative sons of bitches like the late Larry C.C. Weiss, even Mokosh.

However, the situation here was a pretty classic RPG dilemma of who to side with. Like in Dragon Age: Origins when you can either help the elves, help the werewolves, or figure out a way to do both. I didn't see the last option happening despite my enhanced intelligence. I also knew where I stood with the Southern Kingdom's gods in a way that I didn't with the Witch Queen.

"I'm the CEO of Epic DungeoneeringTM or, I was, at least, until Veles overthrew me," Susanos said. "At least I used to be. I was the one who came up with the idea that we should lure Larry C.C. Weis into writing the Garland's story before turning it into a multimedia franchise."

I blinked. "So, you're Zuzanna Czarownica."

Zuzanna Czarownica was someone I'd never met in person but was on the walls of the studios where I'd worked as well as the occasional issue of WIRED or the website (not the magazine) of FORBES. She wasn't someone who sought publicity despite building a multi-billion-dollar empire out of a video game company. The woman in the picture had also been touched up enough that I hadn't made an immediate connection. That and I was just terrible with faces.

"Yes, her name was literally Susan the Witch," Jon said. "Not really making much effort to hide her identity."

"Yes, I am," Susanos said. "Working with the Wise Man allowed for a steady supply of faith to be poured into the Old Gods as well as Perun himself. Enough to create the Marks of the Champion as well as feed Veles. The idiotic veneration of people buying comics, action figures, and wasting hours of time in front of the idiot box was not as pure as true faith but quantity has a quality all its own. Dark Undermaster 3 sold fifty million units alone and that's not including the TV show's audience. When the Kingdom of Poland existed during the Middle Ages, it had a million and a half people."

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

I stared at her. "So, you were plotting against Veles for some time."

"I was hedging my bets," Susanos said. "Whatever the case, it also created a bond between Veles and Earth that would eventually allow him to manifest on your world. That is why your world is in danger and that is why we must go now. Veles knows that the public is fickle and with no more books coming from Weiss, who realized what we were doing was empowering Veles as well as the champions, this will be his last opportunity to carry out his plan."

"Ow," Sparky said, blinking his big draconic eyes. "That makes my head hurt."

"Mine too, buddy," I said.

"But to explain to you, I only need you, Aaron," Susanos said, simply.

"The rest of your team is Destiny's Child while you're Beyonce," Jon said. "You know, expect not nearly as hot, cool, or capable of doing multiple musical genres."

"I have my own group. Which you are now a part of," Susanos said, snapping her fingers.

There was a flash of light and I found myself standing next to Susanos. Sparky was gone and we were sitting on the top of a mountain as the skies shuddered with thunderclouds, pouring down a chilly rain. No sunlight was penetrating the place and the only illumination was the lightning that crackled every few seconds. The mountaintop was about the size of a football field's interior and there were shattered ruins of a temple as well as tombs spread throughout.

It reminded me of one of the final levels of Eldritch Ring where you were supposed to face down the Death God/Goddess. There was a sense of oppression to the air and I couldn't help but feel chilled from more than the rain. This was a place of great evil and far more corrupt and twisted than any of the warped Great Temples.

"Where the hell am I?" I asked, turning around in confusion. "Where's Sparky?"

My mark began to rapidly ding, letting me know my status was being updated.

SPARKY HAS LEFT THE PARTY

ANIA ROSE HAS LEFT PARTY

AGATA ROSE HAS LEFT PARTY

KRAGEN BLOODSTORM HAS LEFT THE PARTY

POPE JOAN THE WISE HAS LEFT PARTY

IVAN CROOKBACK HAS LEFT PARTY

SUSANOS THE WITCH QUEEN HAS JOINED THE PARTY

"You know where you are," Susanos said, chuckling. "As for the dragon boy, we don't need him. Nor do we need your other associates. I hope my teleporting you against your will shows that I can be trusted."

"How's that?" I asked, furious. I knew, at least, where I was: Bald Mountain. Veles' former domain.

The place that was supposed to be where we had our final showdown. I knew not just because it was the most logical place but because "Night on Bald Mountain" from Disney's Fantasia started to play on my mark.

"I could have teleported you to space or the bottom of the ocean," Susanos said. "The differences in our power are of kind not just level. You will require my power as well as that of my associates to survive even a second against Veles."

"Right," I said, accepting her logic for now. "You're not really convincing me I don't need my part."

"Hey, man, it sucks to be them," Jon said, flapping his wings while remaining on Susanos' shoulder. "However, look at the bright side, Agata is going to be able to have her baby in peace."

"I induced labor before we left," Susanos said. "That should provide us with a distraction until we have left this plane."

"Or she's going to be absolutely miserable for the next few day," Jon replied. "Then miserable for the next eighteen years because kids suck."

I took a deep breath. "I guess I don't have a choice at this point, do I?"

"You did, until now," Susanos said.

ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: THE LESSER EVIL IS STILL EVIL

(A) - 50 - Side with the Witch Queen over the Gods

Well, that wasn't reassuring. It seemed that this particular quest was on a timer and I'd screwed up by not making a decision fast enough. What was the old adage? Not making a decision is a decision by itself?

"Right," I said, sighing. "So, what now?"

Susanos smiled.

That was even less reassuring.

"Now we go meet the others I've gathered," Susanos said. "A more...appropriate party than the one you have assembled for yourself."

"They're going to be a bunch of psychopaths and serial killers, aren't they?" I asked, adjusting my hood to keep out the rain. That was one good thing about Dark Undermaster gear: it was very good at keeping away the elements.

"Some of them," Susanos said. "But I prefer not to deal with complete monsters."

"The regular kind?" I asked.

Susanos laughed at that and turned around to head into the temple ruins. Veles had either trashed the place on the way out or hadn't bothered with the upkeep over the past thousand years. It was far more like Castle Dracula than Castle Bloodmoon with webs everywhere, broken statuary, and no sign that anyone had been here for years.

Nevertheless, the webs parted for Susanos and we headed into the heart of the central chamber, revealing a desecrated temple similar to the one inside Dragon Keep. Except Perun and Mokosh's heads had been chopped off and the smaller gods had been replaced with their Old God demon forms. It was about as close to, 'This is a Temple of Evil' as you could probably get without being the literal Temple of Doom. Man, that movie was inaccurate to Hindu religious practices.

Focus, Aaron!

The temple had a portal circle in the back, radiating power that dwarfed anything I'd experienced up to this point. The portal network had once been a mainstay of the Southern Kingdoms and had elevated society to something closer to steampunk (magicpunk) instead of the Medieval hellhole it had been since the 1940s and the Great Darkness. That was when the deathrot plague, Twisted Ones, and literal Nazis had kicked everyone back to the Dark Ages. I'd restored a few but this was something that was akin to a nuclear reactor while I'd just been fiddling with steam engines.

There were other people present in the central chamber of the Temple, though. Some of whom I recognized and some of whom I did not. The first two figures that came to mind were ones that I'd fought alongside already: Alek and Rachel.

"Hi, Aaron!" Rachel said. "Or should I call you daddy around here?"

"Seriously, she's doing it deliberately," Alek said. "You realize that, right?"

"I wish she'd develop another personality trait," I muttered.

"Do you?" Jon asked. "Because I question that."

Next was Maelor the Black, vampire brothel owner and former king of the elves. He'd been so bad at it that they'd sworn off monarchy forever and become anarchists. Mind you, his turning himself into a vampire via pact with Veles and then transforming most of their nobility had probably helped. He was wearing a special suit of black armor that incongruously had a Green Goblin-esque cap on top. Bloodstorm's father was an unusual addition here.

"Hello, Aaron," Maelor said. "It seems I'm out of retirement."

A woman was standing next to him, dressed in a black leather corset with two silver tonfas that had blades attached to the ends. She was quite curvacious with long black hair and looked almost identical to Agata only twenty years or so older, It took me a second to realize she was Maria Rose, the sister's mother, who had gone from grande dame to Bloodrayne since her transformation to the undead.

"Oh, uh, hi," I said, feeling very awkward about this meeting.

"Is this the man sleeping with my daughters?" Maria asked.

"The naked healing thing doesn't count! I mean, I'm only sleeping with one! Now! Sleeping not s....fuck," I said, pointing at her. "Anything I say will just make it worse."

Maelor laughed.

Maria glared.

Alek chuckled.

Rachel just beamed brightly, like she didn't have a care in the world.

The final member of the group was a man in Dark Undermaster Master Ranger Armor like myself with gaunt, pale, and saggy skin with glowing eyes. That would have been disconcerting enough if not for the fact we had the same face.

I knew him in an instant.

"Meet your own personal Suicide Squad, Aaron," Jon said. "The Bad, The Worse, and the Nasty."

MARIA ROSE JOINED THE PARTY

MAELOR THE BLACK HAS JOINED THE PARTY

GARLAND OF NOWHERE HAS JOINED THE PARTY