Veles was an asshole.

This was something that he'd already established with his whole 'kill the world' philosophy and contemptuous attitude toward everyone. Plus, there was the constant low level cheating that he'd been engaged in throughout our attempts to overthrow him. Cheating that had graduated to full-on hacking the game by incorporating nukes and rage-quitting. However, doing what he'd done to Larry C.C. Weis seemed like it had dug the hole a bit deeper and cost me what little respect I'd had for the man.

I had complicated feelings regarding the Wise Man. As Jon said, he'd done a lot of shady stuff that had resulted in needless suffering for a lot of people. Perhaps I was too forgiving. Which, honestly, was a bit like saying that Mario jumped a lot or Link liked green hoodies, but I was willing to overlook a lot. Yet, Weis had killed the Dragon Queen because he didn't think she had what it took to defeat Veles. This had driven my cousin insane with revenge and led to the death of a lot of Weis' allies. He'd also set me up to become lovers with Zorya Dawnbringer and reincarnate her but only after forcing me to kill her. Explictly making me the murderer of the mother of my child (however much Rachel denied she was in any way my daughter).

Weis had also done something worse than both of these things, at least from my perspective, in that he'd undermined his own cause by refusing to trust anyone with the whole picture. If Weis had really wanted to be save Mokosh then he should have shared what he had planned with the people, he was trying to maneuver. Instead, he'd kept it all extremely close to his chest and now I wasn't sure what he'd been planning.

Except what was in this letter that I was now opening. "Maybe this holds the key to his plans."

"Did you learn dialogue from Writing 101?" Jon asked. "Also, please tell me you don't believe that letter is actually from Weis."

"Maybe it's his last message to me," I said, offended.

"That Veles didn't notice when he was torturing him before wearing his body like a condom?" Jon asked.

"I don't think that last metaphor was needed," I replied. "You think this is a trap?"

"I think that our insides might still be liquifying because Veles used a nuke on us after planting it in the penultimate boss chamber," Jon said. "At this point, I wouldn't be surprised if Veles paid your ex-girlfriend to reveal your secret identity so she could do porn and buy drugs."

"Nice Daredevil reference," I said. "You know they were making a sequel to the Netflix show. I wonder if it got cancelled due to Veles."

"Godsdammit," Jon muttered. "If he's responsible for that, he's eviler than we thought! FYI, you need to clear with me if you are monogamous with Ania or just playing headgames. Because if we do save the world, we can pretty much get any man or woman we want. Deborah Anne Woll, Matthew Cox, the guy who does the stunt work--"

"Comments like that are why I play headgames," I said, opening the letter and causing a glowing yellow wisp of gold to fly out before transforming into a translucent ghostly apparition of himself.

"Huh, it seems Larry is now cribbing from Spaceballs," Jon said. "Sure, why not. Aaron is a prince and he can marry Princess Vespa."

"I'm sorry, Larry," I said, looking on his ghost with sympathy. "I should have moved quicker. Maybe if I'd beaten Belobog immediately after defeating Zorya Nightbringer, I might have been able to beat Veles before he escaped."

"He can't hear you, Aaron," Jon said. "This is a prerecorded message. It's also, again, almost certainly a trap."

"It's not quite as prerecorded as you might think, Jon," Larry said, surprising me by speaking in a sad but respectful tone. "Perun elevated me to his Chosen before his death. As such, the state of being alive and dead are somewhat fluid when dealing with me. Even Veles can't touch the Cycle of Life and Death without the consent of the people involved."

"I'm so glad Mega-God Hitler cares so much about consent," Jon said. "Oh, Aaron, can we bury Larry? I'd like to piss on his grave."

"You shit on my shoulder way too often for me to take that any way but literally," I replied.

"Ravens don't have bowel control!" Jon said, defensively. "It's nothing personal. I'd be in human form when I pissed on his grave."

"We'll cremate you unless you have any other wishes," I said, having adopted that as a policy throughout Ledziana. Tombs were something that couldn't really be afforded these days when the dead were refusing to stay that way. The only exceptions were individuals who were marked for being raised and since only Joan, Agata, and I could do that, it wasn't something that there was much demand for. Rachel might have been a god, but it didn't seem like healing, let alone resurrection, was her purview.

"What happens to my remains now doesn't matter, though I wouldn't be surprised if Veles left something on the body to deal with you," Larry said. "He might not sound like it but you have him scared and it is part of the reason he's accelerating his plans so quickly. You remind him too much of his brother and while they are buried deep, there are feelings of both guilt as well as doubt within Veles."

"Aaron reminds Veles of Lord Fratbro? The Chris Hemsworth Thor with slightly better magic?" Jon asked. "Yeah, I suppose I could see it."

I rolled my eyes. "Jon thinks this message is the trap."

Larry shook his head. "The letter is just a representation of me and is composed purely of Perun's essence. It is sent along the marks and cannot be seen by him. This is a conversation just between us."

"Which is exactly what a trap would say," Jon said.

"I'm listening," I said.

"You will go to the Dagobah System," Larry said, waving his hand. "There you will learn from Yoda, the Jedi Master who instructed me."

"Okay, I'm gone," I said, getting up. "Clearly, I am the most serious person here and that is just fucking tragic."

Larry let out a Santa Claus-esque laugh, which probably shouldn't have been surprising since in addition to being the Southern Kingdom's discount Gandalf, he also was apparently the guy who delivered toys to all the good little pagan girls and boys during the Winter Solstice. The weird shit you find out about alternate worlds. That also meant, of course, that in addition to all the other evil things he'd done, Veles had ruined Christmas.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

"I'm kidding, Aaron," Larry said. "No more training do you require. However, I made the choices I made with the knowledge that they'd lead to my death. The information I can pass on is something that I hope will mean the difference between victory and defeat."

"Oh, so you dying and depriving us of the strongest wizard on Mokosh was part of the plan," Jon said. "Great job. Real brilliant planning there, Sun Tzu."

"Throw your soldiers into battle from which there is no escape, and they will prefer death to flight," Larry said, quoting the Art of War. I'd never read it but I was familiar with the Sabaton album of the same name. "That's the strategy I chose to follow when bringing the champions to this world. It forced you to become the heroes we needed. Which includes you too, Jon."

Jon raised a wing in what I assumed was a flipping off gesture.

"What's the message, Larry?" I asked.

"Three parts," Larry said. "The first of which is the fact you have to be on top of Bald Mountain in three days."

"Three days?" I asked. "I can't be on top of Bald Mountain in three days. I have to fight Belobog."

Larry shook his head. "Belobog doesn't matter right now. It may take an army or three to defeat him but he's a mindless force of destruction. Thousands may die, maybe tens of thousands, but the world will recover. Veles is the real danger. The portal between Earth and Mokosh that is located there will only be open on Walpurgis Night, however. All the other times it can be opened will require an archmage of which, well, we're distinctly lacking on. Either because they're loyal to Veles or because Alek killed my students."

"Yeah, he's real sorry about that," I said, sarcastically. "Some asshole murdered the woman he loved and replaced her with an imposter."

Larry frowned. "I see your opinion of me isn't that much better than Jon's."

"I just don't like people who hurt my family," I said, sighing.

"Family," Jon grunted in his best faux-Vin Diesel.

"Second, Veles plan is to unite the worlds," Larry explained. "That is his endgame and what you have to prevent on Earth. The Old Gods warping the Elemental Temples was the groundwork he needed to lay to achieve this on Mokosh. He's had decades to do it and will have to work much faster on Earth, so he'll at least have his works being big and obvious."

"This isn't going to be like the original Final Fantasy where we have to refight all the bosses in a row is it?" Jon asked. "Or Castlevania: Symphony of the Night where we're going through the castle again upside down?"

I ignored Jon. "By uniting the worlds, do you mean--"

"He will literally combine their timelines and reality to create a massive explosion of magic that will allow him to absorb all of the other gods as well as the billions of lives on both worlds into himself," Larry said. "It will transform him from a creator god, already one of the most powerful beings in the universe, into a new Triglav. An anti-Triglav if you will. As close to an opposite of the traditional interpretation of the Abrahamic God as exists. Then nothing will be able to stop him. If any other overgods exist in the universe, I do not know of them."

I didn't bother asking if the Abrahamic God would qualify as I wouldn't trust Larry's answer regarding old Eli. Instead, I nodded. "Right, so Veles plan is still to kill everyone but he's going to do it in a way that makes him even more of a god than before."

"More Final Fantasy rip-offs," Jon said. "The villain is always trying to be a god in the end but here, he's already a god so it's just hack writing."

"Reality, unlike fiction, doesn't actually have to follow the rules of good storytelling," Larry said. "Veles' plan is something that his own followers have been deceived about. As the Twisted One's influence poisons his mind, his usually rock-solid willingness to honor his promises diminishes. The Thirteen, Epic DungeoneeringTM's executives, and many others are expecting to be rewarded for their service. The fact Veles plans to destroy the world would result in many of them questioning their loyalty.

"The Witch Queen has already shown up to us and offered to help us against her master," I said.

Larry's expression became unreadable. "You shouldn't trust her."

"No kidding," I said, dryly.

"I trust her as far as my dick," Jon said. "Which can be pretty far now that I can become a dragon. Seriously, you can bash someone's head in with that thing now."

"The Witch Queen wants to be a goddess and Veles' equal," Larry said. "However, she was cheated by Veles when they first made their bargain during the early days of humanity. Becoming a death lord, or indeed any sort of undead, precludes a person from ascension to divinity. Your soul is permanently bonded to Veles and reduced in nature. All of their power is channeled from him as well so while they may be vast in personal magic, they are no longer truly free-willed beings and permanently subject to his will."

"And we're back to ripping off Tolkien," Jon said. "You act like that's really profound but it's derivative. Sauron wants to conquer Middle Earth while Melkor wants to spite Eru. The Ringwraiths were kings of men but they're now Sauron's busboys. No one can destroy the One Ring willingly. Do you have any original ideas?"

"Given this is all the history of a living world, no," Larry said, showing remarkable honesty. "I deserve credit for turning your dialogue, Jon, into something even remotely readable. What I mean to say is the Witch Queen covets the Marks of the Champion. She may also seek other means of ascending to the divine as well."

"You mean like stealing Veles power?" I asked.

"No," Larry said.

I cursed as I knew what Larry was getting at. "Agata and Bloodstorm's baby."

Jon flapped a bit in alarm. "Hey, she's not the kind of person who would steal a baby."

Larry and I both looked at Jon, though in my case it was more curving my head.

"Okay, she's exactly the sort of person to steal a baby," Jon said, looking down. "Probably so she could put her in a tower and harvest her golden hair but that doesn't mean she's a bad person."

"Amazing," Larry said. "Even Aaron has a poorer opinion of the women he sleeps with."

"Given he killed one of them, I'm not sure that qualifies," Jon said. "That's going to be a red flag on your dating profile forever after. I mean, Agata is probably not going to seek you for comfort after she and Bloodstorm inevitably break up."

"What?" I asked, appalled.

"Oh, sorry, no, that was my plan," Jon said. "But you were thinking it. Single moms need love too!"

I decided that when I got back to Dragon Keep, I'd develop a permanent SILENCE spell for Jon. "What was the third thing you were going to tell me? At this point, I'll take any advice I can get since everyone seems to want Veles defeated but they're already starting to feud about how."

It was a sobering moment because there had been many wars that had been close to victory before infighting snatched it away. We were far from close to victory.

Much to my annoyance, Larry didn't respond. Indeed, his image was frozen in place with no response.

"Hello, hello," Jon waved his wing at the archwizard. "Is this thing on? Great, he's crashed. Do we need to reboot him or what?"

"I don't think that's an option," I said, annoyed. "What are the odds the third thing he had to tell us was, by far, the most important?"

"Given the quality of the writing so far, I'd say about 100%," Jon replied. "Do you think we should move to another universe with better material? Maybe superheroes? I know the MCU has taken a dive, and I doubt it's gotten better when I'm gone but maybe they finally let Zach Snyder finish his work."

"James Gunn is in charge now," I said.

"Really?" Jon asked. "Well, it's too bad Satan is probably going to ruin that too."

"Towers..." the image of Larry Weis slurred. "Deathrot...Reincarnation."

With that, his image winked out of existence.

"Well, that was useless," Jon said. "Is your mark acting up?"

"Fraid so," I replied. "I can't see any of my stats."

"But that's the entire appeal of LitRPG and RPGs in general!" Jon said, appalled. "Seeing the little numbers go up is addictive like crack! It's why we shell out seventy bucks or even more for these games!"

I sighed and noted the letter in my hands was now just blank. Well, blank if you didn't count the bloodstains. "We need to figure out a way to get to the portal on Bald Mountain while not betraying everyone we've assembled to fight Veles' forces."

"You don't think that they'll be fine without you?" Jon asked before bursting into laughter mixed with caws. "Oh, yeah, no, they'll be at each other's throats in minutes. They almost fell apart the first time you went to the bathroom. Ivan will start chopping off heads the moment you're not looking over his shoulder and Agata is going to go nuts the moment she finds out that her goddess betrayed her."

There was a crack of thunder outside.

"I mean asked a great sacrifice of her," Jon said, nervously.

"Come on, let's go," I said. "I need to tell the rest of the group. Secrets are poison."

"Said no man in any successful relationship ever," Jon said.

That was when Larry Weis' corpse got up off the ground and threw a fireball at my face.