Nightchilde placed her hand, well, one of them, on my shoulder and I felt myself restored. "You'll need this if you want to have a chance to fight the Wind Demon."

I turned to her. "Uh, aren't you going to help?"

"Not a chance," Nightchilde said, dryly. "The Wind Demon would concentrate all of its force upon me for the anger it feels over what I've done to it. I am currently in a weakened state due to our separation, even with the Dragon Queen's body, but I will be at full strength once I have the chance to absorb its power post-mortem. Your soldiers will have to finish it off by themselves."

"Uh huh," I said, only really registering she said my party and I were going to go after this thing on our own.

"Do not be too alarmed, Aaron," Nightchilde said, smiling. "The Wind Demon can heal itself to full strength, but it cannot resurrect its heads. Each of them represents a fragment of the people I once was and with two of them gone, it will be substantially weakened. Your angelic slave did not die in vain."

I got the distinct impression Nightchilde was doing her best to be nice to me, but she was failing miserably because her definition was so far removed from anything i considered to be so.

"Yeah, right, well I want to go try to rescue everyone in the city," I said, gesturing to the door. "Do you have any objections to that, Your Majesty?"

"We'll finish our game afterward," Nightchilde said. "Remember, Aaron, that you have your own unwelcome passenger. Ask yourself if your most recent actions are because you decided to do them or because you are influenced by someone else."

I think she's talking about you, I said to Perun.

No shit, Perun also. Also, I never would have killed Ivan.

Oh, I said.

Yeah, I would have either forced him to swear allegiance or killed him but not both, Perun said. That was brutal.

I bowed my head and turned away before heading to the door, having no idea how I was going to get myself out of this current situation. The Nightbringer was one of the most popular characters in Eldritch Ring but someone who also had a manipulative streak a mile wide. I wasn't one of her stans, though, and the fact she'd apparently decided we should get married to solidify her claim on the Southern Kingdoms wasn't improving my opinion.

That and the mass murder of royals and wizards who could stand in her way, Perun said.

That too, I added.

I'd cared for Nightchilde a lot but in retrospect, our relationship had been one big fat lie. She'd been a rock star, or at least something close to it, and I'd been a computer programmer. The relationship had been entirely on her terms. She showed up, crashed at my place between gigs, and sometimes invited me to wherever she was staying no matter how far away it was. There hadn't been much glamour to it and any emotional intimacy was voided by the fact I didn't know she was a goddess from another planet. It was kind of the reverse of my situation with Ania. I'd known everything about her life, and she'd known nothing about mine.

There was also the fact, if you'll pardon the Pwiffle pun, she was holding all the cards. I had no idea how to piece together the jigsaw puzzle that had been made of the Southern Kingdom's political situation. The Mad Queen was dead, rather anticlimactically assassinated Godfather style, along with the Great Mother of the Sisters of Mokosh and First Ranger Rhoeas. Maybe Emperor Constantine the Black II but he hadn't been here, only his delegates. There were a bunch of other people I had no idea as to the identities of but had to assume they were important.

Basically, everyone who could have stood up to Nightchilde in her coup had been wiped out in one fell swoop. Well, not everyone, the Wise Man had managed to survive by sending a doppelganger. Still, I didn't know if it was best to make a deal with the Devil (Elizabeth Hurley's version from Bedazzled came to mind) or risk trying to go out on our own. I also had to re-evaluate White Alignment Lawful Good paragon Francine since, apparently, she'd spent the past few years helping Nightchilde set all of this up. Hell, Francine was the assassin of the Dragon Queen and meant that she'd been responsible for the worst series finale of any show since Dexter.

"Hey, Aaron!" a familiar and entirely unwelcome voice spoke at the end of the hall I was traveling down.

It was Alek and he was carrying his assault rifle.

Acting like he wasn't a guy who had just murdered a bunch of people, including Garland's mother.

Joan was beside him.

"Alek, I don't mean to be a dick, except I kind of do," I said, taking a deep breath. "Please back the fuck off, you fucking psycho."

I paused.

Alek paused.

"I apologize for my language," I said, looking down at Joan. "That was uncalled for."

"You blew the head off of my friend and raised him from the dead," Joan said. "I mean, yes, he was lying to us--"

"The lying was bad," I said, feeling like I had to be patient here even though I could hear screams outside along with battle. "The stealing someone's body and wearing it like a suit part was worse. Oh, and being party to torturing my girlfriend and her sister when they were teenagers. Oh, and trying to use us to kill his bodysnatching victim to cover up his crime. All that pisses me off. Dammit, I really am sorry for my coarse language."

"I think she's heard worse," Alek said, jokingly.

"Quiet, Mr. Murder!" I said, pointing at him. "You are a murderous bad person now! I do not want to hear jokes from you after seeing your gunned down victims!"

I felt like my brain was degenerating to grade school around Alek, I was so furious at him.

"You killed Ivan!" Alek said. "You don't get to lecture me about murder when you pull that shit! Sorry, Joan."

"Seriously, I've heard bad language before," Joan muttered. "It's not even a sin if you don't invoke Mythras' name or blaspheme by referencing other gods."

"I can lecture you about murder when my victim's up and walking around a minute later!" I said. "It's like a punching a guy. It hurt and then it's done."

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

"It's cruel and unusual punishment," Alek said, sounding genuinely offended at my dismissal of what I'd done. "Not that I wouldn't have killed him for what he'd done. Same as Francine and probably Jorg or any of the rest of your group. I'm just saying you're no better."

"I killed him so no one else would!" I said. "Which is admittedly stupid sounding in retrospect, but it worked. I think. At least, hopefully no one has killed him in the day since it happened."

"Can he really be blamed for his past crimes?" Joan asked, clearly wrestling with the earlier part of our conversation. "I mean, the stuff he did as Prince Cezary. In many ways, he's really a different person in the most literal sense. We're talking about the mixing and matching of souls."

"Aren't you, as the Pope, someone who should be deciding that?" Alek asked.

"This isn't covered in the Mythrandium," Joan said, blinking. "I should probably ask Mythras."

"You do that," I said, upset at being interrupted. "But right now I need to assemble everyone I can to slay the evil dragon god so we can save people."

"I want to help," Alek said, looking at me.

I stared at him. "Like fu...err, frick you will!"

"I want to help too!" Joan said. "You can bring back Celestyne! Nightchilde said so. We don't need her."

I stared at her. "This is what it takes to get you to turn on her after both swearing allegiance to her?"

Yes, I was irrationally angry about that except remove the irrationally part.

Alek paused. "See, that's the problem, Aaron. For most of us, bringing back the dead, is not a normal everyday occurrence."

"I mean, I can do it, but it has to be in three days and I have to have the body," Joan said.

I made a mental note to see if we could find the Great Mother and her attendants’ bodies, assuming Nightchilde didn't just disintegrate them.

"I'm not sure it's that easy," I said. "Nightchilde is running around in Celestyne's body."

Alek and Joan stared at me. Their shared look was one of pure horror.

Shit.

I probably should have kept that to myself at this point. So many books from the Dresden Files and so on advocated that you should be open as well as honest with your partners about everything. When, in reality, sometimes there was something to be said about operational secrecy.

"That lying evil..." Alek trailed off.

I took a deep breath. "Alek, I can't imagine the kind of pain and suffering you're going through. I know what I would do if Ania was lost to me and someone offered to bring her back. However, I need to suggest to you something simple: stop making pacts with evil gods, you goddamn moron!"

"See, now that's a sin," Joan said, making a joke even as her eyes contained despair. "When you revealed my mother had been taken by an imposter, I thought I'd accepted it but then she offered--"

"People are dying!" I said, pointing to the side of the hall where I could hear the screams. I wished I had a window to look out and, simultaneously, was grateful I didn't. "If you want to help, fine, but if anyone tries to kill you for the fact you murdered their aunt or sister then I'm not going to intervene."

Technically, the Great Mother wasn't their aunt, just their foster brother's mother, Perun said.

Shuddap, I replied.

Unfortunately, if there was another moment we could have spent on discussing this, it had past because there was the sound of a massive crash from down the hall I'd just heading toward. It was where the others were supposed to have been held prisoner. Not thinking with my INT but my heart, I ran down as fast as I could.

The sight that greeted me at the end of the hall was one that managed to stun me even after all I'd managed to have seen in the Southern Kingdoms. Passing through the door frame, the door having fallen of its hinges, I came into a large chamber that had previously been a lounge between multiple apartments. It was here that my party had been divided and guarded by Nightchilde's assassins.

It was better than a dungeon with more of the pleasant, oddly Mediterranean architecture style (to go along with their Japanese weapons--elves were weird), but a prison was just a prison. I could only imagine all the party wondering if I was going to betray them or help them. I'd lost their trust during all of this and wasn't sure I could get it back. Maybe that was something I was imagining, though, and just reflected what I feared most.

None of that mattered though, right now, because the roof had literally been ripped off the top of the chamber and the Wind Demon was staring his two remaining heads down into the chamber. It had breathed fire into the room and there were still pockets burning across the stone floor like oil fires. Dragonfire seemed to work less like a flame thrower and more like napalm.

A good six or seven Dark Moon assassins were dead on the ground alongside an equal number of gilded armored elves of both sexes. My party had managed to gather its weapons and was attempting to fight the monster. Not all of them had gotten their armor on, though, with Bloodstorm naked.

Ivan was, hilariously, wearing a white nightgown with a cap like he was Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol. He'd once more summoned his personal cannon and it was firing at the monster to minimal effect.

"Cezzaaaaarrryyyy!" The Wind Demon hissed, its two draconic mouths speaking the name simultaneously.

"I assume you're going to blame me for this!" Ivan shouted, throwing what appeared to be a modern grenade that stuck to the side of the second head and blew up. It didn't kill the head, though, but half-blinded it.

"Die, monster!" Alek shouted, raising his rifle and shooting at the injured head. The bullets tore into its wounded head, and it turned to stare at us with one blazing eye as the other head continued attacking my group.

"Thank you, Alek, we really needed its attention," I shouted, holding out my hand. "PERUN!"

I really hoped that the sword Thistle had stolen would return to my hand if I summoned it. Much to my surprise, it did, appearing in glorious He-Man-esque fashion.

The dragon breathed forth a massive amount of greenish fire at me, Alek, and Joan, only for the latter to summon a glowing shield that barely managed to hold it at bay. It flickered seconds after the torrent of flame stopped, though, and Joan ended up on one knee.

"Mythras is very mad at me," Joan muttered. "You can't serve two masters."

"Then serve one," I muttered, charging at the dragon and casting JUMP before I leapt on its back, driving my sword into its back. The Sword of Perun buried itself into the monster's thick hide at the base of its wounded neck. A thick black ichor poured from the wound and the head thrashed for several seconds before falling still.

That was when the Wind Demon looked back with one of its heads before starting to levitate upward and take me with it.

Oh crap.

"YOU WILL COME WITH ME, PERUNSON," the Wind Demon spoke with one voice rather than two as it took to the sky. It was suddenly a lot more coherent sounding. It still sounded like every word was being shouted, though. "YOU WILL MAKE A GIFT TO THE DARK LORD AND I WILL RECEIVE THE RESTORATION THAT I HAVE SO LONG DESIRED!"

Great, you eliminated the competing personalities, Perun said. Now it can think straight.

You are not helping! I mentally shouted.

I struggled to stay on the Wind Demon's back as it started sailing over the city. La Tene was on fire in several places, and I could see that fighting had broken out between the armies encamped in ruined parts of the elvish settlement. If this was Nightchilde's plan to bring all of the armies of the Southern Kingdoms under her control, it was not a very good one.

"I don't suppose we can work something out!" I said, very glad I had my ring of ogre strength on or I would have gone flying off by now. "I know you are the real Ivan! We can get you a new body or even your old one back, maybe!"

"I LIKE THIS NEW BODY!" The singular head spoke. "I WILL SEVER THE REMAINING HEADS AND MASTER SHAPESHIFTING TO HUMAN FORM! VELES WILL NEED A KING TO REIGN OVER HIS CONQUERED LANDS BEFORE HE DESTROYS THEM ALL! I WILL BE THAT KING!"

Yeah, it seemed that we'd reached the limit of diplomacy here. "Don't make me destroy you!"

Okay, I was quoting Darth Vader now.

That wasn't a good sign.

"WHAT COULD YOU POSSIBLY DO, INSECT?" the Wind Demon screamed. "YOU ARE A BASTARD IMITATION OF GARLAND AND NOT EVEN A TRUE GOD."

I sucked in my breath and let go of the sword, clutching one of the scales instead. I was going to get a Divine Mishap here. "PERUN'S DIVINE LIGHTNING BOLT!"

A bolt of lightning larger than any I'd ever seen shot down from the sky and struck my target: the Sword of Perun that channeled the electricity throughout the body of the Wind Demon. It screamed like a human being over a microphone, ringing through my ears. It wasn't enough to kill it, though, so I held my hand right over the crackling pommel and shouted, "PUSH!"

The sword shot so deep into its chest that the pommel disappeared.

And the dragon began to fall. I struggled to hold onto the edge of the injury, burning my hands on the hot ichor but a gust of wind blasted from the wound.

Divine Mishap.

The wind blast hit me with as much force as one of my PUSH spells and sent me flying off into the air.