I think I reacted to being knocked off a dragon in mid-flight rather well.

"SHITTTTTTTTTTTTT!" I shouted, flailing in the air and never more aware of the fact that I could have gotten the GENTLE FALL spell at first level. Unfortunately, I was still about six hundred thousand experience points away from leveling up this time. Hit points meant I was tougher but since Valentin had been about 20th level when I'd pushed him off a similarly sized cliff, I was pretty sure they meant nothing here.

Indeed, it was kind of embarrassing my last thoughts were going to be of game mechanics versus something profound like the meaning of life or Ania. Hell, I was annoyed my final thoughts were going to be annoyed that I wasn't thinking of Ania. Then my mind wandered to Ania and Rachel but not in a way that could be considered familial, philosophical, or profound. No, I was imagining Ania naked and realizing Rachel looked exactly like a girl I met at Undermastercon.

Was time travel involved?

That was when my super-intelligence calculated just how much time I had left before I impacted against the city of La Tene below, presuming I hit one of the streets rather than impaled myself on one of the ruined stone buildings.

3...

2...

"Gotcha!" Jon shouted before a pair of draconic claws grabbed me in mid air and nearly broke a pair of ribs when they clamped down. My friend was now an enormous blue dragon, far smaller than the Wind Demon but way larger than Sparky had been. On his back were Rachel and Ania, both of them having webbed themselves to his back.

YOU HAVE TAKEN 15 HP OF DAMAGE

"I'll take it!" I said, coughing as Jon continued to carry me. "Thank you! I owe you big!"

"Perhaps the real incest was the friends we made along the way!" Jon said, cheerfully.

I flipped Jon off despite the fact he'd just saved my life. "I hate you!"

"I love you too, Aaron!" Jon said.

"Is it dead?" Ania shouted at the top of her lungs.

I stared down at where the Wind Demon had been sent crashing and saw it had smashed into the side of what looked to the Cathedral of the All-Gods. I remembered that being described in Art of the Dark Undermaster Saga book and preview material for Lords of Dragon Keep when everyone thought that was going to be out before the end of the show.

The Cathedral of the All-Gods was basically elvish Notre Dame and it being burned down by the Ledzianian army had been the start of the Piast-Jagellion dynasty's collapse. While not quite as dramatic as Mokosh's curse on the forests outside of Crossroad, everything from plague to financial ruin had followed Alfred the Elfslayer's reign before it passed to the Old King, Frederick.

Actually, we had nothing to do with that, Perun said.

Really? I asked, surprised. I thought you'd have been all over the divine punishment of it all.

Picking a side in a race war rarely ends well, Perun said. At least if you're worshiped by both sides. It's why the Crusades were such a pain in the ass for Ellie.

Ellie?

You know them by another name, Perun said.

I could see the Wind Demon having broken through a pair of walls as well as a bunch of construction platforms where the late Queen Rhoeas had begun rebuilding. The creature was presently in the middle of the central chamber, motionless.

"No!" I shouted back at Ania. "It's not dead yet."

"How can you tell?" Ania shouted, confused.

"There hasn't been a GOD SLAIN notice," I said, feeling very proud of myself.

"We need to get the others!" Rachel said. "Facing its second phase with anything less than a full party would be suicide!"

"We can't let it recover!" Ania shouted instead. "If it casts healing spells while we assemble our forces then we might as well not have injured it at all!"

Damn, everyone was talking in game speak these days. "Jon, take us down!"

"I should point out that I'm very new at this!" Jon said, slowly descending down.

"Dragonflight doesn't exactly obey the law of physics! I think this is more like a flight simulator from the Eighties and I never successfully landed the airplane from the NES' Top Gun game."

"I don't think anyone ever did!" I replied. "Just try not to crush me when you land!"

"No promises!" Jon said, slowly descending toward the Cathedral of the All-Gods.

The Wind Demon was prostrate on the ground among dozens of shattered stone pews and its sole remaining head pressed up against the altar. There were statues of Perun, Mokosh, Dazhbog, and other members of the Ledzianian pantheon but as elves rather than humans. Most of them were damaged and some of them even demolished completely.

The ground was sticking with the black ichor that had been leaking from the wound I'd created with Perun's sword even as I wished I could draw the weapon to me again. Unfortunately, if that was an ability, it was one that I'd need a higher divinity score to use.

Jon hovered a few feet off the ground, making use of his dragon magic to do so, before dropping me on the ground. He then hovered a few feet behind me before plopping down. It wasn't the most graceful landing ever, but it got the job done. Rachel dismissed the WEB spell binding her and Ania to the back of Jon before both slid onto the ground.

"Okay, I'm going to blast him!" Jon said, staring at the still-unmoving body of the Wind Demon. He pulled his head back and proceeded to, uh, well, wheeze at it.

If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

"That didn't work," I said, conjuring some Arcane Fire. It wasn't my strongest spell, but it was still something I hoped could tear into the Old God.

Jon coughed again. "Okay, gimme a second."

"Performance issues?" Ania asked, looking at Jon. She had Lightbringer ready to use.

"Hey!" Jon said. "This is not a common thing for me! It's the first time, I swear!"

"That's what they all say," Ania said. "They have potions for that sort of thing."

"I liked you more when you didn't have a sense of humor," Jon muttered, gagging as if trying to light a fire inside himself.

Rachel lifted her staff and began chanting in a language I didn't recognize.

That was when I heard a very familiar feminine voice. "PUSH!"

I was sent flying into the air alongside Rachel and Ania. I didn't go far before I ended up smacking into the side of Jon's draconic body. It was like being thrown into the side of a rhino. It hurt like hell and rang my bell as I landed on the ground at Jon's feet.

YOU HAVE TAKEN 5 HP DAMAGE

"Oh crap," Jon said, accidentally stepping forward and pushing his clawed foot on me.

YOU HAVE TAKEN 15 HP DAMAGE

"Mothersucker!" I shouted, feeling like I'd just had a car dropped on me.

Dammit, I was taking more damage from my team member than I was from the evil god.

"Sorry!" Jon said, stepping off me and accidentally slamming Rachel in the face with his tail. "Crap!"

Ania managed to roll out of the way before Jon stepped on her.

My attention was drawn to where the spell had come from, and I saw that Francine and Jorg were stepping off the side of their own flying demon steeds. Francine had her enormous sword drawn and Jorg had his smaller one equipped alongside a kite shield.

"Francine, what the hell are you doing?" I asked, slowly climbing to my feet and whispering both of my CURE spells.

They helped.

A little.

"Hand over the coin, Aaron," Francine said, coolly. "This doesn't have to involve anyone getting hurt."

"Speak for yourself," Jorg said, staring at me with hate in his eyes. "I say the face of my sister's murderer. It's almost identical to yours. You're all in this together."

"That is not true," I said, calmly. "Listen, we've got bigger issues to deal with now. The Wind Demon is not dead and--"

"I don't care," Jorg said, his voice low and threatening. "It was a mistake not to kill Ania Rose when I found her among those terrorists and it was a mistake not to kill you when I saw you'd brought back Thistle. You're all plotting against my family and I'm not going to get away with it."

"Francine, what the hell is this?" I asked.

"I made a mistake allying with Nightchilde," Francine said, making the understatement of the decade. "She's as much a threat as the creature that you just killed beside us."

"It's not--" I started to say.

Francine talked over me. "If we're going to be able to pull a victory out of the jaws of defeat, we need to resurrect Apollonia and put her on the throne. From there, we can defeat Nightchilde and Veles both."

I stared at her. "Are you out of your damned mind?"

I had to wonder if she was suffering from sunk cost fallacy. She'd spent the past few years fighting a brutal stalemate against a vastly superior military force, slowly grinding those EXP that I'd mostly won in the past month and had served as an assassin of the messianic co-protagonist of the books. Maybe she was in love with Nightchilde, it would explain a few things, or maybe she'd simply made a bad call that was still defining her decisions.

"I'm not going to let you turn over my father's country to a Old God inhabiting Celestyne's body nor the thing that is wearing my brother's corpse as a suit," Jorg said, his voice low and threatening. "Do you think I'm an idiot? That I wouldn't recognize your damn near twin is the assassin of the peace conference? One that they're going to blame on the Empire? You're a pawn of the Old Gods and you don't even realize it."

"The Aaron Bartkowski I knew wouldn't have agreed to work with her," Francine said.

"You didn't even recognize me back in the sewers!" I snapped, annoyed that she was choosing now of all times to make this betrayal.

Can you tell her to back off? I asked Perun.

Sorry, hoss, Perun said. She's way too high-level to listen to me. If you'd gone up to your current status after level 12, I would never have been able to speak with you.

Something to look forward to then, I replied, annoyed with the uselessness of the Skyfather's ghost.

"Please, Aaron, this is the only chance you have to do the right thing," Francine said. "I will take the coin by force if I have to."

Jon stepped in front of me and accidentally (?) smacked me in the face with his right wing.

"Listen, lady, I don't know you, but Aaron spoke highly of you. Which, of course, means you must secretly be a complete bitch. He has a type. However, you're facing down a dragon now. D-R-A-G-O-N.”

“I slew the Dracolich,” Francine said, unimpressed. “I ended the Spider Queen, the Balor Giant, and Deathlord Castor the Goblin King. I rescued Garland’s soul from the Underworld. I even solved the riddle of the Tomb of Seven Parts. Believe me, you are not filling me with dread, dragonling.”

Huh, so that was what she’d been doing for twenty-five levels.

“I think you and your little Jaime Lannister-Boromir boy toy need to walk away,” Jon said, nonplussed. “Now.”

"Why does everyone assume it's sexual between us?" Francine asked, completely missing the point.

"Well, there was that one time..." Jorg trailed off.

"That doesn't count," Francine said. "There was a girl present."

Ania had Lightbringer drawn again but this time aimed at Francine. "You can't trust the Mad Queen, Francine. This is not you."

"Hard decisions have to be made," Francine said, calmly. "I cared for you, Ania, but in the end you weren't willing to see the big picture."

Ania's gaze was murderous, and she shot a light arrow from her bow, Jorg jumping in front of her.

"Now can I kill them?" Jorg asked.

Before Francine could answer, the Wind Demon raised its sole remaining head and blasted both her and Jorg with greenish fire. It barely missed me, sending me tumbling backward across the ground.

"Fuck!" Ania said, aiming at her bow and firing another light arrow at the Wind Demon's head. The arrow sank into its head but didn't do appreciable damage. The dragon proceeded to blast her with another torrent of green fire.

Ania tried to dodge...but didn't.

"Bastard!" Jon screamed and managed to unleash a blast of lightning from the back of his mouth, smashing into the torso of the creature.

The Wind Demon retaliated by grabbing Jon's neck by the throat then clamping down, biting deep and causing gushes of blood.

Turning to the burned forms of Francine and Jorg, both of them dead or close to it, I saw the former's sword was still intact. Grabbing it with both hands, I swung it into the side of the Wind Demon's neck. It bit hard into the monster's flesh as I swung again and again. The Wind Demon let go of Jon's neck and screamed. It turned its head around and lifted up its two functioning human pairs of arms before starting to cast a spell.

"COUNTERSPELL," I said, barely able to lift the sword but managing to stab it through the front of the creature's torso.

"I will…live…forever!" the Wind Demon said, gushing black ichor from its mouth. It sounded almost identical to Ivan now. Well, Not-Ivan. You know, what the hell, I’m calling him Ivan again. This guy certainly wasn’t the real Ivan. Not anymore.

"GREATER DISINTEGRATE!" Rachel said, standing up and aiming her staff at the Wind Demon.

It turned its head rapidly, only to suddenly turn a brilliant white before crumbling into a fine gray powder. There was no GOD SLAIN to go along with the death of the monster, but I was sure it was gone for good.

I didn't care.

"Ania!" I said, running over to her side.

She was burned...badly.

So was Jon.

Ania wasn't breathing.

Neither was Jon.

"I'm sorry, Aaron. I'm still getting used to getting knocked around in battle," Rachel said, shaking her head. The red witch turned her attention to the fallen champion beside me. "Oh, Francine, what have you done? You could have won the whole thing."

"She made her choice," I said, not taking my eyes off the horrible damage done to the woman I loved. I had a REVIVE spell and a resurrection coin. The sane, sensible thing to do would have been to wait for Joan and hope she could raise one of them while keeping the coin in reserve.

I was not sane or sensible right now.

I cast REVIVE on Jon and put the coin in Ania's hands.

"Come back to me, please," I whispered.

"Ah," Nightchilde said, behind me. Well done. "I knew I could count on you, Aaron."