Merzhin bolted from his seat and fled toward the hallway with one hand clamped on his mouth. He shoved the door open, took three steps and heaved the meagre contents of his stomach onto the white floor.

Alex cut the recording, shaking with rage.

The rest of the room was in an uproar.

“You, filthy plague-spewin’ bastard!” Cedric roared, turning and running after Merzhin. “Are y’alright?” He called.

The Saint stumbled further into the hallway.

Drestra was up and out of her chair, her body slack with shock.

Hart’s eyebrows had shot up.

Jules was shaking her fist at the image of the God, cursing him with colourful words Alex had never heard before.

Birger’s hand was clasped to his mouth.

Theresa was grinding her teeth, shaking her head while glaring at Uldar. Brutus was snarling at the image of the god, barking beside her.

Bjorgrund had gone pale.

“How horrible!” Isolde gasped.

Alex went after Merzhin and Cedric, finding the two young men down the hall. Cedric’s arm was around the Saint’s slight shoulders, as he sobbed against the wall.

“That's what we worshipped!” Merzhin choked. “That monster is what I dedicated my life to! I trusted that, and if I hadn’t…Carey would still be…” He gasped again. “Her life…she wasted so much of her life on that!”

“I ain't gonna say s’alright,” Cedric said, rubbing Merzhin’s back. “But, the two’ve ya’ve got good hearts. Don’ matter ‘bout some dead monster—”

“But it does!” Merzhin spun around, tears staining his face. “It does!”

Alex reached them as Drestra and Hart came up behind him. The five Heroes were united.

‘The five Heroes of a god who had slaughtered his people,’ Alex thought, feeling a wave of nausea wash over him. A thought where he had no Mark, neither General, Fool, or any other, kept playing in his mind as he silently cursed the selfish, murderous god of Thameland.

Merzhin’s eyes turned to Alex, tears streaming from them. “All of our lives were twisted by that…monster!” he choked. “Your life was stolen,” he sobbed. Then he looked at Drestra. “You didn't want any part of this quest, and I told you to serve Uldar…I told you to serve a god, a dead god who’d killed most of his own people! His own people! A god who believed that marking the young would make them easier to manipulate!”

Drestra stood quietly, only trembling.

Cedric’s mouth opened and closed, but no words left it.

Alex was speechless.

Hart broke the silence. “So what?”

The other Heroes collectively flinched.

“What do you mean, so what?” Alex asked him.

“All of you need to pull yourselves together right now,” the Champion continued. “Look, he was a shitty monster. I can’t even pretend that he wasn’t. We served him for a lie. He changed the path of our lives including our futures. If he was here, I'd be happily caving in his bloody head without a second thought. But he isn't, I don't even have his dead body to kick around.”

His expression was fierce. “But on the battlefield, sometimes your enemy sticks you with a spear. They hurt you. Do you cry and scream, and roll around on the ground bleeding? Maybe, but that's a good way to get dead. What you should do is pull that spear out of your guts, and drive it right back into their face. Doesn't matter; when you grab it, it's yours.

He pointed to each of their Marks. “Those Marks we got? They’re ours now. He's too dead to make us do anything with them, except what we want. There’s nothing he can do about that, and that’s good, right? We'll take his power and break his plan into pieces.”

“But what about all the mistakes we've made?” Merzhin asked. “I have done so many terrible things in his name.”

“So?” Hart asked. “By the time I was twelve, I’d done things that would make all of you look at me like some monster. That's the way of battle. Sometimes, you don't fight for the right cause. Sometimes you don't have a choice. Sometimes you don't know better. But we know better now. So what matters is what we do next.”

He nodded at Merzhin. “Carey laid down her life for all of us, and now she's with a deity that's not some raging shithead. A deity that’s trying to help all of us. It'd be nice if she was still alive, but she isn't. We've gotta deal with that, she took her death and did a lot of good with it. When she died, she didn't cry and scream and vomit: her soul came back to save us. That's what a warrior is. Nah, I say we do the same. We get back in there, find out what else we can learn from that bastard’s image, then we go fight his spawn, train, get that fancy research stuff done, then…we kill whatever he’s left behind.”

Silence followed.

“Are you sure you're not the General?” Alex finally said. “That was really well put. Harsh, but really well put.”

Hart shrugged. “We've all got our moments.” He looked at Merzhin. “You good, or do you need some more time?”

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“I…” The Saint took a trembling breath, choking back tears. “I can do this. Let's finish learning what we can from his record, so we don’t have to hear his poisonous voice any longer.” He paused, giving a bitter laugh. High-pitched. Chilling. “All my life, all I ever wanted was to hear his voice. Yet, even when I was foolishly in the hands of the hidden church, he wouldn’t speak to me. Now, all I want is to never hear his voice again! Life is a wicked jester, isn’t it?”

“Sometimes you tell the joke, sometimes you're the punchline,” Alex said, patting Merzhin on the shoulder. “All we can do is laugh or get even. Right now? I feel like getting even.”

“Yes,” Drestra growled. “He talked about the young having passion. We’ll let the flames of our passion burn down his legacy.”

“Aye.” Cedric stood to his full height. “We’ll give his little creation what for! Now, let's go back in there an’ see if’n his sins get worse.”

“Yeah,” Alex said. “Then we undo what we can.”

When the Heroes returned to the viewing room together, they were quiet, with their heads held high. They looked united.

The others watched them; Professor Jules’ eyes were full of pain.

“Are you sure you can continue?” she asked.

They made their way back to where they’d been sitting before Merzhin had fled the room.

Alex sat in Uldar’s chair again. “I’m sure.”

“Aye,” Cedric said.

“Yes,” Merzhin said.

“Of course,” Drestra said.

“Always was,” Hart said.

Theresa mouthed ‘are you okay?’ to Alex.

He nodded. “If everyone's ready, let's continue. I don't wanna see his filthy face much longer.”

The General of Thameland turned on the recording.

Uldar made a great show of sorrow at his admission, but Alex couldn't help but feel sick watching him.

“The guilt still eats me to this day,” the god said. “Yet, it had to be done. The continued disruptions by the General would have destroyed the cycle. The cycle’s end would have spelled my doom. And my doom would have meant the end of Thameland; my people always needed their god, even if that meant pain in the short term.”

“We were fine with you being dead,” Alex muttered bitterly. “We got on just fine.”

Uldar, of course, did not respond. “And so the Ravener, during the next cycle, had all safety protocols lifted. With full access to its power, and the fear generated by my people, it was easy for it to make its strongest monsters; hordes and hordes of them. They struck quickly before the Heroes were ever united. My heart broke watching as my people died in massive numbers. I had to watch their cities burn while their prayers went unanswered. It was one of the most difficult experiences of my long existence, though the fear powered me deeply and let me enjoy greater health than I had in centuries. I spared the lives of a small portion of the population: enough to be fruitful and make Thameland whole again. Just as if I were culling a population of deer, specimens had to be left intact to re-populate, like any herd.”

Theresa said something rude under her breath.

“When the cull was over, a small number of the lowest most isolated peasant communities remained. Robust people who would make good stock to replenish Thameland’s numbers, simple folk who knew little outside their own closed off group. The perfect types with little knowledge or histories from hundreds of generations to pass along. They were pure, almost like blank slates. The Ravener eliminated a good portion of the hidden church as well, leaving the lower ranking members since they were not privy to the full details of my plan. I then told them what they needed to know and no more. These agents, these young priests, worked with the peasant stock to shape the rebuilding of Thameland.”

He smiled weakly. “Again, I have to thank my own foresight for making my island nation isolated. I was able to do what had to be done without the world seeing or interfering. People were far less connected than they are now, and the nearly complete destruction of one small kingdom could easily escape the notice of others. While the people worked with the hidden church to renew my kingdom, their faith grew. Combining with the dying prayers of those the Ravener had erased, the poison coursing through me ebbed away for a long period of time.”

His smile faded. “However, I must also curse my own foresight. In my attempt to make the process of marking Heroes self-sufficient as well as to fit with the same time that the Ravener was reborn, I made the process extremely intricate. I could not simply eliminate the General without having to rebuild the entire process from the ground up. Nor did I have time to do that. Yet, it was necessary to ensure that never again would the leader of the Heroes be able to discover my true intentions. So, although I could not completely eliminate the General…I could modify the Mark. Where before I would have had a grand leader for the Heroes, one made in my image to coordinate the Heroes’ actions and lead them, now I had to change that role to one of Fool, someone who would not analyse the situation they were in. The Chosen could still be suitable to lead, while a greatly diminished General, now the Fool, would still be of use, providing relief, levity, and comfort to the others.”

He opened his hand, a glowing symbol of the General’s Mark appeared above it. With a twist of his fingers, it transformed into the Mark of the Fool. “I granted the remaining members of the hidden church a revelation that the General was an abomination, and that my true intentions would follow in the next cycle. They were tasked with ensuring that none of the population spoke of the General again, and they themselves were to take any knowledge of their existence to their graves. They did so admirably.”

Uldar smiled weakly. “To achieve my new goals, I added additional protocols so the Ravener would make the next cycle less challenging than past ones. The Thameish population was far from abundant, and of course, this new Hero—the Fool—would naturally hinder the Heroes: I did not wish for them to display the same level of power that they’d had in past cycles. The results were even greater than I had hoped for. Though the Ravener acted with a good deal of restraint when it faced the new generation, they nearly lost the war, only achieving victory through great sacrifice. I sent another revelation to my priests, in it I told them that the Heroes’ sacrifice should be celebrated, and that word of this should be spread among the budding population of Thameland. Over time, all mention of a General disappeared both from history and memory. Soon even the fae—long lived, but flighty and largely unconcerned with the intricacies of mortal matters—saw that knowledge slip away too. All except Aenflynn, of course. Cycles passed, my kingdom rebuilt through generations, and we reached a new equilibrium. Unfortunately, the odd complication would arise.”

The god frowned. “For one, I was unable to consistently alter the selection of my Fool. At times, the Mark would find its way to those who were analytical and clever. This problem forced me to manually select the inept for my Fools when I learned who had been chosen in certain cycles. Yet, it did happen on one occasion when I was indisposed and a cycle occurred, that the Fool’s Mark found its way to one with an analytical mind and ambition; causing what the hidden church called the General’s Folly. A troublesome event where a Fool came to discover that they could control dungeon cores.”

Alex swallowed, looking at Drestra.

“Of course,” Uldar continued. “The name the hidden church chose for the event—The General’s Folly—was coincidental. They had no knowledge of the General, but for a frightened moment, I thought they had uncovered something. Luckily, it turned out the name was because the Fool was commanding Ravener-spawn like a ‘general’. Thankfully, in that instance, the people of Thameland were none the wiser and all went well. I will end this entry for now, the matters I was forced to remember here have been most distasteful, leaving me drained.”

With that, Uldar disappeared.

Alex felt the chair’s energies.

“There aren’t a lot of entries left,” he said. “It looks like we're getting close to when he died.”