It was a terrible day for a funeral. Not that there was such a thing as a good one in the Eternal Swordsman’s opinion. And there had been far too many funerals of late.

Still, as he stared down at the ruined form in the casket, he couldn’t withhold the feeling that this was one funeral he shouldn’t be attending, a funeral that shouldn’t even be happening.

Circulus Seruatis, The Protected Circle, had not dealt well with the first real conflict in its long history. That was a little unfair really, there were few armies or cities in the entirety of Reath that could have held up to the sort of assault it had endured.

A full demonic invasion, three senior liches, one of the major ghoul clans and an automata assault, each was the kind of thing that could fell most cities on their own. Nonetheless casualties had been immense, at least for a town as small as Seruatis.

The world’s largest retirement home for magical legends had less than a quarter of its original population and was unlikely to see a resurgence any time soon. Its promise of safety irreparably broken, and the breaking of one pact in particular hung like a smog in the air, so thick that sometimes the immortal feared he might choke on his own tears.

Over half the funerals he had attended over the last month had been for children.

Trust was a terrible thing sometimes, it had taken thousands of years, and far too many dragonslayers, for Seruatis to become a creche for dragonkind, allowing their children to spend their two centuries of immaturity in safety and comfort rather than having to avoid would-be heroes. Thousands of years to build and yet that trust had been shattered in a single night.

Which brought his thoughts reluctantly back to this funeral. To the one person in Seruatis who had not wanted to be there. Who more than any other had been within their rights to simply sit out the desperate battle.

Ambassador Janiah Vorthame was, by the standards of heroes, on the smaller side. Once she’d doubtless been a towering figure of a woman but her advancing years had taken a frame an ogre would have been proud of and reduced it to merely broad-shouldered. Still it had not been time that had killed the elderly paladin.

The old warrior, dressed in a simple scribe’s robe, was a mess of burns, her copper and grey locks seared off and if a person looked closely they could find flecks of metal where her armour had been melted off of her body.

A full dozen paladins, each with enough accolades their heraldry was borderline illegible, stood at attention, their swords forming arches over the coffin as the thirteenth begin her speech.

“We are gathered here today to mark the passing of Janiah Vorthame, last scion of the Vorthame line. Janiah was a hard woman, attachment came uneasily to her, friends even more so but what few she made she treasured more than gold. It was perhaps her greatest regret that she would outlive all of them.”

It had been no small feat to get a paladin force here at all, let alone in just a month, but for Janiah they’d done it. The Forest Von Mori’s elder dryads, at war with the Paladin Protectorate over the murder/kidnap of the great dryad of the forest, had refused point blank to allow the paladins access through its trees to enter Seruatis and had sworn any attempts to do so would be met with lethal force.

Seruatis’ response to their oldest ally had been less than kind. They’d sent an escort, and not even Twisted Hawthorn, Von Mori’s warleader, had been prepared to test the Elder Wraith’s patience and whatever the paladins’ thoughts on being protected by an undead they had at least been wise enough to keep them to themselves.

“Of her death however, if Janiah had any regrets she overcame them with the bravery that exemplifies the very best of our order. I am told she fell in battle, as she always hoped she would, against an overwhelming foe and outnumbered besides.”

That was underselling things in The Swordsman’s opinion. The battle had been a frantic affair, he’d been pinned in place holding down a stabilized rift to the Hells as a full legion of ragos had tried to pour through, and if he ever found out who’d hired them there would be a reckoning for that.

Seruatis’ other heavy hitters had been similarly tied up. Jay crippled by automata. Nem, probably the strongest of all them, had been out of the town taking the fight to the now fallen Imperator as Seruatis’ great contribution to that battle. That had, afterall, been half the point of lowering Seruatis’ spell shield in the first place.

Dus, most ancient and crochety of gorgons, had been tied up saving Jay. The Elder Wraith had been duelling three liches, and while the result of that battle had never been in doubt even so august a fighter as she had been unable to kill them quickly.

Pheus, the most active of Seruatis’ three gods-in-hiding, had been trying to tear apart the rift he’d been defending.

That had left just Seruatis’ collection of retired mages and warriors, already depleted by so many choosing to unretire in recent months, to fend off the Drake-Eater Cabal, a major clan of ghouls and vampires infamous for feeding on so much draconic flesh they’d assumed some traits of the scaly behemoths.

The good news had been that due to the daylight assault the vampire half of the clan had been unable to join in. The other half of that equation was that Seruatis’ not insignificant vampire population had been unable to safely help either.

“In the defence of children, Janiah gave her life. She did it without hope of witness or hope of reward.” The paladin continued, she had a good speaking voice, and the even cadence was almost hypnotic in The Swordsman’s opinion. He had to wonder just how much practice she’d had giving such speeches. “We can only hope to emulate her example.”

And what an example it had been. When it had become clear that the ghouls would succeed in forcing their way into the fortified bunker that was the Seruatis caferia, and that all of the town’s powerful defenders were occupied, into the gap had strode Janiah.

Drake-Eater ghouls were a lot more dangerous than a typical ghoul, and a typical ghoul could eviscerate most people in seconds. Even before they’d glutted themselves on dragonflesh (and wyvern and wyrm flesh back before they’d gone extinct), they’d had to be the kind of person capable of hunting down a dragon.

After that point armoured scales, an absurd resistance to heat and dragonfire were almost gratuitous.

The barred double-doors to the cafeteria had been forged from enchanted steel, embedded into thick granite walls. Most siege weapons would have struggled to break through but dragonfire was laced with annihilation and within minutes the wards and runes on the door were erased and the metal ran like water down into the cafeteria itself.

The cafeteria should have held despite all that, the small landing that led down to the borderline banquet hall below had no banister and thus no cover. A perfect killing ground for the scorpioballista, essentially a repeating crossbow on a crank handle, placed opposite as well as the half dozen superlative archers supporting it.

Against feral ghouls they could have held out until the end of time, or at least until the supply of bolts, quarrels and arrows ran out. Against most ghoul clans even they could have held out until one of Seruatis major powerhouses was freed up to mow down the Drake-Eaters like a scythe through wheat.

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But Drake-Eater coffers ran deep and they’d brought weapons of their own, ancient warriors of their own, and the crossbowghouls were having a distressingly easy time of clearing the raised platform the archers were on with little success beyond the one archer who managed to put an arrow in a ghoul’s eye.

Their scales might be a pale imitation of the real thing but they were more than enough to deflect or even shatter mundane arrows and bolts, and the explosive enchantments some of the arrows held were almost uniquely useless against dragonscales. The Seruatis Vaults may well have had a dozens of clever brands of mana-fuelled mayhem but noone had expected the cafeteria to come across anything powerful enough to require esoterics.

The wisdom of ages had concluded, not without foundation, that it was said wisdom likely to be the main target and that the best thing to do was to get Seruatis’ ancient powers a good distance away from what could loosely and somewhat inaccurately be described as its civilian population as possible so they didn’t get caught in the crossfire from things like, as a completely random example, a god, Reath’s oldest undead and three lichs armed to teeth fighting to the death.

That particular crater, at last check, had still been smouldering. And occasionally sobbing, which was not something anyone wanted to hear from a hole in the ground, especially after an evening’s drinking.

Once they’d cleared the archers away the ghouls had used their new vantage point to start clearing the room. Not that they got it all their own way.

One particularly sprightly elven blademaster, Elis the Dancer, had pretty much springboarded his way up using one of the tables, skipping the stairs entirely. The ancient elf, old enough hair was tied in a braid around his waist, had cut down over thirty ghouls before he disappeared in his own personal bonfire.

Those who had to use the stairs were less successful, the ghouls easily turning the approach into an inferno as their fellows took potshots at the people and dragons hiding behind the tables, pinned in place where noone could even attempt to approach their attackers.

Except Janiah Vorthame.

The paladin had been quite content to hunker down behind one of the great oak tables, it wasn’t her fight afterall and most of the people around her she’d have happily stabbed in any other circumstance. But the ghouls made a single mistake, they tried to negotiate.

For a few brief seconds the hail of crossbow bolts stopped as one of the ghouls yelled out, “Send out the dragons and none of you will get hurt.”

Janiah hadn’t waited to hear any more. Dragons were hideously destructive beasts with little regard for their fellow sapients and as arrogant as a demon lord of pride stood in front of a mirror. And every single dragon at Seruatis was a child.

Everyone had to draw the line somewhere, as the rather startled ghouls discovered as the elderly woman vaulted the table with an incoherent bellow of rage as she sprinted for the stairs. Most of the crossbows missed, noone had expected that kind of burst of speed from someone who blatantly had one foot in the grave.

Still, inevitably, some of the bolts struck true and the ghouls relaxed as Janiah stumbled as three of them took her in the back only to franticly try and reload as the paladin caught her footing and began to bound up the stairs four at a time, blade drawn and extended in front of her like a lance. Her chainmail had managed to stop the bolts from piercing, though each one had been like taking a punch between the shoulderblades from someone who knew what they were doing.

The stairs however were a far greater challenge, with nowhere to dodge to Janiah had no choice but to just barrel up the stairs and hope for the best.

The good news was that she didn’t have to worry about being killed in a hail of bolts. The bad news was that was because there wasn’t any point firing them, they’d have just been burned up in the inferno of dragonfire that the senior ghouls sent careening down the stairs to roast the would-be hero.

That was their second mistake. It was possible, perhaps, that the nullsteel of her chainmail would have held up to a cluster of bolts, but it was unlikely in the extreme.

Dragonfire on the other hand, all consuming, annihilation-laced dragonfire, was a magical effect, and the null of her armour and the null of her blade turned what should have reduced Janiah to a shadow on the far wall to merely agonizing, her outstretched arm and levelled blade giving the magical fire as much time to be blunted as possible until the tip of the blade ended the stream of flames entirely as it emerged from the back of the ghoul’s skull.

None of the ghouls had seen it coming, blinded by their own fire, and they stood flabbergasted for a few moments as Janiah wrenched her blade free from the semi-draconic head and stepped in amongst them. Her blade flashed through the air twice and two more ghouls fell lifeless at her feet as the others tried to flee, unable to turn their flames upon her without scorching their own allies.

Erebus had regarded Janiah, despite her complete lack of magic, her merely serviceable bladework and mundane lifespan, to be one of the most dangerous people he had ever had the misfortune to meet. If he’d been watching the battle that followed he’d have revised his threat rating up.

The old woman was an absolute menace, the ghouls were faster and stronger and she didn’t give them a single chance to capitalise on that as she beat them back towards the broken doors. Always on the attack because to do anything else would have been certain death.

Alas momentum alone wasn’t going to be enough as the ghouls around her fled or died. When the last one fell Janiah looked up to glare at the empty doorway, though her expression softened into shock before it hardened into resolve.

“Oh.” She said simply as the first bolts took her in the chest.

Without any of the clan near her there was nothing stopping those outside simply bombarding her.

This time there was no doubt about whether the bolts penetrated past her mail, Janiah’s eyes wide with pain as she staggered, the brown of her robe darkening across her chest as blood flowed from her wounds.

Janiah stayed standing, taking a few slow and deliberate steps towards the ghouls arrayed against her before a second volley slammed home, bringing the butchered and blistered paladin to her knees, blade stuck in the ground just to stop herself collapsing entirely, the other hand propped on one of the fallen ghouls.

One of the ghouls, a spectacularly mutated specimen on the verge of finishing a pair of blue scaled wings, smiled, “She’s finished. Resume the assau-.”

He got no further as a crossbow bolt burst through the back of his head, the crossbow Janiah had lifted from the dead ghoul falling limply from her fingers. Ironically if he hadn’t been talking the shot would likely have just bruised his scales.

“Now she’s finished.” Another of the more draconic ghouls observed with something approaching respect in his voice as he advanced towards her, only to back away sharply as a dozen bellowing heroes came boiling out of the cafeteria.

The ghouls tried to stop them, those with dragonsbreath trying to just roast everything in the chokepoint the entrance provided but the flames peeled to either side. Janiah’s broken form providing a beachhead as heroes of ages charged forwards to meet one of Reath’s most powerful ghoul clans in close quarters as Janiah had known they would.

All they’d needed was a way to safely get amongst them, and she had provided.

The old paladin saw none of it, just focusing on not falling to the floor as she stayed propped up on her blade as the battle played out around her.

Slowly the sounds of battles petered out and a taloned hand came to rest of Janiah’s shoulder as she took slow, rasping breath. The feeling as her lungs filled with blood wasn’t a totally unfamiliar one to the old paladin, but there were no healers here today. There would be no last second recovery as she raised her head to stare defiantly at the ghoul that was going to kill her.

“A valiant effort.” It was the second ghoul that had spoken, soaked in blood and with a ragged wound across his chest and part of his skull exposed. “Would that I had a hundred ghouls like you in the clan and nothing would stop us.”

“Go to hell. You can’t have them.” Janiah spat, and spat for real, bloody spittle falling short of the ghoul.

“Perhaps I will. We will have enough dragonflesh to secure our clan for centuries and I suspect things on Reath will be inhospitable for us for some time.”

The paladin lunged forwards, trying to put her belt knife through the ghoul’s throat. It didn’t even get close, the ghoul catching her wrist and simply squeezing until she dropped the knife, the undead snatching it out of the air almost boredly before he put it through her eye.

Slowly the corpse sank to the floor for a final time as the surviving ghouls, less than half of their original number, turned their attention back to the cafeteria. A feast awaited.

If there were any justice in the world this was the point where one of Seruatis’ great powers would have swept in, Seruatis’ retirees buying enough time to save the drakelings. Reath was not a just world, even where heroes were concerned, perhaps especially where heroes were concerned.

The ghouls had not, as initially believed, killed every dragon in Seruatis but it had been close. Only a week later, as Agh’zak Skullcrusher, freshly returned to Seruatis and head chef of the cafeteria for over a decade, opened his largest pot to make a nourishing stew only to find the four smallest hatchlings had been stuffed inside by some unnoticed saviour – doubtlessly dead in the failed charge.

Slowly the funeral wrapped up and the Eternal Swordsman could only watch at the coffin was lowered into the ground.

He was getting sick and tired of burying heroes.