Elsewhere the Paladin's morning was eventful and unkind. His hopes for candied bacon were dashed by a dive-bombing vessel he had narrowly avoided before dispatching. The grace period between fights was shortened by Corvolos's ongoing consumption, leaving him with numbers to spare. Over the next few hours, the culinary knight faced a salvo of attacks set upon him since dawn.

Viciously he charged up a rocky slope polluted by vulture dust and radiantly damaged earth. Although each buzzard had been conquered up to that point, Corvolos made sure each left an impact. Under his increasingly battered armor, the Paladin's skin was coated in sweat and bruises. His right pauldron had been stripped four battles prior, exposing a deltoid stamped by the crushing twist of a forefinger to the shoulder. One cuisse had nearly been broken through to the femur, and his breastplate was beyond recognizable. Painted in dirt and riddled by puncturing projectile plumage. All this, and the warrior raged on.

"RIGHTEOUS CHOP," he roared through a bisected bird, not even slowing momentum up the slanted route. His boots, scraped from continuous dismounts onto rolling rubble. Yet he could not slow down, not with two more vultures on the way. "Send as many drones as you'd like, coward! That'll trail me right to you!"

"Exactly, boy," One of the drones chirped, bolting through wind resistance.

"An army," the second vulture took over the reply as its opposable feet hurled stones into the lone hero's armor. "An army to whittle you down to a weary pound of tissue."

"Our battle is written," the first bird uttered before reaching the paladin at a lethal velocity. "THE MINUTIA IS RELATIVE, AND I INTEND TO TAKE ADVENTAGE OF THAT!"

A jagged stone cracked the corner of the man's eye, and he staggered at the flash in his perception. His body moved on instinct allowing himself to fall with the stagger a few steps backwards. The demon buzzard was too trained on its course and the Paladin barely avoided contact.

I will not waver, he told himself in the split second the bird was still darting by. His hands were ready for an idea the hero didn't even know. From my destiny.

In that very same instant, the vulture's neck and tail were seized by the Paladin's own violent grasp. Three stones were fired into his back, and once again follow the stagger. His knee bent and hips turned while forcing the avian javelin into a new direction. His cyan iris was surrounded by the blood of his damaged sclera. The Paladin needed to factor his right and what he assumed his left would be seeing. With a toss made mighty by sheer adrenalin, the vulture was sent barreling into the other. The Earth beneath the Paladin's feet erupting into a pulse of radiant magic that sent the hero several yards forward in tow.

My people... The battered man thought back to all the people of Sall far behind him. He remembered the first time eating steamed vegetable buns. The adolescent Paladin sat on a bench at the market, watching the citizens run errands and tend to their shops. Living their day to day lives. That peace, that freedom could not be taken away. You don't deserve their time!

"SACRED BATONNET!" In four light swings, both vultures cleanly lost for segments in burning radiance. Their warped torsos cut like carrot sticks before bursting into dark particle clouds.

The dust settled and the Paladin could breathe once again. The pain in his eye would not slow him down, but it certainly hurt to no end. His back was rubbing against the dents in his armor, and only now did he realize one of his gauntlets had flown off in the toss. His bare hand lit up with radiant magic as the Paladin touched his eye to seal the wound. Not ten steps later Corvolos's cackle echoed down from the summit. There was no time to waste, no time to rest. He picked up the pace, preparing his sword for the bird's next move. His heart had not reset from pounding before and beat faster.

"That's it boy," The drone's wings opened. "Keep fighting. Your desperation and tenacity are the first entertainment I've had in centuries."

Before the vessel could make its move, a peculiar glass bottle floated up from the cliff edge of the summit. The bottle hovered, like it was being pulled from the bottom as inside black crystalline dusk eagerly pushed itself trying to get free.

"Fragments of my constructs?" Corvolos questioned.

That was when the Paladin saw a mostly green gangling shape blurred by his repairing vision, going up the cliff face. It was Georgie, gracelessly running vertically thanks to Spider Stride. Frantically he drank from his water sack while digging into his satchel. When his sight fully regained and the Paladin could fully tell who it was, his legs jolted fast up the slope. He could see the construct clearer, and its eyes were on the bottle. The knight realized Georgie had a plan and needed a distraction!

Dammit, Georgie cursed himself. How did I let that thing go? Being conscientious sucks!

The creature's head perched over the edge and went face to face with that impudent stick bug of a human, cheeks packed with water. A shock of malice rushed through the strings of magic connecting the vulture puppet to Corvolos. A surge of green demonic energy traveled up the vulture's neck.

"Refuse to heed my warning?" He snarled in preparation for a hellish chomp. "AM I A JOKE TO YOU, HUMAN?"

However, Georgie had already started spitting water from his mouth. The creature's face and beak sprayed by the saliva of a lower being. Through the vessel, even Corvolos was disgusted. Of course, the chosen one could combat his drones, but an underprepared primate with a limited bag of tricks should have already be flayed after one encounter. He wasn't a primate, but a dirty contemptuous roach. The prophecy had become an afterthought to the demon, put on hold just for the satisfaction of breaking the sickly-looking wretch who dared call him a nuisance.

"ENOUGH OF Y-"

Georgie threw a familiar cold bottle of elixir from his bag, crashing against the vulture's top beak, expanding frost over its head. With half its head stunned, Georgie just had to worry about the bottom jaw fixed on his throat and ducked. The bottom beak closed on instinct, sending inch wide cracks up the frozen edges of its mouth. Corvolos could still see, and even if this vessel was destroyed, he could still crush the roach!

"DIE ALREADY!" He screamed, winding up for a shattering headbutt. "GEORGIE!"

A sword came down, splitting the rickety bird spine in two. The Paladin had made it up in time. The drone burst into nothing. Horizontally crouched, Georgie shielded his eyes as the ice loosened off the dust and fell in shards. The cold cascaded through the fabric of his clothing, wincing at the frigid glasses against his pale membrane. Once again, reminding the bystander just how much he hated this job now. He threw his head over the edge to see the mad vendor walking the mountain face with a stone face of his own.

"Georgie!" The Paladin panickily called. "Are you okay?"

"8 Gold and 5 Silver," he panted in response.

"What?"

"8 Gold," Georgie took his last step up, and rotated forward and back to proper physics. "And 5 Silver. I only had two frost potions, and they're expensive to make."

"What are you doing here?" The Paladin moved right passed that comment.

"Believe me, I'm mad about it myself," Georgie said, looking above at the flying bottle escaping by the push of the bird's retreating remains. Unfortunate, but possibly hilarious, if could hit Corvolos upon returning. He retrieved two health potion bottles and drank one. The chosen one had finally taken notice of the shoulder tear and dried blood on the man's white button up. The various new scrapes and cuts from the falling ice sealed quickly, and Georgie handed the Paladin the other.

"You were attacked," the hero stated the obvious.

"I ran into one of these earlier today," the brewer motioned at his marks. "Apparently Corvolos already consumed every Stead Vulture this side of the mountain."

The Paladin took pause before the bottle touched his lips. He had known something of that level had to be the case if Corvolos could summon so many constructs in succession. In the 9th Age when Corvolos first manifested into the material plane. His body began frail and featureless with only a single eye and serrated teeth. He needed to consume the flesh of a material being to copy their properties and use the victim as a vessel to find more of its kind. In the original battle against The Holy Swordsman Rada, Corvolos attacked the countryside with an army of zombified giants. Now he aspired for an army of the greatest predators in Corv's Folly. The Paladin drank his potion fast, breathing deep while waiting to feel his body stitch itself back together. He should have been furious and objecting to Georgie being there, but by that point, he knew that'd go nowhere.

"But why did you come here?"

"He said more about your prophecy," Georgie continued. "The details of your fates. It sounded vague and open ended."

The potion was working, but the hero was unable to relax his muscles. The breeze brushed past the two, and the Paladin turned his head to the long summit ahead of them. He could see the retreating sand a few miles ahead before descending down a decline of earth. Deep in his repaired bones the knight knew that path would lead him to the crater. To the real Corvolos.

"Why do you care?" he tightened his fist, looking back at the walking enigma. "You've been treating all of this like an inconvenience, so why are here?"

Never being the type to maintain eye contact long, Georgie averted his gaze to the hero's broken armor. His wounds had been healed, but the blood remained stained on the metal. Georgie was smart enough to create a fire resistance gel out of charcoal and yucca sap, but words had always his enemy. Especially when they needed to be the right ones.

"Because your sandwich was good," he said, hoping that was a good enough start. "I thought this prophecy was open and shut. Like, you were destined to beat the demon and save the world. I didn't realize that could be your last meal, and... I'm sorry that you never had the security of a definitive answer."

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

The Paladin looked at his sword and remembered the first day he held it. The whole village came to the temple he was raised in on the chosen one's tenth birthday. When he lifted the handle, the blade illuminated with his power. The boy stood firm, but the weight of the weapon had laid onto the fear building within his heart. However the citizens applauded, and the new paladin decided to smile.

"I won't fail," he said with resolve. "I can't. No matter what, I won't let anybody else die for Corvolos. You were wrong last night Georgie; adventurers are not the only ones with higher callings. Tanners, builders, cooks, those people are living out their higher callings. You are too."

The words from Georgie's imageless dream passed his thoughts, and the familiar words wailing from a child came to the forefront.

I wanted to be like you.

His dream may have been featureless, but he knew the face to that shameful boy, broken by words and pain forever etched into his dry soul.

"Money or not, this is my job to do."

"But what after?" Georgie asked the ground with an invested monotone. "You may have been born for this, but if it wasn't you, where would you be right now?"

The Paladin kept looking on at the path as the two had this moment on top of the world and only a few feet from the sky. Not many people in the world could say they had done that, get to where they were standing. The view wrapped around an incalculable number of miles across the treacherous desert waste, but it was beautiful from that high up. Yet what the Paladin had to think about was Corvolos. He always had to. The hero took the moment to taste the air in his deep breath, and shook at how clean it was. In that moment, the Paladin answered Georgie with silence, once again sitting on that bench in the marketplace, people watching and eating something new. Shopping for ingredients to try making that dish himself. Could he make something just as good? Could he make something better? Did anybody ever try his food before? No.

"Georgie," the Paladin choked, turning back at his awkward companion with a look of uncertainty. "You really thought I could be a chef?"

"Why are you using past tense?" Georgie finally met his gaze again. "Just because you annoyed me doesn't mean apples weren’t a good idea. If that's what you want, then you can't waste any more of your time here."

What was this pain in the knight's throat? A burning lump he struggled swallowing. No words could escape his stunned mouth. When he blinked, his eyeball was coated with salt water he forced not to let down his cheek. The Paladin gulped, sending the lump to the pit of his stomach and set his insides ablaze. He burned with the same fire one would use to cook a heavenly meal.

"And besides," The brewer with the light messenger bag strolled up next to the Paladin, hands in his pockets. "If you die then I don't get my hair tonic, and Corvolos will probably kill me. So, you could probably use my last healing potion."

The chosen one nodded, oddly assured by that. As they traversed the dry mountain top, The sky began to sink into a shade of dull blue on the verge of gray. Clouds materialized overhead from nothing. Corvolos was setting the stage to the final performance.

"How many potions do you have left anyway?"

"Three," said Georgie. "I didn’t plan for this, but I might have a plan."

. . .

Before noon had even come, the sky hung low with a heavy fog of inactive storm clouds. The summit's pathway was wide, but the Paladin and alchemist remained within each other's reach while carefully walking through the thick sunless fog. It's thickness not only in obscuring vision, but a density too strong for water particles. An inky coagulation attached to the very air passing by, almost clinging to the two like burrs on pant legs. The Paladin skulked with one hand on the handle of his sword and careful focused on his senses. Georgie hiked along at the same pace but unnerved and muttering to himself at a nearly inaudible tone. The knight beside him occasionally glanced at the man, trying to decipher his muted ramblings in curiosity, watching Georgie's lemon tinted eyes scanning the gloom.

"Two," he murmured. "Another two. One, three, two, six, three flickers."

"Do you see something?" The Paladin chimed.

Without a response, Georgie retrieved an empty bottle and swayed an arm through the air before corking it.

"Look," he belatedly answered, holding a bottle of black fog, swirling in the glass. "Wait and watch closely."

The Paladin leaned in and squinted into the obscured maelstrom. Unsure of why but sure of a reason as Georgie was willing to let him be this close. While waiting for a result, the Paladin glanced at his companion's composed observation without a blink to interrupt. However, his attention became fixed on Georgie's eyes. His pupils constricted as if they were looking directly at the sun, and his irises curiously lit with a faint gloss that no light could possibly cause in these conditions.

"It shouldn't take you this long," Georgie bluntly informed. "Why are you looking at me?"

"Uh," the Paladin stuttered. "I... was waiting for you to say something. Why- I mean, what is it?"

"Not fog," he answered, looking away from the hero's obvious misdirected focus. "It's impossible to bottle a cloud. All you would get is moisture. Bottled fog would require water and isopropyl alcohol."

"But it's obviously magic," replied the Paladin. "These clouds formed in under an hour."

"The same rules would apply with weather magic," Georgie looked around, still with constricted pupils contrasted by his lackadaisical science lesson. "It's the same dust from those corpse puppets, broken down to the size of particles; and every once in a while, I've noticed random green flickers in the haze."

The emerald flashes had been veiled, interwoven between the murky vaper wisps watching the two. At any point these eyes could form an onslaught of birds out of the very air they were being subjected to. If they were breathing in these hellish particles though, would they not be already choking be now? Could Corvolos not have already summoned a mock monarchy to pick them apart?

"We're probably fine for now," Georgie commented on the hero's justified paranoia. Once again, he scanned their billowing black surrounding with his dim night light corneas. "Your natural radiant magic probably fries his conjuration fragments once in your respiratory system."

"What about you?" The Paladin questioned, still showing suspicion.

"Nothing," the vendor shrugged. "He's probably hoping to kill me himself. Petty."

"Then I suggest we discuss ideas on your plan."

"Not when he's omniscient like this," Georgie took step closer to the Paladin, taking his wrist by the man's surprise and plopped a new potion in his hand. It almost looked like plain water, unassuming and crystal clear. Downright refreshing if it weren't for a mysterious orange clot floating just under the neck.

"Drink this when he's at his most petty."

"Petty?" The Paladin tried to understand. Carefully, he sniffed the cork for any semblance of scent and detected hints of freshwater fish. "What is this?"

A green willow-wisp entered the hero's periphery. Then another followed, and then another. Now so frequent that its malevolent source was throwing stealth out for invasive surveillance over the next word said. The Paladin, no longer concerned with the state of Georgie's own eyes saw the emotion hidden behind them. Though cold, awkward and blank as he had been, the Paladin felt something beneath. A twitch expressing something clearly foreign to the vendor, collecting dust in the back of his heart.

"I trust you Georgie," he nodded, storing away the odorous elixir. "Let's get this over with already."

Walls of black crystal atoms pulsed liked the belly of a heaving animal. The scattered eyes swelled in size revolving around Georgie and the Paladin in loathing. The particles swirled in a dizzying speed, creating a mesmerizing spectacle of intricate patterns of razor beaks and gnarled bulbous fingers threatening to claw. Blood-curdling screams surrounded the two in echos ringing across the valley outside the swarming tornado.

"OVER WITH?" Corvolos shrieked over the wails of misery. "EVEN NOW YOU TREAT MY RESSURECTION AS A CHORE 'CHOSEN ONE?' EVEN YOU DARE INSULT THE MAGNITUDE OF MY POWER!"

The maelstrom of shards raised to troposphere, expanding across the summit and shading the mountain range from the all-encompassing blue sky. The Paladin could see the summit path clearly now, and the decline was right before them. There perched on upon the edge of his destroyed crater was the true Corvolos. His titanic body had adopted the stead vulture's physique. Coated in jet black feathers as long as pike spears and the width of war fans. His neck was twisted into leathery coiled folds buried under his collar, waiting to spring forward. His wings stretched to the sky, commanding his shards with skeletal phalanges protruding from the bend. Despite these features, Corvolos kept his face. A flat white volto mask sharpened at the chin under a wide serrated smile cut all the way up to his sickeningly hypnotic emerald eyes. He peered at the Paladin as black rings pulsated across his lenses.

"TAKE THEIR LIMBS AND BRING ME THE STILL BEATING TORSOS!" Corvolos ordered the shade above. His head snapped back at the pests dwarfed by his size. "Let us, "get this over with,' humans. Let my new age begin."

Georgie looked above at the patterns in the cloud materialize hordes of wings and talons. A deformed legion of stead vultures nearly four dozen strong divebombing from the heavens on the soul mission to send them straight to the ninth floor of the hells.

"Dammit," the vendor huffed while pulling his second to last potion from his satchel. A single-pointed bottle holding a thick ichor of revolting browns and greens mixing like oil and water. "The plan hasn't changed. You fight the bird; I'll hold off the flock."

"No," the Paladin gasped. "Whatever that potion is, it won't be enough. I'm not leaving you!"

Ignoring the heroes plead, Georgie gulped the potion quickly and started to gag. His hands and knees fell into the dirt as mucous shot from his nostrils and mouth. The vendor's aloofness broke down into a sniveling mass of bile and abdominal pain with only a few seconds before being mulched by oncoming drones.

"Georgie!" The Paladin screamed, reaching for his crumbling ally. "What did you do? Say something! Please!"

By the time he could get the young man on his feet, it was already too late, and six vultures collided with them. The sandstone exploded into a puff twenty feet high and rubble soring even higher. Corvolos let out boisterous cackling in glee and pure satisfaction at the sight of his foes sprayed across the mountain. However, before he could calm his laughter, the six birds erupted into fragments.

"What?" He hissed. "No, no, no, NO!"

The powder settled to the sight of the Paladin stunned in mid swing. His lips quivered watching the bird remains disintegrate while the following drones froze at the scene as well. All eyes were set on Georgie's outstretched arm by the clumsy swing of his backhand; coated in mineralized red tiles.

"Are those scales?" Asked the baffled knight. "What kind of potion was that?"

"My own recipe," Georgie answered, back to his quiet demeanor. "One of those personal projects you do, just to see if you can. Something I'll never make for anyone else."

Another three vultures continued the volley of attacks, only to meet an empty space of dirt as Georgie dodged before a second could pass. They weren't even able to comprehend their target was now overhead, swiping the three in one untrained slap. The birds shattered against each other's bodies, breaking apart in a mangled ball of particles.

"Superior Infusion: Chimera."