“So, there I stood. I had tracked down the villains that attacked our town and was following a small group to their lair before WHAM ambush! Those fellas knew all along that I had been following them, so they sent a message ahead to their base to hide two parties in the bushes besides the road!”

“Wow! What did they look like? Were they strong?”

“Yup. These were the burliest dudes you could possibly imagine. The warriors were each almost seven feet, covered in leather armour and armed to the teeth. Swords, daggers, the works. They had them all. Then their archers – oh man the archers – their arms were as wide across as your body! Totally crazy. Even their clerics looked like they had spent entire mornings punching sandbags. Heh, of course they didn’t have any mages.”

“Wow! I still bet they could never beat dad!”

“Of course. I stood there alone, a single man against fourteen, when-”

“Honey, don’t lie. Parties over five are nonexistent.”

“No, I swear! Of course evil people wouldn’t follow standard societal norms. There were definitely fourteen.”

“Right.”

“I bet dad could deal with them even if there were twenty!”

“That’s not my point, but do go on honey.”

“Ahem. The fourteen men stood across from me, warriors in front, archers and clerics in the back. I slowly drew my sword, Phantom, an ancient blade pas”-

““we know””

- “from father to son for… Ok, sorry. I drew my sword while staring them down. Suddenly, the archers released their arrows! Of course, they were far too slow for one such as I. I sliced both the arrows midair without even moving a single step! I charged at them, I was probably moving half as fast as those slow arrows the archers had shot. When I reached them, I just turned in a circle after casting wind blade on my sword. It was glorious! That little blade of wind managed to slice into the stomachs of three of them. Blood began bursting out!”

“Err...”

“They held their stomachs, trying to keep their inte-”

“He’s a child, honey.”

“O-oh. Um, The blade of wind hit three of them, making them loose focus and momentarily stealing their ability to counterattack.”

“I wana hear the fancy version.”

“Um, your mother is probably right. Ask me when you’re older.”

“Awww...”

“But anyway, those clerics, they did their whole clericy thing and started healin’ those bas- ndits, bandits, they healed them up. Of course they were too slow! I was next to them in a second, and with their eyes closed, they didn’t even see Phantom as it ‘very cleanly’ separated their heads from their bodies in a single swing.

“Without their clerics, their defeat was only a matter of time. I stepped in and out of their reach, severing hands and heads one by one. I think it took me around… I’d say thirty seconds to finish them all off.”

“But dad, you said killing’s bad! You always said the right thing to do was to let the lord take care of all the criminals.”

“Haha little kiddo, you’re already growing up to be a fine and honorable knight. Yes, sometimes killing is bad, but sometimes, there are things more important than integrity and honor. Especially if someone y- Ehh, we’ll get to that in time. But yea, sometimes killing is good!”

“Now this is why I try to be the one to tell him his bedtime stories.”

“Oh come on! A little murder never hurt anyone!”

“Hmmm, I think a few people would disagree with that.”

“Can’t disagree if they’re six feet under.”

“Come on! What happened next?”

“So, of course, now that I had a lead, I needed to follow it. I focused a bit and activated mana sight. Now remember this, kiddo, magic and divine energies repel. The path the clerics had walked was clearly demarcated by still-swirling eddies of mana. I followed it as quickly as I could. I can’t really follow disturbances after they’ve faded for more than an hour, and because these guys were so weak, I would probably have had even less time than that. Fortunately, I reached their hideout after twenty minutes of light jogging,”

“Was it scary? Did they have guards out? I bet they had undead!”

“Actually no. They hid in a baker’s shop. Pam’s perfect pastries, if I recall correctly.”

“Pam’s? Such a shame. They had the best cakes there. I would always buy one whenever I visited that city.”

“How did they hide in a bakery?”

“I knew Pam, she would never stoop to such lows. The bakery was probably just co”-

“The bakery was just cover. The real hideout was underground; I had to search around quite a while to find it.”

“Uh oh. I hope your searching didn’t disrupt her business too much.”

“Indeed. I was as inconspicuous and non-invasive as possible. I walked into the bakery like any normal customer. It was super crowded, like always, so I used a mana pulse to search through the crowd for any formations.”

“Oh dear… Doesn’t that make people sick?”

“Turns out that there was a teleportation array behind one of the potted plants. But that’s not all my search found! One of the tables had someone with an obscure presence ring. No honorable citizen would wear such a shady accessory, so I knew he was a scout for the group. I needed a distraction! Fortunately, at that moment, four people threw up! It was amazing- the perfect distraction. While everyone was running around screaming, I slipped behind that plant activated the formation.

“Their lair was underground, as expected of such underhanded people. The teleportation chamber was guarded, though. No issue for me, of course. I cast a sound isolation barrier and just stabbed them. There were only two so it was quite easy to incapacitate them.”

“Were they undead?”

“Ah kiddo, there’s more that’s evil on this world than undead. In fact, many are far, far worse.”

“Worse? How?”

“You’ll see one day.”

“I sure hope he doesn’t.”

“… Ok, so I kept going. I opened the next door into a room full of eating, perfectly human, humans. I was pretty deep in enemy territory, so I decided to splurge a bit on spells, burning some mana to finish them off quickly. The room was too big for me to cast the silence barrier, so I just windbladed them over and over again. When I was done, the walls were painted red”-

“Ahem.”

-“because they were evil and thought red wallpaper was a good decor decision. Also, cow wasn’t the only sliced meat in the room anymore.”

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

“Honey, if you want to tell your story, please keep it child friendly.”

“I don’t understand...”

“You don’t need to, kiddo. This is your last warning. Tread carefully, o’ dearest.”

“But this bandit complex was quite complex. It was quite mazelike, full of twisting hallways that ended in dead ends and rooms that turned into hallways. They had the whole ‘evil aura of evilness’ down to a tee. The halls were filled with suits of armour, enough to arm an entire army. The halls weren’t even the staple dark and musty- they were only dim and musty! They were luxuriously illuminated by- get this- mana lanterns hung from the ceiling. That meant that this was no normal criminal enterprise. They had a mage”

“Like dad?”

“Yup. That’s why I started being more careful. I killed anyone I met in the hallways with Phantom alone, I needed to save as much mana as possible for the mage. Remember, you only have the luxury of being able to spare lives when the lives you spared can’t cause danger to you.

“So I kept on going. Eventually I found the mage. Really, I should have found him sooner. It was quite obvious, massive doors, central location and all. Anyway, I could feel the mage’s mana inside so I just kicked down the doors and stepped in. He started with his typical villain spiel, all ‘oh so you’re the one that’s been killing my servants’ and ‘your life ends here.’ I just launched a fireball at him.”

“What else did he say?”

“No idea, I don’t bother memorizing the last words of my enemies. He probably stopped his monologue when he countered that fireball. Being a foolish type, he thought to show off by blocking the shot rather than deflecting or dodging it.”

“Why is blocking bad?”

“It’s not inherently bad, it just uses up a lot more mana than the other options. Battles between mages often turn to battles of attrition, so his wastefulness showed his inexperience.”

“Oh!”

“Anyways, he blocked. He brought up a windwall. Of course all that fire was still under my control, so I just spread it out in the wall with the help of its winds. While he couldn’t see, I started condensing an ice spike and launched it at him.

“He cast dispel magic to get rid of the fire. However, funny thing about ice magic, if you condense the ice instead of summoning it, it acts as a physical object and isn’t affected by dispel spells.”

“Wow! So did it get him?”

“Haha, of course not. Mages aren’t known as paragons of power for nothing, after all. It did end up burning one of his personal wards, though. Oh! Yea, those are just protective enchantments cast on a mage’s person. They take a long time to set up, but they can save your life in a pinch, like they did for that guy.”

“Do you have any?”

“Oh yea, I had tons. I am certainly not one to be unprepared!”

“I can’t help but notice your use of ‘had’ there.”

“Um… well I don’t have any right now. They were all bur-”

“You know how I feel about you walking around without wards! I couldn’t bear being separated from you forever.”

“I know… I know…

“Well, I started getting serious. I summoned a swarm of fireballs and ripped up some of the floor for projectiles. I threw them all at the dude, trying to cover multiple angles. He actually acted pretty competently this time. He melted my ice spike into a water barrier to extinguish the fireballs and deflect the earth a bit. He got pretty overambitious and started chanting a spell.”

“Ooh! What was it?”

“Some high tier fire one, I think. I interrupted his cast before it could manifest so I have no idea.”

“How?”

“I cast a ton of waterballs at the barrier, of course it stopped them, but they merged and made it draw a whole bunch more mana- enough to distract him- so he stopped his cast preemptively before it could backlash.

“I started charging the good ol’ water lightning combo. When I had enough lightning accumulated, I had it float over his barrier. Now, if his control over it lapsed, the lightning would travel through the barrier to him. I tried to relieve him of his control with a few friendly spell barrages, nothing special, just low tier junk. I saw ripples forming in the barrier, he was on the verge of losing control.

“However, this dude impressed me. He somehow, on the precipice of peril and mana instability, cast another spell! It was just a little earth shield, but I didn’t think he would be able to do anything, much less cast a spell.

“Your lightning wasn’t strong enough to for his shield?”

“Nah, it was just to trap him for a bit. When the water splashed down, the lightning just followed it into the ground.”

“Then why cast it at all?”

“Efficiency. It’s a lot more easy to maintain a little lightning orb than a massive water barrier.”

“So did you try to actually attack him this time?”

“Yup, he was a sitting duck under all that earth. He knew that I was going to attack him, so he started reinforcing the barrier as much as he could. He made one fatal mistake, however. His barrier was so small that I could just pick up the entire area it was in without needing to bypass his magical interference.

“I surrounded his little barrier with a big firestorm. He had no way to escape- so I thought. I didn’t know how at the time, but he had actually gotten ahold someone to make him a spatial formation. He teleported out of that barrier to the area behind my back and tried to assassinate me with a lightning blast he had been charging. It was actually pretty powerful- got through two of my wards and knocked me off my-”

“I knew it! You need to be more careful!”-

“Honey”

-”You shouldn’t be fighting so much! What would happen if”-

“You know I had like ten wards. I wasn’t in any danger then!”

“Oh, so should I be glad that you were the target of a spell that could kill you twice over?”

“I needed to do this.”

“Well you won’t be getting any dinner tonight.”

“Well then… So there we were. I was on the ground but so was he. Teleportation isn’t easy on the mind, he was just laying there on the ground.

“I stood up and cast a truth spell on him. In his confused state, he ended up answering all sorts of questions. Do you know what I found out? Guess who hired them?”

“Who?”

“The king. The king himself.”

“Oh...”

“I left that filthy bandit fort.”

“Of course.”

“I flew to the royal capital.”

“How else?”

“I walked towards the throne room.”

“I see...”

“I entered. The guards saluted me. They thought I was still on their side. I corrected that misconception by exploding the floor below them.”

“Ah.”

“The king rose from his throne and asked why. You know what I said?”

“No.”

“I returned the question. I asked him why. I asked him why he killed everyone in my town, everyone in my family, everyone I cared about most.”

“No!”

“You’re not even real. The both of you… are dead. Look at me, talking to myself.”

“”...””

“Why did he do it you ask? He did it because he was afraid. He was afraid of dying. He heard that drinking condensed lifeforce could extend someone’s lifespan, so what does he do? The coward goes and massacres an entire town in ‘secret’. I remember the exact words that fool said.

“’My old friend, I had no idea you even lived in that town. I needed lifeforce and it was just unlucky that I chose your town of residence. You helped me achieve my position all those years ago. You know I would never deliberately go against you.’

“He said ‘I’m sorry, I just cannot die yet. I haven’t done enough for the world. The world won’t remember me when I’m gone. I need to cement my place in history.’ The fool. Doesn’t he know the world is only what we make of it? Nothing exists beyond what we see. Our world is ours, and mine shattered when the two of you died.

“My world ended, so why shouldn’t everyone else’s? The lifeforce was right there, sitting in a cauldron beside the throne. The densest source of power I’ll ever know. It sat there, just waiting for me to use it.

“I detonated it. This made a wave of lifeforce spread across the entire kingdom, scraping away any lifeforce it encountered and growing stronger for it. The greatest magic I’ve ever cast, cast with a simple devour and expand rune.

“Only because I was so close to the epicenter, where the blast was at it’s weakest, did I survive. I got to watch the land, from horizon to horizon, turn to dust. The king survived too. He looked at me and apologized. He looked so scared, absolutely terrified of what lies beyond. How foolish. Everyone I know is there, it can’t be any worse than here. As a friend, I helped him on his way.”

****

“So that’s what happened.” A man stood up from a kneeling position and faced the two gravestones on the hill. “I avenged you. Are you proud?” For an instant, the haughty expression he wore while telling the story adorned his face before it crumbled to sadness.

“Of course I’m proud, dad! You’re the-” Like embers under rainfall, the figments of his imagination were quenched by the tears that ran down his face.

“Don’t worry, son. Daddy’s coming. Just wait, we’ll be together soon.” With a hand pale and wrinkled from mana exhaustion and drained lifeforce, he took Phantom from his belt. Kneeling once more before the graves, he looked at the cloud of smoke in the distance, at the ash that fell like snow even here, at the names carved in stone with the last drops of his mana. He traced their names one last time.

The ash settled on him as he steeled his mind and pushed the sword through his neck, severing his head. The ash settled over his body, burying it alongside the lights of his life as he passed to the eternal night. The ash settled into a scape of flat gray, to remain in peace for centuries.