Quest Update

Mentor

Secondary objective failed. You could not preserve the lives of your mentees for the duration of their tutorial. No one was surprised.

Continue to safeguard the new heroes for the remainder of their tutorial to receive your reward.

Kevin

Quest completed.

You are now Unbound.

Mizu’s geas has been lifted. As a ranked entity, you are free to pursue any path you wish. However, actively acting against the interests of Harmony may result in disintegration. This is not a promise, it is a threat.

Additionally, as an Unbound, you have been granted significant resistance to psychic influence and Presence manipulation. You’re welcome.

The blue-semi-translucent screen hung in the air over my arm like a question mark. I tapped the elder sign on my hand to dismiss the notification.

“A message from Harmony?” Astaroth, still wearing the form of a colorful phoenix, warm orange light seeping from beneath his blue-green feathers, sat atop Noivern. The wyvern didn’t seem to mind the company, and his mouth lolled open as he took in the temple Kevin had built around his portal to Bedlam.

My portal. I wasn’t simply holding the throne while a captive dark lord stewed in a cell anymore. Kevin was gone. Not erased, but out of this world, likely forever.

“Essentially.” I glanced back at the swirl of purplish static within the portal, and with a mild effort, extended my Presence to command the portal to close. There was slight resistance, the chaos lying between worlds didn’t care for being stymied, but that was the difference between a portal and a rift like the one I’d accidentally torn in Bedlam by using the Heart of the Hollow King as a grenade. “Can you take Noivern to the aery and stay there until I send for you? I’ve got a few things to take care of, and I don’t want my family to see you’re back until I’ve had a chance to talk to them.”

“As you wish,” the phoenix bobbed his head and whistled at Noivern, who waddled toward the entrance of the dark stone hall where the portal was kept. I lingered on the platform. There was so much to do and catch up on, it was hard to be sure exactly how long we’d been gone. At least Mount Doom didn’t seem to be a smoking ruin. I needed to visit the forge, but Esmelda and Leto had to come first.

“Spawns! To arms!”

A pair of soldiers threw open the broad doors at the entrance of the hall, and confronted by a massive wyvern with a burning bird on its back, were appropriately alarmed. Their swords, flashing in the torchlight from outside, were solid diamond, and they wore armor of interlocking crystal. Esmelda’s templars.

“Chill out! It’s me. I’m back.”

The Templars didn’t drop their guard, but they did look past the hulking form of my waddling wyvern to see me standing on the granite platform ahead of the giant ring of obsidian. One of them raised his visor, Hurin. Tall, handsome, he could have been Gastard’s cousin.

“My lord! You look—” He cut himself off.

“Better or worse?” I stepped lightly down from the platform. My armor was in storage, so I was in my underclothes. A linen tunic and my runic boots.

“Better.” He smiled. “You’ve been healed?”

His expression faltered as I got close enough for him to get a good look at my eye. Calcion had been as good as his promise. No more horns for me, no claws, no fur growing over my arms. I hadn’t lost my night vision, oddly, though my catlike pupils were back to a normal human shape. At least in my left eye. The right was something else entirely.

“It’s a long story,” I said. “Send someone to let the Lady of Dargoth know that I’ve returned.”

“Of course,” he brought his fist to his chest. “Do you require an escort?”

“I don’t. I’m headed for the royal suite.”

We were only a few paces apart, and a pale green readout appeared beside his head. It was similar to my System screen, except that the writing looked more like the symbols over an enchantment table than any alphabet I knew. Their meaning was as clear as if I had been reading these alien characters all my life.

Human (F Class)

Bearer of Heroic Title - Templar (Minor)

It wasn’t a lot of information, but if I focused, I could cause the readout to explain its terms. It was more than my System had ever done for me. With a flex of intent, I selected the keyword.

Human: Lynchpin species of the local sector. A warm-blooded biped. Moderately sapient.

There were humans in nearly every realm under Mizu’s protection. Something to do with Earth being at the center of the sector. Prem had explained a few things after Calcion ripped out one of my eyes and replaced it with his. He’d been remarkably informative, a refreshing change from my relationship with the agents of Harmony.

The templars hustled off to spread the word of my return and assure the incoming guards that their alarm had been mistaken. Noivern spread his wings as soon as he was through the doors, and I felt the wind muss my hair as he took off with Astaroth circling behind him. Somewhere above, a harpy cried a greeting.

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As I made my way across the fortress, I nodded at the people who welcomed me. Bows and salutes, then someone insisted on sounding horns. Their peals spread from the inner wall to the outer curtain, and I could hear voices raised in the streets below the main fortress. The night was early, so there were still plenty of residents about. Things seemed, if anything, more relaxed than normal. We could have been under siege, or I could have returned to a ruin. The demons, for whatever reason, hadn’t taken advantage of my absence. Readouts appeared beside the heads of my subjects as I passed by. I could will the visual displays away, but it was easier to let them appear and disappear on their own.

It was hard to quantify what the eye did to my perceptions aside from the AR overlay. Kevin had said it made everyone who didn’t have a System look like NPCs, and there was something—off. Like everyone was farther away than they actually were. Otherwise, my sense of my own impending corruption had drastically improved. No nausea. No intrusive thoughts about human beings just being sacks of meat. What if the eye didn’t work the same way for everyone, and Kevin had been the problem? The bad combination of a questionable artifact and an awful individual.

I knew I couldn’t be that fortunate, but at least I was home.

A sharp sensation grazed the furthest extent of my Presence as an entity sought to slice its way through the veil of the world. I paused, smiling at a child who was looking at me from behind his mother’s skirts. He looked clean, well fed. The boy was nervous, but not truly afraid. There wasn’t a Dark Lord here anymore, only me, and I’d lost my horns.

With a moment’s concentration, I sealed the slit in reality that the entity had been trying to use. It had been a small one, maybe a koroshai. A demon would have been able to press through my intent, and so would some of the more advanced monsters. Relief swept over me. It worked. All the fear, all the running, all the fighting, it didn’t have to be like that anymore. I didn’t have to be a walking wound in the world. The shadows here were only shadows again, but I couldn’t let myself get overconfident. Still better to rely on torches and warpstone until I was more sure of my new ability.

When I asked Calcion to teach me how to heal the world, I assumed he would refuse.

Instead, Prem had shown me how the eye could be used to understand and manipulate my Presence.

There had to be a word for this in German. Something you knew was wrong but was too valuable to pass up. A gift you would accept knowing that it could destroy you. The One Who Knocks had decided that he could catch more flies with honey.

And it was such good honey.

Esmelda didn’t wait for me to get to our rooms. She met me on the stairs that led to the third level of the fortress. Her bare feet barely touched the stone as she ran down the steps and flung herself into my arms. A green overlay flashed into existence, and I dismissed it. The distraction was not welcome. All I wanted at that moment was to feel her pressed against me.

“You were gone so long.”

“A week,” I said. “I knew you could hold down the fort. Things look great here.”

“A week?” She pulled back enough to be able to meet my gaze. Because of her position on the steps, we were nearly the same height. The gray of her eyes was the most lovely color I had ever seen. “It’s been a month. Will—” she blinked, “what happened to you?”

A month? As far as the time skips I’d endured because of misadventures in Bedlam, this wasn’t so bad. Still, that meant that I’d been in a time dilation without realizing it, or else I was missing time. Calcion hadn’t shown off his power, but he was functionally a deity, and it was possible he’d done something to my mind I had no inkling of.

Forget it. I couldn’t change what had already happened. I needed to focus on what I had now.

“A lot,” I said. “We can talk about it all. But for right now, can we just spend time together? Where’s Leto? Is he okay?”

“He’s fine,” she frowned. “But what about Gastard? And where is Kevin?”

“Gastard’s going to be respawning soon. We had some trouble, but he’s going to be fine. And Kevin’s gone.”

“Gone?” Her gaze widened further.

“Gone.” Kevin was bound to Calcion more tightly than ever, and he was going to be sent to another realm to do his master’s bidding. Calcion had been clear that after the remaining demons were dealt with, he wouldn’t be doing anything to destabilize Plana further until he came to personally knock on the door. At that point, he expected me to be ready to let him in.

It was an odd play. I respected his confidence. It suggested he really did believe that I would come around to his way of thinking. If he hadn’t stuck the eye in my head as well, I might have been more inclined to trust that he would let me come to that decision on my own.

Leto’s greeting was somewhat less effusive than Esmelda’s had been, he stood up from the lounge chair in our sitting room and froze when he saw me. I knelt in front of him, taking in the face that was so like mine, and so unlike it. He was leaner, more angular than I had ever been, and in a good way. In another world, he could have been an Instagram sensation. I wasn’t sure that I would trade demons for social media, at least demons came with a permanent solution built in.

“You lost your horns,” he said quietly.

“Sure, but isn’t my eye kind of cool?”

He considered it, then shook his head. “Too spooky.”

I hugged him, and he stiffened for a moment before returning it.

“Gastard?” His voice was barely audible, even though his mouth was right next to my ear.

“He’ll be back tomorrow. He wouldn’t miss practicing with you for anything.”

We ate some food. It wasn’t a full meal, they’d had dinner already and I wasn’t terribly hungry, I just wanted to have the normalcy. Zareth appeared hovering in the doorway to the dining room as I was buttering a slice of bread, and I excused myself to have a moment with him.

“I thank the goddess for your safe return,” he said. He didn’t comment about the changes in my appearance, but there were lines of worry creasing around his eyes. When had he started worshiping Mizu, or was that just a turn of phrase around here now imported by the lillits? “There is much for us to discuss. I’m sure the Lady has already shared some of this with you, but there has been a letter from Egard, as well as missives from some of the demonic fiefdoms outside of Gundurgon.”

“Thank you,” I said, “but all of that can wait for tomorrow. Unless we are going to be attacked before morning, I’m taking the night off.”

He blinked, surprised, but not displeased. “Of course, my lord.”

The overlay hovering beside him came with an interesting note.

Human (F Class)

Bearer of Heroic Title - Castellan(Minor)

Was that something he had developed himself, or had Esmelda’s class skill advanced while I was away? Zareth reiterated his happiness at my return and saw himself out with a wave for Esmelda and Leto. I noted that he hadn’t brought his scrolls with him. It was the first time I could think of seeing him without paperwork tucked under his arm.

Esmelda read us a story, a folk tale. It was clear that our son thought he was getting a little old to be read to, but he still enjoyed listening to his mother. And given that I was there as well, if the lord of Dargoth wasn’t too old and serious to be read to, then he could hardly make the argument that he was. It was a quiet evening, and our footman made sure that we were undisturbed. Leto went reluctantly to bed after I assured him that would be the quickest way to skip forward in time to Gastard’s return, and Esmelda and I went down into the safe room.

The Anchors were there, their runes thrumming from within the obsidian.

I called the golden orb from my inventory and set it atop the Anchor we had selected for Gastard. The chamber was cool, but I could feel the warmth of the essence within these artifacts. Yet another formula I would have to rediscover on my own now that Kevin was gone. It melted into the glossy black stone, and Esmelda drew in a sharp breath.

“What was that?”

“Gastard’s soul.”

“William…what?” Her voice raised with the question.

“Gastard was killed by a monster called a Hollow King. Then I met the One Who Knocks. His name is Calcion.” The words came out fast, almost scrambled. “He was with Fladnag’s son, Prem, doing an odd-couple bit. Calcion had Gastard’s soul, and he said I had to accept his eye to get it back. So he ripped the eye out of Kevin and gave it to me instead.”

“Wait,” Esmelda stepped closer to grip my arm. “Slow down. Start from the beginning.”

I told her everything.