In the city of Alasvir, there was a library.

It wasn’t any grander than all the other libraries across the globe. As looks went, it was just about the same. And yet, it differed from its kin in a way that made it invaluable.

History is written by the winners, so it is told. But sometimes, there is no winner. And sometimes, those who come later decide that what has been written is dangerous, and needs to be removed. And sometimes, the winners decide that they don’t want their methods to be known.

On the continent, one will find sparsely any records on the origins of the gods — across the centuries, the Temples have made sure that all such records were removed from public spaces. They still existed, though, and rumors still floated. But without the written text, there was little research one could do, which was just like the gods wanted it.

This was where the Floating City’s anarchistic tendencies made a difference. That wasn’t to say they didn’t worship the gods, of course (though the practice was viewed as optional, rather than a fact of life), but the hand of the Temples had a much weaker pull. And without the temples, the gods had little way to act in the mortal world.

Not that they hadn’t tried. Temple-hired thieves, arsonists who claimed prophetic dreams, and even the odd possession — all had been attempted, and all had failed. But the council that led the city had been had maintained their stance. There was no one in the world powerful enough to make the city submit — and no one outside the world, either. If they wanted the books removed then the gods would have to bring the proposal to the council and hope it would pass.

And so, on one winter day, one Archmage-cum-Dark Lord sat among a pile of books — though he would have called them towers if he were so inclined — breathlessly soaking up tales and histories he had never seen before. And not too far away, at the same table, surrounded by a similar fortress of books, sat a young boy of seventeen years. And like any boy his age, he was reading about one of his favorite topics, one that he was painfully more involved with than he ever thought he’d be.

The boy was reading about Heroes and Villains.

It wasn’t the first time Cam poured over a book on this topic. He’d sneaked deep into the Temples’ private libraries in search of information, but what he’d found there was paltry compared to the wealth of knowledge stored in the Floating Library, as it was called.

First, he had wanted to read about his own. Heroes. Champions of the just, bringers of peace and prosperity and yada yada yada.

They were introduced as such, but it was clear from the histories that they were anything but. They were tools, brought forth for a single purpose — to kill — and discarded after they were used.

Cam had connected those dots fairly quickly. It was obvious, even, to any who looked closely enough. All the Heroes recorded in the books had one of two ends. Either they fell to the Villain — which happened much more often than one would think. About three-quarters of all Heroes perished that way.

The second end was when the Heroes successfully defeated the Villain. Cam had expected to read of a happily ever after, or of a Hero marrying the princess, or any other fairy tale ending like that, but there was none. There was no mention of events following the slaying, with a small number of exceptions. Bodies, that was. Often, Heroes were found dead not long after they accomplished their goals, in circumstances that resembled suicide.

A shiver crawled up Cam’s spine as he remembered the power of the mind-controlling spell he’d been under. It could easily have forced him to kill himself, should its caster wish it. And it seemed like that was the fate he’d been destined to meet before the Dark Lord had wrested him from its path.

Cam peered over his book, taking a look at his unlikely savior. When Sarah had stabbed him on that hilltop on that fateful evening, he had been certain that would be the end for him. A sword through the heart usually was, in any case.

And then, against all odds, he’d woken up. As far as Cam was concerned, Julian had earned his undying loyalty with that move. He knew Alexis and David didn’t quite agree — David especially. Even Cam couldn’t miss the way the other boy still trembled when he looked at Shiro or Julian. It made sense — David’s death had been the most traumatic of the three. But still, to live again…

Well, it didn’t matter. David was David and Cam was Cam. So, Cam returned to what he did best and buried his nose back in the book.

If the Heroes of old were victims much like himself, the Villains were a much more varied and interesting bunch. Cam had started with the oldest books, making his way toward the present — and he noted an interesting thing about the oldest recorded Villains.

The first mention he could find was dated back three thousand years. An impressively long time for a book to be preserved, by Cam’s account, and yet, it wasn’t nearly one of the oldest the library boasted of.

And therein laid the interesting part. Villains had only begun appearing after the so called Ancient Times, or, more simply, they began happening not long after the last god ascended.

The timing felt too odd to be much of a coincidence, and Cam wasn’t the only one to think so, either. Some older texts also noted the timing of these events, going as far as to speculate on the connection.

The first Villain had been a street rat — though the book didn’t quite refer to her that way. She was noted to have fought in underground gladiator pits in what would now be one of Rhinia’s provinces. Until one day, she stopped losing — and weeks later, she had killed the owners of the establishment. At that point, the proclamation had come from the heavens naming her a Demon Lady — and not much later, the local lord fell by her hand, and within the year she was poised to conquer the entire nation. She’d grown explosively, and was told to have been invincible with a blade.

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Her reign was cut short when a party of Heroes finally defeated her. It wasn’t clear if this had been the first party to be summoned, or merely the first to succeed, but the point was moot. She had died, and with her the small empire she had begun to forge.

The second Villain had been an adventurer. A man of modest means, who’d grown up learning how to hunt and trap animals. He was the only one to survive a dungeon dive gone wrong, and not long after his skills had become effectively superhuman — he had been allegedly able to shoot an arrow a mile away, though Cam thought that bit must have been exaggerated. Not even Alexis could shoot that far — though, maybe with a skill or a few more levels?

The next few Villains seemed to follow similar patterns, though not all of them began with humble origins. There had been a few mages, a lord, and an exiled prince — but for the most of it, they were normal people, spurred by adversity to greater heights. And the more Cam read, the more he grew to believe that none of the old Villains had been what one would call evil. Some of them had been imperialistic, perhaps, but even then, their intentions had seemed benign, if not good.

So, how did Julian fit in all of this? From Cam’s understanding, Julian didn’t exactly have any goals, so to speak, so he didn’t think that ambition in itself was a reason to be branded a Villain — he wasn’t alone in this either, with at least a handful of all Villains having only engaged in violence defensively.

Power, then? That couldn’t have been it either. Julian was powerful, that was certain, but he’d been powerful from the start — where most of the records in the book seemed to follow a rags-to-riches kind of pattern.

Or was it? They had all received their titles after they had begun their rise, when they already had some power to their name.

Was it a discovery, then? Had they found a method to empower themselves, and were condemned for that reason? That would have explained nearly all of their stories, but again, it didn’t fit for Julian.

Or did it? Again, Cam peered over his book again, trying to sneak a glance of the Dark Lord — and failing. The Archmage was crouched over the table, surrounded on all sides by his own fortress of books. Could he have found some magical artifact that made him stronger, which had triggered the whole thing? But, he didn’t seem to have grown stronger, all that much. At least, not until he’d unlocked the System for himself. Which Cam still thought was insanely cool, and he really wanted to ask how he did it.

If he could unlock the System in a person, what else could he do, Cam wondered. Could he give everyone System access? Could he maybe alter it, or even better, hack it? One day, Cam would work up the nerve to ask Julian to teach him how he did what he did. But today was not that day.

And so Cam pondered. What was the missing link? What was the thread that connected all these people? Why did they all seem like okay people to be around? Why was somebody calling his name?

Wait, what? Cameron wondered, and he blinked himself out of his trance. It didn’t take long to realize who was addressing him.

“Cameron? Are you alright?” Julian asked softly, his voice a half whisper and his brow furrowed in worry.

Cam blinked several times, remembering where he was. “Uh, yes?” Too loud. He cleared his throat and tried again, this time whispering properly. “Sorry, did something happen?”

“You were staring quite intently,” Julian said, and Cameron he realized he’d never stopped looking at Julian’s book pile. “I called out, but you seemed unresponsive.”

“Sorry. I got lost in my own thoughts.”

“Ah, that’s good — I mean, that’s not — actually, nevermind,” Julian said, blowing away a stray bit of hair. “I was worried you might have gone catatonic or something similar.”

“Is that, like, something you’re expecting to happen?”

“It shouldn’t. I was merely worried. You know, the spell I used to revive you — all of you — is still very much experimental. I don’t expect your mind to suddenly become detached from your soul, but then again, I can’t say with certainty that it’s not something that can happen.”

“Okay,” Cameron said with a nod. “I really didn’t need to know that. Why did you have to tell me that? I’m going to keep thinking I’m about to die all the time now.”

Julian rolled his eyes. “If you were alive, your blood could coalesce into a clot and kill you. This is much like that — unlikely, but nevertheless, always a possibility.”

“But you can sew it back, if it happens? The soul, I mean?”

“That’s an overly simplistic metaphor but yes, I can reconnect the two if not too much time has passed.”

A few moments passed in silence, and Julian moved to return to his book — but Cameron wasn’t done yet.

“I have a question. Before you became a Villain, did you discover any power-up or anything like that?”

“A power-up?” Julian raised his eyebrows.

“Like, some artifact that made you stronger? Or a spell?”

“Nothing of the sort, I’m afraid. I was working on an agricultural project, at the time.”

“Agricultural,” Cam said, his voice deadpan.

Julian’s lips quirked up. “Yes, agricultural. A way to fertilize large fields, specifically. Why?”

“Was just wondering. I’ve been looking at, well, Heroes and Villains, and trying to see how you fit with them, and…”

“And? What did you discover?” Julian asked, eyes shining with interest.

“Nothing, really. You don’t really fit.”

The Archmage nodded, not completely surprised. “Those were my thoughts, as well. I didn’t look into the histories quite as deeply as you have, but there’s still usually a clear trigger as to why a Villain becomes a Villain.”

“And there’s none for you.”

“As far as I’m aware, no, there isn’t.

“Do you have any gaps in your memory? Maybe you did something but someone made you forget about it.”

“Cameron,” Julian said, tone disapproving. “What were my specialties, again?”

“Soul and, ah… Mind. Right. Sorry.”

“Exactly. I think I would know if someone tampered with my mind.”

“Just saying. I don’t know, I’m just trying to sort out this puzzle.”

Julian shrugged. “Perhaps there is no puzzle. Perhaps the gods decided to change the way they did things. Or perhaps it was a mistake. Either way, the result is the same. And the consequences will be the same.” His eyes grew darker.

Julian didn’t need to specify what those consequences were — Cameron knew full well how the older mage hated the mind control the gods had been using on the Heroes.

The two mages returned to their books. Cam took another look at the one he’d been leafing through and put it on top of the pile of books he was done with. The history lesson had been informative, if not entirely fruitful. And now, it was time for something a little bit more interesting.

Among the towers of books he’d collected, one was significantly smaller. After all, magical tomes were expensive, and the Mages’ Guild did not like to have them publicly accessible — it cut into their income, after all. But even so, Cam had been able to find a few promising spellbooks within the halls of the library.

He cracked the first one open, grinning at its contents. He had to clamp his mouth shut to keep himself from doing his best Emperor Palpatine impression.

After all, Force magic was very versatile indeed.