After three days' travel, we reached the City of Northwind.
Northwind was built upon a hill, allowing the castle in the center of the city to be seen from many miles around. In an era before the invention of cannons, this was a great boon for Northwind. From the tall spires of Castle Northwind - also called the Granite Keep - in the center of town, armies could be spotted hours before they’d reach the outer walls of the town.
Tall granite walls surrounded the city. They were built two hundred years ago, when skirmishes between the northern lords were much more commonplace. Much of Northwind was built out of granite, in fact, due to its heat resistance. Even Hellfire would have a hard time burning through several centimeters of thick granite wall.
A river flowed just south of the walled portion of Northwind. It flowed from the east to the great Azure Sea to the west. The road we had been following since Sableton passed through the center of Northwind. This road was called the Dragon Road because it was the route that the nobles of House Drac took when they first arrived in the Northern Realms. Taking the Dragon Road was the most common method of reaching the Barren Wastes to the north.
Our caravan was greeted with much fanfare, but most of it was lost on me. Edwin Feldrast, my uncle and Count Armond’s brother, came out to meet us. Edwin had the same black hair and red eyes as Armond, but his skin was a healthy tan color. He had inherited the Talent [Lesser Hellfire], which granted the benefits of [Hellfire] but without the fire resistance.
I soon found myself within Castle Northwind. Almost automatically, I walked to the roof of the castle. I looked around the dull, drab, empty space that served as the top floor of the Granite Keep. Briefly, I mused that this was the place where Merrick the Hero and Count Thale had their final confrontation.
I walked to the edge of the roof and peered over the edge. I must have been more than twenty meters in the air, and I could see for miles around. Far to the east, I could see the plains of Northwind slowly start to transition into the rolling hills of the neighboring realm of Muspelheim.
At the edge of my consciousness, I could feel the slithering intent of an intelligence that was not my own. I could feel the other mind weakly try to take control of my body. That time, I decided to not resist as the other intelligence started to motivate the body that I had been in control of for seven years. Why not? I might as well give Count Thale a chance at the wheel. He was still weak. I could take back control in a second if necessary.
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I loosened control over my muscles as if I was falling asleep, and my falling body was caught by that other consciousness.
I saw through my own eyes as the original Thale took control of the body. He did not wrench control from me. No, he was too weak at the time to exert much control. Rather, the original slowly seeped into my body wherever I did not resist.
My eyes blinked in confusion. The original truly did not expect me to yield control.
“Huh, so this is what it feels like to have a body? I almost forgot.” With a coldness in his voice that I had to admit was eerily similar to my own, the original spoke to himself. “Personally, I would have gone through with a few… renovations by now.”
My fingers snapped, and six motes of Hellfire sparked into existence at my side in a hexagrammic structure. The motes flowed in a circle around my body, shrinking in size and floating toward my hand. The original held his hand out with his fingers splayed. A small, candle wick sized spark of flame danced at the edge of each of my fingers, and one slightly larger flame rested atop my palm. My hand closed into a fist just as the sparks were extinguished.
“That’s still working,” my voice said. “There’s just one more thing to do.”
A slight twinge of malice entered my voice just as the original was finishing his sentence. With no hesitation, the original threw my leg up on the side of the battlement and started to pull my body forward. My body had almost reached the top of the battlement before I wrenched control of my body away from the weak consciousness controlling my body.
My body once more in my control, I threw myself backwards away from the battlement. The force of my sudden change in direction caused me to fall and land on my butt.
“What the Hell was that!?” I shouted, temporarily forgetting that I could speak to the original with my thoughts. “Are you trying to kill us!? If I die, you’ll die too!”
You still want to live. You wouldn’t have stopped me if you had truly given up on this world.
“Yeah…” That was the first time since my mother’s death that true emotion had entered my voice.
Yeah, I want to live. Why do you care? This is better for you, right?
Because you’ve been horrendously boring ever since Tabitha’s death. You’ve convinced yourself of a falsehood and are using that falsehood as an excuse to wallow in pointless misery.
Falsehood?
Yes. You act as though this one failure means that everything you do is doomed to fail. This is obviously false. You have saved Eadric, you have saved Melissa, and you have created a new school of magic. You failed here, yes, but that does not mean you will fail in the future. If you continue to believe in this falsehood and continue to wallow in misery, then it would be better for you to just die.
I sat there, shocked by the slow realization that I was getting a motivational speech by the most evil man in Ferrum. After a few seconds, there was only one response I could give.
You’re right.
Of course I’m right. Now stand up and go kill the Red Knight.