My outburst was most certainly not what either of them had expected. By now, the soldiers that had accompanied us were cowering behind me in abject terror.

"You mistake the position you're in," Ashwin's idiot son, Gallant, said with a stupid, insipid sneer. "I have surpassed your power."

I wanted to bash my brains out on the wall, but alas, Queen Amaridae had thought ahead and nixed anything of the sort.

"How long have you been pretending at this?" I demanded of Ashwin. "You supported this? You? Of all people?"

"I," Ashwin said calmly- gravely, as if he were resigned. "My son is all I have left to me. I cannot deny his voracious appetite for blood, nor can I condemn him to a hanging."

"You are a true paragon of fatherhood."

"It matters little." Gallant pushed off the table he was leaning on, and I saw a shape sprawled across it beyond him- a body? "I know I have surpassed you. Abyssus has chosen me as his herald of the End Days, that which you failed so utterly to bring about. How disappointed in you he must be."

I pinched the bridge of my nose and let out a slow breath.

"I cannot help that my son is inherently better suited to the arts of death than you are, Necromancer," Ashwin said calmly. "I have accepted his true path. I will not stop his destiny."

"His destiny is to be torn apart by spirits he barely understands, and then tortured by a god on whose toes he is violently stepping," I said flatly. "Abyssus does not create Necromancers, nor does he 'herald in the end days', you idiotic mistakes of humanity."

"Abyssus is the god of death," Gallant shot back. "You can't confuse me, witch! I'm more learned in this art than you!"

"After, what, a handful of years? You believe yourself to be more powerful than I? A true jest if ever I heard one. Amaridae is seeking court jesters, Ashwin, you should have told me your son had aspirations toward courtly amusements."

"Do not insult my progeny," Ashwin snarled, finally showing some of the backbone I had come to expect of him in the last 5 years. "Neither you nor the Queen saw this coming! My son is blessed by the god of death that you once served!"

There was a ringing in my ears as I slowly clapped my hands together, trying not to lose my patience.

"If you had ever once paid even the slightest attention to your charge," I said, "you would know, Ashwin, that I have no patron. I serve no god. I do truly hope your son has not sworn himself to Abyssus without literally any study into his dominion, because while I understand that Abyssus is not a popular god along the Pale Coast, he does, in fact, have may tomes on him within the Queen's own Library."

"I know enough," Gallant said, smiling. "He came to me in a dream and told me what I needed to know. I looked up the ritual for swearing unto him my whole self, and then the books for the undead arts practically fell into my lap."

"Oh, gods have mercy, he's insane."

"Nercomancer," the quaking Captain behind me said anxiously. "Please, Necromancer- can you not defeat him?"

"I won't have to," I said, throwing my hands up. "This tomfoolery is far more than the Queen every expected from you, Ashwin."

For the first time, he looked somewhat unsettled by this sudden statement. "Expected...? What do you mean?"

I rolled my eyes, a motion that involved more of an internal feeling and a telling movement of my head. "You think Her Majesty assigned the sparkling new toy to you because... what, you were there at the Battle of the Hordes? You think she put me in your command because of non-existent accolades? You think she granted you the honor of parading around the captured Necromancer because... I don't know, you have a lot of money? You certainly did very little at the actual battle, Ashwin. Surely you don't think she didn't miss your cowering."

Ashwin flushed, and Gallant turned crimson.

"Do not speak to my father that way, witch," he snarled. "You know nothing of our plans."

"Oh, certainly, or I'd have put a stop to this nonsense long ago. Imbeciles! The both of you! Frittering around with arcane arts you barely understand and swearing yourself to a god you think you saw in your dreams? Your son is a mad man, Ashwin."

"It does not matter what you say, Necromancer." Ashwin drew himself up, proud beyond deserving. "The Queen made a mistake putting you in my control. I have my son to take control of Cordona, and I have you to die in his defense."

"By all means," I droned. "Command me."

"Kill the other soldiers."

There were immediate cries of horror from behind me as they scrambled back, but I again rolled my non-existent eyes, glancing over my shoulder. "I'm not going to kill you," I snapped. "Stay close. This whole place is fit to blow from pent up arcane stupidity."

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

"I told you to kill them," Ashwin thundered. "I am your master!"

"Wrong." I held up the manacle. "The Queen is my master. Any command you give me that directly conflicts with commands she has given are rendered useless. You are no longer in charge of me, Ashwin." I smiled at him, holding his gaze, hoping the meaning sunk in.

The only one who could command me wasn't here.

Ashwin paled, but Gallant roared with laughter.

"Fine," he said. "Have it your way. Deal with this, then!"

He waved a hand, and I shifted my gaze, again, to the Otherworld.

The room was over-crowded with spirits. They were agitated, like too much energy gathered in too small a space; this whole manor was truly about to explode. I had a good idea I knew what he'd been planning: he wanted an undead army at his fingertips, but instead of relying on bodies fit for reanimation, he had decided to rip souls straight out of the Rivers of the Otherworld.

The Rivers that Abyssus personally oversaw and tended to, and considered the entire epitome and art of his existence.

Right.

A scarlet spirit was pulled forcefully through the veil, writhing in agony as it did so. Sparks and flames burst from its eyes- it was too far gone for any quick work of my abilities. Quelling such an agonized soul would require weeks of any good mage, perhaps an hour from me, and we had neither on hand.

Not that fixing it was my current intention, it just... generally put me in the good graces of Abyssus to try.

"I shall show you the reaches of my power," Gallant half-sang. "You brought the dead back- I create demons!"

"Of course you do," I said. "Be my guest. I will not stop you."

"Please stop him," one of the soldiers said shrilly.

Gallant ignored my flippancy and, raising his hands high, charged the spirit with a beam of scarlet magic. It writhed again, twisting, until the seams of its being burst. It was a sad thing to watch happen, and bitter tasting, knowing this fool had likely done this to who knew how many souls before it. A complete and total waste... and likely, a furious amount of work for Abyssus to undo.

The spirit was quickly deforming, its anguished moaning turning guttural, spitting, and violent. It thrashed against the floor, Gallant cackling like the predictable hack he was, and Ashwin looking on with grim pride, as if his son were winning a town pie-eating contest, and not summoning a demon he absolutely could not control.

Particularly not in my presence.

At last, it stood before us. A great beast with horns, a barrel of a chest, and cloven hooves, yet the head of a raven and massive black wings that nearly sent a chandelier crashing to the floor. Furious red eyes scanned the room, stopping momentarily with deep hunger on the men cowering behind me, and then freezing on locking onto my own gaze.

"This," Gallant said, almost rapturous, "is my greatest creation. My most powerful summon... my most talented child. I do not summon demons- I create them, like an artist! An artist of the spirit world!"

"It's going to kill you if you do not send it back," I said flatly.

"My son is no half-wit," Ashwin snapped. "You were caught, not he. You were slammed with the manacles, not he. You were given like a dog to the Commander of the Inquisition, who tracked you down like the weak, predictable animal you are!"

"If you say it, then it must be so," I said blandly.

"This is only the next of my greatest creations," Gallant said, mostly ignoring his father and I. He was walking around the demon, who was still staring at me, transfixed. "When I complete the ritual you so carelessly interrupted, I shall gain further power and create my army, at last!"

The shape on the table, I thought, and turned my Otherworldly gaze on the figure. To my surprise, they were shrouded, as if trying to hide, which I doubted was a trick of Gallant's.

"Show me, then," I said. "Show me your power, Gallant. Slay me."

"I shall not deny a pretty woman her request," he said, delighted, and pointed at me comically. "Go, my creation! Kill her!"

The demon, predictably, did not move.

"Why does it not move?" The Captain whispered hoarsely behind me.

"Go!" Gallant screamed. He threw more crimson lightning at the demon, but now, it did not respond. It stared unblinkingly at me, desperation filling the black voids of its eyes.

I flipped open my Necronomicon, the book I painstakingly made myself, with my own hands, over the course of 200 years.

"Appoxxus fel Abyssidae," I intoned, the words lifting off the page to encircle the demon. "Rivesus Sel dominus."

The demon breathed a long sigh... and exploded. I was ready for that one; a shield cropped up from the book, but Ashwin and Gallant were thrown back against the walls of the chamber, coughing and choking and bewildered. The table with the unknown figure on it was mostly unharmed, though it skidded back with a nasty grating sound.

"What in the nine hells was that?!" Gallant snarled, when he could.

"I sent the spirit back to the River of Souls."

"Spirit?! It was a demon! I had utterly changed its entire being and made it my own!"

"It was not a demon. It was a spirit that you tortured- all the thousands of spirits you've entombed within your wretched abode will never be true demons. If I do not end this stupidity now, then Abyssus will, and it will take out half the city- including you two stupid idiots- with it."

"You lie!" Gallant screamed.

"By all means, Gallant. Release the army you think you're building. Make my job easier."

Ashwin was struggling up, and I saw, through the fading smoke and dust, that he suddenly looked uncertain. Reality was catching up with him.

"Gallant," he wheezed, wafting thick clouds away from his face as his reckless son strode toward me in fury. "Gallant, wait. Perhaps we should instead retreat-"

"No," Gallant said, pompous and proud and unchecked to the last. "If it is an army she wishes to see, than I shall put to shame her little militia from five years past!"

He waved his arms, and a horrific cacophony of moans began to rise up from the manor. I saw the writhing spirits, Gallant attempting to rip all several thousands of them, at once, from beyond the veil.

"Riversus Sel dominus," I said again, and then, "Abyssus, take back your property."

For a terrible moment, all the spirits were visible through the veil; the men behind me were screaming.

Finally, at last, Gallant's magic rebounded.

There was a noise like a pop, but it was deformed, sounding as though it were echoing across dimensions. From within Gallant ripped out a green arc of lightning, which touched on every spirit he had forced into this realm. His screams were that of the damned, the spirits he had tortured and forced upon this world for his own stupid, twisted, perverted pride, and then, when all the spirits at last had been collected, the green lightning expanded out of him in a twisting, flashing portal. The arcing energy twisted, reality warped, and Gallant was forced through the portal into himself, ripping out of existence with yet another ethereal pop.

And then it was done.