“How do I know you’re not lying, you hag?” Sharan asked.

Rieren had dug the wily, traitorous woman’s head out of the tree trunk it had been buried in. That had allowed one of Sharan’s skulls to regenerate her head’s rear, granting the brain within the ability to let her speak normally again. A small blessing, Rieren had to admit.

“You do not know,” Rieren said. “You will need to take my word for it.”

Remis Sharan started cursing Rieren again. Alright, maybe it wasn’t that much of a blessing. “That’s insane. Why in the world would I believe I’d be set free by someone who chopped off my head, buried it in a tree trunk, then impaled the rest of my body on a branch above?”

“I have no idea why you would, ideally speaking, but do consider your vastly limited options here.”

“I should kill you where you stand.”

Batcat hissed down from where it was resting on top of Rieren’s head. Aw, how nice of the little kitten to react to anyone threatening her. She petted its fuzzy head till it calmed down.

“You cannot kill someone merely by cursing them, Sharan,” Rieren said.

Sharan scoffed. “Oh, Vallorne, I can certainly imagine all the things I’m going to do to you once I get the rest of my body back.”

“Which you only will if you answer the Clanmaster truthfully.” Rieren glared down at the head even as she kept moving. “Understood?”

Remis Sharan rolled her eyes so mightily, Rieren was a little surprised to not see them pop out of their orbits. “Fine, fine. I’ll answer. But I swear to the Aether above and the Abyss below, if I don’t get my body back, I will skin you alive and strangle you with ribbons of your burned flesh.”

“How droll, Sharan.”

Remis Sharan simply cursed out Rieren some more at that.

Rieren had to be careful as she approached the location where she had last spotted the newest Banishedborn. Of course, a lot of her plan revolved around the assumption that he hadn’t moved, that he was still there. That he hadn’t joined the battle of his own volition. In fact, now that she came to think of it, the reason the battles were still ongoing could be his participation.

But she wouldn’t know for certain until she reached where he was supposed to be. So, Rieren kept one eye on the enormous displays of powers all around her as she tried to thread her way through the hazard-ridden battlefield.

There were times she had to hunker down, times she had to use Fray Passage to get her away from trouble, times she had to hope no one caught sight of or sensed her.

But eventually, Rieren made it to her target. She found the spot where she had left the former Aryoventos Clanmaster and the Anchor to the Divine Realm.

It had clearly been visited by the wrath of the old Forborne Emperor and the Banishedborn fighting against him. A crater extended for several hundred paces, its depth ending at perhaps another fifty paces. Boiling blood was strewn all over the area, as were broken roots and trunks, splints of wood dotting the landscape like thorns set on impeding all passage.

Near the very centre, where the Anchor lay dull and lightless, the newest Banishedborn knelt like a statue.

“Oh, he looks dead,” Remis Sharan said. “Does the deal still count if he turns out to be a complete and utter useless prick?”

“Yes,” Rieren said.

Remis Sharan cursed Rieren at that too, though it sounded like happy cursing, if such a thing existed.

Rieren picked her way through debris, careful not to step on the blood. So nice of the old Emperor to draw the battle away from here. She ought to thank him by providing unexpected reinforcements.

“Banishedborn,” Rieren said. She didn’t get too close. There was no telling how the former Aryoventos Clanmaster was going to react. “Can you hear me? I’ve come for you. With the truth.”

The former Aryoventos Clanmaster did indeed look like a statue. Rieren had already seen his stony powers earlier.

Could he hear her in that condition? Maybe Rieren had to tap on him or something. Perhaps she could even break off a finger. He wouldn’t miss his middle finger much, hopefully. Unless he was compensating with it for other areas he lacked. Rieren was about to do just that, but then stopped herself.

With agonizing slowness, the statue turned its stony head to observe her with morose eyes.

“Your acceptance means nothing,” the new Banishedborn said. His voice sounded like two rocks being grinded against each other to start a fire. “I have been rejected. Cast aside. What reason does a discarded tool have for existing?”

Dour as that sounded, Rieren was a little relieved that he was at least talking with her. “I am not here to accept you. In fact, I doubt anyone can truly accept anyone, save for their own selves. But are you not interested in the truth?”

“What truth? The truth that you will peddle to me in hopes of making me accomplish whatever you want me to?”

“Yes.”

He stared at her. “You do not even mince your words.”

“Why would I? Ultimately, I have come to do you a favour, in return for a favour that you might do for me. You would do well to accept my proposition.” Rieren raised the disembodied head as Sharan grunted at the motion. “Recognize this woman?”

The former Clanmaster blinked at Sharan. “Where is the rest of her?”

Rieren answered, but she couldn’t even hear her own words for a massive explosion rocked the sky not far off. She took a quick look. Starloper’s Domain of a cosmos riddled with stars was collapsing as what looked like liquid blackness tried to submerge it.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

She tried again. “This is Remis Sharan, and she is here to speak the truth of what she has been doing.”

“She has been helping me,” the idiot said. “A valuable asset who—”

Rieren cut him off. “Who has been manipulating you for her own ends.”

That sparked some life back into his eyes. A flash of anger crossed his face. “And what proof do you have?”

“Me,” Remis Sharan said with an almost bored voice. “I am the evidence, Ellam.”

The former Aryoventos Clanmaster—who was apparently on a first-name basis with Remis Sharan of all people—stared. “You can still talk? With your head cut off? Who—what are you?”

“I am still me. Remis Sharan.”

He shook his head. “Remis couldn’t… do something like that. You weren’t anywhere near strong enough to survive something like a beheading.” His eyes flashed suspiciously at Rieren. “What trickery is this?”

When Sharan didn’t immediately answer, Rieren shook her head by the hair a little. The bodyless head grumbled but got the meaning.

“No, Ellam, it is still me.” Remis Sharan took a deep breath, then sighed. Why she needed to do any of that when she had no lungs was beyond Rieren’s ability to care. “Vallorne here is correct. I’ve hidden a lot from you. A lot that I have to reveal.”

“What do you mean?”

Sharan took another deep, preparatory breath. Then she explained everything.

How her ultimate goal had always been to reach Vanharron and replace the imperial court.

How, after the eradication of her original friends and family, she had decided to latch herself to the most powerful being she could find as a means to accomplish that—the Clanmaster of her home region.

How she had manipulated events back home to get him here, how she had learned of the Emperor’s ascension and decided to take advantage of it, how she established contact with Starloper and planned to create a new Banishedborn in order to call down the old Emperor.

How she had used him all this time to strike back at the gods in the way she saw fit.

“Why?” The former Aryoventos Clanmaster’s face was a little too stony to display proper reactions, but the tone of his voice betrayed his inner turmoil. He sounded like he wanted to be angry but couldn’t muster the effort to do so. “Was I merely a pawn for your ends, Remis? Did our work mean nothing?”

“It did,” Sharan said. “It… it meant everything to me.”

With her eyebrows rising in surprise, Rieren looked down at the talking head. Remis Sharan actually sounded sincere. No sneering, no gloating, no sounding like a complete imbecile.

Sharan’s head had swung a little when she had talked before, but now it stayed still. “It wasn’t your fault, Elam. I just stopped caring. It’s very hard to feel anything, for others and even for yourself, when everything you knew and loved dies. All that’s left in your heart is a way to make things right. And if that’s not possible, then all that’s left is rage.”

Rieren suppressed a sensation of familiarity from arising. She knew that line of thinking. Intimately. That was what had driven her so arduously in the previous timeline.

What she had been trying to rid herself in this timeline.

It wasn’t strange to see Remis Sharan had fallen for the same trap. Had sunk into the same mire. In fact, she spoke of it with great familiarity too. She was as experienced in it as Rieren.

“I wanted to destroy the ones who destroyed me,” Remis Sharan said. “And I would stop at nothing to do so. No matter who I had to manipulate.”

It would have been almost tragic if Rieren could have sympathized with Sharan. Unfortunately, she was a little too evil.

Rieren gave Sharan’s head a rude shake. “Now is not the time for a sob story.”

Sharan tried to spit at Rieren but only reached halfway towards her boot. “I’m going to bite off your fingers one by one. Just you wait, you hag.”

Rieren turned to the new Banishedborn. “What she is trying to say is that you were not solely being manipulated. You two had similar goals. In a way, Sharan wished to help the old Forborne Emperor as well, even if it was roundabout and not at all her true intention.”

“I was only helping myself—oomph­.”

Sharan had said enough so Rieren clamped her hand around the woman’s mouth, making sure she wouldn’t suffer one of the aforementioned bites.

The newest Banishedborn stared at the ground for a long while. He still appeared like he was struggling to be angry. But his actual internal conflict went deeper.

Rieren considered herself lucky that she had never really doubted her place in the world. She had never been one to lack a proper purpose. Even when she might have wished she could have had some purposeless room to find a new goal, a new objective to accomplish in her life, she had still been sure of herself.

Unlike Elam Aryoventos, she had never needed to depend on others to determine what she ought to do.

Although, the new Banishedborn was finally getting to his stony feet.

“You are right, Remis,” he said, grinding voice more solemn than ever. “It is difficult—nigh on impossible—to feel anything when you have lost everything. When things have changed to such a degree. But even in that, we must find a reason to go on.”

“What will you be doing?” Rieren had a very specific action she wanted to suggest, but she let him come to the conclusion himself.

His neck grinded around as he turned to look at her. “I will do what I can for what I intended, manipulated or not, was never wrong.” His marble eyes landed on the head of Remis Sharan. “But I have been wronged. I still wish for vengeance, for myself and for my poor son.”

He waited, like he was expecting Rieren to walk over and hand the disembodied head to him. Remis Sharan struggled in Rieren’s grip.

“There is no point,” Rieren said, remaining where she was. “If you took your revenge now, destroying Sharan’s head, it would only grow back wherever her body is.”

“And where is the rest of her?”

Rieren waved a hand vaguely behind her. “Somewhere over yonder. I do not particularly recall. But once this business is done, I will be happy to help you find it.”

The former Aryoventos Clanmaster considered her. She stared back, unflinching.

After a few moments, his body began crumbling to dust. “I will remember your promise, then, after the battle.”

In a few breaths, he was gone.

“Bah!” Remis Sharan appeared to exult in her ability to speak clearly again now that Rieren’s hand had been retracted. “You promised, Vallorne! Don’t you dare go giving me up to that stone-headed idiot, or I will drain the marrow from your bones while you’re still alive.”

Rieren laughed. Sharan’s insults always grew more creative the more flustered she was. “I did promise I would set you free.”

“You did! Don’t forget it so easily.”

“I forgot nothing.”

“Really? Could have fooled me, the way you were promising that oaf how you’d hand me over as soon as the Banishedborn are dealt with.”

“An empty promise. You have nothing to worry about. Your former Clanmaster will likely end up dead.”

“That’s besides the point.” Remis Sharan’s head shook again in Rieren’s grip. “I’ve done my part, Vallorne. Now get me back to my body.”

With exaggerated slowness, Rieren raised Sharan’s head until their faces were level. She smiled at Sharan’s scowl. “I did promise I would let you go.”

“Yes,” Sharan spat. “So now—”

Remis Sharan cried out as Rieren dropped the head. It thudded to the ground.

“There,” Rieren said. “Promise kept.”

She began walking away. There were more important matters to tend to than the head of a former associate, now turned self-serving, backstabbing thorn in her side.

“Wait!” Remis Sharan yelled after her. “You can’t leave me like this, you hag! I need my body. I need to heal myself. I said wait.”

Rieren offered a short wave. Even Batcat meowed a farewell.

“You will regret this day, Vallorne! I will haunt you till you die and then I’ll haunt you in the Beyond too, and…”

Sharan’s words faded into the background.

Rieren pulled off Batcat from the top of her head. The kitten protested with a soft hiss. “Now, now, I have a job for you. Please go find and stay near Sharan’s body on the tree. I want you to note if anyone gets close, alright? You do not need to interfere if they attempt anything.”

Though the chances of it were small, Rieren didn’t put it past Remis Sharan somehow managing to convince anyone who came across her head to help free herself.

With a huff of a meow, Batcat ran off. Good cat.

Rieren paused, took a deep breath, then began hurrying forward. The battle was still ongoing. There was still a role for her to play yet, before things finally settled.