Scarlet dust pulled in the wind.

Laya dropped to her knees. Her staff clanked on the deck, and she stared into her hands, her eyes wild, horrified, her hands shaking, and she looked up at me with an expression that would haunt me forever.

Her voice trembled softly. "What... have you done?"

I stared down at her.

Tears fell down her face. "What have you done to me? This entire time. What have you done?"

She stood on shaking legs, and the air around her shimmered gold with a teleportation spell. Her face twisted with grief. With shame. With anger and horror and madness and suffering and now, just now, had she finally been broken free of the spell, and now the reality of it all crashed back into her, the fact that I stole her from her family who had long since turned old and forgotten her, her father whom she loved dearly and since died in the war, and her entire wants and dreams and aspirations all gone with the passage of centuries, and now she breathed free again.

She vanished with the spell.

Kisk coughed and stood. "Well, master--"

I stepped back. "I shattered the gem. You're free now. You don't need to--"

She laughed. "Demons immune to charisma magic. I only have a fetish for power." She stepped over to Ai-Gee and shook her head.

"I have a lot to say," I told her. "A world of apologies."

She rolled her eyes. "Keep it to yourself. I'm not into that anymore." She waved her hand at Ai-Gee's limp body, and a demon portal snapped just beneath him. His corpse fell through like a ragdoll, and she walked over.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

"Kisk," I said. "Why are you with Marianna?"

"I told you," she said. "I love things that are powerful, and I hate things that are not." She raised her fingers, eyeglasses flashed into existence with a burst of smoke, and she set them on her face. She hit me with her little succubus smile, and she winked. "Marianna is powerful enough to conquer the world."

"Yeah, I know," I said. "She wants to rule the world or whatever."

Kisk shook her head. "She intends to destroy it."

"What? Why? She lives here, too; what the fuck?"

She crossed her arms. "She intends to have the heavens rain down upon the cities of the Earth until there is nothing left."

"But why?"

She smiled sadly and looked away. "It's complicated, but to be honest with you, I think I agree with her." She stepped over to her portal. "Farewell, Imsi. If you can stop her world-slaying weapon, then maybe I'll come and... lend you a helping hand." She grinned her demon's grin and jumped through, and the portal snapped shut behind her.

A momentary silence came.

The decks were scarred and torn with deep gashes, burns, and sprays of blood, and I lowered my head in thought.

Marianna intended to destroy the world for some dumbass reason, and she had a weapon to accomplish it. Maybe it was that thing the rebel leaders talked about. What was it? Nukes? Maybe that's what she had in mind. But could that destroy the world?

Someone clapped. A sad, solitary pair of hands clapping slowly at first, then picking up speed until another pair of hands join in, then another, then more, and more, and when I turned to see what the fuck was going on, I found the crew looking and smiling and clapping for me, and it spilled over into a grand applause.

Jenna approached from the crowd, still dressed in her red musketeer's outfit. She herself was clapping, and she grinned wide at me. "Oh, Redrim, congratulations~" she sang.

"For what?"

"You're goin' to jail!"

"What."

She put her hands together, winked an adorable wink that melted my cold heart, and said, "For crimes against humanity, of course!"

"Oh shit."

Jenna handcuffed me. I looked down at these rickety piece-of-shit cuffs and back at Jenna. She beamed up at me with the cutest nose-crinkling grin, and the people didn't stop clapping. They were proud of me somehow.

Jenna brought her happy expression to the rebel soldiers behind her and shouted, "Guards! Seize him!"