“You know, all I ever really wanted to do was water fields,” Uriah told the weird, goat-faced demon tiredly as it fruitlessly scrabbled for purchase in the bubble of water that kept it suspended in front of him. He felt empty inside, hollowed out. He knew he should be feeling something, but it was all too much. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

The water boiled as the thing tried to conjure fire in its fist and sulfurous steam gurgled up, adding to the stench that hung thickly in the sewer tunnel. Uriah wasn’t sure if demons actually needed to breathe in order to survive, and he didn’t care. It was neutralized, and it was going to listen to what he had to say.

“It would have been a good job—honest work,” he went on. “People need hydromancers out in the country. There’s never enough help up north when there’s a dry summer. And they can’t pay well, see? You have to work hard. But it’s rewarding. It’s not about the money.”

The demon opened its mouth to scream, and Uriah casually directed the water to force itself down into its lungs. It spasmed and its weird eyes rolled madly, but it kept trying to conjure hellfire, sending gouts of steam bubbling up out of the surface.

“When the third investiture didn’t take right, I swallowed my pride and I went to the Underkeepers. See, you have to move a lot of water for irrigation. Can’t work fast enough to make a living without the right augmentation. I made my peace. It wasn’t a bad job either. Decent pay, good public service.”

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Uriah’s jaw clenched in a sudden and barely controlled flash of rage so intense that his voice trembled with it. “But then you showed up. You hellspawn and your filthy godsforsaken gray dwarves. And old Ed wanted us to fight you, but I… I didn’t want to get involved. No. I transferred here, to get away.”

Uriah was crying now, breathing hard and voice wracked with heavy sobs. He knew that something inside him had broken. But it didn’t matter. What could possibly still matter now?

“Honest work!” He bellowed at the now terrified creature. “NO FIGHTING!”

It came out as a deranged scream, and he punctuated his words by forcing the water down into the demon through its mouth and its weird, square-pupiled eyes, pushing and pushing until it burst like an overfilled sack.

The bubble of water boiled furiously for a moment, but then it grew calm, except for the corpse that still spun lazily inside.

Uriah knew dimly that he’d lost it. But he didn’t care anymore. No. It was all too much. Releasing the control cantrip numbly, he let the water and the corpse splash down and turned away.

Still hyperventilating, he waded through the knee-high slurry of water, shit and blood that flowed through the sewers under the burning ruins of Loamfurth. He needed to get out. Out of these sewers and the city.

He would make it across the river, and he would head east. East, toward Halfbridge. Ed had wanted to kill them.

Uriah wanted to help.