Lollyp leans forward, clearly interested despite Xenia's glum expression. "You made monsters? You mean like a necromancer? Or some sort of summoner type?"

"Not...not that kind of monster, Lolly Pop. Look..." The woman trails off for a moment, looking into the eyes of each of her council around the table. "...This is the one run I hate talking about, more than any other. Even Beatrice hasn't heard any stories about this one. Is it really important that you guys hear all this?"

The group also takes a moment to glance around the table, looking a little guilty as they do so. Each of them waits for another to say something like 'No, no, we respect your privacy, Xenia!' Yet none of them do. Sincere is the one to speak first, at least. "I will be honest, Xenia. Although I am no longer technically an arcane demon and do not 'feed' on hidden knowledge as I once did...hundreds of years worth of habits die rather hard. I, for one, would like to hear your story. It's possible that telling us your past won't help us at all when it comes to dealing with the fury demon set upon us, and yet, even so. As you yourself have noted, we may all be here together for an eternity, should things go well, and it may be best if we have things come into the light sooner rather than later. Certainly, I'd be willing to answer any questions about my own past if others have them."

Xenia checks each of them again, finding them to either be slightly nodding along, or too guilty to meet her eyes, but none disagree. "Gah, you're all a bunch of nosy bitches. But I love you, so fine. And...I guess maybe I should talk about it more. It's...not right that I get to skip away and pretend it didn't happen, that I didn't do the shit I did. So if you hear it and do want to judge me for it - fine. I do got it coming."

The dungeon master stretches in her seat for a moment, as if trying to physically work out her stress, before finally beginning her tale. "So, it starts with my run as the Hero of Seven Cities. Pretty sure you've all heard about that one by now, right?" The party around her nods - over months of dungeon grapevine gossip the story had eventually gotten around to almost everyone, even Taly, given that there were only so many topics to talk about. Xenia appears unbothered by the fact, or perhaps even relieved that she doesn't need to repeat that particular story. "Then you know that the one after that, I was a bug. Well, that was just the start of a really, really bad time for Xenia Worthy, Reincarnator Extraordinaire. The bug run only lasted for about a month, but that's longer than some of the ones that came after it."

She counts off on a few of her fingers, as if reminding herself, and nods. "I basically had no patience for 'bullshit' runs for a while after that, if one started and it looked stupid, or boring, I just...moved myself on. I checked out early on the next three goes, and I was actually a baby on one of those runs, and I still feel like shit when I look back and imagine what I must've done to my parents. I mean, I've always hated the baby runs, but they didn't deserve that." She grimaces for a moment, before moving on. "I did stick around for the few after that, but I was basically like...full on depressed nihilist the entire time. Used my combat skills to earn the easiest coin I could, then spent it all on drinks, or whoring, or shit like that. Fuck, I spent some time whoring myself on one of those runs. Coin doesn't come much easier than that when you don't give a shit about shit."

Taly grimaces herself. "Ah, okay, maybe we don't need to hear all this after - "

"Nope! Too late motherfuckers, you got me going and now you're along for the ride! Strap on in, the train's headed for Bad Timesville and you all got nonrefundable tickets!" Xenia gets a bit of a maniacal glint in her eyes as she stares Taly down, and if the rest of the table are suddenly feeling regrets, they keep it to themselves. The dungeon master lets out a bit of a wild laugh for a few seconds, before sighing and picking up with her story as if nothing had happened. "Then it all came to a head. Got myself another baby run, but it turned out that this time I was the son of a king. I was - "

This time it's Xenia who gets interrupted, by a sudden outburst from Lollyp. "The Prince of the Fallen Tower!" Her eyes go wide a moment after saying it, and the slime briefly seals her lips away before reopening them for a follow-up statement. "Um, I mean, sorry to interrupt."

"...What? How'd you know about that title?" Xenia's face is one of confusion, entirely thrown off track.

"Um...it was one of the ones on that list you shouted at Tassa way back when? I'm pretty sure you've explained the rest of them by now, and it seemed to fit. Uh, sorry again."

"Uh, no problem, but...you seriously remember that? Fuck, I don't know why I even tossed that one in there, I must have been really caught up in the moment. There's definitely others I'd rather advertise more...well, right. I mean, technically I was just a prince of the Seafall Kingdom at first, but Prince of the Fallen Tower is what people ended up calling me after I grew up. See...it was basically just like the world I lived in during the Seven Cities run, with Sarah, except...mirrored. Cause that time? My dad was the evil tyrant. Monster armies, vassal kingdoms, dark pacts with eldritch powers, the whole nine yards. If I'd come into that run like, six runs earlier or later? I probably woulda stabbed the dude the moment I was old enough to hold a knife and like, tried to overthrow the whole damn system or something. But as it was, it happened to me at the worst possible moment in my shitty existence."

Guy speaks up, in a gentle voice. "I take it you, shall we say...leaned into it, ma'am?"

"You could sure say that. When I came of age - which is usually pretty early for me, I tend to impress folks pretty young considering my whole, you know, everything - I got granted lordship of one of our newest territories. The capital of it once belonged to some sort of divine elf lady, had this massive tower in the center of it which was half blown up when we moved in, so that's where my title came from. Anyhow, when I say it was like the world from the Seven Cities one, I mean the place had the same sort of system of Summoned Heroes and all of that going on. And, here's the thing you gotta know about places like that."

Xenia leans back into her seat, softly laughing to herself. "Those worlds are bullshit. By which I mean, I'm like ninety percent sure the gods running those places are trying to recreate fairy tales or something, managing fate just the right way, tipping the scales just so, to make sure things always come out as if people were playing out storybook roles. By which I mean, all the key players, heroes and villains both, usually end up acting as much like archetypes as they do real people. I don't know if you've got the same culture of stories here like we did where I grew up, but any trope you've ever heard about? The ridiculous, over-the-top evil schemes, villains acting like idiots at all the key moments, the heroes getting their setbacks only to overcome all challenges at the last minute? That's how shit played out there. Hell, even I was playing one of those roles with Sarah, but given it worked out in my favor on that run it wasn't like I was complaining then."

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

"I TAKE IT YOU DIDN'T ENJOY BEING ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THINGS THE NEXT TIME AROUND?"

"Couldn't tell ya, Big D." Xenia shoots DEATH a smirk. "Cause I didn't bother playing the game. If some god or something picked me for that role, they fucked up, cause you never pick a genre-savvy motherfucker for a motherfuckin' storybook role. The first thing I did when I got put in charge was do a complete overhaul of security. Snuck into my own damn fortress thirteen times before I was sure I'd patched up all the security flaws, and oh my god were some of them obvious when you know what you're looking for. Paid off, though - made the place Hero-proof, and I proved it when the first Hero finally came at me just a few months later."

Lollyp, unable to stop herself from trying to guess the story beats, fills in the next part for her. "Guess you killed him pretty good, huh?"

"If only I had. Did kill his team of adventurers, but I took the risk of taking the Hero alive because I wanted to see him with my own eyes. See what it's like from the other side of the mirror, right? And we got to talking, as you do - except our conversation didn't go in the typical storybook way, where I talk way too much about shit I shouldn't, and give him time to escape, and all that sort of shit. That old script goes right out of the window when both parties are from Earth. He was from a good century or two after I left, but apparently Star Wars survived, cause I made some Emperor quote references, he quoted Luke Skywalker, and we all had a good laugh."

Taly gives Xenia a confused look, an expression she's not alone in. "I...have no idea what that means, but you killed his party and you were joking together?"

"...Maybe it was just funny in retrospect. But the point is, we got to talking, I told him about my experience as a Hero, about how much everything was just one big stage play for the gods, how none of it really matters in the end, and all that nihilist bullshit I was riding at the time. I don't know if it was as much a scam for him as it was for me that run as the Chosen of Ulthor, but I sure talked like it was. And that's when I really threw a wrench into fuckin' everything. I actually managed to convince him that it was all rigged, and got him to sign up for Team Nihilistic Hedonists. It wasn't even that hard - I don't think he was a proper Reincarnator like me, just a random dude on his first run through fantasyland, and the poor guy had no real idea what the fuck was going on. Dangle a couple hot orc babes in front of him, tell him he'd get a castle and not have to do shit he didn't want to do, and it was over in a flash. Dude barely even knew the adventurers in his party I'd killed, anyhow."

Sincere's brow furrows with further confusion. "And you feel like this is your great sin, the one that drives a fury demon wild? Corrupting a single Hero?"

Xenia's grin once again turns maniacal. "One Hero, Sincere? Oh, no. No no nonono. I corrupted dozens." She stands up then and begins to pace around the room, raising her fist into the air as if she were once again an evil tyrant boasting of her deeds. "Dozens! They could repeat the summoning ritual once every six months, so like clockwork, twice a year heroes would come by, different strategies, different parties. Sometimes they did have some success against other lieutenants, but none got through my territory in one piece, and with me going around playing advisor, even most of the others were locked down pretty tight. Not every Hero did flip sides - some died in battle, some did play Hero to the end, but every one I flipped made it easier for the next. They weren't all from Earth, but we were the biggest gang of outlanders around, and when some confused-as-fuck, barely-past-teenaged champion looked around and saw us all on one team, my arguments started looking way more compelling. ...Also it got way easier to beat them up when there was a whole bunch of us, which was pretty compelling too, I suppose."

The dungeon master pauses for a moment as she stares out the core chamber windows, once again facing into the mountain's abyss, before she begins reciting names. "Peter the Sword Champion. Rachel the Whirling Spear. Hua the Iron Palm. ...God, no way I'm remembering all of them. They eventually started 'saving' up their Heroes, you know, doing entire parties of four or five at once, no redshirts, but even that didn't work. Over my, oh, fifty or sixty year career, I must have flipped at least forty of them, through I probably peaked at about twenty-something at any one time. Started flipping a lot of their sidekicks too, though not as many. I'd swear they sent at least a dozen 'Daughters of the Golden Elfess' at me over the years, supposedly kids of the elf we took that city from, I don't know if she really got around or if they just started proclaiming random orphans into fitting the roles they needed."

Sincere again presses his question. "But even so, how is this so much worse than playing at being Demon Lord?"

Xenia practically shouts her response through the window and into the mountain. "Because I created a small army of nihilistic hedonists with superpowers! Sure, some of us just wanted to sit back in our castles and drink and fuck around - honestly, I think I ended up having bastards with at least three of them myself - but not everyone. It wasn't all sitting back and waiting for new Heroes to show up. Sometimes, some of us, we went on the warpath. Conquering territories and kingdoms. Gaining new lands to hand over to all these new lords and ladies I was recruiting. And some of them turned vicious. Especially the ones who convinced themselves it was all just a game. Massacres, tortures, slaves...not all of the Heroes, maybe not even the majority, but a few of them got really bad." Xenia's face falls. "And I...I allowed it. Encouraged it even, at times. The number of times some shit went on right in front of me, and I didn't raise a finger against it. The number of people who ultimately died or suffered, because I was in a bad fuckin' mood...I don't even know. It was many...so many. And unless the gods got things back on track after I died, I'm pretty sure Team Evil actually ended up winning that world. At least for a long time."

She turns slightly, eyeing her companions out of the corner of her eye, perhaps waiting for them to yell at her, to turn on her. And certainly, Taly and Sincere look quite disturbed, although perhaps unsurprisingly DEATH and Guy don't display any outward reactions. Lollyp, however, makes her way out of her chair and over to Xenia, and takes one of her hands in her own. "That...is all pretty bad-sounding, Xen. But it's not the Xenia I know. I know you wouldn't do that now. So what changed?"

Xenia looks down at Lollyp, and needs to swallow before answering. "It took...way too fuckin' long, Lollyp. But as I got older, and more time went on, I realized my mistake. Life matters. It always mattered. It mattered to Sarah. I mattered to Sarah. And I..." She pauses, clenching her eyes shut, needing to swallow again before continuing. "I betrayed everything Sarah believed in. Instead of honoring what she lived for, I spit all over it. And I convinced others to do the same, and I...I hurt so many people." Sliding down to her knees, Xenia takes Lollyp in a hug, almost whispering as she does so. "And I'm sorry. I'm so fuckin' sorry."

Lollyp returns the hug, giving what comfort she can. "I know. And I believe you. I can't offer you forgiveness, Xen, none of us here can, but I believe you're a good person. Maybe you did fall down - but you've climbed back up, and that can only ever be a good thing."

"Have I? Have I, Lolly Pop? I still fuckin' kill people for a living. Good people, probably. Did I ever improve at all, deep down? I - god, I was teaching Taly how to commit murder yesterday! I'm doing it again! What the fuck is wrong with me!?"

Footsteps approach the pair, and as Xenia looks up she sees Taly herself standing next to her. "I don't know if I've always really believed in second chances. I do believe people can change, it just...takes a while, and for most people, that's longer than we're given. But if we're really immortal down here, then we have that time. We've always got another tomorrow. Another chance to be better than we were today." She gives Xenia a faint smile, the best she can manage at the moment.

"So what do you say, boss? Want to start planning for a better tomorrow?"