Path of the Deathless

416 Expendable

—Official summons from the Auroral Council to Master Havel Van StormhaltVII-62

Expendable

There were two letters inside Havel's pocket: the summons from the capital, and a second letter—more personal, and unfinished.

On it was simply one line:

,

That was as far as he got. He didn't know what to tell her. He didn't even know if she was alive. Barred from his usual channels of information and heavily monitored, Havel had no way of inquiring if the Inquisition or the Auroral Council itself had any information on his daughter's status.

Since the Blackedge debacle, everything had been slowly crumbling around him. First, Councilwoman Chandler had stripped him of his status as Battle-Avatar of Halsur the Endbreaker and forbidden him from even conversing with any of the Ascendants, but otherwise refrained from punishing him, instead letting him retain his noble title and return to his City to raise an army for the upcoming war against the Jotun up north.

If only that had been the end of his humiliation. Traveling back east from the capital, Havel and Legend-Advisor Mandering, placed at his side by the Councilwoman herself, had arrived at Fortress-City Vermind mere weeks ago.

In those few weeks, a cascading series of events had further seen Havel stripped indefinitely of his status as City Lord, lose control of his army, and be placed under what could only be described as a politely framed house arrest within his city.

The Legend-Advisor had made his dislike for Havel offensively plain the moment he was introduced to Mandering, but he had otherwise mostly refrained from directly instructing the City Lord, letting him and his existing advisors handle the formation of his army. With his worth in the eyes of the Councilwoman already more than precariously brittle, the need to regain his honor and prove his usefulness had naturally been at the forefront of Havel’s mind.

Thus he aimed to use this war to bolster his reputation, placing loyalists to his person in key positions within the army. If only he'd known the Legend-Advisor had been given to him to serve not as consultant, but as watchdog. His actions were reported to the capital, and punishment followed swiftly, with Havel being put in the position he was in now, while Mandering assumed temporary stewardship of Vermind and control of its army per Veronica Chandler’s direct orders.

Now, he was City Lord no more, spurned by all who once knew and respected him, and at the lowest point of his life.

But that was the smaller loss. The social status that he once enjoyed was always a means to an end. He'd been faithful. He'd been used, ultimately, by the Ascendancy, but he didn't care. He understood. He was no naive fool. There were games being played behind the scenes between gods, and he was merely a piece. Perhaps a larger piece than most, a more reliable piece, but ultimately just a piece, and pieces were expendable.

But he was fine with that, more than fine. If it meant bringing down Roland Arrow, avenging his family, avenging his wife—Isabella's mother—and seeing his daughter brought back from that festering, wretched household of blood and unceasing tragedy, then Havel would see himself expended. He would see himself used utterly.

But that wasn't how things turned out.

He had been a fool, trying to strike a bargain with the fiends of the Abyss. That exiled Necrotech presenting himself as a serpentine lich knew nothing of honor and was consumed by his own desire for revenge. He was no ally to Stormhalt, the Inquisition, or even his own people. This Havel knew. But what he failed to anticipate was just how far the Vicar would go to secure his own revenge, being willing to wager the fate of their entire world in his mania to strike Roland Arrow down.

Yet the lich proved to be the lesser surprise, for the true adversary that brought everything to ruin was a monster wearing the guise of a boy—that wretch of a child, spawned by Harlon and Vera Lowe, the murderers of Rose Van Erren and her daughter; Eclipsebreakers before that. But the Deathless was more than that. Havel was but a pawn, but even a pawn had their own cards to play. And he knew the blood that flowed down hidden lines. He knew the Councilwoman had her own moments of human weakness, and from that came seeds of human regret, fruits of life cast away to banish such weakness in turn.

The Deathless was related to her. That explained why he knew so much. It explained his prodigious growth, his horrific power, and it also explained why he possessed the Path he did. Doubtless, he was an experiment gone wrong. Perhaps one of Maiden's gone rogue, or maybe it was a greater scheme on Veronica's part: a game she played against one of her old enemies. Whatever the truth was, it stood beyond Havel's grasp, but the consequences of the Deathless's existence were still his to suffer.

The special Inquisitorial Expeditionary Force had been prepared for many things. An ambush conducted by an army of High-Tier orcs was not one of them. But again, the Deathless himself proved a monster greater than any of the grayskins. He just kept growing. Every time he was struck down, he returned stronger than before. By the time he was interned within the Rubix Well, he was a Legend where he'd only been a low Hero days before.

When Havel last fought the Deathless, he was imbued with the Endbreaker's might, shielded from all harm and granted strength beyond any Pathbearer out there, Legendary or otherwise. But even that wasn't enough. The Deathless endured, the Deathless defied, and somehow the Deathless struck a final blow of eternal shame on Stormhalt, as he and Roland Arrow’s spawn collapsed the prison at its roots despite the former City Lord's best attempts.

And in retrospect, that was when something inside Havel died. His humiliation and punishment at the hands of the Councilwoman simply made it official—he loathed her. He despised her. It was her sin, more than his, that everything unraveled, but that didn't matter. This was a world built on privilege and power, and he was less than nothing before her.

But despite that, he did fail. Havel lost. Even with a god making up for his deficiencies as a warrior and Pathbearer, he lost against children—not only the child of his enemy, but a child bearing brutish strength and nothing more.

Havel Van Stormhalt lost. And the loss broke him. He'd gone into seclusion, at first, to scheme how he would regain his position and redeem himself in the eyes of the Council. Even if Veronica Chandler wished to see him punished, there were others there, other presences he could invoke, connections in high society he could still tap into if they would only answer.

Yet, his political machinations melted away as nightmares took hold. During the first night that he allowed himself to sleep in the aftermath of those events, he was filled with horrific terrors. He dreamed of fighting the Deathless time and time again. He struck the boy down over and over, but he just laughed. He just grew stronger. He just returned, and that which slew him before proved impotent thereafter. With every blow he endured, he drank in strength, growing larger and more monstrous until there was nothing of his human guise left. He was a thing of claws and teeth and shell, no different from the Tarrasque that rampaged somewhere across Integrated Earth.

It was a disgusting fear to suffer. Havel despised himself for this moment of vulnerability, and when it didn't end, he hated himself more for allowing vulnerability to fester into phobia. Only one other individual had scarred him so deeply, and they couldn't be further apart. For all of Roland Arrow’s flaws and faults, for all the personal indignities and pains he'd inflicted upon Havel, he was still the platonic ideal of what it meant to be a Pathbearer, and that made it worse.

He should have known better. He should have been better. He should have had some level of measure, some form of dignity when it came to Havel, but he never provided it. He never thought about anyone else but himself. Even so, there was that flicker, that dimmest spark of respect, despite how much Havel wanted to extinguish that flame.

The same didn't exist with the Deathless. One couldn't respect a storm. One couldn't respect a plague or a calamity. One was terrified of it. One suffered it. One survived it.

But Havel didn't survive unscarred. The Deathless became a permanent fixture in the darkest recesses of his mind from that point on in all the months that followed.

Then, one day, for seemingly no reason at all, a summons came from the capital. A summons demanding his personal presence at Flamecrown Castle to present himself and to embark upon this redemptive journey.

Instead of joy, he only felt a terrible sense of foreboding. Perhaps in the first days after his house arrest, he could have imagined this. He would have yearned for this. But for it to come now? It was beyond reasonable. Something felt wrong, like he was taken out from the expendable pile of pieces and used again for another great game he couldn't see.

But he had no choice now. He had to heed the call. The summons was backed by both Veronica Chandler's personal power of rhetoric and her role as Councilwoman and Shadow Monarch of the Yellowstone Republic. Even if he didn't want to present himself, she would find a way to force him, and it would cost too much to discover what further depths of his own humiliation and suffering could still be delved.

Before leaving his household, he involved none of his staff. He told none of his extended family—for he had no desire to provide those jackals with any further bones to chew upon. Standing within his private teleportation anchor, he cast himself through a linked dimensional network and back to the capital from his secluded abode in the Rusted Midwest.

Yet even his attempts to be agile and subtle were thwarted. The moment he arrived, there was already a group of Inquisitors awaiting him—informed in advance about his movements. That told him he was being watched at all times from all angles. It told him that he might be walking to his own execution.

But he could only walk, for there was no road back.

He was already too deep into the game.

They brought him to Flamecrown Castle under the cover of night. Yet darkness did not define the sky, for dancing flames spilled up from the castle’s foremost spire, where a sculpted illusion of a trial took shape. A sculpted illusion presenting a battered, bleeding, chained Deathless facing the charges of sedition, heresy, murder, treachery, and more.

As the scenes played on and new sins were added to the Deathless' litany of transgressions, Havel felt his throat go dry as he glanced out his carriage and beheld a most troubling series of scenes. There were people on the street sprouting the strangest of feathers from their heads and limbs, the likes of which sported colors that assailed his sanity and made his mind reel. There were also other creatures snaking through the air. They were ethereal in nature, so thin they barely existed in reality, but still visible, still casting an unmistakable presence like they were oil upon water.

And as the sentencing went on, Havel felt his disbelief grow. He'd been secluded for too long, isolated and ignorant. How had the Deathless struck down? How had the Deathless done this to an immortal member of the Ascendancy?

It was impossible. As strong as he was, as inured to a final demise though he might be, he was still mortal in all other aspects. Merely a Pathbearer, a lone Legend. One untrained and raw. How could he best Longinus the Wanderer? How could he impose poison upon one most divine?

Havel tried to speak to his accompanying attendants, but they refused to respond, merely keeping their gazes low. It seemed they were instructed to tell him nothing, to keep him in the dark, and ensure his arrival at Flamecrown against all possible delays.

And so he arrived as the flame-sculpting came to an end, and the visage of the bloody Deathless faded into sparkling embers, but the boy presented a final expression before everything went dark. Instead of seeming furious, broken, or any kind of miserable, he had the audacity to smirk, and there was a gleam in his eye, a gleam of knowing, a gleam of cruel, sadistic intellect.

The worst part about noticing that gleam was how similar it looked to Kathereine’s.

Havel's despair grew a thousandfold as his carriage slipped beneath the darkness of Flamecrown's battlements. He resigned himself to whatever was to come. He had no hope for redemption, nor atonement, nor retribution. He felt more hollow than ever, and he wondered then what he was going to be forced to endure within the halls of this castle he once looked upon with pride and awe. The heart of this Republic, festering and diseased, his gods and his people betrayed from within.

There was no waiting when he was led through the halls of Flamecrown. They brought him to the Councilwoman's office immediately. And when those stone doors flung open and that clench of dimensional pressure washed over him, Havel hardened himself and mustered what little remained of his honor and spirit. If he was to be damned, and if he was to face this woman, then he would do so as a Pathbearer, even if his life was fated toward tragedy. He marched in, head held high, his shield slung over his back, his war mace fastened firmly to his hip. He carried a series of daggers within his bandolier—rondels to work between armor, charged with kinetic enchantments to cleave and bury bursts of energy. Smaller ones for survival and utility. There were his other weapons held within his dimensional satchel, an armory's worth if he simply reached in and invoked their name.

None among his arms or armor would see him spared if Veronica uttered a single word of derision in the end. Before her, his weapons, his adornments were all nothing but aesthetic; for that was the distance between a Master and a Truest Legend.

He found her seated behind her stone table, carved with runes and imbued with strange powers he lacked the knowledge to understand. The scene played out like the only other two times he was allowed into her office. She was writing something on a large piece of parchment, and her scroll was tinged with Dimensionality as she inscribed spells on the page.

The troop of seven Inquisitors, all High Heroes, all formidable Pathbearers from what Havel could tell, didn't accompany him and seemed to bear no fear for the Councilwoman's safety. They simply closed the gate behind them, as they must have been instructed prior, and left the former City Lord to his fate.

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Suddenly, the Councilwoman's chamber seemed far more cavernous than before. The roaring flames built into the hearth toward his right roared hotter, bringing a sweltering heat that boiled Havel within his armor. A series of bookcases loomed, each of their tomes thick and bound together by pieces of gleaming metal or leather planed from the most grotesque of textures.

Havel felt small and pathetic—and the feeling was made even worse by the Councilwoman's obvious indifference. He scorned her all the more for it, but couldn't muster a true measure of hate. He didn't have enough left over after the exhausting emotional tortures he'd inflicted upon himself.

Short of Roland Arrow, there was no one that Havel Stormhalt despised more than Havel Stormhalt.

And with that self-inflicted suffering came a measure of freedom.

He marched up to the Councilwoman, his hands clasped behind his back. Unafraid of potential death at the hands of her Rhetoric, he was indifferent toward whatever fate might follow. "I have presented myself, Councilwoman. It is as you decreed, or perhaps as the Auroral Council has ordered. At least the member that matters."

Veronica Chandler didn't even lift an eyebrow at his veiled insult. She simply continued scribbling away as if he didn't matter at all, but it was maddening. It was ridiculous. She was the one who'd called him here. For her to demand his presence and then rebuff him with such ambivalence was ridiculous. More than insulting, it was downright confusing. There was a game being played here, but it wasn't a game between political rivals or masters and pawns. No, this was a game that children would perform to hurt each other's feelings, to make one think less of themselves.

Legend Councilwoman Veronica Chandler was many things, but she was never a child, and her cruelty was always calculated. Now there was something else at hand, and… and…

Havel saw him. Finally saw him. He'd been standing there the entire time. His back faced both Veronica and Havel as he flipped through the pages of a particularly large tome once sealed by mithril chains.

The Deathless had grown larger, not only in height but also in physical stature, as if he hadn't been an imposing sight before. He was more like a moving wall or a small building than a person. Waves of mana crashed across his body in vectored tides, some striped, others not, a representation of the Legendary Physicality he possessed. Said tides looked duller than Havel remembered, seeming grayed out somehow, as if deprived of a measure of magic. It made sense. No one would allow the Deathless to wander around without restrictions, but if there was a skill that allowed someone to bind and suppress mana to this extent, Havel didn't know of its existence.

Yet his mind couldn't move beyond the simple fact that the Deathless was right here, unchained, unshackled, dressed in dark blue silks like he was a Young Lord and not a prisoner.

The former City Lord and Avatar tried to muster a measure of outrage, but the noise that left him was less roar and more croak. "I… You…"

Havel's voice compelled the Deathless to turn. Veronica continued on, scratching away at her parchment, never once lifting her head to look between the two.

"Oh, hi, Master Stormhalt," the Deathless said. He snapped the tome he was reading shut with such force it sent a thunderclap through the room and caused dust to spiral through the air and fairies flitting about below the ceiling to scatter and whoop. This finally provoked an annoyed stare from Veronica, but now it was the Deathless' turn to ignore his grandmother in favor of Havel.

Sliding the book back where it belonged, the Deathless strolled across the room with leisure, taunting Havel with a bestial smile. The former City Lord couldn't help it. His insides screamed for him to flee or to fight. More the former than the latter, considering he could no longer call upon the Endbreaker’s might. This wasn't a battle he could win with his own skills, through his own abilities. The Deathless stood beyond him before, not by measure of expertise or martial superiority, but from endurance and strength alone, and that was the sourest thing about fighting him. It was knowing you were better than someone, but could never be their equal, for they were simply too naturally gifted, simply too overwhelming by birthright.

The way the Deathless towered over him made everything worse. Havel had long prided himself on his own robust physique, and his stature was nothing to be ashamed of. Beside the Deathless, he felt like a toddler with respect to both height and musculature. The brute was a half meter away from being three, and the bulge of his biceps looked a third as big as Havel's entire torso.

To make matters worse, the Deathless noticed, and he couldn't help but chuckle. "Shit, man, you alright? You look thinner and weaker than when we last met." He smacked his lips together playfully. "And that's a real thick stream of fear you got flowing out of you. You must have had nightmares of me. How much of your mind do I take up? You've been thinking about me since we last fought. I gotta admit, I'm flattered."

"Councilwoman," Havel hissed, fighting to keep his breath under control. If he needed to fight, then he needed to breathe, and his heart needed to pound at a steady pace for him to pace himself in battle. He would not see himself debased before death, even if an end was certain. He unslung both shield and mace, preparing to make his stand, but before that point, he wanted to know for what reason the Councilwoman had unchained this beast and if it was her will for a former City Lord of her own Republic to be butchered like a dog in a cage fight. "Councilwoman, I beseech you, answer me. I came here at your summons. I am here now. I've presented myself. So why is this thing present? Why is he here? Do you intend for me to be devoured by your grandson? Is this some measure of—"

"I didn't want you here," Veronica replied, her words cool and dismissive. "I was uninterested in issuing your recall and repealing the Writ of Exile I placed upon you. The only reason you stand here before me now is because the Deathless—and by extension, Legend Hawgrave—seems to believe you might still be of use."

"And I really, really do," the Deathless said with enthusiasm, both eyebrows lifted high. His irises, twin circles of blinding white in pools of inhuman black, gleamed with vicious mirth as his hair seemed to be a shade darker than before, and his skin held a hint of silvery essence.

The silver, however, was swallowed as the Deathless vanished in a sudden burst of gold—and reappeared beside Stormhalt in the next half second. A transparent membrane of momentum and inertial energies rattled around the Deathless, slipping beyond the threshold of his Chronomancy field. But instead of striking Stormhalt down with a casual blow from his warhammer-sized fist, he simply squeezed the smaller man's shoulder in a mocking, faux-affectionate gesture and then let Stormhalt go. It was a taunt above taunts. It was an expression that, if he wanted Stormhalt dead, he could have taken his life through Chronomancy as much as through raw speed and strength alone.

But he didn't.

The humiliation was almost enough to make Stormhalt vomit.

The Deathless held up his hand as he circled Stormhalt. "Relax, Havel. You're all tense for nothing. I'm not here to rip your head off, or rip your arms off, or rip your legs off, or rip you in half, or rip your meat off piece by piece and watch you bleed to death and lap the blood."

"Enough," Veronica said, her words pressing down on the Deathless. "Master Stormhalt deserves a measure of respect, slight though it is after all his failures. Stop playing with him."

And to Havel's continued disbelief, the Deathless heeded Veronica's commands, not in the way a dog might its owner, but as someone taking a suggestion. The glow of sadism behind the Deathless’ eyes flattened, or maybe it was never truly there to begin with—maybe Havel imagined the cruelty inherent within the boy he viewed as a beast. "Let's give it a second. I think Jessica will be here at—oh, here she is."

On cue, the doors opened once more. The stone grinding against the floor announced the arrival of a new Legend, a third entering the room, leaving Havel the only Master, outmatched and overshadowed by all others.

Legend-Inquisitor Jessica Hawgrave entered the room without her blade drawn or even her helmet on. She scanned Havel and narrowed her eyes at the Deathless, but the expression on her face was not one of judgment or fear, but mere annoyance.

"Hey, I didn't do anything to him," the Deathless said, holding his hands high defensively. "Tell her, Havel. I didn't hurt you. You gave all that fear to me willingly."

"Then why does he have his Mason's shield drawn?" Jessica asked, gesturing at the item in Havel’s hand with her chin.

"You've gotta ask him that. I can't give you the answer. Havel got a little scared, I guess. Decided to fill his hands with steel and find comfort pretending that might make a difference." The Deathless stared dead-on down into Havel's eyes and almost sneered. "If you want, I’ll let you take a few swings at me, just like old times. See if you feel better after that. See if you get a little bit less scared—I don't think so, but hey, I'm up to try if you are."

Havel's blood had been replaced by ice, and his muscles petrified into stone. For the first time in his life, every instinct inside screamed for him not to hit his enemy, to avoid this battle, that trying to use force against the Deathless was futile. Though Havel considered himself an above-average warrior, the one true talent he had above all else was his combat intuition.

And right now, his intuition told him that only further sorrow would flow from rising to the Deathless’ demands.

Thus the Endbreaker's most faithful servant held firm, choosing to do nothing, if only out of spite. He was rewarded for that choice in more ways than one. Slowly, the expression on the Deathless' face turned, going from a lackadaisical smile to a measured stare that held the slightest hint of respect. The Deathless lowered his chin in something almost approximating a nod, but said nothing more as he stepped back to give Havel his space.

He kept his shield and mace drawn, uncertain why the Deathless had retreated. He wondered if a psychological game was being played through Social or Intimidation Skill.

That question went forgotten as Jessica called out to Havel. "Hey, Master Stormhalt, you remember what I told you at the start of our little expedition a few weeks back?"

Havel turned and frowned at his former comrade. Why she seemed so calm, or for what reason she was playing along with a supposed enemy, he didn't know. He could only reply to her to see if that led to actual answers reciprocated. "When the expeditionary force departed? Yes, I remember. I remember you saying something about how this could all end in tragedy. That it could all be pointless. That we could just cause a bigger problem without resolving our original pain."

Jessica snorted. "I didn't say 'problem,' Havel, I said 'shitshow'— shit show. Guess what? We do have a bigger shitshow. Multiple, actually. The good news is that one of them volunteered to help deal with the other as part of his atonement."

"Atonement," Havel croaked.

The Deathless adopted an exaggerated expression of regret and placed a hand over his heart. "I did a bad thing to Longinus and the Republic, and I'm ready to be a good boy now. Done with the naughtiness. And I thought to myself, 'Why should I be the only one who gets to redeem themselves? There are plenty more people than just I who got into this mess!' Since the Republic and the Councilwoman are being so kind with me, I decided that you deserve a little forgiveness of your own." The Deathless laughed. "After all, this whole shitshow, as Legend Hawgrave so aptly described it, is your mistake too."

"My mistake?" A growl of pure anger slipped out from Havel, and he didn't even care that he was less than an insect before the Deathless. He closed on the towering boy without fear now, scowling as he spat his rebuttal. "My only mistake was trusting mongrel abominations to deliver for me what could only be done by the hands of those righteous and faithful. My only mistake is striking bargains with those beneath me and thinking that I would be rewarded for my desperation rather than keeping to the course and taking righteous revenge with my own hands."

Though the heat of a just rage boiled inside Havel's chest, the faint measure of respect he'd earned from the Deathless was doused as the boy who called himself Shiv glared at Havel for the first time. "You made a hells of a lot more than one mistake, Havel. I know about your bargain with the Vicar. I know about the deals you struck with the Jealousy of Theborn. And then there’s the Animancy bomb and the Undying Tarrasque on the loose."

"Empowered by your nature," Havel shot back.

"Yeah, but here's the thing, Havel. I would've never become Deathless if your assassins didn't decide to attack Blackedge. If you didn't betray a town of the Republic to one of those mongrels you mentioned earlier. Now one of those mongrels has left us a posthumous problem. I'm using that word right, right, Jessica? Posthumous? After someone dies?"

"Yes," Veronica answered for him.

"Great," the Deathless grunted. "So it doesn't matter how you feel, City Lord. You've got a lot to atone for, a lot more than even me. The good news is you can take on your role as Avatar again. In fact, most of the Ascendants have an Avatar or a few taking a little trip up north. We're going to interrupt and handle this problem before it spirals any further out of control, and you and I are going to get real acquainted in the meantime as we hash a few things out."

Havel almost swallowed, but he halted the action to hide his returning fear. "And why should I acquiesce to this, since this is your request and not the Republic’s—"

"Oh, it is," Jessica interrupted. "Shiv here pulled a dick-move and got me volunteered into a leadership position again. So… As your now-superior, I welcome you back into the Inquisition’s Special Operations, Stormhalt."

Something fell out below Havel’s stomach. "Legend Hawgrave… surely you can’t be serious."

"I’m not wearing my clown makeup today, so I surely am," Jessica deadpanned. Then a frown appeared on her face as her thoughts seemed to drift. "Haven't worn that in a long time, actually… Anyway, look, Havel, it's not personal between you and me, but frankly the kid's got a point. Someone's gonna need to deal with a Tarrasque, and I view this as an opportunity for you to get back into the good graces of the Republic. Besides, the Endbreaker isn't open to taking just anyone as an Avatar, so you help us solve that problem too."

The patriarch of House Stormhalt was speechless. He had nothing to say. The levels of betrayal he felt right now were beyond description, beyond belief. Even Jessica Hawgrave was spending him like a token.

"And there's a reason why you're going to accept, Stormhalt,” the Deathless said. “There's a reason why you're going to say yes. You're going to do that because you want to punish yourself, because you have this coming." The Deathless stared him down. "Now, I want you to ask me why."

"Shiv, come on." Jessica scoffed. "You’re being a little too nasty right now."

"Most of Blackedge died, Jessica," the Deathless grunted. "All those lives spent. But Roland’s still here, and the Starhawk still has his bird nest. I'm not being nasty to Stormhalt at all. Frankly, I'm being nicer than he'll ever deserve. And I'm sure you'll agree, City Lord, because guess who got hit by the Vicar's plague? Guess what happened to Isabella—who your incompetent assassins were probably meant to kidnap and extract but ended up leaving behind to suffer along with the rest of Blackedge?"

The truth struck Havel dead and deep in his heart. The breath was driven out of him, and a burning horror tore into him. "Isabella… No, you’re…"

"I don’t need to lie, Havel. You know where she was. You know where you left her. Now, since you got unreasonably lucky in the sense that she happened to survive Sullain's plague, I want you to think about what you’re going to say to her in your own defense when she realizes helped the Vicar to make this all happen, that you made her suffer and drove her close to the brink of death and thousands more over it because you hated Roland Arrow so much you were willing to betray everything to have your revenge.” The Deathless snorted and leaned back. "I got half an urge to bring her here so that you too can get reacquainted with her face-to-face with what you did. I'll watch the love bleed out from her eyes as you stop being anything of a father to her, as she gives up on you entirely, as you strip yourself of what family you got left while not even inconveniencing Roland."

"No," Havel whispered.

"No is right," the Deathless said. "So. What’s going to happen is that you’re going to play along with us. Your former position, influence, resources, and contacts in the Inquisition will be made available again, but this time, we’re going to do something we all agree is right. You, me, Jessica, the Republic. This time we're all gonna be the good guys, because none of us want the frost giants to flatten our homes, and we don't want the Tarrasque to come back around for a second go. Understand this isn’t blackmail; you can say no, and I’ll try to ask Veronica to give you some dignity. But I will destroy your life for that—because where Isabella lived, quite a few other people didn’t, and when you took a swing at Roland, you killed someone I cared for instead. Make no mistake, Havel, I’m not going to kill you. As I said, I got to atone in the eyes of the Republic, but I can see your heart and mind, and you’re not that far from the edge. With a little push, I think you’ll solve your own equation for me. And I think the heartbreak and disappointment on Isabella’s face will be that little push, wouldn’t you agree?"

That last sentence proved to be too much.

All the emotional anguish Stormhalt tried keeping inside him burst out as he doubled over and puked a stream of vile, black flame that coiled around him in choking bands. Havel hyperventilated and heaved, fighting to regain control over his body and mind as a true panic attack overtook him for the first time in years.

"Sloppy. Stupid. Unnecessary." Veronica rose from her chair, and while spots formed in Havel’s vision, he realized that the Councilwoman was criticizing the Deathless instead of chiding him. She and the boy shared a mutual glare, but she handed him the parchment she had been filling in earlier—and even in the dim ambience of the room, Stormhalt could see the title.

"Alright, Havel, you catch your breath," the Deathless said, looking over what Veronica had written. "But when you’re done, we’re going to need you to sign something. But you should be used to this now—striking bad deals to get what you want. Well. Here’s an easier one. No need to feed the poor and weak to a demon as brain fuel. Just a promise that you’re going to heed the commands of Legend Jessica Hawgrave for this expedition, that you cannot tell anyone about what we’re doing, that you cannot abandon the mission, and that you cannot make an attempt on one of our lives while the mission is still going. In exchange, you get to do the right thing for once. You get to save what’s left of Blackedge and your daughter before a second siege follows, and you get to put down the monster you accidentally made possible. Plus getting your privileges and pedigrees back and all that."

The monstrous boy took two steps forward, and his shadow fell over Havel—who was still bent over, spilling bursts of foul, torturous flame from his insides. It felt like he was breaking apart and turning to glass; a kind of torture Havel just couldn’t describe. Whatever this Skill afflicting him was, it fed on the inner tumult within the man and made him sicker and sicker.

"And, finally, you're going to say yes because you and I are going to settle our own problems as well." The Deathless bent down and whispered beside Stormhalt, "Because you’re just a bomb waiting to go off, and I’m not having it. By the end of our little expedition, you’re going to give up that grudge on Roland, one way or another. This isn’t a boast. It’s going to be a fact. So…" The Deathless dropped the writ down on the ground in front of Stormhalt and walked away. "Get your shit together and sign that. Once you do, you, me, and all the other expendable Avatars are going to get real acquainted."

. Havel trembled as he struggled not to sob and heave.

For the first time in Master Havel Stormhalt’s life, Roland fell from the heights of his hatred as a terrifying new Pathbearer stole that place—and further filled him with stomach-turning fear.