“Why, the plan to stop Ingerson, of course.”

“I… I don’t know what you mean.” Rivers of sweat poured over the floodplain of Ortson’s brow.

“Ha! You must!” said the king. “After all, you didn’t come up with a reason why Ingerson’s quest couldn’t move forward⁠—”

“I beg your pardon?” asked Ortson.

The king’s smile froze, but his eyes were like hot embers. “I wanted you to find a reason to bypass all this business with the dragon.”

“But…. but you asked if there was a legal rationale… there wasn’t one.” Ortson dabbed at his forehead with a sopping handkerchief, though it had all the effect of an umbrella in monsoon season.

Johan pounded the abused armrest of the throne. Cracks spiderwebbed through the venerated wood. “You’re the thrice-cursed Grandmaster of the Heroes’ Guild!” he roared. “If you can’t find a good rule, make one up!”

Ortson sputtered at the sudden reversal. “B-b-but you… I had just done that to allow the quest in the first place! It took all I had to set up two no-bid quests for the largest hoard in history in weeks. W-we bypassed so many protocols to get your quests⁠—”

“Ingerson was supposed to try to accuse us! He was supposed to reveal that he raided the northern site!”

“I, uh…” Ortson tried to follow the king’s line of reasoning, and kept tripping at the same point. “Why would we want that, sire?”

“So we could deny everything!” said Johan, leaping to his feet. “We should be arguing about who the real criminal was! Why would I want him to go on a high-profile quest? Why would I want to send him down to investigate the dragon? And now that you’ve let him and his cohorts into the dungeon, I assume you have a plan to stop them from coming back!”

“Ah…” said Ortson. “Well, sire, I assumed that the actual dragon, or whatever else you fought down there, would make short work of them. Right?”

Johan’s eyes narrowed. He studied the guildmaster with the disgusted fascination of a child who has found a bloated, spindly-legged creature under a log. “I’d prefer to leave nothing to chance,” he said eventually.

“B-but if they return without slaying the dragon, we can say they were derelict in their duty for fear of the dragon,” said Weaver. “And if they do actually succeed, you can still deny that you killed the, uh... we can still deny all wrongdoing.”

It was a poor recovery, and Weaver didn’t need to look at the king’s face to see that it hadn’t been enough. He did though, and saw that Johan’s perpetual grin had faded into a determined grimace. The almost-unspoken accusation hung in the air like a sword above the guildmaster’s head.

“Do you think I killed someone, Weaver?”

“Of course not, sire.”

“You said I’d need to deny it. You think I killed someone?”

The guildmaster searched for an escape, but it was hard to see one through the haze of alcohol. “Not… uh, not directly,” he tried.

“Not directly?”

“I mean, I saw her eat… the poison…” Ortson’s eyes were beginning to water. “It… it was suicide.”

Johan’s shoulders fell, genuine disappointment pulling his face into a deep frown. “I… I really did love Marja,” he said.

“Of course, sire⁠—”

“The princess I saved. The damsel that needed a hero. That needed me.” Johan held a hand up as he descended the stairs, as though reaching out to touch a memory. “It was a tale out of storybooks: a hero, a wicked wizard, a maiden in distress, a daring rescue. Lovers kept apart for years… decades… by caste and fortune, reunited at last. I loved our story, Weaver. I loved her.”

Ortson stepped back from the descending king. “Sire, I didn’t mean⁠—”

The king closed his hand into a mailed fist. “But I have important plans, Weaver. More important than you could ever comprehend. Failure is… it’s not an option. It’s not even a possibility!” He growled the last remark, as if to cut off an unheard dissent. It took a moment for his snarl to fade back into a mask of melancholy. “When she threatened those critical projects, I… I knew we couldn’t be together any longer. The best I could do was give her a happy ending.”

“She went mad with grief and killed herself,” said the guildmaster, backing away.

“For love. The way she always wanted to. It really was the best I could do for her, once she got in the way. I don’t have a choice in this. I cannot fail.” Johan turned his eyes on Ortson. “I can’t tolerate failure.”

“Sire—!” Ortson started to back away, but Johan was on him in a flash of golden armor and ivory teeth. A gauntlet like an iron vice clamped onto his arm.

“I needed a plan. I needed Ingerson stopped. You didn’t do that. You… let… him go into the dungeon, when I needed… him… stopped.” Johan’s voice was level even as his face reddened and veins throbbed on his forehead.

“Sire, I… I’ve served the crown loyally… for many years.” Ortson’s words were a whining wheeze. The king’s grip sent waves of agony through his arm.

“Ha haaa! Indeed you have, Ortson. For many years. Long enough to know that in this business, there’s two types of people.”

“Not the speech,” Ortson sobbed, trying unsuccessfully to pull his arm from the king’s grasp. “Not the loose ends speech⁠—”

“Ha! I see you’re familiar with the basic concept.” Johan wrenched his arm and grinned as the guildmaster screamed.

A few moments later, the lights in the eyes of the shrine of Mordo Ogg at Sculpin Down flashed with sudden brilliance.

“Ooh!” Ignatius cooed, watching the crimson glow fade away. “Another big one! And so soon after Her Majesty. And she after…”

The old man pursed his leathery lips and stroked the thin, ivory strands of his beard. He didn’t know much about math—serving in Mordo Ogg’s priesthood didn’t require much arithmetic beyond counting the departed. Yet he could see a logarithmic pattern in the interval between major deaths lately, even if he had no idea what logarithms were.

Ignatius licked his lips, deep in concentration. He glanced suspiciously at the sky. Something in the clouds sparked a decision in the old priest, and he quickly opened a small compartment beneath the shrine and drew out a small wooden placard. He carefully placed the sign in the stone skeleton’s lap. It read:

Attendant away. Service continues.

Moments later, Ignatius made his way toward the Pinnacle, clutching his robes close against the chill as he ran through the streets. People hurried out of his way, perhaps because he was a clergyman in service of the god of death, or perhaps just because he was an old man in tattered robes laughing and muttering as he sprinted up the road.

The old priest knew of an observation tower on the Fifth Tier where a sightseer could pay a shilling to look out over the lower tiers of the city. People lined up by the dozen to see the city in the summer, but in the frosty Highmoon air nobody stood by the tower door but a dour-looking Goblin minding an empty till. Ignatius dropped a silver coin into the tin bucket and ran up the stairs to the observation deck.

The winter wind carved through the old priest’s robes as he stepped up to the railing, but he paid the cold no mind. The sky above the city was chill and clear, but to the south, clouds drifted toward the western coast as though pulled along by the Tarapin. His gaze followed them Ridgeward, where he saw a cluster of cumulus puffs drifting north up the coast. He looked back toward the Wall, and on the eastern horizon saw thin wisps of vapor teased south by the wind. The upper tiers and Mount Wynspar blocked the northern sky, but he could guess that winds toward Scoria were trending east, pulling the clouds into the beginnings of a very large spiral.

“More to come,” he whispered, watching the sky. “Much bigger things to come.”

“I’m sorry, but I can’t deal with anything else at the moment.” Feista Hrurk waved Aubren away without looking up from her memo. “You’ll have to see to it.”

“Yes, ma’am, but—” The young Human was barely audible over the war drum, manned now by two Wood Gnomes bouncing up and down in turns.

“It will have to wait. I need these numbers. Next, do the Plus-Five Corporation!” Feista barked at the Wood Gnomes. Teams of the diminutive workers moved furiously across various spreadsheets laid out over the desks of Warg Inc.’s analysis office. Swirling patterns shifted in the crowd as the Domovoy calculated and marked figures to the rhythm of the war drum. Around them, Goblins and Orcs shuffled papers and checked figures. “This report is due by the lunch hour!”

“But ma’am—” Aubren hovered by the office door, a dusting of snow on her winter shawl.

“If this is about the shoddy work in the kitchen, you have to handle the contractor.” Feista glowered down at the stubborn numbers on her parchment. Reams of untouched paperwork lurked behind the page, metastasizing within her inbox as she struggled to concentrate.