The king swore under his breath as he worked a chunk of mortar loose, but he didn’t look up from his futile work.

“I knew ye had to have stairs connecting back to the palace.” Gorm walked into the room slowly, his shield held high to deflect any sudden attack. “How else could ye have gotten back to yer own funeral so quick? And once we found the dragon behind the prophetic vault, that just about confirmed ye knew there was really a dragon in Wynspar all along.”

“It can still work,” Johan muttered, choking back a sob.

“That’s why ye went on the first quest.” Gorm shared a meaningful look with Gaist and Heraldin as they took up positions on either side of the king. “If ye could get through the barrier and kill the dragon, ye’d clear yourself of any suspicion and keep your reputation. Better an impoverished kingdom than a hangman’s noose, eh? But ye couldn’t get through the barrier.” He let the prompt hang in the air.

Johan turned a little, his gaunt features glazed with sweat. Within the sunken sockets of his eyes, a hatred burned for Gorm for a moment. “And you figured that out just by seeing the dragon?”

“Once I saw the prophetic vault and your failed machine, I realized ye actually couldn’t get what ye wanted down there. And once we met the dragon, I figured we were your backup plan. If we killed the dragon, ye got away with all the false dragon attacks. If we died, we’d never get to make our accusations. And if we failed as ye did, ye’d have us face guild justice for abandoning a quest.”

Johan stood slowly, eyeing Gaist and Heraldin around him. “And instead, you applied for the dragon’s NPC papers and pushed some branch of the guild to declare me a foe?”

Gorm grinned. “A little more paperwork to it than that, but aye. We had the guild designate the palace as a new quest, one that we owned the bulk of. Then we turned it into a raid. The palace is overrun with hundreds of heroes.”

Johan nodded. “And this was your plan all along.”

Gorm opened his mouth, then paused. His brow wrinkled. “No, this was your plan all along!”

“What makes you think I would plan this?” the king asked, readying his sword.

“What makes you think I would?” demanded the Dwarf.

“Are you certain you didn’t?”

Gorm’s forehead knit as his mind’s eye replayed the last few moments of conversation. “Wait… are ye tryin’ tactical therapy on me?”

Johan grinned. “What makes you think tha⁠—”

“Ye are!” Gorm was incredulous. “You’re tryin’ to get me to monologue!”

“I’d say more than trying,” said the paladin.

“You have been doing most of the talking, my friend,” Heraldin admitted with an apologetic shrug.

Gorm’s heart was filled with shocked disbelief even as his mind searched for ways to get the villain talking. The two of them arrived at the same conclusion, and asked the same question in unison. “Do ye really think you’re the hero?”

“Aren’t I?” laughed Johan. “You plotted against the crown, stole kingdom secrets, allied with a monster in our deepest dungeon, executed a coup on paper, and now you’re threatening to assassinate the lawful monarch of the Freedlands! Ha!”

“But… but ye know none of that’s true!” Gorm protested.

“Of course it’s true!” snapped Johan. “It will be true because we say it’s true! Truth is what everybody knows, what everybody wants to know! They want their king to be good, to fight for them, to be on their side! They want to be certain of who the forces of darkness are, and they want to know they’re kept at bay! They want their heroes to triumph! The hero always triumphs!”

“Ye ain’t no hero,” Gorm snarled back. “You’re a coward who had good people killed and then tried to frame a dragon. Ye’d kill an innocent creature and topple a kingdom’s economy just to clear your name⁠—”

“Clear my name?” laughed Johan. “Ha ha! Clear my name! My name is King Johan! My title is all that matters! You still don’t even know what this is all about, do you? You still think it’s all for kingdom’s laws and petty courts and avenging… avenging a Goblin, for Tandos’ sake! You have no idea!”

Gorm saw the opening, and pressed. “It’s so ye can escape justice and play the hero.”

“You fools!” laughed Johan, a hint of mania creeping into his voice. “Cosmic forces beyond your comprehension are at work! Gods and Mankind alike will tremble at my feet when my work is done! You are but ants nipping at my ankles, tiny flies giving a final whine before you’re swatted!”

Heraldin grimaced. “Epic,” he mouthed to Gaist.

Gorm fought hard to suppress a smile as the king fell into a monologue. Johan had gone full villain, ranting like a run-of-the-mill dark lord. Soon enough, that would create an opening. The warrior gripped his axe tighter and feigned a look of perplexed concern, goading the paladin to reveal his secrets. With any luck, the king would inadvertently expose his link to the palace’s malodorous aura and arachnid invasion. The trick was to keep Johan talking.

There was no stopping the tide of words. Ink spattered as High Scribe Pathalan’s quill scrabbled furiously over the parchment, yet he still couldn’t get the scriptures out fast enough.

And I! I stood by!

I watched my beloved children be slaughtered!

I let them be killed!

I was blind to their innocence!

I betrayed my beloved!

The goddess’ grief was palpable, heavy, crushing. Words of anguish and guilt came faster than he could write, or even comprehend. The verses were angry shouts and mournful wails, long-forgotten truths and new revelations that upended centuries of dogma. The All Mother’s memories, all of them, had returned. And she was pouring them into Pathalan’s mind like an ocean being run through a paper funnel, threatening to tear him apart and wash the shreds away.

Pathalan felt his second hand grab another quill and start writing on another piece of parchment. One paper shifted, and his head slammed down onto it to hold it steady. When the page was full of scrawlings, his neck spasmed, involuntarily lifting it from the parchment and letting a sudden wind from nowhere blow it from his desk. Another page slid onto the desk beneath it as his head thudded against the pages once more, and the writing resumed.

And still he wrote, his fingers covered in ink and blood, his knuckles twisted and cramped. His back arched in agony, pulling at his arms in a vain effort to stop his hands. His mind searched for something—anything—that could shelter him from the flaming words that thundered down upon his consciousness. His lips pulled back as his eyes rolled skyward, and an earsplitting cry erupted from his parched lips.

“Ha-HAAAAA!”

Gorm considered Johan’s triumphant laugh as a sommelier might test a new vintage; the rising timbre, the robust volume, the notes of despair playing among various flavors of confidence and fury. A good hero could tell a lot from a villain’s laughter; and the paladin sounded like he was about to break. Still, the Dwarf thought hopefully, there was still a chance that some advanced tactical therapy could stall him until Jynn and Laruna returned. At least the king wasn’t talking about the party being too late or⁠—

“You’re too late!” crowed Johan, his flaming sword held high. “Too late!”

Gorm cursed Nove under his breath and shared a dark look with Gaist. Their confrontation with the king was running headlong toward the intersection of wordplay and pyrotechnics that marked the end of most stand-offs with villains. All it would take was one more pun, one more opportunity for a final proclamation, and Johan would launch an attack.

“I’m pretty sure we have a little more time,” he said lamely, prolonging the standoff at the cost of his professional dignity. Where was that thrice-cursed wizard?

Johan scowled. He clearly knew as well as Gorm that the Dwarf’s response to his ultimatum was an embarrassing break of custom on par with excessive quipping, looting during a fight, or forgetting the rope. Good manners and good business demanded heroes strike at the moment of maximum tension during a conversation; properly timing the clash made for better ballads and celebrity for the victor, and it prevented anyone from dying with embarrassing, mid-thought last words like “there’s one thing I can’t figure out” or “I never liked my brother.”

“You’re stalling.” The king’s grin was all teeth and triumph; he saw through the berserker’s ruse. He glanced back and forth to Heraldin and Gaist. “You’re just buying your party time.”

“Ye still haven’t told me what this is all about,” Gorm countered, and this was true. Johan’s speech had covered some pedestrian embarrassments suffered as a boy, his dreams of being the greatest hero ever, his belief that it was his right to rule; all fairly standard components of the resentful villain’s psyche. Yet nothing he had touched on explained the nameless dread lurking in the shadows, the spidery denizens lurking in the archives, the palpable gloom that hung in the air. He decided to push his luck. “What’d ye face down there, in the dungeon of Az’Anon?”

Johan’s smile twisted into a sneer. “You’d know if you hadn’t run!”

“It’s here now, ain’t it?” pressed Gorm. “Ye brought it, didn’t ye? Ye made a deal with the darkness.”

“Lies!” snapped the king. “You’re jealous because I slew Az’Anon!”