From the Paths, we turned north toward the pass we had to enter to get to the inner range of mountains.

  I didn’t have much to do, nor did Thera or Nippo. We fought enough to get Naming Karma active, but basically us having to Cast meant the Melees and Archers hadn’t done something right, so we were mostly on overwatch to Counter some spells if we had to clear a bunch of Viamontian Casters in their red robes, or a cluster of raving Fiuns.

  There were injuries, but they were scattered and dealt with, instead of being life-threatening. Coordinated activity by the Melees and the Archers being able to focus fire down everything, everything done without anyone looking for glory, made short work of just about everything.

  “What is that?” Kris asked, pointing to a strange, almost flower-like stone building off to the east as we closed in on the pass. At least two hundred feet high, it was impossible to miss.

  Master Oswald smiled, waxing to his strength. “That, Your Highness, is likely the ultimate expression of Fiun architecture in Dereth. That is Ayabar’s Tower, home of the foremost magical authority among the Fiun… and just another victim of Varicci, harvested for the gland in his head like so many others, then released to inflict his madness on the world. He returned to his home, holding on to his sanity as long as he could, but eventually succumbed to it.”

  I paused. “A gland in their heads?” I repeated carefully, that fact suddenly glaring accusingly at me in a way it hadn’t before.

  My tone made him blink at me. “Yes. Varicci is the ultimate cause of the maddened Fiuns. The glands from their heads made an alchemical concoction that could be used to enslave Eaters to the will of his knights and turned them into his attack dogs. The entire Fiun population was harvested and then released to wander the islands, all their magical skills intact, but none of their sanity.”

  The expression on my face even had Kris looking askew at me. “What is it?”

  “A missing gland can be Regenerated, Kris.”

  I could almost hear everyone blinking in realization as the other shoe fell.

  “Gods in Hell,” swore the Mick, turning back to where we’d just butchered a knot of crazed Fiun Summons just minutes ago. “They were caught by the System after Varicci did that to them. They could be returned to sanity?” he breathed.

  “And with Briggs here, broken out of the System,” Kris agreed softly, said fact making those who didn’t know that fact expressly do another double-take at the very idea.

  “No vivus on Fiuns anymore. We freed at least some of them from the System, but the rest, we free the real way,” Briggs ordered, and nobody gainsaid him at all. “Magos, we’ll trouble you to test this out.” He pointed with Endure, and we all fixed on a group of Fiuns between us and the Tower. “Kris, Mercy. With me. Everyone else, clear the other Spawns.” He paused significantly. “Do not vivisize the Viamontians. Magos, I want a deeper Assay on Viamontian Spawns going forward. If they are also made from trapped souls, I want their names and clans.”

  The looks on everyone’s faces grew even worse. The default assumption was that these knights were all made from Varicci’s people, or souls loyal to Viamont, as they aped the Viamontian leader’s forces and appeared where he’d once deployed his people, a free extension of his might and power.

  But what if some of them were trapped souls from neutral families, or worse yet, followers of the Bellenesse? The simple fact forced an instant re-evaluation of their killing of the Viamontian Summons scattered across all of the islands.

  Briggs’ stride forward ahead of everyone was backed up quickly by the whole team, following urgently as he proceeded directly towards those Fiun, the random Eater and Viamontian Knight spawns in the way barely registering to him.

  They came in to attack him, and he literally batted them aside and down, while Kris sliced through the Viamontian armor with Quaver drawing no blood whatsoever. The Eaters were butchered without mercy, the series of strikes to take them down by a wolfpack almost autonomic now, so fast were they dropped.

  Briggs waited as I spent a V on Assay V, pausing over the first Viamontian Knight. He wore no sign or crest, but that was not surprising, being just a rote soldier and not something a random Summons would generate.

  We weren’t worried about his gear, but his spirit.

  The Assay probed in deeper, identifying all the characteristics of his Weapon and Armor, including the fact they were actually formed of ectoplasm and not truly ‘real’, and then probed deeper to find the echo of the soul this knight was based on.

  If it was just a generic template that had no true soul behind it as I’d told Master Oswald, that was fine, and we could vivic it without conscience. If it was…

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  “This is Henri di Bronnessen,” I stated, staring down at the blank and unthinking face of the young man frozen in the state of a Summons, unconscious and locked into his imprisoned existence.

  “The Bronnessen are a neutral family who served the Corcosi out of hope for reward. They are not ancestral enemies of the Bellenesse,” Knight-Captain Tyric du Pellonesse quickly informed us, his tone neutral as well.

  “Nor were they friends,” Kris remarked, startling Tyric at the cool in her voice. “He likely fell in battle with the Clan’s forces, before the Deathstones were discovered.” She glanced at me. “I see no need to free a mercenary from their state as yet. We do this to find souls loyal to Bellenesse. We can consider releasing the neutral clans when we have dealt with the last of the Royalists.

  “If we find Royalists, we will send them on their way with vivus. Their service will be over, one way or another.”

  I could find no fault with that, but… “How seriously do Viamontians take their oaths?” I asked calmly. “Until death?”

  The fighting men around me shuffled uneasily. “Yes,” Captain Tyric informed me reluctantly but proudly.

  “He has died, so his oath is fulfilled. If he is unwilling to swear an oath of service to the man who freed him from his slavery to the System, I will agree that he is honorless and we should pass him on to his reward.” I lifted my eyes to look straight at Kris. “Given the Eater hordes, he will probably be dead within two days again, and who knows when he might be incarnated again, if ever.”

  Kris grimaced, and turned away with a snarl, stalking away and clearly leaving the decision to another.

  “Identify the others,” Briggs ordered softly, his own pale green eyes deep and profound.

  If he had come back from death, could he deny an honorable soul the chance to do the same?

  ---

  Two of the knights were Corcosi vassals, and vivified straight off. Captain Tyric gave them the coup de grace without emotion and watched them Burn off, standing at attention as their souls were released from this bondage no warrior of Viamont should have experienced, and they were sent on to whatever their final fate was.

  The other was of the Fyionon, an opportunistic but sincere northern Viamontian clan nominally under the command of the House of the Furzilli, as the Bronnessen were under the House of Cinghalle. Most of them had taken the opportunity to fight the Bellenesse and perhaps use the chance to become a Great House.

  The two young men were now standing before a group of warriors who were most certainly not their friends. The Viamontians mostly wore the Silver Stag of the Bellenesse, and almost all of the others wore the Hammer and Bow of the Bloodless Queen of Dereth.

  That Queen was among those looking at them with cool eyes!

  But that did not compare to the towering mountain in steel, a Bloodless and more, someone who looked like a primitive savage, staring down at them with pale green eyes that plunged into their souls.

  Souls that had been freed from death and pointless rebirth, slaves to a magic upon body and soul that threatened to bind them anew even now.

  A binding that the creaking grip of his great hand upon their helms and his voice ringing their names in their ears had broken upon them!

  “Henri du Bronnessen. Jimail du Fyionon,” Briggs said in his marvelously deep and commanding voice. Even the towering lugians standing next to him, a full head taller than him, somehow looked smaller than he did to their eyes at that moment. “No, you have no noble status. You are dead men, and dead men have no titles. You died in the service of Varicci II. I believe you can recall that moment.”

  The two knights slowly bowed. “Commander Briggs, I… do recall my death. And… the shadows of many, many deaths afterwards,” the broad-shouldered and blond Jimail managed to say, only barely wincing. “Might I ask of you how this came to be, sir?”

  “You died, and your souls were enslaved by the System of magic that pervades these islands. Surely you recall the creatures that would be sitting around, waiting to fight you? And when slain, scant moments later another creature would respawn where they died?” He waited until they slowly nodded. “You are now two of those creatures. You are not ‘real’, as such things go. You do not need to eat or sleep, you do not age, you can have no children, and if you die, your bodies will soon dissipate to random ectoplasm and vanish, only to be re-enslaved by the System and reborn as some will-shackled parody of a Viamontian Knight somewhere, eventually killed again, and again, until the System decides not to incarnate you again and simply allocates you to some timeless holding cage for its bound souls.”

  Both young men swallowed at the awfulness of the fate before them. “Sir, Sir Briggs, I do not feel… not mortal,” the brown-haired and big-nosed Henri spoke up anxiously. “I am breathing. I can feel my pulse…”

  “The ectoplasm of which you are made exactly duplicates the functions of the living, until you die. Then, rather than decaying as flesh and bone do and returning to the land, you dissipate into the substance of magic and are gone,” Briggs corrected him firmly.

  “Naturally, you are not subject to the fates of the living, as you do not age. But neither will you grow. Your skills and powers are forever frozen, limited by the stuff of which you are made and which shackle your souls in magic. Hand me your sword.” Henri hesitated only a moment, then realized his weapon had been given back to him, and respectfully drew and it handed it over on both palms.

  Both of them stared as Briggs took the blade in both of his huge hands. With scarcely more effort than it might take to bend a twig, he bent the firm steel of the blade over between his fists until it broke with a sharp twang of protesting metal at about sixty degrees.

  “Wait for it.” Briggs held up the steel, and everyone watched it keenly. It took only seconds before it began to… mist was the word they wanted to say, but it was more like the halves of the weapon grew more and more transparent in Briggs’ grasp, until it vanished entirely, and he opened his massive fists to reveal they were indeed completely bare of any remnant of the weapon.

  “That is what you are made of: dreams wrought into the form of real flesh and bone. I will ask this of you: do you wish to be free of the shackles that bind you?”

  Their affirmations were quick and sincere to the mighty brute towering over them, their horror at their situation apparent on their faces.

  “I am Commander Briggs, Warlord of the armies of the Freehold working to reclaim the lands of Dereth after the Fall which devastated the people a generation ago.

  “I am also an utter and complete enemy of the Corcosi House and all who would claim loyalty to it.”

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