It was strange to be in a body again. Strange, even painful, but exhilarating.

  Baron Maegar Varn followed his mercenary gut to find his way to the exit of the dungeon. He needed time to adapt. Probably a lot of time. He wasn't even sure if he had said his thanks to Baroness Guelder for the rescue. As to the dwarven healer who'd stopped the bleeding from his ravaged eye socket and bandaged him up, all the while mumbling about the futility of human efforts in life, he was pretty sure he'd thanked him.

  His memories from the time of his captivity were settling down in his brain. Visions, impressions, details he couldn't fit into a big picture. Images of Guelder cornered, trapped, fighting for her life, several times, against several foes. Any one of those situations could have ended badly, and he'd mourned for his dear friend multiple times, only to get another glimpse of another desperate struggle further down the line. Had he been possessed of his usual brain for thinking, not just his raw soul bottled up like a message for posterity, he would have figured out that nobody was to be considered dead unless he saw them die.

  However, he had seen Felicia die.

  His newfound life started with an unthinkable bereavement, much, much worse than the loss of an eye. He used to be so certain that Felicia would come out the other end of everything. Hell, she had even returned from the First World, victorious, sword in hand, protecting her allies from waves upon waves of monsters. He used to be so sure that they would grow old together, that she'd hold his wizened hand on his deathbed, her red curls streaked with silver, surrounded by their grandchildren, ushering him out of this life. Instead, he'd watched her choke on her own blood, her eyes wide with a fear of death she'd never known in her short lifetime.

  He'd failed her. Just as he'd failed everyone who'd looked to him for guidance and protection, from the Lostlarn Keep taskforce to... well, all the citizens of his barony, ever since he'd assumed the title. The feeling of inadequacy came down on him like a cartload of bricks and squeezed his soul like the glass wall of a vial. In this one thing, Vordakai had been right. Maegar Varn was too weak and incompetent to rule a country. He had to resign. And the only person he would happily pass the helm on to was gone.

  There was another way, though. He could still do a last service to his land: unite it with another, larger, better managed barony, ensuring the welfare of its inhabitants in the long run. Cephal's dream would come true, with one single difference: the ruler's person. As his honour demanded, he would offer his sword and his lands to his saviour.

  Guelder's team brought up the rear, as the last citizen of Varnhold walked out the exit. Last of them was the baroness herself and her feline friend. He bent the knee in front of her, taking her hand and touching it to his forehead in reverence. As he rose, he found himself in her embrace, her face, damp with tears, brushing against his own, her breath scorching the nape of his neck. They held each other for a long time, and he drank her presence, her warmth, her scent. Life. So sweet, so overwhelming that it made his remaining eye tear up, and he wished this moment would last forever.

  Before she could sense what was going on in him, he let go, took a step backwards, and braced up to pay the debt of blood to this incredible woman.

  Cephal Lorentus startled awake with a deep, spastic, shaky breath, which conveyed a good dose of stale water into his tormented lungs. He struggled up to all fours, coughing fitfully. Being back in his body was not so pleasant at the moment as he'd imagined it would be, but still, he was free. Well, more or less. As much as someone could be free in the deepest recesses of a dungeon, surrounded by a bunch of zombies. Anyway, compared to being penned up in a soul vial, it was definitely an improvement of sorts.

  And no, those were not zombies anymore. Those were living people, dazed from a sudden resuscitation, like himself, in the course of adapting to another fundamental change in their ontological status.

  What had he even been doing face down in a puddle?

  His memories slowly returned. A pilgrimage through the necropolis, in a strangely purposeful state of mind, leading his squad to a land flowing with decay and zombie juice. Undefined, maddening agony. Prison. A small vial or alembic, stoppered, ending in a tap. Why did a soul prison have a tap? He'd soon found out, when a small portion of his soul had been drained from the vial and sent back into his body, just the right amount to power his magic but not enough to let him rebel, his spell slots filled with death spells he'd never prepared. A split mind, part of it in a rotting body, another part bottled up on a shelf, like kameberry cordial. That made a person aggressive and ready to attack anything that moved.

  Particularly if that anything was a group of intruders from Nightvale.

  Hell, had it been infuriating. Cephal should have defeated them easily. But alas, his zombie comrades couldn't produce one quarter of the performance they'd been able to deliver alive. And there had been no trace of either Sneaky Bastard Zombie Lord Maegar or Your Worst Nightmare Zombie Lord Darlac. So Cephal had stood his ground like a lonely cliff in a sea of incompetence, but he'd finally fallen under the enemy's blows, his soul spark siphoned back to the vial, and (to add insult to injury) his corpse looted.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  He ejected the last mouthful of water from his lungs, and while the others shambled away, drawn by an invisible force towards the dungeon exit, he tried to calculate the consequences.

  Baroness Guelder was in Varnhold territory, on a dungeon expedition forbidden by the treaty, and instead of exploiting the situation to crush her rival underfoot and seize his lands for herself, she was rescuing the people of Varnhold. What gambit was she playing? Did she want to put Varnhold in her debt? Did she reckon that, through the Oculus she'd doubtlessly claimed, she would have unlimited control over her eastern neighbours anyway? Or was Cephal missing some important detail?

  He had to find out.

  One by one, the citizens of Varnhold walked out the exit, with Cephal at the end of the line, falling back a little. The people were in quite a battered shape after having been used as frontline fodder zombies, but once they passed by an insignificant-looking sarcophagus lid leant against the wall, their posture became upright and proud, and as they proceeded, there was a spring to their steps. Cephal stopped in his tracks and watched.

  As the last commoner left the tomb to claim back his freedom, something moved under the sarcophagus lid, and Darlac's silhouette detached itself from the shadows. She stood up straight and looked towards the exit, but didn't take a single step in that direction. Where had she been before?

  At the end of the corridor, the familiar figure of Maegar Varn stood, wearing a bandage across his left eye, checking on his departing subjects and probably waiting for the beast woman in order to thank her for the rescue. Darlac's knees trembled. Why was she holding back? Did she know something Cephal didn't?

  Indeed, the baroness arrived in a few minutes, and a heartfelt moment of reunion followed. The Nightvale squad tactfully went ahead through the exit, leaving the two leaders alone. Darlac, too, had retreated behind the sarcophagus lid.

  Cephal walked up to her, stepping as lightly as his old joints allowed, but not lightly enough to remain unnoticed. Darlac turned back and a smile of childish joy spread over her face, in stark contradiction to her eyes puffy with crying (and probably also red beneath the golden glow). Cephal stopped himself from hugging her at the last moment. He had more important matters to attend to.

  "What's going on there?" he mouthed, jerking his head towards the baron and the baroness.

  Darlac turned away, fighting back tears again. Cephal raised his finger to stop her from talking (not that she seemed willing to), and started to cast his very own Enhanced Sonic Transmission spell, by which he was able to transmit his own voice over a long distance or listen in on conversations from afar. Whatever Maegar and the beast woman were up to, the Lord Regent had the right to know about it. And so did Darlac, the future Baroness of Varnhold.

  "By the debt of blood," the baron was saying, "I offer my sword and my barony to you. The cowards in the north didn't help me in my need, so I will serve the one who did."

  Well, shit. Obligations based on gratitude were one thing, but giving away independence in a surge of thankfulness was quite another. And this surge would probably continue in a more personal way. This could not be happening... and still it was. Darlac stared at Cephal with big, round eyes, her lips trembling. Poor child, she just realised she lost everything she held dear, right after she got her life back.

  It was pure luck that the Nightvale crew had killed undead Cephal before he'd wasted all his spells on them. He could still fix this. If he took out the baroness, the revived Varnlings could dispose of the rest of her squad, and then they could pretend this entire thing had never happened. Perhaps he would even find the Oculus of Abaddon in her backpack. The hardest part would be to hammer some sense into Maegar's stubborn head, but that would be Darlac's job. She was not half bad at that. The more he pondered, and the longer he looked into his young comrade's tearful eyes, the more certain he was that he'd found the solution. He silently thanked the lich for teaching him Finger of Death.

  "Look away, kid," he said softly. "There is only one way left to end this farce."

  He drew back a little, raising his right hand and narrowing his eyes, locking onto the target. Black wisps of death energy appeared at the tip of his index finger. If he only had his staff to amplify those...

  "Cephal, no!"

  In a flash, Darlac moved into his line of sight, blocking his view of the target, and threw herself at him to break his concentration. Too late. The spell was out, Cephal couldn't take it back anymore. It hit the girl square in the chest. She lost control of her body and slammed into Cephal by the force of sheer inertia, knocking him back and bringing him down to the ground. His head crashed into the flagstones with a jolt of pain and a sickening crunch.

  Damn. Oh damn. Stupid, stupid girl.