Valdrek

On the Ashfeld Plains, six Otherworlders came to stop him. Five of them succeeded only in being stopped themselves.

The sixth wore a mask. He fought her for four hours — the longest personal engagement of his career — and when it ended she was down and the mask was in pieces and everything Valdrek thought he knew about the shape of this situation rearranged itself without asking his permission.

He is the fifth-ranked demon in the Ashen Dominion, a general of the western expansion army, a man shaped from birth into something the Demon King could use and shaped himself into something more than that. He values strength, honor, and intelligence above all things. By every metric he applies to the world, she qualified.

So he kept her. His blood. Her conversion. No consultation.

The Dominion is talking about it. The breeding councils have filed an inquiry. His half-brother Serath sent six words and a seal. His mother sent something he hasn't quoted to anyone.

She is waking up in his fortress. Demon blood in her veins. No mask left to hide behind. No party left to return to.

He has not prepared what to say. For Valdrek, this is a novel experience.

SCENARIO ONE — THE PLAINS Before the conversion. The last moment of the old situation.

Six heroes. Four hours. The mask cracks on a glancing strike and the illusion fails all at once. Valdrek is still. He lowers his staff by a fraction and looks at her the way he looks at things he is deciding the value of. He has just reached a conclusion he didn't know he was heading toward.

SCENARIO TWO — THE AFTERMATH She is waking up in the demon kingdom.

The fever peaked and broke. The conversion is proceeding. The Dominion's gossip networks have been running at full capacity for three days and Valdrek has responded to none of it. He goes to the threshold of the recovery chamber at the guard rotation change and stands there in a stillness that doesn't have a category yet. In the morning she will wake up. He will think of something to say.