Normalis Humano x14 slain.

One hundred and forty Souls harvested.

"Get in the stone!" I ordered. The Fangs and our golems rushed to let Glimpse snatch them out of the world and into storage. I collapsed the corridor behind us with Shape Earth, burying half a dozen more of Mortimer's minions.

Soulbound Servant slain x7

One hundred and forty Souls harvested.

"Glimpse, let us out at the entrance to the palace!" I said as I reached out to enter his range so I could enter stasis as well.

There are powerful guards there, Glimpse replied.

"Not powerful enough." I vanished. The next moment, from my perspective, Glimpse let us out on the broad stone steps that led up to the palace entrance. The compound walls were bristling with archers and casters. A hail of arrows flew towards me, and I threw up a fire shield while I chugged a mana potion to get back to full.

The arrows flashed into ash, and most of the spells were stopped. A couple of fireballs came through, but I let them hit me in the chest to cover Glimpse and the newly released Fangs. I was blown backwards, unharmed by the fire, but unable to ignore the concussive blasts from the low-level spells.

I rolled to my feet and released a stream of fireballs to annihilate the archers and the casters, who seemed to have assumed I was dead, as they were now taking aim at my friends. Incandescent balls of almost colourless fire from my rings deleted them and a series of sections of the wall as I threw Fireballs at them.

Soulbound Servant slain x24

Four hundred and eighty Souls harvested.

Normalis Humano x41 slain.

Four hundred and ten Souls harvested.

The Fangs leapt into action, running to engage the guards at the gates in close combat. They launched blasts of fire and ice, but the defenders threw up their own shields, walls of ice and lightning intercepting the bolts. The Fangs just battered through them, and spears flashed as the armoured men met my battlemad friends.

Shit. The idea had been to stop the nomads from committing atrocities in the palace, but when I looked back behind me, I saw smoke starting to rise across the city. The vision of the babies being broken against walls had fucked up my priorities.

"Jandak!" I yelled, but he was busy duelling a man wielding a flail and dagger. I charged over and snatched his opponent up by the neck. I clenched my fist, causing a loud crack, and my victim's head to loll to one side. I threw the corpse to the ground.

Soulbound Servant x1 slain.

Twenty Souls harvested.

"Jandak! Go and intercept the nomads! They're slaughtering innocents! Get them to turn back! I want them back outside the city!"

"Hey! He was a worthy foe! That would have been a good fight! Why? We've broken the walls. Whatever happened to the Amalgam, now is the time to run wild!" His eyes flashed with something that bordered on madness.

"Killing soldiers is fine. Anyone who fights back can die. But they are just killing. Do as I say!" I yanked the thread connecting our souls, and he grimaced.

"Very well, Warlord. You said you'd never do that." Jandak spoke bitterly as he turned to do my bidding. "Why not use the threads to the nomads and legion?" he called back angrily as he sped off.

Goddamnit. I assessed the spiderweb of thousands of links that flowed out of my soul and mind. I started plucking the closest ones, excluding the Fangs, compelling them to turn back. I moved in concentric circles, as far as I could tell, sending more and more of the army back towards the gates via the soulbound link. Each time, I sent a compulsion to leave the noncombatants alone, while leaving them free to attack any armed resistance as they liked.

Glimpse had resumed his oversight, and I could see that the troops were falling back to the wall. The fires they had started were spreading rapidly, but there was nothing I could do about that. The usual rapid response to fires in a city in this world was impossible while terrified by the marauding armies cutting through. The fact that those troops were now falling back wasn't something the locals were aware of, so they didn't start trying to organise a firefighting effort.

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But I'd already broken free of Hadesti's vision. The troops weren't going to storm the palace and murder babies in my name. I'd escaped that future.

"Mond!" yelled Mune, as he threw himself past me and summoned another ice shield between us and the palace. Kos slid under it and shook off his spear, which was black with blood, as he rose to his feet.

"We've got company, Mond. Bad company," Kos hissed as his badly burned arm glowed green for a moment.

I leapt to snatch a glance over the top of Mune's shield, which was now ringing and cracking as blasts of magic slammed into it. The fuckers had got themselves organised quickly. Three groups of casters were moving as a group around a central formation of Soulbound servants wearing heavy armour. It was closer to the medieval style, as opposed to the metal dresses the northern elements of Mortimer's forces had favoured.

Glimpse, need some close air support, bloke. Nuke the casters! A sense of confirmation came back down our link, and I backed away from the shield.

"Danger close, blokes! I'll deal with this lot!" I charged forward and leapt, soaring through the air to land fifteen metres beyond the rapidly failing ice shield. I summoned a pair of fire elementals as distractions, and they flanked me as I ran towards the group of armoured fighters. I moved too fast for the casters to react, and before I reached my own targets, blasts of fire fell on the casters, blowing them into red mist or reducing them to ash as Glimpse barraged them from above.

My sword cleaved out, slicing through two men in one swing. Then we fell into the dance of death. The two dozen fighters were at best A-ranked in the body stats, and this felt a bit like a grown-up fighting a swarm of heavily armed toddlers. They were potentially dangerous; they had things with which to stab me, after all, and there were a lot of them, but individually, they were no threat. I ducked a slash and punched out with my free fist, the armour cratering as my assailant was launched backwards to skitter across the stone in a shower of sparks.

I took another man's head with a backslash as I spun to drive back the mob. Then Mune and Kos slammed into their flanks while they were focused on me, and we took them apart. Within seconds, the three of us were panting, surrounded by scattered and broken bodies.

Soulbound Servant slain x17

Three hundred and forty Souls harvested.

"Well, that was refreshing," said Mune. "I don't think I need many more workouts today, Mond." I tossed him one of my dwindling supply of mana potions as I slipped three more into my belt pouch.

"As long as we hold here, we're fine. Jandak is pulling the army back; we can probably negotiate with the civvies. It's just Mortimer we need to kill. And his slaves," I added bitterly.

Was I any better? I scanned around, and we were clear for now; no new formations were rushing towards us. I'd abused my power over my friend and pissed him off. I had been desperate to avert the kind of shit I'd seen in Death's second vision, and I had done one of my oldest friends on Urth a disservice. Damn it.

"Where's Jandak?" asked Kos, still cradling his badly burned left arm. I threw a Heal Other at him.

"I sent him to call off the army, get them back outside the walls."

"Well, that's fucking stupid. We've broken through, why pull back?" snapped Mune from where he leant with his hands on his knees.

"We can do this with a decapitation strike. No need for indiscriminate killing. It's fucking unprofessional!" I snarled. I knew they were right on some level, but targeted violence made sense to me. A bad person, with bad enemies who were willing to pay, needed to be removed. I'm OK with that. If someone pays me to kill my former employers, that's also fine. In fact, every new client had been a new target; it had been a fantastic business model.

But it was always precise. Always neat, with no collateral damage. Killing civvies and randos "accidentally"? That shit was for the artillery and the air force. The burgeoning mass slaughter had offended something fundamental in my psyche.

Death didn't know me. He didn't know my fucking future. I had his source now, and when I had a moment, I'd figure out what I could use it for. To serve me and my people. I wasn't the monster he showed me in his domain, but I couldn't be the man of peace he claimed was a possibility either.

Mortimer had fed hundreds of thousands of people into his Amalgams. All the cities we'd taken had been severely depopulated. Anyone who wasn't useful had been turned into bandaged men or worse. Whatever evil I had done, and would probably still do, I would never compare to that shitbag, and I'd see that fuck six feet under before I stopped.

Mune exploded into a cloud of red mist. His head, still attached to part of his right shoulder, flew high into the air. I snapped back to focus and threw myself between the place that Mune had been a moment ago and where Kos was currently standing. Something slammed into my chest, and I felt my bones crack as I was thrown backwards into my brother-in-law.

I pushed aside a wash of grief for Mune, getting attached was always a bad idea, and pulled Kos into my storage ring before he was crushed between me and the wall I slammed into.

As I landed on my feet, I summoned my armour and pauldron from storage; they appeared around me as I cast Heal, and my health ticked up. I chugged another mana potion to top me off.

"Mr. Cobbler. You shouldn't have come here."

He was a tall, muscular man, wearing simple iron plates over his vitals that were held in place with gleaming leather straps. He had a pair of short swords on his hips. I quickly scanned his appearance and equipment and realised I knew this man.

"The fighter," I snarled. "Why the fuck have you thrown in with that zombie-loving twat?" I paced slowly to one side as I slid my helm closed and drew my sword. He watched me impassively.

"I have my reasons, cunt. You and your hordes are just as bad," he said slowly.

"You killed my friend." I began inching closer to him, blade held ready at my side for a rising slash. His stats were worrying me. While his Mind and Soul stats told me his magic wouldn't be powerful, and that he didn't have a reserve of Souls available to suddenly power up, his Body stat was SS—a single rank beyond myself. And I had no idea what kind of magic he had chosen. If I were a gambling man, I'd say Life and Time were solid bets. As to the third? I had no fucking clue.

"Gallagher. If you hadn't killed my friend, I'd have let you walk. My beef is with Mortimer. But now, you're right at the top of my shit list."

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