Fetch Quest Side Story: What if Katie returned alone? (Patreon)

Katie stood in front of the window, looking out over the chapel. The shouty-mage had barely moved, the months of time spent in this world of horrors taking up a few sparse seconds back in the real world. If that world was any more real than this one in the first place.

Given the conspicuous changes to her appearance, she'd dithered trying to decide between her leather armour, which would cover up as much of her as possible, or her nightie, which left her looking the most like 'Katie'. Alas, someone human-shaped but leather-clad would be just as suspicious as someone scaled and winged wearing Katie's nightie, given that they'd seen her only a few seconds ago.

In the end, Katie decided on her nightie, simply because it was easy to replace. At least for now. In ten seconds' time, who knew what rules would change?

Katie smashed the window and stepped through.

New respawn point activated

"A demon attack!" yelled shouty-guy, backing away as the trio of shiny knights drew their weapons. "They've penetrated the castle! Sound the alarm! It's a half-dragon!"

"Oh, shut up!" shouted Katie, almost matching the mage for volume. "I'm your own bloody summoned hero! Five minutes, you said! Five minutes! That was months ago! And you have no idea what I've been through in all that time, because for you it's only been a few seconds!"

The three knights ignored her tirade, charging at her. In a feat of perfect teamwork, the centre knight moved to impale Katie, targeting her heart, while the left-hand knight swung for her neck and the right-hand knight stepped past her to strike from behind.

Katie ignored them all in turn, their swords shattering against her scales.

"Well?" she grumbled, impatiently tapping her foot.

"What?" asked the shouty-mage, stunned not quite into silence, but at least into a normal volume.

"Do I need to repeat myself?"

The mage examined Katie carefully, finally noticing the matching face, clothing and general body shape. Mostly. The wings obviously hadn't featured a few seconds earlier, nor had her rear been quite so bulbous.

"You vanished along with the holy sword, then a few seconds later came back in through the window..."

"I got teleported to another world, along with the sword, and spent months trying to find my way out. Time ran faster there. And I picked up a few interesting mutations while I was at it."

The shouty-mage blinked as he tried to process the unexpected development.

"Perhaps... we should have checked what blessing the Goddess bestowed on you before bringing you here?"

"Yes, you damn well should have. Too late for regrets now, though."

The mage blinked again as another slice of realisation dawned. "Where's the holy sword?!" he shouted, reverting to his full, ear-splitting volume.

"In a dragon's hoard, where I couldn't get to it," answered Katie, not adding that being unable to reach it was her own fault.

"What! Then... we're doomed! It's all over!"

"Perhaps you missed the bit where I'm suddenly an immortal half-dragon? Surely that counts for something?"

"Immortal?!"

"Yes, immortal. Now would you please step outside and tell the dozen knights charging towards the room not to attack?"

Katie refrained from a full explanation of her respawn cheat, partially because there was no time before the reinforcements arrived—presumably summoned by the alarm, or shouty-mage's pure volume—but partially because she hadn't yet obtained any details on the war, and didn't want to give compromising details away to anyone. For all she knew, the humans had started it, and the demons were acting in self defence. Her time in the dungeon had taught her well how deceptive first impressions could be.

The shouty-mage did indeed step outside and shout something about the alert being a false alarm, due to an unexpected effect of the summoned hero's blessing. Katie kept watch with her esoteric senses as the charging knights slowed, but a few still entered the room with the shouty-mage.

"That's the summoned hero? It looks more like a demon."

Katie bit down on the urge to flame the knight in the fancy armour. "Look, can we do introductions? I can't keep calling you shouty-guy, faceless knights A, B and C, and fancy-armoured-guy, even in my own head. I assume you do have names, right?"

She checked with appraisal, barely managing to stifle the giggle when she learnt that shouty-guy's name was Kevin.

"There's no need for that; we don't want someone as suspicious as you in the castle. Hand over the sword, and the court mage will send you home."

First impressions could indeed be deceptive. Her first impression of the humans had been fairly reasonable, given the offence Kevin appeared to take at her thinking she would be conscripted to fight. Her second impression—in which three knights attempted to murder her—was not so great, but being murdered had become par for the course these days. She struggled to get worked up about it, particularly when her would-be murderers stood zero chance of actually succeeding.

Rude people, though... Katie could not abide rudeness. This third impression was rapidly becoming the worst of all. At this rate, the fourth impression may well involve slave collars, and at that point she'd have no choice but to flame the entire castle.

"About that—there's been a... complication," admitted Kevin.

"Complication?" asked the fancy knight, who appraisal identified as Sir Richard Langhind. Why he had a surname, but Kevin didn't, was anyone's guess. Maybe surnames were a noble thing, and being the court mage didn't automatically imply nobility?

Sir Langhind peered around, taking in the empty altar, the group of sheepish unarmed knights, the fragments of metal scattered around the floor, and took a scant few seconds to work out which of the several noticeable oddities was the precise oddity Kevin was talking about. "Where. Is. The. Holy. Sword?" he intoned, each word a promise that someone was about to have a bad time.

"Stuck in another world, apparently, but our hero has offered to fight personally instead!"

"Stuck. In. Another. World?" he continued, apparently having lost the ability to speak more than one word per breath.

"I had a really weird blessing," said Katie, shrugging. "Now, do you want me to fight or not?"

The humans really did want her to fight, now that their divine weapon had gone missing, so Sir Langhind held his tongue and took their newly empowered summoned hero to visit the king. Sitting on a throne that managed to incorporate an impressive amount of gold and gems while looking neither gaudy nor uncomfortable, he looked down on the hero, flanked by the knight and mage.

"So, her blessing caused the barrier to teleport her and the sword to some pocket world, where she was forcibly trained and turned into a fearless, immortal, inhuman warrior, and then sent her back alone without the sword, to force her to fight personally?"

Katie remained silent, not wanting to correct any of the misunderstandings there. Not that she was entirely sure how much of it was a misunderstanding. Now that she heard someone say it out loud, claiming the entire dungeon experience had been some sort of forced training montage made more sense than she'd have liked.

"That appears to be the case."

"Then why are you bothering me? Point her in the direction of the demon forces and let her loose."

"Fearless, immortal, inhuman warrior, maybe, but not a mindless one. I need to know who I'm fighting and why before I attack anyone."

"Again, not a reason to bother me. This is your project, mage. Fill her in yourself," demanded the king, waving away his audience with an irritated expression.

"He doesn't really act like he's on the losing side of a war," commented Katie as they left the throne room.

"Watch your tongue," snapped Sir Langhind. "Hero or not, disrespect of the monarch will not be tolerated."

"What are you going to do? Break more of your swords on me?" giggled Katie. "Put me in prison and not let me fight? Torture me? Execute me? Given that you've just discovered fear has no effect on me and I don't feel pain, your options are rather limited."

A vein bulged in Sir Langhind's temple as he tried to hold back his anger. Conceited as he was, even he recognised that antagonising their one chance at victory over the demons would be a bad idea.

"We have ways of punishing you that would... encourage you to behave yourself," he muttered half-heartedly, referring to slave collars, a fact which he was incredibly fortunate Katie wasn't aware of, or else any chances of human victory would have ended there and then. "Besides, you're relying on us to send you home. It would be a shame if something convinced us not to."

Katie frowned and bit back her sarcastic response of 'and it would be a shame if anything happened to this castle'. After all, they didn't need to tell her they weren't going to send her back. They just needed to adjust the spell to send her elsewhere. Maybe that wasn't possible, but she didn't want to risk it.

"Can you just tell me about this war? Who started it and why? How long has it been going on? Who's fighting?"

"The demons started the war, using the excuse that human bandits were raiding their territory, as if banditry was something we could prevent. There had been some low-key activity for a while, but things really kicked off a little less than three years ago. Bandits raided a few demon villages and razed them to the ground. Demands from the demon lord came a few days later. We promised we'd do our best to rein in the bandits, but more kept leaking over the border, and things escalated. The demons locked down their side of the border hard, solving their bandit problem, and we thought they'd be content to stay like that, but a few months back they started an all-out war. The grand barrier has already degraded to the point that demon raiding parties are leaking through, and it won't be long before it falls completely. "

"And how was the holy sword supposed to help?"

"To kill the demon lord, obviously," snapped Sir Langhind.

"But why would that help? I mean, you may not have said it explicitly, but it's pretty obvious that your summoning ritual was an act of desperation. You're losing badly, so how does killing the demon lord aid you? Wouldn't the demons keep attacking regardless? One sword can hardly win a war on its own, however powerful."

"Demons are mindless puppets of the demon lord. Kill him and you've cut their strings."

Katie stopped walking, remembering the NPC-like behaviour of the denizens of the abyss. "Wait, demons are puppets?"

"Well, not all of them," admitted Kevin. "Some of them are merely slaves, but they should still stop fighting once their master is dead."

"Slaves? How would they know if... Wait, magical enslavement?"

"Some sort of soul magic, as far as I understand, yes."

Katie fumed as the anger bubbled inside her. Between the centipede, the fox-kin collars, the cursed crown, the rapist tree and the floating brains, she'd long since had her fill of mind control, and now the demon lord was using it on his own subjects? And not just any mind control, but soul magic?

"Just point me at this demon lord," stated Katie, all emotion drained from her voice.

An hour later, Katie was flying high in the air towards Muigal Pass, her item box occupied by actual, real-life food. Also maps, which were handy in this alien world, but which she considered considerably less important than, to pick a random example, a simple sandwich.

Katie shuddered slightly as she bit into the aforementioned sandwich, drifting off course briefly before correcting herself. "Proper food... Oh, how I've missed you," she muttered under her breath.

The simple joy of a meal that wasn't raw meat for the first time in months was enough to peel away some of the anger, leaving her to analyse the humans' claims more calmly. Yes, if the demon lord really was forcing his underlings to fight a war they didn't really want to, then the world was likely better off without him. And having met the black dragon, who was supposedly a copy of that demon lord, he'd certainly expressed the opinion that he'd preferred his subjects not to have free will.

Even so, charging into his lair and flaming him without even stopping to say, "Hi. I've heard you're evil. Is it true?" would be premature.

Although, there was a lot to be said for not giving him a chance to use his soul magic... Katie's resistance wasn't even up into the third tier, and the potential of him doing something that a respawn didn't fix was horrifying.

When patches of black and grey ash started appearing on the ground, Katie slowed and descended, keeping her eye out for damaged shrines. If the demons had broken any during their incursions, she wanted to repair them. Fighting the demon lord, especially knowing he could use soul magic, demanded she take every possible precaution. If she could gain extra levels before reaching him, so much the better.

Really, her best defence was his ignorance. If he didn't think she was immortal, there was no reason to use complicated magic when a simple breath attack or claw swipe would suffice.

She only found a single shrine on the human side of the border, the statue near a burnt-out village, surrounded by corpses that had presumably fled there for sanctuary. That raised her cap by one, but failed to raise her level. The force at Muigal Pass let her through, alerted to her mission by their communication orb, and another shrine on the other side gave her the level she was looking for. On the demon side, the statue had been inside a burnt-out village, but this time the damage looked older, and no corpses were visible. There weren't even bones.

Katie frowned as a suspicion dawned. Just what, exactly, were those human bandits stealing? Goods, or the demons themselves? Furthermore, it was a village. It looked no different to a human settlement. Katie wasn't sure what a village of puppets should look like, but there should be some sign. Surely they'd live in communal barracks for efficiency, rather than individual houses, for example?

Katie examined her new skill selection, then picked pathfinder and immediately jumped home, happy to find it was barely dawn. Once there, she wrote out a quick note and left it on the outside of her door, then stuck her phone, purse, keys and some clothes in her item box and jumped back, hoping that would be sufficient to stop people panicking about her disappearance, now that she was outside the time dilation.

It was another hour's flight to the lair of the demon lord, where a welcoming party waited impatiently for her arrival. A trio of dragons, red, white and green, sat on the side of the mountain.

"So, the summoned hero of the humans comes to end us, using our own powers against us," roared the green dragon. "If my efforts to punish the humans for their behaviour have incurred the wrath of the Goddess herself, so be it, but don't expect this fight to be easy."

Katie hovered in confusion briefly, wondering why a green dragon was talking as if things were his fault, but of course, the black dragon had been Void-touched. Green may well have been his original colour. Rather than these three being guardians, protecting the sheltering demon lord, the demon lord had come in person, with two guards.

"Punish? A war seems a bit extreme to punish criminal behaviour," shouted back Katie.

"War is not the punishment, it is simply the means," roared back the dragon. "If the humans would simply hand over the guilty parties, I would have no need to break in and take them by force. But even if they did, more would take their place in time. I am thankful for the excuse to end the threat once and for all."

Katie pondered the answer. While things weren't completely black and white, the dragon wasn't denying the accusations of the humans. In that case...

"Then let me ask one more thing. Is it true your 'citizens' are nothing more than puppets or slaves?"

The red dragon emitted a series of low-pitched roars, which required Katie's proficient empath skill to decode as booming laughter.

"By the definition of humans, yes," answered the green dragon, ignoring the red. "Yet I ask you, who has the better life? A soul-bonded slave living in a clean, crime-free city, guaranteed food, clothing and lodging, or a human slum-dweller, living in a hovel, if not on the street, wrapped in rags, begging for their next meal. That is the freedom of humans. You let your children sell their bodies for money. Your elderly starve when they grow too feeble to work. Your people die of easily treatable diseases because they're unable to afford a cure."

Katie frowned as she activated trigger respawn. Even she could see the problem with his reasoning; it was a dressed-up version of the ends justifying the means, committing a definite evil to prevent a potential evil. There were solutions to injustice better than creating a society devoid of free will. Admittedly, humans had never managed to get any of them to work, but there had to be some way.

"To be honest, I was hoping you'd deny it. Now I suppose we have to fight."

"Fight? You think this will be a fight?" roared the red dragon, spreading his wings and lancing Katie with flame.

"Yes," answered Katie once he stopped, suddenly very glad that she'd stashed extra clothes in her item box.

The white dragon followed with a blast of ice, as the red and green took to the air, not letting Katie's survival distract them too badly. It had no more effect on Katie than the fire, nor did the acid of the green dragon that followed it.

Katie lanced the green dragon with flame of her own, hoping for an easy kill, but when her fire splashed against his scales while doing little damage, she switched to ice in an attempt to ground him.

Her mind magic immunity levelled as the green dragon attempted to rip the source of her immunity to their breath attacks from her mind, Katie's protective necklace soon glowing red hot. Thankfully, her heat absorption protected her from that, too.

The red dragon resorted to claws, which Katie deftly dodged. The white tore great boulders from the mountain face and hurled them at Katie's flying form.

The green, his mobility hampered by a frozen wing, and being pelted by more ice that he was now completely unable to dodge, resorted to soul magic.

Katie tried to scream in pain, but the breath wouldn't come and her mouth wouldn't move. Her eyes refused to open after the pain had forced them shut, but she could see anyway. And what she could see was the back of her head. A head that was falling from the sky, wings hanging limply and certainly not flapping.

The red dragon swooped past with claw outstretched, bisecting what was already a corpse, the two halves falling to the ground surrounded by a cloud of blood and guts.

The green dragon hovered in front of Katie's vision, mouth curled into a massive grin as he reached out and grasped her exposed soul in his claws. Katie, her panic still repressed by friend of fear, desperately tried to speak, to move, or to do anything. Yet nothing happened. She couldn't move. She had nothing to move. How she was conscious at all was a mystery.

And yet, deep within herself, she felt the trigger respawn counter still ticking.

The green dragon raised his prize up to one eye, despite it being completely invisible to his sight.

"Don't worry; I'm not going to kill you. I'm just going to put you somewhere safe, where you can take some time to think over the mistakes you made today. And maybe, in a few years, I'll take you back out to let you see what has become of the humans you stupidly tried to protect."

Utterly unable to resist, the disembodied Katie was carried into a cave set in the mountain, presumably the lair of the demon lord. He landed at the end of a long passage in a chamber that glistened with gold, before fishing out a familiar-looking ring from his hoard. "Goodbye," was all he said before Katie's perception was cut off. Sight, sound, smell, olfactory perception. All was dark and silent, yet still the timer ticked down.

In what had recently been a burnt-out demon village, but was now a ring of lush green grass surrounding a gleaming statue, the statue began to glow. Over a period of a minute, the glow grew brighter, before it rose up the exterior of the statue, flowing from it and building into a ball hovering between the outstretched hands.

Once all the light had entered the ball, it shot forward and downward, hovering over the ground, where it expanded into an ovoid. The glow gradually faded, leaving behind a rather bored looking dragon-girl.

"I'm glad I was only in there for an hour, and not the threatened years," she muttered to herself as she climbed back to her feet. "That twin of mine is lucky my item box stops time..."

That had been more dangerous than expected. Katie had proven immune to all three of the dragons' breath attacks, and too agile to be caught by them in the air. The demon lord had resorted to soul magic despite not knowing of Katie's immortality. What if the respawn didn't work while her soul was imprisoned? Or what if he had used a spell that damaged her soul, rather than removing it neatly from her body? He hadn't even noticed her resistance.

Resistance that had now evolved to nullification. Would he notice that?

Katie made a sweep for more shrines, finding only one, before heading back for another attempt at the demon lord, this time with draconic power enhanced. The ice breath had been working; it just needed another boost.

This time, her arrival seemed to catch them by surprise. The green dragon was still in his lair, the red and white nowhere to be seen. Katie lanced the massive gates that guarded his layer with flame, the boost from her freshly enhanced skill helping her melt through, and before long her flames flooded the corridor. A presence approaching from behind her indicated the return of one of the dragons, but Katie ignored it, flying through the hole and aiming a bolt of ice down the corridor.

The demon lord roared in anger, driving back Katie's breath with his own as he spell-cast, the powerful dragon needing neither gestures nor vocalisations to perform his magic. Once again, Katie felt the pain as the green dragon tried to tear her soul from her body.

This time, with her evolved resistance, he failed. Nevertheless, the pain was debilitating, even through her pain immunity. The red dragon took advantage, ramming a forearm through the hole Katie had melted in the gate and piercing her with a claw.

Once more Katie respawned back at the demon village, now with another pair of levels of soul magic resistance under her nightie. Once more, she set off back to the demon lord's lair, and this time, all three dragons were present.

But this time, they didn't immediately attack.

"What did you do?" growled the red dragon.

"Respawned?" answered Katie. "I'm immortal, in case you haven't worked that out yet."

"Mere immortality would not explain your escape from my prison," commented the green, "but that was not what my brother referred to. You struck the pair of us with a soul curse, strong enough that even I am unable to remove it."

"Huh? I can't use any magic, let alone whatever the hell a 'soul curse' is."

The green dragon stared at Katie, finding no lie in her words.

"So, the Goddess really has turned against us to that extent. So be it."

As if expecting his words, the red and white dragons shot into the skies, but instead of engaging, they flew to the east.

"Even cursed, with the bulk of my mana sealed, I will not let you take an easy victory. And I will ensure that any eventual victory you do take will be pyrrhic at best."

The demon lord took flight, attacking Katie with neither breath nor magic, but a simple physical assault, attempting to use his vast size to bat her out of the air. Katie was small and nimble enough to dodge, but conversely found that her ice breath had far less impact on the dragon than before. Flickers of mana around the dragon suggested some sort of shielding. The fight would be protracted; even if a fight of attrition would eventually fall to her, it was obvious that the 'eventually' was the entire point. The demon lord was stalling, while the other two dragons...

What would they do? If they could break the humans' barrier with ease, they would have done so long ago.

Meanwhile, at Muigal Pass, the commander stood on the wall watching the latest demon attack, Kevin next to him. The capital had sent out their entire supply of arch-mages, their flight ability allowing them to race to the border faster than any horse could carry them. The extra manpower had been enough to hold off the attack, at least until now.

"They've gone mad!" commented Kevin. "Why are they charging like that? They're getting slaughtered out there!"

"They're desperate," answered the commander. "Your hero must be fulfilling her role well. I wasn't sure I dared to hope. I could feel her power as she passed through this place, but battling the demon lord? What can we do but hope?"

Long range artillery spells crashed into the barrier, the mages doing their best to attenuate them before impact to reduce the pressure. It would hold. The commander smiled, daring to believe in victory.

"Dragons!"

The smile vanished. "Ballistas, prepare for incoming dragons!" he yelled, his orders passed on as the ballistas fell silent, ignoring the lesser demons in favour of the larger threat.

In under a minute, he could see the incoming monsters himself, their flight speed being as ridiculous as ever. But his enchanted weapons could pierce even the scales of a dragon. One bolt may not achieve much, but they wouldn't be able to direct enough firepower at the barrier to break it without being turned into pincushions. Unprotected soft targets had much to fear from the dragons, but this fortress did not, else it would have fallen long ago.

The commander looked down at the suicidal charge of the demons and had a terrible premonition.

"Prepare to fall back to the grand barrier!" he ordered. "Expect the dragons to make a suicide run. Take them down! Only when they're dead do we retreat!"

Kevin looked at him in shock, but the commander only smiled as he pulled the immense tower shield from his back and strapped it securely to his arm. "The hero is doing her part, and we must do ours. This ends today."

The red dragon came first, his flame striking the barrier and rolling around its perimeter. The heat inside rose, but the dragon's flame failed before it became uncomfortable.

"Is that all you have?" goaded the commander, but quietly, not actually wanting the dragon to hear him.

"Shouldn't he... pull up?" asked Kevin, watching the still-approaching dragon.

The commander didn't answer, watching in confusion. He'd guessed the dragons would make a suicide run, but why did he hold back on his flame breath? He should have been capable of far more than that. Had he been injured by Katie before arriving here?

The dragon didn't pull up. Bolts pierced his head, neck and wings, but he flew on regardless, turning his own body into a projectile that smashed through the barrier of the fortress, his corpse battering through the wall and structures beyond, not coming to a rest until he'd left a trail of destruction spanning more than half the fortress

A trail of destruction that had taken out half of the ballista emplacements.

The white dragon hung back, evading the bolt-fire while the demons resumed their berserk charge. With the damage done by the red dragon, there was no way the human defences would hold.

"They're going for the remaining ballistas," observed the commander, shaking his head in defeat. "The moment enough of them are gone for the white dragon to close in, we're all dead."

"Shouldn't we retreat, then?" asked Kevin.

"I'm not going to stop you, should you want to flee, but our objective here is to buy time, not to win. We'll hold till the last second, then fall back to the grand barrier."

"And if that white dragon tries the same stunt there?"

"The demons gain unfettered access to our lands, and every minute more they have there before your hero slays their master is another minute they have to kill and burn, so we shall hold them."

The human forces, their morale bolstered by the knowledge that their hero was fighting the demon lord—as well as the sight of the red dragon's corpse, which rotted as they watched, eaten away by a red and black haze—held admirably, but eventually enough ballista encampments were overrun that the white dragon could close in to attack range.

"Retreat!" screamed the commander, the order repeated by captains all over the fortress. The humans fled, chased by the demons, the rearguard holding them back at the costs of their own lives.

The grand barrier and the kingdom-spanning wall inside it were not designed to hold against a determined assault. The terrain of the land-bridge that connected the two lobes of the continent meant that Muigal Pass was the only place land-based forces could be fielded in large numbers, hence its importance, but with its fall, a long stretch of wall was vulnerable. It couldn't be held for more than a couple of days, but that should be plenty of time for a fight between hero and demon lord.

The white dragon flew ahead of the demon armies, descending upon the wall like an unstoppable avalanche. She ignored spells and ballista bolts alike, but as with the red, the damage built up. Unlike the red, she didn't seem to have come pre-injured, and was still alive on collision with the barrier.

The white dragon detonated.

Some minutes later, the commander dragged himself upright, having been thrown from the wall and covered some fifty metres before landing. He hadn't been the only one, either, but most of the others hadn't survived their trip.

The terrain had changed completely from before the explosion. Gone was the dirt road and surrounding scrubland. Now all that remained was a plane of ice, stretching off into the distance beyond the commander's view. A gaping hole had been opened in the wall, and while the barrier had held as a whole, the local disruption was enough that demons were walking straight through.

With a sigh, he held his shield upright, and walked calmly towards the demonic mass. Every minute bought would reduce the damage they could do before the war ended.

Half the demons died. There was no warning. No sign. Every member of the vulpes sagax and carnes multiformis simply collapsed to the ground, like puppets whose strings had been cut. Which was ironic, because they were the species of demon that were supposed to not be puppets.

Even those that stood were not unchanged. All signs of cooperation vanished. Some attacked each other. Some started consuming the corpses of the dead, human or demon alike. Others charged at the commander.

A flash of yellow light dispatched them with ease.

"Oh? I thought you'd run away?" commented the commander to the mage who had materialised next to him.

"I'm no coward. As you said, the hero is doing her part, and we must do ours."

The commander sighed again; his part had suddenly got a lot messier. He'd thought the war would end immediately upon the death of the demon lord, but much of the demonic army had survived. Reduced to animals, perhaps, but animals still posed a danger. More were swarming in through the breach and purging them would take time and lives.

At that moment, Katie stood atop the corpse of the demon lord, panting. She was missing an arm, and a gouge running across her face had claimed an eye, but she'd won. The demon lord was dead, and the humans saved.

"So, you actually went and did it," boomed a voice, seemingly coming from the corpse beneath her feet. "I have to admit, I wasn't expecting it. I was hoping for a better ending than this."

The green scales rippled in a black haze as wounds widened and layers of flesh melted.

"Oh? You're here?"

"Alas not. With the death of my template, I am stuck in the fake world forever, as is my brother."

"You hoped I'd lose?"

"I hoped you wouldn't fight. That you would reach the limits of your power and take on the role the Goddess had prepared for you. No matter. Go home, failed hero. We shan't meet again."

The haze faded, and with it the voice, leaving Katie sitting alone on the bleached bones of the former demon lord. She stored them in her item box, on the basis that they were probably damn good materials, and then she purchased formless, switched into a human Form that still had both arms and the correct number of eyes, and went home.

The lands of Lord Craig Slecher and his cadre of hedonistic nobles along the kingdom's border were ravaged by the mindless demonic hordes, which took months to clean up, but which never posed a threat to the kingdom as a whole. Lord Slecher himself never had the chance to discover this, having been stabbed in the back by one of his many slaves the moment the demon lord had taken over the control of the vulpes sagax from his brother.

"Is everything okay?" asked Bell of Katie, back on Earth, having read Katie's generic 'family emergency' excuse for why she'd left the house without telling anyone. "You look awful."

"Gee, thanks. Yeah, I had a pretty rough night. It's all over now, thank goodness."

"Want to talk about it?"

"Maybe later. I'll need to explain why there's two of me at some point."

"Two of you?"

"Turns out I have an identical twin."

"You what? Just what sort of family emergency did you have last night?"

"I said later! For now, I'm going to sleep in a nice, soft bed."

Locked in her room, she curled up in bed, mind filled with the possibilities of things she could have done differently, wondering what sort of outcome, exactly, the black dragon had been hoping for.