“Even if you get through the armor golem, you want get through the giants that Graves just animated. And all the while we’ll be on your back, harassing you, hindering you, but NOT killing you,” Garon continued. “And it’ll be the whole family, save for Jarrik and Bak’shaz, against you. But hey, if you wanna go for a threefer and take down Dad, too, now’s your chance. Bad odds. Wanna do it anyway?”

  The sword fell from Mastoya’s hands.

  “I hate you, Mother,” she told Zuula.

  “She know… Zuula is…” The half-orc shook her head. “Sorry. Was stupid to beat you. Was bad to hurt you. Was… trying orc parenting on half-orc. Bad t’ing to do to little girl. Never did it again.”

  “I will never forgive you for it,” Mastoya told the doll.

  “Okay. Is fair.”

  Mastoya picked up her sword and sheathed it with a snap, reached up to the ring of beads around her neck, and ground one to dust between her metal-clad fingers. “Retreat,” she said. “Surrender where retreat is impossible. We’ve lost. We’re done.” She spoke, and the enchantment whispered the command through six more officers. They had their own beads. The command would echo down, she knew. The General of the Crown’s army bowed her head.

  “Oh no.” A strange voice said from behind her, and she turned to see a little bear, a sharply-dressed bear clambering out of Reason’s hatch, pulling a charred form behind it. “No, no… I’m sorry Celia, I didn’t even notice.”

  The form wore Dame Ragandor’s armor, a full-sized version of it.

  With sudden understanding, Mastoya dropped her buffs, and clapped her hand over her mouth, eyes going wide. The daemon princess had been in Reason, and I was fighting it with Back You Fiend up for… how long? Long enough, evidently.

  “Oh. Well. I guess that settles that,” The doll-sized version of the princess said. “No going back to my old body now. If it was even possible.”

  “I didn’t even notice she was dying. Everything smelled like burning and I was healing Reason,” The teddy bear said, staring forlornly down at the meaty lump.

  “No. It’s not your fault. And it was the right choice. Messing around with daemons at the last minute was how my father fumped everything up. Come on, it’s better this way.” The doll moved forward to hug the teddy bear.

  And goddamned, if it wasn’t as adorable as it was tragic.

  Masoya pulled her hand from her mouth. It still took two tries to wet her lips and whistle, until Petunia returned. Then it was up, up and to the front lines, to get her troops in safe.

  “See ya soon girl,” Mordecai drawled, and faded from view.

  She got up to the lines, to find one of Tane’s subordinates leading the withdrawal. Lana? Kara? No, Kara was the shorter one. “Status?”

  “Bad. The dwarves let us go, but… the golem…”

  “They killed him? How?”

  “Not them. The Inquisitor.”

  “What?”

  “He was too thick in the fight to retreat. He surrendered. The Inquisitor looked furious. She… she punched right through him. Then she ripped his helm off, ripped it clean off. I don’t know how!” The blonde woman shook as she recounted the betrayal.

  Mastoya closed her eyes. My last ally is dead I told him to surrender if I ordered it, and he followed my orders into death. “Back. We need to get back to Fort Bronze. The King needs to hear this. From your lips, right away.”

  It took two hours to get back to the gates of Fort Bronze.

  They were closed.

  And the Crown flag no longer flew from its towers.

  “Told yer we’d see yer again,” Mordecai said, fading in next to her. Without Zuula around, this time, thankfully. Mastoya thought that if she had been, there would have been nothing on Heaven or Generica that would have stopped her from trying to kill her Mother. Again.

  “How?” Mastoya whispered. “The garrison…”

  “Fell ta Jericho and tha rest o’ tha Rangers when ya were far enough away. Our fort now.”

  Mastoya looked at him. In front of her, her army stood, staring at the gates, not quite comprehending what was wrong yet. Lines of dwarven captives stood off to the side, staring silently. Staring at her.

  “Ma’am?” Sir Renick asked, riding up, eyeing Mordecai. “Everything all right?”

  “No.” Mastoya said, and she drew her blade. The nearest soldiers called out in alarm, but she waved them down, as she eased off Petunia. She was tired, so tired, as she walked forward, walked to stand in front of the gates, and whirled to face her troops.

  “Soldiers of the Crown!” She said, using the final charge for the day on her helm’s giant voice. “You fought well. You fought hard. You fought with honor. But you lost. We lost.” She said, feeling her eyes burn, fighting the tears. “This war is over. We fight no more.” She took a breath, turned to the gate again. “This war is over. I order all of you to stand down. I order every prisoner freed. And I surrender unconditionally.”

  We’re done, Mastoya thought, bowing her head.

  And may the victors be kinder to us, then we would have been to them.

  The Sins of the Fathers 1

  “Honestly I have no idea what she was trying to achieve,” Emmet rumbled.

  “Something to do with making a demonic version of you, we think,” Threadbare said, looking down on the trudging, battered golem walking next to Reason. He and Cecelia were sitting atop the mecha-turned-lesser-armor-golem, trudging west. Below, the rest of their friends mingled with the dwarven army. King Grundi’s Kneelchair, in its warwagon configuration, kept pace with them a few hundred feet away.

  Emmet was with them, and not with the other prisoners. The dwarves had objected to that, until Threadbare pointed out that if Emmet really was planning treachery, it wouldn’t matter WHERE he was.

  They finally backed down when Threadbare told them Emmet was his brother, and that he’d take full responsibility for the guy.

  “Yeah, making a daemon copy of you would be the most likely conclusion,” Cecelia said. “The parts she tore out of you are-are the parts she ripped from me.” The doll smiled. “If it’s any consolation, when we mended you up, they probably vanished right from her hands. I like the idea of the frustration she must have felt from that.”

  “I did have a heart but it was for show. The head was… damaging. I barely survived that,” Emmet said.

  “So she was able to hurt you that easily?” Threadbare asked, worried. “That worries me.”

  “Not so easily!” Emmet sounded offended, just a touch. “I surrendered. I deactivated all skills and buffs. And then she commanded me not to resist her attacks.”

  “And you listened to her?” Cecelia said.

  “I had no choice! She COMMANDED me. She used three scrolls to do so.”

  “Oh,” Cecelia said, putting her hands to her mouth. “Oh gods she’s got command golem scrolls.”

  “Oh no. Those again.” Threadbare rubbed his head. “I’m to blame for her getting those.”

  “You? How?”

  “I was very stupid when she gave you the quest to bring her the scrolls. And it was a public quest, so I got it as well. And…”

  “Oh no.”

  “…yes. That was why you couldn’t find me after we became scouts. I was out delivering them.”

  Cecelia was silent for a few minutes.

  “I wish I hadn’t,” Threadbare said, “everything that followed was my fault. When they came for Caradon, you could have fought them off, Emmet-“

  “No,” Cecelia said. “No, he couldn’t have. The house was a wreck, things were messed up, and my father had brought overwhelming force. Don’t… don’t beat yourself up over this. It wouldn’t have made a difference in the end. It just would have meant more deaths. They would have found another way to get what they wanted.”

  “I do not understand what you are upset about,” Emmet rumbled, “I do not know the details. But the current state of affairs is not displeasing to me. I have found a way to satisfy both my honor and my family, as General Mastoya suggested.”

  “Wait. What?”

  “I spoke to her after the Inquisitor commanded me to do something I did not want to do. Together we found a workaround. And it has worked.”

  Cecelia looked at the bodies they were passing, then at the small train of human prisoners… which included four knights that hadn’t stopped staring at her since they’d first laid eyes on her porcelain form. She gave Sergeant Tane a good hard look, then turned away. “What exactly are you saying? Mastoya wanted this to happen? I find that hard to believe.”

  “It is…” Emmet said, pausing. “It is not enough to do the good thing, or to have justice on your side. You must also be strong enough to win. To survive. Or else good and evil don’t matter.”

  “I think,” said Threadbare, glancing over to Garon and Zuula, where they were walking happily alongside Jarrik and Mordecai, “that we need to have a good talk with her when we catch up to her.”

  *****

  They found her in the depths of the cells, guarded by two grey-cloaked women who muttered “Scouter,” as they approached, then nodded and faded back into the shadows. Mastoya watched them come through the cell bars, looking rather ordinary out of her battle plate. Someone had taken the fingerbones out of her hair, and she was painstakingly braiding it back up into a knot.

  For a good long second, Threadbare and Cecelia looked her over, and she looked back.

  “And?” the imprisoned General asked.

  Cecelia spoke. “I didn’t come back from Outsmouth. That wasn’t me, these last couple of weeks.”

  “I know.”

  “Then why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why did you…” Cecelia covered her face. “Did it make a difference to you, that I’d been replaced by a daemon? I thought you cared about your troops! I was under your command! Why didn’t you…”

  “Do what, precisely?” Mastoya said. “Tell the King that his daughter was a daemon? For all I knew he’d ordered it. If that was the case, then I’d be dead or out of command. And if it WAS the Inquisitor who’d just killed you? Then I MIGHT be able to tell him, but if he believed her over me, or she got wind of it, I’d be dead or out of command. Stage a coup? Go traitor?” Mastoya hawked and spat in a nearby chamber pot. “Fuck that noise. My troops wouldn’t have followed me. My only worth, my only chance of doing anything was if I remained a General and gave you the chance that you needed. And I did.”

  “The chance that we needed?” Threadbare asked.

  “Yes. You want to break the cycle, right? You want to claim the throne and stop the wars and get rid of the demons, right?”

  Cecelia said nothing. But evidently it had been a rhetorical question, as Mastoya continued. “Five years we’ve been fighting this war. Five YEARS. The nation was invested. IS invested. This isn’t just pride, it’s the heart of who we are. Good, evil, it doesn’t matter. We threw ourselves into it. Through orders, through drafts, or through volunteering, it’s Cylvania’s war. And if you hadn’t won? Then there’s no way you could achieve a lasting peace, later. You had to decisively beat the Crown. And you had to do it in a way that SHOWED my troops they were beat. And you did. You’ve won.” She lay back on her cot, staring up at the ceiling. “Deposing the King? Taking the castle? That’s just the finishing blow. Won’t be an easy one, but it’s inevitable, now.”

  “If only that were true,” Cecelia whispered. “The final struggle’s just starting.”

  “What?”

  “Did you know that all of Cylvania is inside a massive dungeon?” Threadbare asked.

  The half-orc sat up and stared. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  They explained, and she listened, eyes getting wider and wider.

  “This… this explains so much.” She clenched her hands on the cell’s bars. “Why he’s like two different people, depending on his mood. He…” She looked down at Cecelia “He ordered me to kill the dwarves. All of them. No mercy, no surrender.”

  “You disobeyed that order?”

  “I told him to his face to get a different general. He was over me, roaring with fury, and then it just-cut out.” Mastoya’s face turned ashen. “He pretended it had been a test, and commended me for not fighting him on those orders. When I’d just refused them seconds ago. I thought he was mad. Now you’re telling me he’s a dungeon monster.”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. This makes me feel better. I wasn’t betraying the king I’d sworn to serve, then. I’ve been working against a monster who’s usurped his place, more or less.” She sighed, smiling. “That makes me feel better.”

  “I don’t really care about your feelings,” Threadbare told Mastoya.

  “Threadbare!” Cecelia gasped.

  “I don’t. It doesn’t matter why you did things. It only matters what you do.” Threadbare pointed up at her. “And a whole lot of people died today because you decided to put your code of honor before them.”

  “You know nothing of it!” Mastoya yelled. ”My code of honor is THEIR code of honor! I couldn’t ask them to compromise themselves, just because-”

  “Because you thought you were following a mad king into oblivion. So you didn’t tell them. You chose for them.” Threadbare continued.

  “That’s what Generals… that’s what Generals DO.” Mastoya said, staring at them. “Don’t you understand? How could you understand?”

  “I understand,” said Cecelia. “You coward.”

  Mastoya flinched back. “What?”

  “You didn’t trust them. You didn’t trust them to make the right choice. You thought he was MAD, and you went ‘oh well, guess we’ll keep on with the plan, just do things a little more nicely,’ You didn’t tell them because you didn’t trust them with the decision. And the dead? They’re on you. Meanwhile you’re in here trying to sort out your FEELINGS.”

  “I’m in here because the rangers fucking put me in here, you little dolly dummy!” Mastoya roared.

  “No, you’re in here because you looked at evil, and you looked at good, and you thought ‘meh I don’t care so I’ll go with whoever’s stronger!’ Cecelia stalked up to the bars, shaking her ceramic finger. “You didn’t CARE! You put yourself in here! You chose POORLY. You are a HORRIBLE person.”

  Mastoya closed her eyes, and sat on the cot. “I know,” she whispered. “Knew that all my life.” Tears leaked from under her eyelids. “Never had a chance, I guess. Tried. Never found a place where I could do some good.”

  The little bear squeezed through the bars, and moved up to her. “Then maybe it’s time to change that.”

  She opened her eyes, and stared down at him. “How?”

  “Three chances. Garon tells me that’s how many you should give family. You aren’t my family, but Garon’s very much a friend, so I think three is fair. You’ve used two of them. One when you turned down Garon’s offer the last time we were here. The other when you fought a war that you didn’t need to. But we have one more chance for you.”

  Mastoya spread her hands. “Alright. What do you want from me?”

  Threadbare shook his head. “No. It’s not for me to say.”

  “Then who?”

  “Your family. All of them. Garon and Jarrik and Mordecai and Bak’shaz and yes, even Zuula.”

  “I will never forgive her.“

  “I don’t care if you forgive her or not, but you have to talk to her. Because without her blessing you won’t get that third chance. And we’ll do what we’re planning, without your help, and more people will die and maybe everyone. So if you must blame her, AFTER her death, AFTER you settled your troubles with her in blood, then you aren’t the person we need for this after all.”

  “Wait.” Mastoya blinked. “Jarrik? Bakky? They’re alive?”

  “Bak’shaz went to the Rangers when they rose up. We just found out he was here today,” Cecelia smiled. “He’s so grown up now.” Then her smile disappeared. “Jarrik went to the dwarves, and the Hand’s daemons almost killed him. Because of this battle that nobody needed to fight.”

  Mastoya sat her jaw, glared… and the glare faded, as she looked away. “I… don’t know if I can face them.”

  “Up to you,” Cecelia said. “They’re all outside. Waiting to talk to you. They want to talk to you. And what they decide, after that, determines whether or not you help us or not. So it’s up to you, General.”

  Threadbare walked out of the cell, offered her his arm. She took it, and together the two toys left the cellblock.

  “Well?” Bak’shaz asked, as they came out. He was taller than Jarrik now, a gangly youth just out of puberty, with a turtle-shell helmet and boar’s leather armor wrapped around his lanky frame. “What do ya think?”

  “I think we need to get ready to move, with or without her. This will go easier if she’s on board, but… she’s a mess,” Cecelia sighed. “If we can’t get her along willingly then we’re better off without her.”

  “Well. Thanks for tryin’, anyway.” Bak’shaz shrugged. “On us, now.” He headed down to the guardroom, to round up the rest of his family. Threadbare and Cecelia headed upstairs, and found themselves joined by Madeline, Fluffbear, Glub, and Emmet on the walk up.

  “I have never had a sister before. I am still ascertaining how I feel about having a brother.” Emmet told the little black bear currently perched on his shoulder.

  “It’s great! Do you like kitties?” Fluffbear said, bouncing up and down a bit.

  “I do not know. I have never been permitted to have a pet.”

  “Oh no! That’s horrible! You can share mine, and see if you like her. If you do we can get you one of your own!”

  “Okay.”

  “There’s something different about you, Missus Fluffbear,” Threadbare said. “Have you gotten a bit bigger?”

  “I’m a grizzly now!”

  “Oh! That would explain it.”

  “A grizzly bear?” Cecelia scrutinized her. She was perhaps two inches taller then she had been before. “I’m not seeing it.”

  “I can hug really, really hard now. It’s awesome! I’ve got good hugs for good guys and bad hugs for bad guys! I am the decider of the embraces! Hee hee!”