Tempest hit the ground and Aris stood over him, the heart still in her hand, her chest rising and falling with the particular rhythm of someone who had used everything they had and was only now beginning to feel it.
Ren looked at her eyes.
He did not need her to explain. It was right there in the way she was looking at the body, the heat in it, the particular kind of anger that was not born in this moment but had been sitting somewhere and had finally found its destination.
She turned and looked at Ren.
"That coward did not deserve a proper death," she said. "He deserved to die by my hands."
Ren said nothing.
She walked toward him and he let her come, reading her as she moved, and when she stopped in front of him he looked at her for a moment before he spoke.
"You were not with him in this," he said. "In the attack." He wanted to be sure that she had not played a role.
She shook her head.
"I tried to stop him," she said. "What he did was cowardly. I do not care if he wanted to fight you. That is his right. But attacking innocent monsters because of his hunger for power is something else entirely." Her jaw tightened. "It made him something I had no interest in standing beside."
Ren picked up on the word she had used.
"His hunger for power," he said. "What does that mean exactly?"
She looked at him.
"Ophelia," she said. "She gave him something. Power, an evolution, something that made him stronger than he had been. He took it without asking what the cost was going to be." She paused. "I do not know the full details of what she gave him but I know that after he received it, he was different. More aggressive. More certain that he could take what he wanted, he gave his soul for power, something I never thought he could do."
Ren went quiet.
He turned it over. Ophelia giving Tempest power. Ophelia pulling strings while she sat somewhere outside the reach of everything he had been dealing with. William attacking him directly, trying to implant a spider, or had he been pushed into it the same way Tempest had been pushed?
Whatever it was, it was clear that Ophelia was playing a game that he had been trailing behind in desperate hope to catch.
"William is involved," he said. "He attacked me directly and tried to implant a spider in me. I am certain he is still alive and still out there."
Aris looked at him steadily.
"Then she has been moving pieces for longer than any of us realized," she said.
"She has," Ren agreed. "And she is in a final phase now. Which means whatever she is building toward is close." He looked at Aris. "I need to confront her. But not without a plan. Stay a while. If you want Ophelia dealt with, we figure out an approach together."
Aris was quiet for a moment.
Then she nodded.
With Ren back and Tempest dead, the fight went out of the ogres fast.
The ones who understood what had happened made the calculation quickly, dropping weapons and stepping back from the engagement, and the ones who did not were handled by the settlement’s forces before the decision could be revisited.
The battle was over.
Ren did not stop to look at the aftermath. He moved through the settlement straight toward where he knew Ragna and Riker would be, his pace not running but not walking either, the particular speed of someone who needed to cover ground without showing that they needed to run.
He found them inside.
Both of them were on the ground, the lizardwomen healers working over them with magic running from their hands in steady streams, the green light of it covering the injuries and finding more injuries beneath those. The air in the room had the particular quality of a space where people were working as hard as they could and were not sure it was going to be enough.
Ren looked at the healers.
"Will they survive?" he asked, hoped with everything that they would say yes..
One of the women looked up at him.
She shook her head.
The room went quiet. Not gradually, not with any announcement, just quiet, the way a room went quiet when something had been said that nobody had a response to. Everyone present felt the weight of it settle and nobody moved.
Ren gritted his teeth.
He looked at the system.
"There has to be something," he said. Not a question. Not quite a plea. Something between the two that came out with more edge than he intended. "Some way to keep them here. Tell me."
The system said nothing.
Ren stared at it.
"Tell me," he said again, and this time the edge was not something between anything, it was just the edge, clear and direct, the voice of someone who had run out of patience with silence.
The system responded.
[Life Force Transfer — Available]
[Method: Use Devour on consumed life forces, storing them internally. Transfer stored life force to targets to stabilize and awaken them.]
[Warning: Requires sufficient life force quantity to sustain both targets. Procedure will draw on host’s own life force as a catalyst.]
[Time Frame: Appraisal indicates 2 days before targets are beyond recovery.]
Ren read it.
He did not ask how the system planned to use his life force as a catalyst. He did not ask what the full cost of that would be or what it would take from him after. He had two days and he had a method and he had one question left.
"Two days," he said.
[Confirmed.]
He looked at Ragna on the ground. At Riker beside him. At the healers still working with their hands and their magic, doing what they could do, which was less than what was needed.
He thought about what the system had said.
Consume life force. Store it. Use it. The procedure required sufficient quantity, which meant a single creature was not going to be enough. It needed to be something substantial. Something that carried enough life force in it to be worth the transfer.
Ophelia.
The name arrived without him having to look for it.
She had been the source of everything that had been building toward this moment. She had given Tempest the power that sent him after the settlement. She had moved William against Ren directly. She had been running her final phase from wherever she was sitting while everything around her collapsed into damage that landed on people who had nothing to do with her plans.
Ragna and Riker were on the ground because of her.
Ren looked at them one more time.
Two days.
He turned and walked toward the entrance of the settlement, his steps even, his expression carrying none of the heat that was behind it, and he found Aris where he had left her.
She looked at him when he came back and read his face with the quick assessment of someone who had spent a long time around people making decisions.
"What happened?" she asked.
"Ragna and Riker are dying," he said. "I have two days to fix that."
She held his gaze and waited.
"The only way to fix it is to collect enough life force," he said. "Enough to transfer to both of them and stabilize what the fight cost them." He looked at her directly. "There is one person whose life force is worth the trip."
Aris understood before he finished.
"Ophelia," she said.
"Ophelia," he confirmed.
He turned and looked at the forest around the settlement, at the territory he had built and everything in it, at the home he was about to leave again in worse shape than the last time he had left it.
Remu appeared beside him without being called, the way Remu had a habit of doing when something was about to be asked of him.
"You heard," Ren said.
"Enough of it," Remu replied.
"Hold things together," Ren said. "Aris will stay and help with the planning side. Everything else falls to you."
Remu nodded once.
Ren looked at the settlement one more time. At everything it had taken to build it. At the two people inside it who did not have two days to wait for him to plan carefully.
He spread his wings.
"I am coming for you, Ophelia," he said, to no one in particular, to the forest, to whatever part of the world she was currently in. "And I am going to end this."
He launched into the air, then he transformed into his full form and shot toward Ophelia, whatever it was that she was doing. He was ending it now, he would make sure she suffered for all that she had done before he allows her die right there as he watches.
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