Owain’s chest rose and fell in deep, shuddering breaths as he struggled to regain his feet.

His head was ringing from the series of concussive blows to his helm, and he had to plant Fallen Claw’s tip on the stone floor in order to hold himself steady as he rose from one knee to his feet.

Like a cane, he realized. He’d been reduced to using Fallen Claw, his perfect killing tool, like a cane, because without it, he was too disoriented to stand.

At least Ashlynn didn’t seem to be faring any better as she struggled to her feet. She was moving slowly and carefully, looking not just at him but around the room as if she needed to orient herself. But even if she was just as battered as he was, it was still humiliating.

They were fighting as equals? Impossible! No one was his equal, least of all the woman he’d beaten and buried nearly a year ago.

"How?" Owain muttered to himself as he stared at the hateful woman through the widened, crooked gap in his visor. How had she become someone, something, that could push him this far in just nine short months?

He’d honed his body into a perfect killing tool since the day he was old enough to hold a wooden sword for practice instead of play. He’d slain hundreds of demons and no small number of men. He’d worked his whole life for this!

And here she stood, matching him blow for blow.

Worst of all, Owain could feel the power surging in his body. He knew that he was moving faster and hitting harder than he ever had before, and still, it wasn’t enough. Inwardly, his heart trembled with the realization that it might never be enough.

"Impossible," Owain muttered as he shook off the ringing in his ear and blinked away the sweat that rolled down from his brow. "I will not fall here! I am the lord of this land," Owain shouted, and I. Will. Not. Fall!"

Across from him, Ashlynn paused, stopping herself from charging to re-engage with Owain as she felt something so twisted, agonizing, and WRONG rippling through the Great Hall that it took her breath away.

The broken, tormented trunk of the Ancient Oak that had been carved into the central pillar of Leon and Odhran’s scheme across generations, the throne of the Lothian lords, pulsed in an anguished response to the latest Lothian ruler’s fury. And then, like a slave moving desperately to avoid the whip of its master, the throne reached out across the Great Hall, searching blindly for the shattered pieces of itself it could feel so close at hand.

It had been built for this. It was a purpose carved into it from the very beginning, and even though no Lothian lord had ever called on it before, one was calling on it now, so it obeyed his desires the only way it knew how to.

A wave of terrified exclaimations echoed from the rafters of the Great Hall as the majestic Lothian throne suddenly became something sinister and menacing, looming above them with all of the authority that had been invested in its construction.

"What, what’s happening?"

"What is that, that thing!"

"Get back! Don’t, don’t let it touch you!"

Like roots from a tree, dark, twisted tendrils of energy flowed outward from the Lothian throne. No longer was the energy the pure, shining, greenish-gold of the Ancient Oak. Instead, the power had become twisted by generations of the petty grievances and cruelties of the men who sat upon the throne.

"Aaaaahhhhh!"

Baron Preden Saliou’s anguished cry was the first to fill the hall as one of the dark tendrils found his chest, latching on to the antique, carved buttons adorning his doublet that had been passed down from his father to him and would pass to his grandson in turn when he died.

The buttons on Baron Saliou’s doublet were one set among many in the hall, but they weren’t the only items caught up in the dark working unfolding before the Great Hall’s horrified eyes.

"Light, save me. Save me!" Betrys Leufroy cried as a dark tendril found the carved pendant at her throat, the Leufroy family antique that her mother-in-law had inherited from her own mother-in-law, which she would have passed down to Tulori’s future bride. Her chest felt like it had been stabbed by a knife made of ice, and blue veins stood out in sharp relief across the exposed flesh of her chest as the dark tendril drank in her strength to feed the demands of the throne’s master.

"Let me go, let me go!" Melsinde Otker cried as yet another dark tendril wrapped around the intricately carved comb in her hair. Her head felt as though it were caught beneath the wheels of a wagon, and when she brought her fingers to the comb, intending to pull it from her hair, she found her hands pinned against the wood by the dark, oppressive energy.

"No, you can’t," Ashlynn said as she turned away from Owain, charging toward the dais at the front of the hall to stop the throne from harvesting the lives of the people of the march.

-CLANG!-

-CLATTER!-

Owain arrived before her with a speed that rivaled Thane or Marcel, sweeping Fallen Claw in a vicious arc, slamming the blade into Ashlynn’s breastplate, and knocking her back six paces before she fell to the ground in a clatter of armor as he moved to bar her way. 𝚏𝕣𝐞𝗲𝐰𝕖𝐛𝐧𝕠𝕧𝚎𝚕.𝐜𝚘𝗺

A single, thick tendril of dark energy flowed from the Lothian throne to Owain, wrapping around his bluish-black armor like a layer of shadowy vines that had covered nearly every inch of his body.

The pain he’d felt after Ashlynn threw him to the floor and battered his helm was a distant, fleeting memory now, and for the first time in his life, Owain felt like he was fully, completely in control of the world around him, as if the Holy Lord of Light had truly taken his side to deliver the victory that was owed to him.

There was no pain, no humiliation, only sweet, delicious power and the ability to force everyone beneath his throne to bend to his will.

Starting with the woman who had come back from the dead to ruin him.

"Owain, stop!" Ashlynn shouted as she struggled to her feet. "This is wrong! You cannot do this to your own people."

"My people?" Owain snorted. "My people serve at the pleasure of their lord! They would lay down their lives for their march and their marquis," he shouted as he felt a pulse of power from more than a dozen people scattered across the room. "And now, they will help me put an end to you!"

Across the Great Hall, more than a dozen knights, lords, and ladies had fallen to their knees, trying desperately to rid themselves of the cursed wooden antiques they’d once thought of as family heirlooms bestowed on their families by the rulers of the march.

And on the dais, as far from the throne as it was possible to stand without stepping down to the main floor of the Great Hall, High Priest Aubin stared at the throne in even greater horror as he realized that this was no witchcraft... Rather, it was a twisted version of the very same miracle that allowed the priests and acolytes of a temple to unite in common cause, to bring about the greatest miracles of their faith.

But this...This was no miracle!