Somehow, Kathy’s claws kept gripping her foe. The great gold wings flapped furiously, but couldn’t keep aloft with a dead weight pulling it down.

That brought the belly that Gren, Lysandra, and the others had been targeting closer. Another flight of arrows sped toward their target, and many of them stuck, hitting with more momentum because they were losing less of it to gravity.

Kathy changed. No longer a dragon, she was just a falling woman, small and helpless. I teleported to catch her in mid-air, but I could only slow her a little as we both crashed to the ground. I cushioned the fall with my body as well as I could, but I could not hear her breathe, or sense her heartbeat.

Talos was running toward us. I knew he could do more for her than I could, so I wiggled from underneath her and looked upward, waiting to see if I once again had a role to play. I could try the trick with the teleporting and stabbing again, but for a moment it seemed the gold dragon would rise again out of range.

Then it faltered as another thirty arrows struck it.

It, too, transformed. The dragon was replaced by a woman, with long golden hair, with a skimpy bra of gold scales partially covering her breasts, and a cloth-of-gold loincloth that did little to preserve her modesty. That woman, too, plummeted, and crashed to the ground.

“Abby, she’s –” Talos said, his voice faltering.

I guessed what he was saying, and I hated it. But I had to deal with the current situation. I ran to the dragon, not wanting to waste any more mana than necessary. Twenty of my warriors joined me, and so did Bronwyn, the priestess.

I took my sword out and put it at the dragon’s neck.

“She’s not evil,” Bronwyn said. She moved the dragon woman’s loin cloth into a more modest position.

“You could have fooled me,” I said. “She killed Val. And Kathy. And countless more.”

“She was being attacked.”

“She attacked first.”

“There must have been reasons.” Bronwyn knelt. “She’s not dead. I can heal her.”

I took a breath. I wanted to kill her for what she had done to Val. To Kathy. To all those helpless goblins. But there was also a person I wanted to be, a person whose ideals I didn’t always manage to live up to. A person who I thought of as my true self, whatever form I was in.

A dragon in human form. What a vampire she’ll make! You can’t pass up this opportunity.

“I’ll tie her up before you heal her,” I said. Would that restrain her, if she tried to change?

“That’s fine,” Brownyn said.

I turned to the others. “Keep a knife at her throat at all times. If she seems to do anything to change, use it. Tell her to stay absolutely still.”

Bronwyn laid hands on the dragon, and I turned away. I walked back toward Talos.

“She’s dead,” he said.

I nodded. Kathy and Valeria, both. I had enough mana to bring back one.

My lover, my wife.

My fellow earthling, neighbor, and friend.

A healer, and a woman who understood Earth technology. They could both do so much good in the world I was building.

“I’m sorry,” I told Talos. “She was the bravest of us all, in the end.”

He nodded at me. He didn’t know what I could do, and didn’t know I had to make a choice.

“Valeria is dead, too,” I said.

I regretted it immediately. I thought of Valeria as my loss, and of Kathy as his. But Valeria was his best friend, and he’d lost both of them in the course of a few minutes. He went to his knees, and the tears he’d been holding back started flowing.

I held him, feeling like a traitor all the while. Maybe he would be glad that I’d been able to save one. Or maybe he’d hate me forever for the choice I was going to make. He leaned on me.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a goblin pick up something silver.

Dimension Step.

To Talos it must have seemed like the support he was leaning on had simply disappeared. But really, I had no choice. I grabbed the silver dragon crown from the goblin’s hand.

“Mine,” I told him, and tossed it in the bag.

“Shiny!” he told me.

“Yeah. But also, mine. Don’t touch my stuff again.”

“But it was shiny.”

I turned back to Talos, but the moment had gone. I wished Jill was here to help him, but there had been no reason to take her along on a fighting expedition. She’d just be someone to protect.

“Abby,” Talos said.

“Yes.”

“Don’t let her sacrifice be in vain. Is the dragon dead?”

I wanted to lie. I shook my head.

He stood, and pulled his sword.

I knew how he felt, but I shook my head. “Don’t do it, Talos. There is a line between good and evil, and right now the dragon is a helpless prisoner. We don’t kill prisoners.”

“We can make an exception.”

“And are you going to stop me?”

“As a matter of fact, yes.” I drew my sword. I wasn’t going to use it, but it had psychological value. If he charged me, I’d charm him. I could top off my mana a little using Life Drain.

He stared. For a moment I thought he was going to attack me, and then he shook his head and collapsed.

I told a soldier to take him to a tent to recover and to stay with him no matter what. I saw Inka, and sent her with him too.

I pulled out a blanket, and covered Kathy’s nakedness with it. I assigned a couple of guards to watch over it.

Then I walked back to Gren and the archers.

“How is everyone?” Gren asked.

“Kathy and Valeria are dead. But I think I can bring Valeria back.”

Shock passed over her face, and her voice choked as she said, “Vampire Valeria?”

I shook my head. “No, really back. But it takes time. I need you to take charge while I cast a spell.”

Gren nodded. “Of course. Does that mean you can bring back Kathy, too?”

I shook my head. “Maybe. The spell description says ‘recently’ and I don’t have the mana to do both.”

“Fuck.”

“Yeah. Indeed. I’m going to get mana back as fast as I can, and I might need to drain a little life from everyone in order to get some back, but I need to see to Val first. And since I don’t know how recent is recent enough, I don’t want to waste time.”

“Got it. I’ve got you covered, my wonderful wife.”

“I knew I could count on you.”

I found Bronwyn healing goblins. “I need you,” I told her. “Please?”

“Of course. Who is wounded? You?”

I was bashed up, but basically, I was okay. “No.”

I led her to where Valeria lay. Bronwyn touched her neck to feel her pulse, since Valeria’s hands were in gauntlets, and shook her head. “Abby, she’s dead. I’m sorry, but I can’t heal her.”

I nodded. “She got bashed up pretty good. Which is why, the moment she comes back to life, I need you to heal her.”

“The moment she –”

“That’s right.”

Brownwyn’s voice chilled. “My magic doesn’t work on the undead, Abby. And even if it did, I’d save it for the living.”

“She’ll be alive. Give me ten minutes, please.”

Bronwyn sighed, and nodded.

I knelt next to Valeria, and put my hands on her upper chest. Her armor might not be the most practical, but at least there was somewhere for me touch. I began the spell, focusing my mana to bring my lover back to life.

Bronwyn, meanwhile, took off Valeria’s armor. I suppose that made sense, and maybe it meant she believed in what I could do at least a little. There were bruises all over Valeria, and her neck was twisted at a bad angle. Her legs were swollen from multiple breaks.

Raise Dead took five minutes.

Valeria’s eyes fluttered open. “Abby,” she said.

“Don’t talk yet,” I told her. “Bronwyn, now.”

Bronwyn was already on it. A moment later, Valeria moved her head, and her neck seemed fine. Bruises started disappearing from her body. Her breath, ragged at first, slowly normalized.

“Abby,” Valeria said. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” I said.

She turned to look at Bronwyn. “Thank you,” she said. “I didn’t know you could raise the dead.”

“I can’t,” Bronwyn said. “That was all your wife’s doing. I’m just healing you.”

“You never told us you could do that,” Valeria said to me.

“I didn’t want any of you taking unnecessary chances,” I told her. “You’re brave enough as it is.”

“You should go raise others. Zargaza. Kendala.”

“They survived,” I told her. “And anyway, I only have enough mana to raise one person.”

She smiled. “I’m glad they are okay. I wouldn’t want you to have to make a difficult choice.”

I nodded. “Just rest.”

She shook her head, and sat up. “No. It’s my job to help the wounded.”

“Valeria,” Brownyn said.

“Yes?” Val looked at her quizzically. “I can move, thanks to you.”

“It’s not that. But when you were dead, what did you see?”

Valeria smiled. “I’ll tell you later. Right now, we have work to do, right? Unless…” She looked at me.

“What?”

“If we had sex with you, you could get your mana back faster, right? Especially if you had sex with me, because I have more mana than your other lovers? I mean, I’m pretty sore, but anything for the team.”

“Uh, yeah,” I said. “I can’t say that I’m in the – ugh.”

“I’m not in the mood either, but if it helps you save someone.”

“Kathy.”

“Kathy’s dead?” Valeria asked.

“Yes.”

“Then take me now. And Bronwyn, you have a lot of mana, right?”

Bronwyn turned beet red.

There were dead people all around me, mostly goblins but some of my soldiers too. I would do anything I could to bring back Kathy, but it would take more than just sex with Val, or even sex with Val multiple times, to get my mana all the way recharged, and I wasn’t at all sure I could get it up right now – much less repeatedly. There wasn’t a lot of privacy, either. I’d been able to fuck Zargaza in front of all the orcs, but that was because that was kind of her thing and I fed off that energy.

Sure, the right thing to do was to start an orgy of sex and life draining right after a bunch of people died and got hurt, but it was really hard to wrap my brain around the idea that it was the right thing and not a callous and very twisted thing.

“I can’t have sex with Abby,” Bronwyn said. “I’m a bride of L’shan. I have vows.”

“And doesn’t L’shan say that the commandments can be violated, in fact must be violated, when a life is at stake?” Valeria argued.

“Well, yes, but with that power she has, if there’s anyone dead anywhere, a life is always at stake in some sense. That logic would have me –” If it was possible, Bronwyn turned even brighter red.

“And you’d enjoy every minute of it,” Valeria said.

“I need to wrap my mind around it myself,” I said hastily. I was not going to let Valeria pressure Bronwyn into sex with me. “And I also need to find out what’s going on. After that, I’ll take what life I can from the healthy, and probably have an orgy, and hope that’s enough for me to save Kathy. But I think I have a little window of time. Valeria, I need you to come with me.”

“Need me to heal someone?”

“No. I need you to help me interrogate someone.”

“I’ll go find people to heal,” Bronwyn said quickly. “Bye!