“Even when I was the Dark Lord, that first time,” Armes went on, “I thought it would help. I still wanted to help, you see. A real enemy, to unite the forces of the Light: something to make people put aside their differences and really appreciate what they had. And when the first real hero came, to the tower I had then—not this one, it was a smaller one, and I hadn’t had the throne done—I let him think he’d killed me, and I traveled back with him, sightless as a ghost, to see the brave new world my experiments with evil had built. And it was just the same. Nothing had changed. And in all this time, nothing ever has. There is no hope for humanity, or anyone or anything. There’s just me, forever and forever. I knew then that I might as well just amuse myself. Dark, Light, Light, Dark, over and over.” He shook his head, like a man contemplating the follies of children. “But you know what, you hero types, you do believe. You go through life doing terrible, terrible things to each other, and to everything else, but you somehow still believe that you’re right. You come here full of the joys of the Light, practically singing with self-righteous fervor. And then you meet me, and I tell you all of this, and I hear your little hearts break. When you find out you’re not right, and you’re not chosen, that the prophecies are just me indulging myself, and that there’s nothing but me that has meaning in the world, forever and forever. So let me hear it. Let me hear the sad little sound of your hearts breaking. And then we can end this.”

There was a long silence after he finished speaking. Everyone was looking at Dion, and she was looking nowhere at all, still clutching the little round piece of metal to her, though the Light had long faded from it.

Then Enth said, “I want to kill him.”

“Join the queue,” Lief muttered.

“You?” Harathes looked from Armes to Enth and apparently found the latter a target he could safely strike against. “This must be music to your ears.”

“I want to kill him,” Enth repeated. His knuckly fists were clenched.