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‘Oh, I doubt you consider it as much of an honor as I do,’ said Voreese. ‘If I’m being completely honest here, I’m a bit of a fangirl of yours.’

Melchor just raised a thick eyebrow at that.

‘I’m an admirer of a lot of the ass kicking you’ve done, especially against Abolish. I remember hearing news of your exploits a few times over the years, and they were usually pretty damn cathartic. If I still had tits, I’d totally ask you sign them for me, right now.’

The man looked briefly at the young Lord Darksteel, but Hector didn’t have anything for him. “Ah... um... I see,” said Melchor. “Thank you for those... kind words.”

‘Yeah, no problem,’ said Voreese.

The pleasantries didn’t last much longer, and Melchor soon joined the rest of the servants in trying to free everyone. For a second, Hector thought the guy and his reaper might use pan-rozum to aid in the process, but they didn’t. No doubt, they didn’t want to deal with the exhaustive consequences of it, in case they ended up needing to fight soon.

The last few weeks must have been especially crazy and confusing from that guy’s perspective, Hector figured. Melchor Blackburn had probably spent the majority of it unconscious and been continuously woken up just before another fight broke out.

Hector hoped everyone would be getting some well-deserved rest once they finally made it back to Warrenhold. There would still be plenty of things to be concerned about, of course--not the least of which was the other large group of Rainlords who’d been captured by the Gargoyle of Korgum at Rheinhal--but at least they wouldn’t have to worry about being attacked at Warrenhold.

Probably.

The notion of Warrenhold coming under siege, too, had not really crossed his mind before. But it was definitely something that he should’ve been giving some thought to, he now figured.

Lord of Warrenhold, huh? Protecting it was on him. No doubt about that. And with the kind of enemies that could end up knocking on his door, combat strength alone probably wasn’t going to be enough.

At least, not their current level of combat strength.

Hmm.

And of course, there was still the matter of what the hell he was going to tell the Queen. This probably wasn’t something he should try to keep her in the dark about. Hell, she’d been looking for strong allies to help her protect Atreya in the future. Maybe he and Garovel would be able to convince her that this was a positive development in that regard.

There was also the restoration of Warrenhold itself to consider. The glimpse he’d gotten of its repairs had been nice, but he knew there were still quite a few places in total shambles.

Ugh. So much to take care of. He was pretty sure he was forgetting a few things at the moment, too.

Whatever. For now, it was nice to be able to just assist the Rainlords in extricating all these climate pods from the warehouses. The pods were still covered in the myriad of shields he’d made when he had arrived in the Undercrust. Maybe a few had fallen off here or there, but the pods still looked pretty well-protected, all things considered, and the Rainlords weren’t bothering to remove the shields, either, despite how much more unwieldy they made them.