The Primordial Villain stood over the dwarf king's body and cast [Subjugation].
The spell reached outward through the bond the way it always did, searching for the threshold that separated a defeated enemy from everything else, and found nothing to grip. The magic washed over Ragnar's crumbling form and slid off like water on stone, returning a system refusal so absolute it didn't even produce an error notification.
"The ritual created a true tank in every sense of the word, huh..." Quinlan murmured, analytical.
[Subjugation] required a defeated enemy or a willing submission. Ragnar was face-down in the dirt with a hole through his chest and his body breaking apart from the inside, and somehow the system didn't register either condition as met.
The dark ritual was keeping him in a state between alive and dead, unable to win but refusing to lose, and that grey zone sat outside the boundaries of what defeat meant.
He used earth magic to turn the dwarf onto his back.
