When Heroes Die

“Whilst Inevitable Doom is a finite resource, Providence is not. That is why one should always spread the ashes of one’s enemies across several kingdoms. Heroes will always find a way to claw themselves back, if they are given a chance.”

– Dread Empress Vindictive III

In the aftermath of the second fight against the Artist, we all agreed it would be better if we made ourselves scarce from Hedges. We had been fairly out of the way during the fight, but staying in one place was just asking for trouble. We couldn’t be sure if our fight was detectable from a distance by any of the more talented Praesi Wizards.

It was much easier for me to maintain esoteric effects related to the idea of absence now. I could maintain a perception field around us without even really focusing on it. It bothered me. If I ever ran into another demon, I would need to be much more careful. I didn’t want to accidentally turn myself into a completely different idea.

We departed Hedges and travelled up to Harrow, staying there only briefly. Shortly after arrival, we departed for the Duchy of Daoine. Daoine was nominally a client state of Callow, but nobody actually treated it like that. It was ruled by its own Duchess Keegan, and she enforced her own laws through the Watch. Despite the situation, so long as the Duchy retained the pretence of being a part of the Empire, the Calamities were satisfied. Our first stop was Caith.

We hadn’t seen the Artist again, although we were all on alert for him.

It was evening and the air was hot and clammy. All three of us were seated in the wagon. Spring rain fell down from above, which I was actively working to filter out. It was a constant strain on me. I could feel the world pushing back as I did so, and it left me feeling irate.

“Try again, girlie. Shoot your shot. See if it works.”

Concentrating, I did as he asked. Focusing on the heavily damaged rat in front of us, I tried to mend its wounds. Cancerous tumours rapidly started to spread.

I tried not to sigh.

It was frustrating. At this point, I had given a lot of rats cancer. Probably more than the number of people that Panacea had threatened to give cancer. It didn’t help that even though the rain wasn’t falling on us, I felt like a wet cat. I could feel it falling on the barrier I had up around us, like a constant poking sensation against an invisible limb.

Max undid the damage.

“And again.”

There was a thump and all of us were jostled as the wheel of the wagon went over a particularly large rock. I winced as my stump knocked the side of the wagon and a splinter was lodged in. Roland mumbled in his sleep. I had no idea how he was sleeping through the weather, but somehow he managed.

Looking at the wound, I had an idea. It was one that should have occurred earlier to me. Something we really should have tested before.

I pulled out the splinter.

“Can you heal this?” I proffered my arm towards him.

Crawling over, Max put his hand on the injury and concentrated on it. Then he shook his head.

“Come to think of it, I should have realized that earlier. Your whole body is fucked, isn’t it? I bet you can’t actually die, except for if a priest or hero blows you. Not that we’re going to try that.”

Taking everything else into account, it didn’t come as a surprise.

“Yeah, I don’t like the idea of testing my mortality either,” I replied.

I could certainly still feel pain.

“I think if you get damaged, your body will fix itself over time,” he looked at me searchingly for a moment, “I don’t think you’re ageing either.”

“Well, at least I don’t have to worry about old age,” I feigned enthusiasm.

Just heroes, priests and diabolists.

“Now, back to your training,” he admonished.

Mumbling under my breath, I got back to it.

About an hour later, the vague shape of the Caith walls could be made out. They rose thirty feet in the air and, in the rain, seemed to loom. Roland had woken up and was sitting beside us. Slowly, we drew up close near the gate.

It was closed.

I could just barely make out the figure of a member of the Watch on the walls above, lit by a lamp.

“There,” I pointed the figure out to Roland.

“Good evening, could you be so kind as to open the gate for us!” Roland shouted out.

I wasn’t sure if they would be able to hear us over the downpour.

“No entry until dawn!” A voice shouted back. It was a woman’s voice and she sounded irate. Considering the weather, I couldn’t blame her.

“I told you we should have stopped at that rest house,” I grumbled under my breath.

“I apologise, Taylor. I hope there is no bruising.” Roland looked sheepishly my way.

“It’s fine,” I waved my hand at him absently.

Turning around the cart, we started to make our way back to the rest house. It was an hour away, so now we needed to endure even more of the sheer misery of having to sit outside during the downpour.

As they lethargically plodded their way forwards, our mules looked like I felt.

Another quarter of an hour passed before conversation resumed.

“Say Taylor,” Maxime began, “now that we’re not in Callow. Could you show me something from your home?”

I looked to my left, meeting his sea green eyes.

“The silk clothes don’t count?”

He shrugged.

“They’re nice, but you can get them here with enough coin,” he grinned at me, “you told us you came from a place that sounds like the gnomes. Show me gnome weapons.”

Ever since the fight with the Absence demon, I had stopped thinking of what I could do as replicating powers. It was more like I could… shape matter into anything I had a good enough understanding of. I couldn’t actually create anything, even when I threw beams of light, the light came from somewhere. But even if what I was trying to make was abstract, so long as I was familiar enough with it, I could turn something into it.

The others had given me grief for a full on week after I had turned a pile of dust into the feeling of regret just to test if I could. It turns out, you can get a lot of regret out of dust.

I knew a lot about weaving clothes out of silk. Enough to turn things into it. Replacing all of our clothing with clothing made out of silk had been something I had as soon as I realized I could. I didn’t think it would offer much protection against any of the real threats in Calernia, but just having clothes properly fitted for me that I liked dramatically improved my mood. Unfortunately, I had needed to match the local styles, but that didn’t take away from my sheer joy at the discovery.

It felt like I had something from home.

It was draining to do even though I was familiar with the process, but well worth it in my mind.

There were many small things I knew enough about to make, forks, spoons, general utensils. Modern combat knives were a big one. Dwarven steel was rubbish and kept breaking, but up until recently I didn’t have a good replacement.

“Are you sure? Guns make a lot of noise.”

“The deluge is so tumultuous that the sound will most certainly be drowned out,” Roland stated dubiously.

Considering he hadn't ever heard one, I thought that him commenting on the noise was out of place. We were in the middle of nowhere though so...

Focusing on the idea of a fully loaded handgun, I tried to force one into existence. I had to put a lot of effort into manifesting it. The shape, the individual components. I had handled one enough that I felt confident I could do it and if anything would convince them about my origins, it would. Sometimes, I felt like they were just humouring me.

Soil from the ground rose up and started to change, eventually forming into the shape of a gun. It fell into my outstretched hand. The effort left me fatigued, but I doubted we would be in a fight soon.

“I’m not sure if it’s safe to fire this,” I admitted, handing it over to max. “I probably don’t know enough about a gun to get the barrel shape right.”

He took it curiously, then started to move the muzzle towards his eye so he could look down the barrel.

“Don’t do that!” I said sharply, grabbing his arm.

“What’s wrong, girlie? I was trying to see what’s inside.” he sounded puzzled.

“That’s like putting a knife blade against your eye,” I explained.

“How about you show us how it works, Taylor?”

“Stop the wagon, then.”

Roland did so, bringing the mules to a halt. They glared at him.

Taking a moment, I concentrated and pulled up a target. The mud twenty feet to our left off the road formed up into a two-foot wide red brick, with rings carved on it. The surrounding grass was short, so it stood out.

“See that target?” I pointed.

It was hard to make out with the rain, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they could not.

“We do,” they both agreed.

“Can you float this thing away from us, point the muzzle at the target, and then pull the lever. I’m not sure that I can do that much at once,” I admitted.

Taking into account the active perception effect and filtering out the rain, it was simply too much multitasking for me to handle. If I dropped the rain filter, I could probably do it, but I had no intention of getting wet.

“If you would indicate to me where the muzzle is, I shall do so,” Roland volunteered.

“The end that Max was about to look down.”

“Why not do it ourselves, Taylor?” Max asked.

“Because I have no idea how badly I messed up making it.”

“This course of action seems reasonable.”

The gun lifted into the air, floated away from us, aimed and then fired.

Bang!

To my surprise, it seemed I had done a good enough job that it didn’t fail catastrophically.

A small hole carved itself into the middle of the brick.

“Now let’s go inspect the target,” I recommended.

All three of us climbed off the cart. I grimaced as my boots squelched in the muddy earth below. Arriving at the target, both of them looked subdued.

The bullet didn’t penetrate very far at all, just putting a minor dent in. I hadn’t expected it to. For people that had only had mages as a comparison, though, it must have come as a surprise.

“How easily obtainable were these weapons?”

“There were background checks you needed to go through if you wanted one legally, but otherwise they weren’t hard to get. Guns like these were mass-produced. That’s just a handgun. There were much more powerful guns than it.”

They asked me a few more questions about them, before we climbed back onto the wagon. I disassembled both the gun and the block. I wasn’t sure just how much surveillance the gnomes were doing, but I wouldn’t take the risk.

We arrived at the rest house close to an hour later. Roland and I climbed off and made our way to the door, Max would handle the wagon.

Roland opened the door, then called out. “Would you grant us leave to enter your establishment?”

“Fine, fine, all of you come in,” a woman’s voice responded from somewhere inside.

Entering, I looked around. The face of the establishment was like an inviting restaurant. Oak tables were arranged neatly in a grid, four by four, with space to move between them. Supporting pillars rose to meet the ceiling and on the left, the dull yellow glow of flames flickered from a hearth.

Taking off my muddy boots and leaving them at a rack by the door, I made my way and sat on the chair closest to the fire. Roland sat down on the chair to my right.

That was when the owner walked in.

The girl was dark skinned and looked to be in her early twenties. She was short, only coming up to my nose if I stood up, with long, wavy brown hair and blue eyes. She had breasts that could only be described as voluptuous, practically spilling out of her work outfit.

Before I had even realized it, my head had hit the table.

“Nope,” I muttered under my breath.

“Is something the matter, Taylor?” Roland asked quizzically.

“Are the two of you new to Daoine?” her voice took on a sotto tone.

“Indeed we are. We intend to remain here for some time,” Roland replied.

At least, we would be looking for answers about me here first. We suspected that the laws that the Calamities had placed on magic would be looser in Daoine, and it would be easier to find answers.

“Well, take heed. There are fell goings-on around Caith during the night. People have been going missing. Best to only go about during the day,” she advised.

And there it was. Exactly what I had expected. It seemed we were in a story.

With time, I had come to build up a picture of how being a hero worked in Calernia. Stories were powerful. They were almost like a global master effect, to the extent that it disturbed me. So long as Roland was performing actions that matched his Role, we could count on lucky coincidences to occur.

“Do you have a map of the area?” I asked.

I was willing to bet I had some idea how this story went as well. At this point, I was expecting one of four things. Slavers, vampires, zombies or the Artist. I wasn’t even sure if vampires existed, but with how caught up in stories this world was, it wouldn’t surprise me if they did.

She frowned at me, irritated.

“I’m afraid not. I think you could purchase one at Azimuth’s emporium. It’s near the main gate, just inside Caith’s city walls. Now, do the two of you want anything to eat?”

And there was the next step of our “quest.”

“Three of us,” I corrected her.

Her frown turned into a scowl.

If it weren’t for the bad weather and the constant sense that I didn’t belong, I wouldn’t have been as annoyed by it as I was. I mentally reminded myself that just because she was a plot device, it didn’t mean she wasn’t a person as well. She had thoughts and feelings of her own.

The rules of this world are completely bullshit.

She took our orders and went off, Max came in shortly afterwards and sat down beside us.

“What’s the matter, girlie?” Max asked.

“We have a problem.”

“Now Taylor, let us not jump to conclusions without more proof,” Roland argued.

“I’ll bet…something that there is a necromancer in the city killing people and raising undead,” I replied.

It was the only version of the story I could think of that fit Roland’s role. It could also be the Artist, but he didn’t outright disappear people. Unless the people were me.

“Now, that’s very specific, girlie. You that certain?”

“Absolutely, it seems like the kind of story that fits.”

“Why did you inquire as to where we could purchase a map?” Roland asked.

“So we could try to narrow down where the culprit is. Make a note of where the disappearances happened, find a pattern.”

I was betting on the graveyard, if it was a necromancer. It would probably be the undertaker, too.

Our meal arrived soon after. We paid for both the meal and a room for the night, then went to sleep soon after.

Arriving at Azimuth’s emporium, I rang a bell hanging outside. “Just a moment!” A shrill voice called out.

Moments later, he unlocked the door.

“Come right in and hurry up, don’t let in any of the rain,” he groused.

An old, weedy looking man came and opened the door. At the front of the store was a desk stacked with paperwork. Around the store was a sprawling mess of shelves. The items on them almost appeared random, it was hard to tell if there was any sorting system to it.

“An acquaintance of ours assured us that we could purchase a map here,” Roland said as he walked in behind me.

“A map, you say? Fine! I should have one in here somewhere, while I find it, take a look around and see if there’s anything else you want. Don’t try to take anything, I’ll know.” The man harrumphed, then went off.

The three of us all went to a stack of books on the right and started browsing through them. I doubted there would be anything to help me, but it was worth a shot.

A few moments later, and Roland let out an exclamation of excitement.

“It seems fortune has favoured us. This is a Praesi magical treatise,” he exclaimed.

“On what?” I asked.

“Dispersing necromantic rituals,” his excitement died out.

“It’s a necromancer, then,” I declared.

There was another lucky coincidence coming to aid Roland in his quest.

A part of me felt like heroism meant less in this world, because it wasn’t truly earned. The luck of heroes actually existed here. Heroes were expected to win, most of the stories I had heard favoured them. Another part of me felt strangely jealous. What would Earth Bet have been like, if it worked the same way?

Maybe the fight against Scion wouldn’t have cost us as much as it did.

Maybe we wouldn’t have had to fight Scion at all.

The man arrived not long after, and we completed our purchase. Leaving, we made our way to our wagon and then took a moment to talk. Max shrouded us in a ward against eavesdropping, making it impossible for others to listen in.

“You really believe it’s a necromancer, girlie?”

“I’m confident in it. Confident enough, I don’t even think we needed the map. We should head towards the cemetery tonight and just cut out all the bits in the middle,” I replied.

“You’re not usually this reckless, Taylor, what’s wrong?” Max asked.

He was right. I was being reckless. Why?

“You’re right,” I frowned. “It’s the city. Being in it is off-putting. I can feel the wards from the city walls pushing against my senses. It makes me want to act. Let’s do this properly, one step at a time.”

I hadn’t even noticed how being in a big city affected me. It was worrying. It was just one of the many ways in which Creation was telling me to leave.

“So we continue as planned. Find a place to rent, settle in and start making inquiries for you.” Max said.

“That sounds good.”

We planned to be in Caith for a while, best not to make a scene on the day we had just arrived.