The Hero’s Destiny
“Of course I can. Who the hell do you think I am?” You rip the Hero’s Medal off, suppressing the ever-growing mountain of doubt over your actions. As the Medal comes free, it shudders violently. You feel something inside you snap, like a thread being cut.
“IMPRESSIVE,” murmurs the Demon Lord thunderously. He does seem genuinely impressed. “THE PUPPET CUT ITS OWN STRINGS.”
“Here, you can have this. As we agreed,” you say, flicking the medal at him. The Demon Lord raises one massive claw to catch the spinning emblem, but it never arrives at its destination. Suspended in mid-air, the medal spins wildly.
The Demon Lord’s fiery eyes widen. “NO, THAT IS-“
He roars an incantation, calling forth a barrier of absolute darkness.
As the realization sinks in, you try to throw up all of the protective spells that you can muster.
The Hero’s Medal shatters. A pure white light bursts outwards, washing everything away. The floor disintegrates beneath your feet, turned into dust by the destructive force of the explosion. Your spells are shattered without giving even the slightest bit of resistance. The radiance burns your armor away, sears your flesh, blackens your bones.
You do not even have time to scream.
***
“Was it clever insurance against your betrayal, or was this meant to be the means of the Demon Lord’s destruction, all from the start?”
You stir, excruciating pain rushing back in to meet you. You almost wish you had not regained consciousness. Your sight is blurry, and your field of vision is limited. You can barely move your arms, and you feel nothing below the waist. Every sound that you can hear is overlaid with a painful buzzing.
“Thus is the fate of those who go against the Goddesses’ will.”
You recognize the voice. Althus. Squinting, raising your head slowly, you see him standing over you. Kyle is there too. Lobelia too. They look tired and wounded, but they seem to have survived the blast a lot better than you did. If they cast a healing spell on you, you could still survive this.
“Did you really betray us?” Kyle says heavily, panting. At that moment, from the tone of his voice, you instantly know that you are not getting any healing of any sort, not from them.
“The devastation you see around us is proof, Master Theseon. It is the anger of the Goddesses manifest in this world, brought down by their champion’s betrayal. In so doing he has twisted the fates of not only himself, but other innocents who were not meant to perish here. I can feel the Goddesses’ sorrow deeply within me that such a thing has come to pass.”
Seeing your puzzled expression, Lobelia explains, “Syke is nowhere to be found. Rurik and Mieren are dead. The explosion killed them. Rurik was blasted to pieces. Of Mieren, we could only find an arm.”
As it probably did nearly everything else in the castle, demon warriors and human prisoners alike. That is probably your fault if Althus is telling the truth. The Demon Lord’s massive, mangled bulk lay just in front of you. He seems to have taken the worst of the attack. Of his daughter, there is no sign. You remember seeing – just before the light swallowed everything up – the Demon Lord reinforcing the cage around his daughter rather than protecting himself, but you are not sure if even that was enough. The black spire itself, a mountain of obsidian rock taller than the highest human towers, has been all but destroyed by the explosion.
“As for us, we survived because the Goddesses have selected Master Theseon as their true hero,” Althus says. “The former hero betrayed his destiny and joined the Demon Lord. Master Theseon’s righteousness marked him as the real hero, and thus he was granted the power to defeat both villains and save the day with his loyal followers.”
Lobelia remains silent. She would usually bristle at the implication that she was anyone’s loyal follower, but this time, she remains silent.
Kyle raises his sword reluctantly and says, “Even if you are a traitor to humanity, you are still my friend. I will end your suffering.”
Gathering up all your strength, you attempt to speak from your ruined throat. “Kyle… my friend…”
“If you have any last requests, I will honor them,” he intones solemnly.
“…I still have the bigger dick.”
“Such crude words even while facing death. You have no honour at all,” grimaces Althus. “The Goddesses must have seen this coming all along, and selected you for this reason.”
Kyle chuckles despite himself, glancing downwards at the lower half of your body. “Not anymore, no.” He moves to drive the sword through your chest.
“Stop!”
With a loud clang, his sword is knocked aside. Kyle staggers, having been pushed back by a powerful blow. Looking at the person now standing in between you and him, he smiles happily. “Mieren. You’re alive!”
Clutching the wound where her arm had once been, Mieren glares back. “What is this? Why are you trying to kill him?”
“He betrayed us all. I am just doing him a favour by ending his pain. More importantly-”
“Even if he did, it is not our place to punish him. He must have had his reasons!”
Ah, yes. ‘Reasons’. If you are physically able to squirm guiltily at this time, you would.
“Heal him, bring him back to the Seven Kingdoms, and have him stand trial when he is better. Let him defend his own actions,” continues Mieren.
“No. His destiny ends here, with his betrayal,” states Althus flatly. “Any other outcome is blasphemy.”
Kyle approaches Mieren, extending one hand in a reasonable and friendly manner. “Come on, Mieren. Think about it. He would have killed us all. He sided with demons. He already caused Rurik’s death because of his betrayal.”
“Rurik died protecting me, and yes, he will have to answer for that. But not this way. Something feels wrong about this situation, and until I find out what it is, I’m not leaving his side, Kyle.”
“Why do you always… always…” Kyle grits his teeth, visibly enraged. Tousling his beautiful blonde hair, he murmurs, “Do you like him that much? Then you can share his fate, traitor.”
Unable to help, you can only watch helplessly as Mieren engages Kyle and Althus in battle. Her red hair streaming brilliantly behind her, she dodges, kicks, and parries their slashes and spells with a strength borne of desperation. Even with one arm, she is holding her own against the other two. Had she always been this strong?
“Tiger Cannon Fist!” Mieren unleashes a powerful punch that drives Kyle stumbling to the ground, throwing up a cloud of dust. Turning around, she delivers a kick that knocks Althus away before he can finish incanting his spell. Then, as she leaps towards the fallen Kyle to end the fight, Lobelia acts.
“Mie... Mieren!” you shout, a croaking gasp that fails to reach her ears.
“Icestorm.” Countless sharpened icicles materialize as a freezing gust of wind chills you to the bone. They rain down upon Mieren like a hail of arrows. She dodges the first dozen. Parries the rest with her arm and legs. The last icicle gets her, embedding itself deep into her stomach. Her blood, spurting into the air, freezes almost instantly. Kyle rises, his eyes full of determination. He steps towards the wounded Mieren, before she can recover, and he cuts her head off.
It bounces on the ground, rolling until it rests right at what remains of your feet. Mieren’s head. Her eyes are looking straight at you, the expression blank. They blink once, twice, and then fall still forever.
“Stupid wench,” spits Kyle. He begins to advance upon you, wielding the sword that took Mieren’s life. “Well, you have no need to fear loneliness. I will send him to join you soon enough.”
The ground begins to quake. Large cracks criss-cross the area, widening into fissures that separate you from your former friends. As the rock begins to split, Kyle cries out, “What is going on, Althus?”
“The… the demon world is collapsing! Upon the Demon Lord’s death, nothing is keeping it together anymore! I fear that whatever remains here will soon be swallowed up into oblivion! Let us go!” shouts Althus.
The heroes flee, leaving you for dead. They would have a bright future ahead of them as the saviours of humanity. All the highest accolades the Seven Kingdoms could confer, those would be theirs. They could even declare a Month of Laziness if they wanted.
You, on the other hand, would die here. Your name would be reviled as that of a traitor. Your family would pay the price for your betrayal. Perhaps your father would be put to death. Perhaps your sister would be tortured before meeting her end. At best, they would be ostracized, exiled from their homes. You are under no illusions that the people would not seek some form of retribution against the one who betrayed their hopes.
Yet they were the ones who dragged you from your comfortable bed, the ones who saw through your feigned madness, the ones who elected you Hero against your wishes.
The ground falls, somehow falling upwards into the sky, and you sink into darkness.
***
You can no longer tell which way is up and which way is down. You cannot see anything anymore. You know that you are dying, that you will not last even a few more minutes. Even so, you cannot let it end here. Blindly, you crawl forward.
YOU ARE NO LONGER A PUPPET.
Somehow, you hear the Demon Lord’s voice. There is a wet, tearing noise, that of flesh being ripped apart.
HERE. DEVOUR THE FRUIT OF MY EXPERIMENTS. IT WILL TEAR YOU FREE OF FATE’S LOOM, TO BE WHATEVER YOU WISH TO BE...
The voice fades away. Your sight returns. The corpse of the Demon Lord sits in front of you. His chest is torn open, and in one hand, stretched out as if offering it to you, is his black heart, still pulsating and beating. You can sense powerful energies still emanating from the massive organ, though it is rapidly weakening with each passing second.
You reach out for it.
It is slippery to the touch, throbbing underneath your torn and broken fingers.
A hunger wells up inside you, despite your misgivings.
It is the hunger of survival, that which all men must confront at the brink of death.
You have no intention of starving it.
Opening your jaw wide, you bite into the Demon Lord’s heart.
---END---
