When Heroes Die

“Time waits for nobody, not even undead abominations. It’s why I have so many tiger pits, Chancellor. People talk faster when sufficiently motivated.”

— Dread Emperor Revenant

The first day was the easiest.

I found the experience claustrophobic, but despite the almost total sensory deprivation, there was plenty for me to distract myself with.

“Which way do we go now, Taylor? We’re at a corridor branching left and right. There is a faint wind coming from the left passage and the Saint thinks we should head that way, but she wants your confirmation.” Yvette asked.

Their pace had picked up. I couldn’t be entirely sure what was happening, but I suspected that they were in a hurry.

This side. The other side leads further down.

I pulled out my presence on the right-hand side of Yvette. It was the best way I had of communicating what I felt. Despite mentioning to Yvette that my sense of her body was the only frame of reference I had for left and right, she still kept using the words as terminology.

I turned my attention back towards determining what I could do. Figuring out how to reposition was more complicated than I expected. I couldn’t walk, or even roll around when I was like this. Instead, I moved by changing my perspective of where I should be. I needed to… redefine my frame of reference for where the middle of me was mentally, then the rest of me flowed to surround that point like water moving downhill.

It only took me a small amount of experimentation once I had worked out how to move to realize it was likely that I could move significantly faster than a human this way. The rate at which my essence poured into its new location appeared to be determined solely by the pace at which I wished it to move. However, the warning pulse from the angels told me that it was probably not a good idea to move too fast. I wasn’t certain why, but I suspected it had something to do with warping my understanding of geometry and distance in the process of doing so.

The more inhuman my perception of the world became, the harder time I would have acclimatizing to a body again later. I was limiting myself to a speed that was only a little faster than a horse as a result.

I did receive a sense of disapproval even at that pace, but I needed some way to keep myself occupied. Exploring this shadow world was one of the few distractions that I had.

“We’re approaching the surface now. Has the Tumult moved, or is it still in the same place?” Yvette panted.

It’s started to move.

It had vacated its earlier position and was swiftly running out of my field of vision.

I can’t see it any more.

“Which way did it go? We need to know where we are headed. Huh, it's surprising how far we travelled underground. We are in a valley at the edge of the mountains now, right beside a river leading onto the flat plains of the Chain of Hunger. There’s grass everywhere, although that’s only because it’s toxic to the Ratlings. I don’t think I’d be able to see over the grass even if I was sitting on Sisyphus’s back. Assuming he was still alive, because he is dead now. I did tell you he’s dead, right?”

This side.

“So to the north, then. That makes sense. We are going to find some place safe, then make camp for a while before we begin to track the Horned Lord again.”

Why not plan more?

“The Saint doesn’t believe that Rhenia can sustain a protracted siege by the Tumult after seeing what it can do. She also believes that with your help, there’s a very good chance of it dying in another fight. Its tools are broken, and it's on the back foot running, she doesn’t want to give it time to recover.”

It would be smarter to think about this.

“She doesn’t have any issue with coming up with tactics to face up against it and plans to wait until you’re back before engaging, but she isn’t willing to let the Horned Lord run away.”

I diverted my attention back towards the Ratlings while trailing behind the two of them. I was trying to understand their movements better. It was certain that their behaviour was not natural, which meant that I could figure out what was happening with enough observation.

It gave me something to think about while I continued to experiment. I hadn’t found a way to circumvent my restrictions, although I had very easily determined that most laws of nature were more like suggestions when I was in this form. Space no longer hindered me. I could freely move horizontally and vertically as if objects didn’t exist. I suspected that if I unmoored myself from my daughter, my sense of time would be similarly displaced. It wasn’t something that I was willing to put to the test.

The speed that I had deteriorated at without a human connection was far too rapid for me to take chances. I didn’t want to lose my humanity just to save time.

That didn’t mean this wasn’t useful to know. I suspected that after this prison sentence ended I could…discorporate myself, move the essence of me elsewhere at a breakneck pace, and then materialise. It would be far less draining than attempting to teleport. I considered the idea of attempting to split my essence in half. A pulse of warning from my family strongly deterred that line of thought.

“Yes, I know how to fight with a weapon. Ma insisted she teach me before she gave me this knife. I’m not even sure why she wanted me to have it, if someone gets close enough to attack me, I am already dead. I’m perfectly fine as is, and I don’t need any more teaching. Magic is good enough to defend me.”

It sounded like Laurence was taking the opportunity to teach Yvette how to fight in close combat.

Listen to Laurence.

“Fine, but only because you asked.” I could hear the pout.

I pulled my presence in once more, then started to poke at her posture. She couldn’t actually feel what I was doing, but it was the thought that counted.

Stand like I taught you. Arms at the ready.

My attention drifted back to the Chain of Hunger as Laurence and I helped Yvette out.

I realized something about the Ratlings after a while. The ones that I believed to be on the surface were clustered into groups of three to four dozen and spread out with vast empty spaces between them. I suspected that it had something to do with their eating habits, but I wanted to know more.

Ask Laurence about if she knows anything about Ratling behaviour outside of spring.

“She says that they usually move in a migratory pattern around the Chain of Hunger. They live in small displaced communities and carry around easily moved yurts. They feed by following other animals that exist in large herds on the plains around. The animals don’t die out because after launching attacks, the Ratlings immediately stop to feast, and it takes long enough for them to eat that their prey can make an escape. She doesn’t consider the information useful except in the sense that it makes it easy to plan attacks on the Ratlings if you wanted to invade the Chain of Hunger. Their migration patterns are not hard to predict. This attack is an exception.” Yvette paraphrased.

That told me something. How did they keep knowledge on how to make tools? Their way of life was so violent that I could easily see knowledge being lost. That wasn’t my only question. For other life to exist on the plains like this, the population of Ratlings needed to be managed in spite of their hunger. Judging by the Tumult’s behaviour, there was no other way for them to have not simply eaten everything to extinction.

Is the size of the Ratling raids the same every year?

“Not always but most of the time, yes. There’s a population boom in spring, which is when the new Ratlings are born and also when the older ones which have grown in size head south and attack the Lycaonese. Laurence wants to know about your origins now.”

Ask her if she’s fine with waiting until I’m able to talk to her myself?

I didn’t want my words to be lost in translation. This was a conversation that should be had directly. I would have let her just read through my journal, but it wasn’t written in any language that Laurence spoke.

“She says she’s prepared to wait, but she doesn’t look very happy about it. I think she’s actually not willing to wait and will ask you about it more later.”

I withdrew to think more about the Ratlings. There was plenty that needed to be learned about them. I wasn’t comfortable fighting them with the inadequate amounts of information about them the Lycaonese had. While it was true they were seemingly incapable of diplomacy, the idea that they had no history or culture was certainly a lie. The Lycaonese might know thousands of ways to kill and skin Ratlings, but if they ever wanted to see the Chain of Hunger resolved, then they needed to know their origin story.

What was the cause of the Ratling’s hunger? What was their reason to exist, and could that reason be changed?

The second day was tolerable, but unpleasant.

I didn't need to sleep. That hadn’t stopped my mind from hallucinating dreams in the Stygian gloom on its own. Nightmarish figures conjured from the depths of my mind, submerging me in unpleasant hellscapes of my own design.

“We have encountered an unusual number of Ratlings today. It’s almost like they are tracking us somehow, and it’s going to be a problem for progressing deeper into the Chain of Hunger. We’ve stuck close to the river for now, but our supplies are limited. Grumpy grandma says we might have to eat Ratling soon.”

That wasn’t really news to me. I had done my best to help them avoid Ratlings, but it wasn’t possible to avoid all of them. The pattern of their movements had shifted. More often than not, they headed directly our way.

I’m sorry I’m not there.

“It’s not your fault, ma. You did your best, and without you the two of us would have definitely died. I was the only one who was useless. Nothing I did worked,” her voice quivered as she spoke.

You weren’t useless. Without you, I’d no longer be myself.

“But I couldn’t hurt the Horned Lord. I couldn’t even do much to damage the instrument. I was just a weakness holding the two of you back. Maybe you would have won without me.”

I had a close friend in the past whom I lost contact with when I arrived in Creation. She didn’t fight with weapons. She almost always used her wits. Before I met her, I was in a very bad place. Being a hero isn’t only about having the biggest weapon, although it certainly can help. Simply helping a tormented girl survive the day can make you a hero to her. Not every act of heroism needs to be big. Just because I’m trying to solve big problems doesn’t make the small ones any less important. We can’t solve the big problems without solving the small ones as well.

Had I told her this story before? It was hard to keep track of what I had said already.

My daughter hummed, and her shoulders relaxed, but she didn’t say anything in response. It was good enough.

I turned my attention back to my current project. I talked to my daughter about Lisa as I worked. What would Lisa think of me if she met me now? I liked to think she would be proud of how I had changed.

In an effort to try to escape the confines of my prison, I had taken to trying to use magic. I hadn’t had success yet, but I felt that I was making progress. There was nothing else for me to distract myself except trading stories with Yvette, and her voice was growing hoarse from overuse. I didn’t want her to hurt herself on my account.

“The Saint thinks the Ratlings are tracking us from your presence.” Yvette interrupted me. She chose her words carefully as she spoke, it sounded like she was chewing nails. “She wants me to try containing you with wards. I’m not happy with this plan. I don’t like the idea of trapping you like that. It’s wrong. Please refuse so that I can turn her down. We can find another solution. I’m sure of it.”

This… was a big ask.

Simply remaining trapped in nothingness was bad enough. Being imprisoned within wards on top of that was taking the unpleasantness one step further.

I wasn’t happy that the Saint had even suggested it, although I could understand her reasoning.

I had been planning to experiment with something like this but had kept putting it off. The idea was deeply uncomfortable to me. Even knowing that Cordelia’s wizards were almost certainly allies and I needed to practice against wards if I was to ever face the Warlock again hadn’t been enough to overcome my distrust.

… Let’s try. I don’t like this, either. Please break the wards if I ask you to.

An indeterminate amount of time later, and it felt like I was being seized by a vice.

She’s my daughter, she’s not going to bind me. She’s my daughter, she’s not going to bind me. She’s my daughter, she’s not going to bind me.

I repeated the words to myself like a mantra as the onset of extreme claustrophobia started to set in. Without the ability to affect the world, this was by far the most helpless I had felt since arriving in Creation.

Please lower the wards.

The words were formed in uneven writing on the inside of my prison. It couldn’t have been longer than five hails since Yvette had first placed up a ward.

Almost immediately, they fell away.

I felt ashamed at myself for not being able to remain trapped like that for longer.

“Are you fine, ma? I hope I didn’t hurt you. I knew this was a bad idea. You should have just said no. I’m sure there’s a better solution than this. I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry.”

It’s fine. I’m fine. Just dislike being trapped. Give me a moment and we can try again.

I didn’t like doing this, but… It was something that I would need to learn to deal with.

My name is Taylor Hebert. I’m twenty-three years old. I’m living in Creation, but five years past I lived in a different world. My father was Daniel Hebert and my mother was Annette…

By the third day, the hallucinations were persistent. I had taken to reciting my life’s history to myself as a form of distraction. It wasn’t a perfect answer. I was haunted by nightmares of events that had already played out. My regrets manifested through broken dreams.

I wasn’t aiming for Jack. It wasn’t even a consideration. Like he said, he had Gray Boy with him. The second I stepped into their sight, I was a goner.

My bullet took Cherish in the head. Another bullet struck Screamer.

I hesitated.

Then I shot Aster, who was held in a Hatchet Face’s arms.

Others were nightmares of events that could have happened, but didn’t.

Tattletale had unwittingly raised the stakes for my scheme. My primary goal was to gather information on them, and here I was getting a chance to see them with their masks off. It was too good to be true, which made me wonder what kind of safeguards they had in place to protect themselves.

I just had no idea what I would be getting into.

The screensaver came up while I stared at the monitor with thoughts racing through my head. The words ‘BROCKTON BAY CENTRAL LIBRARY’ scrolled across the screen in varying colors.

If I went, best case scenario, I could get enough information to turn them in. I’d get mucho cred from the good guys and respect from an international celebrity. If I’d judged Armsmaster right, I’d get even more brownie points if I gave him the info and let him – or helped him – make the bust. On the flip side of the coin, the worst case scenario was that it was a trap, or they’d figure out what I was doing. It would mean a fight, maybe a beating. There was an outside possibility I could get killed, but somehow that didn’t concern me as much as it maybe should have. Part of the reason for my lack of concern, I think, was that the possibility existed any time I went out in costume. That, and from my interactions with them last night, I didn’t get a ‘killer’ vibe from them.

On the topic of the status quo… if I didn’t go, what would happen? This particular window of opportunity would likely pass, as far as being able to get the dirt on Tattletale and her gang. That was okay, as I thought on it. It was a high risk, high reward venture anyways. Taking that path would mean turning down the meet, then killing time for the rest of the afternoon, trying to avoid dwelling on the fact that I had missed two straight afternoons of classes and might, maybe, miss more. It was depressing to think about.

There was another choice I could make. One that I realized was likely smarter. What if I contacted Armsmaster and told him about the meeting in advance? This was the perfect opportunity to set a trap for them. One where I knew the time and place. It was hedging my bets.

I dismissed the hypothetical, pushing away the billowing fog of could have been yesteryears.

My name is Taylor Hebert. I’m twenty-three years old. I’m living in Creation, but five years past I lived in a different world. My father was Daniel Hebert and my mother was Annette…

Containing me had failed to yield results. The Ratlings were still tracking the other two persistently. My daughter hadn’t managed to sleep much. She caught at most three to four hours of broken rest. Laurence didn’t need rest. Swords didn’t sleep, and neither did she.

The only progress to come out of it is an improvement to my daughter’s wards. They were nowhere near as good as the Warlocks, and there was plenty for me to criticize.

I made another attempt at trying to cast a spell. All of a sudden, I felt something. It was different from when I usually changed the world. Instead of telling it what to do, it was like to…talk to it persuasively. Convince it that it should follow my orders with words instead of forcing it to do what I wanted through brute force alone. Then, once Creation had bought my propaganda, I simply needed to close my grip. Eagerly, I tried to cast the most basic of spells.

“Stop, stop, stop! You’ve done something nearby, and it looks like uncontrollable magic. I don’t think experimenting like that is safe, and neither does Laurence. I’m sweating from the afternoon heat already, and I don’t want to sweat from worrying about what you just might do.”

The nightmares are bad. I’m looking for a way out. Don’t think being here is good for me.

“It’s safer for me to talk more to you, even if it hurts my voice.” My daughter rasped. “Please stop ma. I know that it isn’t fair, but I’m asking anyway. Laurence is twitchier than the grass around here. It waves back and forth in the wind. It’s kind of calming to watch. Swish, swish, swish. Calming. Just be calm, like the grass. Tell me about what you sense around us. That helps to distract you, right?”

I took her advice and reached around us, trying to make sense of the phantom world. More ghosts haunted the edges of my mind.

The smaller Ratlings are moving towards you again from the south and southeast. It’s uncanny. I think that it's all orchestrated by the Horned Lord. He’s trying to wear you down. If his range is this big, then he’s probably responsible for the entire species. It means that the normal spring raids are a part of whatever plan he has.

“There’s this rhyme in Rhenia about the Horned Lords. They call the Tumult a tyrant, so it would make sense if he’s in charge of everything. I wonder what the other Horned Lords do? The Eater doesn’t sound very interesting, but what about the Skein? It’s such an odd name.”

I don’t know. There is this ever present Hunger around us. It grows stronger the further north we travel.

“Then let’s talk more about tactics. That always distracts you. How do you think we should try to fight the Horned Lord? Laurence still believes that whatever you did when you cut off the song is our best chance. She wants to set a trap and bait it into an enclosed environment, then have you cut its abilities off. I think you should summon an angel on the Chain of Hunger and let them sort it out.”

What Laurence wants is effective, but I can’t do that long enough to be reliable. I want to try to fight it at range first. There are some indiscriminate attacks I couldn’t risk before because I might hit one of you two. Ideally, I’d like to try hiding us from its senses and then attack repeatedly from stealth. We don’t want to give it the chance to suppress us again. There isn’t a reason to engage it fairly at all.

I didn’t comment on the viability of summoning angels. Summoning them in anything except the most extreme of circumstances felt blasphemous to me. I wasn’t willing to call down an angel short of the end of the world.

“How about poisoning it? You can make food easily and if you drive up its hunger it should be easy to put it in a state where it can’t resist the compulsion to eat poisoned food. Then we could kill it while it’s weakened.”

I don’t think it would work. The Ratlings don’t eat the grass on the plains, regardless of how hungry they grow. They likely have some defence mechanism against consuming fatal foods.

“Then how about…”

We kept trading ideas back and forth as the other two continued onwards. It was not nearly as effective a distraction as I’d have hoped it to be.

My name is Taylor Hebert. I’m twenty-three years old. I’m living in Creation, but five years past I lived in a different world. My father was Daniel Hebert and my mother was Annette…

I was becoming desperate by the fourth day. Despite the request of both my daughter and the Saint, I was seriously considering trying to use magic again. I could always move away from the group and experiment elsewhere, right?

The angels had been there for me, and providing emotional support, but that wasn’t enough to drive back the darkness.

“You thought Jack had a thinker power. Why? What?”

There was a pause.

“Because he’s like Weaver. He reacts like someone that is way too aware of what’s going on.”

Acts like me?

I’d made the comparison myself, but I’d tempered that, held back as I formed that conclusion. Hearing it in such a blunt way stung as much as a slap in the face.

I pushed back against the vision, fought back against memories of my past self. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe that I could last through this. I knew that I could. It was more that I knew how bad this was for my mental state. I’d spent years putting the puzzle that was my life back together. I didn’t want to have to do that again.

My name is Taylor Hebert. I’m twenty-three years old. I’m living in Creation, but five years past I lived in a different world. My father was Daniel Hebert and my mother was Annette…

It wasn’t just memories of Earth Bet, either. Most of the time I was haunted by losses on Creation. The Revolution and the burning of Liesse featured heavily in my mind.

The sound was distant, coming from down a narrow alley beside the tavern. We wouldn’t have even noticed it if not for the song. Looking, I spotted a run-down building with a sign on the outside. It took a couple of heartbeats to read it, with my vision spinning the way it was. Happy Endings. It looked like the kind of place that Roland would probably be visiting in a day or two to find out more about the auction. I wasn’t too keen on staying somewhere like it, but everywhere else had been full.

“Let’s check it, Taylor?” Max said.

“Not going to make the joke about the kinds of happy endings they offer?”

“Not the right time.”

I didn’t like the idea of staying in the maybe brothel, but it was better than returning to Roland empty-handed or staggering around like this much longer. Perhaps we could pay the bard with the money we were saving on rent to shut up. The noise was almost as grating as the feeling at the back of my head.

Staring into the abyss this long wasn’t sustainable. If it wasn’t for the hallucinations, I’d be fine. Possibly. Another three days like this, and I wasn’t sure that I would be the same person coming out the other side. I’d be scarred in both new and old ways. With very little except my own thoughts to occupy me, there were plenty of monsters to haunt my conscience.

I turned my attention back towards the small bundles of hunger moving within my range.

I wondered what Ratlings dreamed of. Maybe freedom from their hunger? How about their next meal? I imagined that I could almost see those dreams tied loosely to them, drifting up into the fathomless void around me.

“I think that fire roasted Ratling tastes better than grilled Ratling. Not that I like either of them. I wish ma was with us. Then we could eat real food. Why are we eating Ratling anyhow? I know there are other animals around. Just because they’re hard to find doesn’t mean we shouldn’t make the effort. It can’t be that hard to track other creatures in this sea of grass.”

What about Laurence and my daughter? Laurence’s dreams were probably something simple. She wanted everything evil to die. Swing the sword. Off with their heads! Yes, that was Laurence. Yvette… wanted to make me proud. I was sure of it. That was her dream, to make her mother proud of her.

I needed a way to escape from this non-existence. It was haunting, torturous. I felt pity for anyone having to endure something similar. Finding new ways to distract myself was becoming more and more difficult.

What were my options? I could try to solve this by myself. Try to find an answer with magic. I didn’t think anyone except me even considered that an option. Was there anything else I could do? Talking to my daughter, prayer, and support from my family were helping. They weren’t helping enough.

I wanted to remain stable in three days time. I wanted to be happy, to not shudder whenever I’m left alone in a dark room. There was no reason to suffer just for the sake of endurance. If there was a way out of this, I’d take it.

“Is there anything else you can do to help me?”

I directed the question towards my family.

A sense of commiseration along with the usual feeling of compassion came to me. There was nothing they could do to me without fundamentally changing who I was. The answer was frustrating, but not unexpected.

I was about to fly away and start experimenting on my own once more when a calm reassurance came from them again. They wanted me to have faith in myself, to trust that I could hold out like this. I had the sense that they believed I would be able to manage. That I should confront my fears, because I would come out the other side better from the experience.

The idea terrified me.

This was in many ways my worst nightmare. I was trapped in a dark place with no way out.

A stinging feeling on the skin at the back of my neck was the first thing I felt upon waking up. Next, came the odour. Pungent, oily, the smell of unwashed bodies. I wrinkled my nose. It must have been a prank of some sort, but for a prank, this was really going too far. I would need to tell Grace this was…

A slap to my face sent me tumbling to the ground. I opened my eyes. A man was standing over me. He said some words in a language I didn’t understand. His tone was harsh, angry. I took a second to assess the situation. I was naked, there was a man standing over me, he held a heated brand in one hand.

There was no need to know anything else. I reached towards my bugs. My eyes widened in shock when they found none. The man had a knife on his belt. I pushed myself to my feet and made to grab at it. My blood started to boil. I staggered back in pain. The man looked at me, satisfied, and repeated the same phrase that I didn’t know.

I felt revulsion as I pushed the vision aside. Another false memory.

Could I hold on for three more days? Was I truly able to persevere through this and remain happy with myself once I reached the other side? I knew that experimenting with magic when I had no way to perceive what I was doing was dangerous, possibly suicidal. There was no way for me to predict what the outcome of my actions would be.

The angels thought that I could handle this. So did Laurence and Yvette.

I shoved my attention back into the many spots that were within the essence of me. The more time I spent like this, the clearer they seemed to become. The pinpricks of hunger reminded me of the stars in the night sky, or of the swarm I had once had so very long ago.

My name is Taylor Hebert. I’m twenty-three years old. I’m living in Creation, but five years past I lived in a different world. My father was Daniel Hebert and my mother was Annette…

I could do this. I had to do this. Everyone that mattered thought that using magic to escape without any prior experience using it was a bad idea. They all believed in me. I would prove them right, no matter how stifling these circumstances were.

Then day five arrived, and my dreams became surreal.