When Heroes Die

“Redemption is a journey that starts from within and has no set destination. It is not a prize to be earned.”

– A Stranger’s Guide to Names in Calernia, Author Unknown

Alaya stayed alone in the council room for a long time, with only silence and thought for company. She watched the sky outside the window as the moon gradually dragged itself from one side of the heavens to the other.

She was about to head to sleep and ruminate on her troubles when a voice called out from behind her.

“Allie.”

A moment of silence.

“Maddie,” she turned around and smiled at him as she spoke.

He was holding a bottle of wine in one hand. He wore a loose white shirt and baggy trousers. His pale green eyes were as sharp as ever. She could almost see the turning of cogs behind them. Approaching, he pulled the cork out of the bottle and passed it to her. He reclined himself in one of the chairs at the table only a few heartbeats later. She sat down beside him and pulled deeply out of the bottle, then wiped the smooth back of her hand against her mouth. There was no need for manners here.

It was a truly horrid wine that somehow tasted of mud. The two of them had been drinking it for years now. It reminded her of better years. Times when the both of them were more innocent in the ways of the world. She passed the bottle back, and he took a pull of his own.

“I’m not sure why we keep drinking that,” he confessed. “It tastes like mud and a future bereft of prospects.”

“Nostalgia,” she mused. “I will concede that it tastes worse than any other spirits I have sampled. Certainly worse than anything in Wekesa’s cellar.”

Both of them shared a grin at the thought. Wekesa did not appreciate their efforts to relieve him of his finer vintages. All the Calamities except Sabah made a game of trying to filch his bottles.

“There is that. He lost another bottle from Kahan to Scribe on a bet. It has him in a foul mood.”

The shared amusement lasted only a moment before both of them sobered once more.

“Do you bring news from the west?”

Thunder crackled outside. There was always a storm around the tower, raging impotently or preparing to rage.

“Wekesa made a mess in Liesse,” Amadeus finally noted. “The number of heroes we have seen show up this year has increased. Rebellions in Callow will keep cropping up, and it’s only a matter of years until the Principate stops biting at its own tail. After Liesse they will be calling for a crusade. We’re lucky they haven’t called for one already. There would already be calls for blood if more people had died during the fight.”

Amadeus passed the bottle back to her. Alaya drank deeply, then set it down on the table.

“Procer is being handled for now, although I don’t expect that to last much longer. The moment the Principate is united, the Empire is threatened. Let’s make sure it doesn’t come to that. I’ll promote conflict in Aisne. If a revolt occurs, the Principate might not be able to feed itself. I want you to put your gambit with the rats into play.” Alaya paused. “The Truebloods smell blood in the water. We’ve held Callow firm all these years. A moment of vulnerability, and now the knives are coming out.”

One move at a time, for the past five years, Alaya had been emptying Tasia Sehalian’s coffers. She continued to levy fines against Tasia for breaking inconsequential laws. The Wolofites kept paying to break them. Her coffers had gradually dwindled, and soon she would be forced to take on loans. Then one day her coin would run out. Tasia would default on her loans and her own family would rise to remove her. That was when the executioner’s axe would drop.

After a few more moves were made in the aftermath, the Truebloods would end as a political entity in the Empire as well.

“I’ll do that,” Amadeus agreed. “I’ll visit refuge first. This gambit will appeal to Hye. We will see what we can rustle up in the north.” He smiled at her with a smile that always looked like it was at someone else’s expense. “Let the High Lords grumble. Let them rebel, even. The moment they take up arms, they will be crushed underfoot.”

“The idea has always been seductive to me in its simplicity,” she admitted. “But as I’ve told you before, it would do more harm than good. The cities of the High Lords would have to be taken, and the cost in lives and resources would ruin Praes for a generation. The aristocracy wouldn’t surrender if the Legions marched to end their reign, even if we were winning. Two millennia of culture and history can’t be washed away with blood. There’s more to ruling than hanging whoever disagrees with you.”

“You have a plan?”

“I plan to offer them a poisoned compromise. The position of Chancellor is not the only one worth fighting over. It was Wekesa who made a mess, and this time he will clean it up. The opportunity to earn the position of his apprentice should serve as a boon.”

The High Lords had never understood exactly what they were dealing with. They kept making the mistake of measuring the Calamities against names long dead. All of their weaknesses had been thoroughly investigated. Many of them would fight amongst each other for the chance to be apprenticed to the Warlock, even if there was nothing to be gained.

“He won’t agree.”

“It is not in his nature to teach,” she agreed. “But I am not asking that of him. Let them follow him around, but what they learn is up to them.”

Amadeus picked up the bottle and finished the last gulp, then set it down once more.

“Has he given his approval?”

“Four positions have been made available. Three will be fought over by the High Lords and one will be assigned to the legions.”

Amadeus would eventually agree to the idea. Alaya could trust him to act according to his nature. He believed the armies from the west would come, and he would do his best to prepare for them. She loved the man, but his way was insufficient. Alaya was working to prevent those armies from marching east at all. She wished to rule the Empire forever, she did not wish to engage in a doomed conflict with the west. The Empire could not weather a crusade.

The Legions would fail, and the Calamities would fail. The fight for Callow was not one the Heavens would ever allow them to win.

Amadeus had been trying for years now to convince Wekesa to open a school for magic. His attempts had never been met with success. It was one of their oldest arguments. If one of the Legion sorcerers was able to learn anything from time spent in Wekesa’s presence, then the Legions might have a teacher after all.

This was an opportunity the man could not pass up.

“This is dangerous.” Amadeus’s eyes narrowed. “The Truebloods will have at least one ambitious heir. It also does nothing to placate the people of Callow.”

He was correct in that. Akua Sahelian was already showing signs of brilliance, even at her young age. Spies in Wolof had begun reporting on Tasia’s schemes for the girl. Unfortunately, it was unlikely that she would fall for this ruse. Tasia Sahelian had Dumisai of Aksum under lock and key, and the man was almost as capable a sorcerer as Wekesa was.

High Lord Idress had been one of her closest political allies for decades. The wealth of his holdings were of great use in keeping the influence of Tasia Sahelian at bay. While that had yet to change, in the wake of the disaster at Liesse their relationship had cooled. Placing Tasia’s girl under Wekesa’s care would have offered Alaya another lever over the Truebloods in the event their alliance came to an end.

“Wekesa has agreed to help with the reconstruction of the city of Liesse,” Alaya dismissed.

“It’s not enough. The burning of Liesse made the common people care about who rules them again. The current Governor will have to be killed.”

High Lord Igwe would become more than a minor complication if the death was public. The Callowans would need to be denied a display. Ruling Praes was a careful balance of give and take. Playing different factions off each other and never allowing one to grow too strong.

“The Truebloods will not be happy. We will have him assassinated discreetly, and then move in another wasteland aristocrat as a replacement when the right opportunity presents itself.”

Alaya could stomach the abolition of the Imperial governorships. Amadeus could even be set up as a regent for Callow, but now was not yet the time. The Truebloods needed to be weakened first. If they pulled power from them now, they were sure to fight back.

Amadeus started to speak again. “I want to substantially increase the wages for Callowans enlisting in the Legions. Few ever take the opportunity. Have them spend time among Orcs and Goblins, then rotate the newer Legions between their own borders and those closest to the High Lords.”

“That is a dangerous risk. I do not want to have to put down a Callowan rebellion with Legion training many years down the line.”

“It’s calculated. It won’t be a problem when they integrate into the Legions. They will prove less inclined to revolt if they are overseeing their own people or facing a common foe. There will still be some uprisings. Many years will pass before the consequences of Liesse have scarred over.”

“Do you have any new plans to deal with the heroine who started this all?”

The Aspirant had made it onto the Red List at Wekesa’s urging. It was a distinction she shared with only Klaus Pappenheim. A demon who had transcended her nature and earned a heroic name was too dangerous to allow free. Unfortunately, her nature made it almost impossible for her to be vanquished or bound. Contingencies had to be prepared. The Eyes were investigating every fragment of information they could acquire on her in order to establish her weaknesses. Little had been learned. They believed she had arrived at what was now known as Constance’s Scar and not much else.

“I still hold to it that she is not meant to fight us,” Amadeus said. “We do not know what her story is, but she would have clashed with us long before Liesse if we were her intended foes.”

“And yet…”

“We need to prepare regardless.” Amadeus agreed. “Attacking her story remains our only effective recourse. Working to undermine her reputation with other heroes is also a possibility, but it remains one fraught with risk. Containing her would be folly, and diverting her can only succeed so many times.” Amadeus leaned on the table and steepled his fingers. “It will take effort from both of us to properly pull this off.”

“It is regrettable that we have come to the current situation,” Alaya conceded. “We cannot afford a second instance. Once an opportunity has been found, the Aspirant needs to die.”

Together with the Artist, the Aspirant had thrown the state of Callow into disarray. It was expected that she would resurface eventually and would prove a threat on par with either Levant’s Grey Pilgrim or the Saint of Swords. Demons were naturally capable of ignoring stories. There was no telling what a demon could achieve when sworn to the side of Above.

“Well, yes,” Amadeus agreed.

It was her twelfth summer when Akua first learned of the fabled twenty-fourth demon.

The news had been brought to her by one of her family agents. They had been investigating the details surrounding the Warlock’s offer of apprenticeship. It hadn’t taken long for them to determine that participating in the farce would prove detrimental to her education. There was nothing the man was willing to teach that her papa was not capable of in turn. Anything truly worthwhile would be locked away out of sight, and thus this prize was left for those with lesser ambitions than her. However, the investigations had not proven entirely fruitless. The agents had stumbled upon papers containing accidental references hinting at the existence of documentation written on the subject of the heroine who fought the Warlock at Liesse alluding to her existence as a demon.

Finding out more had been the work of a season.

Managing to have a copy transcribed had cost her a small fortune and the lives of over two dozen family agents in the Tower, but she’d found the prize worth it. Contrary to popular belief in the Wasteland, the Warlock’s failure in Liesse had not come at the hands of a powerful Named sorcerer. His failure had come at the hands of a demon instead. The assertion that it was a hitherto unknown type of demon had at first been dismissed as the failings of an inadequate sorcerer until copies of his other writings had been acquired. Warlock was a prolific author, and the sheer spectrum of anomalous sorceries the man had been able to categorize swiftly laid that thought to rest. He was certainly one of the most talented sorcerers of his generation and was not to be underestimated.

Warlock had been forgiven for his failure to capture or contain the thing. Demons were born of Evil, and so Evil could not destroy them. Even the most talented of Praesi sorcerers would be hard-pressed to properly bind a demon, let alone one that had never been observed before. It was for a good reason that Dread Empress Triumphant – may she never return – had been so feared.

It was then that Akua’s interest was truly piqued, but it wasn’t until the discovery of documents pertaining to the nature of the demonic corruption that discovering more about the heroic demon was deemed a matter of critical import. Warlock asserted that the demon’s taint on Creation was almost imperceptible. It was as if the thing was attempting to mimic the tabula rasa effect with only minor differences. Warlock had speculated after investigating those discrepancies that the demon’s essence could either be classified as narration or verisimilitude. Unfortunately, the exact details of those investigations were left sparse, and only his conclusions were provided. It was impossible to learn more without having the beast on hand to vivisect.

The existence of this newly discovered demon also posed other, more pressing questions. If the age-old belief that there were only twenty-three demons had proven to be false, then how many other types of demons were there, truly? How had thousands of years passed before the twenty-fourth was discovered? What could a villain achieve by binding never before seen monstrosities to their will? Warlock’s records on this single specimen made it evident that the thing was far more intelligent than others of its kind. It had proven capable of not only hiding itself from discovery for years, but also of earning a name. Even if after investigation it was revealed this was the last type of beast to be found, it still proved to be by far the most versatile demon in existence.

Akua was determined to be the first to discover how to summon and bind one of its kind.

Learning more would be a daunting undertaking for most. It would be the work of many years to discover where exactly this new demon came from, but Akua was not one to allow her ambitions to be tempered. Akua’s plans were still in their infancy, and there was much room for them to grow. Vivisecting the anomaly would prove the most expedient method to further the plans she currently had in place.

What could a villain achieve with a demon specifically designed to manipulate narrative itself? By their very nature, all demons corrupted stories. This would be taking the manipulation of narrative one step further. Could this new type of demon be used to define how stories should end, and in doing so break the hold of Good on victory in Calernia? Could it be used to show the world once more that none were beyond humbling? Praes was a legacy. It represented the last great villains of Calernia. The drow of the Everdark had collapsed into bickering tribes, and the Chain of Hunger was nothing more than a horde of starving rats. The Dead King had not stirred from beyond his borders in centuries. All that was left with the Dread Empire. Villains had become so inured to tragedy that they were allowing their legacy to fade gently away.

Akua looked up from her desk and turned around. Behind her was another youth only ten summers old bound to an altar. She reviewed the ritual circle behind him a final time before making her way over and plunging the knife into the whimpering victim below. It was essential that she remain methodical throughout the process. Akua did not hesitate as she drew blood. It was a lesson that her mother had instilled in her many years ago. She wiped down the blade and set it gently to one side of the altar. A devil materialized within the circle moments later.

She began to negotiate with the creature in earnest. The negotiations concluded in the same manner as all prior agreements. Two souls in exchange for questions answered fully and without attempts to obfuscate the truth. Once more, the devil failed to divulge anything in regard to the twenty-fourth demon that she did not already know, and once more the devil was dismissed. Akua made her way back over to her desk and started the process of memorizing her collection of notes. Leaving evidence of her experiments for the perusal of others was an unacceptable risk. Once she had completed the task, she consigned her documents to the flames. It would be years before her many plans neared completion, in many ways this undertaking could be considered the start of her life’s work.

Capturing a heroine would prove challenging and would be the culmination of many years of work. To bind a heroic demon would be termed madness beyond all but the most successful of Praesi villains. Akua had not decided what it was she wished to strive for yet, but she knew that she was not satisfied to remain squabbling down in the mud. She would be no mere Chancellor or Black Knight. The world would tremble when she rose to power, and none but the bravest and most foolhardy would even dare to whisper her name.