An Epic Hero Story: Book 2 Chapter 37 (Patreon)

Two days, that’s how long we were left wondering when the wretchlings would grow tired of waiting for Morlo to wake up. When the tension finally broke, it did so in a way none of us had really anticipated. We’d been expecting a sudden attack from our new allies, perhaps knives in the night.

We hadn’t thought the Thaumaturge would actually come to.

It didn’t feel like a stroke of luck at first, though. For the early minutes of Morlo’s return to consciousness all we could concern ourselves with was the collateral damage.

Apparently, he’d been having bad dreams. Really bad dreams. And it took him a while to realise he’d left them behind when his slumber finally ended. Morlo the Great and Terrible reminded everyone once again how he had earned his moniker.

The flames were our first warning, and a warning to anyone within five miles with how high they went. Let it never be said that Morlo’s powers were damaged when he fell before that Demon, because the fire must have leapt higher than a castle wall before he bothered to stem it and rose in his dazed frenzy. 

By then the wretchlings were panicking and clearing out, while I, in my idiocy, headed for the source of the power. This wasn’t a burst of heroism of course, I just figured out that my best odds of surviving involved getting to Morlo and talking some sense into him so that our fellowship might reclaim most of its combat power as soon as possible. Better that than let the wretchlings galvanize first.

They might decide we were too dangerous to leave alive, now.

Had I not possessed Thaumaturgy of my own, even approaching Morlo would’ve been quite a dangerous affair. Fortunately protecting myself from both force and heat were among the first things he’d taught me. One shield to repel any air moving faster than a jog, held out a few feet ahead of me to give me plenty of clearance from any magic coming my way. Then I’d siphon the thermal energy that bled past it and hopefully turn it into my own power to avoid being cooked.

Except things like that really worked best when you had more than a tenth of the power you were being threatened with. I felt my armour heating up, then a few moments later felt blisters begin to swell across my skin as Morlo’s unleashed power went haywire. Not much time before I was too hurt to do anything but writhe on the ground and gurgle, so I got to talking fast.

“Morlo, you stupid bastard,” I roared, “you’re awake!”

Morlo didn’t seem to hear me, so I tried again. When that didn’t work I punted a rock at his head and, to my surprise, actually connected. Though the impact jerked him to the side and left a trickle of blood running down his temple, it certainly got his attention…

…for better or for worse.

The Thaumaturge’s eyes fell onto me and I just froze, understanding how the deer felt staring down the bow of a huntsman. For a second I wasn’t sure whether I’d live or die. Then I became certain it was death waiting for me, that any moment now I’d see a flash of light and feel a burst of heat and stop existing altogether.

Morlo slowly lowered himself back down to the ground, the gale-force winds abating around him, the power relaxing as it coiled at his will.

“I’m awake,” he echoed, blinking through pain-misted eyes. He nodded, more to himself than me I suspected, and nodded again more confidently. “Right. Good, about time. What did I miss while I was out?”

He asked it so matter-of-factly that I couldn’t help but answer with basically a full report. I’d gotten quite good at giving those, on account of all the ridiculous shit I’d witnessed, and this one was made easier by the fact that I didn’t have to worry about embellishing all my own unheroics out to keep my undeserved reputation from melting. Morlo’s confusion seemed to have gone entirely by the time I was finished, and the wretchlings were gathering around us as well. They didn’t look confident by any means.

Morlo did, though. It hadn’t taken him long to re-equip his mask of invisibility, and even I was left wondering whether it really was a mask at all.

“Right then,” the Thaumaturge grunted, “I need a bath and something to eat, so I say we head to the nearest settlements to the undead threat.”

“Sheppleberry?” I asked him, surprising myself with how eager I was. 

“What?”

“Sheppleberry is right next to the Dungeon, right?” I pressed, “it’s…uh…” I did not want to say, out loud, that it was where everything started, because although I was now fairly certain it was my own fault that rotters were sweeping across the countryside like a plague, that didn’t mean I wanted other people to go around getting that same impression. Morlo seemed to understand what I was getting at, and that I didn’t want it given voice. 

But he crushed my hopes of returning to home with a single gesture.

“No use, I already examined that area before taking you out of there. Whatever this is caused by, it’s something else. But Sheppleberry is far from the only area in that region with Old Nation ruins.”

The Old Nation was mentioned so casually that I barely even registered it. It was probably a warning of how accustomed to traveling with Morlo I’d gotten, that hearing the name of a damned fairytale given as the object of our search had such little effect on me. 

Vara was less inured, apparently.

“The Old Nation?” she cut in, “it’s real?”

Morlo smiled, an odd twist to his lips.

“Oh yes, they’re real. And no, that isn’t a good thing.”

He didn’t need to tell me that, another thing I’d learned is that the truly magical is very rarely of any benefit to everyone else. 

Vara of course was full of questions regardless. I’d have thought growing up as a woman would teach someone not to stick their nose in things that might kill them at any moment, but apparently male violence had only made her more resistant to the effects of fearing death. 

I didn’t much care either way at the time, only noting that it felt somewhat like justice that Morlo was being irritated by her endless questioning after all the trouble he caused us by falling unconscious. That wasn’t the only thought on my mind, though. I’d almost died too many times to ever have only one thought on my mind at that point. 

“That Demon threatened us,” I told the Thaumaturge when we had a free moment, “and it didn’t give me the impression it’d be leaving us alone.”

“Aye,” Morlo growled, “I’d expected that. Vindictive creatures, are Demons. Now that I’ve defied it by going and living, I imagine we can expect trouble from it for quite some time. But they can’t just manifest anywhere they like, fortunately. Else you’d have all been slaughtered in my absence.”

He had as strong a knack for keeping my spirits up as ever. Besides that, though, there was a change to Morlo. One I struggled to put my finger on until he gave me a big hint by asking his next question.

“Did I say anything while I was unconscious?” he probed, a wary edge now to his voice. 

I got the very sudden impression that I was now in dangerous conversational territory, and I responded accordingly.

“No,” I lied, before making a really big wish that Morlo wouldn’t unveil some magical means of seeing through deception in response. I thought he would for a second, with how intense his stare was.

“Alright then,” he said at last. I didn’t sigh in relief, I didn’t do anything that might be perceived as anything, just nodded and kept walking on alongside him, trying not to send sidelong glances over to the Thaumaturge. 

Amazing. Just a few days with him unconscious and I’d almost forgotten how stressful being around the curmudgeonly lunatic was. But one conversation brought it all out. Nevermind armies, there was something more dangerous still walking with me at that very moment.

And the Demon had the better of him, when last they’d fought. I shivered.

Now that we were closing in on the area I’d been born, I was starting to recognise the landscape around me. Not directly, I didn’t think I’d actually laid eyes on any of it, but there was something about the terrain that just seemed familiar. Perhaps nature builds its hills in predictable patterns. Perhaps simply being close to Sheppleberry meant everything was more alike to it. 

Perhaps it was just in my head. God knew by then I’d learned better than to go around trusting my own instincts for everything, they could be so easily misled. 

Night fell before we reached any destination, and by then all of us were feeling more than restless. Somehow the lifting of imminent danger had only worsened our moods, as if letting our minds focus on the minutiae at last. Bickering was considerable, and Cedwin’s glares became far more intensely aimed my way. I figured he’d decided that his chance to cut and run was gone, now that Morlo had woken up. Figured he’d decided to blame me for it since I was a more convenient target than the mature Thaumaturge who’d stared down a Demon.

Figured he was probably right on both accounts, and so I stayed cautious.

Not that cautious thought, because as much as tempers were shortening and moods deteriorating, Morlo’s return had brought a level of security to us all that was hard to overstate. The biggest question had been whether he’d keep travelling with the wretchlings, but to my surprise he opted to do so.

“A few hundred extra weapons between us and danger is no small thing,” he told me, “even if they are wielded by arms as small as those.”

His was one of the more positive attitudes towards the wretchlings, and vice-versa. Most people didn’t even bother to use their actual name of Echityk. 

It wasn’t our attitudes that were of concern, though.

“The backup is good,” Chak began as we sat around our fire the next night, “but other humans don’t like wretchlings any more than we do. It might get hard to find shelter in towns if we’re hauling them around with us.”

“Impossible, more like,” Dubin grumbled, “and I’m not sure what good they’ll even do us. A few hundred wretchlings won’t help much if we’re attacked by thousands again, will it? Tens of thousands even. And what if that Demon comes back? They said it themselves, they couldn’t do anything to resist it.”

Vonti alone kept quiet, eyes flicking from us to the wretchlings, fidgeting. I was just starting to fear that someone would ask me about the topic and make me commit to an answer when Morlo spoke up.

“Don’t underestimate the dangers of an ambush,” he said evenly. “If we have so many more safeguards against getting our throats cut in the night then that leaves our chances of success that much better. And make no mistake, our chances of survival are our chances of success long-term, at least if this undead infestation is half so bad as I’m beginning to fear.”

That was a lovely note to end the conversation on. I caught Cedwin staring at Morlo as the rest of us readied to sleep, and it suddenly occurred to me that the Thaumaturge had just tacitly told the gunner that he was vulnerable to being killed in his sleep.

I made sure to sleep as lightly as before, after that. It wouldn’t do to wake up and find our major safeguard against Demonic attacks killed in the night. Wouldn’t do at all. 

Thinking of how to keep my own allies from murdering me, what a hero I am.