An Epic Hero Story: Book 2 Chapter 38 (Patreon)

We finally had sight of another settlement, just two days later. Those days were not enough to finally unwind our coiled nerves, but after a good few hundred hours of not being swarmed by Demons in total even our most highly-strung paranoids were finally starting to calm down. Slightly. 

Gruin was doing the opposite as usual. As hard as it had been to convince him not to enact what would have been the second largest wretchling massacre in recorded history, it was a lot harder to convince him to continue tolerating their presence on an hourly basis. As with most things, Morlo’s awakening made it that much easier. 

Or at least possible.

The town was looking like it’d make that danger lower, provided we got lucky and turned out to have moved faster than the word of our little incident in the last human settlement we’d stayed at. Morlo was interested in that, too, though only in the purely academic way he seemed to be interested in everything.

“There’s a lot of theories about the connection between darkthings and Demons,” he explained as we walked. “I haven’t found to prove any of them yet, though I’ve seen quite a few disproven in my time. Most of academia is a lot of shit being thrown at a wall, followed by prolonged waiting periods as men—old men of wealth, usually—see what sticks.”

In my own experience of academia, I’ve come to learn that Morlo was being rather charitable. Things might be getting better these days. Possibly. Who knows? I certainly don’t, as the world’s foremost Hero me knowing how good things are would require that I be told the truth about anything when I ask people.

[++I had a paper rejected once, and was called a whore in the rejection notice. I don’t think our academia is very good either.++]

Morlo took the lead in approaching this new settlement, and the wretchlings all hung back. Well back. So far back, in fact, that we couldn’t see them, and hoped the townsfolk couldn’t either. I felt something dangerously close to introspection at that as it showed me first-hand how difficult travel is for some people. 

It didn’t last of course, I was too busy focusing on me to think about anything else that much. We were staring up at a closed gate and a few unfriendly faces within the minute, and I enjoyed having someone else to speak for us more than I would have admitted.

“Who goes there?” one of the townsfolk called out. I watched Morlo, waited to see what cunning manipulation he’d use to weasel or daunt our way in. 

I had overestimated his patience.

“Have you been getting attacked or bothered by swarms of undead lately?” he called up to the people, “if so, we’re here to do something about it. I’m a Thaumaturge and I have two reasonably powerful apprentices with me, plus seven especially skilled and well-equipped warriors, plus a force over that hill which…will serve as effective reinforcements should we need them to.”

It didn’t take long for a decision to follow that.

We saw the gates open and were promptly ushered in. I kept my guard up, more out of habit than anything, and looked around as we entered. More and more, I was coming to realise how similar the rural towns of Anglyn were. I didn’t think there was some deliberate unity in how their designs ended up, more likely there were just convenient or easy ways of assembling architecture in such circumstances, that all the different people around converged on. 

Buildings were made similar in style and size, spaced as I’d come to expect and as far from the walls as was usual. 

“Is it just me,” Vara asked, “or are you finding it hard to remember Sheppleberry these days?”

I realised, with a sudden stab of unease, that I was. My own town had been just like this, after all. I probably wasn’t struck quite so hard by the feeling as Vara herself, having grown up outside of the main settlement itself, but there was still a disquieting sensation there. Something about my own past breaking off and falling away from the rest in retrospect.

We weren’t left to dwell on it for long, however. Business was too pressing for that, and Morlo too eager to get on it. 

As a nice change of pace, though, I only had to stand around and vaguely pay attention while he did all the talking. I had missed him being alive and conscious to take care of things. 

This town’s people remained friendlier than the last, which told me that they probably hadn’t gotten word of what we’d done yet. Morlo gave nothing away as he probed them for reports of weird sightings in the local area, as well as any rumours they may or may not have heard regarding the not-so-local area. 

That latter topic proved to be…somewhat unconstructive. 

A lot of people will say some very charged things about country folk, considering them backwards, uneducated idiots. This is not true, as city people are also incredibly stupid and ignorant, and both country and city folk nonetheless enjoy an advantage over the nobility due to not having been produced by a marriage between first cousins. 

Nonetheless, I wouldn’t trust their testimonies very far. People in the outskirts of Anglysh civilisation, where the land is plains and hills and coiling mist, tend towards exaggeration at an alarming rate.

Apparently, there were a great many mysterious monsters active locally. An unbelievable many, I should say. So when we asked about that, hoping to hear useful information about roaming undead or, potentially, necromantic hedge-wizards, we were instead treated to;

Descriptions of ‘The Beast, a carnivorous monster with between two and seven heads that supposedly ate people, save for any that were personally known by the ones telling us about it, and exclusively hunted in areas with poor visibility where solid eye witness accounts could not be gathered.

Descriptions of necromancers, who appeared to be responsible for using their magic to cause every single stroke of misfortune the town had recently suffered and, in a shocking coincidence, just so happened to be colluding with exclusively the most unpopular and ostracised people among the settlement.

Morlo was far more patient with it all than me, oddly enough. Another example of how the Thaumaturge’s madness and instability was at least partly for show, because he just stood there nodding and gesturing the townsfolk on as they continued gibbering away about their rumours and superstition. 

When they’d finally finished, tapering off like the tip of a particularly badly made sword, Morlo cut in with an easy tone that worked wonderfully at disguising his general contempt. “You’ve all given me much to consider,” he said evenly, “and I will investigate what you’ve told me thoroughly.”

That seemed to please the townsfolk a lot, who wasted no time in clearing out and leaving our group alone to discuss things in peace with the promise that we’d be sheltered for the night.

As soon as Morlo had the eyes off him, his demeanour fell. 

“Right, most of that was bullshit, but I caught a few tidbits that sound worth actually investigating at least,” he told us all frankly.

“The stuff about the necromancers?” I guessed.

“The stuff about the sounds,” Morlo corrected, “the groaning. Could be wind bouncing off hills and rolling around the area, could be something more. I don’t expect to find anything untoward looking through most of these things, just so we’re all clear. But I do intend to be thorough.”

He said it like a man who’d paid for not being thorough before, and had every intention of correcting that mistake.

“So we’re going all together, then?” I guessed.

“God no,” Morlo grinned, “no, I’ll investigate it and I’ll take one of you with me. Uh, you Kyvaine. Everyone else I want here to hold down the fort and stop the townspeople from doing anything stupid. I don’t know how they might shit this up, but I know that normal people need to be watched constantly.”

I didn’t know why I’d been chosen, and I was far from happy about it. I also knew better than to bother complaining, all that would do was take a notch out of my undeserved reputation. Morlo and I headed out shortly and made a beeline straight for the hills. 

Straight for where we’d been told mysterious, evil voices had been heard in the night. I was on edge the whole time, as you might imagine. Despite it, though, there wasn’t actually any incident when we got there, nor when we returned to town. We walked around investigating a few more peculiarities, and then moved on without anything of note occurring. Just as Morlo said would probably happen.

The whole group headed out of town shortly after that, and we kept travelling. Continued what, I was soon to learn, was going to be among the most exhaustive searches of my life.

A few days into it, the wretchlings and us parted ways after Morlo came to some kind of arrangement about future reconvening. I won’t pretend to have understood what was going on, save the broad strokes of our no longer being surrounded by them. That certainly lifted spirits among our fellowship. In hindsight, I will note that the added vulnerability was not so ideal.

“No helping it,” Morlo explained, “they have too many mouths to feed, they couldn’t tag along after us forever. They’ll be where we need them, mark my words.” 

I had no choice but to take him at face value there, though I’d been given reason by then to believe that the Thaumaturge knew his business in most things. One day I would discover the source of Morlo’s seemingly unnatural knowledge, for the time being I could only shrug and factor it in as a  known quality.

We headed to other towns shortly after that, making quick progress through the Anglysh countryside. Our questions didn’t really change, and unfortunately neither did the answers. The details were different, disparate calling cards between the mythical beasts we were having reported to us in different places, but after a while the stories all blended in together.

Save for the talk of shamblers. That remained the same, and it was this that told us we were on the right track. Of course soon after we started actually encountering the things ourselves, which served as far better evidence.

I also found one of my larger fears confirmed, because the shamblers seemed just as interested in me as they’d been when I first took flight from Sheppleberry. 

We’d had the chance to rest and heal over the past weeks, and so all of us were meeting the monsters with a great deal more energy than normal. I myself felt like my armour was weightless, moving more easily with the sixty pounds bound across my body than I used to while naked. Though I have to admit, our physical condition was of limited consequence with Morlo there. 

The shamblers came at us in dozens and scores, but Morlo was dispatching most of them before they could actually close in to fight us physically. Waving his hands and cackling as the air burned with magic. 

I won’t pretend not to have been scared fighting the few that reached us anyway, but damn if this wasn’t a de-escalation to the threats I’d grown used to. The creatures thrust at me with spears or swung with axes, and I turned away everything that came my way. I actually had strength to spare, found their motions seeming to drag behind in my vision like I was watching the whole world slowed down for ease of viewing. 

We cleaned up quickly and moved on quicker still, without so much as a single wound between the lot of us.

“I’d say that means we’re on the right track,” Gruin growled eagerly.