An Epic Hero Story: Book 2 Chapter 46 (Patreon)

Vara was waiting for me when I finally left Morlo’s presence, which was a surprise. Not an unpleasant one.

And not a pleasant one.

I realise now that I’ve not given much time to her presence over the last few events I went over. She was there of course, witnessed everything from the Foggy Peaks to that desperate defence in the blackmist shelter. But she’d not seemed her usual self until now. 

The reason for why, of course, was actually more unnerving than any darkening of her mood could possibly prove to be on its own. And I found out shortly.

“I think Morlo believes the world is ending.”

It wasn’t what she told me that was so bloody disturbing, but rather how she told me. Vara was happy.

+”Untrue. I wasn’t happy, I just appreciate excitement.”+

Quickly putting aside the madwoman before me as only the second biggest concern, I let her words sink in.

“I…see. What makes you think that?”“I told her,” Il’vanja volunteered. It wasn’t easy to sneak up on me, not at all. A man can only be attacked so many times before his ears and peripheral vision become several cuts above the standard most people are accustomed to.

Nonetheless, you don’t know what quiet is until you’ve heard, or rather haven’t heard, an aelf in motion.

While I was busy twitching and waiting for all the nervous energy of my reflexive fright to fade, I buried the signs by forcing a smile and addressing the woman.

“And what makes you think that.”

“I cannot tell you the full story,” she replied. “If I do that Morlo will kill both of us. However, the particular lines of inquiry he and his fellow Thaumaturge have been pursuing relate to the calamity, or calamities, that supposedly befel the old world and its civilisations.”

She spoke so calmly that I almost didn’t clock the line about us being murdered. As usual though, I had bigger problems.

“What do you know about the world ending?” I pointedly asked the aelf. 

“Very little, save that Morlo appears to be trying to prevent it, that the threat is likely a long-dormant danger recently stirring back into action, that whatever it is will surely destroy us if it brings its full power to the efforts of doing so, and that we yet have chance to prevent it. Simple deductions.”

I hadn’t made any of them, though that’s less of an intellectual limit as a motivational one. People tend to think aelfs are cleverer than us but that’s, if not wrong, an oversimplification. It’s more like they’re focused in a way we aren’t. 

Try thinking about things, I mean really thinking. You’ll amaze yourself with what you can do. God knows if an idiot like me can save the world then anyone reading this can do something great with the right effort.

Speaking of amazements, and human inadequacies, I wasn’t done being educated yet.

“It’s also underground,” Gruin told the group. He had not approached nearly so quietly as Il’vanja. As usual, the Grynkori’s every footfall was less categorically similar to a step as it was an attempt at killing the ground for some long-forgotten slight. Nonetheless, we were more concerned with what he was saying. “That far in the past, it’ll have sunk. Things do that over time.”

“The Grynkori is correct,” Il’vanja began. She faltered as the Grynkori in question swung his hammer for her head with, as far as I can tell, literally all of his strength and speed. Even she barely dodged. 

“Shut up,” he spat.

Rare to see an aelf shaken, and I wasn’t treated to the sight just then. Il’vanja did, however, shut up. 

After that, Morlo made himself known again and told the group what we’d all been expecting. We were heading off to do something dangerous and probably die. What he probably didn’t know, or maybe did and just pretended not to given what a crafty bastard he was, was that we all knew the actual stakes.

I like to think he was surprised with how well everyone took the thought of another brush with death, frankly there wasn’t a lot he could tell us that was more frightful than the kind of danger Il’vanja predicted we were working against. 

But of course Morlo was Morlo, and frightful was more or less his specialty. Our short briefing was barely at its end when he turned to me, all careless and thoughtless, and let slip a few words that hit me harder than Gruin’s hammer. 

“By the way Kyvaine, your father’s here.”

Things seemed to freeze. 

“My father,” I echoed intelligently. 

“Yes,” Morlo shrugged. “I thought you might want to meet him so I let you know.”

That implied a lot more than it said, and with my intellect rather compromised by shock I took my sweet time in chewing it all up. My father was in town, but I was finding out about the fact from Morlo.

Which meant my father hadn’t sent word to me. He didn’t want to see me, didn’t care to share anything or hear anything I might have to share with him. That obviously meant I wasn’t going to be re-inherited anytime soon, but to even my own surprise that wasn’t what ended up striking me. 

I waited for anger. I had a short temper, you’ve read enough of these pathetic memoirs to know that much. It was nowhere to be found now, though. Rage was the farthest thing from my mind as an icy, crushing melancholy flooded in to displace all other emotions from me. The wrath of my father’s disinheritance had been jarring and painful, but I’d been able to meet that with outrage and indignity.

This, though, such a casual apathy as to not even warrant sending me word that he was near…

My distress was enough that I didn’t remember I was in company until a few more moments of sulking had passed, and the realisation was just another jolt of unpleasantness to worsen my day. 

“I’m going to go and…I’m going.” I couldn’t be arsed to think up an excuse for everyone, just wanted to be gone. Fortunately all of them had either the sense or the apathy to let me take my leave then and there. 

Unfortunately, that just left me completely alone with my thoughts. Never a good state of being, that. My thoughts tended to get me into quite a lot of trouble. 

There weren’t any dangerous dungeons for me to sprint dick-first into just then, which was a stroke of luck considering I was mentally stunted enough by pain and natural stupidity that I just might have done it. Instead I ended up settling for just wandering around and being miserable. 

I’ll skip the rest of the sulking, because I don’t have a spare rainforest to make all the paper needed for cataloguing it in totality. The highlights; I cried again, I got angry at crying and punched a wall. I found out that my newfound physical abilities were not, in fact, sufficient to punch a solid stone wall without getting hurt, and I ended up focusing myself with the pain and actually coming to a decision.

My father was in the city. He didn’t want to see me, but I’d already decided I wanted to see him. My legs seemed to be moving of their own volition as I started for him, and got only a few strides before a hand came down on my shoulder. I jumped, reflexes acquired from my journeying as springy as ever, and only barely relaxed when I saw it was Morlo.

“We’re heading off soon,” the Thaumaturge told me. He looked grimmer now, jaw set. 

“I have something to do first,” I hissed. Morlo took his hand from my shoulder and took a step back, sighing irritably. 

“We’ll be at the city’s gates. Your father’s renting the large house ten blocks north, shouldn’t be more than fifteen minutes from the door to us.”

From the door to them? I took a moment to realise why Morlo phrased it like that, of course. He was expecting me to be turned away without so much as getting entry to speak with my father face-to-face.

As he’d said, it didn’t take me long to find the place, nor to approach. I was halted at the door by none other than Jeeves, however. The aging servant had lost none of his vigour in the year or so since I’d last seen him, though I realised now that I actually stood taller than he did. Hadn’t even realised I’d grown until then. 

“I’m here to see my father,” I told him. Jeeves met my eye and I tried to meet his. Truth be told, my journeys had made me a lot less brave in this particular face rather than more. Now that I’d acquired the eyes to spot a dangerous man, I was realising just how dangerous this one was. Hard to see, growing up around him, and impossible not to while staring him down.

“He doesn’t want to see you.” Jeeves’ tone was slightly soft and slightly warm, but his face was colder than ice and hard as old granite. I actually took a step back as I saw the unyielding expression of his eyes. 

“I don’t care,” I snarled. “Let me pass.”

My hand went to my sword, and Jeeves’ was on his in a moment. Neither of us drew. It took a second of us both just standing there, staring at each other, for me to calm down enough that I avoided doing anything terribly stupid. That’s the problem with Heroes, really. At the end of the day we’re just people with great power. And people are cunts.

“I’m sorry sir,” Jeeves stressed. “But you need to leave.” 

For a moment I just stood there shaking and trying to think of what I could do, which did not, fortunately, take long. If only because I could do so little.

I turned around and headed off in my humiliation. Jeeves relaxed as I did, which I found odd. I’d never known the man to show stress or its alleviation before, and couldn’t fathom why he might have started now. At the time, the obvious explanation escaped me. 

Which was a shame, because it would’ve saved me lots more bother if it hadn’t.

Things weren’t much changed among my party at the gates when I finally reunited, save that everyone was bereft of Morlo.

“Where’s the Thaumaturge?” I asked, more to distract myself than out of any real care about the answer. 

“Gone,” Gruin growled. “Didn’t say where. He was in a hurry.”

Another little detail that I’d have caught, were I not half so distracted or one quarter so stupid. You’re probably considering me a right idiot, reading this, and you’re not exactly wrong for it, but one doesn’t live a lifetime of constant danger if one has a halfway decent brain.

[“I don’t know about you, reader, but I’m completely lost here. And that’s with me knowing the broad strokes of what happened next.”]

Morlo kept us waiting another few minutes before heading over at a jog, panting with a face as red as a beet. I didn’t find that remarkable in and of itself, the Thaumaturge had been rushing all over of late, but the fact that he was late as well should have at least spurred on a few questions from me. Alas, idiot.

“What were you doing?” Vara asked the Thaumaturge, rather pointedly. Morlo glared at her. 

“I was tapping into the winds of the universe and observing deep changes to the natural order,” he snapped. “The cosmos has, in fact, changed so much that my idiot apprentices are now permitted to demand answers of me.”

She glared at him, and Morlo moved on without seeming to care. But he stopped dead as soon as he was past the gate.

“...Shit.”