An Epic Hero Story: Book 2 Chapter 47 (Patreon)

It didn’t take us long to see what it was Morlo had laid eyes on, and even less time after that to concur with his reaction. There were blackmists rolling across the lands ahead of us, thick as any I’d ever seen and approaching fast.

“No way we’ll be getting through that before the darkthings are on us,” Dubin observed helpfully. 

As obvious as his proclamation was, it was also completely correct. Even if it hadn’t been, I was in no mood to risk the blackmists just on some non-guarantee that we’d manage it. Not even with the painful emotions of being in the same town as my father to motivate me. 

“We’ll need to stay in Whingrham,” Vara pointed out. “No choice in the matter.” She stared at Morlo, and I realised she was actually worried he’d contradict her. 

Looking at the Thaumaturge myself, I started to share that worry. Morlo had an odd look on his face, irritation mixed with stubbornness mixed with that unique sort of fervor he got in his eyes whenever he perceived a challenge to his will and ego. 

I’d yet to see him back down from such a challenge, then, and didn’t see this being any different.

“We might end up delaying ourselves more if we set off now, anyway,” I piped up. “Right? It’d be harder to travel, warding off darkthings out in the open. Unless you have a specific reason for why that’d be worth the bother.” I didn’t know it at the time, but I’d just said the exact right thing to make Morlo stay the night. And, not knowing, I was quite surprised by how effective my little manipulation was. Of course I just chalked it up to my own cleverness. 

One good thing about being in a crowded, shit-smelling town the size of Whingrham was that it meant we also had access to blackmist shelters. In fact, we had access to private ones. Apparently some enterprising people had long since worked out that people with money could be convinced to part with it if it meant they didn’t need to hunker down with the common peasantry several times a month. 

It’s amazing, the expenditure people will tolerate if it means they can avoid going near those they consider to be their social inferiors. And a good reminder of how fundamentally stupid humans are.

“At least we don’t need to hunker down with a bunch of fucking peasants,” I said. Vara, a peasant, glared at me with undisguised irritation at that, but I only really noticed this in retrospect. 

[“Don’t worry, I made him notice how unhappy I was in other ways later.”]

Gruin appeared to calm down in the shelter, like he so often did while confined in stone. I have to admit there is something refreshingly direct about boxing yourself in behind thick walls. This didn’t last that long, though. 

See, even a luxury blackmist shelter is only so comfortable. The things aren’t built to keep people happy, only safe. Granted, I’ve been in ones belonging to Dukes and Kings which were plenty pleasant, but the people who made this one just didn’t have that sort of money to finance it. 

Blackmist shelters are bare-bones by nature, and it doesn’t take long after finding safety before you start to yearn for a few luxuries. Or at least it didn’t take me long, back then, on account of my being a little shit. Granted even Vara looked to be chafing after our first few hours. 

“Bloody now, of all times,” Morlo growled. “That Demon, I’ll bet it’s that Demon.”

Not the most pleasant thing to hear when you’re locked in a stone box. Blackmist shelters are built sturdily, but I was under no illusion that the one we hunkered down in would so much as delay that damned Demon if it came looking for us. Stone wouldn’t stop a cannon battery, and it wouldn’t stop that.

Of course, such abstract dangers as that didn’t do much to bother me by that point. I’d spent enough time facing down real threats to my life, including from a non-imaginary Demon, that by comparison the fear was just…dulled. Like being asked to tolerate a cold day out when I’d swam through an icy lake days earlier. 

In the end, I managed to get a good few hours of sleep before the night was done and the blackmists receded. I woke up to the door already open, quickly shaking the stiffness out of my joints as we started pouring out. Morlo seemed downright eager to leave, which I naturally made nothing of since I was still as thick as ever.

I didn’t notice how much of a hurry Morlo was in. Or, rather, I didn’t piece together why. It didn’t occur to me, for instance, that the few minutes we saved by speed-walking would matter little on the timescale of our one-day delay, or that Morlo was rational enough to certainly be aware of that fact. 

Vara did. She took me by the arm, panting with the effort of maintaining Morlo’s pace, and tried to warn me. 

“Something’s off about this,” she wheezed. 

“We’re late,” I replied, as if it were obvious. Everything is obvious to a moron, all the non-obvious things simply go unnoticed. I’ll get there, don’t worry. There’s a really satisfying realization for me coming up if you keep reading. 

“Morlo doesn’t hurry, not like this,” Vara pointed out. “So what’s gotten to him?”

“Maybe the fucking Demon?” I suggested, being altogether more sarcastic than I had any right to. 

Vara’s only mistake here was dropping the matter over a bit of mockery, though in this particular case her decision didn’t come back to bite us. At least not very hard. We made swift progress through the town thanks to Morlo’s torturous pace, and we got almost as far as its gates before anything of note happened.

That is, of course, where it all went to shit.

I’d gotten into the habit of perpetual fear already, and so I was anticipating a great many ambushes that might surprise us when we got there. They started at wretchlings and moved up to that fucking Demon showing up again. What I had not expected, though…was my father.

For a second I didn’t notice him, somehow being the last, out of those who knew the man’s face, to do so. Morlo saw it at once, Vara a scant second after. I kept walking for a good few more paces before it finally sunk into me what my eyes had fallen upon. By then, my father had seen me as well and was already approaching with Jeeves in tow.

“Kyvaine!” He growled, face awash with…relief. I’d been expecting rage or some related emotion, but not that. It almost looked like he was pleased to see me, and that had been an unnervingly rare sight even before he kicked me out and disinherited me. I just froze and stared at him, uncomprehending. 

“Kyvaine, it…it really is you?!” He seemed disbelieving, and his disbelief finally settled my belief. 

“...Father?” I was almost reluctant to say it, as if it was somehow a commitment. 

Then he did something that almost had me headbutting him in a sheer, self-preservative reflex. He stepped in and hugged me. 

“What the fuck is this?” I snarled, anger flooding me all at once as my shock finally broke away to free the thoughts below. They were not friendly ones. 

My father seemed confused, which only made me angrier. 

“Kyvaine,” he began. “I…I want you to come home, I don’t know why you ran off but—”

—”Ran off!?” I screeched, red in the face and suddenly uncaring that all the early-risers were now staring at me. “You kicked me out! You disinherited me! You…” 

It was the sight of his confusion growing, rather than sinking, that finally had me halting my tirade. 

“I didn’t kick you out,” my father croaked. 

Naturally, my first instinct was to analyze the situation with a cool and considering eye, fitting together all the facts  I knew in the most logical way I could and using reason to seek an answer that explained all the apparent discrepancies. Just kidding, I started screaming at the old man and, in classic fashion, he began screaming back.

We didn’t get much done in the way of working out what had happened, and in the end it was Vara who interjected to help restore some semblance of order. She did so through the only possible method that might have managed to snatch both of our attentions at once. She set my father on fire.

Only a little bit, of course, and naturally the dramatic old fuck started screaming as if he were actually in any danger. I took a moment to lazily suck the heat out of his clothes and extinguish the flames, then glared at her while he recovered his wits. 

“What’s going on here?” Vara asked, pointedly. “Why are you both so convinced the other is lying? Maybe you were both tricked.”

That was the final push I needed to actually analyze the situation and, at last, work things all out for myself. It took me long enough, I know. 

But slowly, I turned to my father. “What happened the day I left, from your perspective?”

He told me, went over all the events I remembered save for a few. The big ones. 

“I never disinherited you,” he finished. “I have no idea why the hell you think I did.” 

Then I started remembering other details from that day, little, subtle things that seemed obvious in retrospect but had been so hard to notice through the fog of my emotions. He’d been acting strange, when he sent me off. Strange like…

I turned to Jeeves. “Did I go to speak with you yesterday?” I asked. The man looked so confused that it actually cracked through his mask of neutrality, which was answer enough on its own. 

My father acted strange when he booted me out, Jeeves was strange when I came to confront him about it. And neither of them remembered doing what I thought they had. It seemed to me that as soon as Morlo needed my aid for his little quest, these discrepancies had started occurring to force me into joining him.

At last, and as I should have done from the first moment I set foot on my journey, I turned to level an accusatory stare at Morlo. 

“It was you,” I whispered. “All along. You nasty old fucker, you were behind all of it!”

I waited for some denial, but to my surprise it never came. 

Morlo met my eye, looked from my father to me, then sighed.

“Fuck,” he grunted. “Well, cat’s out of the bag now. Yeah, I did that. Had to get you out and moving. Now that we’ve dealt with this, I’ll be heading off to go and stop the world from ending. You coming?”

It’s actually hard to really convey how fucking weird it felt to hear that response in the circumstances, but if you can imagine being midway through a conversation only for someone to pull their cock out and cut it off right in front of you then you’re probably in the right direction. 

“That’s all you have to say?” I growled, resisting the urge to storm over and punch the damned Thaumaturge. The only thing stronger than my rage at him, in that moment, was my lingering fear. I’d seen enough of Morlo’s Thaumaturgy to know that wouldn’t end well for me still.

But standing there, staring at his smug face, his sneering certainty that everything would go just as he planned regardless, I needed to do something to hurt the fucker, to at least inconvenience him. This, dear reader, is one of many examples in which my mouth was just a little bit quicker than my brain.

“I know you’re Glyca the Facechanger, you fuck.”