With a thunderous roar, the gigantic beast shuddered and fell to the ground. Covered in dozens of cuts, bruises, arrows, and burns, the dragon was finally dead.
Our group was battered and beaten, covered in plenty of burns of our own. But as he removed his sword from the dragon’s heart—for it was he who had struck the killing blow—a collective cheer broke out among us. Our clothes were tattered and our skin was covered in soot, but our spirits were high. Such was the effect he had on us—on everyone who met him.
Though the quest had been a team effort, most of the glory went to him. Such was usually the nature of our endeavors. He was a hero; The Hero, to be precise. Everything he did was always an accomplishment. My suspicions have always been that it is impossible for him to fail in the long-term. Whether by some divine power or sheer luck—or perhaps a combination of the two—he always managed to win the day, slay the beast, rescue the princess, and save the kingdom. Or kingdoms, in some cases.
I’m speaking in general terms, of course; our adventures as a group have always been varied. We’ve accomplished heroic feats such as slaying a dragon that threatened to destroy a country and we’ve done simple tasks such as finding a little girl’s lost doll in the forest near the village where she lived. Nothing was too difficult, nor was any task beneath our—beneath his—dignity. We helped and saved those who needed it most, whenever they asked.
We are not mercenaries; or at least most of us are not. He accepts requests without any assurance of compensation. Even though most of the time we usually receive some sort of reward for our efforts, never has he explicitly asked for payment. It would seem that to him gratitude is sufficient.
As of this moment—as of slaying the dragon—our group numbers sixteen. We have among us three archers, each skilled in their own way with the bow; five fighters, each using swords and axes and spears and various armors to their liking; three mages, of which I am one, though not the most skilled in our group, with my job being almost solely devoted to the practical application of magic rather than its lore and theory or its healing capabilities like my counterparts; two stealthy rouges who, although they served little purpose this time, have proven themselves extremely competent in times past; a summoner of sorts who uses various spirit beasts for both combat and non-combat activities; surprisingly, a young, orphaned girl who, although she cannot fight, travels with us and performs certain menial tasks for the group as thanks to him for some deed or other he did for her in times past; and lastly, him. The Hero, the one in the middle of it all. He is most proficient as a warrior, clad in his thick armor which he moves around in effortlessly, a shield of unmatched strength in one hand and a sword of piercing and unstoppable light in the other.
We were not always this way. Originally, he was alone, and with only crude weaponry and little money to his name. Or so he has told us. He has never spoken of his true origins, only that when he started his adventure he was essentially an unknown, unskilled, unproven face in a sea of faces. One might assume that he simply materialized into existence by the will of some creator god and his actions were merely an extension of said god’s will. But, even if such were the case, it was a truth that had already existed for some time; there was no changing the very fabric of reality which he had undoubtedly become an essential part of.
I, personally, met him while on a particular journey into a particularly hostile mountain range. My mentor—who has since passed away, rest his soul—had asked me to venture there as both a test of my strength and to find some rare ingredients for his alchemical experiments. The initial encounters with the mountain witches clan’s darkbeasts expended almost no effort on my part, for I was on the outskirts of their territory where they were not so heavy in number. However, after weeks of probing for a weak spot in their defenses—for the ingredients I was seeking lay far within their territory—I managed to find the walls created by their patrolling spawn to be nigh impregnable. I took a gamble to attack with as much ferocity and force as I could bring to bear, rush to the location of the ingredients, and break out before three days time. While initially my efforts were met with token resistance, I must have caught someone’s attention for it was no long before an innumerable amount of snarling mouths with rancid breath were bearing down on me. I did not have the energy capable sustaining a prolonged and continuous battle against them. Eventually, I managed to find sanctuary in a cave, where I did what little I could to nurse my wounds and try to formulate a strategy.
It was not long before he arrived. While hiding in the darkened cavern, my mind delirious from exhaustion and feverish from an infection, a voice so illustrious and commanding called out to me. Not my name, specifically, but as a simple call of acknowledgment of my existence. I was unsure if the voice belonged to friend or foe, but at that point I was in a mood which preferred to be taken captive by foul witches than to die alone in a stinking cave. So I returned the call as best I could, and indicated no hostility.
When the last of my words left my mouth, a pair of foot steps drew near, with several more pairs following close behind them. The voice asked for light, and light he received. A torch was lit and a spell was cast, causing the whole cave to glitter with the sparkle of moisture on the walls. It was then that I saw his face. It was, objectively speaking, a striking yet handsome face, with eyes that held every positive adjective hostage. It was moments later that I noticed his compatriots. A young women had cast the spell illuminating the room, and a young man had lit the torch. There was another women, older than the other two, I assumed at the time, who stood further down the cavern with a weapon in her hand, to which her purpose, I later learned, was guarding the rear.
No sooner had I had seen the faces of the people than had their faces changed from curiosity to shock. Upon following their eyes and looking down I saw, to my horror, the true extent of my wounds. My arms and one of my legs were broken, my torso was in tatters, and I had lost a disturbing amount of blood. He kneeled down first, and gently placed a reassuring hand on my shoulder. He looked directly into my eyes and told me it was going to be alright. He turned to the woman who had cast the spell and asked her to heal me, which she hastily agreed to do. The woman sat across from him and took off her satchel, using one hand for a healing spell—something I am not very good at doing—and the other hand for rummaging through her sack, producing herbs and bandages.
It was not long before we were found by the darkbeasts. Whether the group was followed or I was used as bait, I cannot say. But they were coming, and we were to soon be surrounded. He and his group took up defensive positions around me while the woman worked on healing me. They fought, hard and long, until I was healed.
The young man was of average build and skill, but swung his axe with determination and trust. He cleaved more than a few darkbeasts’ heads in two. The woman guarding the rear had a bow, which she used to some proficiency, though honestly at the time I had seen far better archers in sporting events. The young woman tending my wounds did not fight, nor did she seem capable of doing so. I did learn this to be the opposite of the truth, but such was my impression of her at the time.
However, he fought with the spirit of a lion. Without fear and without hesitation. In fact, with such vigor did he throw himself into the fray, one might have thought he lived for the fight. This, too, I later learned to be an incorrect notion, but in the moment, watching him swing his sword and raise his shield without rest, I regarded him as remarkably fortuitous and mesmerizing to watch. Though he was not a perfect fighter—he staggered, misplaced his footing, took hits, and missed his attacks—it was the way he moved in the fight; from just his actions alone, he seemed to believe that the fight was not only going to end, but that it would end in victory, and easily. In some ways, I was enthralled by his presence; indeed, I had asked myself if he was perhaps royalty by some divine right.
The woman tending to my wounds finished doing what she could before the fight was over, and I made a move to stand and help, though I was still in a sore shape. She protested and demanded I rest, but I insisted, and called out to him, begging him to let me fight. I told him I was a skilled mage and could be of use. He stopped for the briefest of moments to consider my proposal and accepted, saying he was counting on me, but to not push myself too hard.
With those words, I stood up with the help of the young woman, and proceeded to cast what elemental spells I could manage. With a raise of my good arm and a flick of my wrist, flames leapt from my fingertips and danced across the cavern, scorching the hides of three darkbeasts at once. But something still felt off. For some reason, my strength was entirely gone, and my ability to keep tens of foes at bay had been greatly diminished. Still, I pressed on, and eventually we killed them all. There were at least one hundred and fifty rapidly degrading beasts of shadow in the cavern when we were done.
Once we had a moment’s respite we exchanged brief stories, both myself and the group explaining how to the other how we came to be in the cave. Evidently, they had been sent for the same ingredient; a flower grown only in a specific grove on a specific part of the mountain. I suspect it was my mentor who propositioned them, for he was always one to have multiple plans and schemes and fail-safes in place to ensure things went the way he wanted them to, though I did not ever actually inquire either party if such was the case. Regardless, he offered me the chance to join them for the duration of this task, which I graciously and gratefully accepted.
Apparently the group had been wandering through the cave system for some time, lost, and without a sense of night and day. The young man with the axe had sheepishly admitted they were also low on food, and that they had been eating various mushrooms that the healing woman had identified as safe. He asked if there was a chance I knew the way out, to which I was more than glad to say that yes, I did.
The entrance which I had come through was actually not far from where I had been laying. It seemed that my wounds were so grave that a distance I perceived at the time to be arduous and lengthy was, embarrassingly, quite easy and short. At that moment I had resolved to put more effort into keeping my body in better shape; although, admittedly, I have not been as diligent as I should have.
Once we reached the entrance we found numerous tracks belonging to darkbeasts. According to the woman with the bow most of them were old and led into the cave, but a few—very fresh, she said, but also very few—led away from it. We came to the conclusion that we had not killed every darkbeast in the cave; that perhaps the witches had recalled them for some reason. There was brief speculation about the reason why, mostly between the woman with the bow—who by now, thanks to the light of the sun and the nearness of her face, I deduced to be an elf of some kind and was, as was made clear by her knowledge of tracking, skilled in all manner of bushcraft—and myself, with my small understanding of the techniques used by witches to create and control those foul things.
Through our conversation, he stood idly by, listening, it seemed, to our debate, taking in our opinions and thinking of a plan. Our debate was cut short by his voice telling us that it was time to proceed, and that we should consider traveling without speaking so that our location might not be so readily identifiable. We acquiesced and followed him quietly down a winding trail.
We had been walking for some time when he made the motion to stop, which we did. He turned and looked at us with a pained expression; not one of physical pain, but of mental anguish. He explained that he could not abide the witches’ cruelty, knowing that they would continue to distress and harm countless innocents in the name of their dark arts. We were asked to assist in ending their evil, by force if necessary. The tone in his voice was on the precipice of pleading. I was almost shocked. But the tone retained enough dignity and enough awe that one could not help but obey. The four of us—those accompanying him—turned to look at one another, small flecks of mutual understanding adorning our faces, and without a word of discussion amongst us we each agreed to follow him in our own words.
And follow him we did. Through the remainder of the forest and over a small creek until we reached the edge of the forest, which opened up into a large field. We kept ourselves hidden, but only just, for he wanted as close of a look as possible. All of us took in the sights and were shocked by what we saw. As a practitioner of magic I myself have dealt with the ignorant prejudices and irrational fear and hatred of what I do and by extension my person, sometimes by and from people who have never met me nor have any real idea of what it is I do or how I live my life. Thus, I knew that the stories of witches were somewhat exaggerated, but I hadn’t realized—nor, perhaps, had I ever given any thought to—just how much such tales were embellished.
Before us presented a scene not of the usual foul notions of hateful old hags dressed in dark, dirty clothes muttering nasally incantations over a bubbling cauldron of glowing ooze, but one of a normal, peaceful village. We saw no dark sacraments being performed, no ritual sacrifices, nothing of the sort. Nothing, at least, that was demonstrably evil. Instead we saw a few dozen homes, humble but well built with stone and log. Children played and ran and chased and laughed in the grassy fields. Men and women here and there were doing chores, and off to one side we could see a group of young girls being taught by an older woman, who made several dramatic movements with her wand until the leaves on the table behind her flew aloft and formed into birds which then scattered among the trees. There was a chorus of girlish squeals which followed. For but a moment I caught myself smiling, remembering my first days in learning magic, and the enthusiastic fascination I too exhibited.
Perhaps most surprisingly was that everywhere we looked there seemed to be darkbeasts lying down and napping. Peacefully. They behaved almost as if they were family pets. One darkbeast in particular had drawn the attention of a pack of roaming toddlers, who had decided to climb and play on top of the supposedly sleeping beast. A daring young girl no older than two even saw fit to open the beast’s jowls and poke at its teeth. She produced a small something from her front pocket and stuck it in front of the beast’s nose. My heart sank and my body froze as I saw the beast open its gaping maw and slowly crane forward towards the girl’s hand; I felt certain that she was going to lose her hand. But no, the beast merely licked the thing off of her hand, causing the child to scream in delight and start running around in circles. If I had not just spent many days fighting the creatures and having witnessed first hand their ferocious rage I might have assumed that gentleness was their original state of being.
I was taken from my marveling when I noticed his expression. He had lowered his head and closed his eyes; he seemed to be lost in thought, and somewhat sad, although the expression did not last. He looked up, a fierce and determined look in his eye; not the kind you see when a man is about to commit violence, but one where rather a man has accepted that violence is about to be committed on him. When he stood up we were surprised, when he walked forward casually we were left in disbelief. He walked towards the village, motioning for us to follow, which we did, if a bit timidly.
Upon catching sight of him—for he walked ahead of us by quite a bit—the residents of the village looked on in shock, then a mixture of fear and disbelief, followed by determination. The men of the village came and scooped up all of the children and hid them inside, whereas the women all stepped forward and seemed to form loosely practiced ranks. None of this being surprising. Witches almost unfailing are tied with matriarchal societies. Only the women are taught how to use magic; supposedly, the men in witch clans unfailingly have absolutely no aptitude for magic. Thus, although in a typical village it is usually the men who rush to its defense, in this case it is entirely women.
Regardless, he seemed to be unshaken, and continued to walk forward. He never lowered his head, nor did he even so much as flinch when the foremost witch of the group hurled a few large mounds of earth in his direction. To the witch’s credit, though, he did stop walking.
The witch standing in the front, the one who had been teaching the group of young girls, commanded him to approach no closer, and to state his business. Her eyes told us that she was ready to kill if necessary, but the shakiness of her hand betrayed her uneasiness. In hindsight, I realize now that our arrival was not only unexpected, but perhaps incredibly frightening. Indeed, the mountain witches used their darkbeasts to patrol the edges of their territory and to keep outsiders away. The witches’ isolation was in part necessary because of how the world viewed them, although the argument could be made that their self-imposed isolation made the rumors about them fester and grow worse. In any case, anyone who had managed to either slip or slice his way in to the very heart of their realm must be an incredibly dangerous person, by their interpretation.
Alas, whether it was wisdom or foolhardiness, he showed no instance of being intimidated, and refused to break eye contact with the head witch. Also, too, did he not speak even a single word, contrary to the witch’s wishes. Why he did this, I still am not certain, but the end result was that the witch lost her cool, and after several minutes of silent staring the witch began to almost plead, asking him how and why he was here. But before he could respond she motioned for two darkbeasts to attack him. Though I’d seen him handle dozens of the creatures before with ease, I still readied myself and let the warmth of flame grow in my hand, just in case.
Surprisingly, he did not draw his sword. Instead he raised his shield and let the first beast tackle it, pushing him back slightly but not causing him to lose his balance. The darkbeast, however, was dazed from headbutting the shield and proceeded to listlessly sway side to side for a few moments. The second darkbeast, seemingly having learned from its companion’s mistake, tried biting below the shield, attempting to grab hold of his legs. Of course, he seemed to have anticipated this, and promptly brought the edge of his shield down hard on the skull of the second darkbeast, which yielded a similar outcome as the first. Now there were two dizzied darkbeasts which were on the brink of passing out, and a whole host of startled witches. He hadn’t even drawn his blade, yet he had incapacitated two of their creations. I suppose his intentions were to demonstrate that he was not one they should trifle with, yet at the same time also show that he did not want to bring them harm, although at the time in my mind I was still under the impression that we were going to attack and kill the witches, so not surprisingly at the time I was just as confused by his actions as the witches were.
This is when he spoke. In that voice that is as illustrious as the sun and seemed to take some of the witches aback, he explained from start to finish all of the events that led to how he had come to stand before them, not even leaving out the conversation we’d had just a few hours prior about wanting to destroy the witches. But, thankfully, and at that the time surprisingly to me, he then stated that his heart had been moved upon seeing the peacefulness of the village, and that he no longer wished to kill anyone or anything while he was there. He then proceeded to kneel, resting one hand on top of his shield, lowered his head, and, in a moment of modesty I will never forget, he admitted he was wrong, and apologized for his indiscretion. He continued by saying that if there were any way he could make reparations for his misdeeds, they, the witches, need only ask.
Even to this day I distinctly remember the expressions on the witches’ faces. I also recall the expressions on my companions, and somewhat the feeling of my own expression. The witches seemed to have never encounter someone the likes of him; I, too, for my part had also never encountered someone like him, nor have I since. My companions, by their right, also had similarly shocked expressions, although perhaps less so than my own and that of the witches.
The witches had no idea how to respond, least of all the witch in front. After several minutes, a hobbled and hunched woman came weaving her way through the loosely formed group of witches. She had on an expertly woven shawl, and kept her hair up in a bun behind her head. She moved briskly for a woman her age towards the witch standing in front, who upon noticing her bent over to incline her ear. After a few moments of whisper the elderly woman walked over to him, who was still kneeling with his head bowed. She reached out to touch him and for a moment I could feel my muscles tense, but when all she did was place a hand under his chin to left his gaze up I let myself relax.
The elderly woman explained that she was the matriarch. She told him that he did not need to let himself be swallowed in needless guilt. They had dealt with prejudice before and would continue to deal with it well after he left. The important thing was that he realized the error of his ways before anyone had been hurt, or worse. She smiled at him and he returned the smile.
Of course, with the impeccable timing I tend to have, I promptly collapsed from my own wounds; I had kept the small flame in my hand for too long; too long, at least, for someone in my state, whose constitution had been compromised and whose willpower was faltering. Simply put, my weakened and injured body did not have the fortitude necessary to maintain such a constant flow of magic. As I fell to the ground I could hear the young woman who had been healing me in the cave start to yell, and as my eyes drifted shut I could see him running towards me with a look of concern.
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