![]() “If you wish only to survive,” it continued, “I will grant you a modest portion of my burdens, and power enough to be free of this realm and its shackles. If this Accursed one had deigned to act sooner, could his wife and son have been saved?īut it had not, and mere dislike means nothing. Even knowing this, he can not help but dislike the being. Power enough to escape this world, or remake it. Take up a portion of my burdens, and in exchange receive a fraction of my power.” I am bound by countless Curses, leaving me greatly diminished, a thin figment of what I once was. My offer is that of a simple transaction. There will be no souls, no contracts, no signing in blood. “No, I’m not the Devil, nor am I associated with any that claim to be him. The man cuts him off with an upraised hand. The being is power beyond measure, beyond the hero’s wildest reckonings, the solemn steady heartbeat of all creation, the sword by which all stories would end. In the hero’s final moments, despair and hate raging equally across his heart, comes a being with the form of a man, offering vengeance in the form of a bargain. Discarded by those who had no more use for him. Treachery achieves what all the overlord’s power could not: the hero undone at last. In that resolve the nobility see the beginnings of a Tyrant by a different name. Too many have died for him to surrender this dream. Is that not justice? There is no place here for the instruments of modernity, much less its frivolous ideals. Theirs is a society of nearly faultless structure, stably and evenly arranged. And they are content with the system at hand. The kings and dukes who fought alongside the hero have filled the vacuum of power left by the Tyrant. It is what they would have wanted - and if he no longer wields a hero's strength, still he has a hero’s influence.īut the world did not sit idly while he mourned. A society with the power and wherewithal to be organized around its highest ideals, rather than brute necessity. That, though the cost was ruinous, more than he could bear, there was good in the world still waiting to be fostered.įreedom, Justice, Truth. And, with the passing of seasons, a glimmer of hope arises in the hero’s heart. But in the eyes of the people, he is still the hero that was their protector, their shining knight, their salvation, howsoever delayed though it may have been. It is eleven years to the day since he arrived in this world.Ĭrippled by the effulgence of that final strike, the widower is a pale shadow of his prior self. Joy and adulation rain upon their silent champion, who stares ahead unblinking.Īfter the parade the widower buries his wife and their unborn child. ![]() The peoples of the world celebrate their liberation. Only the enemy which must be destroyed, no matter the cost. In his eyes there is no more victory, no more dreams of failure or success. In the Tyrant’s implacable guard, a momentary opening appears.īurning selfhood like tallow, the widower mounts one final onslaught. The hero’s final companion throws herself into its path. The gap in power does not suffice to overcome the gulf of skill still between them. But for the first time, that imbalance is in the hero’s favor.Īnd yet even that is not enough. As before, their powers are unevenly matched. The long, bitter path of his journey trudges towards culmination. In sparse moments, the hero and his surviving companions carve out a life for themselves, stealing what joy they can. Time bought dearly with the blood of his allies, a patchwork insurgency of the desperate and condemned. Years more of preparation, to realize the power that talent portends. Finds in them, at last, an arena in which his talent exceeds his adversary’s. Mirrors the monster's unmerciful cunning, turns to those forbidden arts his long-dead mentors warned him against. But the hero’s heart is full of hate, and it is much too late to stop. There is no certainty of victory barely any chance of it. His quest, prophesied as the dalliance of a season, becomes a grim slog of years. The companions with which he journeyed become a procession of the dead. He loses an arm, an eye, half a lung, all the natural vigor of his youth. The people of the world suffer for his impudence. And mere causality does not suffice a hero from coddled Earth to stand against the Tyrant. He sets the world spinning to the direction of a new master. He is wise to destiny’s tricks, greater than destiny’s stewards. So destiny has decreed.īut the Tyrant is not so easily overcome. The boy becomes a man, the man becomes a hero, the hero defeats the Tyrant, and all live happily ever after. A world of wonder and magic, suffering beneath the Tyrant’s cruel yoke. The boy from Earth stumbles into another realm. ![]() Every story spoken has been spoken before.
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