Chapter 17 - Hero

A crowd of Jotnar are gathered around Skald’s head. Some are laughing, some are crying tears of joy, and none of them are mourning.

“The tyrant king is dead. I never thought I’d see the day.”

“We’re free! We’re finally free!”

“Let us throw a party! We shall eat legs of lamb and drink ale until the sun rises!”

An older Jotunn drops to a knee before me. “Are you truly the one who slayed him?”

“I just dealt the final blow,” I say, sitting atop Pumar’s shoulders with him holding my legs.

“And an impressive blow it was indeed!” The Jotunn says, bowing. “We Jotnar owe you our lives. Please have mercy on our army. Many of us are deeply pained by the atrocities we were forced to commit. Those who refused, or tried to run, were nailed to the castle walls for all to see. Although you may rightly blame us for not choosing death, I beg you to sympathize.”

“I have no hard feelings against you, but it’s not my decision to make. Ask Pumar.”

Below me, Pumar takes a deep breath. “There is nothing I crave more deeply, than for the relationship our two peoples to return to what it was, before Skald.”

“Thank you! I feel the same. We must celebrate, the hundred-year war is officially over!”

The throne room erupts with cheers, Marmothi and Jotnar alike.

The Jotnar get cured meat and barrels of ale from the castle basement, and we feast together long into the night. Ruby manages to get her hands on some ale somehow, and drinks way too much of it. She goes on a drunken rampage, sneaking away to attack Jotnar randomly until I track her down and stop her.

“We don’t attack our friends!” I tell her.

“But you got to fight Jotnar! Why don’t I get to? It’s unfair!”

“Yes, very unfair. Too bad.”

“Ayla meanie!”

The next day, the Marmothi pack up for the journey home, restocking their supplies with the help of the Jotnar. They take that one day to recover from their hangover, and then the next morning the Marmothi set off, heading back to the Great Burrow to deliver the good news.

On the journey home, we laugh and celebrate, but we also mourn those who lost their lives during the assault on Ymirskrod. I couldn’t save everyone, but in the grand scheme of things it was an astounding victory. We only lost a couple hundred soldiers, most of them to either being crushed in the rubble as the mountain reformed, or killed by Skald himself.

Still, it hurts that I couldn’t save everyone. I know it's unreasonable. It’s war, which means people are bound to die, but I wish we could have won without losing anyone.

When we are almost home, in the tunnel that leads to the elevator, we hit a dead end.

“That’s not supposed to be here. Did we take a wrong turn?” Lara says.

“It looks like a recent cave in, within the last couple months. It must have happened while we were away,” Pumar says.

“Probably that earthquake we felt a few days after we left. Let’s take another route.”

There’s an awful knot in my stomach, and there’s a bad smell in this cave, dank and musty.

It’s a familiar smell.

“No,” I whisper. “Let’s go to the surface! We have to check something!!”

Panic swells within me as we rush up a series of tunnels. We encounter more unexpected collapsed tunnels along the way, so it’s more difficult than expected to escape the caves.

When we emerge into the sunlight, it’s clear something is wrong.

The mountains have deep cracks and fissures running through them, and in a wide section of the mountain range directly above the Great Burrow, the mountains are sagging, as if a hand the size of the sky had pushed them down into the earth.

“No,” Pumar says breathlessly. “No! It can’t be! They were only supposed to do this if Skald came here! Where are the Marmothi who were evacuated? Did they flee?”

I run to a nearby mountain shrub, and check its roots. My heart breaks.

There is a slimy grey fungus rotting the base of the shrub. Many thin stalks are coming up around the stems, with black beady heads. It’s the rot, the same one that destroyed my home.

Sephtis. It was him. Was he really the hero from Lorencia, or was that a lie to get us to give him free access to our support beams? Perhaps he was sent by Noriam the bastard.

Perhaps the king’s order was not to lay to waste every to village of Englevard north of Korwind, but to lay waste to everything north of Korwind.

“Sephtis!” This man destroyed my home twice. He’s the source of the rot, I’m sure of it.

The runes he had been drawing on the support beams were no doubt to rot through them while everyone was still inside, because the rot is fueled by death. That was all that he cared about, killing as many Marmothi as possible, so his rot would spread, even in these mountains.

“Aaaah!” I collapse into the dirt. I can’t stop the tears. We worked so hard to protect our home, we fought a monster beyond anything we could imagine, and we won.

And the Great Burrow has been destroyed anyway. Will the other burrows even be able to survive with the rot spreading in the mountains? Will Skald’s corpse awaken into undeath?

“The Marmothi who evacuated must be somewhere. We should find them,” Lara says,

“You don’t understand. None of them evacuated!” I say. “I’ve seen this rot before, it’s the rot that destroyed my village, the rot of death! The only way it could have spread this much through the mountains in only two months is if it had thousands of corpses to fuel it!”

Lara covers her mouth with her hand, her eyes going wide. I can see the moment of realization, the horror and the pain, the question why?

“We have to leave. Food will not grow here anymore, and the rot is toxic. The dead will come alive as monsters, and the rot will spread,” I say.

“We must alert the other burrows of this situation, as well as the Jotnar.”

Tears well up in my eyes. “I’m not coming with you.”

“What? Why?” Lara asks.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“Lorencia. They’re in danger too I think. I can’t be sure, but I have a feeling they’re next. I’ll travel there with Ruby and warn them.”

“I’ll come with you. I know the way,” Lara says.

“No,” Pumar says. “The Marmothi will need their high priest, now more than ever.”

“I’ll try to find a way to stop the rot for good, and if I find Sephtis, I am going to kill him,” I say.

“Very well,” Lara says, but I can see the pain in her eyes. “At least stop by Scree Burrow with us first. It’s close to here, and we can get you a map of the mountains. We’ll get you prepared for your journey while we warn the others.”

“Okay,” I say.

Scree Burrow is only ten days walk away. I tell the Marmothi everything I know about the rot, then we split up the platoon, sending out groups to find other Marmothi and spread the word.

There is no elevator for Scree Burrow. The tunnel leads to a big set of demonite doors, and we knock loudly.

“Who goes there?” A wary voice comes from the other side.

“The supreme commander and the high priestess!” Brog shouts.

The door opens. The Marmothi man who greets us looks haggard. He is coughing.

“Hold still.” I send a moondrop into him and cure him. His eyes go wide.

“We have news,” Pumar says.

Scree Burrow is very small compared to the Great Burrow. Only a couple hundred Marmothi live here, and all of them are already sick with the rot. Their farms are all infected. I thoroughly purify the rot from the burrow, and then I draw moonlight runes all over everything to keep it away permanently. Then I spend a week drawing moonlight runes on clay plates, so that the Marmothi can spread them to the other burrows to keep the rot at bay.

“I am going to find Sephtis. I’m strong now, stronger than ever.”

“If he is capable of magic of this scale, he must be incredibly powerful, perhaps even more powerful than Skald. You must be careful,” Pumar says.

I nod. “I will be.”

“It’s a long journey to Lorencia. Here,” Lara hands me a map. I unroll it.

It’s a map of all of Albia, the island that encompasses Englevard to the south, the mountains in the north, and the small kingdom of Lorencia at the very northernmost point of the land mass. All the Marmothi burrows are marked on it. I’m a little more than half of the way through the mountains from my old village in the north of Englevard.

“You should stop by here on your way,” Lara says, pointing to a spot marked in green.

“Oasis Valley,” I read out loud.

“It’s a valley filled with lush greenery, despite being in the coldest section of the mountains. There are fruit trees and root vegetables there, and you should be able to restock on food.”

“Gorentus told me to go there if I wanted to learn about the heartshards.”

“Did he? I don’t know anything about that. It’s just a good place to take a break,” Lara says.

“That will be my next stop then.”

“Adventure!” Ruby says. “Adventure! Adventure! Adventure!”

“Oh, if you’re so excited, then I’m not carrying you this time. You’ll have to walk,” I say.

“I can walk! Ruby Zoom Zoom!”

I pat her on the head.

“I’m going to miss you Ayla,” Lara says.

I hug her. “You’ve been like a mother to me. Stay safe. We’ll meet again one day.”

“You’re still so young. You shouldn’t have to take such a burden upon yourself.”

“I don’t have to. I am choosing to.” I smile. “Thank you for everything.”

“Goodbye, Ayla.”

Ruby and I set out together, heading north once more. We hike for weeks through the rocks and the snow. There are signs of the rot everywhere. It’s spreading quickly.

This time, Ruby is actually able to help me hunt monsters.

“Can’t escape me, wolf!” Ruby grabs onto the horns of a giant wolf, the same kind I fed to our mother while she was pregnant. Ruby bites into the back of its neck and rips out its spine.

“You caught dinner! Good job!” I praise her.

We enjoy roasted wolf meat that night, broiled by Ruby’s flames. It tastes much better than when it’s cooked with my lightning.

After six months of traveling, we encounter something odd.

“Is that supposed to be a cabin?” I ask.

“Cabin! Cabin! Maybe they have yamba!” Ruby says.

It almost looks like a cabin. It’s a bunch of slabs of rock and the windblown wood, piled up together into a makeshift structure. It has something resembling a chimney, and smoke is slowly rising up from it.

“Someone must live there,” I say. “Let’s go say hi.”

We hike up to the cabin. It has a front door consisting of a large chunk of spider carapace.

I knock.

“Oh? Visitors at this hour?”

I recognize that voice. The door opens, by simply flopping outward, pushed from inside.

“Zalorian?”

“Oh! Ayla, my dear! Long time no see! Come in and have some tea!”

The mage is looking much better than last time I saw him. There is a scar on his neck where the harpy queen slashed his jugular, but otherwise he looks quite healthy.

He hands me a stone cup with hot water and twigs in it. In contrast to the rest of the haphazardly constructed cabin, there is a very finely made and lacquered wooden tea table.

“Thank you,” I say.

I actually drink the tea this time. It tastes alright. It’s twig water.

“So what brings you here to my humble abode?” He asks.

“I’m traveling to Lorencia to warn them about the plague of rot.”

“Lorencia? Oh, I’ve been there!” He pensively taps his finger on his lips. “ If I recall, the king gave me some sort of mission, but I forget what it was.”

My eyes go wide. “Was it perhaps slaying a Jotunn named Skald?”

He claps his hands. “Right! That’s it! Thank you for reminding me! Now where is this Skald?”

Lightning courses through me. It’s all I can do not to draw my sword and cut this fool down right here and now.

“You abandoned them. The Marmothi waited for you, for over a decade. So many of them died. And you were here the whole time.”

“I am so very sorry. It simply slipped my mind! I shan’t make them wait a second longer.”

“Skald is already dead! I killed him myself, you useless old grandpa!”

“I’m afraid I have no children, let alone grandchildren. I am bachelor yet.”

“That’s not the point!”

“Well then, if you killed him, you must have his heartshard. Give it here, I have to bring it back.”

“I don’t have it, and I wouldn’t give it to you even if I did!”

“Where is it then?”

“Somewhere west of here. I purified it, and it flew away.”

“YOU WHAT?!”

The tea table explodes into splinters, and the fireplace erupts in purple flames. Zalorian goes to tackle me, but I dodge in a bolt of lighting, grabbing Ruby as we zip out of the cabin.

The whole cabin explodes in a cataclysmic blast of purple fire. The mountains shake.

When the flames fade, Zalorian is standing in midair on a circle of runes, holding his staff. Beneath him is a smoldering crater.

“I cannot suffer fools,” Zalorian says. “Skald was a fool, certainly, he tried to eat it, so I heard. At least he didn’t PURIFY IT!” He raises his staff. “YOU HAVE SINNED AGAINST SANITY!”

A beam of purple fire erupts towards us. I fly me and Ruby of the way in a bolt of lightning. Zalorian sweeps the beam towards us, cutting a deep molten gash in the mountain behind us.

“You had a treasure that could bend reality itself! You could have studied it and learned the secrets of the cosmos! You could have laughed at truth and drawn forth your wildest dreams! And what did you do instead? You threw it away! FOR WHAT?!”

I fly towards him.

Luminous Authority!

He points his staff at me, then looks at it in puzzlement as nothing happens. Then the platform of runes he is standing on is undone, and he drops down onto the smoldering rocks.

He cries out in pain as the rocks burn his legs and hands.

I land on the edge of the crater, Ruby still squirming under my arm. I point my sword at him.

“I met the Moon Sister. She thanked me,” I say.

“THAT IS NOTHING!”

He waves his staff at me, but once again, his magic is cancelled by my moonlight.

“You’re wrong. It’s something more valuable than you can possibly imagine,” I say, with enough certainty in my voice that even I’m surprised.

Zalorian drops his staff. He collapses down onto the scalding rocks, seemingly unbothered by the sizzling of his skin.

He takes a long moment, seeming to actually consider my words. “Is that so? Hmm, perhaps. After all, I have never been mad enough to try it. But I am not usually wrong. More experiments are necessary, but are they actually worth the cost?”

“I am leaving now,” I tell him. “Don’t attack me ever again.”

I sheathe Wish and walk away. Zalorian remains in the crater he created, muttering to himself.

“Faya boom boom!” Ruby says.

“Yeah, I bet you liked that huh.”

“Boom boom!” She repeats.

We spend the next month traveling north, and the mountains get colder. Snow falls all around us in a constant blizzard, and everything is coated in a layer of ice. Ruby is my only reliable source of warmth, so we cuddle constantly. It’s amazing that anything can survive out here.

After a few months of trudging through the frosty wasteland, eating frost trolls and ice goats, the map says we are getting close to Oasis Valley.

In the distance, I can hear birdsong.

“According to the map, it’s just over this ridge.”

We crest over, and my eyes are struck with a sea of green.

The snowflakes melt into tiny raindrops as they fall into the valley. A misty haze runs through huge bushy treetops. Flowers are blooming everywhere.

And in the warm breeze, I smell the slightest hint of rot.