Watching the four figures gathered around the Tear of Creation, Lan thought through what he could do. He didn’t know how long the figures would stay around the Tear, but if he could wait long enough to regain enough mana, there was the chance he could Wisp Walk down there, kill the one that was the centre of all this and be out before the others knew.
But that was wishful thinking at best. Without using enhanced sight, something Lan didn’t want to risk, he had no idea how strong they were, although every fibre of his being told him to do it anyway. Even a tiny voice said that he only needed enough to manage one Wisp Walk, disregarding his life as long as he could free the Tear.
In the end, his common sense won out. Though the idea of leaving the Tear stung, Lan knew where the Tear was now, meaning he had something to show the guild master and, judging by the light of the Tear and the fact that he could see the purple light not gaining any more ground. Lan told himself that he had enough time to return later.
Tyr sent an alert a moment before a wall of something slammed into Lan’s back, throwing him into the cathedral as he spun wildly. The sudden sounds of hundreds of small chittering voices filled his ears as he felt pinpricks of pain nip around the exposed flesh of his face and neck.
Instead of falling, Lan was lifted and carried around the hall by what he realised were bats. Hundreds of bats with glowing red eyes packed so close together that it looked like he was being held by a black cloud.
‘Well, isn’t this exciting?’ A feminine voice sang in a tone that was like silk to the ears despite the accompaniment of chittering bats as the four figures turned to watch Lan be carried to the floor. ‘It’s good I showed up when I did, or this little one would have escaped without anyone noticing.’ The voice laughed while Lan felt his feet drag along the ground as he was moved closer to the Tear. Letting him see the face of this enemy for the first time.
Four faces, backlit by the struggle between the Tear and the black pool, watched him with an impassive expression like the way a tyrant would regard a peasant child in the street before them.
The first and the largest was a walking torso of a man, his upper body looking almost twice the size for his build with arms like twisted oaks and skin that was a dark red even though the rest of his features reminded Lan of a Goliath, but more primal.
Although most Goliath had long canines, when this one sneered at Lan, his looked like something that belonged in the mouth of a sabre-hound and of all those gathered, he was the only one that seemed upset enough at his presence to let out a low growl that made Lan’s teeth rattle.
Compared to the first, the next person was underwhelming. Just a well-dressed older woman. A noble, maybe, with white hair, pale skin and the subdued reassurance that only came with a lifetime of believing one was better than everyone else. Yet she was the only one who looked at him with something akin to worry.
That was until Lan looked into the woman’s eyes and faced the predator behind them. Large gold eyes with twin red spirals watched him with an ancient malice. The longer he looked, the more Lan could feel himself wanting to bend to them. That was until he managed to tear his gaze away and onto the next person.
Lan knew what the next figure was the moment he saw them. A Necromancer, but unlike the one he had seen as a boy or even the undead that he knew were slowly closing in on him. This man was just… rotten.
Pudgy, fat skin hung on a skeletal frame so loose it looked like it could slough off at any moment. Lodged into his skull where his left eye should be, the man had a ring, from which were three hinged round eyeglasses, while on his right hand were claws of long straight spikes that reminded Lan of the ones used to infuse spices into meat, on each knuckle were four long glass vials and over his putrid robes stained around the lower half with black gore the man wore a long white coat painted with blood and seemingly made of simple fabric.
For a moment, Lan couldn’t help but wonder why anyone would wear such a thing. It didn’t seem to provide any protection from whatever the Necromancer had been in, nor did it seem defensive.
Pushing that aside, Lan looked to the last of them and the one controlling the darkness, but the man had his back to Lan, his hand on the Tear. The very sight of which sent anger shooting through his blood.’
{Lan… that one does not have a Seraph.} the Voice said, sounding shaken to her core.
‘And the others do?’ Lan thought back.
{No, they have long abandoned them, but that one in the middle has never had one}
‘Oh my, look at you,’ the incredible voice said as a woman with shining pearl-like skin, hair like obsidian threads and eyes like crystalline blood that matched her lips materialised from the bats, inches from Lan’s face blocking his view.
‘Look at those eyes.’ she said, although for a moment Lan had thought she had read his mind. ‘Perfect blue and crowned in gold to say nothing of the inner light… it’s like being under the sun again.’ She added, tracing his jawline. ‘and I might add how easy on the eyes you are… I think I will keep you.’
The woman’s forwardness was even more intense and far more overwhelming than Olivia's.
‘That’s enough, Morrigan, you are disturbing the young master.’ The older woman chided.
‘Me?’ the pale woman grinned and turned with a smug tone to her voice. ‘I wasn’t the one that made me put sound-nullifying magic in the tunnels that my little lovelies and I use, was I’ she asked, and even though Lan could no longer see her face, he knew she was smirking by the way the older woman frowned.
‘Enough, you two.’ the Necromancer called in a high, cracky voice. ‘The young master needs total focus to dominate the Tear of Creation. Get rid of that rat now.’
‘No…’ the one man they were calling master said in a high tenor, ending the discussion before he turned to face Lan.
The man was young, probably a little younger than Lan if he were human and no older than Silas, with unassuming brown hair and a pale, freckled face. Standing around the others, Lan would have felt the need to rescue the boy from them if not for the emotionless expression on his face, with eyes like a dead fish left out to stare at the sun.
The young man wore black-on-black robes trimmed in silver and more black, but the oddest part was the boy’s eyeglasses, unlike Lily’s relatively common round glasses. The boys were more rectangular, held only by the part around the ears and a little gold bridge linking the two halves.
‘The Orb reacted to you.’ the young man said, his tone filled with amusement that didn’t crawl up to his eyes. ‘So you must be the hero of this storybook.’ He laughed at the joke that clearly only he got if the blank looks of the others were anything to go by.
‘Too bad I don’t plan on writing a cliche.’ The young man smiled.
Lan knew he was screwed. It didn’t seem like he would be getting out of this, and he didn’t think he could stall long enough to regain mana even though Tyr waited at the tunnel for him, sending him the impression of following her. So, he would just be stubborn.
‘Hero? You got the wrong man. I was just going on a stroll and got lost.’ Lan said, trying to shrug through the swarm of bats. Lan really didn’t need to try. Light Marked and tasked with killing the man before him, yes, but that didn’t make him a hero.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
‘See that young master?’ the Necromancer started. ‘Despite his situation, this one holds no fear in his heart. He serves the Hunter and is undoubtedly from one of the guilds in the city.’ The Necromancer counselled.
‘I know.’ The Young man said, glancing at the Necromancer. ‘It is only a matter of time before one showed up, but I did not expect them to be tied to the Orb. But then it makes sense, like a body trying to heal itself, there are certain rules to this game. If there is a villain, then there is a hero to slay them, but this? is a little disappointing.’
‘Tell me, Trash Hero… what is your name?’
Looking back at the young man, Lan said nothing, even as he tried to wrap his mind around everything happening. That this person was behind the darkness trapping one of the Mother’s Tears, not to mention the silent devastation in the forest, beggared belief.
‘I will handle this.’ the Older woman said as a long black insect with hundreds of legs and a scorpion's tail crawled from her sleeve and onto her hand as she stalked forward.
‘No… let Morrigan.’ The young man finally said, making the pale woman step in front of Lan again, waving for the bats to lift him off the ground; she looked into his eyes while the other woman frowned.
‘What is your name?’ she asked sweetly as her eyes began to glow.
‘L-Lan-drin Cross…’ Lan said, feeling the words, his words massaged from his mind by the woman’s enrapturing voice.
‘Cross!…’ the Necromancer started, ‘he is of His brood.’ He advised the young man, who shot him an annoyed glare.
‘I know.’ He said, looking away with a frown
‘You know my Father?’ Lan said, feeling shock and horror at the idea, almost making him miss the mirrored horror on the faces around him.
‘No…’ the Necromancer hummed. ‘This one is far too young to be the child of that man. he must be referring to another descendant. But now that I look at him, there is no doubt no one else has hair like that.’ Having no idea what they were talking about, Lan watched them all relax. His Last name was rare, but he didn’t know why it brought that kind of reaction. That was until he remembered the abilities tied to his father’s side of the family and that name.
The woman was prompted to go on before he could ask who they were talking about.
‘How many of you are there?’ she asks, and Lan felt his eyelids flutter.
‘Just… me.’ Lan breathed, glad that it was technically true that Tyr was part of him.
‘Oh… and what are you doing here?’
Instead of answering the woman, Lan felt the compulsion rooted in his mind mixing with his anger and obligation as he looked past the woman to the young man.
‘I was sent to stop you.’ Lan didn’t know what it was, but something flashed in the boy's cold, dead eyes before he smiled at the threat that Lan knew he wouldn’t live long enough to act on.
Immediately, the red Goliath stepped forward, ‘Enough of this. I will get rid of this worm.’ The Goliath said, raising a fist as if to crush Lan’s skull with a punch.
‘No…’ the young man said, making the Goliath freeze.
‘He is linked to the Tear… a Light Marked.’ He said, pointedly at the Necromancer. ‘We can not risk his soul joining the Soul Furnace without making it unstable. Kill him, and we lose the Tear. Plus, I have a better use for this one.’ He said, moving up to Lan. ‘When you leave this place, what will you do?’
With the idea that he wouldn’t be killed still falling into place, Lan still felt no need to play along.
‘After seeing all this, I will pack and leave the city the moment I get out of here.’ Lan said, making the young man laugh.
‘No, you will run to your guild, and in a few weeks, an army of adventurers will be at our door. But what you don’t know is that I want you to do that. I have stripped the forest and still need a lot more Soul essence to finish my work. Now tell me, can you think of the one place where I can get hundreds of powerful souls?’ the young man grinned. ‘That’s right, I plan on killing all of you adventurers to use your goddess's power to unmake this world.’
‘How… how can anyone do this?’ Lan asked. Being able to use magic was one thing, but controlling a Tear of Creation was another. It was like someone choosing when the sun set.
The young man actually smiled at him, ‘I always wanted to do this.’ He trailed off for a moment. ‘I was not only given the power to see the structures of magic but also reshape it.’ he went on, waving his hand and making one of the torches’ flames turn to sand. ‘It’s like rewriting code, but a little more fun. However, I can only do so around me or through my dark dominion, but once I have the Orb under my control, I can corrupt all of its kind, with which I will erase the gods of this world.
‘Why?’ Lan tried; surely, no one who was once human could want to end the world, and yet he was in a room filled with monsters that wanted just that.
‘The people of this world think they can take anything they want and get away without consequence, take land, take lives, take people from their worlds. And when you are done with them, throw them away. A world in which the gods will allow this to happen is a world not worthy to exist.’
For a moment, Lan just stared at the young man… the summoned Hero. Guilt and shame that were not his but still tore at his heart, filling him, and then it was replaced with anger.
‘And you think you have the right to choose if this world lives or dies?’ he asked, bringing on another smile that avoided the Hero’s eyes. ‘We were summoned to save it, were we not?’
For a moment, Lan could do nothing but stare, and then the Guildmaster’s words returned to him: “Sometimes a hero was never meant to be a warrior, but seeing as summoned heroes are held to the same or higher standards than our Hero Title bearers they don’t last long.” Lan could see just as some were not meant to be warriors. Some were never meant to be Heroes.
‘What will you do knowing that?’ the young… the summoned Hero asked. ‘Help you bring an end to your world now, or try to steal a little more time before the end.’
Lan didn’t know why, but despite the situation and the turmoil in his heart, his answer was clear before the young man finished.
‘We won’t keep you waiting.’ Lan said, his mouth stretching into a wild grin. What the young man was didn’t change what he was; as a Light Marked and one belonging to The Hunt, he would do his duty.
Whatever the young man had been expecting, the look in Lan’s eyes seemed to not be it as his expression returned to its blank state.
‘It looks like we play this game, Trash Hero. You have four weeks to bring me my sacrifice, or I will come to the city to get it.’ he said. ‘Morrigan, get rid of him,’ the young man said, turning back to the Tear.
‘Hmm, a shame, Light Marked and a descendant of Arron Cross, it would have been good to add you to one of my Golems after experimenting on you. The Necromancer mused, drawing Lan’s attention from the young man.
‘You are to blame?’ Lan snapped as he tried to pull himself out of the bats.
‘Yes.’ The Necromancer answered proudly. ‘resurrection for a Necromancer is child’s play, but the master has shown me a new method that I have rededicated myself to mastering. To bring back life through my experiments will be my greatest achievement.’ He laughed.
‘You!…’ Lan growled before the bats moved to cover his sight before he could finish.
When his vision cleared, he was looking down on the city gate from upon a short ridge at the edge of the forest. The odd woman hugged him from behind, one arm draped over his chest as the fingers of her other hand walked along his jaw lovingly, her nails like daggers but wielded with enough care not to scratch a baby’s skin.
Despite it being daytime, Lan found himself shrouded by darkness until he looked up and saw a parasol of bats blocking the sun from their mistress.
‘There we are, Cole.’ The woman… Morrigan giggled. ‘Faster than the first time, no?’
‘How?’ Lan said, still reeling from everything happening before remembering that he knew she had caressed his name from his mind. ‘How did you know how long it took me?’ he breathed.
‘It’s simple love. I read your mind. Well, I saw your memories.’
‘What!’ Lan started, taken aback by the intrusion.
‘Oh, don’t be like that, darling. It’s not like I wasn’t already ordered to look around your lovely mind. I just took a little peek, and I have to say I think I want you even more now.’ She said, hugging him tighter.
‘We are enemies!’ Lan said, incredulous at the whole tenor of the conversation, which was the only thing he could do with the rest of the bats still holding him.
‘Oh, for now, love.’ She soothed.
‘For now? But aren’t you trying to end the world?’ Lan asked, finding himself working to keep up with what was happening.
‘Once this whole business with the Mother and her Children is dealt with. I will come to get you so we can face eternity in what comes next together,’ the woman said, her eyes lighting with sincerity, more fitting plans for a meal between lovers and not talk of the end of the world.
‘But we must say goodbye for now,’ she sighed wistfully. ‘You have an army to raise, and I have lunch.’ She giggled. ‘Oh, and one last thing before I forget.’ With that, Morrigan's fangs sunk into Lan’s neck, pulling slightly from his blood as her eyes took on a golden light. Before she stopped herself with visible effort and kissed his neck.
‘What are you doing?’ Lan demanded, feeling a sharp pain before it was replaced with a cool numbness.
[Vampire’s Mark – A form of magic branding that allows a vampire to track their prey]
‘I was right about you.’ She licked her lip before seeming to wake from her intoxication. ‘Oh, don’t worry. I have not given you my gift just yet. No, I want you to master the power sleeping in your blood first.’ She mused. ‘With this, I will be able to find you in the battle to come,’ she went on before looking thoughtful. ‘and anywhere in the world, really. I wouldn’t want one of the others to hurt you, so be sure to stay out of trouble before I am able to come for you.’ with a trill, the bats scattered, and the Vampire vanished, bathing him in the light of day.