Prologue
The being currently referring to itself as Tryn daintily wiped off its mouth with a lacy purple handkerchief, which it then tossed over its shoulder dismissively, the gore-stained bit of cloth disappearing in a small puff of smoke shortly after leaving its still gore covered hands.
“I think that about sums up any questions you could reasonably have.”
Around the world, a babble of disagreement broke out in response to that statement. Tryn adopted a confused and considering expression.
“Not at all, true enough. Allow me to rephrase in a more honest fashion.” It crossed its arms behind its back, the thin limbs hidden beneath puffy purple and black sleeves bending at unsettling and unnatural angles. With its head tilted to the side, purple flames shifted and danced in empty sockets, somehow giving the impression of an intense stare.
“I know that sums up any questions you could reasonably have that I care enough or am obligated to answer.” It grinned, it’s face stretching and widening a bit to allow it’s grin to stretch even wider. “So, we shall move on to the next, and far more interesting phase.” Its arms snapped back in front of it, like bungee cords that had come unhooked. Raising one arm, it pointed directly at every person in the world at once, the hand pointing down to the scattered remains of those who had drawn its ire and not survived to this point in the conversation that the entirety of humanity suddenly found themselves having.
“The assigning of powers and abilities! A torrent of potential, martial, magical and otherwise shall now be bestowed on you! The ability to thrive and overcome the terrible tribulations that await!” Tryn bowed its head slightly, breaking eye contact as its grin widened again. “Or at least to writhe about more attractively, the most select of worms impaled on our shiniest hooks.”
Straightening back up, the skeletal looking creature spread its arms wide as it continued, ignoring the fear and anger generated by its last comment in equal measure. “To that end…”, it cast its arms wide open dramatically, throwing back its head to stare up at the sky, the bells at the tip of its hat bouncing about soundlessly. “Bring forth your heroes!”
A wave of silence greeted this pronouncement, as both the hostage audience of the entire world and the jester seemed to wait for something expectantly. After a moment, Tryn lowered its head, looking around in feigned confusion and dismay.
“Oh dear… oh dear YOU, that is, well, that’s simply terrible. Not one? Not a single hero to shepherd this lost and assuredly doomed planet of sheep?” The jester brought both hands to its mouth, widespread bony fingers doing nothing to hide the cruel smirk it adopted even as it lamented the poor pitiable human race.
“It’s true, I’m afraid. Not one hero walks among your people, we checked.” Tryn tiled its head to the side. “And to those of you that stepped forward to volunteer just now, I applaud your arrogance and stupidity equally and enthusiastically. But no. No, no, no, not at all, not even a bit. No paragon of teaching underprivileged spiders to read or champion of making sure no child grows up without tasting a Big Mac is the type of Hero we’re looking for and you all so desperately need in the days ahead. I’m talking about a slayer of monsters, a warrior who stands against entire armies, a champion of power that shakes the very heavens and rouses your non-existent gods from their napping.”
The jester snapped its fingers, and a pair of tiny reading glasses and weathered scroll appeared in its hands. Placing the former upon its nose, it examined the latter intently, the flickering purple flames within its empty eye sockets flashing against the thick lenses.
“Let’s see here, surely your planet full of glorified chattel animals has had at least a hero or two at some point in your embarrassingly short history of existence.” Tryn leaned over the scroll, scanning it quickly. “Achilles? Immortal with bad heels, breaker of sieges and slayer of armies? Very eager to massacre anything that got on his bad side in a four miles radius?” The jester glanced back up, then leaned its head to the side like it was listening. “Not real? Irrelevant! Dead?” It paused, considering that. “For how long?” It once again listened, seemingly to nothing, at least to those of humanity not currently providing an answer. “Three thousand years?” It snapped its fingers. “Just missed him. Alright, how about…”. It returned to scanning the scroll intently. “This one… no, dead. Maybe her… no, most of you don’t even remember her. And she’s also dead. Maybe, no. No. Noooope.” The jester shook its head, clapping the scroll between its hands, which obligingly vanished in a small puff of foul-smelling smoke. The glasses it plucked off its nose, and tossed them into its mouth, crunching the broken glass while regarding humanity reproachfully.
“You know, a species as generally unimpressive and unremarkable as yours should really make more of an effort. Being of actual value beyond entertainment is likely forever outside of your species reach, but you could at least put in a token effort to not be total disappointments on a cosmological scale.” Swallowing the mouthful of broken glass and twisted wire rims, Tryn rubbed its chin with one hand while considering humanity and their collective shortcomings thoughtfully. After a moment, he shrugged.
“Well, there’s nothing for it then. Without Heroes for you to rally around, and to guide you in the days ahead, you all will end up wiped out in less time than it took us to get here. Not to mention the time it would take to get back, and the whole thing will just end up a huge waste of everyone’s time.” The jester paused to pick a long shard of broken glass out from its gums, the blood the coated it black and thick like tar, with a faint smell of cinnamon. “Not to mention your species will cease to exist, but honestly, that’s far less important to us than the possibility of wasting my and my master’s time.” It sighed, the perfect picture of a weary and put-upon employee. “I suppose there’s nothing for it. If only to make this mildly worth our while, we’ll have to help you all out a bit.” The jester leaned forward suddenly, eyeless sockets and skeletal face pressed close to every face on earth.
“So… who is your hero, who will fight the monsters?”
* * *
Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.
The ensuing responses to the question posed by the self proclaimed ‘Herald of the Depths’ were varied, to say the least, though they all fell into one of two broad categories.
The first were people who answered by naming real people who they, in spite of the jester’s mockery, felt qualified as heroes. This ranged from professional athletes, to Internet personalities, to first responders, to almost the entirety of the World Wrestling Division company. Those people, whose responsibilities up until now had included things like pitching a shutout game or playing scary video games in front of an audience, suddenly found themselves labeled as heroes, with power and ability to match. That had unsurprisingly mixed results.
The second group was people whose answered by naming fictional characters. Everything from video games, to comic books, to movies was drawn upon. The entire cast of several popular comic books, plus a variety of other superheroes set up shop in New York City. That didn’t go as well as the people who’d wished for it had hoped or expected. It turns out that more than fifty years of mismatched, often traumatic and sometimes outright contradictory history, when shoved into the head of an actual person who had just been willed into existence, resulted in often unstable and generally unreliable heroes, and some of them caused more problems than they solved.
The other problem was how commonly certain responses were given. If a hundred people in Mineral Point, Wisconsin called out for a specific cape wearing champion to be their hero, and ten thousand people in New York City called out for the same individual to be their hero, Tryn, or more accurately the system he served, did humanity the dubious favor of letting the majority rule, which left the good people of Mineral Point, in this example, thoroughly out of luck.
All across the world, there were a few points that stood out as anomalies during this process. Places where local legends or celebrities were the more popular response than the bigger names whispered across the world. In one of these places, a truly unusual majority of people gave the same answer. Not a superhero, or a dragon-riding knight, or the undisputed heavyweight champ. Instead, when asked who would fight the monsters, the people of this town answered with the relatively unknown name of Virginia Christianson.
* * *
Blood Drinkers from Below was a low budget, critically panned slasher horror film from 1988. There is, at first glance, nothing notable about this film. It had terrible writing, two dimensional stereotypes for characters, laughable if enthusiastic special effects, and a cast made up of a mix of lifelong unluckies and no name hopefuls. The former expected very little from the film beyond a meager paycheck and weren’t disappointed. The latter found it a harsh learning experience about the realities of making it big in Hollywood. None of them went on to have any sort of future in acting, with the exception of Gary Janson, who played the part of the popular and handsome male lead, Johnny Burke. Gary went on to do a series of very popular TV spots for a moderately sized chain of hardware stores in the Midwest, portraying the chain’s mascot Mister Fixer.
“If you need something fixed, the best place to come is Carter and Son’s Hardware. And I would know, since I’m... MIS-TUR FIXER!”
It brought a tear to the eye to see.
The film’s female lead, Virginia Christianson, was played by similarly bright eyed hopeful Rebecca Helens. Rebecca was... not a good actress. She was however, the most endearing sort of bad actress. What she lacked in talent or proficiency for theater, she made up in enthusiasm and bubbly cheerfulness. Sure, her lines were terrible, but she said them loudly and with undeniable energy. Those who are fans of bad films would describe her as ‘chewing on the scenery’. Honestly, of all of them, Rebecca honestly could have had the most success in the acting profession, the way terrible but earnest actors and actresses sometime do. Especially in the horror genre, where films that are terrible but fun are almost their own subgenre. However, it was not meant to be. Rebecca did not go on to star in a series of successful commercials or a series of terrible but fan-loved movies, and by the time a few years had passed, had gotten out of the acting game entirely. She refocused her attention elsewhere and got a license as a commercial real estate agent, where her bubbly cheerfulness and enthusiasm helped her thrive.
The film itself, Blood Drinkers from Below, unlike it’s female lead, was just terrible, not so good it was terrible, despite Rebecca’s earnest performance. It ran in theaters for only two weeks initially, then quickly made the jump to VHS. The only DVD release the film ever saw years later, was as part of a special “Classics of Horror”, crammed into there with a dozen other similarly forgotten films. The kind you see in Walmart, offering five films for five dollars, or tucked into a wire bin in a gas station under a faded sign reading, “Forgotten Gems, $6”.
In all honesty, Blood Drinkers from below would have likely ended up forgotten by the world entirely, it’s name only occasionally appearing on Special Edition Collection sets (featuring more than 100 spine tingling films!), and YouTube channels devoted to preserving the very particular niche of history that is classic horror films from the mid-1980s. And for the most part, that’s exactly what happened.
Except in Hope Falls.
Hope Falls, Indiana, a town whose name presumably described the mood and mindset of the founders, was a small community of less than three hundred souls located hours from the nearest city or population center. The majority of the town were employed by a large manufacturing plant that made parts for televisions. Not entire televisions, just their component parts, which would be loaded up monthly onto a series of trucks that were in town for that purpose, and then delivered to a different factory where they would then be assembled. There were two schools in Hope Falls, one catering to children from kindergarten through eighth grade, that was referred to by residents simply as ‘the school’, and Hope Falls High School, or Hope High, or as the students occasionally referred to it sullenly, Hope You’re High. The majority of the graduates of Hope High, whose gifted program was something that was run around the holidays where students volunteered to wrap gifts for anyone who dropped one off in their choice of green or red wrapping paper, would go on to work in the manufacturing plant like their parents, or similarly around the small town. As far as how the people of Hope Falls passed their time, the options were limited. There were two bars, a single bowling alley (with four lanes), a lake, and a movie theater with two screens. While the bowling alley was a popular spot, especially on Friday nights when the employees at the snack bar made a point of not asking to see ID before selling beers, when the weather was cold outside and folks were just all bowled out, they went to the theater.
The Unlimited Horizons Multiplex was open every afternoon and evening, with showings at five o’clock and eight o’clock. The theater itself was proof that the term “new releases” was relative, with the few movies that did arrive, arrived months after the rest of the world, and lingered for weeks. To combat this delay, the owner of the Unlimited Horizons had a series of old standbys. These were shown on a regular rotation with loose themes, things like Need a Laugh Wednesdays, and Action-Packed Saturdays. Fridays were Fearfest Fridays, where the Unlimited Horizons would play their old horror standby, Blood Drinkers from Below.
You have to understand, when options for entertainment are that limited, it’s not a question of preferences anymore. Your preferred genre or flavor of film is no longer a consideration. So, after more than thirty years of Fearfest Fridays, it was not an exaggeration to say that literally every man, woman, and child in Hope Falls was well acquainted with that unfortunate film, Blood Drinkers from Below. It was a bizzare and somehow profound phenomenon, to have that many people, in one place, all knowing one story so well.
As such, when everyone in the world was asked who would fight their monsters, everyone in Hope Falls, Indiana, had the same knee jerk reaction.