The battle, the funeral pyre, and the mansion they’d set aflame were now behind them, figuratively and literally. However, Rowan couldn’t help but feel like they’d taken a step forward right into the murk of some kind of ominous swamp.
“It’s Kayla, right? It has to be…” Rowan repeated for about the tenth time, once again receiving unhappy grumbles from Blake in return. Even though he wasn’t the biggest fan of Kayla either, Rowan didn’t understand Blake’s issue with Kayla after their arrival in their new reality, but he did have a pretty strong hint now.
Every time the heroine’s name was brought up, an unpleasant cocktail of anger and distrust would boil up in Blake. That wouldn’t be so bad, but the problematic part was that Rowan could tell that the emotions were not fully his own. Rowan could feel the goddess up in his friend’s head, contributing to those emotions. Stoking them. Encouraging them.
And there was nothing he could do about it.
“It’s not important.” Once more, Blake gave the exact same response, eyes fixated angrily on the horizon. “You know what we need to do. So, let’s just do it.”
“And where, pray tell, do you want us to head?” Rowan finally snapped, biting his lip to stop from saying anything else. “Which way do you want to go?”
They’d won. There was no denying that. But they’d also taken losses. Plus, it would take time for them to track down the next legendary demon.
Blake’s response to the question was unexpected. The other hero froze, eyes fluttering shut. When they opened, they glowed with a divine radiance, and snapped to a particular spot on the horizon.
“That way.” There was no uncertainty, no trace of doubt that mere mortals would allow to slip into their voice. Just the plain surety of divine knowledge as Rowan’s connection to Blake fed him a fraction of the radiance the other hero’s soul was bathed in.
Rowan grimaced. No matter how much he disliked the gods, even he couldn’t deny that the second-hand emotions were enough to affect him a little. Just not enough to inspire him to instantly charge into the deeper wastes.
“I get that you’re zealous, but we still need to wait until morning. We should be in bed as it is. Or better yet, back in town to recuperate.” Rowan’s complaints fell on deaf ears as his best friend navigated past the tents, venturing to the very edge of their camp.
They didn’t want to sleep anywhere near the scene of their former battle, so the army had marched until sunset before setting camp. Thanks to Blake, the route had taken them deeper into the wastes, but they were proceeding carefully. Despite that, Rowan could easily tell that Blake’s opinion on the matter of their marching speed was going to be contentious come morning.
“Blake, really, can you calm down?” Rowan was forced to grab the other hero’s shoulder, finally resigning himself to slightly harsher methods. “Are you going to do the same thing again? Just charge until everyone else dies besides your party?”
The flinch and sudden haunted look in Blake’s eyes made Rowan want to wince, but there was no taking the comment back. At least it did its job of jerking him out of whatever the Divine insight had done to him.
“It’s… different?” Blake ventured cautiously, cringing at the look of disbelief Rowan sent him. “It really is?”
“How? How is rushing going to fix anything?”
“It’s different because my goddess actually wants me to be here now! I’m no longer going against her wishes. She obviously wants me to do this, if she’s providing me with guidance. Besides, the girls, I…”
“Yes?”
Blake was hesitating, and his face did an almost funny cycle between paling and blushing, but he did eventually get the words out. “I don’t want to fail them. They need me to do better. Even in this last battle, I didn’t perform up to expectation.”
“Blake, you wounded that thing badly enough that I could take advantage and almost finish him, and then Milena managed to resist his final efforts and kill him. That’s no small part to play. When I first tried, I could barely get past the demon’s skin!”
“That’s just my goddess’ blessing…”
“And who was the one who used the blessing?” Rowan was on the verge of snapping, again. The only thing that held him back was the sad expression on Blake’s face. Thankfully, Blake began to cheer up soon after, a smile stretching across his face. And Rowan would have been even happier if he couldn’t feel the whispers of the goddess nudging him to feel that way. But for now, he would take it.
“You know what? You’re right! Okay, sure, I get it. I need to be more careful. For… for them, I guess,” Blake mumbled.
“Finally! Now, how about we finally go get some sleep?” Rowan asked.
“That sounds great! I hope I’ll have enough space in my tent leftover for that.”
This time, when Rowan laughed, the sound was pure relief and amusement. “Your fault, my friend. I have but a single fiancée, so I don’t have any issues with tent size.”
“No, you have issues with a different kind of size.”
Rowan just about face planted at the innuendo, whirling to face Blake with wide, startled eyes. “Did you just make a…”
Congratulations!
[Balkar, The Count of Stoic Pride], one of the Four Demonic Pillars, has been slain!
The moment of levity evaporated in the face of heat in Rowan’s chest. He gasped and clutched the front of his shirt as the heat ramped up past the point of its previous peak.
Calculating…
Conditions 5/8 fulfilled.
Error!
Unsealing requirements not met.
Once again, the unsealing failed and Rowan was left glaring at the status window, willing it to provide a full and proper explanation of what exactly was happening.
It declined to do so, if its immutability was any indication.
Neither of the heroes got particularly restful sleep for what remained of the night.
—
The next morning, it wasn’t only Blake and Rowan who looked like they were missing sleep. Each of the epic tier classes looked like they’d been put through the wringer.
The hero parties were caught up in the doubtful mood of their nominal leaders.
The Mercenary King was a jumble of nerves, fear, expectation and guilt.
Tamara was the only one with a relatively stable mood, though the coil of excitement Rowan kept glimpsing was definitely growing to be a worry.
Ironically, in spite of that, most of them looked perfectly fresh and ready for the day, especially since four people had access to Rowan’s Natural Renewal.
“We need to set out immediately.” Blake’s version of, ‘Good morning,’ wasn’t exactly well received. It was coated with the palpable anxiety that Rowan had hoped he’d smothered yesterday. Once again, his brow furrowed when he felt the goddess’s influence.
“What need is there for such a rush, hero?” assured Lucius. “We all got the notification yesterday. There’s but a single legendary demon left, and we’re well ahead of schedule.”
Fortunately or not, while the hero parties were caught up in doubt and suspicion, most of the army was in a celebratory mood, and Lucius was working to emulate them. After all, the notifications had come one after the other, bolstering their conviction and courage.
The man was smiling and a perfect picture of health. Even his clothing and armor were nicely polished and maintained.
If Rowan couldn’t sense his actual feelings on the subject, he’d likely have been fooled.
“That’s the exact reason we need to rush,” a buzz-kill Blake snapped. “One of those kills may have been Kayla. Both? I refuse to believe that she could have pulled that off. That means there’s something out there, plotting something.”
“Plotting to help us kill the demon king?” Marcus’s voice was calm, but the tone he used made his implications clear.
“You don’t understand, it’s…!”
“Blake, it’s fine.” Rowan cut in, feeling the other hero’s emotions spike dangerously and artificially. “We’ll be okay. Deep breaths.”
“But, we only got one of them. And the experience…” Blake trailed off, flushing at the looks Rowan’s party sent him. “I just want us to be ready to fight the demon lord, that’s all.”
“I understand your concerns. Speaking of, we wanted you to have this.” Rowan led the conversation towards a healthier topic, pulling a card out of his pack and presenting it to Blake.
The other hero’s expression was full of both shock and wonder as he took it, odd emotions dancing across his features too quickly to identify right after. “Are you sure?”
Rowan could understand his hesitation. Funnily enough, it wasn’t even him who suggested this particular course of action last night. His party had come together to evaluate their progress and sort out their loot, and it was Milena who pushed for one of the two drops to go to the other hero party.
According to the woman herself, “It would breed bad feelings if they walked away from the encounter empty-handed.” Rowan could see the wisdom of what she’d insisted on as the posture’s of Blake’s party members relaxed, losing a lot of their rigidity.
“We wanted you to have it so you stay safer. Gods know that Rowan spends enough time worrying about you,” Milena teased gently, toying with her staff.
Rowan flushed when the attention of everyone focused on him, then coughed. “She’s not wrong. But really, the card should be useful.”
And it was.
The Mind Electric (Legendary, Passive)
Your mind is your bastion, capable of housing all dreams and nightmares. None shall threaten your sovereignty.
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Rowan had briefly tested it, with Milena’s help, and the description really didn’t do it justice. After all, it had allowed him to weather the effects of the other card that dropped without even flinching.
Kiss of Madness (Legendary, Active)
The glimpse of eternity in a water droplet, the aria of heavens in the screeching of a storm.
The description was utterly useless, but in line what he was starting to associate with higher tier cards, the more poetic the description, the more profound the effects.
That card had gone to Milena with absolutely no contest or doubt. She’d landed the last blow, and the thing was practically tailor-made for a [Shaman] class. According to the woman herself, it allowed her to cast a curse of madness, either as a spell or a ritual.
The effects of both were ridiculous, and threatened to shatter the mind of anyone who so much grazed against the curse’s area of effect. Rowan couldn’t explain it, much like he couldn’t explain what happened to him when the demon used the card. It was like his mind was forced to expand, to take in more and more information all at once, to live through every second of his life and his current reality all at once. The worst part of the whole thing was that thinking back on the experience filled him with longing. For just a moment, every part of him was there, expressed and on the surface. He understood every facet of his own being.
But it was a mirror that threatened to shatter and take his mind with it.
For all that Kiss of Madness was aggression, The Mind Electric was the complete opposite. The card allowed its owner to recognize any curse’s effects, categorize them, and then shove them aside in favor of restoring his own will and sense of self.
That was why, when Milena suggested Blake have it, Rowan was fully aboard.
With baited breath and anxiety burning in his chest, Rowan took in the sight of his friend eying the card. His face was perfectly blank now, but with their bond, Rowan could tell what he was feeling.
Desire warred with an odd sense of caution.
Gratefulness warred with a profound sense of being undeserving.
On and on, the contrasting feelings warred inside of Rowan’s best friend, each opposite more artificial than the last.
Then, at last, Blake raised his eyes to meet Rowan’s own. Hesitation met nothing but sincerity, and The Stalwart Hero stepped forward, gently pushing Blake’s hands that had a death grip on the card until the orange card gently pressed against the hero’s chest.
Blake took a shuddering breath as a purple card materialized in front of him and plummeted to the ground, and the legendary card dissolved into motes of light that went straight into his chest. Immediately, a rush of changes surged through Blake’s connection to Rowan. It was like watching a flame lick up against a gasoline puddle, the whole thing turning into an inferno in a matter of seconds.
Each emotion combusted and evaporated, before a sense of calm and emptiness surged back down the connection. The inferno stilled, and in its place was a lake, its surface calm like a mirror.
Slowly, owlishly, Blake blinked and looked around, then down at his now-empty hands. For several long seconds, no one spoke.
“Each and every one of you, so dramatic.” Rowan swung around when a new voice sounded around them. The voice was smooth and undeniably human, yet when the whole group rounded on the source in a panic, they spotted a plump, shiny black raven giving them the stink eye.
“Kayla?” Rowan’s voice was full of disbelief, but there was no denying the familiarity of the voice. Or the fact that it was coming from a raven.
“Correct, tis I. The greatest mage to grace this kingdom.” The raven saluted them with a wing mockingly, turning its head to the other side in that distinctly bird-like fashion.
“I’ve had nowhere near enough to drink to deal with this,” Rowan sighed, already feeling a headache coming on. His eyes flitted between the bird and his best friend, but Blake was oddly non-responsive.
Oh, he was there and he was focused. Rowan could tell that much by the flicker in the man’s eyes, but he could no longer feel a single emotion coming from him. Not even a hint.
“Like you were ever fun enough to drink this early,” the raven scoffed, then fluttered forward and landed right on Rowan’s left shoulder, purposefully smacking him in the face with a wing and its tail as it perched itself there.
“Not that I’m unhappy with the visit, but what exactly do you want?” Rowan groused, taking in the reactions of the group.
His own party had mostly glares to spare for the heroine-and-raven, having been there when she admonished Rowan for his lacking prowess after easily killing an epic they were all about to die at the hands of.
Blake’s party, if anything, was even more hostile.
They drew closer to their hero, looking like lionesses about to fight to keep their male out of the clutches of a different pride. Rowan thought that the raven was smirking, somehow.
Blake himself was still nearly emotionless, making Rowan start to regret ever giving him the card.
It was, however, the feelings of the two Rest’s Remorse powerhouses that worried him.
The Mercenary King’s guilt spiked again, and with it came a sense of resignation.
Meanwhile, the ecstatic glow of Tamara’s emotions was more than enough to give Rowan pause. With concentration on his face, he focused on his connection to the woman, but other than happiness and expectation, he got nothing else.
“Well, if this idiot here could finally learn to listen,” Kayla started off crassly, pointing a wing at Blake. “I’d like to meet up, and offer up a bit of advice. After all, there’s no going back now. It would be a shame if we failed right at the finish line.”
“Just tell us what you want, Kayla. I’m not going to play your games. I’m just… tired.” When he spoke, Blake genuinely sounded like he was hanging on through sheer willpower. Whatever the card’s effect had done, it was obvious that the other hero was struggling. Instead of haste or anger, there was just a deep weariness in his expression.
“Can’t do it like this. You really think a familiar I’m possessing is a good replacement for an in-person meeting? No. For now, I’d like you to continue heading west. It’s deeper into the wastes, yes, but it’s where we need to go regardless. You’ll find a spot where two rivers meet easily enough. Make camp there.”
“And let you do what, ambush us?” Blake snapped, but there was no real heat in his voice.
“You missed a familiar, Blake. If I really wanted to, I could have dropped potions or something on your tents. Or channeled a spell through it if I wanted to go big. Now, please let the adults do the thinking, and just follow along like you usually do, okay?”
Kayla’s voice was sugary sweet, but her words made Blake go completely pale. Rowan edged a bit closer to his friend, ready to catch him if he passed out. Thankfully, no such thing happened, and without even waiting for a response, the bird took flight, then melted into a mass of shadows overhead.
The shadow drifted over the army camp harmlessly, even if they did provoke a couple shouts of surprise.
The two heroes could only stare, each with complicated emotions of their own.
“Right, well. I’m putting this to a vote. Everyone who wants to actually do as she suggested, hands up.” Rowan wasn’t about to waste time, but he really wasn’t sure whether to hope people voted for or against.
He did decide to put his hand up, however, and a second later, his party followed suit. With great reluctance and great exuberance respectively, both Lucius and Tamara raised their hands as well.
The real surprise was when a pale-faced princess followed suit, earning looks of angry shock from the other two girls in her party.
“I suppose you two are against,” Rowan said. The two girls nodded, shooting more looks of betrayal at the princess. “And you, Blake?” Blake just stared at his friend, making no move to either protest or acquiesce. Rowan winced. “Right, then. Well, I guess we’re going.”
—
The mood among was the troops was still generally positive as they set out, traipsing through the jungle of the wastes. Supported by the cards of the Mercenary King, that was unlikely to change.
The mood among the leaders of the army, however, could use some improvement.
Three girls were still clustered around Blake like someone would try to steal him, while the man himself was a dazed mess.
Rowan didn’t want to ask for the card back. He really didn’t. But by the time the sun crested over the horizon and they finally found their way to the destination Kayla had specified, he really was starting to feel tempted. Blake was like a block of ice, impossible to read and melting with weariness.
At least Rowan’s own party was ready and functional. They’d slipped a little ahead of the others, and Rowan took the chance to fill them in on everything that was happening and his own fears and suspicions on the subject.
“So, somethings coming to a head,” Marcus said. It wasn’t a question, and the wolf kin grim expression only went to accentuate the fact.
“Almost definitely,” Rowan confirmed, massaging his forehead. “And Blake’s still out of it.”
“You’re not getting any feelings from him at all? None?” Milena asked to confirm, leafing through a large old grimoire instead of one of her more recent acquisitions.
“Not a hint. Zero. Zilch. Nada.” The string of strange expressions earned him a few odd looks, making him wonder for the first time in a while how his communication ability actually worked.
Milena sighed and closed her book, shrugged, then put it away. “Best I can tell, the card gave Hero Blake blanket immunity to mental effects. You could probably work with him to figure out how to make it possible for you to sense him, but that means you’d need to explain the whole thing to him first.”
“Yeah, I don’t think I want to do that,” Rowan admitted with a wince, looking away. In a very real way, he’d broken Blake’s confidence as much as the Goddess did.
Maybe more, considering the fact that he’d been friends before landing in a new dimension. It was admittedly for his own good, but still, Rowan was firmly hoping that Blake would never learn about it.
“I’m more worried about your other friend,” Olivia said, hugging Rowan’s arm a little tighter. “I don’t know what she wants, but the Mercenary King’s reaction hints that she’s involved with the King’s plans. And then there’s Tamara…”
Olivia trailed off, but the look in her eyes anything but friendly. It seemed Olivia was now ready to carry on the torch of her mother’s anger.
“I’m not sure whatever Tamara’s planning is malicious, per say,” Rowan hurried to reassure, desperate for even a single ally more. “It’s more like she’s just… excited, and yes, I hear myself and know how it sounds. She felt the same when we fought the legendary, though. Complete with disappointment that followed. Maybe she just wants the experience and cards, and knows this is a great opportunity to get them?”
“Why isn’t she saying anything, then?” Olivia protested, turning up her nose at the idea that the mage was blameless.
“She wants to swoop in and heroically rescue us, earning our undying gratitude?” Rowan offered, even if the reasoning was rather thin.
Olivia scoffed, and he was forced to admit he agreed. “Anyways, just, please be ready? We don’t know what we’re walking into.”
—
Their destination was almost impossibly beautiful. Located at the intersection of what appeared to be two major rivers, the surroundings were oddly flat and jungle-free.
The rolling meadows hugged the banks of the rivers, and grass enchantingly swayed in the gentle wind.
There were only a few things that spoiled the beautiful view.
First, no matter how much it added to the scenery, the unfortunate fact of the matter was that both the grass and the rivers were a deep shade of purple. While the rivers were nowhere near as revolting as the one they came across closer to the city, Rowan was pretty sure that a single sip of the water contained enough poison to kill the entire army. The river was still filled with filth, corruption, and corpses.
The second thing that marred the view was the corpses themselves, drifting by. Various beasts and monsters dotted the river banks, some of them quite fresh, some of them quite not. All of them rather smelly if you got too close.
Otherwise, a pleasant and enticing smell dominated the air, wafting off the purple river water and making Rowan’s mouth water.
“Lovely locale, here,” Rowan snarked in a vain attempt to distract himself from his building thirst.
Oddly enough, it was the princess that stepped forward with a heavy frown on her face. A corona of light ignited around her, and then rolled over the army. It temporarily banished the smell, and with it, took the tingles that had snuck up on Rowan and which he didn’t notice until they were gone.
“Waiting here is a terrible idea,” the princess declared, turning to eye up the Stalwart Hero. “The poison in the river dissolves into the air, especially where it’s drying on the banks. Inhaling it for just half an hour is enough to be lethal.”
Her proclamation wasn’t exactly loud, but it was still enough to reach the ears of the closest soldier ranks and then spread out like a ripple.
Rowan sighed, eying up the river and what insisting on meeting there could mean. “We’re here already. Any Ideas?”
“I can set up wards,” Milena volunteered, eying their surroundings. “And that stretch of land between the rivers isn’t all that big. We can probably hold it rather easily, especially with the wards added to the mix. Any land troops, would be forced to cross through poison to reach us.”
“I can help with that, I suppose,” the de Vort contributed to the conversation, eying up the wolf kin speculatively. “And good idea on the positioning. We’re going to need all the advantages we can get, I suppose, since someone decided we needed to be here.”
More glares were exchanged with the princess, but Rowan cut them off and got them moving.
Transporting the entirety of their army across the river was a chore, but between the mages and the princess’s healing abilities, they managed.
From there, Rowan frankly enjoyed watching the two spell casters work on their warding. The arrangement of symbols carved into the dirt, items buried in it, and ancient chants were all things he found fascinating. He was able to let his mind relax a bit in the monotony of the ritual casting.
When it was done, honest to goodness force fields sprung up around them, glowing and opaque, before they faded away from view. With the shields in place, the princess performed one final purification ritual, and their temporary base was done.
Gone was the sweet, compelling scent, or the way Rowan’s surroundings gently rippled at the edges of his vision. It was an odd thought to have, but he almost missed the beauty of it.
That wasn’t a thought he could spend much time contemplating, however, because the sound of whistling precluded the sight of a small army of mages cutting through the sky on their way to them.
At their helm stood Kayla, in all her arrogant glory. The heroine looked like someone stepping out of her carriage into the reception hall of a ball, clad in a glamorous dress that shifted through hues of black and violet with every movement of the material.
More tellingly, Kayla’s expression wasn’t fixed in a smirk. It wasn’t the practiced disdain Rowan knew she tested out in the mirror on occasion.
She was stone-faced, focused and intense.
The heroine was on a war path, and Rowan was only mostly sure her ire wasn’t directed at them.