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Semi-pro Tagonist V

Hiro had no idea where things could have gone so wrong. One moment he and Dianne were talking to a monster, which was an experience he never expected to have, and then Dianne was suddenly hissing and clicking like a monster herself. Hiro panicked. He was ashamed of his reaction, this was Dianne, his best friend! If he could go back and change things, he would certainly ask for her side of the story, but that wasn't what he did, and no one could change the past.

Dianne had run. Hiro tried to follow; he could always go deal with the dungeon later, but there was no telling what Dianne would do if he left her alone. Tracking her proved too difficult for him, though. Hiro didn't have any magic spells or skills that could help find someone, and whatever Dianne had done to escape was not just running. Her tracks ended within a hundred paces of entering the trees. There were no marks to indicate she had climbed the trees for some reason, her tracks just… vanished. He spent hours wandering the forest looking for any sign of his best friend. Eventually though, he had to give up the chase. The rest of the party would be wondering where he had gone, and from what Theodore had said, Hiro was integral to this mission for some reason. When he made it back to the village, the Grand Paladin rushed up to meet him.

“Where have you been? Where is Dianne?”

“We... I don't know… Can we just finish this?

Theodore looked like he wanted to say more, but something in Hiro's face made him decide otherwise. With a nod he led Hiro to Shale's house where the rest of the party was speaking with the leader of the village.

Jacob spoke, shaking his head all the while, “Trolls? No. We're here for demons. If you have a troll problem, we can take word back to the capital when we are done. They can send an adventurer party on an official quest. Magnus, are you ready to…”

Shale interrupted Jacob with a raised hand. “I beg your pardon, milord. The trolls are not JUST trolls. Something leads them. None of us have seen demons, but it stands to reason that one may be puppeteering this ‘troll dungeon.'”

Jacob seemed to chew on that idea for a minute, and Hiro stepped forward, nearly tripping over a squirrel as it scurried from a nearby roof and into the trees.

Hiro shook off the distraction and glared at the village's leader. “I spoke with some of the villagers last night. They say Shale is working with the local dungeon monsters. Why are we even talking to him?”

Shale looked honestly shocked. Which part of his statement was surprising though, Hiro didn't know.

Jacob sighed, “Look… Hiro… We have much more important things to be worrying over right now. I'll tell you the same thing I told Shale. Any problems with monsters or mismanagement will have to follow the proper channels after the demons are dealt with. Magnus, please cast your scanning spell; it's time we found the source.”

Hiro gritted his teeth in frustration but held his tongue. The fastest way to handle the problems these people faced would be to quickly deal with the demons, and then come back for the monsters and those who fed their own people to them. Magnus chanted a long, complicated spell, accompanying it with gestures and movements almost like a dance. The spell culminated in a great leap, and Magnus landed on one foot, pointing with one arm outstretched and one leg back for balance. It would look like a joke if not for the glow under his foot keeping the man hovering just off the ground.

Magnus whispered one last phrase, completing the spell, “the nearest demon.”

Then the mage began to slowly turn in the air. His outstretched hand sweeping around to point at any trace of demon magic. Hiro's heart skipped a beat when Magnus's pointing finger approached Shale's direction, but the man didn't look worried, and Magnus didn’t slow, passing right by him and settling in a direction to the north. That was when Hiro realized that was the direction of the dungeon he had been at with Dianne last night.

Hiro whispered so low no one could hear him, “Dianne… you couldn't be… no… surely not.”

His thoughts were interrupted when Theodore shouted. “There… DEMON!”

Hiro's gaze snapped up to the trees where Magnus still pointed. There, just beyond the tree line, stood a tall, black-scaled pig with glowing red eyes. As soon as Hiro made eye contact, he heard a voice in his head.

“Humans… You disgusting mongrels… Come then, let’s do this.”

Rather than charging, though, the demon faded back into the trees. Theodore rushed after it.

“Shit!” Jacob hissed, “Hurry up, Hiro, go after him. Magnus, make sure Hiro can keep up!”

Magnus grumbled but quickly cast another spell. To Hiro it seemed like the entire world slowed, but no, that wasn't right. He had been sped up. He took off running as fast as he could, leaving the other two behind. Moving so quickly was quite like the spell Magnus had placed on them when traveling that made them all light as a feather. Hiro didn't fall as quickly as he felt he should, so it was difficult to maintain speed.

By the time he reached the trees, he had worked out that using his arms to push off obstacles was just as fast as a loping run. Theodore was just barely visible ahead as a blinding light carving a path through the trees rather than going around them. The devastation in Theodore's wake made it difficult to recognize where they were, but Hiro was sure this wasn't the path toward the dungeon he and Dianne had visited. If they continued on this path, they would miss the dungeon and go into the forest beyond. But that didn't matter at the moment. First, slay the demon, then the monsters.

After some amount of time traveling, Hiro wasn’t sure just how much with Magnus's spell messing with his sense of time, Theodore finally stopped. When Hiro caught up, he found the paladin standing at the bottom of a hill. The demon stood at the top, cackling down at them. Then Hiro saw why the paladin had stopped his pursuit. The hill wasn't an ordinary hill... it was a dungeon. Another dungeon, so close to the other. This one must have been the source of the trolls that the villagers spoke about because dozens of the things poured out from a grand stone gateway in the side of the hill. Trolls were generally low to mid-level monsters, but this many all at once, with at least one demon supporting them, could prove difficult.

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Theodore spoke quietly to Hiro. “Is Magnus coming?”

“I don't know; Jacob made him speed me up, so he might need to recover…”

“Damn… Alright, I need you to distract the trolls; I will kill the demon.”

“Wait, shouldn't we…?”

But the paladin was already streaking up the hill. Hiro cursed at the man's back but did as he was told. He picked up a stone from the ground and hurled it at a nearby troll.

“HEY YOU!”

The rock bounced off a troll's head; it turned to look at Hiro.

“Yeah, you! You're ugly, and your momma dresses you funny!”

The troll blinked at him, unimpressed.

Another, smaller troll called out from inside the stone gateway. Whatever it said caused all of the trolls to turn to Hiro and roar.

“Oh boy…”

Hiro ran, and a score of trolls followed. The chase lasted far longer than Hiro expected. His role as distraction had surely been fulfilled long ago, but the trolls just did not give up. He tried several times to lose them, but nothing he did was enough. When Magnus' spell wore off, he nearly lost his head to a particularly large troll in the front. After that he focused on nothing but running. Eventually he lost track of exactly where he was, but he didn't have the luxury of worrying about such minor concerns as being lost. On and on Hiro ran, until suddenly there were no more trees to weave around. He had somehow made his way back to the village.

“No… oh no…”

But it was too late; he was exhausted, and the only way he might survive was if he continued on, right through the village, with an army of trolls chasing him. Hiro silently begged the villagers to be inside hiding, but it was near midday already, and a frontier village could not rest inside all day. Screams rose up around him as normal, untrained people tried to run. They didn't stand a chance.

With Hiro proving to be difficult prey to catch, the trolls decided to settle for slower, softer targets. Hiro tucked his head down and cursed himself for a coward. All his talk of helping the villagers and killing the monsters, and now he was too terrified to fight. Hiro ran. He made it halfway across the village before running into familiar faces. Magnus and Jacob were running in the opposite direction, toward the fighting.

Jacob called out to Hiro as they approached, “Oi lad, what happened? What's going on?”

Hiro gasped, out of breath, but managed a few words. “Trolls… Theodore… fighting the demon… Trolls chased me…”

Jacob spat in disgust, “Dammit, what a damned fool!”

Hiro almost broke down crying then, but Jacob continued. “Good lad, we'll handle the trolls; you go back out, find Theodore, and smack him in the head for me. He knows you are the one that is supposed to fight the demon.”

Magnus cast the speed spell on Hiro again, and soon Hiro was off to chase after the demon and Theodore… again… He wanted to argue, to insist on joining the fight against the trolls, but he had found his own true measure. He was a coward; down in his core, he was a coward. So he did what cowards do; he ran from the fighting.

Behind Hiro, magic explosions and shouts of effort pushed him forward. However, ahead was another fight. It wouldn't be any large task to find Theodore and the demon. Their battle sent as many fiery explosions and tremors through the earth as Magnus' magic and Jacob's sword work did behind him. Fighting ahead and fighting behind. Hiro wanted to throw up. He had just wanted an adventure with Dianne; how had things spiraled so far out of control? Was there no way to take it back? To go back to being a farmer?

Hiro slowly made his way back along the burnt-out path that Theodore had cut with his holy flames as he chased the demon. Far too soon for his liking, Hiro once again found the hill with a dungeon in its face. The place seemed eerily quiet now with all the trolls missing. But that wasn't true. The trolls weren’t ALL gone. Another group of about twenty trolls gathered at the front of the dungeon.

Hiro quickly hid behind a tree and watched. It was too far to hear anything, and the troll language was just a series of grunts and yells, even if he could hear them. So he held far back to keep from being noticed. As he watch a fox walking on two legs exited the dungeon, and turned to say something to the small troll that Hiro recognized from before. In a matter of minutes the group of trolls were following the fox away from the dungeon, down a different route.

“Where do you think they're going?”

Hiro nearly jumped out of his skin. He was so startled that he didn't think to draw his weapon, instead just flailing around as he tried to put some distance between himself and whoever had spoken. Dianne stood in front of him, hands behind her back and a ghost of the smirk that used to send Hiro's heart pounding on her face.

“Dianne! What are you… Wait, no, that’s not… How?”

The smirk fell off her face, and she looked incredibly sad. “Follow me; it's dangerous here… I’ll tell you what I know…”

Hiro followed. His only other option was to pick a fight with trolls, different trolls, or a demon. He wanted none of any of that. Dianne led him deeper into the trees, where she stopped and turned to him. She told a story to Hiro then. One that she claimed her mother told her the day before they left for the capital. Dianne's father was apparently not who everyone thought it was. Her mother, Jasmine, had come from the southern kingdom where vampires ruled. She had been on the run trying to hide her pregnancy. A pregnancy that neither humans nor vampires would welcome.

Dianne was half human, half vampire. The story took some time, and Hiro had many questions. Dianne either didn't know or wouldn’t tell Hiro many of the answers. Eventually, though, the story ended.

“So…” Dianne said, “what do you plan on doing now? I won't run if you want to kill me.”

“Kill you? No… I… I don't want to fight… This isn’t for me. I’m a coward; I could only run from the trolls before.”

“Run? There were more of them? I thought the group that we watched leave the dungeon was all of them.”

“No, there was another group before them; they chased me and attacked the village….”

Dianne looked confused for a moment before asking, “So… why don’t we go destroy the dungeon now?”

“There's too many of… them…”

But that wasn't true. The group attacking the village and the group that left with the fox man. That should be all of them. There was no way there were many more inside. If Hiro could go in and defeat the dungeon, then the monsters might stop attacking.

“Let's go!”

Dianne didn't get to answer as Hiro was already running back to the dungeon. If he could be a hero and save the people of the village AND avoid fighting, then he would. Maybe that would be enough to redeem himself after running away. When they reached the hill, though, there were monsters outside, four of them. A smaller bipedal fox with a nasty neck wound, two goblins, and that strange human-looking monster from the other dungeon. Hiro almost stormed out into the open, but Dianne held him back.

“Wait, see what they do first.” She said.

Hiro did as she suggested. The human-looking monster was talking to the fox creature. The fox argued for a moment, looking petulant, but eventually took a knee and said something. The human monster nodded and answered. With that, the group made to leave, but the fox asked a question of the human monster. He looked down at a round object in his hands, shrugged, and tossed it into the trees. Then they all left together toward the other dungeon.

“Should we go after them?” Hiro asked.

“Wait, what did they throw away?”

Dianne checked to make sure they weren't coming back. When she was sure they were alone, she searched for the object. Hiro didn't expect she would be able to find something so small in all the vegetation, but as soon as she got close, Dianne got a strange look in her eyes and jogged directly over to a bush. She bent down and quickly came back up with something shiny in her hands. Before Hiro could see what it was, she smiled widely and placed it on her head.