“I’m sorry, it sounded like you said we had only 3 months to kill something everyone else failed at. It also sounds like you must have forgotten to tell the rest of us this fact.” The thief glared daggers at the prince.
“Hold on a second!” The saintess looked between the rest of us in a panic while screaming. “I wasn’t told any timeline for this! Or what happens if we fail to do our goal in that time! If we are going to be discussing things finally, I have a lot I need explained to me. I have been left in the dark for long enough. I have been hoping to get time to ask about common knowledge stuff.. I can’t stand knowing about this world when you guys reference important things as common knowledge. Especially if it is this important.”
Her shoulders heaved as she exhausted herself with her explosive demands. We had all stopped walking at this point. She gave an angry pout, but the expression was more cute and less intimidating. It was an interesting view, a short white-haired and pale girl in white church robes glaring up at us.
“Breathe, take a deep breath, and let’s pool information for a bit.” The monk mostly defused her anger just by saying that calmly, although I suppose she did agree to the demands. “Let’s start with some basic questions to see where we stand. Did you learn about the previous hero groups?”
“No.”
“Did you learn about how paths help you grow to achieve your goals?”
“No.”
“Did you learn this kingdom’s name?”
“No.”
We all had a long moment of silence. This was going to be a long break as we prepared to explain what we knew. A long, long break. I threw the pelt off my back and sat down on it.
“So who wants to start where?” the monk looked at us, unsure of where to start.
“Fraland. The name of the kingdom is Fraland, same as my last name. The royal family is going to need to talk with the church about forgetting to mention the name of our kingdom.”
After the prince broke the ice, we began to share information with her freely.
The demon lord and the great evil are used interchangeably, but members of the church and royalty tend to correct people to use the second one. No explanation on why, but we noted that detail for later. The saintesses of the past were the saintess of souls, saintess of dreams, saintess of hope, saintess of foresight, and now saintess of martyrdom. We don’t actually know what official name she will have as that is given after the fight with the great evil. The great evil continuously comes back into the body of a person and must start a path from the beginning again. They started using curses against people sent after them, even affecting an entire army sent after them. A coup attempt was made another time, whether they were affected by a mental curse was unknown. And eventually, a decision was made that led to groups of 5 like ours being sacrificial death squads.
The saintess’s eyes were glued to us as we told the history of the kingdom and the great evil. She looked so interested and enraptured that I almost forgot that she should have already known about this. The monk, thief, and I silently agreed to not give the gruesome details of how many of the fights ended, nor how some of the people went missing completely. Nor how many who did survive were never fully healed to “preserve the memory of the fight”. We gave her an edited version of the events that wouldn’t give her nightmares… I suppose the church hid facts from her but I feel we were more justified.
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We talked about how paths worked. How philosophers believed things to be, and why they might be. We gave slightly conflicting information on how much you need to have done for a path to become available to you. The monk jumps back to philosophy and how paths affect one’s body. For a physical path like me, we naturally find ourselves stretching and doing small things to keep in shape when not thinking about anything. It feels natural to do so. I haven’t been showing that side of paths because said trait doesn’t show when one is in constant motion.
Honestly, we broke into an argument on that topic and continued off-topic for a while. The monk was hiding some serious opinions on paths.
Magic based paths have an easier time learning magic, gaining new ideas for magic subconsciously, and not becoming a useless wreck after overusing it. That last point was said by the monk in kinder terms, likely to console the saintess, but seemed to have the opposite effect. The prince took over at some point to finally speak, only to give a very technical version of how the veins in the body are affected. I couldn’t even pretend to understand it. He, in turn, seemed annoyed that some of us wasted his efforts to teach by not understanding it.
We went further into many of the guilds that existed, the secrets they might keep, and how we thought they could help the people at the heroes’ meeting that we believed to be hiding things. That turned out to be everyone. I think in hindsight that the thief set the conversation in this direction, as he quickly pivoted to asking the prince what he was hiding.
“Can’t say.” He frowned and crossed his arms when we gave him four sets of dissatisfied looks. “It’s not that I don’t want to say, but that I cannot. A member of royalty is very good at reading people’s faces and tells. Telling you the information I am hiding would constitute treason. Even if I survive everything, when asked if I committed treason I would be unable to answer no clearly and honestly. I would then be executed for treason.”
We let the info sink in. Whoever this person was, I didn’t know about them. The royal family must be keeping quite a few big secrets.
“I can hint to you very little and outright tell you even less about some very important topics that would keep us alive.Information that I could act on as a leader, but cannot give to another leader. I will say this: we have been underestimating the great evil.”
His comment was very vague. So much so that I had to wonder what sort of secret was being hidden and how much a sacrificial prince could find out and not be killed. As the saintess leaned in for the next part of his warning, he looked up and frowned. “Looks like we spent too much time talking and it got dark. I’ll light a small fire.”
The sun was indeed at the horizon, making it apparent we talked for more hours than we thought. The prince left without any indication that he would continue. As I laid out the pelt for all of us to sleep on, though I wasn’t planning on taking the first watch this time, we watched the sunset in mostly silence.
“Do you guys think the church wants me dead?” We turned to the saintess after she asked the question in a whisper. “They didn’t tell me so much that would help me. I don’t have any weapons or armor, haven’t been given time to train my body, and my path title has me concerned. I got the option to be a martyr right? What caused me to get that as a path?”
The monk opened her mouth to answer, but nothing came out. We all waited for someone else to come up with some answer, but we had none. The church and saintesses were a mystery to us. I wasn't comfortable with many of the guesses I had either. Her albino red eyes glistened in the fire, and then tears began to run down her cheeks.
“Does everyone want me to die and martyr myself for a cause I wasn’t told about?”
“No.” The monk instantly went to her side and spoke softly. She put one hand on her shoulder while the thief held her other shoulder. “I doubt Frederick wants you dead. I know I don’t wish you ill. You asked for Logan to be spared, so he owes you a life debt. And the big guy over there took an arrow from an assassin for you.”
The saintess looked over to us with a soft smile, tear marks glistening down her face.
“Thanks”.