It was James’s turn to do dinner. He carried the wide shallow bowl over to the table in their little hut and placed it in front of Lucy. He’d done a tomato-fruit based stew. Big chunks of meat and lots of local spice. It was one of those meals packed with loads of flavour and smelled delicious but wasn’t much to look at. He smiled at his wife as she started poking lumps in it with her fork to see what was in it.

“Oh come on! I mostly followed the recipe this time.”

“Only mostly?”

“Well I added a few bits extra you see.”

“Uhuh, and what did you add?”

“Mostly more meat. I’m a growing boy you know!”

“No you’re not, your a lazy layabout who’s not left the city in months, if you want to end up like Baboa you’re going the right way!”

“End up as a gold ranker with his own personal kingdom on a vehicle in a magical desert no one can travel over? Ok!”

“No I meant fat James, he’s fat. I don’t know how, he’s an essence user but somehow he’s fat and it seems like you’re trying to find out how he got that way by trial and error.”

She was abusing him good naturedly but he could tell she was stressed, more than the usual stressed she had from working long days in the magic society. James stopped for a moment to consider.

“Where’s Kyra?”

“She had to step out, she didn’t say if she’d be back for dinner”

“Well I didn’t know what to expect with James cooking you see, didn’t know if it was worth being here.” Kyra said stepping into the room.

Lucy and James turned to see their sister-in-law coming in and hanging up a cloak she wore over her ever-present armour. What shocked them into silence was Teddy standing behind her. He had taken off the tasseled armour he hadn’t relinquished in months and had worn a simple dark outfit of the nearest they had found to jeans and a T-shirt. It was the first time they had seen him since just after they had entered the city almost ten months ago.

“Hey.” He said quietly from the doorway.

A lot of emotions were running through the room just then. He had simply disappeared, on his own in the new city and basically turned off his interface, the system that connected them all so deeply. They had looked for him at first but it was clear he didn’t want to be found. They agreed if he needed time to give it to him. After six months Kyra had started getting more and more worried, they’d all heard of the disappearances and wondered if he was connected. Kyra had confided in Lucy as she fretted and eventually told her she was going to find him.

They looked at him now standing just behind Kyra in the doorway holding her hand interlinking their fingers with a nervous apologetic look on his face.

“Hey yourself. Hungry?” James said, getting up to grab him an extra plate for a finally full family dinner.

……..

James, Lucy and Kyra had settled into the city while Teddy was absent. They had effectively found jobs with the exception of James who maybe sometimes worked part time as a trainer for rich families with young adventurers. Kyra had found work as a healer in the temple, a rare instance of non-clergy doing the healing. When there were no patients she took the time to learn more from the higher ranked and much more experienced healers. Lucy had been working for the magic society conducting research, her interface and ability to quickly and reliably produce ritual circles calculated for the ambient magic was invaluable.

Teddy and Kyra walked arm in arm down the street. Teddy was taking it all in in a different light. He had seen the low stone huts as potential hiding spots for targets he had to hunt out. Now in the ‘light of day’ they looked very different. The wide streets had hut doorways along both sides packed wall to wall with a narrow alley every five huts and a roadway every ten, children ran freely between the huts, chasing each other and laughing. Teddy looked up and saw the cavern roof high above, amazed they were three layers deep in the mountain. The air was fresh regardless and the ceiling high enough they didn’t feel claustrophobic. The shops and houses were built like regular buildings which added to the feeling of being outside.

They stopped outside a hut and knocked on the door. The door opened and James ducked through, coming out into the street

“She’ll be out in a minute, she worked late and slept late.” James said. Teddy wondered away lost in thought. “How’s he doing today?” He asked Kyra quietly.

“He gets a little more himself everyday, he was away what, ten months? It’s only been three weeks. He sleeps at night now, not for long but he sleeps.”

“Is he going to be ready for this today?”

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

“He says he is, he knows he needs to get over this to get back to himself. This is a major step that could be a turning point.”

When they arrived at the city they had delivered the weapon thereby closing the contract. After that for the first time since they had left Greenstone they had been able to put the Serenity into storage. They bought cheap accommodation in a modest neighbourhood trying to blend in with the locals while they waited for Teddy. It was a nice change of pace from being constantly on the move.

They received an invitation from the church of Hero to visit for a memorial service. They weren’t sure how Teddy would take it, he had been so traumatised by Ragnar’s death he had gone on a murdering spree and wiped out the majority of the confederate presence in the city. They had found out from him that the confederacy had been targeting the city for a long time. Their global plan was to wipe out the ‘corrupt’ system of essence users running the world by starting a world war using alchemically controlled monsters, an army that naturally replenished as monsters spawned. They used disenfranchised essence users and twisted their minds to their cause. The mechanical units they used to control the monsters used some very specific materials, in an uncharacteristically big move they had sought to take the city on the mountain, the chief supplier of the raw material required. Due to the high defensive nature of Honshuraskil they had needed to seed the population with as many of their moles as they could. Teddy had systematically found and eliminated as many as he could in revenge for Ragnar.

Lucy came out and immediately started berating Teddy even though he was wandering down the street in a semi-daze.

“And another thing, if I add resonating rituals in there is no way we can scale that with your dimension idea, it wont work.”

They were trying to re-create her Deathstick but on a more stable level. The first iteration she had got away with using herself as she had an essence power that not only let her use magical item like staves and wands but get more out of them. This meant she could use the dysfunctional wand without hurting herself. The wand description on the interface had helpfully shown the limited amount of uses left on the wand as a countdown out of two hundred. She hadn’t known what was going to happen when it ran out of charge, either she would need to recharge it or it would blow up. Happily she left the choice to an enemy to find out and the residual magic in the wand blew most of his arm off.

Teddy turned back around with a slightly glazed look. “Maybe if you add them in stacks, then as the rings come down you stretch the one into the other.”

“That… That might work. But the math is ridiculous.”

“Then brute force it.” He was starting to perk up now, she was engaging him in a subject to bring him out of his reverie. “Take a spirit coin. Boost yourself to silver.”

“That’ll work but its not exactly economical to keep choking down silver coins.”

“You only need to do it for the first one, after that you should be able to remember the math?”

“Gods damn you I’ve actually missed your help. You just see things differently.”

“And I appreciate you adding the magic to what I do so it all works out.”

Teddy hadn’t actually touched a weapon in the last few weeks, actively avoiding them. After a week of talking things through with Kyra he had gone to the adventure society, asking to speak to someone in administration about something sensitive. As a three star bronze rank adventurer he had been put through to a meeting room pretty swiftly. The senior administrator had been unfamiliar with the context of the Confederacy and had to go higher. He outlined that he had intelligence on the organisation in the city and found himself in a dark room being interrogated. He gave nothing away about his activities over the last ten months but gave them enough intel to make them want more. He headed his own task force after that of handpicked city based adventurers to weed out whatever was left.

They were making their way to one of the giant elevators at the end of the street, as they got closer the normal flow of traffic around them was all headed the same way. Most people were carrying thick heavy coats as it went to the surface which is where the temple district was.

As the elevator came into view the magic shield dropped which kept everyone on when it was moving. Expecting to move forward James was surprised when Teddy blurred out the way, a young iron ranker bounced off James who had been standing behind Teddy while they were waiting, her eyes were red and teary, she obviously wasn’t looking where she was going as she had been rushing to get away from the elevator.

“Err sorry miss.” James said, picking her up with one hand under her arm.

She didn’t even look at him as she ran off into the streets. James looked bemused watching her run. They mounted the elevator that continued up. The temple district was on the surface hence the normal rank civilians putting on heavy reinforced jackets.

They came out of the elevator with a burst of steam, the magically heated humid air from underground condensing in the freezing dry air. The streets were kept clear by magically heated pavements that were pleasant to walk along. It was much less crowded up here with most businesses choosing to set up beneath ground, only the headquarters of various high level organisations, the adventure society and the temple district chose to see the sky.

They stopped in front of the temple of hero, the familiar sight of the sculpture of the Spartan helmet on a Spartan sword with a Spartan shield resting against it next to the huge wooden double doors. The difference here was the black band tied around the shield. The doors opened and they were greeted by a familiar face. ‘The Beast’ of Arngo greeted them. The gold rank high priestess had travelled to Honshuraskil for the memorial service, having spent time with them when they travelled through.

“Welcome Mitchells, as always. Please come in.”

As they crossed the threshold they all felt Teddy tense. The unmistakable aura of Hero permeated his domain and it was triggering him. Kyra extended her aura, no chance against a god’s influence but Teddy felt it like a warm blanket and squeezed her hand.

They were led to a large room that was decorated with busts of heroes local to the city. At the front was Ragnar’s shield with a black ribbon tied around it. They stood at the threshold stunned. They hadn’t seen the shield in the valley at the end of the fight and thought it had gone with Ragnar himself.

“His shield was recovered whilst going over the battleground. It was trodden into the earth quite thoroughly its no wonder you missed it.”

Teddy stepped forward and put his hand against the shield, intimately familiar with it as he had crafted it himself. He traced the lines of the engraving on the front, the irony not lost on him of the scene depicted. He opened his storage rift, reached in and pulled out the two halves of Ragnar’s huge double headed axe, the shaft and one blade then the blade that snapped off with the rent cut into it. He propped them up against the shield then went and sat with his family.

The service started, first tankards were passed around but no one drank yet. One by one clergy from the church of hero stood and read from what looked like a giant bible. It turned out every priest of hero had an entry in the churches book that was magically shared around the world. The priests took it tale at a time, telling the story of Ragnar. After each tale there was a bang as everyone clashed their tankard on the back of the pew in front and took a drink. The last tale was the epic ballad of the battle of the valley under the mountain. Hero’s aura intensified at the telling, making his presence felt as he had been at that battle, every temple of Hero this tale was told forevermore this would happen, the same with each epic rendition of any battle where Hero gave his choice.

After the service the drinking started in earnest. The team knew Teddy wasn’t up for that yet and started to make their exit, the Beast caught them at the door, she was holding the shield face down in both hands, Ragnar’s axe on top and a small mystery box.

“Mitchells. Again I am sorry for your loss, please take these. The shield means a lot to you and you should have it.”

“Ragnar told us the axe was a church weapon, it was passed down from newly bronze to newly bronze each time.” James said.

“It was, it has been all round the world. But it is now broken and no longer ours, Ragnar has changed it in his moment of power, he infused it with some of the power and it has some greater fate to come. It belongs with you.”

“And the box?” Lucy asked.

“A gift, from the church.”

“I don’t want anything from him.” Teddy snarled.

“Peace Mr Mitchell, it’s not from him, from sympathetic clergy who heard how close he was too you, it’s a princely gift try and be grateful through your anger when you open it.”

Kyra looked at a hallway mirror and the items disappeared.

“Thankyou High Priestess. Until we see you again.”