“Never convince a hero that you’ve backed them into a corner. The dawning look of defeat on their face comes at thrice the cost.”

― Extract from the personal journals of Dread Emperor Terribilis II

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“Put us down if you don’t want bolts for breakfast,” Laurence advised.

My ball of Light continued to hurtle between the crags towards the fortress city of Rhenia.

“They won’t recognize my miracle?”

“They’re a twitchy lot, the Lycaonese. If they see something unfamiliar, they shoot first and ask questions later.”

I withheld a sigh and followed Laurence’s advice. The incandescent sphere surrounding us slowed, then descended. We were all deposited on the cold, hard soil below. Not even a speck of dust dispersed as we touched the ground. The ball flickered, then faded away.

“You’re really making us walk the rest of the way ma I was getting used to just flying like that in the sky there’s so much to see from up high it also gives me plenty of time to read through the notes we made in the Titan’s city undisturbed.”

Yvette spoke from my left as she shoved the notes in her hands back into the satchel at her side.

“It’s not that far to walk, Yvie.”

“But this is much faster and I know you said that we couldn’t use it in the Chain of Hunger because then you couldn’t focus on defending us but we’re out of it now and have been for a while I like resting my feet.” She stretched like a cat as she talked, it was hard to see her face in the pre-dawn light.

“Laurence thinks it's for the best.”

I started to push Laurence’s chair along the soil from behind. The wheels made a harsh, scraping noise against the uneven ground. It came as no surprise that we were one of the few groups of people this far out at this hour. Everyone in Rhenia knew better than to be outside the defences alone.

Few would challenge that.

“She also thought we should eat Ratling again and you ignored that advice the first time you needed to consider eating one not that the food you made with the Light tasted much better so tell me what you think I don’t want any more blisters on my feet.”

“You should spoil her less. She’s like one of those flowery nobles down south.” Laurence cut in from her chair.

We passed a nest of grass buried in one of the crags. A weaver bird let out a cry as we continued our jaunt.

“I don’t see any reason to make my daughter’s life worse. It’s been hard enough already.”

“There is no keeping her sheltered. She’s earned her choosing.”

“An artisan with a Name won’t be in many fights.”

“Yvette isn’t an artisan.”

“Do you think we will run into another new Name either a hero or a villain as we arrive in Rhenia itself like the villain we found in the small hamlet who killed all those children I hope not ma said there would be new stories but I didn’t believe it until I saw that.”

“I hope not.” I muttered in reply.

Yvette’s eyes tracked something that was scampering around in the distance. She started to wander away from us.

“Yvie, focus.”

She turned scarlet, then stepped back into my shadow.

“Fate doesn’t cut that way.” Laurence denied. “There are many stories, but only a few shitheads have Names. There won’t be a Name if nobody steps into the Role.”

The dirt trail evened out, then turned into cobbled stone as we stepped onto the road. Crags gave way to open space. Rhenia beckoned ahead. The torches on the walls shone bright through the murder holes. The city menaced in the dark.

“The Mesmerizing Musician was bad enough. Even if he was relatively small time.”

He had been Creation’s cheap knock-off of the Pied Piper. Same story, different book cover. It had taken us a day to properly hunt him down.

“It was good that you cored him like an apple.”

The Light was good for killing people with long range projectiles, although I wasn’t happy about having to do it. I didn’t regret killing the man, but I was sad that it was necessary to begin with.

“I was hoping we would run into a new hero first.”

“Fate isn’t that kind.”

“At least Rhenia’s defences held.”

“Taylor.”

“Yes?”

“You’re glowing.”

I grimaced, then pulled my Light back into myself.

“I like that now I’m not the only one who messes things up,” Yvette sounded like the cat who caught the canary.

“I’m practising how to use the Light.”

“You keep saying that but I don’t believe you I think you’re just messing up by accident like I do but don’t worry I won’t complain it's nice to have more in common.”

“No, really. When I shroud myself in Light like that, it improves all my senses and washes away my fatigue. You both wanted me to guide us out of there as fast as possible. Didn’t expect to acclimatize to it so fast. Now I keep forgetting not to do it.”

“If you say it enough times then maybe I’ll believe you after all you told us that you didn’t actually need to sleep so if you don’t need to sleep why did you do that.”

“It’s smarter. Lets me discover what I can do. If I didn’t experiment with it on myself, I wouldn’t have figured out how to extend it to you.”

The sounds of other travellers echoed up ahead. It seemed we were not the only fools taking to the road before dawn.

“I’m sure you could have experimented with something else instead but now you sound like me every time I make a mistake with my research I especially liked when you tried to stick Light inside a rock and it exploded.”

“I learned something important in the process.”

It would have been convenient to know that objects infused with the Light were highly volatile before I went ahead and tried it myself.

“Mmmm hmmm,” Yvette nodded as she skipped ahead of us.

Brat.

Perhaps Laurence was right and I did give her too much leeway.

She tripped on a rock and fell face first on the ground.

“Careful,” I admonished as she yelped.

“I was being careful I swear that rock must have appeared out of nowhere it wasn’t there before I tripped on it,” she grumbled.

“Glaring at the rock won’t fix anything.”

“Kid’s got the awareness of a sea slug,” Laurence added. “Need to hammer it out of her before it gets her killed.”

Laurence will say something nice one day, and the world will end.

We lapsed into silence as we approached the walls. It took a while before we came to a stop outside the weathered barbican. It towered over us. The polished steel gate was closed. A small crowd waited in an orderly line outside. My eyes trailed over them one by one, assessing their dreams.

Dreams of marrying that girl. She dreams of marrying him. Both of them are too afraid to talk to each other.

“Say, Laurence,” I muttered from behind her. I didn’t think the people I was looking at would hear me over all the other people talking, but there was no reason not to play it safe.

“Spit it out, Taylor.”

“Should I stick my nose in somebody else’s love life?”

Seeing people’s dreams like this reminded me of Lisa. I’d try to be more considerate than her when it came to using what I knew.

“No.” Her fingers dug into the side of the chair. Sometimes it seemed as if she was trying to break it.

“I think it's a bad idea, but this dream would be so easy to fulfil.”

The chains rattled as the gate started to open.

“Leave it. If it’s easy, then it will come in time.”

“It feels like such a waste. There’s an opportunity for me to do good, and I’m just… not.”

Not that every dream I had seen was good. Some of them made me want to submerge myself in an ice-cold lake after observing them.

“Think with your head and not your bleeding heart. Keep to yourself if it's not another would be torturer.”

“It’s not. Just two lovers who can’t work up the courage to confess to each other.”

“You should have cut the man down.”

“I won’t persecute people for their dreams.”

“You’ll know better in a decade.”

“I told the local priestess. She should be able to handle it. She knew everyone involved. We didn’t.”

There had been a few cases where I had warned the local priests. I didn’t trust the guards to handle those situations with any level of care.

“I’ll eat my own blade if you’re not a jaded sack of vinegar by the end of the decade.”

“There’s more good dreams than bad, even if the bad ones are truly vile.”

Laurence was about to reply when the gate finished opening. It wasn’t long until the line began to move forward. We made our way along the most direct path towards the keep itself.

“You sure about this?”

“Speak up. I can’t hear you over the din.”

The clanging from a nearby forge were almost deafening. I wasn’t sure what was happening inside, but it was hard to talk over.

“Are you sure about leaving?” I shouted.

“I am. My purpose lies on the road, not inside the church.”

“You could come south and help me out. Teach new heroes.”

“I can do more good here.”

“You’re still planning to fight from horseback?”

“Yes.”

“But-”

“Save your arguments for somebody who can be swayed.”

We lapsed into an awkward silence.

It wasn’t much longer until we arrived at the keep. Laurence and I were recognized on sight, although it took longer for them to recognize me than her. It wasn’t long until we made our way inside.

We were led towards a cosy parlour by one of the servants. The room was dark and had no windows, lit only by the light of a scented candle.

“Until we meet again,” I wished Laurence goodbye.

“Let fate never see fit to end you.”

Yvette and I made our way out once more.

“We’re leaving already we just arrived why can’t we stay somewhere comfortable for a few days,” she grumbled.

“We’re not leaving yet,” I denied.

“Oh, then where are we heading towards because it looks like we’re exiting the city.”

“Just a brief detour.”

We headed outside the city once more into the surrounding wilderness. It took some time to find a place that suited my requirements. Yvette’s attention drifted from place to place as we travelled. I almost had a minor heart attack when she tried casting a new spell. The sun was approaching its zenith by the time we stopped on a rocky outcropping. It was obscured from view behind a dense wall of fir trees.

“Now what this trip seems pointless there’s nothing here I don’t see a reason for coming.”

“This.”

I finished praying. The stone appeared as two of my ghosts left me.

“Why are you carrying around a large rock is that writing on it oh.”

“You see why I waited on this?”

Yvette turned her head from me to the rock to me again. Her hair bounced around as she did so.

“I don’t think Laurence would have been happy about this and I’m not really either but I can see why you did it but are you really even going to consider this it doesn’t matter what it's asking for we can’t trust it.”

“Let's read first before we judge.”

For the standing duration of five repetitions of…

It shouldn’t have surprised me that the Tumult’s response was excessively wordy. Somehow, it did. It took some effort to decrypt what it desired.

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“We’re not giving it what it wants right that seems like a bad idea to me imagine how much harm Ratlings can do with magic we should just be happy with the five years truce and find a solution on our own why is it offering a truce anyhow?”

“The Tumult is thousands of years old. Five years means nothing to it. Its demands are selfish, but they make sense. It’s trying to solve the hunger on its own. Why would it believe our intentions are good?”

“But it wants us to give it books on magic and even worse it wants books on Gigantes magic how will we even get those and think about how badly it can go wrong at least that proposal about the killing field is sensible but it shows you how little Ratlings care about each other.”

“It never used sorcery when we fought it.”

“If anything that’s even worse just think it means that other Ratlings will be learning sorcery we should just leave this be.” Yvette shook her head from side to side in anger.

“The hatred between the Tumult and the Dead King is interesting. It hates the Dead King so much that it's unwilling to risk swelling his armies. Must be a story there.”

“Shows that even Ratlings knows how bad that idea is I wonder what happened there it must have a reason for that.”

“We’re taking this to Cordelia when we head south.”

“That wasn’t a refusal to consider this,” Yvette glared at me.

“It wasn’t,” I agreed.

I was considering honouring it myself, even if Cordelia refused. There were obvious downsides. The risk of what the Ratlings could do with sorcery was one of them. It was unlikely that most Ratlings would ever have the time to consider learning magic, but… it was still a major risk.

The pragmatic decision would be to not risk it at all.

The two of us hiked our way through the firs back towards Rhenia. The autumn air was nippy, and the sun had started to dip.

“Where are we headed now I want to rest we’ve been on the road for so long now and it's not convenient or good for research.”

“I thought you liked nature.”

“In small trips not spending weeks outside eating bad food and barely sleeping adventuring is not nice,” she flicked one of her golden locks out of her face and scowled.

“We’re headed to the House of Light.”

“Oh you want to talk to them like you talked to them at the outlying villages warning them about new villains that makes sense but we’re staying in the keep right?”

“We’re staying in the keep,” I agreed.

I needed to send out plenty of letters. It was why we had made our way to Rhenia. While it was likely I could commandeer the messenger birds in any of the Lycaonese Principalities, I decided to play it safe.

I’d been trying to find a way to send messages with the Light. I was sure it could be done, but so far I hadn’t been met with success. Every priestly miracle I was aware of relied on the properties of Light in some way, be they natural or symbolic. Speed and Communications were both associations I personally made with the Light… the issue was figuring out how to manipulate Light that way.

Almost every priest that I’d talked to about the Light was exceedingly conservative in their approach towards using it. I could only partially understand their perspective. The Light was the power of our Gods. It should be respected, but that didn’t mean it shouldn’t be experimented with. I believed that anything our Gods didn’t want us to achieve with it, we couldn’t do to begin with. Limitations like Necromancy weren’t arbitrary.

“Good it's much nicer than anywhere else it means that I can get clean oh look at that shop the one with the tattered purple curtains behind the shutters the stands outside have all sorts of interesting things I wonder what that glass is for do you think they have something useful?”

I spared a brief look at the shop in question on our left, then dismissed it. It looked like an antique store. We passed another two-story building, then beneath a clothes line spread across the streets.

“You’re going to come to church with me in the morning.”

“But why ma I wanted to experiment with trying to amplify transmutation effects maybe I can do what you did before I had an idea for crafting an appropriate focus but I’ll need help from a proper artisan and more silver than-”

“Yvie, make your mother happy and come to church.”

Her eyes bored holes in the ground.

“Maybe you’ll find some new friends, or even someone you like.”

I didn’t expect her to find any friends here, but with time I hoped that she would find some peers her own age. Being around people like me, Laurence or Songbird all the time could not be good for her.

“Ew no I have no interest in anything like that relationships are a waste of time why do you even want to go to church anyhow it's not like you need to.”

We paused as a wagon hogged the road ahead of us, then stopped again as a group of giggling kids ran past. They were fencing with each other using sticks.

“I’m trying to have no regrets. That means I make time for the things that matter to me. My friends, my family, and my faith. I lost sight of that the last time I tried to be a hero, and I’m trying not to this time.”

A familiar laugh up ahead brought me to a halt.

“Is that Songbird that sounded like Songbird why is she here didn’t you send her away?”

“I did.”

The two of us followed the trail of the sound and ended up at a familiar, shabby looking tavern. Both of us went inside.

The place was densely packed. It was quiet in spite of that. A dainty figure in a shabby leather jerkin was sitting on a table-top. Two others were on either side of her. She was on the far right of the establishment with her boots on a stool, regaling everyone with some kind of tale.

It was Songbird.

One look at her, and my heart broke.

The faintest edges of the broken remnants of a dream remained. Songbird has no dreams of her own. What must it be like to not have any dreams at all?

“-nd so I said ‘prob’ly gonna need-’” she turned towards the door as we entered, and her voice cut off.

The weight of the silence could crush the Tower.

Her presence was large. Despite being one person among many, she seemed to occupy the whole room. It took me a few heartbeats to notice the identity of the people around her as a result.

Roland sat to her left. He was wearing a flamboyant outfit and many pieces of strange paraphernalia. Metal armbands, gold spectacles, several gaudy rings. None of the items matched each other. He had several news scars since I’d last seen him.

He locked gaze with me and he smiled roguishly.

I turned towards Songbird. “What did you do!” I scowled up a thunderstorm.

There is no way Roland would be dreaming of sleeping with me without outside interference. I refuse to believe it.

“And she arrives.” The third figure at the table spoke.

It can’t be.

My indignation narrowed in on the figure.

My mouth ran dry. I tensed.

Death. Death above all else. The entire world can go up in flames, so long as she burns on the pyre.

The battered silver flask and lute sitting on the table before her registered distantly.

It was not her only dream, but it was the most prominent.

It was also broken. Fragmented into a million splinters.

And I was the one who had broken it.

Death for the Dead King. She desires his demise more than anything except her own. The dream is more vivid than any except the first. Detailed. Extremely detailed.

Her second dream was so complicated that I could not piece anything except the broader picture together at all. It was detailed to the point where I was confident that either she could succeed at it, or killing the Dead King was impossible.

The third dream turned the first into a tragedy.

She wants Good to win.

I felt Yvette tugging at my robes. I heard her talk, say something from beside me. My attention was focused on the figure before me.

“What’s your name,” my tone was flat, emotionless. It stood in stark contrast to the simmering pot that roiled within me.

“Lisa,” the Bard introduced herself with the same air that my old friend once had.

Dark blonde hair tied back in a braid, narrow face, black long sleeved t-shirt and a knee-length denim skirt. It felt like I had come face to face with one of my own ghosts. A picture of my past come back to life.

I… I could feel insects crawling all over me as she talked. Everything about this creeped me out. I was being manipulated. Worse, I knew that I was being manipulated. I was aware that she knew about it, and I knew that it was working.

“Let's talk.” I stated.

It was hard not to put on a scene.

The room was packed, but only five of us were there.

It felt… inadequate. Like there were no words I could say that would ever be enough.

“It’s about time,” she grinned at me with a smile that I knew so very well.

A smile that I knew meant nothing at all.

The others all looked at me. Confusion reigned supreme.

“Stay with Song and Roland for a while, Yvie. Head back to the Keep if I’m late.” Something in my voice must have given away how serious I was. None of them questioned what I said.

She picked up her instrument and her flask and walked jauntily towards the door. I followed behind. Her path continued towards my original destination. She followed the route towards the House of Light.

I doubted it was an accident.

“You’re not her. Call yourself something else. Anything else,” I ordered.

She strummed her lute while she walked. There was no order to the notes she played. Everything was discordant.

“No can do, sweetie,” she replied in an offhand tone.

I caught up with her and matched my pace to hers. Crowds of people bustled around us, and yet it was if the whole world was silent.

“I didn’t know what I was doing.”

“And I don’t even fucking know where Brockton Bay is, but I’m from there now, and I’m playing the Role!” Anger bled through. I wasn’t certain if it was real or an act that the Bard was putting on.

“I’m…sorry?” I ventured.

I wasn’t sure what I felt. It was complicated. I knew that I had broken her dream. It hadn’t been intentional. Some stories I had introduced had buried her own plans. I was also glad that I had broken her dream. It was horrible.

And then there was the juxtaposition - my old friend’s face with that dream hidden behind it.

“It’s rare that I get time to myself. Rarer that I use it to bitch. Let me be the first to invite you to a club. It’s fairly exclusive. Here, drink. You’re the only one who likes this,” she shoved her flask into my hands.

A part of me wanted to drink it. It wasn’t like I could find that tea anywhere else. I was too distracted. I clung to the flask instead like a lifeline at sea.

“How did you take her face?”

“Welcome to the immortals club. There’s only a few of us. My condolences. Give it a thousand years, and you’ll also be a bitter old hag.”

“Did you kill Max?”

I had so many questions. Too many questions. I almost walked into a wagon. It wasn’t possible for me to focus properly. Our pace slowed as we approached the House of Light. I breathed in, breathed out, tried to centre myself.

Her dreams are too big.

“You make me feel bad about being mad at you. It’s like kicking a sad puppy. Thanks.”

“I’m sure there’s a new way to kill yourself?” I tried. It was feeble, and I knew it was.

Earth Bet had stories about people arriving in strange lands that had suffered through the apocalypse. Stories about people surviving the apocalypse. Stories about civilization recovering from the apocalypse. I didn’t expect to be sympathizing with someone who had been attempting to kill the continent.

I should have been horrified - and a part of me was - but it was horror at insight into a disaster that had already been averted. The doom never happened. That didn’t mean the root of the issue was gone.

“Oh sure, forget all the new work I have. I’ll just take a break and figure it out. Oh wait, I have no free time!” I had never heard Lisa’s voice injected with that much venom before.

I opened the door. She entered first and sat on one of the pews. I sat down beside her.

“Stop mimicking her. Please.”

I hated that I was resorting to pleading. There was too much baggage here. Too much going on at once. She wasn’t Lisa. She looked and acted like Lisa. The Bard dreamed of Good winning. She dreamed of blowing up the continent. She couldn’t die. I had no way to coerce or threaten her. No way to convince her to act like someone else.

I didn’t even know where to start.

“This is your fault, pretty much,” she waved her hand in my direction. “Wonder what they’ll call the new Age.”

“New Age?”

I passed the flask back to her and turned away. My hands shook. Looking at her was uncanny.

“It’s still some ways off,” she said airily. “The Age of Chaos sounds peachy.”

I was about to respond, but the space next to me felt absent all of a sudden. So I turned towards her.

She was gone.

What should I do?

I’d only met two bards, and I was already starting to hate the role.

Were all of them like this?

No, this wasn’t my problem. At least, it wasn’t just yet.

I’d stick to my current goals. One step at a time.

Giving suicidal immortal bards with now defunct apocalyptic ambitions a new purpose in life was the kind of problem I didn’t expect to have. It wasn’t as if I could kill her, and having her remain in her current state was far too dangerous for everyone else.

It was also a problem that would have to be dealt with later.

I didn’t even know where to start.

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After the meeting, I sat there for a while. I was on my emotional last legs. I wasn’t sure how long I was there for.

Was this why my Gods asked me to give up my stories?

The question ran circles in my mind. I didn’t think it was the reason. It couldn’t be so simple.

The Bard had been manipulating me. I knew that from the very moment I had seen her dreams. They were too big, too complicated to be anything but the result of thousands of years of meticulous planning. The trouble was, I didn’t know what she wanted from me at all, and I didn’t have a way to get rid of her.

“Do you mind if I join you in prayer, sister?” A voice broke the silence.

“Sure.” I looked up. I hadn’t been praying, but it was easy to see how one might interpret my silent contemplation that way. It was the sister that I had met the first time.

Family safe. Looked after. Financial security. Ambitions of rising higher in the church.

It was so nice to look at someone and see an ordinary dream after talking to the Bard.

Her blue eyes lit up.

“It’s good to count you among us, Chosen. I hope the road has been kind to you.”

“What’s your name?”

“Sister Olivia.”

“Call me sister Taylor then. Can you listen for a while?”

“If you find yourself troubled and need an ear to unburden yourself to, I’d be willing to listen.”

I started to talk, sharing my concerns about the turmoil that lay ahead. The sun had set by the time I was done.

“Keep faith, even if the future looks dark.”

“I expected you to be more worried.”

“I only burden myself with wounds which I have a hope of salving. Larger than mortal burdens are for your hands, not mine.” The smile she gave me was pitying.

“Will you warn people of the trouble to come?”

Much as I wished she could, I knew that she was unable to do much more.

“I’ll help to spread the word.”

“Thanks for listening.”

“Will you be here tomorrow?”

“Yes. Do you mind if I lead the service? I’m not a good speaker. It would be my first time. Meeting you was what started me along this road. It would mean a lot to me if I was allowed to preach.”

“You had only needed to ask.”

“See you tomorrow.” I stood up, and made my way towards the door.

“May your dreams be sweet.”

The door creaked as it closed behind me.

It didn’t take long for me to make my way back to the tavern. I wasn’t sure if the others were still here, but it was best to be sure. The place was quieter than before when I arrived, but it wasn’t empty.

My friends and family were still there.

“S’pose you can tell us what that was about?” Songbird asked.

“Complicated. Have you decided?”

“I’m sticking with you,” she nodded from her seat in the corner.

“I held you to be deceased,” Roland added. “I’m sorry for allowing the candle of hope to dim.”

“That’s fine, Roland.” I turned towards Songbird. “We’ll need to lay down some new rules.” I sat down in the empty seat beside her.

“I’ve had some time to think. Tell me if these fit. You’ll prob’ly want to know my plans. So I’ll talk them over with you. Won’t keep any secrets.”

“How about lies.”

“I’ll keep them harmless. Promise.” Her eyes bored holes through her hand. She drew a card, then discarded the Tower.

… That would need a thorough examination.

I was about to ask about Roland, when I decided to leave it for later. He and I could talk over both old problems and new ones in private, there was no need to have that discussion in front of everyone else.

“Good enough for now. About the Bard,” I looked at all of them. “Did she say anything to any of you?”

“The Bard kept her tongue around us. We had no knowledge of her possessing a Name before you arrived.” His glanced up from his cards as he spoke.

“Okay. Tell me if anything occurs to you. Anything at all. Now. Can you tell me why you two are in Rhenia?”

“Went north after finding Roland. Found out where you went. Figured you would prob’ly show up here when you returned. You’d have to if you were gonna send letters. ‘Sides, more trouble happens round you than anywhere else. Keeps things interesting.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence. Everyone keen to follow me back to Salia?”

Roland looked surprised, as if he had expected me to step back into his shadow. That didn’t stop him from agreeing with everyone else. Three voices were raised in support.

It was nice.

Nice was something that I sorely needed after glimpsing the heart of the Bard.