Year 253 (Part 3)

Unlike Jura or Lovis, I couldn’t hold onto Hafiz’s soul. Not if he didn’t want me to. A hero was a hero.

Instead, I received a [Titan Frame]. I could deploy up to three Titans, now. Kei’s, Hafiz, and one left from the three heroes of the earlier generation. Supporting three more titans, or five titans simultaneously wasn’t a problem for me magically.

Titans. Useful for Comet, if I could get them there. I would deal with that later once I got my clone deployed.

The hero, Hafiz wanted release from his heroic duties. Like all heroes that were no longer shackled by their worldly chains, they sought to return.

He saw something. I could feel it, and so he didn’t want to be here. I wanted to hold him here. With us, but he refused and vanished away. He was a hero, and he slipped through my grasp like a slippery eel, and back to nothingness.

Where I hoped the Gods fulfilled their promise.

Because back on Treehome, the survivors bear the cost of his sacrifice.

And in Colette, I saw Hafiz’s experience. There was a strange disquiet in her, and it manifested in her soul spring. I noticed cracks throughout the entirety of their normally pure white stone around their soul.

Colette stood quietly, alone in the wooden room. The Hero’s Journal glowed faintly on the table, infused with the will and magic of the heroes from times past.

Here, in a Giant Attendant Tree created solely to house the Hero’s Journal, she prayed. She wept. She injected memories into the journal, and it certainly felt like there was more unsaid than could ever be said.

Her partner, Prabu was with their daughter, Rohana.

Mother needed time alone. To mourn and to grieve for the dead. He told her. But even he could see the distance in his partner.

Hafiz and Colette were friends. Colette felt that way, at least. Not close, but friends. I listened to her talk to herself, as if she was talking to him. Things she wished she could say. She thanked him, quietly.

Before all of them drifted apart.

That was how their relationships were. They were allies of convenience and circumstances, brought together because they died together. It didn’t mean much once the demon king died, and their different interests pulled them apart.

The hero class did nothing to keep the heroes together, beyond a shared purpose to slay the demon king. In the same way, the Valthorns exist as protectors against the demons.

Ken definitely had a point when he asked the question of me. “What if you win? What if it really was the end, no more demons. What happens to all the things and structures that you and the Valthorns built?”

Ken may have come around and accepted the purpose and direction of our role, but his skepticism of what comes after never faded.

“What do you do when your purpose is lost? That decides whether you are benevolent, or just a dictator. I hope that what I see is true, that you will let go.”

I thought about it, and certainly, my role as a tree is to ensure nature exists. The demons must be removed because there is no coexistence. But without their existential threat, Ken is correct to say we would lose a big part of our purpose.

Colette sat in the room. She was there the whole afternoon, sipping tea, thinking, and then checking the journal again.

And again. And again.

After a long while, she suddenly asked.

“Are you able to remove our hero classes?” Colette asked. “The hero from a previous generation, Mirei, when you disabled her hero class, she suddenly dreamt of home. She dreamt of family. Friends that she has long forgotten. Like Hafiz.”

Life has a way of coming around in cycles. Events rhyme with those of an earlier time. I looked at Colette, and saw a weary young mother, trying to remember what life was like before all of this. Before death.

Maybe Mirei would be like her, or she was like Mirei. I wasn’t sure. They blend together, sometimes.

I think about Lilies, about how all the people, all the personalities seem same-ish after a while. There were only so many combinations of character traits. I remember why even a hive-mind like Lillies couldn’t find it in them to latch and get close to individuals, to treat each individuals as unique.

Is it because after enough time, people really do blend together and you notice how the character traits blend together in slightly different ratios to form a slightly different individual? Just variations of certain base templates.

“Can you do it to me? Not remove it, but, just suppress it for a while? Just to see what was there, what was before all of this?” Colette said quietly. It was something Mirei would have said. I could imagine her saying it.

I knew the answer to the question. I think I could.

To suppress the effects of the hero class for a relatively short moment is certainly not out of the picture with my current strength.

But do I want to?

I had a flashback to Mirei from so many decades ago. She wanted death as a release from her duties as a hero. I looked at the mother of a growing baby girl and wondered whether I could impose this sin on myself.

That feeling reemerged once more. That moment after Hafiz’s death when I felt something brewing within Colette’s soul.

“Is this something you really want?” I asked.

Colette looked back at the journal, closed her eyes and seemed lost in thought for a moment. That feeling strengthened. Dissatisfaction. Discontent. Anger. It was as if Colette radiated chaotic energy.

When she opened her eyes, she nodded. I thought I saw her resist some pain, or it was a wince. She quickly picked up the cup of tea and drank everything.

She answered. “-yes. It is.”

“Very well. There will be consequences. Consequences that extend beyond yourself, and I will do so only after you’ve discussed this with your partner.”

Colette paused as she digested my words. After a while, she nodded. “I suppose he deserves to know what i’m thinking.”

It is her choice. But her choice has consequences for the sole offspring of two Earth heroes. Mirei went down a death spiral, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to facilitate that for Colette. But, I understood the need to know, and so I only ask for her family to make that decision with her.

Consequences for her, for her partner, for her child, Rohana. The young child seems normal so far, her soul spring turbulent and unformed.

I wonder what blessings or curses await someone so special.

With a parent like Colette, going through her own challenges, it would not be easy growing up. I looked at the child, and thought of Arlisa.

Such wasted potential.

I looked at the parents, Colette and Prabu and realized that they were going to be just as bad as Lausanne at parenting. Maybe worse. There was no one to humble them. They exist at the very top of society. What was life growing up like that, so detached from everything?

Morbidly, Rohana would likely see her parents die. Her parents are heroes.

Their fate was death. I briefly wonder whether the gods prevented hero-parents just to ensure that every child would likely have one non-hero parent still live.

I doubt the system was so sympathetic.

***

“Call me a selfish bastard again.” Ken countered, and the relationship between Chung and Ken was tense.

“You are a selfish bastard. I said it once. I will say it again, and I stand by my damned statement. You are a coward. You ran away from our joint duty to defeat the demons, and now you criticize us from the sidelines. Well, do you feel happy, do you feel smug watching the rest of us toil in misery?” Chung said. “Do you feel validated in your decision?”

I didn’t understand why Chung vented his frustration on Ken. I suspected helplessness, and so he turned on the ‘traitor’. They were good friends.

Yet even good friends disagree on things. Ken was silent before he nodded. “Yes. I wanted no part in the schemes of greater powers.”

“And yet here you are, consorting with the greater powers. Hypocrite.”

Ken sighed. “Yes. I am a hypocrite. But I now know what I really wanted out of.”

“What?”

“I wanted no part in schemes that I have no knowledge and control of. I hated how the Gods didn’t inform us the full scope of our duties, our burdens, the chains that shackle us, both physically and mentally. I hate they treated us as tools, instead of partners that should work together. I hated we didn’t have CHOICE, Chung.”

“And that hatred of you led to one of us dead.”

“Chung, you’re making no sense. I have no way of preventing his death. Even if I was a hero, so what? Could I have stopped that last part?”

“We- we-” I realized Chung’s arguments were just frustrations. A bundle of emotions. Chung just stomped, and his magical stomp radiated through the ground. The floor cracked but wasn’t destroyed because my roots quickly reinforced the ground.

“Look, my old friend.” Ken tried the soft approach. “We’ve been through years, decades together. We’ve been apart, and we pursue different goals to satisfy the emptiness in our hearts. To fulfill what the gods robbed from us. Right now, I think the gods’ influence is meddling with your mind. You are not thinking about it properly.”

“Then tell me why you want to die, while leaving the burden of the living to the rest of us. Leaving us to face the duty of fighting some other person’s war. If you are my friend, I need you here. I need you alive and well to tell us that all over again. Because you know it’s meddling with us, and because-” Chung took a deep breath before saying it. “-I’ll only listen to you.”

Ken was stunned to hear it from his friend after so long. He suspected Chung was a little too attached, on that point, a fact I knew for quite a while. But it wasn’t something to bring up.

Chung sighed, admitting the truth. “-I’m not good with advice. I can’t take it from the others, or Aeon or any of my servants. I tried. But I just couldn’t. Please, friend. Stay and live along with us. Be the common sense we sorely lack. We will suffer from your absence.”

Ken let out one of the longest sighs in his time here. His posture sagged as if he aged ten years after that conversation. “You suffer from my absence. I suffer from my presence here in this world. I’m weary, Chung. I’m sick of this game. I didn’t trust the gods, and I don’t want to live to see my current faith rot into something else.”

“Selfish bastard,” Chung repeated.

“You know what, I guess I am,” Ken said. “I’m selfish because I want to die peacefully while the rest of you won’t ever have that option.”

Chung’s fist almost landed on Ken’s face.

But it didn’t.

Because it would kill him if it did.

“Curse you.” Chung said.

Ken felt his heart skip a beat. A hero’s attack was still a hero’s attack, and Ken was just a regular person with a fairly normal class.

***

The dwarven capitol was wrecked, but the location was not ready for the people.

“This is all that damned tree’s fault. They must have planned this or in cahoots with the demons.” The Dwarven King wasn’t quite happy about returning to what was a destroyed landscape. Most of the original dwarven citizens of the capitol cursed as they surveyed what remains of the home.

Foul magic still lurked here, some of the demon spiders escaped, perhaps squashed or hidden underneath the rubble, waiting to strike anyone who discovered them. As with all prior demon king-deaths, the place was filled with the remains of the demon. Daemolite.

Ruins. There were craters everywhere. Old buildings, alll destroyed. The explosion at the end burned and left dark marks in the soil itself.

The people were unhappy, and the King could sense it. Some kings gained skills that give them an innate sense of how loyal their people were, the rough tones of their populace’s emotions.

There was no good outcome when a city is lost.

“Let us help to rebuild.” Some of my Valthorns from Branchhold reached out to offer assistance.

The dwarves themselves got to work. It would be some time before the city would be a city once more. The general populace lived in tents. In temporary housing. Long-term temporary housing, at least for a few years until the city could be properly reconstructed. The wealthier dwarves moved to other cities.

Even if the Capitol was rebuilt, the people who lived there would have changed, and a lot of their bustling energy and magic would have gone far away.

The King, although he seemed glad not to die in the battle with the demon king, the anger of his population meant he had to find a target. Someone to blame.

Conveniently, the target of their frustration was the heroes.

Indirectly, we were caught in the crossfire.

***

Year 254

The heroes were trouble I didn’t want to deal with. Instead, I focused on Lumoof on the Demon’s Comet.

Only one more year before my Clone was ready, and already, the Demon’s Comet drifted out of range of demon turtleworld. We didn’t even ship all the bombs we made, so that was a waste.

My Valthorns relocated the bombs to Lavaworld, a process that would take a few months because we shipped so many. Shipping these bombs without proper storage could accidentally trigger the bombs, and we had some of our crystal bombs exploding during one of the Demon Comet’s daily flare ups.

The next intersection in six years, by Year 260, and we really needed to make our time on this place count.

***

“What’d you get?” Stella looked as Alka placed another magical probe on the ground. It would be destroyed if the flares activated, but it was one of the best ways of scanning the Comet’s structure. They all looked exhausted, even if the rotating system meant they all managed to get some rest.

“Those eight nodes- there seems to be a chamber around it. There are rocky parts located throughout the Comet.”

“We know that.” Stella clicked her tongue, a little irritated.

“The flares come from the nodes, but because they radiate outward like a fanning wave, these rocky parts are deep enough to be out of range of the nodes.”

“So we’ll just have to dig down the rocks, deploy Aeon there?”

“Probably the best chance to get a somewhat safe place.” His probes and scanners still couldn’t figure out what was at the core. Until we could deploy my clone, I couldn’t start creating my digging titan.

“It’s still pretty damned deep.”

“Not all the way to the core, just a quarter of the way.” Alka thought as he looked at the team. “We should start digging. A tunnel that far down should take us a year.”

“If the Comet doesn’t collapse on us.”

“It won’t.” Alka said. “These crystals are pretty damned solid.”

The Comet was made from a magically resistant material, so the best way to dig down was to hit it physically. With pickaxes and hammers. It’s a good thing some of the Valthorns were more physical in their talents.

Dig.

Based on whatever data we had, we built a model of what we thought was the most efficient way to reach the rocky areas beneath the crystalline comet.

We’d have a year to dig. One of the plans developed by the Valthorns over the past year of data collection was essentially to dig deep, and plant the bombs there. Trigger an explosion from within, disrupt whatever magical bonds that held the comet together.

This should be one of the better ways of destroying the comet without actually destroying the materials of the comet. Once the comet loses it’s bulk, whatever damage it could deal would be survivable.

Should.

***