Chương 12: Shadow Upon the Rising Sun

'Death' As of 993 AN, no offering recipe for a relic that could resurrect someone infinitely has been discovered. Just as well, a relic that could bless someone with immortality has yet to be discovered. The world after true death still lies beyond mortal reach. —Excerpt from 'Observations on Relics and the Divine', Written by Naghari the Sage The middlequarters felt wrong without people in it. That was the first thing Orland noticed as he ran back down from the noblequarters. The middlequarters was never quiet.

Even at night it had drunks, tailors finishing work by lanternlight, salt merchants swearing over tomorrow's stock, and lots and lots of children who ought to be asleep. Now the whole place was empty, ravaged streets littered with debris and rubble. He sprinted past a toppled cart half-melted from the leech's blood, past a pair of shoes in the middle of the road, and past a bent lantern leaking oil into the cobbles.

The closer he got to Vodyanaya Thread Street where the leech first exploded out of the sewers from, the worse it looked. Practically every roof on the street had slid into the road, and entire walls had been sheared off. The old dyed fabrics strung between buildings hung in tattered ribbons now, swaying eerily in the wind. He only stopped at one of the pools of leech blood to fill up his flask, and then he kept running as fast as he could. Baba Marza's shop should be here. It should be easy to find.

He knew this street better than most slumborn knew their own names, but the place was torn and crushed so badly that for a few horrible seconds—as he staggered into the street—he didn't know where to go.

"Baba!" he shouted, looking around frantically. No response. He sprinted over a broken beam, slipped, and kept shouting.

"Baba Marza! Where are you?" No response still. His heart began thumping too fast and too hard, making his hands feel numb. In a fit of anger, he kicked aside a bunch of rubble, smashed through a fallen shelf with his gauntlet, then spun around to face the wreckage again.

"Baba! Make some noise if you're—" A low groan suddenly answered him from the side. He whipped his head at the sound and rushed towards it once, his heart immediately soaring as he rounded a corner and saw Baba Marza was still there, just where he'd left her earlier: propped up against that slab of stone. Though, she was more slumped now. Dust had settled all over her hair and shoulders. Her eyes were closed.

Her hands lay limp in her lap, and under the moon, without the warm orange lamps of her shoulder or the constant movement of needlework and scolding and fussing over him, she looked… Old. And that struck him harder than he'd expected. For the first time in fifteen years, he realized he'd never actually seen her outside the light of her shop. Was she always this wrinkled? Was her hair always this grey? Was she always that… small?

Stunned and relieved in equal parts, he was breathing too hard to say anything at first. Maybe that was why she spoke before he could.

"Is someone there?" she asked faintly. Orland tensed. But, before he could even say anything, she let out a tired little breath and sighed.

"Oh, if it's death come to claim me, then fuck off and leave me be for a bit. I'll go with you after a little while," she muttered.

"But if it's not death… then sit down and keep an old woman company for an even littler while, hm?" Hearing her say that made him clench his jaw so hard it hurt. The panic when the God-Sucking Leech first appeared had made everything blur into urgency, but now that the battle was over, there was no mistaking it: tiny punctures, splinter wounds, and small cuts were everywhere across her body.

Jagged debris had gotten her all over when the shop came down, and while none of them looked deep enough individually to kill a healthy man, taken together—with her age and the blood already lost—they left her pale and weakening by the minute. Even though he'd come back with his bloodreturn flask fully filled, he knew—in an instant—that hastened natural regeneration wasn't going to be enough. Not even close. …

And so, as if she could sense exactly where his mind had gone, Baba Marza shifted and winced with her eyes still closed.

"I can hear you breathing over there. Sit down already," she said, sterner this time.

"Don't just stand there looming like some undertaker's apprentice." He obeyed. Quickly. He knew her well enough to know that tone was not to be played around with, so he lowered himself beside her against the stone slab before he even knew what he was doing. For a while, neither of them said anything. The town was still making tons of noise in the distance. Faint bells and shouting further uphill dominated most of them. Down here in the ravaged middlequarters, though, the air was still mostly quiet.

That made it so pulling his knees up to his chest and hugging them was unnecessarily loud—but he did it anyways. Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work! He just really, really wanted to hug something right now.

"... Well?" Baba Marza finally said after a while.

"I can't be bothered to open my eyes anymore. Who's there?" Orland opened his mouth. Closed it. Then, he forced his voice steady and answered.

"The Hero." A slow grin appeared at one corner of Baba Marza's mouth.

"The Hero, is it?" she drawled.

"What an honor to have a Hero at my side at the end of my life. Hah. Where I come from, there's a saying that when fate remembers your name, it only does so at the most inconvenient of times." Despite everything, he almost smiled back.

"Aren't you… from Rusalka?"

"Oh, no." She leaned her head back against the stone.

"I was born and raised in Karsk, far, far to the north. Plenty of linen and flax up there, but the winters were so terrible. I doubt you've heard of it before."

"Why'd you leave?"

"The Second Demonic Incursion forced everyone to leave the north back then. It wasn't anything special sixty… almost seventy years ago, now," she said plainly.

"Armies of demons clad in astral lead poured out of the Unholy Rift like waves. Karsk had soldiers and men with relics—I guess women had them, too—but they all died to the last for nothing trying to hold the town. Fools. They should've run like some of us did." She let out a dry laugh that broke into a cough.

"I heard they ate the men, sucked the mana from the women, and corrupted the woods and wells around the town into lead. I don't think I would've made it out of that town if it weren't for one of your predecessors." Orland frowned at that.

"Pre…de…cessors?"

"Yes."

"What's that?"

"Oh. I apologize. It must be a difficult word.

'Predecessors', in your case, means the Heroes before you."

"... There were other Heroes?" That made her smile wider.

"Silly boy. Of course there were other Heroes. There may only ever be one 'Hero' at a given time holding the Title, but Heroes come and Heroes go, their appearances divined by the Curator Church and their journeys to defeat the Tyrant of Vyrmgaard blessed by Naghari the Sage." She moved her head slightly towards him, as if trying to listen to his breaths even closer.

"Forgive me if I'm wrong—I'm far too old to be caught up on the news—but you must be… the Fifth Hero to wear that mask, yes?" He absorbed that in silence for a moment. Then, after thinking a little, he asked, "How many Heroes have you seen?" Baba Marza's brows lifted.

"Hm… I have lived in the eras of three Heroes, including you. And if that makes you believe you, too, will die on your journey to the north, then… maybe you will. I'm old enough to not think anybody is invincible, even if you're blessed by fate." She leaned her head back against the slab again, letting out a soft breath.

"But if you'd let an old lady get in your ear a little, I'd like you to know this: I still believe in the Hero—and so does the world—because while you Heroes may not always win in the end, all of your predecessors have always worn their fates and convictions well. Luminous beings you all are, unlike us… who cannot even fathom a journey to the north." Orland listened.

"The First Hero," she recited, "repelled the First Demonic Incursion nearly a century ago and reclaimed Relikov City for the Saint-Monarch before he died. The Second Hero re-established roads and liberated smaller regions across the continent, helping the Saint-Archbishop stitch the empire back together before she died. The Third Hero—the one who saved me from Karsk—repelled the Second Demonic Incursion and helped research new relic recipes to defend the empire against grand rifts before he died.

And the Fourth Hero drove every demonic fortress all the way back to the northern border, established the Bratstvo Morosov, formed the Death Voyagers, and travelled across the black sea to strike into demon land for the first time in half a century before she, too, died as well. What do you suppose they all had in common?" She paused for breath, as if waiting for an answer—but he didn't have one. He didn't even know half of what she'd just talked about. So she gave him a wistful smile instead.

"All of your predecessors left the path longer than they found it, so that one day, their successors can burn just a little further along," she whispered.

"When it is your turn to burn to ashes, where will it be—upon the path of mortal men, or the corpse of the King of Demons?" The question landed and stayed there. This time, even Orland knew she wasn't expecting an answer. The only thing he knew he could say for sure was that her breaths were growing ever thinner, every fainter, every inhale smaller than the last. There wasn't much time left.

"... Can I ask you something?" he eventually said.

"Mm." She nodded slowly.

"That's what 'talking' is for, boy." He thought for a moment how to word it—how to not come across as stupid—but who would judge him for a stupid question anyways? Baba Marza would never.

"If there's one thing you want to see before you die," he said softly, "what… would it be?" And it was as if Baba Marza didn't hear his question for a second. Then she peeled her eyelids open, and instead of turning to look at him, she stared straight ahead—past the town, past the woods in the distance, and even further past the horizon. What is she looking at? he thought, following her gaze. The moon's not there. The stars aren't there. What is she…

Even his thoughts trailed off when he finally saw what she was looking at. How had he never seen that thing before?

"Why, of course, I'd like to see a world without war," she said, almost jokingly in tone.

"I'd like to see a world where a boy can live without worrying that rifts will open and demons will pour out and swallow all the work of a lifetime in an afternoon. I'd like to see Ostravia at peace… but that's what I would've said seventy years ago after I survived the Battle of Karsk. If you were to ask me now …" She smiled at that dark, dark tower in the further of the furthest horizon, jutting halfway up to the sky like a defiance against the gods.

"I'd just like to see the sun rise once again without the shadow of demonkind looming over us," she whispered.

"If only that damned tower could stop being such a sight for sore eyes." … Orland heard footfalls approaching in the distance. They were disorganized but armored, and there were many of them. Search voices were among them too. One of them was Milena, shouting and calling out for the 'Hero', which meant the others around her were probably nobleguards also trying to do the same. He ignored them. He didn't want to see them. Instead, he leaned sideways and rested head lightly against Baba Marza's shoulder.

His throat tightened. He hated it did. Wet tears threatened his eyes. He hated them too. He placed his gauntleted hand over Baba Marza's and felt her blood and weakness through the metal. He hated them the most.

"Thanks, Baba Marza," he said, waiting to cry, but he swallowed his pain for as long as he could.

"I liked… your bread the most." In response, Baba Marza held his gauntleted hand and rested her head against his, smiling softly.

"Why, I have no idea who you are," she whispered.

"You are the Hero, right?"