Chương 13: Fate Maker

It is said that in Tsuyonei, the Land of Spirits, the spiritual manifestation of the planet resides in a cave with the brightest emerald lake and the greatest tree that sheds the most beautiful shade of cherry blossoms. The locals call it 'Seikon', meaning the soul of a star. They worship it with shrines and rituals completely independent of the worship they give to the Curator Gods, who do certainly exist, and who have been proven to exist—because 'Seikon' has never been observed by anyone before.

I watched a hundred Jūkai shrine maidens wash the temple in the purest spring water from top to bottom, and I asked a hundred what 'Seikon' looked like. None of them could tell me. They told me they have simply heard its voice and felt its hands around their bodies before, and that was all they required for their devotion. How curious. For as long as I have lived, mortalkind has only believed in one pantheon of gods: those of the Divine Museum.

But perhaps we do not share this world with only the Seven Curator Gods, for there was a time, before my birth, that the world existed without them. Who created this world in the first place? Who is more ancient than the Seven Curator Gods? … Two days ago, I caught a glimpse of my own 'fate'. I was to stub my toe on the corner of my desk as I rolled out of bed this morning, because I was going to drink too much at the bimonthly Archivum Ardentia Gathering last night.

I had resigned myself to my fate, and even bandaged my toe ahead of time before I went to bed, but it turned out a small avalanche collapsed three fields past my inn while I was asleep, knocking my desk two inches out of place. I did not stub my toe this morning. Sometimes it happens. A cup that is supposed to fall and shatter wouldn't fall. A man who is supposed to trip down the stairs wouldn't trip. A blade that is supposed to shatter in the face of a great beast's claws would cut through the claws instead.

They call me the All-Knowing, but sometimes when I wake up, I feel as though I do not actually know anything, and that I am simply dancing in the palm of a much, much more primordial force. The locals of Tsuyonei call it 'Seikon', the true, unobserved god of this world, and I am inclined to believe it exists as well, though I would call it the 'Will of Musea' for my more simple-tongued colleagues in the Archivum Ardentia. For what reason could our world have a will? I do not know.

But perhaps it is the Will of Musea that sometimes, 'fate' can be defied. —Excerpt from 'The Planet, the Moons, and the Sun', Written by Naghari the Sage Sharp at seven in the morning after Baba Marza went to sleep, Orland found himself being escorted to the town's eastern gate through the ravaged middlequarters. In all fifteen years of him living in Rusalka, he'd never seen the town in a state as shoddy as this.

While half the town's nobles and merchants trailed around him like he was some saint on parade, working men hammered new boards over broken shopfronts. Carts creaked by with rubble piled on them. Women hauled buckets, cloths, nails, broken shutters, and anything else that looked salvageable out of the wreckage, while children crawled into tight gaps between fallen debris, searching for survivors or corpses trapped in the dark.

The middlequarters had taken the worst of the leech's attack for sure, but the noblequarters had suffered too. When he'd led the leech up to the salt warehouses, a lot of their pretty gardens, manors, and houses had also been damaged and destroyed in the process. Now they knew what it felt like to lose things they'd thought belonged to them by right.

Even Ruslan and his little pack of spoiled dogs were gathered not too far behind Orland, their fathers arguing in tense voices over loss stock and repair fees— without actually voicing their complaints to Orland, of course. They wouldn't dare complain to the Hero who'd saved their town, but each time one of those fathers lifted his hands in outrage, Ruslan and his cronies seemed to shrink half a finger shorter. … Still, Orland couldn't bring himself to gloat about their loss quietly.

Sixty-five people had died in the middlequarters because of the leech he couldn't kill back in the caves. So he gave no thought and no attention to anyone else while Ludoslav and Milena hovered at his shoulders, the governor prattling on about something utterly unimportant while he was escorted east.

Somehow, even though the entire middlequarters was busy working to fix their town, Ludoslav had managed to assemble what he apparently considered a proper departure: a dozen noble families in their good clothes, rows of Belograd nobleguards, servants carrying trays of food and drinks nobody needed, and enough noblequarter townsfolk clustering the road behind all of them to make the whole journey to the gate feel like another damned festival. Flowers were being handed around.

Wealthy children had been scrubbed clean and dressed and told to cheer. Every second person following them seemed to think the Hero ought to leave town under sunlight, applause, and three different speeches praising his strength. Orland hated it. And when their little parade reached the square right before the eastern gate at last, more townsfolk were already waiting there. All noblequarter men and women with time to spare, of course.

They cheered when Orland arrived and tossed flower petals into the air, heaping even more praise onto him, and it was like they just knew they weren't going to have to sweep those petals away afterwards. How else could they be so carefree making even more of a mess in the middlequarters? Amidst the falling petals, Ludoslav stepped ahead of Orland and turned around, raising both arms theatrically.

"Good people of Rusalka!" he boomed.

"The night past, our great town stood on the brink of calamity! A grotesque abomination—this mutated, forsaken God-Sucking Leech—rose from beneath our very streets and sought to devour not only our homes, but our lives, our livelihoods, and our futures! And yet, in that darkest hour, fate answered us with the presence of—""What about the rest of my leech relics?" Ludoslav stopped mid-speech as Orland stared straight at him. The whole squared quieted a little as well, evidently confused by the blunt interruption.

"One of your nobleguards said you were going to harvest the leech parts and turn them into relics," he continued.

"Where are the rest of them?" For a moment, Ludoslav only blinked. Surely Orland's blunt request hadn't fit into whatever speech he'd rehearsed in his head, but he wasn't the governor, and he hadn't had years of public-speaking experience for nothing, because he recovered quickly with a smile.

"Of course!" he said, beckoning the guards over in a hurry.

"By saints and salt, naturally! The Hero shall have what is owed to him!" The two dozen guards almost stumbled as they reached Orland, each of them holding out red velvet cushions with small, beautiful flasks resting on them. He didn't even have to read their tags to know they were bloodreturn flasks, all of them identical to his.

"These are bloodreturn flasks—fine Apotheca-Class relics obtained from the parts of the three God-Sucking Leeches!" Ludoslav declared to the crowd.

"Any blood poured into it can be converted into a restorative draught, for since the beasts could regenerate through the consumption of blood, so too does this relic preserve that principle in a more refined and civilized form! It was, in fact, the Hero who discovered this relic recipe, so we hope the Hero shall find great use in—""Just keep them." Orland clicked his tongue.

"In fact, give them out to the people of middlequarters. They need it more than I do." Then, before Ludoslav could restart his speech or someone could hand him another gift wrapped in lace, he turned his back on all of them and started walking back into town— straight through the crowd. The cheering faltered around him. Nobody grabbed him. No one dared. Those standing in his way parted quickly, confused and murmuring.

The nobleguards scattered around the square immediately looked at Ludoslav for instruction, as if wondering if this was some event their governor had planned, but it wasn't. Orland simply had no intention of letting the governor drag him around anymore.

"Wait!" Ludoslav called, hurrying after him with a nervous smile and bead of sweat down his forehead.

"There is still the departure speech! And the ceremony! We have more relics for you, equipment and food and the like—""If you've got the time to celebrate, then help the people fix the town," Orland snapped, stopping halfway through the back and glare over his shoulder.

"If you've got more relics sitting in your closets, then give them out to the ones who really need them. If you've got servants and guards to crowd a gate for some ceremony, then use them for something worthwhile instead. Stop… wasting so much fucking money on me while half the middlequarters' still in ashes." Ludoslav's face immediately went tight. Not angry, of course. Shocked. Shocked that anyone, let alone the Hero, would speak to him like that in front of the whole town. But Orland wasn't done.

"You guys are all rich enough to drown in your salt and coins," he said, turning to glare at everyone, "and what do you all do with it? You sit on your asses and save yourselves first. Cowards. All of you." Gasps spread through the crowd. Some of the nobles tried their hardest not to look offended, but still he wasn't done. His gaze cut to Milena next.

"You too," he said.

"Learn how to walk even if you're scared. You got lucky that man was willing to carry you when you couldn't stand. If you were in the slums instead of the middlequarters, you'd have been robbed, toyed with, and left for dead before anyone even thought about carrying you uphill. Get your head outta the gold and into the mud sometimes. Maybe then you would've realized years ago that you could've bought lesnik fox tails for less than twelve curons a piece."

Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators! That one landed the hardest. All Milena could do was stare at him, stunned straight through, but still— still —he wasn't done. His eyes moved through the crowd until he found Ruslan standing before his dejected parents, and he purposely walked straight at them, making them tense as everyone around them parted for him.

"Madame Marzanna saved your life," he whispered to Ruslan as he passed by.

"I'd kill you if I could, but that'd just be me spitting on what she died for." Ruslan's face drained. Orland could just tell the boy wanted to run the opposite direction, but his legs were frozen, his knees were locked, and his parents were stunned with fear as he left them behind—so when he finally managed to cut through all of their bullshit and reached the back of the crowd, he turned and faced them all one last time. He had their full attention now.

Why not give them the only farewell he felt any honesty towards?

"... I hate how salty the air is," he said softly.

"But you should all try going down to the slums sometimes. It's a hundred times worse there." Then he turned and resumed walking. No one followed him this time. Maybe they were too stunned, or maybe they were too frightened to even consider doing so. Whatever the reason, the crowd behind him stayed exactly where it was while he travelled from the eastern square, through the thinning roads, and down towards the part of Rusalka that'd never once felt the need to cheer for him even as the Hero.

The slums received him the way they received everyone—by not giving a shit. People glanced at him, yes. A few saw his mask and his golden hair and stared a little longer, but most had their own hunger, injuries, errands, and grime to think about. Slumborn boys squatted by walls, glaring daggers at him. Two old men argued over half a loaf of bread in an alley. A woman washed a torn rag in a bucket with water already too dirty to wash anything. Nobody threw flowers here, and nobody shouted blessings here.

If the Hero was walking through the slums alone after insulting half the noblequarters, then that was the Hero's problem, not theirs. He preferred that. At the slum's central square—if he could even call it the muddy open patch with broken benches and a leaning shrine a square—about a hundred vagrants were gathered in loose little knots all around. Most, he quickly noticed, weren't actual slumborn.

Many were middlequarters folk who had nowhere to go while their homes were being rebuilt, and while they weren't desperate enough to start begging for alms yet, they would be soon. He knew starvation, and he knew cold. The threat of bone would rattle any man's mind and pushed their bodies to do things they could never do before. Which was why he stopped in the middle of the square and reached under his coat, scattering a handful of jewelry he'd stolen from the Belograd Manor into the air.

There were chains, clasps, brooches, and a few jeweled bits, all of them glittering briefly in the bright morning light before several vagrants noticed and lunged for them at once. The first few of them fell over each other, scrabbling, swearing, and grabbing at whatever their fingers found first. Then more and more people, seeing the commotion, stood and rushed towards the middle of the square to join the fray.

It didn't take long for just about everybody to start trying to grab hold of their future—which meant the one man who didn't move from where he sat was the man Orland was looking for. Orland approached the man sitting against the side of a dark, muddy alley slowly. The man's hood may be up and his tattered rags may be covering most of his body, but his legs gave him away.

There was only one man Orland had seen in his entire life who wore a metal brace built specifically for his right leg, and no matter how small and nonchalant the man tried to make himself seem, the pride of a former, disgraced soldier was surely pride all the same. At the very least, Orland hadn't thought Kazimir would fight for scraps of riches like the other vagrants would.

"... Come to put more salt in the wound?" Kazimir muttered, arms still crossed and head still dipped as Orland stopped beside him.

"What, pray tell, does the great Hero want with a vagrant like me?" Orland ignored the taunt.

"I'm leaving town."

"That sounds like a Hero's problem."

"I need people," he continued bluntly.

"I need someone who can teach me about a lotta things… and I mean a lotta things.

"So?"

"I want you to come with me." The middle-aged man finally looked up at that. Then he snorted, half a scoff, half a laugh.

"Me?" he said.

"With all due respect, 'Hero', but I am only a disgraced soldier sent away from the northern war, and a dismissed guard captain turned vagrant with no badges and a bad leg. The Hero would do better to take a proper warrior as a companion. Better yet, the Hero could simply wait for his six prophesied companions to arrive by his side. Sooner or later, they will crawl out of their holes and find—""No. I want you." Kazimir's stare sharpened.

"Why?" the man asked.

"Because you're the only real soldier in this town," Orland said plainly.

"Fuck fate. Fuck what it wants for me. I'll choose my people, and I choose the only other man in town who didn't run from the God-Sucking Leech." And for the first time since they met, Kazimir went completely still. Just still. An entire minute must've passed just like that, but eventually, Kazimir finally spoke again.

"... Are you telling me this as the 'Hero'?"

"Yes."

"And if I refuse?"

"You can't," Orland said, giving the man a sharp grin.

"I'm the Hero. You've got no choice but to follow me." That might've sounded absurd coming from anyone else. From him, tired and furious and still too young for the title on his mask, he knew it sounded absolutely childish—but Kazimir, however, didn't laugh. Whatever the man was thinking, Orland wasn't privy to any of it. He only had to grin even harder as Kazimir eventually grunted and pushed himself up.

The metal brace over the man's right leg clicked as he did, but once standing, his tattered rags shrugged off, he looked every bit like what he was last night: a man built for war even though war was no longer built for him.

"Well," he muttered, dusting off his old leather coat and adjusting the belt at his side where his sheathed blade still hung, "why not, huh? I don't have a job anymore, so perhaps traveling with the 'Hero' will finally kill me once and for all." Orland frowned as he bent and picked up a small bundle of wrapped wooden boards next to him, slinging them over his shoulders like a really bulky backpack.

"You're not gonna die if you go with me."

"Because the 'Hero' will protect me?" Kazimir murmured back.

"You'll have to tolerate my limp as well. I won't be able to run. I also drank all of my rejuvenation potions and mana restoration potions last night, so I'll have to rest a lot to regain my stamina naturally while we travel. If you find all that unbearable, feel free to abandon me whenever you like."

"I won't," Orland said immediately.

"That's not what a 'Hero' would do, right?" At that, the man's mouth twitched almost into something like a smile as he pulled his hood back, running a hand through his messy grey hair.

"... Right." So the two of them turned together and headed for the northern gate, not intent on drawing another crowd and getting caught up in some departure ceremony. As they walked, Orland kept his eyes straight ahead. That dark, dark tower looming above the world on the northern horizon was a tower he'd never seen before—because he'd never had eyes for anything past his grasp before—but he'd asked Baba Marza what she wanted to see the most last night, and she'd given him an answer most impossible to achieve.

And it was impossible for 'Orland', the slumborn boy never to shine under the sun, but for the 'Hero', fated to be legend… that answer might just be another request. Like how Rusalka had asked the Hero to slay the God-Sucking Leech, an old lady had asked to see the sun rise on a world without that tower. So while it may have been a complete accident, now that he'd been handed a one-in-a-million chance to finally make something of his worthless life… … This is for you, Baba Marza. I'll show you the sun.

By the time the lone traveler in the moledrake hood and cloak reached Rusalka's eastern gate, dusk was already settling over the town. She noticed it on the road far before she even got close to the gate. The town beyond carried no festival noise, no drunken shouting, and no heralding horns or chanting crowds. That wasn't right. Every account she'd read—every message carried by construct and courier alike—had said the Hero's departure was a thing that should draw attention whether people wanted it or not.

Humans loved spectacle. Unlike her people, they made noise for births, deaths, and victories they barely understood. A Hero leaving town should be drawing half the town behind him. Instead, she found herself standing before a barred gate. The two guards stood in their posts by the sides of the gate with none of the ceremonial posture she'd expected, and they'd been whispering quietly amongst themselves as she'd slowly approached them.

Now her arrival forced them to tighten their grip on their spears, and for good reason—she was easily a whole head taller than both of them, and they already seemed like big human men already.

"Hold there," one of them said, voice firm but not quite completely steady.

"State your purpose of visit, traveler." She frowned at them without lowering her hood.

"I am looking for the Hero," she said, then looked around the barren fields outside of town. Still no signs of a departure ceremony ever being held.

"I was told he would still be here sharing drinks with the locals. Where is he now?" The guard hesitated.

"About that…" he began, rubbing the back of his neck.

"The party was… cancelled."

"Cancelled?"

"Yes. The Hero… he's left already. Before the eighth bell even tolled this morning, I heard." For a brief moment, she said nothing. Then she tilted her head, failing to comprehend the guard's claims.

"That is not correct," she said plainly. The guard blinked under his pointed helm.

"I beg your pardon?"

"That is not correct," she repeated.

"I was meant to meet the Hero here, at this time, at this hour. That is what was written. That is what I was told. Why is he not here?" The guards exchanged a glance.

"Well, I don't know about any of that," the other one said, more cautious now.

"But I'm telling you, the Hero's gone. He's not here anymore. What're you looking for him for, anyways?" She reached up and pulled her hood back. The two guards had been so focused on what her face could look like that they never noticed the full breadth of her frame, so when she pulled her cloak back and turned it into a cape—revealing the heavy plated armor she wore over every inch of her body—they flinched visibly in surprise. Of course, they didn't get to see her face even after she pulled her hood back.

She wore a dark veil that covered her face, but she was sure they recognized the veil, the make of her armor, and—if not her sheer size—the thick black braid of hair trailing behind her back like a living serpent. Dwarven veil. Dwarven armor. Dwarven size, and dwarven hair, her pride and joy.

"I am Miriyela Doch Kamenrody Kamengradskaya, the Sixth Princess of Kamengrad, and one of the six prophesied companions of the Fifth Fated Hero," she declared proudly, one hand on her chest.

"Now tell me, which way did the Hero go?"