War Aeternus: The Beginning

by Charles Dean

  “But . . . I don’t want to wait,” she sobbed. “I just want him back. Why couldn’t you have healed him?”

  “Because it was his time to go.” He always hated hearing that whenever someone said those words to him. He always felt like it was the dumbest excuse anyone had ever come up with, and now he was guilty of committing the same offense. “And it’s not yours. You need to be strong for him. You need to become a person that everyone looks up to and help as many people as you can. That way, when you get there, he’ll be that much prouder of you.”

  “Okay,” she answered, but then just laid back, tears still rolling down her cheeks.

  Alright, the battle’s over, so show me what you got, Lee thought to the prompt. He had asked for all messages to be held until after the fight, and he was grateful that he had when a flood of kills popped up. Before he could sort through the death notifications, skill ups and the EXP and the loot from all the kills, his eyes were drawn to three specific status message notifications.

  The first was relating to his killing of the Herald, mainly because it looked nothing like the other status messages he had seen for kills.

  You have defeated the Herald of the God of Books and Stories. As the slayer of a Herald, all of his excess Faith shall be awarded to the god you serve. You have also been granted the final boon of a now-dead god: three blank pages from his Book of Endless Dreams.

  The second one let him know that the whole thing was finally over. The status message he had been hoping to receive when he first rescued the poor peasants from the slave camp at the mine.

  You have completed the quest: Save the villagers from the kidnapping threat. Your party has been awarded 15 gold, one engraved steel sword, one engraved pair of bracers, one unknown silver ring and 15,000 Experience, of which your share is 5 gold, one unknown silver ring, and 5000 Experience. Your Charisma has also improved by 10 for going above and beyond in the aid of strangers. Your Honor has improved by 4 for honoring your word and completing the quest as you promised.

  Your reputation in Satterfield has increased significantly.

  The last of the three major notifications, though, was what caused Lee no endless amount of worry.

  Due to your followers dying, your Personal Faith has dropped from 39 to 37.

  Lee’s heart skipped a beat when he saw the change in Personal Faith. He didn’t know if that was lost from people who died during the initial siege, or if it was people who had just died defending the battlements, so he rushed straight up the stairs and back to the top of the fort wall. As he climbed the stairs to the battlements, he found himself staring at a single man surrounded by a sea of red.

  Miller, covered in wounds, stood tall and proud with his spear planted in the ground. Ling was leaned up against the wall with Amber and several others, each dyed as crimson as the next, and there was so much blood that he couldn’t even begin to guess whether it was theirs or someone else’s. If it wasn’t for the occasional arrow protruding from a body part or a visible gash in the clothing, it would have been impossible.

  “What in the . . .” Lee’s mouth hung agape as his eyes darted from body to body. They were littered everywhere. The soldiers that had come to reinforce the fort had turned into a horror show’s worth of mutilated decorations across the ground, and Ling and his other followers were just staring blankly. “What happened here?”

  “Victory,” Miller said as smugly and arrogantly as he could. “Victory happened here.”

  “Yeah, but . . . Did we lose anyone?”

  “Three people,” Miller answered quickly. “Three people died that shouldn’t have died because we delayed justice.”

  Was it anyone I knew? Was it someone I traveled with? That I drank with? Or just someone’s family who had come along to help because they believed in me? It was a rather cruel thing for him to realize that he somehow valued one set of lives over the other simply because he knew them better. Yep, that’s life for you.

  “We came as soon as we were rested and ready for battle,” Lee argued.

  “We could have marched straight here yesterday. The rest is why those three died,” Miller countered.

  “The rest is why others lived,” Lee countered. He didn’t know why he even felt the need to argue with Miller. He could just as easily ignore him, but given the shell-shocked expressions on the survivors’ faces, he didn’t want to trash whatever morale they had left by miring it in self-doubt. “Trust me: This was the right decision.”

  Even though he was arguing about whose fault the deaths were, Miller still looked rather pleased with himself. “I’m sure if you say so, and if Augustus says so, then it is so.”

  “Either way, it was a victory. Their Herald is dead, we’ve freed more people, and we’ve won the day.” Lee wanted to keep the news as positive and upbeat as he could.

  His eyes landed on one of the few men that had come with him. The poor man was loaded up with arrows like an overused pincushion. It was brutal to even look at. Lee didn’t know how the poor guy had turned into an arrow magnet whereas the others were fine, but he didn’t really want to know either. He counted his blessings that they hadn’t lost more.

  “Then your victory was as glorious as mine was!” Miller declared, slamming his staff into the walkway. “Tonight, we’ll have to celebrate our conquest over drinks to honor Augustus.”

  “Yeah.” Lee nodded, finally moving over to Ling. He healed the few wounds she had before proceeding to the next person. “We’ll get around to that, I’m sure. But, well . . . Look. I need you to do something for me. I need you to pack these people up and get moving.”

  Miller looked at Lee curiously.

  “Get moving? Why? We haven’t even finished raiding the keep and taking his loot.”

  “I know you don’t want to hear this, and I don’t want to be the coward here either, but we have a lot of injured, tired and worn out people. We need to get back to the town and let them rest up,” Lee said. “You and I can go out after that and have all the fun you want. We can loot and raid and kill our way there and back as much as you like, just help me get the townsfolk to safety first.”

  Two of your personal followers have become zealots. Your Personal Faith has increased by 12.

  Current Personal Faith Total: 49

  “Okay, fine,” Miller said, bending over and grabbing two of the hurt people Lee hadn’t gotten to healing yet and tossing them over each of his shoulders like they weighed less than a feather, and then he proceeded to bring them down the stairs and to the keep’s gate, where a lot of people were now waiting. Since Lee was already nearly out of stamina, he was happy to not have to help them out. He was sure they’d all be fine. Other than Ling, whom he had healed first, he had prioritized the ones he helped by the severity of their wounds.

  Ling watched him heal one last person then stood up and offered him a helping hand as he finished healing the people against the wall. “Are you okay?” she asked as he took her hand.

  He shrugged. “Yeah, I had a pretty tough fight, but I came out okay.” His divinity skill hadn’t fully recuperated his health, but it had gotten him back up to over a third of his life. “I’m just gonna need a good night's rest soon . . . That is, if Miller will let me have it without forcing me into another fight,” he chuckled. Yeah, his cooperation will cost me. It always does one way or another.

  “A good night’s rest with Amber?” Ling asked pointedly, but Lee felt that there was more to the tone of Ling’s question.

  “Ling, Amber is going through stuff, and she doesn’t want to be alone at night. There wasn’t much more to it. I might as well have been a night light by the bed for a kid afraid of the dark. Don't read too much into it.” Lee had expected this topic to pop up eventually, and he cut it off quickly. He wasn’t sure how much she’d understand or accept, but honesty was the best policy. “I like Amber, but much like with you, I don’t really know her.”

  “Yeah, about things we don’t know . . .” Ling trailed off as her eyes follow
ed the ground. Then she looked straight back at him with renewed focus. “You need to tell me now. I want my explanation.”

  “Am I allowed to tell her?” Lee asked Augustus, whom he was positive was listening.

  “You can tell her as much as you want. It’s not like you know much to begin with,” the laughing voice of the trolling god quickly replied.

  Ling didn’t say anything, but she seemed to have the gist that he was asking a higher authority for permission.

  “Well,” Lee started, “in the place I come from . . . I wasn’t a god. I wasn’t the son of a god, and there wasn’t even Augustus. But, there were boxes like those status messages. Just . . . They weren’t. In reality, they were in games. You’d receive them to notify you about the mechanics of a fake game world. Then, one day, I got stolen away by a crazy lunatic of a deity, Augustus, who claims he is some distant grandfather type figure in my lineage.”

  Lee carried on with as much honesty as he could. He was happy that Ling had been the only one to stay and wait on him after he wore himself out healing. He was comfortable telling her this information for some reason—likely just the fact she was pretty and he knew her—but he didn’t want to blab all of this stuff to the rest of the world. “He took me to a coliseum and made me fight to the death with a zombie. Once I won, he sent me here and told me that the only way to get back to my home world was to build up believers for him in this world. If I didn’t do that, I’d be stuck here forever.”

  “Oh . . . But the boxes?” she pressed.

  “Yeah, I don’t get it either. From what I understand, this world is run by a system—a god of some kind—that regulates the functions and physics of every interaction. The deity who built this world was really into the game format from my old world, and so this world mirrors that.”

  “So, are you saying we’re in some kind of game like one from your own world?”

  “No, I thought that might be the case at first, but this is a fully-fleshed-out and real world. Everyone and everything here is real, and death is definitely real. When I die, when you die, we’re dead for good. The only exception are certain people this god has selected who don’t permanently die: they just start over from scratch with a new life somewhere else.”

  “Oh . . .” She appeared to be taking the news rather well, but Lee had no idea what was going on inside her head as her eyes slowly but surely drifted toward the ground between them. After a long pause, she asked, “Does that mean you plan to leave us?”

  “Huh?”

  “You said you were converting people to Augustus’s religion because you needed to do that to get back home,” she repeated his words. “Does that mean you plan to leave us for good once you get enough followers for Augustus?”

  “Oh, that.” Lee put on his best poker face. He didn’t want his mixed emotions on the topic to bleed through. “Well, I’ve actually been back to my own world a few times already. I go at night sometimes, so no one notices. But I have to, and not because I plan to leave you all. I think you’ll be stuck with me for a long time. I go because there are things in that world that you don’t have here.”

  “Ah.” Ling looked relieved. “Okay, I understand. So, do you believe in Augustus? Really?”

  “Yeah, I have met him, after all. He’s . . . crazy. The worlds he made and threw me into, the forms he’s taken . . . He definitely has a lot of power, and he’s definitely real. I never knew he existed before the day he brought me here, but I promise you that he is a real and powerful god,” Lee asserted.

  “Awww, now you’re just flattering me,” Lee could hear Augustus saying while chuckling softly.

  “Okay. Thank you,” Ling said, nodding.

  She seemed to be nodding a lot, but Lee understood how difficult this all was to swallow. He had been in her place, to some degree at least, at the start of this adventure. Baffled, confused, and feeling like her sense of reality was being distorted: that was him when he first met Augustus.

  “Is there anything else you want to talk about?” he asked her.

  “No, I think I’m good for now. Let me process this, and . . .” She paused and stared up at him with big doe eyes that made sure he’d have trouble refusing whatever request she made. “Please don’t leave us for your home world.”

  “I won’t,” he said.

  “Okay,” Ling answered and walked away, down the stairs toward the rest of the group.

  “That’s good,” another voice came out of the shadow near him. It startled Lee enough that he nearly had a heart attack—if that was possible in this world. “That you’re not leaving, that is. Because I need a night light by my bed.”

  “Holy—” Lee calmed himself. Being startled in this world was definitely not a good thing. Anything that could make him jump could also just as easily kill him before he realized what it was or that it was even there.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you or eavesdrop,” Amber said with a laugh. She was still just as blood-drenched and injured-looking as before, so he had no idea how or when she had managed to meld into a shadow while still dripping the occasional drop of blood from her armor to the ground. “I just didn’t know when it was okay to make myself known when you two were having that awkward conversation. I guess my mother is right: if I don’t speak up and make myself known, I really am invisible.”

  He wanted to argue with her, but he had completely failed to notice her. “That’s fine. No harm, no foul.”

  “Do you want a hand down there? It looks like everyone is expecting a speech of some sort.” Amber pointed at the gathered crowd that was growing larger and larger by the gate. They had opened up the fort, and everyone was putting their stuff together and getting ready to depart.

  “Yeah, I suppose we should head down there,” Lee said.

  “Mhmm.” Amber put on a cheery face. It was disconcerting seeing someone so bloody standing in the middle of enemy bodies with such a happy-looking face.

  Lee didn’t take more than two steps toward the stairs down, however, before she herself stopped him. “But Lee,” she said, causing him to turn around and look at her again.

  “Yeah?” He was worried that she’d want to ask a bunch of questions like Ling had since she had overheard their talk and probably had plenty of curiosity bothering her too now.

  “I need you to stay too.” She gave him a playful smile before adding, “And it’s not just because you’re a lamp by the bed.”

  “I suppose that’s good to hear.” Lee wasn’t exactly sure how he was supposed to answer that, but he wasn’t comfortable with leaving a silence hanging between them either. Still, the two didn’t exchange another word as they descended the stairs.

  It turned out that Amber was correct: everyone was expecting a speech. Several were munching on food that Lee had insisted they bring, most had bandages on one body part or another, and a few were shuffling around with a general sense of malaise. As soon as he walked up with Amber, however, they all stopped whatever it was they were doing and stared at him expectantly.

  Yep, awkward and uncomfortable, just the way I like things before I make a grand speech, Lee chuckled. He was starting to get used to this feeling, even if only a little bit, but not enough to stop his cheeks from turning slightly red as he looked around at the crowd. “So, I am told that, after victories, you’re supposed to say something meaningful. I told you to take care of others first, and you have, and I think that’s more meaningful than anything I can say. But, now I suppose I have to get around to giving a few words.”

  “Are you re—” A member in the audience quickly elbowed the newcomer in the stomach, silencing the question before it could even finish.

  Thank you. I tell enough lies as it is, so don’t make me just repeat another for the sake of it.

  “And for these words, I want to say you should look to the person on your left and right because they were the ones that carried us to victory. They were the courageous ones who ran through a field of arrows, who climbed walls and killed fear
some enemies, just to make sure that you and your loved ones, your neighbors and that guy down the street who you really don’t like but can’t put your finger on why can all sleep soundly tonight. They fought hard and risked their lives against a small army so that you won’t have to be concerned with who was kidnapped or why they were captured each morning when you wake up.

  “That’s why they fought,” Lee continued. “They didn’t fight because of me, because of my religion, or because I have a god who makes the best bacon.”

  Lee realized that he needed the words to be true even as they left his mouth. People hadn’t stepped up to become conquerors or murderers because he had asked them to. People hadn’t died because he had wanted to kill a Herald in some game.

  When he continued, he was speaking as much to himself as he was anyone else. “I also promise you: They didn’t fight because they liked to. Well, most of them didn’t just fight because they liked to.” He paused and shot Miller a knowing look before continuing. “No, they fought for you, they fought for their family, and they fought for a better town. So, I’m not going to cheapen their victory with paltry, meaningless words or empty platitudes. I’m only going to say that you all did a great job and that those who died will not suffer.”

  One of the people from Satterfield who hadn’t been there at the mines stepped forward and asked. “What do you mean? Isn’t being stabbed or shot to death with arrows pretty much suffering?”

  “In death . . .” Henslee answered for him. Her eyes were puffy and her nose was red from where she had been sobbing earlier, but there was a little more brightness in her expression. “In death, those who lived a good and noble life or died for a good cause get to go somewhere amazing. So long as they didn’t take their own life and were good people and good followers of Augustus, they’ll go to a great and wonderful place without pain and suffering.”

  “She’s right,” Lee agreed. “And if they died trying to save and protect their fellow man or while doing a great deed for other people, it’s a place they will absolutely be welcomed into. Augustus and I will take good care of them there.”