“You...” I started to speak, but struggled to finish my question. “You didn't believe it?”
The little red-glowing woman looked startled.
“Of course not, sir knight,” she said, blinking. “That creature put me in a cage. It hurt my cousins. It put my niece in its Pit,” the little sprite's voice quivered. “And you saved her, then saved the rest of us, then you battled the monster bare-handed on our behalf. Why would we ever trust a word out of its mouth? And why would we ever suspect you, of all people, after what you've done for us?”
“You… wha...” I had started to speak again, but I had no idea what to say. I had no idea what to even think. “Really?” I finally asked. I looked at Breena. “That...that's all they needed?”
“What do you mean, Wes?” Breena cocked her head at me.
“I mean all I did was...” I had started to say. But how did I say it? How did I say that none of what I did mattered back on Earth to people, in face of what my dad had allegedly done? How did I say that the harder I worked to be better than him, the more suspicious people became of me?
I tried again.
“All I did was...”
“Save me,” a quiet, but musical voice interrupted behind me.
I turned and saw the pink-glittered girl I had pulled from the pit. “Carry me,” she continued. “Cover me to protect my dignity. Comfort me as I screamed and shrieked at you.”
She had a pleasant, bell-like voice now. It sounded much different than when she had been shrieking and whimpering. And to my immense relief, she was wearing proper clothes now, the fairy version at least. I had no idea where they came from and right now I didn't care.
“Thank you Challenger,” She said firmly, squaring her shoulders. “You stopped something horrible from happening to me.”
Then, before I could speak or react, she flew right up to my cheek, and gave me a peck with tiny glowing lips.
“Bless the knight who risked the very worst, for the very least of us,” she intoned, her voice quivering slightly. “Let your body bear record of your heroism, Friend of the Small.”
“Hear, hear,” the red-glowing fairy spoke again. “Please accept our favor, sir knight.”
To my further surprise- and slight discomfort- she kissed me as well. The other two fairies followed suit, blowing pixie dust at me and making my eyes water.
Yeah, that was probably why my eyes were watering. It couldn't have had anything to do with what I was thinking before.
I had thought these tiny women had been horrified of me. Had made the same judgments everyone else had made of me back home. But they hadn't. I had misread them. They hadn't been horrified of me earlier. They were horrified for me. Despite everything they had been through.
I had felt a tremor of power in the pink pixie's words, and now it washed over me. Some of her dust swirled over me as well, and I suddenly felt as if I had just finished a refreshing cool shower.
You have been blessed by the Small Folk of the Woadlands. They have imparted you with their favor as well as some of their grace. Your Charisma has increased as a result.
Furthermore, the sprite children of the Woadlands will recognize this blessing and mark you as an ally in the future. Your Deeds and Renown will update accordingly.
Lady Titania witnesses this blessing and approves.
All of this info flashed into my mind-screen in a matter of seconds. I blinked, and then turned to the fairy.
“Thank you,” I said, at a loss for words. “I appreciate your favor.”
At the time, my words sounded dumb to me. But if the little sprite agreed with me, she didn't show it at all. She just smiled at me, let out a little giggle, and flew back.
Breena flew up next to me.
“Alright now,” She said with a glare. “If you're done trying to seduce my friends...”
“What?” I sputtered, old worries suddenly surfacing back. “I didn't- they’re not even-”
But my companion just giggled at me.
“I'm just kidding. And yes, you earned a break. I'm sorry I kept yelling at you. Here, have another kiss.”
Before I could say anything else, she fluttered up and kissed me on the nose. This time, all it made me do was sneeze pixie dust for a moment. And my nose started burning for some reason. “There. See ladies? He's taken. You're going to have to find your own Challenger.”
The other sprites all giggled at that, despite everything that had happened today. I guess that was a good sign. I wish humans could figure out how to bounce back from trauma like that.
Heck, I wished I could figure out how to bounce back from trauma like that.
But enough melancholy thinking. We won. Everybody got saved. I needed to move on.
“Alright,” I said, turning to Breena. It was time to get out of here before more tiny women tried to hit on me. Yes, they were pretty, and to be honest their kisses felt kind of nice, but they were tiny enough to make me feel like I was about to wind up on the five o'clock news if they got any more comfortable with me.
“What's next?” I asked my companion. “Do we wait here for someone to pick them up, or do we need make sure the area's safe?”
Breena shook her head.
“You were recognized as having overcome the Challenge, so the threat has been purged. No more Horde should be alive. We'll scan the area just to be safe, but my friends will be fine. Lady Titania's envoys will make sure of it. Especially when she finds out the invaders were Horde.”
“Yeah, I'm going to need you to explain everything I heard today,” I said as we began walking out toward the exit. The hole had gotten larger when I forced my way through, so climbing out wasn't going to be nearly as difficult as climbing in was. “For today, though, maybe you can tell me who Invictus, Malus, and the Bloody-horned Huntsman are? Preferably without getting mad at me for asking?”
“Yeah, sorry about that earlier,” the little fairy said a little guiltily as she flew out of the hole ahead of me. I grunted, grasped at some tree roots, and pulled myself out after a couple of seconds.
“The Bloody-horned Huntsman is a Dark Icon. He's a power that formed long ago from some unbeaten Challenges. He draws power from creatures being hunted, tortured, and sacrificed in his name. The more sentient the creature, the more power he gains. He also empowers others to do the same kind of acts. From what I could see, that wretch you killed had his Mark of Favor.”
“Is that why it had antler horns?” I asked in realization.
“Yes,” Breena answered with a blink. “And good guess. The Mark also made the wretch stronger and smarter than its type of species normally is. He probably had the power to curse you, as well. That's why your wound bled so much, and why you had delusions about Malus and Invictus.”
“A curse can mess with my mind-screen?” I asked. That sounded really bad
“Not really, but that's the closest explanation I can think of. If you got a concussion or something then you might have seen something that wasn't there, but I didn't see any signs of you having one.”
“I didn't get hit on the head in that fight,” I said firmly. I could remember that much.
“Well, then there's no reason you'd get a message about Malus or Invictus, because they're not real,” Breena insisted stubbornly. “And Stell will be even firmer with you than I am on that. Malus is just a boogeyman. He's a lazy explanation for all the evil in the universe. Before the Icons came he was believed to be the source of all Challenges, Trials, and Tumults. But there was never any real evidence of him.”
“Didn't you say the Horde were boogeymen?” I asked carefully.
“Yes,” Breena said in a flustered tone. “But the Horde are real. You've seen them. A bunch just tried to hurt my friends. You killed them for it. Thank you, by the way,” her voice quivered for a moment. “But there's never been any proof of Malus existing. A long time ago, there might have been a Dark Icon by that name, and he may have been powerful enough to be remembered long after his destruction...”
>
“Wait a minute,” I interrupted. “Destruction? Icons can die? Aren't they like gods or something?”
“Yes and no. Some people worship them, and unlike mortals they draw power from gaining Renown. But they can die and have done so in the past. Especially the Dark Icons. A number of the previous Challengers have had a field day with them, in fact.
“But like with you, death is rarely permanent with them. Usually they can slowly pull themselves back together. It just takes centuries. That's what happened with the Bloody-Horned Huntsman. Arthur killed him ages ago and he's just now recovered enough of himself to cause some minor trouble. But he's still nowhere near the strength he had over a thousand years ago. In fact, Arthur hurt him so badly that some of the Icon's strength was lost permanently.
“However, there are plenty of other Dark Icons that were so thoroughly broken that they never came back at all. Usually that happens when they die a second time, before they've recovered most of their strength. These days most Dark Icons don't even take the risk of summoning up their full power because then a Trial or Tumult kicks in and they risk Stell being able to call in a Challenger, who is then further empowered by the other Icons that want the Dark Icon gone permanently. Plenty of so-called dark lords have met their permanent destruction just like that.”
“That sounds like a lot of old stories back home,” I mused.
“If they're about how some evil power sweeps across the land, only to be stopped at the last moment by some noble hero coming out of who knows where, who is favored by the gods of light, then yes. That used to happen all the time,” she even rolled her eyes as she said that. “We cleared out entire pantheons of evil idiots that way. Now, though? They finally wised up. Bloody-Horns was the last to take that risk, and even he tried to be subtle about it.
“But Malus? Never seen any evidence of him. Every now then a cult pops up in his name, but they are always quickly put down and have no details about him except for some non-lucid nightmares. There's no trace of his power, no monsters unique to him, just... nothing. I don't know how his name traveled to so many worlds, but in all our centuries we've never seen any evidence of him. Just some very old, very disturbing stories that we can't even trace the origins for.”
“Do they even have the same theme?” I asked. I really didn't like Breena's answer or reaction to my question. I'd have liked something more to go on than 'ignore it, the problem's not real.'
“No, not even that,” Breena answered. “Wait, there is one. Supposedly in every story he's an ancient evil, older than all of the other Icons put together, older than the oldest of Stell's race, and the cause of all monsters. He wants to both destroy the world and bind it into eternal suffering at the same time. Which is impossible because it's hard to torture people when they've been completely destroyed. But all of the stories say he wants to do just that. Destroy people utterly, down to the last speck, and yet bind them into eternal pain and shame. He wants to kill, torture, and enslave, all at once, over and over. Unrealistic goals by any standards. And it's just more proof that he isn't real.”
“Okay, fine,” I said, dropping the issue for now. “What about Invictus?”
“Ugh,” Breena said. “I mean, sorry, no offense to you, but, ugh! Invictus is an even bigger myth. Bigger than your Easter bunny.”
“Don't tell me he or she's the opposite of Malus,” I said dryly.
“What?” she asked, before she shook her head. “No, the stories are unrelated. Well, sort of. If Malus is the monster you tell children about to make them behave, Invictus is the one you tell them about to get them to go back to sleep. He's the mythical Icon of Challengers but again, no evidence because unlike all the other good Icons he's never actually shown up. Actually, people used to say he wasn't an Icon at all, but something older, more powerful, that predated all the monsters and Dark Icons. He was the imaginary hero that was ready for them when they came, and the reason they never destroyed us all. But there's no evidence of any of that, because if that happened nobody ever bothered to write about it. All we've go is a few random people-usually kids- that credit certain acts of salvation to him. And they never explain why.”
“That actually sounds disturbingly familiar.” I said carefully. Because a lot of people thought that about all the deities in my world. Especially mine- or rather, my dad's.
I wasn't a hundred percent sure what I believed at the moment.
“Yes, I heard a lot of faiths back in your world work that way, especially the monotheistic ones.” Breena said, raising her hands as if to avoid offense. “And all of them have more basis for belief than Invictus. There are at least enough sightings or other circumstantial evidence of them, however contested, to form groups, churches or whatever. But Invictus only has a handful of old, extremely questionable sightings, and the last written mention of his name comes from the remains of a text that predates Stell by at least a millennium. That's all we've got.”
“Okay,” I said carefully. “So I'm getting messages about two people or Icons, or whatever you want to call them, that I've never heard about. So it can't be a hallucination.”
“I know,” Breena grumbled. “So it must have been a side effect of the curse. I'll have Stell and Guineve look at it when we get back.”
“Okay,” I gave up. It had been a long day. I had killed something for the first, second, third and more times in my life, seen tiny people be horrifically and revoltingly abused, and then rejected recruitment from their abusers and a gross hell-pit. I was done trying to make sense.
“You said you wanted to look around to make sure it's safe right?” I asked Breena. “Can you do that on your own while I guard the entrance to your friends?”
Thanks to Breena's healing, I had recovered most of my vital points, and resting had restored about half of my magic power. But I still felt all out of sorts from the experience and didn't feel like another adventure at the moment.
“That's fine,” Breena said. “I'm faster than you anyway. And Wes?” She was staring at me, looking a little concerned. “Even if a bunch of things we don't understand happened, you did fantastic today. Guineve and Stell are going to be really impressed. And even though I yelled a lot, I'm really impressed too.”
She had smiled as she said that last part, and her face had glowed a little brighter than the rest of her.
“Thanks,” I said, still feeling a bit numb. “I'm just... going to sit here for a bit and guard the door.”
“Sure,” She said with an understanding smile. “I'll be back.”
She was gone in a trail of pink. I reflected that if this all was some crazy part of my brain, then I had a serious problem with fairies.
Then another part of my mind spoke up, and asked what it said about my mind if I had dreamed up the Horde, and all the things I saw them do, and their invitation to lead them do more of those things?
I didn't like any answer I could come up with.
A twig snapped some distance away.
I figured it was just an animal and didn't get up.
Then I remembered that the Horde had eaten all the animals around here.
And that Breena and the other fairies didn't walk and weren't heavy enough to snap twigs even if they did.
I swore and leaped up, drawing my new sword. The arm holding the weapon twitched to correct its positioning, then twitched again when I asked it how it knew to do that.
I barely noticed a whirlwind of green and brown bound over to me, landing less than ten feet away. Still, somehow my weapon had tracked my new guest the whole way end.
Not that it mattered. This time, I had brought a two-foot sword to a spear fight.
The woman landed in a crouch, with long, lean limbs covered in brown and green leather sleeves and leggings. Camouflage, my brain pointed out helpfully. She's wearing camouflage. She also had a stiff, studded leather chest-plate over her upper torso. Her head was bare, save for a short cloak around her neck that had her hood put away. Her nose and mouth had a tint of wild to
them, reminding me something of either a hawk or wolf, and I couldn't make up my mind as to which. Her eyes and hair were both a type of rich, healthy brown that reminded me of good quality wood- dark chestnut for her eyes, and a lighter shade for the wavy locks that escaped her braids. A tattoo of blue swirls so detailed I would get lost trying to puzzle out crawled from the side of her cheek up to her temple, just next to her hairline. In a savage, queen-of-the-wood way, she was every bit of beautiful.
She was also pointing a metal-tipped spear at my chest.
To my surprise, I was still holding my sword in a way that would have deflected her attack.
“Please don't,” I found myself saying calmly. “I've already had a bad day.”
She glared at me for another minute longer, looking every bit like she was going to knock my puny weapon away and pin me to the tree stump behind me. Then, after a snort and a smirk, she relaxed and lowered her weapon.
Downfall And Rise Page 28