Everyone in the entire world of Lom knows A Hero.
Take a moment now, in case you missed it. See the capital letters on A Hero? That means it’s a proper noun, like John Smith or Jane Doe. That is to say, it’s a name. First name A. Last name Hero. Full name A Hero, start to end, five characters and a space. Initials written A.H. Paperwork signed with a stylized Hero. Sometimes an A gets tossed on the front for fun and style.
Maybe we really should start A Hero’s story at a time before everyone knew A Hero by name. That wasn’t the plan, as it’s a rather messy tale better left to the interpretations of moral philosophers, but it may be best to set the record straight.
Yes, that does seem necessary.
You see, A Hero wasn’t always known as A Hero, or even a hero, for that matter. Unfortunately, the transitional force was so pervasive that all record of any name predating A Hero has simply been lost. Letters. Memories. Tax forms. Arrest warrants. All changed. It was more than just a transformation from an unknown moniker to that of A Hero. That is, the magic was so powerful that our hero did not become A Hero, but rather, had always been A Hero.
Anyway, let’s move the beginning of our tale to a lonely water-bridge in a distant nation of no specific regard. A water-bridge being a bridge that transports water over land, and ships over water, and people on the ships over water—you get the idea. On this spot, the bridge crossed a narrow and yet deep crevasse, ferrying its passengers out from beneath one vine-choked canopy, through the sky, and then into another, as the waterway meandered through the jungle. Upon the bridge, one could observe a vast landscape of rugged mountains blanketed in green canopies. Flocks of colourful birds dotted the skies, and an ocean sparkled in the distance. For a few seconds of visibility, the view was breathtaking for anyone inexperienced enough to look at the horizon instead of at the trees in search of ambushers.
Perhaps it should be mentioned that this story occurs on the world of Lom, whereupon the sun does not traverse the sky and the day does not give way to the night. Eem, the sun goddess, is transfixed by a great prayer performed by curious little people on a mountaintop. A performance that has been ongoing for the larger part of seven centuries, and so the goddess has not moved in seven centuries. There is a moon, too. Her name is Hyum, and she thinks the sun is very grand but a little too easily distracted. Dragons and magicians? Of course, as expected of any proper fantasy realm, although this world calls the most powerful monsters malion (that’s plural, by the way). The sun and the moon have one other friend in the sky. Her name is Rho. She is a tiny pinpoint of sometimes light and sometimes darkness that goes around making the day dark and the night bright, so in a way, the day and the night are still in fact things on Lom, even though they are not a consequence of the sun and a rotating planet, but rather, an effect of one celestial body being somewhat indecisive.
Overall, Lom’s heavens present the sort of situation where advocates of geocentricism, Heliocentrism, and Flat-Lom theory, are all a little bit right and a little bit wrong, and no one is happy. It’s a fantasy planet soaked in magic, and that’s about as much as you need to know. Well, that and the fact that the darkness is evil, but that’s not important until later in the story.
My apologies. I’ve gone somewhat off course. Back to A Hero before the name A Hero adopted them. They’re on the lonely water-bridge, or more specifically, in the growths leading up to the lonely water-bridge. Lonely, because the bridge resides in one of those places where good folk sometimes need to travel, but bad folk like to linger, because the good folk are much too far from other good folk for anyone to come and hunt down the bad folk for their misdeeds. Ominous posters, with large sums of money and phrases like “dead or alive” written on them, are of course distributed (sometimes with “alive” crossed out). Unfortunately, seldom does anyone claim a reward.
Let us pause a moment. One more disclaimer is in order. At this point in time, A Hero was not, by even the most generous interpretation of the title, a hero. A Hero was, even in the opinion of the type of people to kick kittens and trick old ladies out of their pensions, a very bad person. In fact, those that knew of A Hero’s deeds were far more likely to label them a heinous, amoral, villain. Historically, anyway. Oh, let’s just move this forward. It will make sense by the end.
A Hero crouched in the ferns atop the stony edge of the canal, observing the small merchant vessel as it rowed past. The six-armed guards, with their crossbows and metal armour, were not nearly as interesting as the banded chest that lay between them. A banded chest rumoured to contain incomparable wealth, or at the very least, the promise of it. The orderly mix of rowers and passengers sprinkled around the guards were of even less concern.
Further downstream, three allies of A Hero waited to act. A muscular and violent tuunci, a nimble and animalistic arlooran, and a small and aquatic telcine.
A Hero emitted a light whistle, like that of a bird, alerting the three confederates lurking beneath the bridge to the approach of their quarry. In response, they prepared their ambush.
Lashed to free-standing rocks on either side of the gap, long ropes dangled into the ravine, out of view of those on the waters above. When signaled, upon the emittance of a second bird-like whistle from A Hero, the ambushers would fling their hooks up over the bridge, ensnaring the ship, and then pull out the stops that kept the stones from falling into the ravine. The weight of the descending boulders would then haul the ship to the side of the canal and pin it there.
A Hero licked their lips, prepared to whistle, as the vessel breached the sunbeam and warmed in the crossing. Fully clear of the vines, and nearly to the middle of the bridge, they released their second piercing call.
“Wow, look at the view,” said one of the careless passengers that was not a guard.
Careless, because this simple act made everyone else look at the blazing horizon, squinting into the bright light of the sun-drenched landscape, when they should have been looking at the grappling hooks that were flying into their laps.
If not for that one passenger, the guards might have reacted in time to deflect the hooks, or at worst, sever the attached lines. Instead, a cloud of confusion overtook them all as their eyes struggled to readjust to the dim light in the shadow of the jungle where they stood. They might also have heard the second false bird whistle, and known immediately from experience that an ambush was imminent.
Instead, by the time the guards knew what was happening, the attackers had already enacted the second part of their plan, which was to release the heavy counterweights attached to the grappling hooks. The ship was skipping sideways towards the edge of the canal before anyone could do anything to prevent it.
A Hero swelled with greed as the hooks struck the boards of the boat, eager to crack the box and plunder its contents, but greed quickly transformed into dismay as the plan progressed. Of the three ambushers beneath the bridge, one was a tuunci, a chalk-skinned man of immense size, strength, and fortitude, with blood and eyes as black as ink. Always seeking to prove their might, the tuunci had chosen an exceptionally large stone to serve as the weight on the end of their grapple. So large, in fact, that it probably weighed doubly more than the ship itself. The heavy anchor descended, undaunted by its load, applying far more force than necessary to simply hold the ship in place.
As the vessel dashed across the waves, like a kite in a hurricane, its people clung to the cleats and ropes in the hopes of avoiding the water itself. In the end, this was their undoing. When the hull struck the edge of the canal, the ship did not merely crash to a halt. Rather, it went up and over, catapulting itself into the sky, along with its crew.
All but one of the doomed passengers aboard the ship shared a single order of thoughts on the way down that culminated in a uniform conclusion. “At least it will be quick,” that thought. All in all, it was a long way down, providing plenty of time to work through several stages of grief before the end.
The only errant thought in the group was that of the same careless passenger that had killed them all. “Wow,” he thought, “look at that gorgeous rock face,” as the landscape rapidly ascended to embrace him.
It is said on Lom that no spirit can be destroyed, it can simply be reshaped, akin to reincarnation. During the sudden and violent reshaping of their bodies, the passengers of the boat also reshaped their existence, merging with the spirits of the environment, as every rock, plant, river, and wagon of Lom has a spirit of its own. For the next few years, several patches of very thorny mountain thistles adorned the cliffs. These plants bore a grudge, and did their best to choke the roots of an incessantly blooming flower that any observer would have surely noted was happily enjoying the view.
“You stick-eating idiot!” A Hero boomed, directing the statement at the tuunci. A few screams from the passengers still echoed up from the wreckage below, even though the source went silent some time ago. “Now we have to climb down and get it!”
Tuunci are famous for one thing, and it isn’t their strength or size; it’s their anger. To a tuunci, anger is a reason to work harder, faster, and more diligently. It swaddles every thought and cuddles up to every other emotion. They hunt angry. They play angry. They perform impassioned operas of sublime nuance while angry. A tuunci is so married to their anger that it even drives them to fall in love, or the closest proximity to that emotion, anyway; they yearn for the company of the man, woman, or monster that induces within them the most irrational, mind-numbing fury.
In short, by courting the anger of the tuunci, A Hero was both flirting with death, and literally flirting. In return, the tuunci broke A Hero’s nose with a charging head butt, although if you asked the tuunci after the fact, they would have said it was just a love tap.
“I deserved that,” A Hero lamented in a nasally tone, as they pinched their nose to staunch the blood flow. “How about we eat lunch, and then we can loot the wreckage?”
The others agreed, and lunch was served in the form of fresh fish taken from the canal. While they ate, the quartet discussed plans for how they would retrieve the fallen corpses and cremate their remains. Regardless of region or religion, every denizen of Lom understood the power of the darkness, and how it corrupted and distorted all things left within its embrace. In that way, to bury a dead body was to condemn its spirit to an eternity in a world of nightmares, and so even enemies would cremate the remains of their foes, sending their ashes to reunite with the burning spirit of Eem in the sky.
A Hero, however, remained silent throughout, preoccupied with the idea of what might be stowed within the banded chest in the ravine below. Therefore, when the task of corpse retrieval fell to the arlooran, the news of the assignment went unheard.
The arlooran people have made their homes in the high places of Lom for as long as anyone remembers. Forest canopies and steep bluffs are their domain, as they excel at climbing. Survivalists by nature, their skin is covered in a fine downy fur that blends with the terrain of their birthplace, while sharp barbs and horns protrude from the surface of their flesh, gathering near the joints. Most deadly of all are the venomous quills that extend alongside the barbs, ready to impale anyone bold enough to initiate unwanted physical contact with the acrobatic humanoids.
A Hero never bothered to learn the names of any allies. Too much effort for too little benefit, as allies were always fleeting, often died, and rarely amounted to anything more than business partners. It also made them easier to betray.
As the group repelled down the cliff face, A Hero went first, rushing towards the forbidden spoils of the downed chest, and thus failed to notice that the arlooran lingered in the bluffs to gather corpses. When they reached the bottom, A Hero discovered a narrow channel of rapids that could not be seen from above. The boat now hung between two steep stone faces, keel upward and wedged in place by its descent. Its lone mast, which had always been sail-less, plunged into the rapids. The wooden post suspended the boat in place, as if someone had understood only the basic nature of a boat, and put the rudder in the air and the mast in the water.
A Hero cursed, and briefly considered diving into the water, just to be the first to reach the treasure. With remarkable restraint, they did not. Instead, the trio gathered on a slim rocky shore, barely big enough for all three of them and some distance from the upturned boat.
“You got this?” asked the tuunci, nodding at the child-sized telcine, who immediately began stripping away their many layers of clothing.
Although they are quite humanoid, the telcine possess a somewhat alarming appearance. They’re entirely hairless, and where the hair should reside on their scalp, thick tubular extensions hang down, like sucker-less tentacles as wide as their arms. Their eyes are massive, and entirely dark, like deep pools of water, and their feet and hands are webbed and stout, for aquadynamic efficiency. They are mammalian, however, being more like a dolphin than a shark, despite what anyone says about their wide flat mouths full of horrifying rows of razor-sharp teeth.
Always pragmatic, and never bashful, the telcine people are only amorous by necessity. Even further, they live underwater, and therefore see nothing strange in the act of being nude. Soon, the two-tone skin of the little person—which is always lighter on the front and in the middle—glistened in the sunlight. To avoid dehydration on land, telcine coat their bodies in oil and swaddle themselves in fabric, so they usually glisten in any case.
“I’ve always wondered,” A Hero said, observing the total androgyny of the naked telcine. “How do you tell the boys from the girls?”
The tuunci furrowed their brow in anger, which meant nothing. That’s how they react to almost everything. “Have you been to the ocean?” he demanded.
A Hero nodded.
“How did you discern the boy fish from the girl fish?” the tuunci growled, furious for no reason, which lent an unexpected air of sarcasm to their words.
Despite their brutish appearance and violent behavior, the average tuunci is significantly more intelligent than other peoples of the world. It is not uncommon for them to provide a pithy retort to a philosophical enquiry.
A Hero chuckled as the telcine dove into the waves, partly in response to the comment about fish, and partly to allay the anxiety that boiled in their guts; the telcine now had total access to the treasure before anyone else. A Hero moved to the edge of the rapids, still prepared to swim down and claim what was rightfully theirs. There they waited, constantly shifting their attention between the tuunci and the chilly waters.
A brief shriek escaped A Hero’s lips as two black and bulbous eyes appeared in the depths. A wide smile of shark-like teeth spread out beneath the eyes as the face rocketed upward.
“You are in my way,” the telcine declared in a flat voice, resurfacing from the depths.
“Did you find anything?” A Hero urged.
“Yes. This boot, this pouch of tobacco, and these coins.” The telcine hefted the goods onto the shore.
“What about the chest?” A Hero snapped, leaving an echo in the canyon.
The other two remained silent, narrowing their eyes at A Hero.
“What chest?” the telcine asked.
“I thought I saw a chest on the boat,” A Hero replied, sheepish. The tuunci now gripped the haft of their axe with both hands, in a menacing pose. Any reason was a reason for violence to a tuunci, and deception counted double.
“I’ll look for it,” the telcine said. “I’m starting upstream and working my way down.”
“Just look for the chest, okay?”
“I want to find the other boot.”
The voice of the telcine was serene, as usual for their species. It wasn’t an argument, but a simple statement of purpose; a pair of good boots was worth collecting.
“Okay, fine,” A Hero replied in a strained voice that was anything but calm.
The telcine dove once more, and the tuunci relaxed their grip on their axe, directing their attention towards organizing the items dredged up by the telcine. Meticulous and systematic by nature, the telcine spent nearly an hour beneath the waves, recovering boots, laces, tobacco pipes, weapons, and all manner of mundane detritus, until A Hero felt like an overripe grape about to burst from anxiety. Eventually, a heavy crunch announced the arrival of a waterlogged chest upon the shore. Thin jets of water leaked from its seams.
A Hero pounced on the container, hauling it as far from the water as possible. It was still leaking as the lock picks came out. The first thin metal strip into the lock caused a splash of water to shoot out, but A Hero kept going, licking at their lips as if they could taste the spoils inside.
While A Hero worked, the telcine dove down again, almost disinterested in the proceedings. High overhead, the arlooran had gathered the last of the bodies that didn’t fall all the way down, and set to gathering the kindling for a pyre. The tuunci simply observed, curious. Moments before setting the final tumbler, an unusual feeling of tension revealed the presence of a deadly trap. If A Hero breached the seal, something dangerous was certain to happen.
“It’s trapped,” A Hero said, turning to the tuunci with a sorrowful look.
“I’ll do it,” the tuunci replied, shoving A Hero aside.
Unknown to the tuunci, A Hero could have easily disabled the threat. A Hero had dealt with this particular trap many times. When the lid was sprung, poison would spray into the air, probably a paralytic variety. However, tuunci possess an incessant desire to prove their strength and hardiness, and although the sturdy creature might survive the hazard, it would mean more loot for A Hero if he didn’t.
The tuunci cracked the lid, and as sure as the sun doesn’t rise—which is to say there was some wiggle room in the doubt department, but ultimately the situation played out as expected—a cloud of white powder exploded into the air. The tuunci did their best to hold their breath and back away, but this was no ordinary poison; it seeped into the pores and invaded the membranes like water in a sponge.
Almost at once, the tuunci began to stumble. Their arm shot out to brace against the steep canyon wall, but missed, and they crashed onto their front, face down in the water from the waist up. Desperation lifted their face to the side, sputtering for air, and their arm reached out for help from A Hero, who stood only a stride away.
A Hero did nothing.
The swift mind of the tuunci realized the truth in a flash, and their efforts shifted towards lifting their body out of the waves. Pebbles crunched beneath his fists as he attempted to push up off his front, but his limbs quaked and he fell again. A furious howl bubbled up from the stream as his legs kicked and his feeble hands scrabbled for anything worth holding.
A Hero gently pulled the chest out of reach, as coins, boots, and assorted baggage were knocked back into the stream by the desperate tuunci. Thankfully for A Hero, the poison worked fast, and the thrashing stopped after less than a minute, possibly due to drowning and possibly because the muscles that pumped their lungs had seized. When it was clear that the spirit of the tuunci had truly darkened, A Hero pushed them into the currents, allowing the body to drift away, taken by the rapid flow.
Okay, look, I know that bit was rather dark, but don’t be mad at me. It was made very clear, much earlier, that A Hero was a bad person. I believe the term villain was used. Do you remember the kitten kicking reference? Right, well, I know it’s awful right now, but I promise it gets better. Comeuppance, and all that. Would it help you feel better if I skipped the details on the fate of the telcine? Yes? Okay.
The telcine also died. A Hero murdered them with a knife. It’s a bit of a shame to eliminate that exposition, though. You’re missing out on a rather clever passage about fish guts and fillets.
Anyway, moving on.
A Hero tossed the bloody dagger aside and knelt in front of the chest. It was not yet fully open, and their fingers caressed the edges like a fumbling lover attempting to breach a corset. Unable to hold back, they ripped the lid open in a rush, grinning more widely than a telcine. Two items occupied the chest: a medium-sized auburn scroll case and a small clay urn of similar shading, no bigger than a mug. An intricate array of alabaster and golden swirls adorned both items, and both items were sealed with crimson wax, and thus unharmed by the water. Soggy straw padding comprised the remainder of the contents.
The wax seal on the urn refused to crack as A Hero twisted at it, and so they stood up in search of a heat source.
The soft crunch of a whizzing arrow landed on the shore between the boots of A Hero. If not for having just risen from their knees, it would have landed in their ribs.
A Hero’s eyes shot upward, towards the source. High on the cliffs, the arlooran readied a second round, taking aim at A Hero. A column of smoke wavered in the distance. A Hero cursed at their own foolishness, completely forgetting that a fourth companion even existed. Worst of all, no one could possibly compete with an arlooran when it came to climbing and archery. To the arlooran, firing down at A Hero, who was trapped in a narrow ravine, must have felt like shooting a hare in a snare.
With no other choices, A Hero tucked the scroll case and the urn under one arm each, and then dove into the water, leaving their fate to the whims of the waterway. The arlooran tracked the movement of A Hero with a smooth grace, and unleashed their shot just as the current swept A Hero under the upturned hull of the boat. The deadly shaft embedded in the planks with a whack, and A Hero hugged the mast to avoid washing out the other side. Beneath the boat, A Hero was safe, but also trapped.
“You’ll have to come down if you want to shoot me,” A Hero shouted.
No one replied. Not that a reply was expected. It was one of those things that people say when they can’t think of anything else to do.
A Hero assessed the waterway. It was deep and fast, and a powerful current pulled downward. Theoretically, it would take very little effort to dive under the surface and emerge further downstream. However, there was the distinct possibility that the current would prevent any sort of emerging, whatsoever.
An arlooran did not need their hands to climb, as their agile toes kept them surefooted, meaning that a nocked arrow was likely still trained on A Hero’s position. The sound of the arlooran descending the cliff face prompted A Hero to let go.
Laden with clothes and unable to paddle, the currents instantly sucked A Hero into the depths. Rough stones bashed across their flesh, and they coddled their prize against their body, protecting it from being crushed. Their lungs burned and their muscles ached in the frigid waters, but they did not dare to open their eyes until the current swept A Hero into a cavernous underwater space. With a heaving gasp, the air rushed into their lungs, but no light accompanied it. Only a hollow echo filled the blackened chamber.
A Hero released a howl of victory, despite the predicament, and raucously slapped the water.
As mentioned earlier, the darkness of Lom is far more than simply darkness. It is a vile force of evil with a will of its own, but never does it turn that will towards creation or comfort. It is a force of destruction, deceit, and distortion alone. Just as the sun is named Eem, the moon is Hyum, and the black star Rho flies across the sky, the people of Lom have given a name to the dark, but they never speak it aloud. They call her Uun, but to name her is to draw her attention as assuredly as hearing your own name spoken from across the room in a crowded tavern.
Admittedly, it may be difficult to estimate the pronunciation of these names, so here is some assistance.
Eem is like seam without the S. Rho is like row without the W.
Yes, the W has a sound. Don’t round your lips when you say it.
Hyum is like. . . uh. . . hubris? But with an -mmm instead of a -bris?
And Uun, well, you shouldn’t say it aloud, but it sounds like noon without the N.
Of course, the first N. Why would it be without the second N? Her name isn’t Nuu.
Anyway, A Hero tentatively released the scroll and the urn, only after confirming the ability of each object to float. Then they set to creating a light. Although not an expert, A Hero was a novice practitioner of the mystical arts. Withdrawing a gem from their pocket, a faint whisper filled the muted cavern, and the gem began to glow as brightly as a candle.
Not unexpectedly, there were no exits from the cavern. It was roughly the size of a carriage, dome-shaped, and contained only water and A Hero, but A Hero did not care; there were goodies to examine.
For the sake of expediency, the next few hours can be summarized. In short, A Hero spent a good long while performing a very boring and frustrating examination of the scroll and the urn.
In the end, A Hero never succeeded in opening the urn. Nor would they have wanted to, as they later learned. According to the scroll, which was much easier to open and decipher, but not without its significant hurdles, the urn contained a concentrated essence of Uun. Exactly what that meant, the scroll did not say. What it did explain was how to use the essence for personal gain, like an enslaved jinni of legend that could grant wishes on demand.
At this point, it must be assumed that the reader is unfamiliar with Uun and her cruelties. Although Uun certainly possesses the power necessary to grant wishes, she is in no way beholden to anyone, even including the force trapped in the urn. If Uun acts, it is because Uun chooses to act. The essence in the urn is less of a prison and more of a magical hotline to the goddess of all things vile and nightmarish. Only an incredibly desperate person would ever consider doing something as bold as directly seeking for the intervention of Uun, but Lom is full of desperate people, and so the existence of the urn is not unreasonable.
Optionally, they could also be exceptionally greedy and stupid, which is where we return to A Hero.
Upon discovering the purpose of the essence, A Hero immediately embraced the power of the urn to be free of the cavern. This process involved smearing blood upon the urn, as dictated by the scroll, and then simply holding a specific desire at the forefront of the mind. A Hero viciously bit their palm, grinning and giddy at the same time, and then slaked the urn with sanguine fluid.
With the task complete, it appeared to A Hero as though nothing had happened. After some consideration, it occurred them to simply try and leave the cavern, and so they did. Diving under, with the urn held in hand, the path to freedom through the underwater tunnels revealed itself as if A Hero had known the way all along.
There are many forms of magic within the domain of Uun. Transformation and transportation of the body. Illusions and illnesses of the mind and spirit. In some circles, where the power-hungry whine about the powerful, a common complaint might be heard. “All the useful magic,” they might say. “All the interesting magic,” you might hear. Or most dangerously of all, “all the fun magic.” Above all of this, Uun knows the secrets of the deep paths of the world, and she will whisper them to anyone idiotic enough to listen. Remember, she is as deceptive as she is cruel, and though she will share these secrets, it will be for her own amusement and gain.
Some hours later, A Hero washed ashore downstream, still in the middle of a forest. With a fresh wound still bleeding, A Hero once again wiped blood on the urn, thinking of nothing other than being clean and dry, and then it happened in the span of a stride. The water evaporated as quickly as if it had boiled away, taking with it the years of grime that caked A Hero’s clothing.
Not far away, the sounds of a bustling village filtered through the leaves and boughs. A Hero approached the source of the sound, and discovered a crowded square on a busy path. Cart stalls under colourful awnings lined the wide stone path, surrounding a statue of an arlooran with a bow. Overhead, a tree-bound arlooran settlement crisscrossed the gaps between the trees.
Deeply in want of a dagger, for simpler blood-letting, A Hero went to the nearest vendor and pick-pocketed a boot knife from their person. In the same motion, rising from a half-crouch and still at the back of the vendor, A Hero set their mind to the desire for money.
“Would you like a sample?” the vendor asked, turning to face A Hero. She was a young woman, perhaps a teenager. A Hero briefly considered knifing her in the throat, snatching some goods from the cart, and then running back to the water. Instead, A Hero nodded.
The vendor, who sold fruits, loaded a small cloth sack with a dozen of their goods and handed it to A Hero. “No charge for a traveller,” she said, and grinned.
This too, was a power of Uun. The power to rob a mind of its will and twist it to a purpose. The scholars of Lom say that Uun has but one ability: to distort the truth. The truth of what is seen, or heard, or known. The truth of shape and substance, or what is where and how it came to be there. Like all things hidden within the darkness that is her form, the truth is concealed.
A Hero bit into their fruit with arrogant pride, enjoying their power. They strolled among the stalls, clutching fruit in one hand and the neck of a bloody urn in the other. A trail of bloody droplets fell to the dusty road in their wake. After eating, A Hero stole a few small charms from the other tables with clever sleight of hand, but in the middle of those deeds, they suddenly pondered the limits of the urn.
Uun whispered and A Hero listened, choking on their own thoughts. There were other urns far more powerful than this one. It was already a known fact, as if A Hero had always known it, and in that same thought they knew both where and how to acquire them.
Over the weeks that passed, A Hero lied, thieved, murdered their way to the base of a towering cliff in a distant mountain range. In their travels, they discovered that the blood employed to activate the urn did not need to originate from the person using it, and they further appreciated the dagger stolen from the vendor by the creek. That is, an unwilling sacrifice was just as valid.
A Hero now stood before a stone door, wrought from the cliff face itself. Snow lay in heaps around it, drifting as high as houses, and a frigid wind froze A Hero’s fingers to the clay of the urn. The door appeared resolute and impenetrable, but A Hero assumed that the way would become clear as easily as every step upon the journey to its stoop. Despite the impressive appearance, A Hero did not wonder who had built a monolithic doorway in a barren wasteland of ice and stone. After all, Lom is littered with the tombs and ruins of bygone empires, and most of them contain unimaginable power in the form of mighty artifacts. It’s getting them out that’s difficult.
The frigid edge of the dagger bit into A Hero’s forearm, imparting a woozy mental fog. A Hero wished very much for a small animal, or perhaps a child, to sacrifice to the urn, instead of their own blood. It had been a long journey, cluttered with hurdles, and they were growing faint.
Fresh crimson droplets wet the urn, but did not stain it, as it was already coated as thoroughly as if someone had painted it.
In the eye of their mind, A Hero saw a pattern to draw upon the stone, and they reached out to it. The featureless face of the stone door split down the middle when A Hero laid a hand upon it. Both halves moved with the ponderous determination of an elephant in a hurricane, until a narrow gap the width of a man penetrated the mountain. A Hero saw only darkness within, revealing a passageway as black as an abyss.
A Hero winced, sucking air through their teeth in a way that eventually became a word. “Seeth,” A Hero whispered, and began to shiver with concern.
Seeth, like teeth, is the word for darkness beyond darkness. This is perhaps a little difficult to convey to someone that has never experience seeth, but darkness is not the opposite of light, it is merely the absence of light. Perfect darkness is zero light, but zero is not an oppositional value; it’s a null presence. On a scale of numbers, zero hangs in the middle between two infinities, positive and negative. This sort of relationship is true in many ways. Hatred is the opposite of love, but the absence of love is not hatred. In that same way, seeth is the opposite of light. It is a darkness so dark that it overpowers the light, dimming torches to the brightness of candles, or snuffing them entirely.
Seeth, they call it, because it seethes with power and fury.
When the dark is left alone for a great amount of time, undisturbed by any light or movement, it grows in strength. It thickens like fog and condenses like dew that vanishes the moment it is touched. It is seeth that destroys minds and bodies, twisting them into the shape of nightmares. It is seeth that writhes, and seeth that whispers. It is seeth that people fear, when they say they fear the dark.
A Hero, just like everyone else on Lom, wisely feared the seeth.
Despite the risk, A Hero pushed into the seeth. The hallway was stone, well-crafted, and wider than the light could spread, which wasn’t far. As A Hero stepped out of the daylight and into the seeth, the blackness drew back from A Hero’s lantern with a sluggish flow, receding like a fluid. It happened slowly, as if A Hero was invading a fortress of Uun, and her crowd of soldiers refused to lower their weapons and surrender.
From the entrance, A Hero descended into a long and writhing labyrinth of hallways and darkness, but A Hero never faltered in their stride. They knew the way to their destination as assuredly as if they had walked the path ten thousand times.
Many horrors lurk in the seeth. Creatures with bones bereft of flesh, or with unblinking eyes sewn into their limbs. Monsters empowered and distorted by the seeth into towering hulks of muscle and calloused hide. This place was no different, but A Hero was granted passage. Ignored, even, in deference to the bloody clay favour clenched in A Hero’s fist.
In time, A Hero came to stand before a great black door set into a tremendous cube of black stone in the center of an impossibly large cavern. The seeth closed in around A Hero as the door emerged from the fog of blindness that hugged the lantern as tightly as blanket. All around, the sound of silence suffocated the cavern—the type of silence that conceals unspoken threats known only to the mind. No echoes came back from the emptiness. No footfalls resonated up from the deadened stone floor.
Upon the door, in glimmering silver runes, a simple phrase had been carved. A phrase in a language known to no one, and yet decipherable to all. Uun whispers, but few choose to listen.
A Hero ran their shaking, wounded palm along the words, smearing them with blood as they spoke aloud. “Only a hero of the world may enter this sanctum.”
At first, A Hero felt only despair. They were no hero, and they knew as such, but the weight of the urn in their hand soon turned their thoughts towards a solution. Of all that had happened since that day on the water-bridge, Uun had proven, over and over, her ability to usurp the minds and memories of everyone encountered. Perhaps the door was not as impassable as it seemed.
Here is the moment where the fate of A Hero should calcify in the mind; a revelation of occurrence should emerge. If you have not surmised their fate, A Hero spilled their blood upon the urn and desired, with the distilled wanting of their entire being, to be known as a hero throughout the entirety of the world. With that craven hope held aloft upon the pedestal of their thoughts, they sliced their gory arm from elbow to palm and poured their essence across the stained clay of the urn, soaking it from cap to base.
Uun is many things, but she is nothing if not cruel. What makes her cruelty so especially unkind is that she is patient. A Hero, a person for whom the rest of the world is but a tool to be employed for personal benefit, a person that places no value on the life or welfare of others, succumbed to the temptations of the darkness, and was robbed of the thing they held most dear.
You see, a true hero is self-sacrificing, a trait that A Hero never possessed in any measure. In that way, Uun stole from A Hero everything that they were, not by taking something away, but by giving something back. With their old memories intact, A Hero gained a new outlook on the morality of existence. In short, they gained a conscience, only they had not yet realized it. The ensuing mental collapse was only a matter of time.
A Hero stood before the door, arms spread wide as their vision went hazy. The landscape swooned, but they grinned as wide as the ocean, awaiting the inevitable parting of the gates to ultimate power.
Nothing happened.
For a time, A Hero stood that way in the frigid darkness. Their breath puffed out in gasping clouds, and their body shook from the cold, but nothing continued to happen. Then, like a weird sort of anti-star ascending over the horizon, the truth dawned on A Hero. Disbelief occurred first, which almost immediately became disgust. Disgust for the deeds that they had committed in their selfish quest for power, and their mortified gaze drifted towards the urn.
In a fit of self-loathing, A Hero smashed the urn against the door. Immediately, the light ceased to penetrate the area of the impact, and not even the sound of the clay shards clattering to the floor escaped the muffling blanket of the seeth.
A Hero ran from that place in a fog of delusion. Eventually, they arrived in a city of some renown. Several curious guards emerged from their posts to greet the stumbling, bedraggled form that approached their settlement. Their initial assessment was that an undead creature had arisen from its grave, and they sought to shoot it down, but stayed their hand when A Hero collapsed into the ditch. One of the guards strode out to inspect the corpse, or what they assumed was a corpse, and rolled A Hero over.
“It’s A Hero,” he muttered, and spun to face his compatriots. “Get the thaumaturgist! It’s A Hero! They’re hurt!”
A Hero said nothing as their worst fears were confirmed. All the way across the frozen wastelands, the ghosts of their past haunted their steps. Now, having it so plainly displayed, there was simply no escaping the truth. Their name was A Hero, and everyone knew it, throughout the entire world.
This is where our tale nears its end, but certainly not the end for A Hero. From those frozen lands they travelled south, and set out to make amends for their crimes. Old habits are hard to break, however, and despite their desire to be better, change did not come easy.
Often, A Hero met with people eager to have a hero in their midst. “A Hero has come!” they declared. “A Hero will save us!” the cried.
A Hero would smile and respond, already familiar with fame, but a sorrowful thought pulled down their cheeks. After all, the world already knew A Hero’s name. The hard part was living up to it.
