Chapter 88: The Hero Fulfilled.
Light sprang from darkness as Ash Vale saved the world. It came with the hiss of steel, a sound almost delicate, almost beautiful. His blade pierced the Demon Queen's heart in a stroke far too simple for the lifetime that had led to it.
He withdrew his blade, and the Demon Queen Lysanthia staggered back half a step. Her mouth opened. Blood left it in place of words, and then she was falling. She fell onto her knees, and then onto her side. Her body lay there and did not move. Blood pooled beneath her, spreading slow across the black stone.
Ash took a deep breath and looked back, and found his party staring right back at him. Ronan held his sword out before him, pointed at the body, as if daring it to stand back up. Elowen stood with her staff planted against the floor. She might have fallen without it. Orvyn slowly pressed her sacred seal into a pocket along her cloak. Ash's eyes followed her hand into the cloth and stayed there, waiting for it to come back out. It came back out empty. Of course it came back out empty.
All of them took one breath, perhaps the first they had taken in some time. And then they were smiling at Ash. Orvyn's smile was more than a smile. Something inside Ash braced against it, just for a moment. It was just a smile.
Ash swept his sword to the side. Blood spattered across the dark hall. Already, all around them, the Dark Tower was starting to come apart. Without its master, it would not last long. "It's done," Ash said, and the sound of his own voice felt strange to him. It sat low, and it rumbled through his chest on the way out. Perhaps that was not so strange. The voice of a Hero on his quest ought to sound different from that of a Hero whose quest was finally through.
"Not as strong as I'd thought she'd be," Ronan said as he sheathed his own sword. "Almost disappointed, after everything it took to get here."
Something in Ash bristled at that. He could not have said why.
"You'd rather she had been stronger?" Elowen asked dryly. "Let's thank the Gods it's done."
"The Gods only put on us that which we can bear," Orvyn said. "We would not receive a charge above our measure."
Ronan grinned. As any [Warrior], the man lived for combat. "Well, now that this is all done I know what comes next for me," he declared, rolling one shoulder. "First, a couple drinks down by the Greasy Mango. Then whichever women in this city are bravest." The grin widened. "And then…well, the world's not out of monsters just because it's out of Demon Queens. Might give one those damn [Great Calamities] a go. A [Warrior] can't let his blade get dull."
Ash listened. His friend had only ever liked three things, so it wasn't much of a surprise. He found it a surprise anyway, as if now, at the end, his friend would tell him a fourth thing he had never shared before. A silly thought.
"You really are a brute, Ronan," Elowen said, though there was no heat in the words. "Hope the Gods have something for you to fight in Epherion when you finally go to meet them. I…well, I can finally give myself to my studies properly. Enough of this life," Elowen said, leaning on her staff. Her body was tired, but her eyes were bright. "I think I'll just do that until the end. That sounds nice."
It was the answer Ash knew his friend would give. It had never before felt like it was missing something.
"So. What do we do with her?" Ronan pointed at the corpse, then he glanced around at the walls, which had begun to shift. Any moment now, the ground beneath them would start to crack. They had minutes.
"They will want to see the body, so we are going to take her back with us. Maybe Elowen can preserve her," Ash said.
Ronan nodded and moved. Ash sheathed his sword and gave her one final look. The Demon Queen Lysanthia had been a nightmare used to frighten children since long before Ash had been a gi- Had been a boy. She looked just like the stories.
Hers was a face just slightly wrong. A nose half an inch from where it should have been. A bottom lip that was full while the upper was thin as a hair. Two eyes in mismatched sizes. And then there were the horns, two blades of polished silver jutting high into the air. It was exactly how he had expected a Demon Queen to look. It was exactly how everyone had expected a Demon Queen to look.
Ash blinked, and for a moment he saw another. He saw a face that had nothing wrong with it at all, and everything right. He blinked again, and the corpse was only the corpse again, with every feature exactly where the stories had put them. Ronan was already moving.
"Ash?" the Warrior asked.
"It's nothing," the Hero said. "Used more mana than I thought I did."
"Well, Elowen can take care of that." The Warrior moved past him, carrying the body as if it weighed nothing.
Ash waited for his friends to retreat before he summoned his mana. "[Status]," he said. The System appeared before him. A recording of Ash's entire past, present and future. Ash ignored all of it. His level, his equipment, his divine blessing -none of that really mattered anymore. He looked for his titles, and he found the one line that had changed.
[The Hero] -> [The Hero Fulfilled]
Ash let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. And with it, his shoulders came loose, as if he had set down a weight he had carried for most of his life. Though, he supposed, that was what it was. He was a Hero who had done his deed, in a world that no longer needed saving. Now he could be anything he wished. A strange thought, that. For what else had she-
Ash winced and stepped forward. The pain split his skull, there and gone in the next breath.
"Ash!" Orvyn was calling out to him.
"Not every ache shows on a System screen, I suppose," Ash murmured to himself, and began to walk.
The Dark Tower collapsed all around him. Sure enough, the floor had begun to crack. Ash cast one last look back at the hall, at the wicked throne that lay empty. That would stay empty.
Ash had saved the world.
The great gates of Caldis swung open to applause. There was cheering, and much of it. The streets were lined with the city's tens of thousands, and they stood in rows along a street wide enough to charge a legion across. There were ten thousand eyes, and every one of them fell on Ash the moment he stepped past the gates.
There were four of them. A Saint. A Sage. A Warrior. A Hero. Yet all of those gazes pointed in one direction. Ash stood tall before them and waved. His golden hair caught the light, and his easy smile turned excitement into cheers.
The gazes should have been easy. They had always been easy. In every city Ash had ever stepped in, they had landed on him and slid off. These landed on him and stayed, and something beneath his skin flinched from the landing. For one instant, she wanted to hide. To be a whisper beneath a shout. Ash did not understand it. The urge passed. Most of it did.
He raised his hand and waved again. When he lowered it, the hand drifted to the side and closed gently around nothing at all. He looked at his own hand before he shook himself.
The crowd pressed close along the barriers, and through the roar, pieces of it reached him.
"He's so handsome-"
"-handsomer than the songs say-"
"-think he'll take a wife, now that-"
All of those were compliments. The kind that any Hero was used to getting. Ash found his chin dipping, his shoulders sagging. He straightened as soon as he caught himself. What kind of Hero couldn't meet a cheering crowd?
"Ash? Are you okay?" Orvyn asked.
The Hero had a smile for her by the time he turned around. "Of course," he said. "There are a lot of them, aren't there?"
The Saint smiled, and it was not just a smile. Ash felt something inside him stir. "Can barely hear myself over all the noise," Orvyn said. She leaned in, just slightly. "Let's talk later, okay?"
She was away before Ash could answer. And pain moved through his chest, thin and bright, though he did not know why. He decided there was no reason for it.
They walked on down the great street, flanked on all sides by guards in brilliant armor of a dozen colors. Petals fell from the rooftops, thrown by the handful. Ash had a smile for human, elf, dwarf and beastkin alike, and every smile was answered a hundredfold. Behind the party, soldiers bore a great wooden coffin upon their shoulders, and the crowds nearest it fell quiet as it passed, and found their voices again once it had gone.
At the end of the procession, upon a raised podium draped in white and gold, stood many of the great men and women of the world. There was the Great Queen of the humans, the greatest of the three. The king of the dwarves. The king of the beastkin. The queen of the elves. They looked down upon the four who approached, and the whole city looked with them.
Egwene, the Great Queen of the humans, rose from her seat. The others rose with her.
Ash knew the ritual well. It was the same ritual every Hero passed through, if they succeeded. And Ash had succeeded.
Their procession stopped before the podium. Ash stepped back toward the great wooden coffin as the soldiers lowered it, and he kicked it open. Lying inside, upon white cloth, was the Demon Queen, Lysanthia.
The crowd was silent. All those thousands of people, and every one of them knew to be silent. Ash regarded the crowd for one moment. His party stepped in around him. The Last Hero dropped down to one knee, and the rest followed.
"In the name of all the Gods. In the name of all that is good and true. I, Ash Vale, have slain the Demon Queen Lysanthia!"
And in the silence, the words carried far and wide.
Then the skies split, and with the splitting came a great roll of thunder from a sky that had been clear. And rain fell. It began as stray drops, and soon it was pouring. And where the rain fell, every soul beneath it felt their stresses melt away. Felt their aches recede. Felt hope for a new dawn. Within minutes, the rain was gone. The sun's light, when it shone again, was warm. Warm like a lover's embrace.
"The Gods," Egwene said, smiling, "have accepted your Quest." The Queen turned, and took in the entirety of the crowd. "Let there be a feast!"
The cheers came again, louder than before. Ash winced, and for one breath he would rather have been anywhere else in all the world. And he did not understand why.
Ash sat in an empty room. A lavish room, in the finest wing of the city's castle. After years spent on the road, or in whatever inn had a bed to spare, it felt strange to suddenly have so much. Ash idly touched the bedsheets, and they were soft. He had not thought sheets could be so soft.
It was quiet after the parade. After the feast that had run for hours and hours. The rulers had suggested they all rest, for the month of festival was to begin tomorrow. And there would be more feasts then, every single day. It was quiet, and Ash did not know why the quiet bothered him so.
The silence in the room was complete. It was nothing like the parade, and its ten thousand voices. Here, in the quiet, he would have rather been back in front of the people again. For now in the silence, he felt that something was missing. It was an itch he couldn't scratch, for he did not even know where to touch.
A fire burned low in the hearth across the room. His eyes kept returning to the floor beside it. There was nothing there. There was no reason for anything to be there.
"One day of cheering and you can't sit with yourself?" he asked himself, sighing. "Didn't even eat much, what's the matter with you?" He stared down at this hands, as if the answer might appear on his palms. It didn't.
There was a knock on the door. "Ash? Have you gone to sleep yet? Can I come in?"
It was Orvyn. Ash felt something inside himself tighten. "Come in," he said. The door opened, and Orvyn slid inside, closing it behind her.
The Saint wore none of her ornate white and gold robes. She carried no talisman nor sacred seal. She wore a simple cloak, a few sizes too large. "I'm glad to find you awake, Ash," she said.
"I am," Ash said. "I know we were told to rest, but it seems a bit too early for it."
Orvyn bit her lower lip. She moved closer to the bed and gestured at the empty space. "May I?"
Ash nodded slowly. His chest was hammering. Orvyn sat down, her hands clasped against each other. It was a gesture Ash knew well. It was what the Saint always did when the nerves got to her.
"You didn't eat much," Orvyn said. "At the feast, I mean."
"I wasn't hungry," Ash said, a bit too quickly or perhaps not quickly enough. "Maybe saving the world filled me?"
Ash was sure that would make Orvyn smile. One of the smiles that were only for her. "So, it's all really over, isn't it?" Orvyn said after a time. Ash looked at her out of the corner of his eye. She was looking at the ceiling. Ash did not know what she found there. "I- I confess I didn't think I'd live to see the end of it."
Ash kept looking, for it was the first time he had heard anything like doubt from Orvyn. "It's been a long road," Ash said. "I'm glad I walked it to the end. But I'm gladder still that I walked it right."
Orvyn turned her head, and her lips quirked. "Ah, but you would say that." She was quiet for a time. Ash stayed silent too. Not because there was nothing to say, but because there was too much of it. Orvyn spoke first. "So. There's no Hero's Party anymore."
"I suppose there isn't," Ash agreed.
"There's nothing binding us together. I suppose that's alright, in some fashion. At least it means I can finally get a proper night's sleep, without Ronan's snoring."
Ash smiled. That much was true enough. "I didn't mind it, by the end," he said. "It had an odd way of putting me to sleep all on its own."
Orvyn sighed. "Well. That makes one of us, I suppose." Then she looked at him. "So, Hero. Now that we're not a Hero's Party… what do you plan to do? You didn't say anything earlier, when the other two did."
Ash did not know the answer, and he had spent some time searching for one on the road back to the city. "I don't know," Ash said. "For a while, maybe nothing. Maybe teach, after that."
"Teach?" Orvyn asked.
"To prepare the next generation," Ash said. "Just because one Demon Queen is dead doesn't mean there won't someday be another. It would be a shame for everything we've learned to die with us."
Orvyn nodded slowly. "That sounds enjoyable." She was quiet for a moment. Her thumb traced the line of her own knuckles. "Do you know what I loved most, Ash? Through all of it?" Ash looked at her. If it was a question, then Orvyn didn't let him answer. "It was always…how small you always made me feel." Color climbed her neck as she said it. "It sounds strange but…but standing behind you. It just made the world feel safer." And then those eyes met him. "No other man has made me feel that way." And then Orvyn looked away, quickly. Ash saw the tips of her ears turning red.
It was…it was very forward. And it was suggestive in a way that should have set his heart racing, and it did, for one moment. But in the next something inside of him recoiled. His throat closed, and for a few seconds Ash felt very sick. He was glad Orvyn had looked away. Ash had regained himself by the time the Saint looked back.
By then, Orvyn's smile softened into something else, and when she spoke again her voice had gone soft, the way it went when she blessed the dying and the newly born. "You get to live now, Ash….You will live."
You will live. Something cold walked down his spine. He made himself smile through it.
Orvyn rose. Ash looked up at her. "Maybe I'll try it too," she said. The woman leaned closer. Ash's heart was beating faster. And then there were lips against her forehead.
Ash stared, and something in her vision fractured.
A demon sat across from her, on the far side of a small fire, glaring at the flames. Arms folded around her from behind in the pouring rain, refusing to let go. A Hero's sword lay in the grass where she had left it, because it was just a sword. Her own hands came up unbidden to catch a small gold-and-black thing that had believed it could fly. Her own lips pressed against a pale brow, beneath two dark horns, beside a stream that carried stars.
Ash blinked, and Orvyn had stepped back.
"I'd like to see more things with you, Ash." Orvyn smiled, and then she was leaving. She paused at the door. "Just don't make me wait forever, Hero." And then she was gone.
Ash stared after her. He stared for a long time. The place where her lips had touched cooled, the way any touch cools.
Then he rose, and swayed. The quiet bothered him. Why was it so quiet? What did he expect in its place? The headache was back, and it was splitting. He staggered forward to the dresser and looked at himself in the mirror.
He saw himself. Tall, and muscled, and strong. Handsome. Powerful. A hero from the stories. A hero for the songs. It was exactly how he had expected a Hero to look. It was exactly how everyone had expected a Hero to look.
And for a second, he saw something else. A woman. Just a woman. Not a hero. Just a tired woman. Another blink, and this time she was not alone. This time there was someone standing with her. A regal face. A chin always raised. Sharp red eyes that were somehow still kind.
He blinked, and he was the Hero again. Bile rose in his throat. His heart felt like it might beat out of his chest. Everything hurt. Each breath was more ragged and pained than the last. His trembling hand reached up.
"[Disguise]," he whispered.
And there was the woman again. Just the woman. It was the first time the Skill had ever told the truth. And she was crying.
"Lys," she whispered.