Chapter 32. Heroes
Koleen Andor had heard the phrase repeated countless times throughout his life. The reasoning was straightforward: heroes, by their very nature, existed on pedestals. They were figures of legend, their accomplishments magnified by distance and time until they became something more than human. And humans, unfortunately, had a tendency to disappoint when examined up close.
Koleen had believed this. He'd considered it logical, even wise. After all, he'd been disappointed before. Repeatedly, in fact.
Aldric Eryndor had been one such disappointment. A colleague he'd respected for years, revealed to have brought Corruption back into the world. The shock of it still sat uncomfortably in Koleen's chest, a weight he hadn't quite processed.
Before that, there had been others. Mentors who turned out to be petty. Colleagues who prioritized politics over scholarship. Students he'd believed in who had squandered their potential for easier paths.
The pattern was consistent enough that Koleen had developed a certain cynicism. Not bitterness, exactly—he was too pragmatic for that—but a measured skepticism. An understanding that people, no matter how talented or accomplished, were still just people.
And then there was Sael the Great.
Koleen hadn't been sure what to expect. The man was a legend, yes, but legends were notoriously unreliable. The father of modern magic. The Archmage who had survived the Age of Ash. The architect of the academy system itself, alongside Bran the Brave.
Just having the man standing in front of him had been surreal. Koleen had questions, so many questions he felt too insignificant to ask. How did you survive when everyone else died? How strong are you, truly? What was it like, watching the world burn and knowing you were one of the few who could stop it?
The first few minutes, before meeting Sael in person, Koleen had been skeptical. Oh, he'd believed the reports, the evidence, the sheer weight of testimony. But believing intellectually and accepting emotionally were different things.
But If there had been any doubt left in his heart, it had dissipated now.
Because right now, Koleen was standing in Hel.
And he wasn't cold.
The wind howled. It wasn't the sort of wind that rustled leaves or carried the scent of rain. This one could strip flesh from bone if given enough time. It tore across the landscape in violent gusts, carrying ice crystals that glittered like broken glass in the pale, perpetual twilight.
The ground beneath Koleen's feet was not snow; snow implied something soft, something that might melt under warmth. No, this was permafrost, hard as stone, stretching in every direction as far as he could see. The terrain rolled in gentle, deceptive curves, each hill and valley identical to the last, creating a disorienting sameness that made navigation without landmarks nearly impossible.
The sky was wrong. It hung low and oppressive, a bruised purple-grey that never brightened, never darkened. No sun. No stars. Just that unchanging twilight that made it impossible to tell if minutes or hours had passed.
In the distance, jagged formations of ice jutted from the ground like broken teeth. Some were taller than buildings, others smaller but no less sharp. The wind carved them into strange, almost organic shapes—twisting spires and hollow arches that moaned when the air rushed through them.
There were no plants. No trees, no grass, no signs of life at all. Just endless frost, ice, and wind.
Koleen looked down at himself.
He was wearing his usual robes. The same comfortable, well-worn fabric he'd put on this morning in his warm office at the academy. The robes that should have been utterly inadequate in a place where the temperature could kill an unprotected person in minutes.
He felt warm, as if he were standing in front of a fireplace with a cup of tea in hand.
He lifted one hand, watching the way the wind tore at his sleeves without effect. The fabric rippled, but he felt nothing. No bite of cold. No sting of ice crystals. Nothing.
The protective spells Sael had layered on him were holding perfectly.
Koleen flexed his fingers experimentally, then reached down and touched the frozen ground. His hand made contact with the permafrost—he could feel the texture, the hardness of it—but no cold seeped through.
"Extraordinary," he murmured.
"The protections are holding well, then?" Sael's voice cut through the screaming wind, raised to be heard over the constant roar.
Koleen looked up. Sael stood a few feet away, perfectly at ease in the hostile environment. His posture was relaxed, his expression calm. He might as well have been standing in a meadow.
Behind Sael, Duke Richter was examining the landscape with the same attention. The faint shimmer of protective magic surrounded him as well, barely visible but undeniably present.
"More than well," Koleen called back, raising his own voice. He gestured at the howling wasteland around them. "I can't feel any of this. The cold, the wind—it's as if it doesn't exist."
"Good." Sael nodded. "That's the intent."
Koleen looked around again, taking in the barren expanse with new appreciation. This was Hel. The continent that had broken countless expeditions, and had claimed the lives of adventurers and mages who thought themselves prepared.
And he was standing in it, in his regular robes, feeling like he was having a pleasant afternoon stroll.
The sheer power required to make that possible...
"How far does this protection extend?" Koleen asked, his voice competing with the wind's shriek. "If I were to, say, stick my hand directly into one of those ice formations, would it still hold?"
"Yes," Sael said simply, shouting to be heard. "The [Perpetual Shield] would prevent direct contact. You'd feel resistance before your hand made contact with the ice itself. And even if the shield were somehow breached, the [Frost Resistance] would prevent damage."
Koleen processed that. "And if something attacked me? Physically?"
"The shield would absorb the impact up to a considerable threshold. Anything that could break through would need to be..." Sael paused, considering. "Quite strong. Level 900 at minimum, assuming a direct, sustained assault."
"I see."
Richter had walked closer during this exchange. "I've been attempting to gauge the temperature," he called out over the wind. His breath misted slightly in the air—one of the few visible signs of the cold. "Based on the ice formations and atmospheric conditions, I would estimate we're experiencing temperatures well below freezing. Perhaps negative sixty degrees, possibly colder."
"Colder," Sael confirmed, his voice steady despite having to project it. "Closer to negative eighty in this region."
Koleen felt his eyebrows rise. "Your mother taught you these spells?" He asked, nearly shouting. He hadn't meant to do it, but his mouth just went at it.
"Yes." Sael's replied, raising his voice. "She traveled through Hel frequently. These protections kept her alive."
There was a story there, Koleen thought. Several stories, probably. But this didn't seem like the time to pry.
The wind screamed across the frozen plain, and one of the distant ice formations moaned in response. The sound was eerie, almost musical in a discordant way.
"Where exactly are we?" Richter asked, scanning the horizon and shouting to be heard. "In relation to the portal?"
Sael turned, pointing back the way they'd come. Koleen followed his gesture and saw it: a faint shimmer in the air, barely visible against the twilight. The portal, still active but dormant, waiting to carry them back to Aldric's office.
"We're approximately fifty meters from the portal's exit point," Sael called out. "I wanted to give us some distance in case the area immediately around it had been disturbed or trapped."
Practical, Koleen thought. Even in a place like this, Sael was thinking tactically.
"And the Cerberus?" Koleen asked, raising his voice over the howling wind. "How far?"
"I'm not certain." Sael's eyes swept across the landscape. "When I freed it, the creature fled through the portal almost immediately. I didn't track where it went afterward. But I have remnants from the chains it was bound with, I collected a section before I left. Those should be enough to establish a tracking connection."
Koleen watched as Sael reached into his robes and pulled out what looked like a small piece of metal chain. Even at a distance, Koleen could see the faint magical residue clinging to it, the lingering traces of binding enchantments. But there was something else too: dark fur, matted and stuck to the metal links.
The fur of a creature that had been chained long enough for its own body to become part of the restraints.
Koleen felt something cold settle in his stomach.
"May I see that?" he asked, projecting his voice.
Sael handed it over without hesitation.
The metal was cold in Koleen's palm, though whether that was its actual temperature or just the residual magic, he couldn't tell. He turned it over, examining the runes etched into its surface.
The fur clung to the links in clumps. Black, coarse, with an oily quality that suggested the creature had been unable to properly groom itself. Koleen had seen enough evidence of prolonged captivity to recognize the signs.
"These are..." Koleen frowned, forcing himself to focus on the enchantments rather than what they represented. He raised his voice to be heard. "These are quite advanced. Whoever created them had significant knowledge of binding magic."
"Aldric," Sael said flatly, his voice cutting through the wind.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
Koleen handed the chain fragment back to Sael, careful not to look too closely at the matted fur. "What do you need to do to track the Cerberus?" he called out.
"The fur should make it easier," Sael said, turning the fragment in his hand and raising his voice. "With direct biological material, I can use it to locate the creature precisely."
His hand closed around the fragment, and Koleen felt a pulse of magic emanate from him a few seconds before the fragment began to glow.
Faint at first, then brighter, until it was shining with a soft blue light that reflected off the ice around them. The fur seemed to shimmer with its own light, responding to the tracking magic Sael was casting.
Sael's eyes remained unfocused for several seconds. Then he blinked, and the light faded.
"Got it," he said.
"The creature's location?" Richter asked, shouting over the wind.
"Yes." Sael turned, pointing to the northeast. "About three kilometers that direction. It's..." He paused. "Moving. Slowly, but moving."
Koleen looked in the direction Sael had indicated. The landscape was identical to every other direction, endless frost and ice formations. No landmarks, no distinguishing features.
"Three kilometers," Koleen called out. "We can fly there. It would only take a few minutes."
"I don't fly," Richter said, his voice barely audible over the howling wind despite being raised.
Koleen glanced at him. "Ah. Well, I can carry you, your Grace. If you're comfortable with that."
Richter's expression suggested he was not, in fact, comfortable with that, but he nodded anyway. "If it's the fastest way."
"It is," Sael confirmed. He was already rising slightly off the ground, his robes barely moving despite the magical forces at work. "Though we should approach with caution. A frightened, injured creature is unpredictable. Even more so when it's a Cerberus."
Koleen moved closer to Richter and extended his hand. "I'll need to maintain physical contact," he shouted over the wind. "The easiest method is if I hold you—"
"Just do it," Richter interrupted, though his discomfort was evident.
Koleen wrapped an arm around Richter's torso, establishing the magical connection necessary to extend his flight enchantment to another person. It was a simple enough spell, one he'd used countless times before, but never in conditions quite like these.
He rose into the air, Richter held securely against his side. The Duke was tense, his entire body rigid.
Koleen almost laughed.
He remembered a boy—small, determined, stubborn beyond reason—sneaking into the academy's libraries. Not even the public ones where visitors were welcome, but the restricted sections meant only for enrolled students. The boy would slip past the wards with a persistence that bordered on impressive, stealing books on magical theory he couldn't possibly understand, reading treatises on spellwork he would never be able to perform.
Koleen had caught him more times than he cared to remember and had pulled the boy's ears in exasperation, then escorted him out while the child clutched his pilfered books like treasures, and listened to passionate arguments about why the lack of magical ability shouldn't prevent someone from learning magical theory.
And now that same boy—now a man, a Duke—was being carried through the air above a frozen hellscape, rigid with discomfort at something as simple as flight.
Some things, apparently, never changed.
"Try to relax," Koleen suggested, fighting back the smile that threatened to break through. "Tensing up only makes it worse."
"I'm fine," Richter said through gritted teeth.
Sael was already moving and Koleen followed, adjusting his speed to match. The frozen landscape passed beneath them, unchanging and hostile. Three kilometers would take mere minutes at this pace.