169. Visions & Strength - The Hero Slayers [LitRPG, Portal Magic] (2024)

Part XVI: Matters Of Prophecy

While Corminar led the Trio to Tokas and Lambkin in preparing for the Player’s imminent arrival, Lore and I took our borrowed—and cursed—library book to Alenna. This meant that they could get the introductions out the way without us, and I was almost sad to miss that; I kind of wanted to see how Corminar would manage introducing Tokas.

I imagined him introducing Tokas to the Trio as follows: This is Tokas, she was blackmailed by a Player over the death of her children to stand idly by while he slaughtered dozens of people, and blackmailed all her friends in the process. We will now be working with her.

For the record, I couldn’t imagine introducing Lambkin was going to be much easier: This is Lambkin. He is a disillusioned ex-guard who thought that a level 2 person was responsible for the devastation of Plainside, rather than believe a Player could be involved. Yes, we know he’s an idiot.

And finally, there was the Trio. These three are the Trio. We still don’t really know what they’re about just yet, to be honest, just that they have a dumb name for their team.

For a moment, I considered parting ways with Lore to catch up with them, but a glance at him stopped me in my tracks. From the expression on his face, I could see he was seeing another vision of the future, and from the grimacing I could tell that it was another bloody one.

‘Anything fun?’ I asked.

‘You were thinking about going to join the others, weren’t you?’ Lore replied.

‘How could you tell?’

‘These visions, I don’t think any of them are certain to happen. In fact, I think I only see them when people are about to make important decisions.’

I raised an eyebrow. ‘And leaving you to hang out with an old friend is an important decision?’

‘Apparently. You leaving me now causes Arzak to die.’

I stopped in my tracks. ‘Arzak? Was Val there?’

Lore shrugged. ‘I dunno. It’s the first I’ve seen of them.’

I tried pressing him further on the matter, but he wouldn’t budge. Whatever he’d seen was—again—bloody enough that he didn’t want to dwell on it.

When the doctor opened the door to find her old friend there, she wrapped her arms around him in a big hug, and Lore didn’t seem to mind that her hands were covered in blood.

‘Another one?’ I asked.

Alenna hesitated for a moment, then realised I was referring to her bloody hands. ‘Ah. Yeah. More every day. No luck sorting out the malae problem, then, I’m guessing?’

Lore shrugged. ‘A bit of luck, but we ain’t there yet. Disassembled the local trading group, or one of them, but…’

‘But there’s a lot more out there,’ Alenna finished for him.

‘Yeah.’

The doctor turned to me. ‘You got it? The book?’ She paused for a moment before adding, ‘Or anything else?’ I knew exactly what she was referring to; she was asking if we had any more mala bodies for her to dissect, but she didn’t want to spell it out in front of Lore.

I waved the book in the air in answer, and Alenna hurried us in. I noticed Lore tried to keep his eyes off the body on the stone plinth in the centre of the room. For my part, however, I couldn’t help but stare. Alenna had made incisions all around the dead woman’s body but primarily around the neck and shoulders. Whatever she’d been trying to do, clearly it hadn’t worked.

We followed Alenna upstairs and away from the metallic scent of spilled blood. In her living quarters, she began brewing a batch of the local, earthy drink, and I took a seat at the table, placing the book down in front of me.

‘So this’ll help, will it?’ I asked, nodding to the book.

‘Can’t promise anything, but yeah, I think it will.’

‘Lenn…’ Lore started.

‘Yeah?’

‘The guy in the library said that this book was about soul-powered wards.’

The tiefling nodded. ‘Yep, that’s the one.’

‘I…’ Lore said, again hesitantly.

I hurried this conversation along. ‘He’s asking how that’s gonna help.’

Alenna sighed. ‘It’s about using the malae’s own…’ She trailed off, apparently rethinking her explanation. ‘You know much about the history of the Beached Armada? I’m talking back in invasion times.’

‘History isn’t my strongest subject,’ I replied.

Lore turned to me. ‘What is your strongest subject?’

‘Sociology.’

Stolen story; please report.

The barbarian’s face didn’t move; he didn’t know quite what to make of that.

Alenna got us back on track. ‘OK, right, so. The tiefling locals weren’t always here, right? They came from well out west, from islands that there isn’t even a name for in the common tongue. They were a naval empire, and they spread and they spread and they spread until…’

‘They ran out of sea?’ I suggested.

The doctor pointed at me. ‘Exactly. When they got to these continents, they found landmasses that stretched for an eternity north and south, and they couldn’t go around them. So what we nowadays call the Beached Armada is… a beached armada. A navy forced into fighting a land war. A war we shouldn’t have won.

‘But there’s this old tiefling concept about using your enemy’s strength against them, and that’s the only reason that the tiefling empire actually… won. These locals, back then, they were stronger. They were used to fighting on land, and they knew the area, which is, you know, pretty important when you’re fighting in a desert.’

‘Ooh!’ Lore said excitedly, understanding where this was going. ‘Water! Water sources.’

‘Water sources, yeah. The locals knew where they were, and the tieflings didn’t. That was their enemy’s greatest strength. So the empire sent out scouts all across the continents. They climbed the Ullites, found the source of the streams and the rivers, and they… poisoned them all with their magicks. Really, we as a people should carry a lot more guilt with us than we do, but other people don’t know their history like I do. History is fun, though? When it’s not about poisoning people, at least.’

‘Yeah, probably worth specifying that last bit,’ I said.

‘The point is, that’s how the old empire won. That was how they always won. Now, I’m not saying that what they were doing was good, by any means. But you’d be a fool to think it wasn’t effective. They won far more often than they lost, and it all came back to that one central idea: use your enemy’s strength against them. That, in a nutshell, is what I want to do with the mala problem. With the corruption. I want to use the malae’s power against them. This is the only way we can win. And we must, must, win.’

Her eyes drifted to Lore, and I could see the pain within them that spoke of their shared loss—of Plyas, lost to the malae. That was Alenna’s driving force here; she’d already lost too much to these monsters.

‘...Does that answer your question?’

Lore and I glanced at one another. ‘Not really,’ we both said at once.

Again, the tiefling smiled. ‘It will. In time. Trust me.’

Lore looked as satisfied by this answer as I was. That is, not at all satisfied. ‘Just… be careful, will you, Lenn? The librarian said the guy who wrote the book went mad. Said the book’s cursed. Once you’d got the info you need, you’ll put it down, yeah? You’ll let us take it back to the Estat Order?’

Alenna approached the barbarian’s side and squeezed his shoulder. ‘After all this time, it still surprises me that you’re a big softy.’

‘Promise you’ll be careful,’ Lore said, not letting the point drop.

The doctor smiled. ‘I’ll be careful. I promise.’

Lore breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Good. Now…’ He gestured to the empty cup in front of him. ‘Where’s the loo?’

While Lore stepped away, I took the opportunity to ask Alenna about the mala that Raelas and I had secretly delivered to her. ‘Did it help? What we…’ I left the rest unsaid, just on the off-chance Lore could still hear.

Alenna smiled. ‘Every step is a step forward.’

From that, all I could take was that she was moving in the right direction with her research; hopefully the delivered book would help more. All this science stuff was beyond me, but I trusted her—Lore was a good judge of character, after all, and if Alenna said she was getting there, then I believed her.

But with the number of malae attacks growing, even with the work we’d been doing… I just hoped she wouldn’t be too late.