The Forsaken Hero

I hugged Fable tight around the neck as he bounded through the city, taking me away from the carnage wrought by their battle. My pocket sagged with the spatial rings I’d taken from the inquisitors, clinking softly between Fable’s muted footfalls. It was impossible to store spatial treasures within each other, and I hadn’t time to riffle through whatever possessions they might have had and transfer them into one ring.

Shockwaves rumbled through the city as the battle continued to move away from the city into the canyon. Streaks of light streamed from the skyship as its mana cannons fired, lighting the sky like lightning on the horizon.

Fable’s paws carried us past ruined home after home, shop after shop, just quickly enough to get my tail twitching but not so fast that the world blurred. Rubble cratered the street, and more than a few times he was forced to leap entire hills of collapsed multistory buildings. The roads were quiet and desolate with no sign of soldiers or inquisitors anywhere.

”Wait,” I hissed, gripping Fable’s fur tightly. ”There’s...something here.”

He pulled up short, leaping atop a nearby inn to get a better look at our environment. I touched my chest, soothing my heart, which beat rapidly as my soul pulsated with mana. I looked around, and frowned, eyes narrowing.

A complex of sprawling warehouses broke the skyline a few streets over. It looked like a meteor had landed in the middle, leveling them with the rubble falling away from the impact. Armored corpses littered the streets nearest the crater, matching the same size and description as the empire’s patrol we encountered before. The entire region glistened with starlight, every corpse, rock, and fragment of window glittering like a mirror.

”Ice?” I muttered, leaning over Fable’s neck, craning to get a better look.

At my urging, Fable leaped from the roof and bounded over to the crater. The clack of his nails changed as we grossed onto the glossy material, turning into the familiar crunch of frost. It didn’t take a second for him to cross the mounds of rubble and stop at the crater’s edge.

I slid from his back and ran forward, tail swishing behind me. The crater was wide and deep, perhaps a few hundred feet in diameter, and filled with jagged crystalline ice formation.

”Fable... you don’t think...?”

I gripped my skirt, forcing myself to take a deep breath, and activated the Oracle of Eternity. It devoured a few precious drops of mana, but the added strength allowed my eyes to pierce the veil of the crystal enchantment and surveil the magical residues of the crater.

”It’s really him...” I gasped, letting my mana go. ”Borealis!”

Fable swept his tail around me, pulling me close. Tears welled up in my eyes, but I blinked them away and hugged him. He nuzzled my cheek with his, whining softly. There was nobody, and the entire patrol of soldiers was frozen in place. He was still out there somewhere!

As he pulled away, my mana stirred, and the Oracle of Eternity rose on its own, swallowing my senses. A chill pervaded my soul as it latched on to Borealis’s fading mana, and I lost all sensations.

A faint cawing sounded in the darkness, soft and weak. As it faded away, a brilliant burst of sunlight split the shadows, illuminating a group of sixth and seventh-level adventurers. Their faces were grim, jaws set in determination, and weapons painted with blood. The light faded, and my heart jumped with a jolt of irrational terror. Before I could understand the impressions, my soul filled with fire. Thousands of needles dug into my soul, tearing it apart before stitching it back together, the unforgettable power of a soul-binder.

I jolted back to the present, clutching at my chest as the pain dissipated with the last of the vision. My forehead was damp with sweat, and every muscle trembled violently. Fable’s body, pressed comfortingly against mine, was the only thing keeping me from collapsing on the spot.

”W-we have to go!”

I threw myself at him, but my fingers grasped vainly at his fur, lacking the strength to pull me onto his back. He lowered himself and nudged me with his head, pushing me up and very nearly sending me tumbling off the other side. By the time I gained my balance, he was already bounding off, circling the crater.

Borealis’s mana was faint, but with the Oracle of Eternity, we tracked his lingering presence away from the crash. A few minutes later, we came across another city block frozen over, transformed into a macabre ice gallery. A smaller patrol of soldiers, caught mid-stride, stood encased in the center, their faces forever contorted in silent screams. I barely spared the frozen sculptures a glance, urging Fable onward with a renewed sense of desperation.

Regardless of the new power the Oracle of Eternity was wielding, it showed me fragmented glimpses into the near future, visions that had thus far proven eerily accurate. But it wasn’t an inescapable fate, for no such thing could exist, save in the present. I had felt the inquisitor’s knife at my throat, yet Fable had killed him before he had a chance to capture me. Now that I knew the imminent threat, we could avoid it. I wouldn’t be bound again. I wouldn’t!

The trail of mana thickened, drawing over a canal into a different section of the city, one yet untouched by the horrors of war. The homes were larger, with spacious gardens and low walls for fences. Fountains burbled softly, and more than a few light crystals still flickered in windows. A carriage rolled by a street adjacent to the one we traveled down, the rumble of its wheels broken by the clop of a horse’s hooves.

A scream shattered the peace, followed by a shockwave of infernal mana. Windows rattled as the neighborhood shook on its foundations, the bark of dogs rising in the distance. The magical residue of the blast was cold and chaotic, sending a chill running down my spine.

”We have to hurry,” I cried.

The ground shattered beneath Fable’s paws as he jumped, streaking toward the epicenter of the shockwave. Even though I was expecting it, the sudden acceleration placed my heart in my throat, stealing my breath and turning my knuckles white as I gripped his fur. My eyes were squeezed tightly shut, but soon, cold swept across my wards, and the clack of stone beneath his paws turned to the crunch of frost.

Shouts floated over the wind rushing in my ears, the calm broken by the clang of steel. Another burst of ice magic erupted from somewhere in front of us, and Fable put on a burst of speed. My heart thundered in my chest as I ran through the glimpses of fate again, trying to put everything in its place.

This mana was definitely Borealis’s, so the first part made sense. Whoever he was fighting had survived two of his attacks, which meant it wasn’t an ordinary patrol. Was it the party of adventurers, or another of the inquisitors with Allana’s group? If it were the latter, I would need to be wary of the soulbinder.

At last, the source of the mana came into sight. Jagged pillars of ice rose around us, towering like trees and bristling with spikes. Fable darted around them, revealing a battle raging through a particularly large mansion’s grounds. A seventh-level ranger held a bow in his hands, firing arrows into a frozen orchard. The force of each shot sent cracks spider-webbing across the ice covering the ground like a broken mirror. Inside the woods and out of view, four sixth-level souls pulsed, auras unleashed. Beyond them, faint and trembling, I could feel Borealis.

”Thank the gods,” I mumbled, laying a hand on my chest and letting my tense muscles relax.

Fable slowed beside the garden wall, and I slipped from his back, giving him a head pat before nodding.

”Save him, please. He doesn’t have much strength left.”

Fable nodded and took a step away from me, mustering his mana. With every heartbeat, his aura grew, his coat shining gold with mana. My chest tightened from the pressure, and I leaned back against the wall, fighting for every breath.

The pressure vanished, and my next breath brought air crashing into my lungs. I blinked to clear my watering eyes, but Fable was already gone. The ranger stood frozen, arrow half-draw. His head turned toward us, lips parted in alarm, but the wolf had already materialized behind him.

The anger’s cry turned to a gurgle as blood erupted from his throat, drenching his leather armor in a crimson torrent. He grasped at it feebly, imbuing himself with mana, but the wound was too great to close with such primitive techniques. His expression shifted to panic, then to fear, and he started to chant, summoning the soft, green glow of life magic. Barely a word in, however, and his spell devolved into a round of bloody coughing, the runes dissipating like dust in the wind.

Fable, following the faint trail of Borealis, streaked into the woods, leaving me alone with the dying ranger. I swallowed hard, the coppery tang of blood thick in the air, and forced myself to stand still. My hands fidgeted with my staff, my gaze darting everywhere, anywhere but at the man choking on his own blood a few feet away. He was a seventh-level ranger, the same as I and the High Inquisitor, and yet... he had died so easily.

It wasn’t because he was weak. He was a ranger. His strength came from his unmatched skill with a bow and deadly arrows, not brute force. Fable, using a seventh-level magical technique, had taken him by complete surprise, tearing through whatever hasty defenses he’d managed to muster in that final instant. Without actively fortifying his body with mana, his physical form was likely no stronger than any of the fifth-level, defense-focused inquisitors we had fought today. And against such overwhelming power, death was the only possible outcome.

The safety guaranteed by reaching a high level was only an illusion. It was why I never left my tent without wards, and now, left alone without Fable, I huddled against the wall, senses strained for any hint of danger, flinching with every scream in the woods. If someone like that ranger could die in an instant, how much easier would it be for me, with all my vulnerabilities, to meet the same fate?