And So the Moral of the Story: We’re Simply Not Heroes

The Keys of Elyndor – Naira`s Journey | Chapter ?

And so it came to pass that we passed a rather impressive estate. And, of course, our porcine compass immediately fluffed itself up.

Why we followed it and listened to it? I still don’t know, even after months of thinking about it. Probably because Naira thinks it’s cute.

Without giving it much thought, we turned onto the road leading up to the estate. It wasn’t large enough to appear on the map, but impressive enough to have attracted a few smaller houses around it.

That’s the sort of thing Elyndor does. Some noble builds an estate somewhere. Big. Impressive. Full of marble and gold—which means absolutely hideous—and then hopes enough ordinary people will build houses nearby before the mud from the roads reaches the estate.

These nobles seemed to be particularly fancy nobles, because the estate was particularly ugly. Gilded doors and windows. Crystal statues on the roof. Shard lamps lighting the entire road up to the estate. There wasn’t a single crack that didn’t ooze extravagance.

After far too long a walk, we reached the gate, and a woman dressed in expensive silk came running toward us.

So the shard lamps had eyes, too.

Charming.

“Oh, my prince! You came all this way?” the woman cried, grabbing Lucryss by the hands.

Tears streamed down her cheeks.

Lucryss went deathly pale. His eyes widened. He tore his hands away and turned around. He was already halfway down the hill again, and I was beginning to worry he might trip and simply roll all the way back down.

The noblewoman stood there, utterly bewildered, staring at us.

We weren’t entirely sure what was going on either, so we merely shrugged.

“Um… I suppose I’ll go see what’s wrong?” Caelen asked the group.

“Go ahead. You’re his bodyguard.”

Naira beat him to it, though, and was already running past him.

That triggered a collective We’re all going to run around like a bunch of wild chickens until we reach Lucryss impulse in the rest of us.

Including the noblewoman.

Group pressure is fascinating.

Or was it curiosity?

I always mix the two up.

“Lucryss!!!!” Naira called, stumbling into her brother’s arms. “What’s wrong? Why did you run away?”

Lucryss helped Naira back onto her feet and threw the noblewoman a growling look.

That was the first time I understood why humans called his kind demons.

My trousers were wet, at any rate.

The noblewoman also recoiled in fear.

“Because I don’t give a damn what her problem is. I want nothing to do with her or her entire family.”

Caelen looked back and forth between his best friend and the noblewoman. After a moment, something seemed to click.

“Wait. Is that…?”

Lucryss nodded, and I am convinced he would have gone for the noblewoman if Naira hadn’t been standing beside him.

“Quick question. What’s the noblewoman’s name, anyway? If I’m writing this down later, I don’t want to keep calling her the noblewoman. Nobody’s going to read that.”

Priorities matter.

“Just call her that noble bitch. It suits her.”

All right.

We’ll call her Miss Misty.

“But, Your Majesty. My house is being overrun by monsters. We need your help. I thought you had come specifically to save me and my beloved daughter. I don’t understand.”

Miss Misty raised her hands pleadingly toward Lucryss and took a step closer.

He answered with bared teeth and a burst of dark magic.

Miss Misty fell onto her backside and stared up at Lucryss, eyes wide with terror.

Lucryss had pulled away from Naira and was now walking toward the frightened woman, a cloud of dark magic gathering around his hand. He knelt in front of her, magic still curling through his fingers, and looked down at her.

“Why should I do that? I made sure you were banished from Thalorien. I made sure you lost everything. And if my father hadn’t intervened, you would have ended up on a ship and sunk somewhere in the Valoryn Sea. Why would I save you from anything now?”

Miss Misty stammered, trying to say something, but Miriana interrupted her.

She placed a hand on Lucryss’s shoulder, stopped his magic, and gently but firmly guided him back toward Caelen.

Caelen nodded and turned Lucryss around so he had no choice but to look him in the face.

It didn’t take long for all the tension to leave Lucryss’s body. He collapsed.

Caelen caught him before he hit the ground.

Lucryss buried his face in Caelen’s shoulder, tears running down his face and soaking into Caelen’s coat.

Nobody had expected an outburst like that.

Our entire group stood in shock.

It was so quiet you could hear the grass growing.

Or the monsters on the estate.

I’ve forgotten which.

Naira was the first to recover. She whispered Lucryss’s name softly.

He pulled himself free of Caelen’s embrace and looked around at us, completely broken.

“Help her if you can. But I can’t. I’ll go back to the camp and wait for you.”

Miriana started to say something, but Naira raised an arm and silenced her.

“Listen. I have absolutely no interest in helping someone who hurt you. Just tell me what happened.”

Once again, the world went completely silent, as though time itself had stopped.

“Wait… what? But I thought…” Seralya said what we were all thinking. “We thought this was your hero’s journey?”

“Hero’s journey? Guys. I’m an adventurer. Not a hero. I have no interest in being a hero or saving anyone. It just happens sometimes. By accident.”

Naira shrugged.

“I only do this whole fucking thing because otherwise I’ll die. The magic mark? That do what it wants or you die thing. From the beginning. You remember, right? If it weren’t for that, I’d probably be somewhere looking for treasure or something.”

Lucryss sighed and began to tell us what had happened.

“A few months ago, after the great ball, I woke up in the middle of the night because someone was standing beside my bed who had no business being there. At first, I thought it was Damiel.

But it wasn’t.”

Lucryss swallowed.

“It was a naked woman. Completely naked. With a lustful look in her eyes.”

His voice broke.

“Everything inside me tightened. I couldn’t breathe. I panicked and ran to the bathroom to throw up.”

The memories were clearly affecting him. His face went pale and he began to shake.

Caelen had to steady him.

“Wait. Bathroom? Since when do we have bathrooms? I always just had a chamber pot.”

Naira looked at Lucryss.

“Are you insane? You know my old room is yours now, right? I put the chamber pot in that little cupboard. It’s too small for anything else. The chamber pot and the tub are in there now.”

Color returned to Lucryss’s face.

Naira’s little maneuver had done its job.

“Why did the woman scare you so much? You constantly have noble sons and daughters chasing after you. Was it because you prefer the company of men? Do women disgust you?”

Seralya brought the conversation back to the subject at hand.

“What? No! I mean, I prefer men—very clearly—but women don’t disgust me. And nobles chase after me, too. But not naked. And not in the middle of the night in my chambers. How would you react?”

“That depends on how good she looks. Either I invite her into my bed or throw her out the window.”

Seralya laughed at the thought.

Lucryss rolled his eyes, and Caelen immediately came to his defense.

“You’re forgetting that this happened in the palace. With a large number of guards.”

“Exactly!” Lucryss interrupted, visibly grateful.

“There was a naked woman standing in front of me who had apparently managed to defeat our entire guard without wearing a single thing. At least that’s what I thought at the time. She really had nothing.”

“As it turned out, she had put most of the guards to sleep with magic and seduced my predecessor to get to Lucryss,” Caelen continued. “Damiel threw a ball of light out the window, and I was able to arrest the lunatic. That’s how I became Commander and Lucryss’s bodyguard. I have to admit, though, that all I know is that the lunatic told us during interrogation that her mother had put her up to it. I never followed up on it.”

“The lunatic in question was Lady Ludmilla. Miss Misty’s daughter.”

Lucryss chose a considerably less polite name for Miss Misty.

I’ll censor that.

Even I think it’s a bit much.

“Lucryss. I know you didn’t want to hear this. But what you’re describing happens all the time. Everywhere in Elyndor.”

Seralya looked at Lucryss sympathetically.

“You’re powerful. Strong. You can defend yourself. You even have guards protecting you. When they’re not sleeping or having sex, at least.”

Lucryss looked genuinely horrified at Seralya.

I think that was the moment he truly realized there was no protection against this sort of crime in Elyndor.

“Caelen. Remind me that we absolutely must deal with this when we return to the palace. From now on, such atrocities will be punishable by decapitation. I need to send Father and Mother a letter today.”

“Understood.”

Caelen saluted Lucryss.

It was clear that things were about to change in Elyndor.

And quite a few nobles weren’t going to like it.

That day, in that very moment, the first stone was set rolling—the one that would eventually bring several noble houses to ruin and make room for new ones to rise.

“Did Ludmilla do it willingly? I mean, walking through the palace naked and sleeping with your former bodyguard, or was she a victim of her mother?” Naira asked. “A lot of good people do bad things because they follow bad orders.”

“According to my information, her mother only told her what to do. Not how.”

Miriana explained it, naturally knowing more than the rest of us.

She really does have her nose in everything.

I’m a little jealous, honestly.

“Then I think we’re done here.”

Naira turned toward the river, away from the estate.

Miss Misty sank to her knees and began pleading for help.

We simply walked away.

We’re just not heroes.

“Naira,” Caelen began, but Naira interrupted him immediately.

“I’m an adventurer, Caelen. And like my mentor always said: I don’t mind risking my ass. Not really. I’ve almost lost it a few times already. But I only do that for people who deserve it. And this family doesn’t.”

Seralya, Naira’s mentor, laughed and threw an arm around Naira’s shoulders.

“Good girl.”

We all laughed, and Caelen added:

“I’m glad you still have your ass. It would be a shame to lose it.”

“Yeah, right?”

Naira laughed.

And so our little group left the noble bitch behind with the monsters.

But don’t worry.

I’m sure Miriana took care of it and made certain there was no danger to Elyndor or innocent people.

I hope.

Kuro, at least, had stopped being a fluffy little piglet.

And that was probably the safest sign that we’d defeated the monsters in this part of the story.

But what do I know…

“Tarric. I’ll take the afterword.”

Miriana interrupted me.

“It is absolutely unacceptable not to know what happened to the estate. We can’t do that to your readers.”

I can only agree.

“Of course my spies took care of the estate. We put Ludmilla in the brothel. As it turned out, that whole seduction scheme really had been her mother’s idea after all.”

I raised an eyebrow.

“And then you put her in a brothel? Isn’t that a little cruel?”

“What? As a healer, Tarric. Not as a prostitute. I’m not a monster.”

She laughed and winked at me before continuing.

“Usually.”

“What happened to Miss Misty, I don’t know. When my spies arrived, the estate was abandoned. Only Ludmilla was still there. She claimed a Grimvor wolf had eaten her.”

“But they’re vegetarians.”

“I know, Tarric. I assume that’s why the Feymorra ate her. Or carried her off or something.”

Miriana shrugged.

“The estate stands on a water source that was heavily polluted during construction. I spoke with the Feymorra elder. We’re helping them clean and protect the spring, and in return, we’re allowed to use the estate as a storage site and archive. It strengthens our position in the area.”

“That sounds good. Any final words?”

Miriana looked at me for a moment.

“Actions have consequences.”

She paused.

“And… what am I doing here? Just behave yourselves or you’ll be eaten by monsters. Or me. If we run out of cake.”

“Miriana…”

“I know, Tarric.”

She sighed deeply.

“And don’t forget: Tarric is far too old for this shit and doesn’t know a damn thing about anything.”