51. The Broken Hero

Jorge drifted in a pleasant, cool blackness.

Time simply washed over him. There was no point in holding onto any of it.

He was finished. He knew that. And yet, it seemed more of a comfort than a defeat. Shepherded towards the halls of death, carried upon an infinite, dark river.

There was no pain. No sadness. No guilt.

His work was done.

It was over.

He became aware of a sound—an annoying buzz at the edge of his perception. Awareness itself was a painful thing. He didn’t want it. And yet, the more he tried to submerge himself in the nothingness that surrounded him, the more insistent the buzz became.

Eventually, the sound separated into something else—became more distinct.

A voice. It called out to him. He couldn’t make out the words, but he knew who it was.

Jorge despised the voice for upsetting his perfect slumber. He did his best to ignore it.

A hard thud rattled his mental walls, then another, then another.

The black partition around him shuddered and began to unravel.

No… Jorge thought. Let me stay.

With a cough and a splutter, he was pulled out of sweet oblivion, thrown back into his shattered body.

There was pain. So much pain.

Every breath burned his lungs. Every tiny movement caused an avalanche of agony that spread throughout the entire limb affected. His ruined socket sent a thumping throughout his whole head like someone tapping his skull with a hammer. He kept his working eye screwed firmly shut, yet the light still offended him.

“Jorge,” the voice whispered, close.

The Doctor.

Jorge tried to make words but found his throat dry and raw. He cleared it, winced with pain. The rim of an earthenware mug was placed against his lips, and he drank greedily.

The water tasted bitter, but he drained the whole cup anyway.

“Why… did you bring me… back?” he croaked.

“I did little,” Good Doctor said. “They’re the ones who did the saving.”

Jorge forced his eye to open a crack. It took him a long, jarring moment to gather his bearings. He was in the main hall, for some reason, placed on one of the long tables with several blankets under him as a rudimentary mattress.

Good Doctor sat by his side. Kiren and Lace stood next to her. The former peered at him with a vague look of disgust, the latter with an expression of unchecked pity.

“You shouldn’t have,” Jorge said.

“You’re our master,” Lace said. “We had to.”

“No, really. You shouldn’t have. Did you ever think that maybe I wanted to die there? And who gave you the fucking right to trample into my home?”

Jorge worked himself into a coughing fit that wracked his body with agony. He gritted his teeth, bit his cheek until it drew blood.

“But…” Lace said.

“No!” Jorge croaked. “You don’t decide my fate. I finally took the plunge. I was going to meet her, and… you pulled me right back. You just couldn’t help yourselves, could you?”

“The city has fallen,” Kiren said suddenly. “Evangel finally made his move. Poisoned people, sent Beasts by the thousands to kill the rest and burn their homes. Including a fair number of your colleagues, I might add.”

Jorge struggled to comprehend what the lad was trying to convey. He stared at him.“You winding me up?”

“He’s telling the truth,” Good Doctor said. “They made it through the walls.” She motioned at the room. “Hence the choice of locale.”

Jorge closed his eye and sucked in a shuddering breath.

Is there no end to this?

Is there no rest?

“How long?” Jorge asked.

“What?”

“How long until they break into the Guild Hall?”

“We’ve repelled them, for now. The Purifiers came to our aid.”

Jorge nodded. “I see. Good. Who did we lose?”

“Wordsmith. Titaness. Torchbearer. About a dozen others confirmed. A few went missing throughout the city when the attacks began.”

“What about Steelfeather?”

“He…” Good Doctor shook her head and looked away. “He took a bad hit. Evangel’s evolved, aided by foul sorcery. I’ve heard reports say that he was still alive when the spawnlings dragged him away, but it’s difficult to know the truth of it.”

“If the Beasts took him, he’s dead,” Jorge said grimly. “Which means there are no A-Ranks left to protect the Lodge. How many B-Ranks do we have?”

“Four. Goldcoin’s in fit condition. The rest are, uh… rough.”

“Well, as long as we have the Purifiers, we might be able to make a continued defense.”

“The Purifiers are leaving,” Lace said. “They’re going after Evangel. According to them, he’s constructing some sort of ritual that needs to be stopped.”

Jorge opened his eye and fixed it upon his apprentice. “Then we’re fucked.”

He made to swing his legs over the side of the table. They were stiff with the lancing pain that coursed through them, as well as the braces made to keep them in place.

He swung over the side, and would have fallen if Kiren hadn’t caught him and propped him back up.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Kiren asked.

“Need to join the defense effort,” Jorge said.

“No you’re not,” Good Doctor said. “Until a few minutes ago, your very survival was in question. You need to rest.”

“All due respect, I’ll do what the fuck I like.”

Good Doctor sighed. She reached down next to her chair and pulled out a brown bottle. She poured a bit of foggy liquid into a mug and put it to his lips. “There. Drink that. It’ll help you settle down.”

“No thanks.”

“You have to.”

“I’ll drink it if you all leave me alone.”

Good Doctor rolled her eyes. “Fine. I’ve got other, far less stubborn patients to tend to anyway.”

Jorge allowed her to pour the liquid into his mouth, sloshed it around. It tasted like bitter leaves.

Lace looked like she wanted to say something, but Kiren dragged her away. Good Doctor lingered for a moment, but eventually, she left too.

As soon as her back was turned, Jorge spat the foul-tasting sedative off to the side.

*****

“The fucking gall of this man,” Kiren said. “All the trouble we went through to keep him alive, and he can’t even squeeze out a ‘Thank you’.”

“If you’re waiting on him to show gratitude, you’ll be waiting a long time,” Lace muttered.

Her mind was on other things. There was something significant about what Magge Miller had said. She just couldn’t quite put it together.

They went back into the courtyard, where the cleanup effort was going smoothly. Heroes manned the walls. Spawnlings had been thrown into large piles, while dead Heroes and apprentices had been covered in white cloth and carried inside the Guild Hall for burial after this nightmare ended. If it ended.

A group of people was trying to move Titaness from the spot where she had fallen, gargantuan body frayed by Evangel’s dark magic. They had no luck and were forced to leave her where she lay to move on to more pressing matters.

Kiren turned his steps towards the small group of apprentices, resting on the ground near the Guild Hall. Tommyn was bandaging Haden’s wounded arms, while Veera lay on her back and stared into the blood-soaked sky.

Gantho wasn’t there.

His absence brought a hard lump to Lace’s throat.

Gantho’s dreams would never be realized. He was just dead. No heroic send-off.

Lace stopped, and Kiren looked back at her.

“Could I have a moment?” she asked. “Alone. I just need some air.”

Kiren hesitated for a moment like he was about to offer to help. He simply shrugged, however, and moved on to the others, leaving her to her own devices.

Lace kept pacing the courtyard and tried not to think about all the people who had been snatched away in just one night. She tried especially hard not to think about who might be next.

Instead, she focused on the riddle Magge Miller had presented her with.

Names, names, names. It’s important, somehow, but what did he mean?

Should I give my Sprite a name? Would that help save her? Maybe having that connection would… consolidate her.

She spent a minute or two thinking of a suitable name.

“What about… Poppy?” she spoke into the air as she wandered. “You’re nice and bright, so…”

There was no response.

Lace felt stupid for not understanding the essence of what the Purifier had been telling her.

She tried a few other names, but there was no stirring from the creature. She could still feel her fractured presence, but it was dormant, unresponsive.

Magge’s Sprite recognized my name. Amar. If my father had a Sprite, too, then maybe…

Maybe mine already has a name.

Lace hurried back into the Guild Hall. The main hall was a mess of people moving to and fro, apprentices carrying the dead and helping Frog-Face and Good Doctor tend to the wounded, as well as putting supplies together.

She eventually found her mother among the crowds, sipping on a mug of hot, spiced wine with a blanket over her shoulders. She was shivering despite the gentle warmth of the room.

“Hey, Mom,” Lace said. She slipped onto the bench next to her. “How are you holding up?”

“I could be much worse, all things considered,” Mom said. “You’re alive, and that’s a blessing. It’s just been a hard night, that’s all. I can’t help but worry that…” She looked down.

Lace nodded.

She understood.

That I’ll go the same way as Dad.

“Listen, Mom,” she said. “I need to ask you something. About Dad. It might sound weird, but hear me out.”

“Sure, sweetie,” Mom said with a tired smile. “Anything you need.”

“Did Dad have a… friend? An invisible friend. One he would talk to when there was no one else around.”

Mom stared at her for a long moment. “Uh…”

“I know how it sounds! It’s important, though.”

Mom frowned slightly, and her eyes became unfocused, far away in thought. “Well, now that you mention it, he did have an imaginary friend of sorts. He would speak to it, sometimes, when he thought I was out of earshot.”

“Did he ever mention the name of this friend?”

“Um, let me think. It was… Faith, I believe. At first, I thought he was seeing another woman. As I came to discover, however, it was just one of Helmer’s quirks. He had many of those, you know. Your father was an… odd man.”

Mom stared longingly into the distance and wrapped herself a bit tighter in the blanket.

Faith.

Lace stood and gave her mother a quick peck on the forehead. “Thank you! This is exactly what I needed!”

“I can’t say I know what use that might be to you, but I’m happy to help.”

Lace crossed the main hall towards the front doors, which were being reinforced under Squiddy’s watchful eye.

As she walked, she tried the name on her tongue.

“Faith.”

Something shifted. She felt a breath of wind on her neck, one which smelled sour and staid. Fractured light, like that reflected off a shattered mirror, coalesced into a half-formed entity on her shoulder, milky white but streaked with black veins that seemed to constrict the little creature like ropes being pulled taut.

The Sprite clung to Lace. Wings sprouted from her back, crumbling and reforming continually.

She was clearly in pain.

“I think I might know just the thing to help you,” Lace said.

She went out into the courtyard and turned her steps towards the wall. She laid a protective hand over the Sprite.

Reaching the steps leading to the battlements, she hoped to find some dripping remnant of the holy water Magge Miller had employed to dispatch the Beasts with such efficiency. Unfortunately, it seemed to have already run off, leaving only residual dampness.

On one of the steps, however, Lace found a small, stoppered bottle with a note tied with string to its body. She withdrew the note and scanned over it.

To the young Amar, for when you figure it out, it read.

“My constituents!” Bloodhound called, taking her attention. He stood atop a pile of spawnlings that had not yet been set to burn. “The Purifiers have left to pursue Evangel. They believe that, if they are successful in killing him, his horde will scatter in confusion, making it a manageable task for the Heroes’ Guild to dispatch the rest.

“Until then, we need to stand ready. We need to beat back the monsters at our gates. Already, they converge once more, sensing the absence of our holy protection.

“Go now! Redouble your efforts, so that we may live to see the sunrise!”

They definitely didn’t waste any time, Lace thought as she busied herself with her task.

She used her teeth to uncork the bottle she had been gifted by the Purifier and sniffed its contents.

It didn’t smell like anything.

She upended the bottle and poured bright, sparkling water into her palm. Lace rubbed her fingers together and felt nothing apart from a faint hum of energy.

Holy water. It has to be.

Perfect.

Lace took the little Sprite off her shoulder and placed it on one of the steps. She poured a steady stream of holy water over the creature while murmuring a prayer to the Creator.

The black veins that marred the Sprite’s body washed away gradually like heavy sediment. Foul became clean. Her body took to the water and began to mend. The many fragments she had been scattered into melted back into one another, and she formed a complete being.

Lace poured until the bottle was empty, then placed it aside. She leaned in closer to the Sprite, which was now wreathed in a dress of trailing, white whimsy, along with a mane of white, cascading hair. She almost thought she could see a pair of eyes on the Sprite’s blank face.

“Faith?” Lace asked. “Is that your name?”

The Sprite put hands on hips and tilted her head. “You finally figured it out, huh? Yeah, that’s my true-name. Don’t pass it around, you hear?”

Lace was taken aback. Faith’s tone was jovial, almost playful. She was changed from how she had been before. Before, her messages had always been short, cryptic, stoic. Now… She could hardly recognize this being as the one who had been traveling in her shadow.

“Do you feel better now?” Lace asked.

“Much,” Faith said with a happy twirl through the air. “Parasitic infection doesn’t suit me. Bad for the complexion.” She giggled.

“What’s a true-name?”

“A name with special importance to beings of a magical persuasion, like me, and like the unpleasant friends soon-to-be hammering on the walls.”

“And my father gave you yours?”

Faith frowned for a moment. “Yeah, I…” She screwed up her face, as if something pained her. “I think so. I can’t quite remember. I’ll have to get back to you on that.”

“You did know my father,” Lace said. “That’s the only explanation. Are you saying you don’t remember that at all?”

Faith clutched the sides of her grape-sized head. “No, I remember. I just can’t remember remember. The past is all so foggy.” She shook her head as if to clear it and flew a circle around Lace’s head. “But that’s what us Sprites are like. Transient beings. No point lingering on it.”

“I see. And hearing your true-name made things clearer for you, somehow?”

Faith nodded as she floated on a current of air. “I remember more now. I can feel it rushing back into me. It hurts, but it’s a good hurt.”

“Beasts have true-names as well, you said. What does it do to them?”

“Well, nothing interesting,” Faith said with a shrug. “Not for them, anyway. Beasts gain a true-name when they ascend from larvae into their adult form. It is part of what grants them their power, their autonomy, in this stage, but it is also a weakness they must keep hidden. Because if anyone knows their true-name, that grants the Right of Bargaining.”

“Which means?”

“Basically, they have to stop what they’re doing, whether that’s sweeping their nasty flesh house or cleaving you in half, in order to bargain. Now, a Beast can refuse any bargain you throw at them if they so choose, but it grants at least a moment’s weakness where their hands are tied. Who made that rule, I don’t know, but clearly someone with status above mine or theirs.”

“And Evangel was fool enough to let his slip,” Lace said.

“All his worst sides, actually.”

“Gorod, Nasaizh, and Khruj.” Saying the words burned her tongue.

“Yeah. Those butt nuts.”

Lace raised an eyebrow. “Did my dad teach you to speak like that?”

Faith hovered in a slow circle. “Hmm. No, I don’t think he liked the potty mouth. But hey, I’m my own Sprite. I say what I want.”

“The Purifiers don’t know these names,” Lace said. “Not all of them, at least.” She sighed. “If only they hadn’t left so soon.”

“The fate of the city will depend on their success,” Faith said, her tone becoming more somber. She paused for a moment. “Are you up for doing something reckless?”

“I think I might have liked you better when you were the strong, silent type,” Lace said with a sigh. “You sound like Kiren right now.”

“C’mon, it’ll be fun,” Faith insisted, fluttering like a weathervane gone wild. “Unless we die. That wouldn’t be so fun. Anyway, I think I have a way of catching up with the Purifiers! Are you on board, or what?”

Faith was already flying up the steps leading to the battlements.

Doesn’t seem like I have much choice, Lace thought, following hesitantly.

“Wait, you think?” Lace asked as she realized what the Sprite had said.

“I’m pretty sure!” Faith said. “My memories are still a little hazy, but it’ll come back to me. I’ll recall it as we go.”

Faith waited on one of the crenellations as Lace walked out onto the wall. Heroes had already manning it, watching for the spawnling horde that still hid out of sight in the cityscape beyond the Lodge.

Should I tell Kiren about this? Lace asked herself. No. He’ll be safer here. Besides, he’ll be needed for the defense. His Power will add a bit of extra longevity to the Guild’s forces.

“You ready to jump?” Faith asked. She drifted down through thin air beyond the wall, towards the blood-slick battlefield.

Lace swallowed.

Here we go again. Let’s hope I don’t regret this.