53. A Father's Memory

Lace entered into a small cellar that smelled of dank earth. Roots grew from the ceiling. Faith clenched her fists and puffed up her cheeks to amplify her light, barely managing to illuminate the walls.

“How did my dad get a hidey hole like this underneath some random shop?” Lace asked.

“His work made him many enemies,” Faith said. She hovered over Lace’s shoulder. “But it made him friends, too. One of them must have lent him this place.”

Most of the cellar was empty apart from some moldy bags. She rooted through them. They contained old produce, long since spoiled.

Lace began to think there was nothing of note in the cellar.

She spotted a wardrobe at the end of it, a sturdy piece of furniture made of smooth, oiled pine, which had lasted surprisingly well against long years of neglect.

“That’s it,” Faith breathed. “Your inheritance.”

Lace approached the wardrobe with slow steps. Now that she was so close, she found it hard to bridge the final distance.

When she reached it, she let her hands rest on the brass door knobs. She wasn’t sure what to expect beyond it.

“I appreciate that this is a delicate situation,” Faith said, “but we are in a bit of a rush. Maybe you could speed it up a bit?”

“Right,” Lace said. “Of course.”

She opened the wardrobe.

She was immediately hit with the soft scent of fabric, and something… different. A heavier, muskier smell she had almost forgotten.

Dad’s.

A suit awaited her within the wardrobe, arranged so that she got a good view of it. Full body, white and yellow, with a cape that was attached to the arms. A high, stiff collar dove into a plunging neckline. The sleeves were wrist-length, and the legs reached down to the ankles, with a wide belt separating the waist. A pair of supple leather boots stood on the bottom below the suit, somehow still well-preserved despite their apparent age.

It was Dad’s outfit, but different. It had been tailored to a woman.

A folded-up note had been stuck inside the belt. Lace took it and unfolded it.

Hey there, sweetpea, it read. I’m feeling kinda dumb writing this out, but in the event that you get to read this, a series of key events have converged.

Firstly, I am dead.

Secondly, you have become a Hero—despite my precautions.

Thirdly, Faith has found you.

I want you to know something, and this is important. I’m not angry with you. This isn’t the life I wanted for you—it’s dangerous, it’s thankless, and it can suck the soul out of you if you’re not careful. But if you’ve become a Hero despite the checks I put in place to prevent it, that means you’ve had to work twice as hard as anyone else.

No. I’m not angry.

If you read this, I’m proud of you.

Lace stopped reading to wipe tears with the back of her hand. Faith placed a small hand on her cheek, and Lace managed a shaky smile.

Catching Villains is hard work, huh? Not as easy as you’d think. I bet you could use an upgrade.

You’ll have to forgive me if some of the measurements are a bit off—I did my best to guess.

Take care of Faith and your mother.

Oh, and don’t let the job take over your life. You can’t save everyone. Be happy.

Go get ‘em, sweetpea.

That was the last of it.

Lace folded the note away to avoid getting tears on it.

“Thanks, Dad,” she whispered between sobs.

In some corner of her mind, her years of hard work seemed a little more justified.

*****

The Beasts were coming back.

Kiren and Haden stood side by side before the onrushing horde. Kiren wielded his greatsword, Haden a hand-and-a-half sword with a round shield.

They were surrounded by score other Heroes and apprentices, including Counter and Goldcoin.

It was their job to hold the gates for as long as it took the Purifiers to finish theirs.

Lace had disappeared somewhere. People said they had seen her leap over the wall just minutes before.

Whatever she was planning, there was no time to go after her.

He simply had to assume that she would make it out alright.

Instead, he translated his worry into rage.

Debris had been piled up to block the entrance, but it wouldn’t take the spawnlings long to dismantle it if left to their devices.

Titaness’s corpse still lay inside the gate, forcing the Heroes to move around her when arranging their positions.

Peering through the gaps in the debris, Kiren saw that the spawnlings were getting close. For as many as they had killed, it seemed that untold hundreds remained. He couldn’t say the same for the Guild. They had barely seventy fighters left standing, and many of them had already been wounded in the previous engagement.

“Whoever kills the least owes the other a round,” Haden said. He grinned as he looked over at Kiren, but his face was stiff, pale. The man was terrified. “Sound good?”

“Sounds good,” Kiren said with a nod. “I could use a drink after this. More than one, I reckon.”

Their noises were growing louder. Despite himself, his stomach twisted in a hard knot. He couldn’t stand those sounds. Screaming. Animal enough to be frightening, human enough to chill the blood. Pain, hunger, rage, all rolled into one.

The first of them smashed against the improvised barricade.

An apprentice stuck it through with a sword, and it fell back over the side.

More of them clawed against the barricade.

Kiren stuck his blade through a gap and punctured soft flesh. A spawnling cried, and Kiren gritted his teeth as he put his foot against the wood and pulled the sword back out.

Three of them got onto the top of the barricade and leapt down at Kiren. A screen of blue energy saw them bounce back over the top.

“Eyes on a swivel, boys!” Counter called. “Don’t let them overwhelm you!”

Haden slashed at the next three spawnlings brave enough to climb the barricade. He got them on the ground and smashed them beneath his boot until they were no longer moving.

Archers and ranged Power users fired from the walls to thin out the ranks, but more and more of the spawnlings were piling up around the gate.

Kiren cut down one, two, three. There were too many of them to worry about finding their hearts. Dismembering them so that they couldn’t move would have to be good enough.

Something large bounded over the barricade, clearing it easily, and landed among the group of defenders.

It was a misshapen, human-like creature with an additional arm and several faces stretched over its body, several times larger than any spawnling. Its withered, ashen skin sparked with dark sorcery. It lashed out at the first apprentice who tried to cut it down with an arm that ended in a sharp, bony protrusion. The lad fell, throat cut.

Kiren clapped Haden on the shoulder. “Hold my spot!” he called. “I’ll take care of that thing!”

Haden nodded and bashed a spawnling aside with his shield so that Counter could finish it off with a clean stab through the heart.

Kiren made his way back through the confusion and found the strange humanoid dueling with Goldcoin on top of Titaness’s corpse. He twirled atop one of her mountainous pectorals, brushing aside violent strokes from the humanoid’s bone scythe using the flat of his rapier. His gold teeth glinted in a wild grimace. He flicked a pair of coins which struck two of the humanoid’s eyes, putting it off balance long enough for him to run it through.

Violent sparks rushed up the length of Goldcoin’s sword. He was forced to let it go and leap back. He shook his hand and muttered under his breath as his sleeve smoked.

Kiren leapt onto one of Titaness’s legs and ran up to her torso. He settled into a firm stance on the oddly pliable footing and swung horizontally at the humanoid, putting his legs and back into the swing.

His blade cut deep into the creature’s shoulder, nearly severing one of its clawed arms. He managed to retract it before whatever black magic was powering the Beast could work its way up the metal and wound up for another swing.

The humanoid spun around with a chorus of howls escaping its many mouths.

“Hey, kid!” Goldcoin called. “Watch out!”

Kiren let the blade fall. Two hands caught it and wrenched the greatsword from his hands with surprising strength. The third lashed out quick as a snake’s jaws, driving the bone scythe deep into one side of his stomach and out the other.

Kiren gasped. There was half a second of anticipation where his body went stiff and wouldn’t move, then the pain hit.

It coursed through him like a red-hot iron. The pain spread from his gut all the way up to his lungs and down to his crotch.

The humanoid let the greatsword fall to the side and raised its two free hands, keeping Kiren on a spit.

Goldcoin tried to make his way over, but a sudden rumble in the ground sent him stumbling.

Not the ground, Kiren realized.

The humanoid raised its clawed hands to finish him.

It was Titaness.

The gargantuan woman sat up in all haste with a deep gasp, eyes thrown wide. Kiren was thrown clear, the blade sliding out of his body, and he hit the stone below with a hard thud.

He gasped at the pain and rolled up in a tight coil to protect his midsection as he fought for breath. His body was slowly knitting itself back up, but he was still bleeding profusely from both ends of his torso.

Titaness sat up straight and regarded the humanoid between her legs with some measure of confusion. When it tried to stand up, however, she simply balled up her fist and smacked it into the ground with the sound of cracking bones and squelching fluids. A brief crackle of lightning seared the skin of her hand, then nothing.

Goldcoin stood, having been thrown some distance, and grinned as he dusted off his expensive tunic. “Titaness returns! Damn it, woman, we had all counted you dead!”

Titaness gave a tired smile as she worked her way first to one knee, then onto her feet. She looked like she’d been to Svarta and back, half of her skin taken off by Evangel’s dark magic. In places, the tissue was exposed all the way down to the straining muscle fibers.

“A Trodvis doesn’t die so easily,” she grunted.

The defenders made way for her as she lumbered up to the ruined gate. The spawnlings had almost taken it over, crawling all over the bits of wood they had thrown up for a barricade. With a single swing of her enlarged hand, she swatted five of them against the stone wall of the gatehouse.

The defenders surged in around her with a round of cheers. Titaness and Haden shared a brief look, and the former nodded her approval.

*****

Lace entered out from the dank cellar. She adjusted the bust of her new outfit.

All things considered, it fit her well, tight around her torso and legs with the roomy, yellow cape trailing behind. The gale-staff was attached to a loop on her belt, along with a flat, round wooden object which she had also found in the wardrobe.

Lace knew what her Dad had been able to do with this type of outfit.

“Are you sure I’m ready for this?” Lace asked.

Faith flew up beside her and rubbed her smooth chin with a thumb and forefinger. “Hmm. No, probably not. But I reckon we don’t have much choice.”

Lace swallowed. “Thanks for the reassurance.”

“No problem!” Faith chirped cheerily.

“Okay… Here we go, then. I have no idea where we’re going, but I suppose we’ll figure that out along the way. It’s not like the Purifiers can be that hard to find.”

“You’re stalling.”

Lace breathed out. “Okay, okay. No problem. Just gotta…” She raised her arms out to the sides, letting the cape attached to her wrists and back catch the light breeze.

“Throw everything you’ve got into it,” Faith explained. “Get some height, then stabilize. From there, you own the skies. Easy as anything.”

“Right. Easy as anything.”

Lace took a moment to steel herself, then put her arms forwards, palms flat against each other. She pulled them back to her chest, drawing a strong wind. Finally, she put her arms out.

The wind caught her cape like a sail and pulled her sharply. Her feet lifted off the ground, and she was taken backward into the air.

The cobblestone street shrank beneath her as she drifted higher and higher. She was keenly aware of her weight, but the cape held. Faith zipped up to join her.

“I’m flying!” Lace called, her words almost drowned out by the keening wind. “Creator’s breath, I’m really flying!”

“Okay, now stabilize,” Faith said.

Lace tweaked the direction of the wind to put her perpendicular with the ground. She must have overshot somewhere, because suddenly she was tugged forward and her cape flipped over her face, obscuring her vision beneath a field of yellow.

“Uh oh,” Lace said. “Uh oh.”

She wasn’t flying anymore.

She was falling.

Lace’s stomach dropped as the earth’s pull dragged her downward, flipping end over end.

She screamed.