Chapter 11
Did this guy really think that barging into my house at the crack of dawn would get him whatever he wanted? I didn’t even need to ask myself that because the look on his face was answer enough. He probably thought that I would be too exhausted from the night before to argue whatever nonsense came spewing out of his mouth.
Or he was just a prick.
“Look, dude, I don’t know what you expected,” I said as I leaned against the doorframe. “The deal was that you cleared out the mine, and then you would get the girl. Well, I did all that before you and your army got here, so I’m the one who gets the prize. I can’t make it simpler than that.”
“That was not the deal,” Lucian growled and took a step into my personal bubble. “There was no caveat that some false god could come in and do all the work for me. Elrin and my father discussed this at length, and it was decided that Elissa would be my bride!”
“Woooooow, you really sound like a whiny little bitch right now,” I said.
The Loser Lord’s face turned even redder, and he managed some kind of garbled speech that was harder to understand than the goblin language.
I smirked as an idea popped into my head.
“Male waste time,” I mocked in the goblin tongue. “This male keep female. This male destroy fighters, destroy all!”
The gaped expression on Lucian’s face made all of the respawns to learn the goblin language totally worth it. He recovered quickly enough, and instead of questioning or praising my amazing new skill, the Loser Lord just seemed to get angrier.
“No wonder you were able to get rid of the goblins,” he snarled. “You’re practically one yourself!”
“I get why you would think that, but you’re wrong.” I shrugged and looked down at my fingernails. They could really use a trim. Did they have nail clippers in this world? Maybe a file would do. “Now if there’s nothing else you want to whine about, I really would like to get back to bed.”
“Whine!” Lucian must really be used to people bending over backwards to give him his every wish. “You will annul your marriage to my bride and give her to me!”
“Gentlemen, please, you’ll wake the entire town!” Elrin came jogging up the street to my doorstep and gestured for us to quiet down. “Why don’t we take this conversation to my house, and we can continue the discussion behind closed doors.”
“There is nothing to discuss!” shouted Lucian. “Your daughter was to marry me, not this so-called God of Time!”
“He is not ‘so-called,’ Lucian,” Elrin said in a calm tone. “Sebastian is the real thing. Everyone in town has seen him in action, and there is nobody in the world quite like him.”
The brown-haired duke’s son gave me a wary glance. He clearly didn’t believe that I was anything special, and I wondered if he was going to challenge me to a duel over the lady’s hand. It wouldn’t be much of a fight since I already had Elissa’s hand, but I didn’t mind playing cat-and-mouse with the Loser Lord.
“Elrin, I want this explained,” Lucian finally demanded.
“Don’t you ever say ‘please?’” I chimed in. I earned a glare from the duke’s son that might have had me shaking in my boots if I was actually wearing boots.
“You’ll come along, too, charlatan,” Lucian added. “I want the entire story from all sides so that we can figure out where the misunderstanding lies.”
He almost sounded reasonable, but I had a feeling he was just being civil for the moment. He didn’t seem like the type to let something get snatched away from him without his say so.
Which kind of defeated the purpose of it being snatched, but whatever.
“My new wife is sleeping all comfy in bed,” I said as I shrugged my shoulders. “I’m just going to go back there. I don’t really care what length of rod Prince Toad has shoved up his ass.”
“Great One,” Elrin cleared his throat. “Lucian’s father… well. He--”
“My family owns this town and the mines!” the other man hissed.
“Ahhh,” I sighed, “so this is a bit of a political thing? I can’t just kill him right now and be done with it?”
“No, Great One,” Elrin sighed.
“I am a trained swordsman!” the twerp groaned as he reached for his sword, “and I--”
“If you pull out that blade I will skin you alive and then roast your balls while you are still living,” I stated.
The prince froze, and I could almost hear his teeth grind together as he let his fingers off his blade.
“You… We need to have this discussion,” he finally graveled.
I looked at Elrin, and when the man gave me a nod, I sighed, raised my finger so they knew to wait a moment, and ducked back inside to grab some more clothes. I retreated back to the bedroom and slipped the loose undershirt back over my head. I didn’t bother with the doublet since I didn’t want to look super fancy for the annoying conversation we were about to have, but I shoved my feet into the nice boots from the wedding. They were surprisingly comfortable, and once they were laced up they fit so snugly that I could have run at top speed and not worried about them falling off.
Elissa stirred as I sat on the bed to lace up the boots, and she gave me a lazy smile. “Good morning, Bash.”
“Good morning, wife,” I replied.
“Why are you up so early?” She reached out and tugged at my shirt to entice me back into the bed. “Nobody should be expecting you to be up and walking around for several hours.”
“Yeah, well, your former fiancé is throwing a little bitch temper tantrum,” I explained as I started lacing up the other boot. “He’s demanding that we annul our marriage so he can have you as per the original agreement.”
I half expected Elissa to give me a worried or terrified look. The Duke of Bullard sounded like a pretty powerful guy if he could get a marriage agreement out of Elrin, and his son had more to offer Elissa than I did, at least where her father was concerned.
“Does he really think Father will order our marriage to be broken?” Elissa laughed. “You are the God of Time, Sebastian. He fears your power far more than the Duke of Bullard.”
“Well, that’s good,” I growled playfully as I leaned closer to her. “Because I don’t like returning gifts that have been given to me.”
Elissa’s green eyes sparkled with desire, and when she pulled me in for a heated kiss, I nearly lost the resolve to go and chat with her father and former fiancé. It would have been so much easier and much more pleasurable to fall back into bed and enjoy her company.
But I had left the door open when I came back inside to get my clothes, so I knew it wouldn’t be long before the Loser Lord came stomping in here to ruin the fun.
“I would love to climb back into bed, my dear, but I have to go be a grown-up for a while,” I said to her as I pulled away from the kiss, and the pout she gave me weakened my resolve further, but I pushed through it. “I will spend tonight making it up to you, alright?”
“It’s a date,” she purred and planted another quick kiss to my lips.
The redheaded vixen sprawled herself out on the bed as I made my way out of the room. She knew she was in the strongest form of temptation, especially when she gave me a seductive smile. Several deep breaths did nothing to break through the fog in my head, but I somehow managed to turn my back and leave the room.
The short walk to Elrin’s house was filled only with the sound of our footsteps. Lucian clearly wanted to save the discussion for when we were indoors, and Elrin was probably trying to act as the mediator between us, so he didn’t want to seem too chummy with me. It gave me plenty of time to fantasize about the naked woman lying in my bed and all the delightful things I would do to her later.
Elrin brought us to a sitting room with plush red chairs. His offer of breakfast went ignored by Lucian, but I was happy to be treated to a bowl of fresh fruits and berries.
Then I made a save point before the conversation started, just in case things took a wrong turn into Crazy Town.
“Get on with it, Elrin,” Lucian growled as he threw himself against the back of his chair. He looked like a child that was being forced to interact with family members he didn’t know or like. He probably thought this whole thing would culminate in Elrin telling me I had to give Elissa up.
“Sebastian arrived here a few days ago,” Elrin began. “We were under siege by a horde of kobolds, and he just came out of nowhere and annihilated them all.”
“Kobolds are weak,” Lucian scoffed. “I would have done the same thing.”
“Against a horde of twenty, my lord?” Elrin questioned. His tone was curious instead of confrontational, but the duke’s son still shot him a glare. “Sebastian knew where the attacks were going to come from. I cannot explain it to you without it sounding like a tall tale.”
Elrin paused to give Lucian a chance to add some comment, but the brown-haired man-child just waved his hand for the town leader to continue. “When Sebastian offered to help the town, I was desperate. We can do nothing without our mine, as you know, and the horde of kobolds was just too close to home.”
“You knew I would be arriving shortly,” Lucian snorted. “You could have waited another day or two.”
“Or he could have had his mine under his control again for a day or two,” I countered with a shrug. “Just saying.”
Lucian glared at me. “He had an agreement with my father, and he should have honored it.”
“Show me the paper trail,” I argued.
“Paper trail?” the duke’s son echoed. “What does that even mean?”
“Gentlemen!” Elrin clapped his hands together before I could retort. “Let me finish the story in full before you start bickering again, please.”
Lucian crossed his arms and scowled at me. He seriously looked more and more like a child with every passing second.
“One of Sebastian’s terms was that if he succeeded, Elissa would be his bride,” Elrin told the duke’s son, and he raised his hand when the man-child opened his mouth to complain. “I will admit that I didn’t think Sebastian would be able to clear out the mine with only himself and the mercenary woman. I thought they would return, or be killed, like others I had sent. I even mentioned as much to him, but he was confident that he could take care of our problem.”
Lucian shifted in his chair and glared at me again, but kept his mouth shut. For once.
“I was pleasantly surprised when they returned just after midday with a chest full of copper coins and the lead goblin’s head,” Elrin laughed.
“I have brought you several chests of gold coins, Elrin,” Lucian growled. “Which is the agreed-upon price of your daughter’s hand. This man gives you your mine back, and that’s it? You would turn away the wealth I bring for… for some god?”
“Yes, I would,” Elrin stated. “If you knew what power he possesses, my lord, you would be down on your knees begging for his forgiveness. He really is a god walking amongst us mere mortals, and I am happy that my daughter is his wife.”
I was pretty sure Elrin thought I was going to fail at clearing out the mine, so his confidence in my power was a surprising change. When we first met, he seemed like a man backed into a corner. He had nothing to lose by accepting my offer, and by clearing out the mine with only two people, I had proven just how amazing I was.
Elissa was right when she said her father respected me and my power more than he feared the duke’s wrath.
Warmth filled my chest at the man’s praise, and I was glad to say he was my father-in-law, even if the term was strange to the people of this world.
“He used a trick,” Lucian said, and he was clearly unfazed by Elrin’s statement. “He can speak to goblins. Probably because he’s got goblin blood or something.”
“I’m a god, you idiot,” I growled. “I can do anything I set my mind to.”
“Clearly,” he snapped. “Otherwise we wouldn’t be in this situation right now!”
“Look, you whiny man-child,” I snapped right back. “Elrin probably shouldn’t have made that deal with me, but what’s done is done. It’s in the past, and you have no power to change it. Elissa is my bride, and I am not going to give her up to a loser like you!”
“Then I will raze this town to the ground and slaughter everyone,” Lucian threatened.
He really was throwing a temper tantrum just because I took something away before he could get to it.
“You are welcome to try,” Elrin chimed in, and the leader’s face had lost its calm expression and now wore a confident smirk. “Sebastian has vowed to protect this town, and he will destroy you and anyone else who tries to harm us. I have no doubt of that.”
The Loser Lord got himself all puffed up again, and if he had been wearing green I would have said he looked like a frog in a pot of boiling water. He was wearing mostly neutral colors, so he just looked like a whiny man-child.
“I have an army at my command!” Lucian shouted.
“The God of Time will annihilate you all,” Elrin said as he shrugged calmly.
The duke’s son shot to his feet and stood breathing like a raging bull about to charge. His gray eyes darted between me and Elrin, as if he wasn’t sure which of us was insulting him more. He decided it was me and stormed the short distance to my chair.
“You will live to regret this, God of Time,” he snarled as he brought his face a little too close to mine. “My father will hear of this betrayal, and he will send as many men as he needs in order to crush you beneath his thumb like the insignificant insect that you are.”
“Don’t strain yourself too much there, bud,” I said as I leaned away from him. “That sounded like too many big words for your tiny brain to handle.”
Lucian’s face darkened further, but before he could make any kind of retort, the sound of someone clearing their throat filled the room.
We all turned to see Elissa standing in the doorway. She wore a pale pink dress that fell to her shins. It really brought out the red in her hair and caused the freckles on her arms to pop. A blush crept across her face when she caught my eye, but she didn’t try to hide her face as she stepped into the room.
“It is very nice to see you again, Lucian,” she said. “But I am happy in my marriage to Sebastian.”
“You’ve been married a day,” Lucian grumbled. “You would have been happy with me.”
She didn’t argue that, but her eyes flashed, and I knew that she didn’t like him deciding for her.
“I doubt it very much,” she began. “Sebastian gave me an unbelievable amount of pleasure last night, and my womb is filled with his god seed. No mortal can compare to him. The matter over me, and my hand is resolved. I have married Sebastian. I am his wife, and he is my husband.”
“So your purity has been fouled…” Lucian’s gray eyes flickered between me and Elissa before resting on the beautiful redhead. “It’s no matter. I still want you, and you will be mine. I will give you two days to change your mind. If you make the right decision by then, I will not destroy this town.
He shot her a warning look before storming past her out of the room, and my mind spun for a second as I considered my course of action.
I could kill the spoiled prince now, but there were a few problems with that. First was that no one but the mayor and my wife would see me in action, and they already both believed I was a god. Second was that I didn’t actually know this duke dude, and Lucian whining to his dad about not getting the woman he wanted would only get a handful of troops for assistance, or so I figured. Reports coming to the duke that I killed his son in the mayor’s house with no witnesses would probably really piss him off, and he’d probably send a few hundred warriors here to kill me.
I figured there would be a better time to kill Lucian, and that would be in front of everyone so that it was clear that the deed was done in honorable combat.
So, I let the man storm out of the house with his life intact.
Elrin let out a deep breath and collapsed into the nearest chair. “I will sleep better when he is far away from here.”
“From the sounds of it, far away from here is going to be six feet under,” I remarked as I plucked a raspberry from the bowl. “He’s not going to leave without Elissa.”
“And I’m not leaving with him, so it’s an impasse,” Elissa stated as she crossed the room to sit in my lap, took the raspberry from my hand, and popped it into her mouth. “I’m quite fond of being a wife to the God of Time, thank you very much.”
We all laughed, and while Elrin and Elissa chatted about the night before, I found myself thinking about the terms Lucian laid out. Elissa had made it abundantly clear that she had no interest in marrying the duke’s son, and I wasn’t about to give my woman to another man, so I imagined there was about to be another epic battle just outside the town walls.
“I’m gonna get some air,” I said as I patted Elissa’s thigh through her dress. “I have to come up with a strategy if I’m going to protect the town.”
“Would you like me to call the men for another meeting?” Elrin offered. “I’m sure many of them would volunteer to assist you in the fight.”
“Naw.” I shook my head. “For now, I just need to weigh all of the options. I don’t want to put anyone in any more danger than they’ll already be in.”
I bade the two of them goodbye and headed out of the house. Lucian was long gone by that point, but I could have sworn I could hear the chattering of his men just outside the walls. The word ‘army’ had been thrown around today, but I had no idea what kind of numbers I was looking at. It had to be a decent amount, since the mine had been crawling with goblins. I couldn’t see ten men clearing out the mine and coming out unscathed, otherwise Elrin would have done it himself ages ago.
I headed straight for the main entrance of the town where I had fought the kobolds. Elrin made it clear that the duke’s castle laid to the south of Addington, so I had to assume that was where the army would camp out in this waiting game. There weren’t any other towns nearby that we could go running to for help, so it wasn’t like the army needed to surround the town to keep us from leaving. Two days wasn’t enough time to get reinforcements.
Too bad I didn’t actually have that fire-breathing dragon Lucian claimed I had rode in on.
“Holy shit,” I breathed as I saw what laid beyond the main gate.
Canvas tents stood like islands in the sea of tall grass. They were spread out in a chaotic manner, and I knew that the only way to count them all would be to get some height and hope the number of tents was equal to the number of soldiers. The men swarmed the place like a bunch of ants, and every single one wore fine plate armor that made my own set look like it was made of aluminum foil. Swords and spears gleamed in the sunshine, and the sound of metal clashing told me there were at least two men practicing their skills with one another.
I tried to take a headcount, but none of the men stood still long enough to get any kind of accuracy. I thought about what made an army back home, but even that didn’t provide any answers. All I knew for certain was that there were less than two hundred men waiting outside the town, but there were definitely more than twenty waiting to destroy everything in sight.
“Disappointed, Great One?” a man asked, and as he came up behind me he clapped a hand on my shoulder. “They’ll be like a cloud of annoying flies for you to swat around.”
The two men with him laughed and agreed, and I did my best to pretend like I wasn’t worried. I mean, I wasn’t really. I could respawn as many times as I needed, so it wasn’t like I was going to lose in the end, but when I thought about how long it had taken me to defeat the kobolds and the goblins, my hands started to sweat. I had gotten really good at drawing on my ability before I could actually experience the pain of death, but there were always surprise moments that slipped through the cracks.
The men out there were likely to be highly skilled in the art of war, and they would be able to slip through my defenses easily in the beginning. I really wasn’t looking forward to being turned into a voodoo doll.
“You seem troubled, Great One.” Mahini’s melodic voice cut through my thoughts. Her presence calmed some of the turmoil building up in my head, and when I turned around, her eyes were filled with trust. “I have seen you battle a horde of kobolds and a slew of goblins. If these men cause any issues, you will handle them without a problem.”
“When they cause problems,” I corrected her, and I quickly filled her in on Lucian’s demands. “He won’t leave without Elissa, and she won’t leave with him, so I’m going to have to kill every man out there.”
The desert warrior’s blue eyes filled with cold fire. “I am sworn to fight at your side, so do not forget to include me in your plans for slaughter, Great One.”
I recalled that some asshole had made threats to her family and I understood her anger. “Do you think it’s wrong to kill all of these men? Lucian I get; he’s a dick; but these guys are only following orders...”
Killing the kobolds and the goblins had been as easy as breathing. Neither creature looked enough like a human for me to even consider their sentience. Even after I learned the goblin language, it had been easy to just think of the little green dudes as monsters that needed to be exterminated.
It was different with humans. The sorcerer’s men had been trying to kill me, so killing them was simply a matter of self-defense. And, yeah, if the duke’s soldiers started swinging their shiny swords at me, I wouldn’t have a problem with defending myself to the death.
But what if there was a way to convince them not to fight?
“If they choose to cross swords with you, then they choose to die,” Mahini said as if she followed my train of thought. “But these men swore an oath to their lord, and if they were to stand down at your word, they would lose their honor.”
“There aren’t many people as amazing as you, Mahini,” I praised her with a smile. “Most humans will choose their lives over their honor when it comes down to it.”
“Would you?” she asked, and she turned her piercing blue eyes to me. It was like she was looking deep into my soul.
“I wouldn’t run away from a fight,” I said. “And I wouldn’t put my life above anyone else’s. But if you or Elissa were in danger, I would sacrifice myself to save you.”
“Yes, that’s what I thought,” the black-haired goddess said with a nod. “You have the highest sense of honor. That is just one of the many reasons why we are bonded.”
“Well, I’m glad you think so highly of me,” I laughed. “I’m happy to have your respect.”
“You have more than my respect, Great One,” she said as she gave me another piercing stare. “I have already spoken of my love for you. But now I need to speak with Jax about upgrades to my armor if I am to stand at your side for this battle. May I depart your company for a bit?”
“Yeah, I’ll meet you there later,” I said, and she was gone before I had even finished the sentence. “That was weird.”
I stood staring after her for several long minutes. What did she mean when she said I had more than her respect? Was she talking about loyalty and trust? Or something else entirely?
“She really is a desert mirage,” I said to myself.
But that just made me want to know even more about her.
I wandered through the town with no real destination in mind. The townspeople must have already figured out that Lucian had given Elissa an ultimatum because the town was as busy as rush-hour traffic. The men were hauling materials to the outskirts of town to get the wall built. A few stopped to talk to me about my home repairs, but I assured them that the town’s safety was more important than my flooring.
“The room you and Liss need is in pretty good shape, huh?” one of the men teased as the rest roared with laughter.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “And what’s a few more days in the long run? I’ll be able to work harder if I know that pest isn’t out there sulking.”
The men went back to their work roaring with laughter and making all kinds of jokes at the expense of their liege lord’s son.
I probably shouldn’t have been stoking the fire of their hostility toward the man, but if I had my way, this town would look to me as their sovereign. The villagers clearly preferred me over the Duke of Bullard who sat in his castle hundreds of miles away, and although I didn’t exactly know the politics of this world, the guy must not be doing a very good job if the first god that comes walking into their midst can just take over as the ruler.
“Wipe that silly grin off your face, Great One.” The sharp voice behind me made me jump and whirl around, and Dora the Healer was standing there with a smug expression. “You have to survive the battle before you can start patting yourself on the back.”
“I don’t suppose you have some knowledge that will help me survive?” I asked with as big a grin as I could manage. Dora reminded me of a feisty Italian mother that used her sharp tongue to protect her loved ones from their own blunders, so her jabs just made me chuckle.
“Unless you plan to poison the whole bunch, my herbs won’t do you much good until after the dust clears.” The scrawny woman let out a barking laugh and jerked her head for me to follow her.
Her words brought back the acid goblin from the mines, and while I thought it might be cool to do something like that, I doubted there was a plant in her care that had the same kind of strength as something obviously magical.
The dark-skinned healer brought me to a small building just around the corner from Jax’s forge. It stood out among all the other buildings in the town because it was built entirely of stone except for the shingled roof. A wide chimney was spitting out thin white smoke into the air, and there was a small fenced-in plot of land attached to the left side. Plants of all kinds were growing there, and the fragrant and pungent smell of herbs hit me as soon as I came within five feet of the front door.
When Dora entered the stone hut, I created a new save point. If I was about to learn a new skill, I wanted to make sure I had it mastered on the first go around. I crossed the threshold and had to pause for a minute for my eyes to adjust.
It was much darker inside, and the only light came from the happily crackling fire in the grate. A single window sat in the middle of the far wall, and when I spotted the bed beneath it, I realized that the healer’s hut had only one room. It served as her kitchen, entryway, bedroom, and sitting room, but it was larger than most studio apartments back in my world, and with how organized everything was, the space was perfectly utilized.
The kitchen consisted of a single flat surface and a large basin that served as the sink. The sitting room had two large comfortable-looking chairs sitting close to the fire. The bedroom was just the bed and a small end table, and the entryway had enough space for several pairs of boots and coats to go on pegs on the wall.
Dora was busy at a large table right by the entryway, and the walls around the table were covered in shelves that held all kinds of jars and baskets of various herbs. Each container was labeled, and I quickly realized that the herbs were sorted in alphabetical order. A large book laid open on the table to a page that detailed the uses of a poultice, and I wondered if it was the poultice she had applied to my arm.
“You’d be better off learning magic than sticking your nose into that book,” Dora said when she caught me reading over her shoulder. “Won’t do you much good in the battle. Those men won’t sit and twiddle their thumbs while you mix herbs together and plaster your injuries.”
“You mentioned magic before,” I said as I looked at the different jars on the shelves. “Is there someone in the duke’s land that could teach me how to heal wounds? It would definitely be nice to mend my injuries as I go.”
The healer was quiet for so long that I wondered if she had even heard me. It was several long minutes before she finally turned around, and she did so with the same slowness of a main villain being revealed.
“I never said there was healing magic in this world, Sebastian.” Her voice was not angry, but there was a certain edge to it that caused my heart to pound in my chest. “The true God of Time would have known that.”
It felt like I had been dunked into an ice bath as the woman’s hazel eyes pierced right through me.
She knew, fuck, she knew.
Chime.
Why was she testing me? Did she not think I was the real God of Time? Nobody else in town had any doubts about who I was, and even though I couldn’t actually show them my powers, how could anyone who wasn’t the God of Time be able to defeat his enemies as easily as I could?
If Theodora was an enemy, I had to figure out how much she knew.
“Magic will serve you better than my herbs in the end,” Dora said after I followed her inside.
“If you’re talking about healing magic, it doesn’t exist,” I replied. “All I can do is mix up a poultice to aid in the natural healing of my body; you said so yourself the day we met.”
The healer didn’t immediately turn around, and I braced myself for whatever harsh villain words were about to come my way. I didn’t have to wait as long as last time, and when she finally turned, her hazel eyes were sparkling with delight.
“Of course, you knew,” she said, more to herself than to me, I think. “Forgive me, Sebastian. I shouldn’t have tested you like that, but I needed to be sure you truly are the God of Time.”
“Who else would I be?” I grumbled. I was a little stung by her doubt, but at least I knew now that she wasn’t actually against me.
“You are very young, Sebastian,” she observed, “yet you are so wise. You must have lived many times over to get to this point.”
It almost sounded like she was talking about my ability to respawn. Why else would she say that I had “lived many times?” Was that why she had tested me before? Not just because she wanted to be sure of who I am, but because she knew something about what I could actually do?
I had immediately connected with Dora when we first met, and I thought that maybe it was just because she was blunt and didn’t put me on a pedestal like everyone else had, but maybe this was why. Maybe she was the person I could talk to about my powers.
Maybe she was supposed to be my mentor in all of this.
Maybe I should just tell her, and if things didn’t work out, I could just Chime and start again.
“I actually have lived many times,” I admitted, and her hazel eyes flash with interest, so I started from the beginning. “I’m actually not from this world...”
I told her absolutely everything, starting from taking my nap in the office. It all just came pouring out of me like water bursting from a dam. The fight with Raijin and the confusing maze of the catacombs, the trek down the mountain and the discovery of the kobolds, and all of the many times that I had died to reach the town only to find out that I also had to clear the mine of the goblins.
“And I know I can defeat Lucian’s army,” I concluded as I looked down at my hands, “but I also know that I’m going to die a bunch of times. That’s why I was hoping for some healing magic so that I could maybe live a little bit longer each time I respawned.”
A huge weight seemed to have lifted from my shoulders, and I could hardly believe how badly I had been wanting to talk about what I could really do. It was nice to get all of the praise and admiration for all of my amazing skills, but it was nice to finally admit that there was a shit ton of hard work behind my badassery.
I smiled at the relief I felt and then lifted my gaze to meet Dora’s only to find her looking at me like I was ten kinds of crazy.
“I simply meant that you must have been reincarnated dozens of times, and perhaps you could recall some of those lives,” she said in a tone that suggested I had overburdened her with my story. “I didn’t even realize reliving your previous moments was even possible!”
“So I guess you’re not my mentor, then, huh?” I asked as I drew on my power.
Chime.
Some of the weight returned to my shoulders as I realized that I couldn’t even talk to Dora about what I could really do. It was easy enough to forget about it in my new routine of killing all the bad guys, but it would have been nice to have someone I could really open up to about my abilities. I still didn’t know everything there was to know about what I was capable of. Sure, I could respawn back in time, but what if there was more to it than that?
“A tutorial would be really nice right about now,” I growled to the ceiling.
“Tutorial?” Dora questioned. “What do you mean?”
“Doh,” I chuckled. “This one doesn’t even count.”
Chime.
The scrawny healer gave me the test about magic again, and I passed it with flying colors. She asked for my forgiveness, and I gave it, since I knew that her heart really was in the right place. Despite having seen me take on a horde of kobolds, the healer was willing to go toe to toe with me if I turned out to be nothing but a fake.
Gotta admire her bravery.
“You seem really interested in me, Dora,” I said to her as I picked up a jar labeled ‘Tincture of Feverfew’. “Is that why you moved here? Because of the Great Catacombs of Legend?”
Once again, the healer was silent for so long I was worried I had stepped over a line, so I turned my eyes from the feverfew jar and found her staring at me with her jaw hanging open.
Oh, shit, I must have really surprised her with that one.
She recovered quickly and let out a throaty laugh. “Nothing ever gets past you, does it, Great One?” The question was obviously rhetorical, and I waited for her to continue. “I suppose now’s as good a time as any to tell you my story.”
The scrawny healer crossed the room and plopped into the high-backed brown chair on the left, so I took the little blue one on the right. She hummed quietly to herself as she stoked the fire a bit, and when she finally sat back again, she stared at me for so long I wondered if there was something on my face.
“I am descended from witches,” she stated as simply as if she were commenting on the weather.
The first image to pop into my head was the Wicked Witch of the West, but I thought Dora looked more like the White Witch from The Chronicles of Narnia, only with very dark skin instead of icy pale.
“The sort that liked to brew potions in big cauldrons, or the kind that use wands?” I asked.
“Uhhh… both?” Dora tilted her head to the side with confusion. “That is an odd que--”
“I’m sorry,” I chuckled. “Just keep going. I’m guessing you are going to tell me about your grandmother that first had the magic?”
“She was my gran many times back, and she was as powerful as they come,” Dora continued. “But instead of marrying a powerful warlock-- a male witch, you know-- to strengthen the bloodline, Gran chose to marry a mortal. It diluted the bloodline so much that her children couldn’t practice magic like she could, and by the time I was born, I could only work with herbs in a practical sense instead of a magical one.”
“So magic is tied to blood?” I asked, and I was ready to draw on my power if she got all suspicious again. “Only those of magical blood can learn spells?”
“Aptitude plays a large role in magic,” she explained, “Anyone can learn if they tried, but someone of the blood will be better at it than someone who is not.”
“Sounds like I’ll need to talk to a mage to really figure this all out,” I muttered.
“Yes, I’m afraid I don’t have much knowledge when it comes to spells and such,” Dora laughed. “I’m sure we could send word to one of the towns in the east for a master to teach you if you wished.”
At least it wasn’t assumed that the God of Time should know all kinds of epic spells right off the bat.
“I have always been interested in your prophecy, Sebastian,” Dora admitted. “It is one of the first legends we teach to our children, just in case the dark times fall on that generation, and somehow I knew you would appear during my lifetime. I moved to this town to be closer to the catacombs, and I’m sure I sensed the moment you descended from the heavens to save us all.”
The scrawny healer reached out and held my hand, and her eyes were brimming with tears. “I know you can save this world, Sebastian, because you have saved this town many times over. Just as you will in the days to come.”
I gave the woman a smile and placed my hand over hers. After a cup of tea, the healer taught me how to mix a few simple poultices, but as she had insisted, none of it would be much help during the actual battle.
Because now there was no doubt in my mind that there was going to be another epic battle in Addington, and if I was going to go out there and destroy an entire army of trained soldiers, I had some serious preparations to make.