Chương 38: The Hero

POV: Evelisse Ardentia I rode low over Astra's neck, my white mare galloping on the grasslands as fast as I could push her; Aniaros Forest still a dark smudge on the horizon. I had made a quick stop earlier to eat sis' meal, and now the sky had gone full black. Without Lord Luminaryn's sigil functioning, pinpointing Milo's exact location would be a problem, but that would be a worry for later. I had been to the forest enough times to guess my way around, at least.

I had considered riding for the Kingdom of Astrea instead, joining Ywain's party so I could be there at dawn and do whatever it took to keep Milo alive from the inside. But the timing didn't hold. I wouldn't reach Astrea until near midnight, and if Ywain meant to strike at dawn, his party would have set out well before then, so the forest was the better bet. If I found Milo early, good. If not, I could wait at the entrance Ywain and I had used before and intercept them there. Worst case, Ywain moved early.

And given the High Priest somehow knew how badly I had hesitated before, it wasn't a stretch to think Ywain had been watching me warily. He would want me nowhere near this if he could help it. As the grassland streamed past, my mind kept wandering the possibilities. I had warned Milo about the attack, which left him with two choices; either run or fight. Last time, when I had warned him, he did not run. I kept telling myself he had stayed so the kingdom couldn't pin the blame on me.

I didn't actually know if that was true. But I wanted it to be, for reasons I didn't care to examine too closely. I should have just asked him, back at sis' place. I hope I'll still get the chance to. I pushed another speed enhancement into Astra. I couldn't hold the spell the whole way since it would break her, so I had been trading off, enhanced then easing back, enhanced then easing, coaxing the distance out of her without running her into the ground. Then, as the forest finally loomed close, I saw them.

Two figures, far off and high, clashing in the air above the treeline. Both winged. One set of wings blazed with light; the other didn't. I could not make out their faces, but I could guess. Lumiere Wings. My stomach dropped. Lumiere Wings weren't like my flight buff, which bought a minute aloft at a time. Lumiere Wings let the bearer fly indefinitely, but only with the Mooncleaver in hand, and only with the resolve to fuel them. And the figure, whom I assumed was Ywain, was not holding the Mooncleaver.

I couldn't see the sword anywhere. Something's wrong. The other winged shape had to be the demon girl, one of Milo's underlings. She chained lightning across the gap between them, fast, no visible delay between casts, silent casting, and skilled. But Ywain slipped it or turned it aside, the arcs simply glancing off him before they could land. A barrier, most likely, but if Ywain could hold a barrier that strong, why hadn't he used it when we fought Milo last time?

He might have received blessings I have never been told about during the Hero ceremony. I leaned into Astra harder. If they were fighting up there, Ywain had come early after all, and Milo wouldn't be far below them. I strained to close the distance. Up ahead, the demon girl lunged in, trying to grapple Ywain out of the sky. Light flared around him, a sudden white burst, and she recoiled off him with wisps of smoke trailing from her hands.

A Holy Flash, or near enough, the kind of thing that scorched anything born of the dark element. Then Ywain climbed, gained height, and dropped a kick down onto her back from above with the full weight of the fall behind it. She plummeted. Fell out of the sky and into the trees, and everything I knew about combat told me she wouldn't be getting up from that. And then the thought I had been outrunning caught me all at once. What if Milo was already beaten? What if he was already— I couldn't finish it.

It sat in my chest like a stone dropped down a well, no bottom to it, a cold that spread out from my ribs and made my hands tighten on the reins without my telling them to. I didn't have a name for the feeling and I didn't want one. I only knew it made everything else go quiet. I bent close to Astra's ear.

"I'm sorry," I whispered.

"This is the last time I'll ask this much of you. Promise." Then I increased the output of the speed enhancement spell, riding toward the forest. Near the forest's edge, I swung down off Astra, cast the speed enhancement over myself, and ran in on foot. Through the trees I could hear it, the ring of blades meeting, then the splintering crash of trunks giving way somewhere ahead. I didn't know who on Milo's side used a sword; I had never seen any of them fight with one.

Some part of me clung to the hope that it was Milo himself, because that would mean he was still alive to swing it. I followed the sound, weaving through the dark, until I saw them. Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere. Ywain, dragging a blazing orange sword out of his own torso. And Milo, on the ground beneath him. I nearly stumbled. Even with Lord Luminaryn's blessings, no one should be able to pull a sword from their own chest and still stand, let alone fight.

It was the same wrongness as the wings. He raised the sword. There was a pause first; he was saying something to Milo, his mouth moving, that easy cruelty in the line of his shoulders. I didn't have time to think. Not about what it meant to attack the current Hero. Not about foiling the Church's whole purpose, the vanquishing of the world's greatest evil. Not about any of it. I drove my legs faster, pushed the strength buff down into them, and leapt.

My kick caught Ywain across the shoulder and flung him off his feet, sending him crashing back into a tree. What I had just done was, by any measure I had ever been given, wrong. I had stopped the Hero from killing a Dark Lord. And Dark Lords were the source of every horror in this world; terror sown across the land, people cut down for the sake of one being's power, whole families broken, whole villages left as graves. I knew all of that. I had been raised on all of that.

I had built my life around ending exactly what lay wounded in the dirt behind me. But Milo wasn't that. I still had my doubts, still couldn't make all the pieces sit flat. And yet, somehow, past all of it, I didn't believe he was the same. I let out a slow breath.

"Lumina manica, indue me." The light answered. It bled up out of nothing, pale blue and translucent, weaving itself along my forearms until the gauntlets closed over my hands, then coursing down my shins into the greaves, cool and weightless and humming faintly against my skin. Armaments of justice, back when justice had been a simpler word. In a moment, I would be turning them on the Hero of Lycora. I stood up. This time, I would try to do what I thought I wanted.

The blazing sword slipped from his grip and hit the ground, sheathed itself in white light, and dissolved into nothing. Ywain lay on his back. He propped himself up to find whoever had struck him, and our eyes met. I was fairly sure my face had gone hard with resolve, and for some reason, that made him smile. He gathered himself and rose, breath coming ragged. Milo had clearly done real damage; the state of him made it stranger still that he could stand at all.

"Evelisse," He said my name almost fondly.

"I did wonder if you might throw in with him." That was…strange. No one should have known about any of it; the gate, the quest, the night market, none of it. I had suspected the High Priest might have pieced something together, but he had never once raised it, not even when he stripped the title off me. So how did Ywain think of the possibility of me siding with Milo? Who had told him? And how?

"Why are you doing this?" he went on.

"Did the Dark Lord worm his way into your head? All those honeyed little words of his?" I opened my mouth to answer and found nothing there. What was I supposed to say? Would it even change anything if I said it?

"Never mind." His voice softened into something coaxing, almost kind.

"You're confused, that's all. Don't believe a word he's fed you, Evelisse. Just step aside, and the two of us can still talk this through." I looked back over my shoulder. Milo lay sprawled on his stomach in the churned dirt, one arm folded beneath him, the other stretched out like he'd been reaching for something and run out of strength halfway. Blood tracked down from his temple, dark against his cheek.

His eyes were fixed on me, and in them was a tangle I couldn't quite name, worry and disbelief and something like relief, all of it caught behind a face too battered to arrange itself. I turned my gaze to the side and let it settle on nothing. Everything I had been taught told me the answer. Move. Let Ywain finish what he came for. Better still, help him do it. That was the right thing, the sanctioned thing. But I had already learned I couldn't live with that version of myself.

And if I chose it now, the last thing I would ever carry of Milo would be a fight in a burning plaza and the look on his face in this exact moment, worry and relief, hoping against everything that I hadn't come here to kill him. It wasn't right. I knew it wasn't. It was only what I wanted. I turned back to Ywain and shook my head. His expression cooled.

"A shame. I'd taken you for someone sturdier than this. Someone who wouldn't throw everything away on a whim." Behind him, the light gathered and unfurled again; the Lumiere Wings spreading wide from his back, radiant against the dark. I set my feet, dropped my weight low, and brought my gauntlets up between us.

"Then I'll have to put you down as well," he said. Then he came at me, fast, wings flared, driving in for a tackle. I sidestepped it, caught his trailing leg, pivoted on my heel, and hurled him off in the other direction. He twisted upright before he had finished falling and snapped an enhanced kick back at me. My instinct was to dodge, but Milo was on the ground behind me, and dodging meant the kick would sail straight into him. So I planted myself and took it on my gauntlets instead.

The impact shrieked up my arms and shoved me back several inches through the dirt.

"You can't beat me, Evelisse." He landed light, unhurried.

"I've been granted blessings you never even knew. I don't even need the Mooncleaver anymore to leave the Dark Lord in the sorry state you see him in right now." He surged forward again, hands sheathed in white. I met him. His palm-strike came in and I turned it aside with a gauntlet; he flowed into a second, and I caught that one too, our arms cracking together in bursts of light.

He pressed, I gave ground, then I broke his rhythm with a sharp kick to his midsection that forced us apart again, both of us resetting a few paces off. That light on his hands. It had to be the holy element, the same thing that let him wound Milo without the sword. But it shouldn't exist, not like this. Heroes were never granted holy power for our own bodies. That wasn't how any of it worked. Offensive holy magic was sacred, reserved for Lord Luminaryn alone.

That was the entire reason He had blessed the Mooncleaver with it, so that one weapon could defeat the Dark Lord for good. And then I remembered the trolls and the grovewyrm; the monsters Milo and I had fought, carrying the same impossible holy fire.

"That isn't normal," I said, holding my stance.

"None of it. The wings, the holy attacks, it isn't possible."

"It isn't. For most." Ywain rolled his shoulders, unbothered.

"But I'm not most."

"What makes you the exception?" I didn't lower my guard.

"Why would the Church—" I caught myself.

"No. Why would Lord Luminaryn grant you something He's never given anyone?" Ywain smiled, and there was something almost reverent in it.

"Because I'm His most trusted piece," he said.

"His one hope of reshaping this world. I am the true Hero this world needs."