For a moment, rage shakes within you. He thinks he can simply call upon you and you'll trot over to his castle? What sort of man does he take you for? The bubble of rage bursts, and you find yourself tearing the letter in two, before crumpling it and throwing it on the floor. Bertrand gulps slightly as he watches.


"Leave me," you say, and he does. You carry on that day as you normally do, drinking heartily and eating when your stomach grumbles. As usual, you pass out late into the night, last bottle of wine in hand.


When you wake the next day, you're fully hit by the reality of the situation. The king threatened to send men to acquire you should you fail to show up after a week. You can't stay here anymore, and if you do, then they'll come sooner or later. This means you'd either need to move on, or try to hold out and fend off any of his men who come your way.


What's it going to be, hero?

You will not leave your home. If the king sends men here, you'll send them back.

You scoff at the idea of leaving your home. The king says he'll send men your way if you don't respond? Oh, please. You can fend off any pansies he sends your way. Though you're getting up there in years, you can still fight with the strength of a hundred soldiers.

With that, you resolve to continue on as you've been doing. For the next few days, you don't do much; you get your bread and wine from Bertrand, drink until you black out, then do it again. It continues this way until, finally, a week has passed since the letter.

You've almost forgotten about it when Bertrand enters your room at around midday. He's already brought you your bread and wine, so you're not sure why he'd come here. His expression is a mask of worry and fear. "Explain yourself," you say, and Bertrand nods with a gulp.

"The king has sent his men here, sir. They're here to take you away to Castle Oren." Bertrand is looking very afraid.

"Send them away."

"What?"

"I said send them away. I don't wish to entertain them."

"But sir..."

You you're not having this. Bertrand should get them out of here.

This is getting irritating. You told Bertrand to turn anyone away, and the fact that he's ignoring your orders is starting to piss you off a bit. "Go on, Bertrand. Send them away, and don't come back until tomorrow. I don't wish to hear about fools coming to my door."


Bertrand releases a sigh, but nods. "Very well sir. I'll go tell them they're not wanted here." With those words, Bertrand turns and leaves the room. You expect him to come rushing back a few minutes later, but he doesn't. It seems the king's men listened to his demands.


Hours pass until finally, the sun has set and the sky is dark. You're about to head to bed, when you hear a faint voice calling your name out. It doesn't sound like it's someone in trouble, so it's probably nothing.


You lay down, and close your eyes...


"Kit..."


You keep your eyes clenched tight...


"Come to me..."


You grind your teeth together...


"I need to see you..."

You damn it all... You'll go investigate, and see who the hell it is.

With a groan, you slip out of your velvet sheets and head to the door. For a moment, you reconsider your choice, but turn the knob and step into the dark hallway. The only light comes from the moon leaking in through closed windows, and you look around, listening for the voice.


"Kit..."


You catch a glimpse of a white figure down the hall, but it disappears before you can get a good look. Picking up the pace, you follow after it. The voice continues to call out to you, growing louder as you descend deeper into your manor.


"I need to see you, Kit..."


You continue to follow the voice until you reach the manor's wine cellar. When you open the door, you're greeted by a woman in white. Her brown hair falls past her shoulders and brushes against her hips. Her white dress flows freely, and around her neck she wears a holy symbol of Judeau, God of Life. Her skin is deathly pale and her green eyes bear holes into your own grey orbs. You know that face anywhere. It hasn't aged a day in twenty years.


"Lilith..."


For a moment fear grips you. You saw her die, that poison dart pierced her throat and she was done for. She was so out of breath she couldn't speak her incantations and heal herself. Yet still, she's standing here before you now, a specter of the past. "I thought you died," you say because you still can't believe she's here.


A smile graces her lips. "I did."


"You... You're dead. You're not real. I'm losing my mind..."


"I'm very real, Kit. Myself and the others have been watching over you, ever since that day. We thought you could pull yourself out of this..." She shakes her head, disapprovingly. "We thought you were better than this, Kit."


Despite the circumstances, you let out a dark chuckle. God, you need a drink. "Better than what? I didn't have much incentive to live after you all died. I didn't even want to go on that fucking adventure. It was Grace who roped us all into it."


"Yet you still went. Why was that?"


Great, now she's interrogating you. You really want that drink... "She was... You were all my friends. I wanted to..."


"Wanted to what, Kit?"


"I wanted to... DAMMIT!" You can't help it. You head to one of the shelved bottles, reaching for it.


"Don't."


Despite Lilith's warning, you grab hold of it, when a sudden burst of wind knocks you back. You crash against another shelf of wine bottles, shattering them from the sheer force of your impact. "W-what the Hell was that for!?"


"I don't want to talk to some drunkard, Kit. I want to talk to you."


Your anger flares. "Go back to whatever fuckin' afterlife you crawled out of! I don't want whatever you're selling me!" You pull yourself up and walk to the door.


"Kit. Listen to me."


You place a hand on the doorknob...

You ... And release it with a sigh, staying in the room.

Despite your anger, you can't leave. This is your first time talking with one of your old friends in two decades. You need this. So, you release your grip on the doorknob and turn to Lilith. Although, just because you're staying doesn't mean you have to be nice about it. "What the hell is it, Lilith? I'm fucking tired."


The smile makes its way onto her face again. "Thank you for staying."


"Don't got all night here..."


She sighs. "Right... I'm here to show you why you shouldn't try to stay and rot in your home."


"Really? Because it's been working out just fine so far."


"You'll see." Lilith snaps her fingers. A blinding light fills the room, reflecting off the glass wine bottles. Your vision goes white and you stick your hands up to block the light... Then, you're gone.

You continue

Once upon a time you were called the greatest hero to ever live.


You must have been twenty at the time. Fresh faced, spunky as all hell, and too optimistic for your own good. With book of spells in hand, you set out with your childhood friends to save the world from an evil wizard (damn, you can't even remember his name) bent on enslaving mankind. When you left home, there were five of you: a fighter, a rogue, a bard, a healer, and yourself, a mage.


The six month long journey to the wizard's tower was filled with happy times, light hearted misadventures as you all prepared for fortune and glory. When you reached the tower, the mood quickly changed. Your bard fell to a herd of undead that ambushed you at the entrance. The healer took a poison dart to the throat on the fourth floor while the rogue was burned to ash by a pyromancer on the seventeenth floor. Yourself and the fighter were all that remained when you reached the twentieth and final floor, and he was cut down halfway through the fight with the wizard. When the dust cleared and all was quiet, you were the last one standing.


You returned home a year after you had left it. The villagers showered you in praise for killing the wizard, and word reached the nobles in the cities far away that the evil wizard had been defeated. They held a feast in your honor, they showered you in gold, they gave you a title and a manor and an army of servants. Men wanted you, women wanted to be you. But it was all hollow.


You played along for the first ten years, finding little joy in the newfound fortune and glory you had longed for. It wasn't until the writers and artists began to touch your quest that you finally shut yourself in. It started innocently enough, sanitized children's tales about the exploits of you and your allies, but soon it became epic poems and romanticized paintings. One by one, your friends disappeared from the fictionalized tales of your quest, until it was just you, the mage in flowing robes, slaying the vile wizard with your vast arcane knowledge.


That was when you finally isolated yourself, to hide from the common folk and their damning praise, from the artists and their bastardized accounts. For five years you wandered the roads of the Oren Kingdom, not staying in one place for too long, hoping that eventually you'd forget who you were. It didn't work. Just as luck would have it, you were recognized one day, and soon people were traveling the all the highways and country roads of the Kingdom. All in the hopes of meeting you, the legendary hero.


In these last five years, you've stayed locked up in an old cabin deep in the woods. You survive off of game in the woods for food, and use an old stream for water. At night you cast the most harmful spells you can, hoping that one will finally backfire and put you out of your misery. So far, none have.


It's a fitting end for the woman regarded as the greatest hero to ever live: locking herself away in a ratty old cabin, hunting and casting and waiting for the day she finally dies.

You continue

And just like that you're back to the cellar.

You're on your hands and knees, taking in sharp breaths, before you look back up at Lillith's ghostly figure. "W-what... What was that?"

"Have you ever considered that it could have been any one of us to see the quest through to the end? Do you think it wouldn't weigh on our souls watching our only surviving friend destroy themselves? Grace chose to fill the void by isolating herself from society. I cut the vision off before you could watch her go mad from the isolation and hang herself."

"So that's what would have happened... What about Henry and Thomas?"

"Them? Henry would have filled the void with alcohol and women until he died from the diseases he caught. Thomas would have filled the void by stealing everything from everyone until he was finally caught and hung for his crimes."

"What about you?" you ask after a moment.

"Myself? I would have looked for every way to bring you four back. It would have led me down a dark path. You don't want to see how that would have turned out."

There's a moment of silence as you contemplate what you just saw. Your... Friend, Grace, and the path she would have gone down if it was you who died that day. Lillith filled you in on what the others would have done.

That's when you realize something: they're hurting, watching you from the afterlife. Hurting enough that they sent Lillith down to try to get you to turn your life around. The question remains of what you'll do with this information.

You need to do something different with your life.

As you mull it over, a tear escapes your eye. Watching what you watched, hearing what you heard... It breaks you. Your friends are watching you, suffering as they watch you throw your life away. If the situations were different, you know you'd feel the same.

The tears flow freely now. Still on your knees, you turn to Lilith and mumble, "You're right."

A small smile graces her lips. "I know that."

Despite yourself, you laugh. "Right. Of course you would." You stand up. For the first time in two decades, it feels like a weight has been lifted off of your shoulders. You feel liberated... But with that liberation, you also feel uncertainty. "What should I do?"

"Whatever you wish, Kit." Lilith's smile fades. "But now, my work here is done. I must go."

You were expecting that. A sigh escapes your lips. "I figured as much. Goodbye, Lilith. Send the others my regards."

"I will."

With those two words, she disappears. You smile faintly, before ascending the stairs and returning to your room. Climbing under the velvet sheets, you close your eyes, and fall into your first dreamless sleep in years.

The next day, you write up a letter in response to the king's call to arms. When Bertrand enters the room with today's shipment of bread and wine, you raise a hand to stop him from putting it down. "I've no need for that, Bertrand. Here." You hand him the letter. "See that the king receives this letter."

Bertrand looks shocked. He places the letter on the tray and leaves the room with a nod to you. You sigh, then sit back down, contemplating the future.

It's a new day and the start of a new way of life for you.

THE END