Sara
It was with great relief that Sara finally took her first steps into the city of Foldo. How appropriate that one of the final steps in their journey would lead to this place, she thought to herself as she gazed at the countless aged wooden structures that littered the city. Far too few people lived here, considering the significance of the Temple of the Children-- the first and only temple devoted to the demigods. Years of neglect had left the city in a poor condition and now the few locals were mostly those who devoted themselves to either Kerun or Maula.
It was morbid curiosity that draw Sara to temple, but the only one who seemed to be interested in joining her was the boy who had joined them while she was unconscious. Kevin the faekin, the Champion of Kerun was quite the enigma. Everything she had heard up to this point suggested that only the four Elder Gods had declared Champions in their war with Maula. The fact that he was here now made some sense, but why was she only just learning of him now?
After going their separate ways from the others, they made their way to the decrepit temple in silence. Kevin seemed to be preoccupied with something that might have been above her and, though he didn’t seem the slightest bit interested in talking, he wore a friendly smile on his face the entire time. When they stepped onto the temple grounds however, that smile faded into shock for an immediately apparent reason: the area was scattered with bodies. There were dozens of people in white robes that Sara remembered were associated with Kerun from her studies. This is not what I wanted my first encounter with Kerun worshippers to look like!
“These people are too far gone,” Kevin said mournfully as he knelt beside the body of a boy who might have been his age.
Sara nodded and looked around. “We should give these people a proper service. It’s inappropriate to leave them like this!” Seriously! Why hasn’t anyone done anything about this?
“Everybody is terrified,” Kevin said with a frown as he continued to scan the bodies. “This was Maula’s work. Both she and Kerun had servants here and this bloodshed became inevitable the moment she decided to rebel again.”
Sara nodded and sighed. “That would explain why this city has seemed deserted, even for Foldo. Still, that means there is no one who can do it but us.”
Kevin didn’t seem to be listening as he had just stumbled onto a smaller body among the crowd. This one wasn’t human, but a young Kerunite, the Life God’s answer to the Maulans. These were gentle creatures, supposedly capable of harming anyone but their tall, shadowy counterparts. But those bulging white stone eyes, which normally glowed with a power that was said to destroy Maulans, were dim.
Kevin seemed to have a harder time accepting this casualty than the others as this pitiable sight had brought him to tears. He leaned over the tiny corpse and gasped as his tears fell on the body.
Sara watched patiently, deciding that the funerary rites she was anxious to perform could wait for him to pull himself together. But as the tears pooled on the creature’s body, that brilliant light returned to its eyes and it began to blink confusedly. Beaming with relief, the feykin stood up.
“Good! It wasn’t too late for this one!”
Sara observed with astonishment as the little fey skipped toward the boy and threw its arms around his leg. The kerunite chirped gratefully and nuzzled his shin as if the scene of death around them was nothing but an illusion.
“That is… unheard of! Amazing! What-- what did you do?”
“I have revived this creature with the power of Kerun,” Kevin said with a smile. “Fey creatures are not bound to Fadal as mortal spirits are, so I guess the threshold I have for doing so is much longer than usual.”
“Are you saying you can restore life to people as well?”
Kevin nodded solemnly as he glanced at the field of corpses once more. “Usually, but not so long after death. I wish I could do something for these people.”
“The funerary rites due to them is all we can do,” Sara said, a little pointedly.
Kevin nodded in agreement, smiling as if he had just heard this idea for the first time. “Agreed! Shall I go find help while you are sanctifying the site?”
Kevin didn’t wait for Sara to reply, but flitted away as if the matter were already settled. This left Sara to prepare for her ceremony alone. With a sigh, she set about cleansing the energy that the violence had disrupted by circling the collective of bodies. The second half of her circuit brought her close to the temple steps. As she walked past the temple, she glanced up toward it and was disappointed to see nobody. The temple had clearly been sealed when Maula’s acolytes purged their brethren. Still, it seems dangerous to be here alone!
Sara had finished her circle and began a prayer for Serenity to nourish the fouled earth when she heard someone approaching from behind. Figuring that Kevin had returned with some of their allies, she finished her prayer before standing to face her friends. But they weren’t there; the footsteps that she had heard belonged to a trio of maulans. The beasts hissed when she noticed them, causing her to recoil in surprise. But she had been prepared for such an encounter; with a tap of her foot, the earth itself spung up to grab all three of them.
“Oi!” the largest of them roared! “You think a few rocks can hold us? You’ve only delayed your death, mortal!”
Sara raised her eyebrows at her furious captive. In her studies, she had learned that a maulan was said to become vocal after reaching an uncommon age. He might actually be older than me!
“Or perhaps I have delayed yours,” Sara said while scanning the area for anyone who could help her. “Until you break free, you are at my mercy. Somehow, I don’t think I’ll be able to convince my comrades to share that mercy.”
“If I die, so be it! Who would want to live with the shame of displeasing our mistress?” the maulan said, his companions snarling in agreement.
“Anyone who actually values life, for starters,” Sara said calmly, though she did not feel that way. Where is everyone?
The maulans laughed uproariously until the vocal one responded, “Our lives are worthless! We are all but implements of the Gods! So few of us get the honor of ever actually being useful, so fuck your value for life!” When he finished, the maulans chortled.
Sara was saved the need for a retort out of nowhere as one of the maulans howled in pain and the others began to squirm around in confusion. A quick scan revealed the source of his discomfort: the kerunite that Kevin had revived had apparently been left with her to wander among its dead friends and it had apparently found its way onto a leg that remained exposed through Sara’s stone trap. Its eyes glowed more radiantly than before as the leg began to swell and it broke away bemusedly. As the rest of the maulan’s body swelled, it shrugged and began to hug the leg of another.
The vocal maulan looked down at this point and gasped at the sight of the kerunite. “Get this little shit away from me!”
Sara watched with a combination of amusement and regret as the second of the three maulans began to swell uncontrollably. It was at this point that the first of them exploded into a cloud of acid green mist. This opened a space in Sara’s trap for the talking maulan to squeeze out through. His feet hit the ground on the side of freedom just as his other comrade exploded. Sara tried to trap him again, but found herself unable to move the earth in her exhaustion. She stumbled backwards as the leering creature kicked the kerunite as far away as he could, taking particular care to avoid touching its eyes.
“I told you that you were delaying the inevitable!” the maulan growled with a triumphant smirk. “All life is worthless! Except perhaps yours, which is why my mistress demands that I take it!”
Sara rolled her head back in desperation, willing her friends to show up. She thought she could see them when she turned her head to the right, but they were too far way to do anything. That didn’t stop them from sprinting toward her, but the maulan was close and his tail was faster than any of them. As far away as they were, neither Seth’s or Maya’s spells, nor Mia’s gun could help her. Sam didn’t even have any magic that she was aware of, and she knew nothing at all of Millie’s magic. She was completely helpless as she lied prone, ready to accept the fate that awaited her until a wandering thought somehow shifted the direction of her thoughts. Where is Kevin?
She looked up to see the fifth champion hovering a feet off the ground behind the maulan, his eyes popping with a fierce white glow. He looks like a kerunite! He grabbed the Maulan’s tail and held onto it with a strength she couldn’t have imagined in him. The maulan thrashed in agony as he tried to free his tail, but he couldn’t stop his body from swelling in the same way the others had. Kevin only released his grip when he exploded.
“I am happy for you to have experienced such a long life,” he murmured as he wiped a green splotch from his face.
Seth and the others caught up moments later and Mia was the first to offer a hand to help Sara up.
“He’s been making us all look bad,” she grumbled as she pulled the acolyte back to her feet.
“We should be grateful for his aid,” Sara replied with a sigh. “His power to wield the abilities of the fey gives us an unimaginable advantage against the maulans.”
“I was happy to help,” Kevin said with a smile. “This world needs its champions until Maula is returned to Fadal. All of them.”
Seth looked up toward the temple. “Still, I can’t believe you left her alone, here of all places! There could be more than maulans around here who want us dead!”
Kevin nodded in embarrassment. “You’re right! I wasn’t thinking! I’m sorry! But I would never have let anything happen to her!”
Sara pulled the boy into a tight hug and said, “It doesn’t matter! I was endangered only because I was careless. The fact remains that my continued existence is only because of you.”
Seth rolled his eyes and said, “Careless or not, you shouldn’t have been here alone. Master Karian told me while you were gone that Maula is building her army here! If we’re going to give these people a good cremation, we’d better do it quickly and get back to the safer side of town!”
Sara nodded and gestured toward the field of bodies. “Right! I have sanctified the ground. All that remains is to gather everyone up and prepare the pyre.”
“You heard her, everyone!” Seth barked. “I have some gloves for anyone who needs any!”
“Not me,” Mia said as she began to rummage through her backpack. “I keep my own for when I need to keep my fingerprints to myself.”
“Fair enough,” Sara said with a shrug as she beckoned to Seth. “Not you, though. I’ll need your fire magic to prepare the pyre.”
The work of gathering, sanctifying, and burning the corpses took up the entire day and the night which followed, during which Clint remained conspicuously absent. When Sara had said her rites for the final body Seth had laid on the pyre she finally asked what the other champion was up to.
“We took the other artifacts to him and set him to work on the Storm of Mercy,” the spellwarrior asked as he flicked his wrist to magically nourish the dying flames.
Sara’s eyes widened with surprise. “Wow, already? I wasn’t aware he had any background in forging weapons.”
“Well, you wouldn’t think so, but somehow the week you and Mia were gone was enough time for him to figure it out. I don’t say it enough, but that man is fucking smart!”
Sara shook her head slowly in disbelief. “As I understand it, that amount of progress in forging weapons is impossible, even for him! Even if he had a teacher, how does that person even know the pattern we need?”
Seth smirked. “Well, it helps that he went and found a direct descendant of the smith who helped the original champions make i. I could have found a guy like that eventually, but I’d have never thought to look for him in the first place. Fortunately, you don’t participate in such a legend without keeping its memory latched to your family for ages to come.”
“Do you suppose he’s working still on it this late? I want to see how he’s doing!” Sara said excitedly, but the spellwarrior shook his head.
“Even if he’s anywhere near done at this point, he can be a bit of a baby about pulling all-nighters, so he’s probably not in the best of moods,” Seth replied with a fond smile. “You should just go home and get some sleep. Maybe he’ll be done by the time we wake up.”
As it turned out, Clint had only finished the shaft of the halberd by the time she had arisen from a nap. What was more, the man had retired for a spell of his own by then, so she wasn’t able to ask any questions. She did meet Martin, but found no hope in his answers.
“It’ll be done when it’s done!” he had snapped.
Sara paced the streets around the city’s safe zone anxiously for the next day, stopping only to sleep. At this point in the quest, she felt that she had done all she could to help. With only the harrowing task of bringing the legendary halberd to life and the battle with Maula and her minions ahead of them, it was hard to figure out the role she would play in the next few days. She wanted so desperately to do something useful, which she realized was a severe contrast to the lifestyle she had followed in the monastery. The Doctrine of Tranquility had taught her to be patient and bring comfort to others as needed. But now as she waited for Clint to finish his work, she found herself thinking more proactively than before.
It was then that she realized that there was something she could do. Poor Clint must be so sore after all of the effort he had put into the forge. A touch of healing magic would not only help him to feel better, but leaving him in the physical condition to work faster than he must have been at the moment. As soon as the idea entered her head, it felt like the thing to do, so she walked to Martin’s workshop and slipped past the blacksmith to spare herself his unhelpful attitude.
She walked inside and found Clint bent over a table. She could see the blade of the Storm of Mercy protruding from beneath his torso, firmly attached to a golden pole. He did it! She smiled upon seeing the weapon and placed a hand on his back. Clint sat up slowly in his chair and looked up at the acolyte.
“Hm?” He mumbled.
“Easy,” Sara said soothingly as she prayed inwardly for Serenity to relieve him of his fatigue. “Just relax for a minute! You’ve worked so hard!”
“I’m not done yet,” he said quietly, but with noticeably less exhaustion in his voice. “It’s all in shape, but I can’t feel any of its power.”
Sara raised her eyebrows. “I’m not sure that’s the sort of power a person can feel.”
Clint shook his head. “Oh, it is. I remember seeing it in my dream. I could feel its power from a few feet away, but now I can’t feel anything even when I hold it in my hand.”
“Well, the halberd is perfectly forged. Let’s go talk to Martin and see if he knows what’s wrong with it!”
Clint nodded in agreement and led the way back outside, where the blacksmith was busy tempering a sword. He looked up at once and smiled wryly as he saw the halberd.
“Fine weapon, boy, but it’s no Storm of Mercy. Not yet.”
“But we’ve gathered all of the champions’ treasures and the halberd looks flawless!” Sara exclaimed. “What’s missing?”
Martin frowned and said, “Mind you, I don’t actually understand what this means. But there is one last step to complete the Storm of Mercy. You have to plunge the blade into the heart of Kerun. He is the source of the weapon’s power.”
Clint scratched his head with both hands in frustration. “Another puzzle now? When will this be over?”
Sara frowned sadly and placed her palm on his shoulder to comfort him. He had been through so much in the past few days. She could heal the ache in his muscles, but that did nothing to address the stress he was under. After spending so long hard at work on the halberd, he was clearly burned out.
“It’s okay,” she whispered gently. “There’s someone else we can ask now. Let’s get everyone together.”
The two of them returned to the inn where the rest of the party had been resting. They found them in the communal dining area, eating in silence. When Sara and Clint joined them, Seth whistled at the sight of the golden weapon Clint carried.
“So that’s the weapon that’s going to kill Maula, huh?” the spellwarrior mumbled with a slight look of reverence.
Maya turned to Seth and hugged him tightly. “Isn’t that great? We can finally go and break your curse now!”
Clint shook his head and said, “Not quite yet. As nice as this beauty looks, it’s no better than any other halberd.”
Seth slapped his palm to his forehead. “Oh come on! Isn’t there enough magic in all the crap we put into it already?”
“Not nearly,” Sara said with a glance to Kevin. “It seems that the Storm of Mercy draws power from Kerun. To complete it, we’re supposed to plunge it directly into his heart.”
Mia scoffed and slammed her palm on the table. “I thought the whole point of all of this was to banish a deity who has invaded our world? Where the fuck are we supposed to find another?”
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