Hero
I appeared standing in the middle of the plaza in the Emerald Kingdom. I sighed in relief as I fell to my knees. Taking Alia’s bubble rifle and firing it at the dome had worked! It was weird I was able to use it now, when earlier I couldn’t.
My second option was to have Sapphire shoot an ice bolt. But she had broken down sobbing and I really didn't want to deal with that. I slowly climbed to my feet and looked around the town. Everything seemed.. Normal now? At least no one was chasing me.
“Ah! Hero! I have finally found you!” I twirled to see Ruby rushing up to me. I instantly noticed three things were very wrong.
First.. She was wearing a red dress, not a yellow one?! Her.. her eyes were green, not blue? But the biggest change was her long purple hair.. It was a vibrant red, the same as her dress.
The weirdest part was none of the physical changes though, it was that she ran up to me.. Without glitching. Not a single dress malfunction, shifting, no words, nothing. She just spoke and rushed up to me.
She didn’t tackle me, and when I pulled out my spear, her eyes went.. They went wide and she took a step back in surprise… She noticed my spear?! “Hero! I.. I don’t know what I did to scare you! I swear I am not like those mad people that tried to assault me… “
Even as she spoke, a guard rushed towards her. I wondered what he was going to say, but he never reached us, as without any hesitation Ruby summoned a ball of fire and launched it at the guard turning him to ash in mere moments before turning back to me.
“Oh Hero, it’s been so bad Hero, the people have gone mad! The beastkin has declared war! But now that you are here all is right!” She smiled as she.. She fell to her knees and worshipped me.
“Sister!” Sapphire called out as she rushed over. She had apparently spawned in the castle as she came from the gates. Ruby instantly lobbed a fireball at Sapphire with no remorse.
Sapphire screamed and ducked, causing the fireball to miss. Ruby didn’t stop though and swirled as she summoned a bunch of fire arrows that she then launched at Sapphire!
I was so stunned, I.. I didn’t know how to react to the princesses fighting. I didn’t even know Ruby could fight?! She had never fought, like ever? I had once had a group of men rape her and she had sobbed and begged for me to save her the entire time. I fed her to spiders and pushed her off cliffs. I had fucking choked her to death during sex a few times.
Not had Ruby shown an ounce of power, much less the pure devastation she was unleashing?! Sapphire had always been a coward, even now she had summoned her bow and was shooting arrows that Ruby was casually dodging.
I dodged to the side as an arrow almost hit me. “ENOUGH!” Sapphire suddenly screamed and I sighed as I waited for the inevitable flood of water.
It didn’t come.. Instead, Sapphire fired multiple ice bolts around Ruby. To my surprise Ruby literally had nowhere to dodge to and was hit head on with one of the ice bolts. Sapphire, ripping her dress off, jumped into the air, summoned a bubble of water as she summoned another medium sized one above her and launched it at Ruby.
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What the fuck was I watching?! Instead of Dodging, Ruby threw a fireball that met the water ball and steam filled the square. A dozen citizens melted from the heat and my health began deteriorating rapidly. I rushed outside the steam in shock.
“You will not claim me, monster! I am the Hero’s!” Ruby screeched. As more lights appeared in the heated mist flying towards where Sapphire had been. Suddenly there was a snapping sound and.. Ruby’s form just.. Fell over.
Sapphire's form appeared, and began to.. Drag Ruby’s body out of the mist?! She casually dragged Ruby’s body over to me and then panted for a moment after dropping her. She shakily brought up her hand and a cleansing mist filled everywhere but Ruby.
My health was instantly filled and the burns from the mist faded. There was barely any damage on Sapphire, but even the dirt cleared away as she shook her head at her sister.
Turning to me she asked. “Hero, my sister has attacked me, how.. How do I explain I am not an enemy?” She stared at me pleadingly and I had no answer.
More guards rushed up before I could say anything and the first one to reach us attacked Sapphire. She was so shocked, she took the spear in her ribs directly. Instead of dying, she just looked pissed.
“You.. DARE ATTACK HERO’S SECOND WIFE!” She screeched as the spear turned to ice, then the man turned to ice, he fell over and shattered into a million pieces. The second guard swung, but she grabbed his arm and turned it to ice before shattering it.
The guard stumbled back, and Sapphire launched a single ice spike directly into his heart. He hadn’t even hit the ground before she turned back to me. “Hero please! I hate when my sister is upset with me. Only you, as the God among us, can help!”
I took a long, considerable moment to hold back the laughter forming. God.. god among them?! Ha! I had a fucking spear! These people were even crazier than the preprogrammed versions!
Sapphire's reactions were so unlike her, even in Muosil she.. I froze as I remembered what she had done to Alia, how she had reacted to the mimic, how she had watched us..
“Sapphire, what do you think you should do?” I asked. She looked uncertainly down at Ruby. Raising her hand, she fired off a bolt of ice and a nearby guard rushing towards us fell over dead.
“Well.. Hero.. Not that my opinion is anything to your greatness! But.. if you truly wish to hear this lowly Princesses opinion.. I mean..” She trailed off as she looked thoroughly troubled at the thought.
I waited for her to continue, after a moment she turned and stomped her foot. The dozen of guards who had spawned and were rushing us were suddenly impaled by ice spikes as the ground around us turned to ice, leaving us as the only spawn ice wasn’t.
“Well..” I asked leadingly. She grabbed her head and fell to her knees, ironically in the process, an ice storm started where ice spikes rained from a large cloud she had summoned and every single one hit a target.
I wanted to cry at the pure bullshit unfairness of this. I was supposedly the Hero, but every person I had tortured over hundreds of iterations, was proving that they were in fact THAT powerful the entire time.
That means, these overpowered insane psychopaths LET me kill them. They let me watch them get raped.. I was so beyond horrified at the realization that at any moment, Ruby could have just.. Killed me. In her thousands upon thousands of deaths.
I remember sliding a dagger into her heart slowly while she sobbed. She hadn’t even summoned a fire wisp! That.. that figure wanted me to collect.. These things?!
It wasn’t the death itself, it was the pure insanity of it. To not lift a finger to save yourself from anything just because the Hero was the one doing it?! “Hero?” I looked down to see Ruby looking up at me with.. With tears in her eyes?! “I.. failed you my Hero!” She sobbed as she reached for me weakly, like I was just out of her reach despite laying on her back.
For the longest moment, I almost snarked back. Then I remembered the fire storm and I froze. After a long moment I swallowed and did something I thought I would never do. I played my role…
“You.. didn’t fail me Ruby, you simply made a small mistake, but.. It’s.. um..” I trailed off as I tried and failed to come up with the right thing to say before lamely finishing. “Just get up and serve me?”
The last part came out as more of a question then anything, but I was really lost on what else to do. I had spent so long avoiding being the Hero.. I had forgotten how to be one.
Ironic all things considered…
