Once again I was in the field just outside of town, dancing feverishly with my hammer, forcing my body to push just that little bit harder than it had the time before.
Once, this had been a piece of serenity, a place for me to improve and understand more of myself, the earth blurring underneath my feet as I sought the words to propel myself further towards competency.
Now, though, it was anything but serene. Long had it been since the days that I'd be able to train without that gnawing feeling in my gut, the weight on my shoulders ever present. Once upon a time, I had read the stories of characters that would face up against impossible odds with a smile and a brave heart. They had inspired me in a visceral way, that never truly lasted long, but I could attribute those moments of inspiration to being catalysts for change in my former life.
However, thinking back upon those stories gave me a cold feeling inside. A detachment from what I had once idealised and, perhaps, even found relatable. Now, my mind wondered towards those characters. The ones who you'd swear ruined the book for you, if they weren't filled with so much truth.
There was a fine line, however, between a character who was dour because of their burden, and one who was actively whiney and insufferable underneath its weight. I felt myself, ever so slowly, becoming the first of the two. At least, in my own mind.
I could feel the magnitude of my life catch up with my psyche. A Demigod, a Champion, a saviour. That was who I modelled myself to be. Pretentiousness ignored, it was something of an impossible task, something that you may only believe heroes of legend capable of facing against. Heracles, Gilgamesh, and their ilk.
But me? As I turned into another step, straining my muscles to pull my hammer along with me, barely capable of moving it from the dirt, something inside of me recoiled.
It was the height of arrogance. I was a Demigod, but I was uncomfortable being told I was. I was a Champion, but the title left me with a distinct feeling of separation from its meaning. I was Rethi's 'Master' and yet, just beneath the surface, I wished that he would one day find that I was nothing special. Nothing worthy of note.
Maybe I had claim to being slightly more charismatic than the average person, capable of somehow succeeding in difficult social situations. But maybe I could attribute that to my pseudo Soul-Seeker status. Empathy was so ingrained in my being now that I could feel the emotions around me as if they were my own.
I knew how others felt about me. I could now feel the adoration of Rethi, the conflicted hope of Mayer, the scathing frustration of Alena. I could feel the fear, wonderment and intrigue of those that I passed in the streets of this small town.
But it created a conflict inside me. I wasn't how people viewed me. I had seen this argument happen with those that were famous back on Earth. They had achieved their fame, and their image impressed itself upon millions, and yet they weren't quite the way they seemed in interviews and on television.
I wasn't a celebrity, by any stretch of the imagination, but I could feel how others responded to me. I had begun to understand the isolation the famous must have felt, the adoration of a person that you aren't sure exists.
It was just another weight on my shoulders. I had so many weights now. So many expectations to be held to that I could feel them slowly burdening me further.
As I completed my last round of a new abridged kata, focussed on training to use my even heavier hammer, I pulled the Soul Weapon back into me and started walking back towards town.
That was the one thing that was keeping me from crumbling underneath the weight of it all. A direction, a purpose. What was a greater purpose than to save an untold number of lives? But I could still feel it weighing on me, and I could only predict that it'd grow.
However, as I did most days, I shook off the cloud that hung over my mind, forcing just far enough away from my thoughts that I could operate. Today I had a very important task, something that had been months in the making.
I was going to confront Rethi's mother, Shae Orsen.
I hummed a structureless melody as I travelled expediently down the worn and decrepit paths towards the ruined section of town. It was all I could do to stop myself from overthinking the conversation that was bound to happen.
It only took me a few minutes to get to the Orsen Household. Surprisingly, it was in a far better condition than what it had been earlier in the year. Some of the entrance had been replaced with a mismatching wood and had clearly been cleaned semi-recently.
I walked to the door and gave it a gentle knock. The wait was rather short, as soon after a confused looking woman swung the door open. She was surprisingly tall, easily able to look me in the face with little need to look upwards.
"Ah, Mrs Smithe. It's a pleasure to meet you again. Good to see you in such good health." I smiled, genuinely, holding out my hand to be shaken. Past our original meeting where Rethi and I had convinced her to be Shae's caretaker, I had never seen the woman again.
She looked… healthier. The first thing that I really noticed was a lack of the borderline miasmic smell that had surrounded her when we had first met. She smelt softly of flowers now, and her clothing was significantly improved. Knowing the amount of money that Rethi was paying her, it was no surprise that she was able to afford nice things. Her formerly sallow cheeks and scrawny figure was now filled with ample muscle and fat, forming her into a strikingly pretty woman, especially with her sharp blue eyes peeking out from beneath maintained, silky brown hair.
"Master… Avenforth?" She questioned as she grabbed my hand and shook it gently. I nodded, mostly to affirm that she remembered my name right.
"I have come to talk to Mrs Orsen." The woman's face drew into a pained grimace as she pulled away from the door to look back inside, shutting the door ever so slightly to obscure my view of the inside room. I waited patiently for the hushed, but clearly heated conversation to conclude, and the door opened to reveal an apologetic expression.
"I'm sorry, Master Avenforth. Shae cannot see you; she is quite unwell." She explained, but I could feel that it was a lie. Well, not a lie in that Shae was feeling unwell, but that she could not see me at all. I gave my own apologetic expression to the woman.
"I understand, Mrs Smithe, but you must understand that I cannot take no for an answer." There was a real sorrow in those words for me. I didn't like giving people ultimatums, and I seemed to be doing more and more of it recently. The woman swallowed gently and nodded.
I don't know if it was a perceived promise of violence or maybe the loss of income that prompted her to open the door for me and usher me inside the quaint little house, but at least she didn't feel any true fear from me.
"What are you doing?" Shae hissed venomously at her caretaker. Shae Orsen was sitting in a well-made lounging chair, one that was old and used but still seemed comfortable nonetheless. I could only imagine that it had come from Arren Smithe's home, especially since Shae herself was obstinate to not take money from Rethi, other than in the form of care. Maybe it was enough of a difference in her life to take the blow to her honour.
Shae had not followed the same trend as her caretaker, becoming all but skin and bones now. She had a constant glisten of sweat on her skin, the pallid colour of it almost making me feel ill by proxy. Her dark hair hung limply and without vitality. At least she seemed well taken care of under Mrs Smithe's supervision.
"There is no need to implicate your carer, Mrs Orsen. I have come here and would not have left without speaking with you no matter how vehemently she had told me to leave." Something I had suspected far more of. Shae herself seemed willing to make up for that fact.
"You expect me to let me you walk into my home and have your way? Like you did with my beggar son?" She spat.
I let any humour or warmness drop from my face, leaving behind a cold, sad mask. I sighed deeply as I sat down in another chair, similar to the one Shae herself sat in. Then I raised my eyes to hers and stared.
I could feel the social temperature in the room drop to freezing, my eyes locking onto Shae's with an iron-clad gaze. I could see straight into her. Her emotions were a wild storm of hurt, self-loathing, hate and pride. I could feel the would on her that Rethi had created by becoming a 'beggar', the armour of her pride in never having asked for anything, yet still surviving despite her hardship, stripped away to reveal the tender flesh beneath.
Each and every day the woman stabbed deeper into that hate in a duality of loathing and hate. Hate at the boy that would violate her pride so deeply, despite knowing that she would rather starve to death than have it stripped from her. And the loathing of the very same woman that inexplicably pushed her son far enough into depravity that he'd have to sell his pride for any money that he could, to steal morsels to eat at all.
I knew, as I looked at the woman, that she was hardly evil. Unreasonable, aggravating, malicious, sure. Evil, no. In fact, in that mess of emotions I could follow every one of them back down to the very root of it all. Failure.
"Mrs Orsen," I said, my voice so cold that it even surprised me, "I came here today for a very simple reason. I believe that I can cure you of your Rhy disease." There was a momentary shock, before a viscous snarl made its way onto her face.
"Hah," she sneered, "I'd bet. I'd also bet that you intended to enslave me just like you did my son. Corrupt our pride with the money you so willingly hand out, violate us for all we are worth."
This was it. The ugliness of pride. I had seen it fester inside of Alena, even still. Rethi had long since discarded his pride, willing to take any opportunity. But now I was beginning to realise just how fine a line I had walked on that first encounter, where I had left them with more money that hey considered warranted. I had used my foreign origins as leverage, then. But now I hardly cared to entertain the woman with anything as elaborate.
It was in that moment that I felt the cold and dark fall over my mind once again, the horrible weight of expectation and anxiety. My face pulled into a deep frown, one set in stone. Shae and Arren watched on as I morphed from my generally amiable self, to a cold mask, all the way to a deep displeasure.
That was when the power inside of me resonated, a deep thrum undulating forth from my body like a wave. It was nothing impressive, no massive amount of force, but it was important. It was divine. Unmistakable and unequivocal.
The two women had never felt divinity before, but as soon as it touched them, they knew. They were sure beyond words.
"You're…" Mrs Smithe began, but stopped short of saying the words. I didn't acknowledge it, for the truth was plainly obvious. My eyes locked with those of Shae Orsen's again. My eyes found the woman's emotions in disarray, shaken to their very core. She believed that she understood me and my 'game', my corrupting essence. But now she sat in front of a true figure of Divinity, regardless of my half-Godhood.
"I am disappointed, Shae Orsen." The words left my chest just as softly as they normally did, but they were infused with something more. A power similar to the oath that I had made only days ago with Alena's father.
"I did not expect much from your reaction. Maybe at best, a begrudging interest or—more hopefully a cooperative spirit. But you have a mind poisoned by a pride that has now foothold." I paused to continue to search the woman, so filled with a strange mixture of awe and fear that it almost made me grimace. "So," I continued, "I want you to think very carefully of what you say next."
The silence in the room, the biting cold of fear, was almost painful. The Hearth inside quivered in displeasure, but it knew that sometimes a conversation must take place inside a dark, cold room with no warmth in sight.
"I–" She began, but her voice failed her, body quivering under the shock of the conversation. "Why?"
The question was simple, but it was exactly what I was looking for. It was a question with no pretence, no venom or hate to accompany. It was merely an open question. However, the cold that I had found myself enveloped in, didn't lift so easily.
"Because of your son." I said quietly, but the words made it to their ears nonetheless, "He is something more now. A warrior Divine. He will one day be among the strongest to ever have lived." The words kindled something deep inside of Shae's heart, but I pressed on.
"And yet, before the inevitable day come that he will leave this small nowhere-place to become something far more, he worries for his sick mother." My mask of displeasure eased into one of mere stone. Not so much dispassion, but judgement. I was the arbiter now, and she knew. She knew that if she had simply entertained me—been anything other than the venomous, prideful apparition of a woman—that I would have helped her with nothing short of a herculean effort.
Now, I was putting the onus on her. I was asking her to prove herself to me. There was never any need for this with Rethi, nor will there likely be much for Alena. But Shae—Rethi's mother or not—had lost a suitable amount of rapport with me. Her disdain for her child, regardless of how projected it was from her own self-loathing, fuelled my own domain with enough distaste that it'd willingly accepted becoming cold, rather than warm, embracing its own antithesis.
"Why?" She said again, her eyes breaking from mine, filled with tears. She knew that she was broken, deep inside. But only now did she come to understand just how destroyed she was. The sickness had taken a toll on her that had shattered her very being, her image as an independent person. She had, by proxy, become a beggar—the very antithesis of her own character, her own pride. And now, as she stared at the floor, droplets falling from her eyes in a display of pure emotional vulnerability, I could smile.
The warmth in the room returned, a feeling of exultation consumed me as my domain sung with it's own pride and I couldn't help but grin with it's chorus of glee. As the warmth returned, and the weight and cold was dismissed, I let the Hearth sing through me.
"Because he was always something more. Because, despite a fate that pulls him towards something more every moment of every day, he obstinately stands against the tide." I paused as the sheer emotion of it all overwhelmed me, letting a single, glowing tear leak from my eye—burning with the soft light of a campfire, battling against the cold of the world.
"Because he loves you."
And that was all it took to bring the woman's armour of pride that had long since cut into her skin, embedding itself into her flesh—clattering to the ground with a mournful, excruciating wail.