***Malenkov's POV***
My sister was always a crude person, but she never really went out of her way to cause harm to a person, let alone an animal.
Yet for some reason, as we were travelling to Kwep (Kiev) We encountered a peasant. His skin and body looked too good and well-maintained to be a peasant, yet his clothes showed his poor nature.
She wanted to step out and see the peasant, much to my surprise, so I followed her as she asked him a line of questions. The peasant had clear distrust and hesitancy in answering her questions, so much so he even hid his name.
Out of nowhere, my sister starts throwing a fit and starts holding the man in the air with telekinesis. I was a bit against this sudden violence, but I wanted to see where this was going.
Then she threw the man back and she suddenly started reaping distraught in herself.
"Wha…-How could you be a hero?!"
"Huh?" What did she just say? The hero? Not possible, the hero is currently in the capital meeting with the king. Unless he was fake? No, it couldn't be. Was my sister's magic incorrect? My sister has 6th circle magic though… Or is my sister mentally unwell? She could be tired from all the training the Magic Palace gave her.
***Narration***
Stalin was dumbfounded. 'A hero? Like one of those child's superhero stories they sell in the West?'
Stalin stood back up, leveraging the tree to get back on his footing. "What nonsense are you-." He abruptly stopped and saw the mage foaming at her mouth.
'What's wrong with her?'
Malenkov reacted in shock, laying her sister down on the soft grass.
"The hero's blessing…" The knight muttered, he then looked at Stalin with a now wary expression.
"You… Who the hell are you?" His hand reached for his hilt and drew his sword out.
'Fuck.'
"The hero is supposed to be in the capital, hundreds of kilometers away. Not only that, one hero is supposed to exist at a time, one after the other. Yet for some reason there are two. What do you have in response?"
"You can't deduce I'm a hero from her rolling back and foaming at the mouth." Stalin snapped back.
"The hero's blessing grants it protective magic from magic and inflicts mental damage to its opponents. You're currently not injured even after being attack by a 2nd circle spell, and my sister suddenly dropped down and started shaking."
"Can't that be just normal defensive magic?"
"If it is so, you will be hanged, and I still doubt it. My sister was a 6th circle magician, meaning she should've been able to resist all magic until the 3rd circle, and even then the magic of the 4th circle wouldn't have effects this severe, so it could only be 5th circle. Most peasants don't even learn magic, let alone go up to the 3rd circle. Meaning the only possible explanation is that you're a hero."
'What's this guy? A detective?' Stalin grit his teeth in frustration. He had just revived in a peak build and young age, only to be a bootleg hero, or die. No, he needed to live, for the Collectivist Socialist Utopia that he so desperately needed.
"You can't exactly kill me though can you? I am a hero as you call it. Isn't the murder of a hero considered taboo and treason? You'd lose more than your life, your entire family be stripped of their title and ruined, banished from the steppes and never to return! While I would only be considered a victim, a martyr if you will. Who really loses more from this?"
The knight staggered, he had not considered the possibility of losing rather than gaining from murdering this could-be-hero. The knight loosened his grip.
"I could also gain more from killing you and bringing your head to the church, and to be praised as the one who murdered a fake-hero. It all comes down to my luck."
"That's gambling is it not? Have the teaching at your church or cathedral not taught you that gambling is a sin? Moreover, even if you did gamble on this chance, you would still be a murderer of an innocent man, or worse a hero."
The knight's grip loosened further, to the point only his fingertips were holding onto the blade. Stalin smiled mentally, he was getting to him.
"You could still just bring me to a priest or bishop and just verify your suspicions, you'd still be rewarded if I'm a fake, or if I am the real deal, be credited to be the first one to ever realize the existence of 2 heroes at once! It could be divine fate, being attributed as a figure of importance in religion!"
The knight pondered the possibility, then gestured two of the watching escorts to come over and put him in the carriage.
Stalin gleefully accepted the hospitality and hopped into the carriage, followed by the knight carrying his unconscious sister.
"Do promise me that your sister won't go all feral after me when she wakes up."
"She won't wake up easily. The spell she used kills a normal person. She'll probably be up in a week."
'Was she trying to kill me or shoo me away?!That's not important now. I need as much information as I can about religion here to leverage my new position.'
"You'll know that growing up a peasant means I won't have proper education, thus… Could you inform me on the significance of heroes?"
The knight grumbles, knowing he had to put up with Stalin until he could verify he was a true hero.
"Ugh, if you have to know. Our religion is the Orthodox one. In which Heroes are considered the direct will of god themselves, god cannot have more than one will, so your existence contradicts that, meaning they have to revise the entire bible just because of you."
He expected something like that. Russia was an Orthodox nation based on Christianity where it was more conservative than Catholicism.
"Orthodoxy implies that there is a different variation of the religion does it not?"
"It does. The Catholic side believes that heroes are not the direct will of god, but rather only blessed by them, and thus subject to corruption. Catholicism is also a reason for the splitting of West Raika and East Raika in the first place, there were other reasons like difference in culture, race, and the neglect of West Raika. It happened around 500 years ago in the year 1300."
'500 years ago in 1100. So it's 1800, just the beginning of the Modern Age. Perfect.'
The carriage arives at the entrance of a gate, leading into what Stalin can only make out as a town.
The gates swing open and the carriage along with its escort knights walk in. A few of the locals stare at them, mouths agape. Most are silent, but a small minority stare at the carriage with skeptical eyes.
Eyes that Stalin all but knew too well. The same eyes he observed from the peasantry from his life. The same eyes that would wage a revolution to depose their Tsar.
Stalin loved it.