Ceaseless Cycle
By Sheik Lovin' Rose-chan
Not mine. Set in Heroes 2. Because Carlawn is awesome.
The tavern was not one of the best she had seen. Ogres and trolls were never her favourite troops, powerful though they may be, and drunk ogres and trolls were even worse. It was too dark and hot, the strategically-placed candles doing little to brighten the areas away from the window and the burning sun, and to top it off it reeked of goblin sweat. Certainly not the place for an aspiring young Sorceress, but then Carlawn had little choice. Her army slaughtered to the last dwarf, the Barbarian town had been her closest refuge.
Carefully manoeuvring around a poker game and declining offers to join, she made her way to the goblin bartender and ordered a drink before sitting down and getting to know what would be her home for the next week (if she was unlucky). She probably had a head start on her fellow hero experience-wise, whoever he or she was anyway – she'd had a moderately powerful army and had found several treasure chests before her old friend Gem had come along with Phoenixes and annihilated her troops. The girl who she had giggled and swooned over knights with had smiled at her, whispering a quick apology as she moved on – or had Carlawn imagined that? – and she was left to pick up the pieces of what had once been a promising career.
It was worse than when she had been looking for her first (and only) job, because then she hadn't known what it was like. To be drunk on the power, the feeling of watching all kinds of creatures fleeing from your strength. And now she had lost that and she was nothing, a nobody; the faded hero you saw in the taverns and didn't talk to and never even considered the possibility that you would one day become them, because you knew that only if someone hired you you would become the most powerful hero in the world.
Some hero she was. She'd lead her followers to their deaths and had been too stubborn to flee, too proud to surrender. Surely Gem would have granted her troops passage, surely there could have been a better way. But she had new recruits now, only sprites and dwarves, but every hero started small. She remembered fondly her old sprites, the ones who'd been with her through everything, the ones who'd joined an inexperienced hero-wannabe looking for her first job when no others would.
They're gone. It hit her like a sledgehammer; they're gone. Those wonderful sprites, charming and witty and clever…growing cold and colder still in some forgotten meadow. And she was left to pick up the pieces, move on in a world that had been too strong for them. Because the hero always lived; armies were slaughtered or surrendered or fled, but the hero would always, always remain, for better or worse.