"Well met, Schemers!
"For schemers, in truth, thee are. Cleave to the plan, the plan . Say I should threaten the lives of brave adventurers three, where is the dull peasant, the fat merchant, the lovesick maiden, to spare them a tear? If your boldest young woman is stripped, ravished, and it is hidden in a dungeon from coward eyes, is it not called a commonplace part of life? Part of the plan. Your brutish, execrable plan! Oh, trust in thy plan, while still thee can …yes, and wait till you get a load of me, hahahahaha…!"
"What?"
The laughing man, little and ugly as a goblin, had vanished from the town square. Harry Fawkes shrugged, and headed back to the Inn, where the wizard Ilsa had joined his and Susan's party earlier that evening. They were real adventurers, now. Strange and significant happenings were to be expected.
The next day, the morning of their first quest, the Shadows came.
There were no more goblin slaying quests; the Shadows filed down their tunnels like ferrets, and killed the last one within a week. The civilised races had barely time to celebrate their unearned relief–or to wonder how Porcelains would learn A from B, without starter quests for two thirds to get killed on–when the Shadows finished the goblins and started to kill everything else.
They were faceless, voiceless, and implacable. Holy Light did not slow them, no blade touched them. A certain quiet man in armour did not fight them, understanding nothing but that his purpose had ended. Heroes and monsters fought the Shadows and died. The nobles and peasants and children who had always left anything like danger to the heroes simply died.
No mark on their bodies, no fuss. Those who had dignity died with it, those who had none without. No one had their dignity taken away. There were no survivors, in the end, to mourn or envy the dead. No pain, no shame, and the terror ended with life. Mastah Kurtz had dropped his bomb in the heart of darkness, to exterminate the brutes and end it all.
There were three survivors. When it came out that somehow they survived the Shadows, they were hailed as the heroes of the world. When it grew clear that the Shadows simply refused to harm them, they were almost lynched–but since the Shadow had come the Three had done nothing but fight them, and grown strong. Every Shadow they fought was a little stronger, just enough to challenge them, as if some alien power had twisted their world into a game.
"It's not right…" Susan fell to her knees beside the little blonde Priestess. The dead girl's cheeks were still covered in icy tears, "This sweet, caring girl, what did she do? What didn't she do? She cared…!"
"Then it is better she died than living to see this." The wizard Ilsa's face was pale, but her grip on Susan's arm was firm.
The Castle of Shadows filled the night sky above them. It had appeared in the Capital, a week after the Shadows. The approach was a carpet of dead heroes.
"Then, if we had to live, and see this, what in the world did we do?" Susan's dark eyes grew hollow. Several times, their plight had overwhelmed, and she had gone under–but Ilsa spoke to her firmly, Harry spoke gently and kissed her hair. She stood again.
"Okay then," Harry's voice was like burning iron, "Let's end this."
He wore Artefact plate mail he had looted, and held a runic longsword. Something buried in his heart sprang with joy that he was going to save the world–even if his two comrades were all that was left.
Before the Shadows came, the little laughing Wanderer had appeared, in every city and village the Three knew of, over the course of a day. Said his piece about Schemers and tears, vanished. The only light that had kept Harry, Susan and Ilsa sane was that world's last heroes should find the devil and kill him. That the nightmare would finally end.
There were Shadows, great and small, deathtraps and mazes. The Three had needed to learn their trade quickly, and they had; but in the end they had to pass through because there would be no one else.
Finally, they reached the great hall, and faced the little Wanderer, the prince of Shadows. He grinned with all his sharky teeth, and twiddled long fingers like twigs in his beard. The Three got within ten paces of him, then Harry spoke the only word they had.
"Why?"
"To make us a statement, mayhaps." The merry little man, the Immortal Goblin, grinned down from a heap of burning money. "There be some that wish the world turned upside down."
"Well, you've killed everyone in the world, but I fear you've failed to express your point clearly," Ilsa spoke coldly, eyes burning through her spectacles, "Perhaps you could spell it out?"
"Oho, my brave maid…" The Immortal Goblin grinned as only a real goblin can, "For the one, I have avenged me on those witless earthworms, usurpers of the goblin name. For the other…but for this good fellow's pranks, know thee what had befallen three young questers, foolish-brave?"
He opened a window in air, and showed them how their first goblin slaying quest would have ended. Harry's sword fell from his hand. The goblin laughed and laughed.
"We didn't want this…" Susan finally forced out the words, "WE NEVER WOULD HAVE WANTED THIS!"
"Oh, my brave Fighter, poor Lucretia, for whom the world was banished. Boadicea's daughter, for whom this rapist's world was ravaged–humans never get what they want!" The Goblin of Pook's Hill rocked back and forth on his burning throne, "Not even my present employer, that artless, long-winded fellow that wouldst slaughter a world to show them ravishment is wrong! For my part, I think it boring, and this is so much fun!"
"SHUT UP!" Susan roared out her lungs.
Harry broke the silence.
"It was a dunghill world, but the people…they were people. I'd rather die nameless in that cave, if it would bring back everyone who died."
"Harry..." Susan took his hand and clung to it.
"Susan. What those things did you you, I can't, I won't let you…!"
"I…think I could. For that little blonde girl, for our friends back home, I'll fight."
She remember the one night when Harry had snapped and almost despaired, but she had been there. She had given herself to the heroic idiot she'd always loved. Whatever hell they plunged into, she had to believe that would always be real.
("Oh yes, gentle reader, my employer shippeth Fighter x Warrior rather more than somewhat. And by Oberon, thou dost not know long-winded until..." The Three had no idea who the Goblin was talking to.)
"Alright them." Ilsa snapped, "It makes more sense for only three to die–and you would have saved the world, as you always wanted. I'm willing to die as well, if it brings back everyone else."
"In truth, forsooth…" The Immortal Goblin breathed, "Thou art truly heroes."
A profound silence followed. When the Immortal Goblin started to pick his teeth, the Three realised that this would end the way they'd expected after all.
"I can almost imagine," Susan muttered, as she dropped into the crouching tiger stance, "That everything will be right, if I can only punch in your face."
"In truth, forsooth," The Merry Wanderer of the Night twinkled and grinned, "It will."
Ilsa thrust out her staff, the words of anti-magic rang out–but something appeared on her chest that smoked, ticked and exploded. Blew her to pieces, as the Goblin clapped his hands.
Harry had his sword again. With Susan barely ahead, he leapt at the Immortal Goblin, with a battle cry that was a scream.
The Goblin flicked his long fingers. Harry's arms grew long and hard, his scream died as his armour burst from within–a huge oak tree was rooted in the hall where he had been.
Susan felt teeth growing, her limbs bending. Her ears–whatever mad plan was seeing her changing into a rabbit, she only knew she would be living on lettuce, and everyone would be dead, unless she moved and struck and killed.
It took exactly as much willpower as she had, but she had to wring out every drop she possessed. She cried out for every forgotten hero, thrust all her Ki straight down her arm, and threw a punch at the Immortal Goblin's pumpkin grin that would have made boulders crack.
He twisted easily aside. Then he was at her ear, whispering the words that would redeem every world and make everything right;
"If we shadows have offended; think but this, and all is mended. Think on this weak and idle theme…it did but happen in a dream!"
After a moment, Susan laughed. Then she kicked the Immortal Goblin across the hall and out of the window–
–and then she woke up, again. In a wood between the worlds, a space within spaces. The dressing room of the multiverse.
She got up. First she would find Ilsa, and Harry. Then she would punch the idiot whose story it had been. Make him feel as if she had, if that was impossible. After that, there were worlds elsewhere. Enough stories for a dozen lives, full of love and heroics. World enough and time, to forget the nightmares.
Elsewhere, the imaginary world that Puck had redeemed, the world of the Goblinslayer, drifted indifferently on.
A/N: The rape of Lucretia (as related by Puck's old friend Shakespeare), brought an end to the Kingdom of Rome. Boadicea's daughters were raped by the Romans, which, among other things, led their mother to have about 80,000 people slaughtered in a very brutal fashion. The rape of the Levite's Concubine, in the book of Judges, (which I didn't have time to mention, along with Dogsville and Pirate Janni) led to the slaughter of almost the whole tribe of Benjamin by the other eleven tribes. Something similar, on paper. for Fighter, if her own world continues indifferent to her fate, strikes me as a righteous, decent statement. If Puck seems a bit OP, remember he's from Shakespeare, Kipling and Neil Gaiman; any Japanese Light Novel is a dead flea between his toes.