Part 4 – Heroes & Demons
"The world is so broken and sometimes it leaves you cold/
At times you can't feel the fire to guide you home/
The demons will haunt you and try to steal what you know/
But the angels, they brought you, and they're gonna hold you up."
-Shane Harper (Hold You Up)
Freedonia was no longer a small kingdom, but a burgeoning empire. She had several surrounding and even distant territories under her rule, and an army to make even a bloodthirsty general think twice before trying to take her on. Despite her army, however, she was not much feared. Lord Spaulding the Great was regarded fondly as benevolent and fair, and he was rich enough that he could afford to either pay off or have killed anyone who didn't choose to regard him that way.
But perhaps one of Freedonia's most famous residents was her knight, Captain Steven Westmoreland, famed primarily for his ability to fight and to inspire slackers to become hard-working and responsible guardsmen and loyal soldiers. However, Captain Steven had also become famous for being the first person to jump into The Pit with The Beast and survive. Many would-be heroes had of course followed his example, with varying results, but it is ever the first to accomplish such a feat who gains fame for it. Steven, for his part, was unhappy to have caused such a trend, and had personally sworn off Pit Jumping, even as he had long ago sworn off drinking.
What was not so well known was that Freedonia's wizard, Amie, newly promoted to Magus, had played a significant part in much of Freedonian history, aiding both monarch and knight during the annexation of both Advorton and Burdley, as well as participating in a rather secretive mission to save The Pit Beast from death by poisoning. Though most everyone knew Steven leaped into The Pit, few people knew why he'd done it.
Amie was increasingly annoyed by her continued obscurity within the kingdom, and perhaps impatient with the nearly continual requests she got for drinking potions and potions for seduction by the villagers, whom she considered to be particularly dim-witted and lacking in natural honesty.
One evening as they were sharing a bowl of potato soup, Amie brought up her annoyance to Captain Steven. It was not the first time she'd done so. Nor was it the first time she'd invited herself over for dinner. At first, she had claimed it was because Steven had a nicer fireplace than her own, but that was no longer the case. These days however she and Steven were quite good friends, and she knew well that he would be up at almost any hour she deigned to arrive, because he had great difficulty sleeping through the night, which was something most people didn't know about him.
In fact, despite his fame, few people really knew much about Steven as a person at all. On the other hand, a great many people knew Amie, primarily for her tendency to suddenly burst out angrily at whoever happened to be in shouting distance, though also she had a tendency to simply curse people walking by when their existence happened to particularly annoy her. The fact that Steven had, on several public occasions, voluntarily hung out with Amie was a deep mystery to the Freedonian people. Several suggested it was just another aspect of his daredevil nature, which they mistakenly believed he possessed. Others suggested that he was doing some kind of penance, and that meant he had to swear off any and all sorts of fun. His avoidance of drink and Pit Jumping aside from that first time seemed to confirm the theory.
But only to those who didn't know him. Those who knew him merely assumed he was too polite to admit to Amie that she was an intolerable person to be around. It seemed safe to assume that he felt sorry for her, for how alone she was, and was nice to her on account of that mainly because he knew no one else had it in them. It was also known to them that he had more than once been assigned to work with Amie, and they knew he was clever enough to get on good terms with anyone he was likely to need something from in the future. Even his friends assumed that it was dedication to duty that made him be nice to Amie, nothing more.
In some ways, Steven's friends knew him least of all.
"The plateau used to be quiet," Amie was telling Steven, "but ever since that fool of a physician showed up, it's been an unending parade of diseased and injured idiots coming across the bridge at all hours of the day or night. You have no idea how difficult that makes meditating."
Even knowing Amie as he did, Steven was not sure if she was actually upset about the numbers and frequency of visitors, or the fact that none of them had come until the kingdom's physician, Bloodletter Iunia, had been installed next door. Amie didn't like people, but she also didn't like the fact that they didn't like her. It seemed to Steven that it was a self-perpetuating problem. People didn't like her, so she was angry with them, which ended up with her being cruel to them, which led them to like her even less, which made her all the angrier. There was no logical end to it.
This he had tried to gently explain, but without any success whatsoever. Thus he had opted to drop the matter, accepting that Amie would do as she pleased, even if it actually displeased her. People were funny that way, but Steven had never had any luck in getting them to change. Change was something they had to do for themselves, or not, as they chose. He tried to stay out of it these days. He had enough issues to focus on without trying to change anyone.
"But the thing that really bugs me about her?" Amie went on, unaware of Steven's thoughts, "She keeps coming to me and asking for money. I lent some money to her once, and she never paid it back. I understand that she's new and can't afford nice things, but when you borrow money, you're expected to pay it back someday."
Steven was inclined to agree. Before he had become a knight, a certain guard by the name of Rhona had always been borrowing money from him and his friend, Rupert. Though Guard Rhona was now the wife of Lord Spaulding and had more than enough money to pave the streets with gold, she never had paid back what she owed, something Steven was too polite to bring up.
But Amie was on a tear and hadn't paused for breath, much less given room for Steven to comment either to agree or disagree with her, "And now I've got Rhianwen on my case! Just because she's pregnant again, she thinks she can come and yell at me whenever she wants. If she didn't have a bun in the oven, I swear I'd deck her."
Amie had predicted, without the need to scry, that Guard Rupert and Minstrel Rhianwen would be having babies as rapidly as possible the moment they were married. She was not wrong. Rupert and Rhianwen already had a daughter named Ruslana, and Rhianwen had become pregnant with a second child almost immediately.
"That doesn't sound like Rhianwen," Steven said, "Not only is she one of the friendliest people in the square, she couldn't win a fight to save her life. Why would she purposely provoke you?"
"I don't know," Amie said, hastily and hotly adding, "But I didn't start it! I've barely ever spoken to her before. Now she just keeps coming in and giving me a hard time for no reason."
Steven remained silent, but Amie seemed to sense his doubt.
"I'm not kidding!" she told him furiously, "I know I'm not always the nicest person, but this time I swear I didn't do anything!"
Steven wanted to say he believed her, but it was against his nature to lie.
"By the Watcher!" Amie complained, "Try to Curse a guy once, and you're branded for life!"
Such had been the basis of Amie's and Steven's relationship. And, try as either of them might, neither could forget it. Steven had long ago let go of any bad feeling he had over the incident. Not only had Amie failed to hurt him, these days he trusted that she wouldn't try it again. Still, it paid to remember that Freedonia's wizard was prickly and temperamental, and extremely dangerous if it came to it. But it did not at all pay to dwell overlong upon the matter.
Steven decided to change the subject, "You make very good potato soup."
Amie blew through her nose, evidently not through being angry, but realizing there was nothing appropriate she could do now except either thank him for the compliment or gloat about her soup making prowess. Glaring at him, she fell silent for a time and they ate their soup quietly.
There was a certain calm which always followed the storm with Amie. After losing her temper and venting it on someone, there was a kind of vulnerability that replaced the anger. It always seemed to Steven that she was genuinely sorry for how she'd acted, and that she really didn't have any idea how to change, or how to properly apologize, even though she wanted to do both. Some people truly enjoyed being mean to others, but Amie seemed to do it without gaining any satisfaction from it, which of course made the whole endeavor seem rather pointless.
But... habits were hard to break. That much Steven knew. He had often privately attributed his difficulty sleeping to habits formed before his appointment as Freedonia's knight. He wasn't sure that those habits were truly the cause... but it felt good to have an explanation anyway.
"So, how are things with the Aarbyville gangs?" Amie ventured after enough time had passed that it would not seem odd to change the topic.
"Quiet," Steven replied shortly, not keen on the subject, "So far."
"You don't think they will stay that way?" Amie inquired.
"No," Steven answered, "Especially not with the recent incident at Kullervo."
"Oh? What happened?"
"I don't know," Steven told her, "Something. One of our fishing vessels returned short several crewman. Its captain was babbling nonsense, and the other survivor of the crew refused to even leave the ship. I couldn't get a useful word out of him. I've gotten permission from Lord Spaulding to visit Kullervo in the morning to try and find out what actually happened."
Steven did not add how truly unsettling the encounter with the terrified crewman had been. The crewman, little more than a boy really, had painted a picture of indistinct horror. Steven had found no useful facts in his fearful litany, but the feel of the crumbled narrative had clung to him. The boy's fright was inexplicably contagious, even though Steven was not at all clear as to what he'd been frightened of. Whatever it was, it was Steven's job to deal with the threat, ideally before it ever touched Freedonia's borders.
"You think the Aarbyville Pirates were involved?" Amie asked, disrupting Steven's thoughts.
"That's what I need to find out," Steven answered without missing a beat, "This war between Tredony and Aarbyville is getting out of hand, and I have a feeling we can't keep out of it forever."
"Well," Amie said with a sigh, "I'd go with you, but I have plans."
"The Philosopher's Stone," Steven recalled, "You're still trying to make it?"
"Of course. I've asked Journeyman Smith Everett to help me. His interest seems... limited."
Steven hadn't had much contact with the blacksmith. Even so, the man had struck him as excitable, and for a moment it escaped him why Smith Everett wouldn't be interested in such a project as the creation of a Philosopher's Stone. He said so.
"Who could pass up the chance to help build something as incredible as the Philosopher's Stone?" Steven wondered aloud.
He realized the obvious too late, for he had already asked the question. Everett wasn't interested because of who was involved in the project.
"That's what I asked him," Amie said, oblivious of the quickly concealed look on Steven's face, "He just told me to get out of his house. Then he went back to making his stupid hammer."
"I'm sure he'll come around," Steven managed to say, doing his best to resume a neutral expression.
Considering how most people felt about Amie, Steven suspected he had just lied to her.