====================================
Saving the World Again

Chapter Two: Return and Begin Again
              by Thomas Wilde
====================================


==================
three months later
==================

The view from his castle was fairly impressive. Julian stood 
at the window, looking out at the rolling plains of Soros. He looked 
at the view for at least a few hours a day, while he tried, 
frantically, to reconstruct the course of events that had brought him 
there.

After they'd signed the papers and returned to Soros, King 
Laurence had showered them with honors. He never mentioned the fines, 
and Julian never got the chance to ask about them. One of the honors 
was the castle he was standing in, and a title to go with it.

Nine months ago, he'd been a hunter in Donnell's Lake, a 
village on the edge of Soros. Julian had had a habit of leaving his 
home early and staying out late, to give himself more time to explore 
the forest.

That had irritated his mother, Maria, to no end, but his 
father, Callan, had always been on Julian's side. "After all," he'd 
often say to his wife, "one of these days, invaders might come to our 
peaceful country village, burn it to the ground, and Julian could be 
the only survivor and swear himself to vengeance against our killers! 
It's important to keep that kind of thing in mind, you know."

Oh, sure, they'd thought it was funny then.

Arica had had a crush on Julian ever since they were 
children, and had told most of the people in the village that she 
intended to marry Julian one day. That led her to spend at least as 
much time in the forest as Julian did, usually because she was 
following Julian. Julian had grown accustomed to having her along.

One day, Julian came home, trailed at a distance by Arica, 
who thought he didn't see her, and found that Donnell's Lake had been 
leveled. No one stone stood atop another, and no timber remained 
unburned. The villagers were either dead, dying, or huddled in the 
woods nursing their wounds. Julian's father and Arica's entire family 
were among the dead.

So, naturally, he'd set out to find the bastard who'd done 
it, and Arica, despite his pleas, had come along. The path to find 
Brandomere had led them across the face of the continent. Julian had 
been forced to pass a series of harrowing tests to borrow Darkslayer, 
and Arica had risked her life, sanity, and soul to prove herself 
worthy of the Staff of St. Gideon. Somewhere along the way, Julian 
had found himself returning Arica's affections, and eventually, he 
asked her to marry him. Then they'd killed Brandomere, and things had 
gotten hectic very quickly.

"Julian, I finished looking over this damn thing," Arica 
said, coming into their bedroom. She held a copy of the paper they'd 
signed in one hand, the hand that she now wore her wedding ring on.

"You're still doing that?" Julian said, turning away from the window.

"I had to look up a lot of the words," Arica said. 
"Otherwise, I would've gotten it done months ago. I thought I was 
fairly well-read until I got a look at this damn thing."

"All right, then. What did they make us sign?" Julian sat 
down on the bed. Arica sat next to him and unfolded the document.

"This makes us official members of the Heroes' Guild," Arica 
said, "'a fellowship of those who have rendered above-average service 
to the crown and to the world entire.' That entitles us to this 
castle, our titles, a healthy stipend from the kingdom, privacy, and 
a free pair of invitations to some biannual party the Guild throws 
every year." She underlined a paragraph with her finger. "However, 
this also 'entitles' us to what amounts to house arrest. We're 
apparently considered valuable national assets, so we can't just move 
around as we like. We've got to clear any traveling we do with the 
bureaucracy, so they can notify neighboring nations that we're 
coming."

"That doesn't seem all that bad, really," Julian said. "I do 
wonder why I've never heard of this organization before, though."

"I wondered that too." Arica pursed her lower lip. "This 
worries me, though. This clause here means that all guidelines in the 
agreement are delivered with the force of a royal proclamation, which 
means we're technically guilty of treason if we break or bend any of 
them. It seems like the whole thing is dedicated to keeping us happy 
and in one place."

Julian put a hand around her shoulders. "We can worry about 
that later. At least we had someplace nice to stay after the wedding, 
right?"

"I suppose there's something to that, yes," Arica said. She 
settled against Julian.

"Besides, we've got the rest of our lives to figure out 
what's going on," Julian said. "One way or the other, we'll get to 
the bottom of this."

========

Unfortunately, two things happened to Julian within the next 
week, either one of which would've kept him from giving too much 
thought to the issue of the Heroes' Guild.

The first one came early in the morning, two days after Arica 
had finished translating the form they'd signed. Julian and Arica had 
stayed up late the previous night, discussing things with the 
peasants who'd come to farm the land around their castle, so they 
were attempting to sleep in.

That morning, around sunrise, Julian woke up, blinked a 
couple of times, and scooted closer to Arica. He became aware of a 
weight on his chest, and thought that perhaps one of the hunting dogs 
was in bed with him again. Then he realized that he didn't have any 
hunting dogs, and came fully awake with a jolt.

He found himself looking into a set of round, wide, 
impossibly cute eyes.

A minute later, Arica woke up with a start, to the sound of 
breaking furniture. Julian, naked, was chasing a small pink fluffball 
around the bedroom with a pike. The fluffball in question was about 
the size of a large loaf of bread, and made cooing sounds as Julian 
tried to skewer it through the middle.

"Oh, gods," Arica said. "No. Not again."

"Good morning, Arica!" the puffball sang out. "Boy, it took 
me *forever* to find you guys!"

Julian slaughtered the end table it was hiding under, and it 
bounded away.

========

Mewly.

Mewly was a sorcerer's familiar. It had been a strange 
characteristic of a long-gone civilization--Julian and Arica had 
found some records of it, but had found nothing that had told them 
the civilization's name--that it trained its wizards from infancy, 
taking candidates from a particular social caste. Members of that 
caste had their familiars bonded to them in the cradle, who grew as 
they did, serving as protectors, friends, and advisors.

When the mages were young, the familiars were too. They acted 
like energetic children, and often adopted appropriate 
characteristics, if not the outright forms, of cats or dogs. They 
aged as their wizards did, and as the wizards grew older, the 
familiars often changed forms to adapt to new circumstances. Some 
became horses or griffons, some became globes of light or smaller 
versions of their masters, and some became ruddy-furred beasts with 
claws, teeth, and nasty dispositions. Those last were still 
legendary. Arica had heard about them from her father, long before 
she met Mewly.

Mewly's master was named Jerry, or Jerimiah Obidiah 
Stonemason if he was in trouble at the moment. Jerry, not to put too 
fine a point on it, was a screwup, but he was also a member of one of 
the most exalted families within his civilization's sorcerous caste.

Jerry, by the time he was seven years old, had killed several 
schoolmates by carelessly experimenting with lightning spells, burned 
down a wizard's tower, and turned the waters of a well-used and 
important river, for one horrifying afternoon, into a potion that 
visited baldness,
influenza, pyromania, lycanthropy, infancy, klazomania, and/or a 
state of incredibly intensified sexual desire and capabilities onto 
those who drank of its waters. Despite this, and mostly because of 
his father's political influence, his training continued. Truly, his 
teachers reasoned through gritted teeth, if his mistakes were this 
spectacular, imagine what he could achieve when he *meant* to do 
something.

He never got the chance. Jerry turned himself to stone when 
he was eight years old. His civilization died before anyone figured 
out how he'd done it, how to change him back, or, to tell the truth, 
why they should've bothered changing him back in the first place.

Through sheer luck, Mewly didn't change with him, and thus 
never grew out of its "infancy" stage. Mewly's life force was tied to 
Jerry, and Jerry was currently made out of some kind of stone that 
was amazingly resistant to damage. As long as the statue remained 
intact, Mewly was effectively immortal.

Twenty-five hundred years later, Julian and Arica were 
picking over the rubble of Jerry's hometown, looking for clues as to 
where to find Darkslayer. Mewly found them, and Mewly had been very 
bored.

Mewly had been cute for the first five minutes.

Jerry had been an annoying child, always poking and asking 
stupid questions, and Mewly had picked up all his worst habits. It 
was also incapable of being seriously hurt or killed as long as 
Jerry's statue remained intact.

On their way out of town, Julian had stuffed Mewly into a 
sack, filled it with rocks, tied the sack shut, and tossed the sack 
into a river--the same river, in fact, that Jerry had turned into an 
insanity cocktail two and a half millennia ago.

It hadn't been enough.

========

Two days later, Julian and Arica were ragged and exhausted. 
Mewly hadn't given them a moment's peace since it had arrived.

"What's this? What's that? Why were you both naked when I 
showed up? Why do you look so tired? Wouldn't you like to pet me? Why 
is the sky blue? If the gods are everywhere, are they in the 
garderobe? What does chalk taste like? Why are you using such naughty 
words, Julian? I'm very well-mannered. I'd never use words like that. 
So why do you both wear rings now? Are you married? How long have you 
been married? Hey, why wasn't I invited to the wedding? Can I be a 
bridegroom? I guess I'd need a gender for that, huh. Well, why don't 
we pretend I'm a girl? I can be a bride's maid. I'd look so *cute* in 
a little dress, don't you think--"

========

The second thing that happened was the next day, when a 
messenger arrived on a horse and wagon. The messenger, Burrows, was a 
squirrely-looking man in a patched doublet and long breeches, who 
always looked as though he'd forgotten something important. He was 
responsible for particularly important packages and dispatches from 
the crown, and took his job very seriously.

However, he also had two passengers with him, which was 
unusual. One was a woman, dressed in green robes and wearing a silver 
medallion marked with the symbol of an oak tree: a priestess of the 
Forest Mother. She, like all her brethren, was strangely ageless; it 
was an old joke that the only way to tell the age of any of the 
Forest Mother's clergy was to cut them open and count the rings. That 
joke had never been told around any of the clergy.

The other was a child, with a strange birthmark covering half 
his face. He looked as though he bore a set of intricate roots on his 
cheek, stretching down from his hairline and extending down
the side of his neck. He was dressed in a forest-green tunic and 
black breeches, and was very quiet.

Julian opened the door to their keep and came out to meet 
Burrows. Julian liked Burrows; the man had no sense of humor, but he 
was polite and dependable. "Master Burrows!"

"Good afternoon, Lord Julian." Burrows squinted at Julian. 
"You don't look so good, sir."

"I've had a few problems. No, no, nothing serious." Julian 
grinned and waved away Burrows' concerns. "As a matter of fact, I 
believe we've found a solution already."

========

The keep Julian and Arica had been given had belonged to an 
old duke who'd died childless. It had stayed mostly empty, save for 
the occasional squatter, since his death, and many of his possessions 
were still lying around inside.

Arica had been using one of those possessions, a silver tea 
service with a large lid, for a while; it reminded her of a family 
heirloom that had been lost in the destruction of Donnell's Lake.

Mewly, sleeping contentedly on the kitchen floor, had been 
surprised when Arica had brought the service lid down on it. Quickly, 
before Mewly could escape, Julian and Arica piled several heavy 
pieces of furniture on top of the lid. While this made the kitchen 
too cluttered to be useful, neither Julian or Arica really minded.

Now, trapped in the dark, Mewly cried softly to itself.

One day--one day soon--it would find someone to love again, 
and that someone would love it back.

Mewly, as its tears dried, began to scheme.

========

"I'd offer you tea, but unfortunately, we're... rearranging 
our kitchen furniture right now, so--"

"No matter," Sarah Valerian, the priestess, said. "Thank you 
for the offer, however."

"What brings you here, Mother?" Arica said, leaning forward. 
Her father hadn't been a priest himself, but he'd known a few who'd 
been in the same line of work. He had respected them.

"I was granted an audience with King Laurence several days 
ago," Sarah said, "and I requested a royal escort for Tyler here. He 
claimed that he didn't have any knights to spare at the moment, due 
to some vague 'border skirmishes,' and recommended that I make the 
same request of you. I've heard of the two of you, so I figured it 
was worth making the attempt."

She ruffled the boy's hair. The boy looked up at her without 
smiling. "This boy, Tyler, is one of our acolytes. We think he'd be a 
very good priest, but unfortunately, this mark on his face," she 
traced the birthmark; Tyler didn't react, "is the sign that he's been 
called to another duty. This mark is the symbol of a paladin of our 
order, a warrior, and it seems like we might need him."

Sarah took a deep breath before continuing. "There is a man 
named Rothschild Damane who used to be part of our circle. We drove 
him out, for various reasons, but mostly because he was attempting to 
use forbidden magics. We gave him every opportunity to stop, but he 
kept at his studies, until we finally had to drive him out. We should 
have killed him instead.

"Damane is, apparently, now the servant of darker powers. We 
know he's taken control of a tribe of northern orcs, and we found out 
recently that he wants to see Tyler dead."

Julian looked at Tyler, to see the child's reaction, but 
Tyler stayed quiet. Sarah continued, "We cast auguries when we 
learned that last fact, and we discovered through them that Damane is 
destined to become a threat to the entire world, and Tyler is 
destined to stop him. We need to send Tyler away from us, to the 
Grand Druid in Kussos, on the other side of the world. There, he'll 
be safe from Damane, and the Grand Druid can teach him what he'll 
need to know."

"So you want us to escort him there?" Arica asked.

"I do. We would take him there ourselves, but we're bound to 
our forest. We're forbidden to travel over water."

"I've never been to Kussos before..." Julian mused aloud. He 
looked to Arica, who nodded, and back to Sarah. "All right. We'd be 
happy to do it."

========

On a distant hilltop, Rothschild Damane sat with his legs 
crossed. He was a large man, with
shoulders like an ox's and hair the color of varnished oak. His face 
was equally broad, and he smiled easily. He was kind to small animals 
and children, knew a lot of off-color jokes, always tipped barmaids 
well, and would not be happy until he'd personally killed every other 
human being on the face of the planet.

Damane knew the word "sociopath," but didn't feel it really 
applied to him. Sociopaths, to his understanding, killed for no 
reason. Damane killed out of irritation, boredom, spite, or malice, 
but he'd yet to kill someone for no reason. His reasons were complex 
things, actually, and even he himself had yet to quite puzzle them 
out. He knew one thing, though; humans were meddlesome, disruptive 
creatures, and Damane felt that they had to go.

A brisk wind came to him, tossing leaves in a shallow spiral, 
and brought him the words from a distant conversation.

He smiled, a bit, when he heard Sarah's version of events. 
The wind brought him nothing he wasn't already expecting to hear, so 
he let it go. Damane had something else he needed to do.

With a bronze knife, Damane made a shallow cut in his 
forearm, and let the blood drip onto a dry patch of earth. He stirred 
the dirt and blood together with the point of his knife, shaping the 
resulting mud into runes, and muttered all the while in an ancient 
language.

In the distance, dark clouds began to form. Birds raised 
their heads, feeling a sudden change in the air pressure, and flew 
away. Animals got the same idea a few minutes later, and with their 
departure, the lands around Julian and Arica's keep took on an eerie 
stillness.

The clouds, after an hour of chanting, gathered above 
Damane's hilltop. Gently, Damane blew at the runes, like a man trying 
to get a fire started.

His breath moved away from his body, and curved. With each 
exhalation, Damane got a bit more air moving, until the resulting 
breeze was sucking up the blood-tainted dirt from the ground. After 
that, he took a step back and watched it grow into a funnel, reaching 
up to touch the clouds.

"Sorry, Mistress," he whispered to Sarah, not sure whether he 
was being mocking or not, and let his tornado go.

========

"You don't mind leaving immediately?" Sarah asked, following 
Julian and Arica around. "I was expecting that you'd want to leave in 
the morning, or tomorrow afternoon..."

"No, that's all right. It's a long journey, and to be honest 
with you, this place has been driving me crazy," Julian said, putting 
equipment into a backpack. "It'll be good to get out on the  road."

"We can discuss payment when you get back, of course," Sarah began.

"We're not *mercenaries*," Arica said from the kitchen.

"I'm sure we can come up with some way for you to return the 
favor, ma'am," Julian said. He opened a cabinet in the front hall, 
and took out both his unstrung bow, and Arica's quarterstaff.

"I do have one question," Sarah said hesitantly.

"What's that?"

"I'd heard that the two of you had a pair of holy weapons, or 
something of the sort. Where are they?" Julian frowned, and Sarah 
continued. "I'd've assumed they'd be in a place of high honor, or at 
the very least, that you'd be bringing them on this journey."

"We don't have holy weapons. We borrowed them." Julian strung 
his bow. "One of the first things we did, after we'd had a chance to 
recover from the fight with Brandomere, was return them to where we 
got them."

"Good riddance," Arica muttered. "That staff was creepy."

Sarah blinked. "You *returned* them?"

"Naturally," Julian said. "That was part of the deal when we 
took them in the first place. We had them for as long as it took to 
defeat Brandomere, and no longer." He shrugged. "I'm glad to be rid 
of them, personally."

"How strange."

Tyler walked into the front hall from the garderobe. Julian 
smiled down at him, and Tyler looked back without any reaction. 
Julian gave up on the smile after a few moments and looked to Sarah. 
"Does he talk at all?"

"He never has," Sarah said. "That's part of what marks him as 
a chosen hero, according to the augurers. Heroes, according to them, 
never talk."

Julian thought about that for a moment, then shrugged and 
went about his business.

When he woke up, two hours later, that was the last thing he 
remembered.

========

Damane's tornado stole across the plains, heading straight 
for the castle. It sucked up dirt, trees, and everything else in its 
path, moving with a singleminded determination that, more than 
anything else, marked it as unnatural. It plowed through the keep's 
outside wall without slowing down.

Sarah felt the tornado coming right before it hit. She did 
what she could to try and stop it, or at least blunt its force, but 
it was too little, too late. She did save her life, and the lives of 
Julian and Arica, but that was all she accomplished.

The tornado tore the old keep apart in the space of a few 
seconds. In the kitchen, the tornado's funnel sucked up the stack of 
furniture, the service lid, and a *very* surprised Mewly, and would 
deposit the lot about five miles to the south, in the wheat fields of 
a moderately surprised farmer. Julian and Arica only survived due to 
Sarah's efforts.

Tyler wasn't so lucky.

Sarah realized, too late, that her protections weren't going 
to be enough, and screamed Tyler's name. The boy didn't even have 
time to react. Damane's tornado was targeted directly at him; the 
destruction of the keep was an incidental consequence. Tyler was 
caught by the tornado's edge and flung into the keep's dining room. 
He felt a sickening crack as the back of his head met the stone wall, 
and then he knew nothing more.

Damane, from his hilltop, grinned, and simply told his 
tornado to stop. It did. The winds dispersed immediately, and the 
wreckage they carried dropped instantly to the castle floor. He could 
feel, in his bones, that he'd done what he set out to do, and he 
chuckled to himself as he walked away.

Sarah, heedless of her own injuries, crawled to where Tyler 
lay, but it was already too late.

When Julian and Arica woke up, it was to the sound of Sarah 
Valerian's sobbing.

========

Three days later, Tyler, who'd never had a last name, was 
laid to rest in a sacred grove. His ashes were mixed with a patch of 
mud, and Roderick, the high priest of Sarah's circle, dropped an 
acorn into the puddle. As Julian and Arica watched, the acorn took 
root.

Seven druids stood in a circle around the grave, solemnly 
watching the tree grow. Within a few minutes, they were encircling a 
healthy sapling, and the high priest muttered, "Enough." The tree 
shuddered slightly, and its leaves burst out of their buds.

"Well, that's it, then," one of the druids said quietly. 
"We're finished."

"Excuse me?" Arica said. "What do you mean?"

"The auguries are never wrong," Sarah said. "If Tyler was the 
only one who could stop Damane, and Damane was going to threaten the 
world, then Damane's already won." She sighed. "It's all over but the 
shouting."

"What's an augury, anyway?" Julian asked.

"It's when they gut a chicken or something and study its 
entrails," Arica told him. She turned back to the druids. "Wait. 
You're giving up all hope because a *chicken* told you it was 
hopeless?"

"We use sheep."

"*Whatever!*"

"Look, young lady," Roderick said, holding up a hand, "I know 
it may seem primitive to you, but it's never been proven wrong yet. 
If the auguries say something will happen, then it happens."

"Have you ever tried to *make* an augury wrong?" Arica asked. 
"What if you found Damane and stopped him yourselves?"

"According to the auguries, that was Tyler's job. None of us 
could do it."

"Why not?" Julian asked.

"That's just the way it is," Sarah said irritatedly. 
"Prophecies are almost impossible to deliberately flout, young man. 
Fate itself is set against you if you try."

"That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard," Arica growled.

"Arica? Love? Please don't insult the priests in whose sacred 
grove we are standing..." Julian said quietly.

"Oh, to hell with that!" Arica walked up to Roderick and 
poked him in the nose with her index finger. "Maybe *you're* willing 
to lie here and die, but that bastard killed a small child in *my 
house*! I am *not* going to sit here and listen to you claim that 
stopping him is now pointless because of something a pile of steaming 
*guts* told you!"

"Do what you like, young lady," Roderick said. He sounded 
very tired, not angry, and Julian let out a breath he hadn't realized 
he was holding. "It's your life. You may waste it in whatever manner 
you see fit."

Arica growled, and walked away from Roderick. "Come on, Julian!"

"Don't you think you're being a little reckless?" Julian said calmly.

"No, I don't!" Arica stopped and poked *him* in the nose. "I 
think that prophecies are a load of *crap*!" She stormed off, towards 
their horses.

"What do you intend to do, Master Kestrel?" Roderick said.

Julian thought about it for a moment. "I don't put a lot of 
faith in prophecies either, sir. No offense. However, Damane seems to 
have wrecked my home, and that offends me greatly."

"So you intend to fight him?"

"I figure I'd better. If I don't, then she'll do it alone." 
Julian shrugged. "We've done this kind of thing before, sir. I figure 
we can handle Damane."

"I doubt it. We have no idea what he's capable of."

"He couldn't be any worse than Brandomere." Julian almost 
grinned, but thought better of it. "We'll handle this guy, sir." He 
walked towards his horse.

"I hope you can, young man," Roderick said to his back. "I 
desperately hope you can."

========

"My Lords," Rothschild Damane said, at the same time.

He stood in his makeshift temple, half a world away.
Braziers lit the darkened clearing, underneath a thick
canopy of leaves that sunlight only occasionally penetrated.
He stood shirtless, his chest and back laced with an
intricate tattoo of scars and brands. His masters had made
sure he knew who he belonged to.

A sibilant whisper emanated from the darkness beyond the
braziers' light. >is the child dead, damane?<

"He is," Damane said.

>then no one can stop us.<

"Some may try, my Lords."

>and they will fail. good work, our son,< the voice
said. >soon, we will succeed where so many others, so very
many others, have failed.<

Damane smiled. "So shall it be."

========




Author's Notes:

Second verse, same as the first:

There's a line the Black Snotling put in a chapter of 
"Self-Extraction": "For some odd reason, someone wishes to destroy 
[the world] every other week."

That sorta set my gears turning, as it were, and "Saving the World 
Again" is the result.

This story is, at its heart, a parody that arose from my years of 
reading high/low fantasy and playing similarly themed console and 
tabletop RPGs. Caera is my old AD&D campaign world, which is 
currently having a sort of renaissance both here and in the 
d10-system fantasy game I'm running. As a general rule, I'd consider 
any particular facet of fantasy, from novels to video games to 
pen-and-paper RPGs, to be open for parody in this story. Mewly's kind 
of the catchall in annoying furry cute sidekicks, particularly the 
kind that the characters like but the reader hates.

The background and sad fate of Tyler is, if you squint, an editorial 
comment on the latest overused macguffin of fantasy fiction, the 
prophecied savior. Tyler is sort of your Garion/Rand type, except 
that he died before he could get anywhere near fulfilling the 
prophecies about himself. In other words, the quest that Julian and 
Arica are setting out on could be utterly impossible for them to 
finish, because they're trying to do something that isn't meant for 
them to do... or, on the other hand, Tyler's death has already 
violated most of the prophecies, so they might be able to pull it off 
after all.

Either way, they've got a long, difficult road ahead of them. Please 
consider any fantasy-esque quest you care to name as a possible topic 
for a future chapter of this story, regardless of its source or 
theme. For that matter, please note that our main characters are 
probably going to wind up violating the terms of the Heroes' Guild, 
so they might wind up outlaws before we're done.

Please note that neither Julian or Arica retain the artifact weapons 
they had at the beginning of the first chapter. Without them, Julian 
isn't much of a swordsman, and Arica is only a fair healer. I 
couldn't think of any way to work that into the narrative smoothly, 
so I left it for the author's notes.

Thanks to the Black Snotling, Anthony Jennings (whose comments led to 
this being two chapters and not one), W4, S.D. Ryukage, Jonatan 
Streith, Mervyn, Mark Poa, and OgOpOgO- for their comments pertaining 
to the first draft of this story.

Thomas Wilde
Maryville, Missouri
4/30/01--5/5/01