The Hero's Party

Deme visited Lavenza three times a day during her week long recovery, each time bringing in a different meal cooked by the Tamarin.

“She’s quite angry at you, you know,” Deme said, “for you wanting to leave so quickly.”

“If she’s angry, she doesn’t have to cook all this for me,” Lavenza said.

“She told me to tell you that she’s using leftovers and the borderline rotten stuff,” Deme shrugged. “It’s supposed to taste like her anger, or something.”

“I thought goblins only ever cooked with rotten leftovers,” Lavenza smiled. “I’m sure it doesn’t taste that bad.”

One bite in, however, and Lavenza stopped chewing. The taste itself wasn’t so horrid. It hadn’t smelled bad when Deme had walked in. The problem was the texture of her food was equivalent to eating stringy cobwebs dipped in ocean sand.

“I added some ingredients of my own,” Deme smirked. “I can be angry too, Venz.”

Lavenza wondered how she might get rid of the debris between her teeth later.

“Wonderful,” she replied. “I see our goblin shaman is rubbing off on you.”

“It’s not just her. It’s a natural response,” Deme pouted. “Nobody likes feeling unappreciated.”

“I said nothing of the sort.”

“But you treated her as if you felt that way,” Deme frowned. “You acting as if you were a bother tells her that you think so little of her.”

“Was I not a bother?”

“What if the roles were reversed?” Deme asked. “What if she came to you, looking like you had? You should have seen yourself, Venz. It was hard to look at you. You looked…you looked had you had been broken.”

“Of course I would help,” Lavenza scoffed. “But—“

“Then why shouldn’t you expect the same from others?” Deme cried. “How long have you known her for? Long enough for you to have taught her almost everything there is to know about the Menuan language, long enough that you two speak in Menuan when in private.”

“Look, it’s not that I don’t appreciate her, Deme. It’s just I think it’d be safer for her if we—”

“Venz, just stop,” Deme sighed and departed. “When are you going to just let people love you?”

When Tamarin did visit, it was at the end of each day, when the rest of the hero’s party had fallen asleep.

At night, Lavenza drifted between a state that was neither awake nor asleep. In one view, she saw the old monastery again, when apostles used to stroll through the grounds aplenty. Headmistress Eifen stood at the temple doors beyond the monastery, where at the end of a long hallway stood the foreboding Whispering Chamber. Her gaze stretched far and wide. She could see, even from such a distance, who among her Menuan children, playing or reading in the sunlit shade beneath the groves, were most fit to serve under her.

In her dreams, the headmistress’s gaze always landed on Lavenza.

On the other hand, Lavenza often felt the stiff breeze of that year’s spring at night. The only solace was a warm, bashful energy that lingered by her bedside for half an hour each night. During that brief time, the cold unraveled in its presence and what pain Lavenza felt in her broken arm and scorched shoulders abated, if only for a little while.

“Enteken,” came Tamarin’s voice. “Enteken.”

By the time Lavenza realized that the goblin shaman was there, she had already left.
Richard visited, much more often than Deme and Tamarin combined, but instead of bringing food or medicine, the hero offered his presence and the supposed promise of good company.

“It’s been a while since we’ve gotten the opportunity to talk like this,” he smiled a sheepish grin. 

“Truthfully, I thought our last meeting was for the last time.”

“Was that why you said such a pithy farewell?” Lavenza asked. “What did you say? ‘My fair Menuan maiden, for whom even the Endire will reserve its final—’”

“Don’t remind me, please,” Richard scratched the back of his neck. “I took a week of class trying to write that. Tamarin and Faye told me it was terrible, but what else was I going to say?”

“How about just farewell?”

“That’s kind of boring, don’t you think?” he said. “So? What have you been up to?”

“Hmm,” Lavenza thought aloud.

It was a bit of loaded question. What was she supposed to say? That she had toppled the Royal Academy and drained all of the empire’s source of mana? That royal soldiers had turned to banditry?

No, it was all a little bit too heavy. Besides, there was another difficult topic to broach.

“I returned to Centa Muis for a brief while,” Lavenza recalled. “Seline sends her farewells.”

“Cynical as always,” Richard smirked. “I knew she didn’t really believe in our quest—”

“She’s left for The Opposing Shore, Richard.”

Richard’s eyes reflected his disbelief.

“She has?” he asked. “I would’ve thought she would’ve waited for us to return. What if we succeed, Lavenza? Tamarin thinks there’s reason to believe that the demons in the Abyss know how to survive the petrification. If we find them, find the Demon King...”

He trailed off. Lavenza traced a subtle anger in his voice, a thinly concealed sense of betrayal.

“The people in Centa Muis are scared, Richard,” Lavenza tried to explain. “They have doubts about crossing The Great Sea.”

“No, I get it,” Richard replied. “You don’t have to speak on her behalf. I know you aren’t her. I should’ve offered my condolences to you first. I knew you two were rather close.”

“Not that close,” Lavenza scoffed.

“Closer than I am with you,” he offered her a weak smile. “I’ll admit it makes me a little envious.”

Faye, the last member of the Hero’s Party, visited Lavenza on the penultimate day of her week of recovery. There was little reason for her visit, but Lavenza imagined that Faye had seen Deme, Tamarin, and Richard take turns to see her, and Faye hated feeling like the odd one out. They were polar opposites in that respect, Faye and Lavenza.

Like Richard, it would be difficult to spot Faye in a crowd of people. Her facial features would stand out, of course. As an elf, she had longer, pointier ears than her human peers. The problem was height. Faye was short, shorter than even Deme, who at least reached Lavenza’s chest in height. That made it all the more ridiculous to see Faye walking around with a magical staff twice her height.

That was how she spotted Faye’s arrival. Lavenza was lying in bed that afternoon and saw what appeared to be a levitating staff bobbing up and down into her quarters. Only after Faye reached the side of the bed did Lavenza see her gleaming, unblinking, celadon irises, silver hair, and porcelain skin. For someone so short, it was easy to forget that the elf had lived several human lifetimes.

“Faye,” Lavenza greeted.

“Lavenza,” Fay replied. “I see you’ve mostly recovered.”

“Thank you for noticing.”

“Will you be traveling with us?” she asked. “Richard mentioned that we’ll be leaving soon.”

“I haven’t decided yet.”

“Is that so?” Faye shrugged. “Very well, Lavenza.”

The Faye Lavenza knew preferred not to hold extended conversations concerning other people’s choices. But for whatever reason, as she left, the elf made an unusual exception.

“If you do decide to join,” Faye added, “I’ll be looking forward to our experiments again.”

And with that, the bobbing magical staff made its exit.

On the final day of her recovery, Lavenza knew she had regained her strength, because her legs ached to go out on a long walk. It was the early hours of the new day. The sun had yet to rise, and Lavenza snatched up her staff and limped outside for a taste of fresh air.

She stumbled at first. Parts of her body felt like they belonged to a newborn. There was a strange sensation as the wind brushed beneath her robes and touched her healed flesh, something between a mild sore and an unreachable itch.

But it felt good all the same. Both sensations were evidence that she was still alive. Lavenza wandered through the empty village until she reached a patch of morning glories. She walked barefoot through the grass, enjoying the fresh wetness of dew and the soft ends of grass that tickled her toes.

For the first time in weeks, Lavenza uttered spells into the air. They were simple spells, spells to brighten the shine of the glories, spells to draw water from the nearby well, spells to lift herself into the air and observe the village from above, long abandoned, long forgotten.

When Lavenza returned from her walk, she saw Deme, Richard, and the others sitting around last night’s campfire. Deme held her father’s armor in her arms. With a rag and a bucket of water, she cleaned the cuirass with vigorous scrubs. On the day she found Rafta, Deme would want her father’s armor to be in pristine condition.

Out there, just a few day’s away, were the dungeons that led into the cavernous Abyss. Lavenza weighed the dangers. The rumors of demonkind lurking in the dark. Headmistress Eifen, who appeared every day now in Lavenza’s dreams, her eyes twisted in wild and frenzied ways.

There were too many questions, too many risks. She could not afford to make mistakes before reaching the Whispering Chamber. This, Lavenza knew. And thus, the apostate's isolation in the final days of Aparthia would have to come to an end.

“Fine,” she sighed. “Let’s all go together.”