The hero

The hero awoke to sand in his eyes and a sword in his face. He shook them both off with a sudden crawl backward. Adrenaline felt alien to his body. That weird feeling of wrongness was quickly put aside to avoid a wide slash of a sword. He fell backwards.

A foreign foot dug into his chest.

His breath was promptly squeezed out of his mouth.

The stranger hopped off him, His tall figure looming over. A wide pointy grin clashing with his raised sword. At no point had he taken his eyes off the hero.

“Excuse me, kind stranger,” That aggressive man had the gall to pretend politeness. “I’m terribly sorry about having you on the ground so fast. Would you mind answering to some questions?”

The hero didn’t want to talk to this guy, of all people, but he continued talking.

“See,” he flashed a journal from under his clothes, “I’m tasked with taking in a certain kind of people into the city. Do you happen to come from somewhere else?” his grin widens and his hand rests back on his sword. “Another world perhaps?”

Scary, somehow this situation has become even more scary.

Of course, this man is crazy. Even though something about another word sounds right. Surely not. He takes a look around, taking in the white-colored sand, blue ocean and equally blue sky above. Nothing was amiss. No video game user interface, no blessing or cursing deity, no sign of being born into nobility. For some reason, his mind conjured up these strange thoughts.

“The name is Furian. Do you have one?” Furian shakes his hand.

He doesn’t reply.

“Look, I have to get some info from you,” Furian said. Furian doesn’t seem like the trustworthy type at all.

“Do you remember anything like,” he trails off, muttering curses under his breath. “Anything like curved glasses around your eyes? Perhaps something like a book, but the images inside move?” He explains, moving his eyebrows up and down as if he would get paid per quirk.

The hero stays quiet. The descriptions do ring a bell. Something like a curved visor over his eyes. Something like a shining plaque with moving figures. He clutches his head.

The memories don’t come to him easily and they don’t come back in their totality, but it does sound right somehow. It’s an overwhelming sensation of something almost gone. Something to the reach of his fingertips, but barely just missing.

A loud splat reaches his ears. It’s easier to focus on this newcomer instead.

It’s a gorgeous woman, pulling away from the sea with a wet thud against the sand beneath her. Perfect figure, the body of a model.

“Hey pay attention to me, ugh I’m not getting anywhere with you.” Furian follows the hero’s eyes and turns back his view. “Oh, ew.”

Ew seems a bit harsh. She’s a vision.

He walks towards her. Leave her be.

“Sorry to bother you here, darling.” Flirting with her for no reason, leave her alone.

He pulls out his sword. Furian must be the worst, a showoff who depreciates women and still goes after them. Beyond disgusting. Every footprint on the sand is a disappointment of what is fair in this world. Get away from her.

As soon as Furian is near enough, she surges forward.

Her body, it has a fish's tail from the waist down.

It happens in a flash. She opens her mouth. He positions himself behind her.

His swords flashes before he lowered it in a quick chopping down motion.

There’s a long trickle of blood parting her pretty face in two halves. The hero looks away before he can see anything else. A loud wet splat hits the sand, and less than a second later, another one does.

Furian looks back at the hero and shows a toothy grin. “So! Back to those questions?”

The hero stares at Furian to avoid looking at the gore on the ground. His blue hair and tanned skin streaked with a splatter of blood. This man was definitively not insane, but something worse.

A mermaid, that was definitely a mermaid. One that had been killed right in front of his eyes.

“I’m an adventurer, did you know? I’m supposed to take down monsters like that lady, as well as any traveler from another world.” Furian shakes the blood off his sword in a practiced motion. “I can’t tell what is your angle here, but you’re not making my job any easier.”

Otherworldly travelers seems a lot less crazy now.

“What is it going to be?” Furian’s hand is once again reaching for the hilt of his sword. “Do you remember where you’re from? Or are you one of them?”

“... An adventurer. I came here because I wanted to be an adventurer,” the hero lies, avoiding the question.

“Ah! Another fellow in the business, I see. Do you want help to get back to the city? I can put in a good word for you. The ladies at the guild love me.” He pulls out his journal and scribbles something in it before putting it back under his clothes.

Furian extends a hand to take. Now, someone with more dignity might stand up for themselves. They might deny the hypocrite politeness of this stranger and go their own way. The hero, however, takes his hand and relies on the other to drag his weight up.

“Quiet thing you are, huh?”

The hero doesn’t reply. Surely if he doesn’t talk, Furian will eventually catch the hint and stop talking.

“It’s okay. I can fill in the silence.We get fantastic benefits, you know? I’m mostly sure you’re just another ship wreck victim. We always get them around these parts. That’s why I patrol so far away from the city. I bet you’ve been bored, no other reason to be just napping under the sun like that. There’s not really a lot going on in this beach other than those huge rocks that your ship got wreck in. When you’re all healed up, you should look into visiting the Pebble Point Beach. I love it there. It’s a lot better than this one, let me tell you, and just two hours away. It’s not far at all-”

Somehow, Furian talked about a beach with the only draw being the number of pebbles for the whole hour-long walk.