Unfortunately, I’m Not A Hero: Interlude: The Heroine

Unfortunately, I’m Not A Hero: Interlude: The Heroine

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Wordcount: 2500

Commissioned by Shaderic.

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Spears and shields surrounded the manticore. The barbs it shot from its tail, laced with poison that was feared by all but the greatest of the Empire’s Saints, sank into even shields of holy argent gilded by sanctified bronze. The footmen withstood the throes of the cornered beast because the line that surrounded the lone, feral creature was three men deep. Each man was sturdy, strong, and backed by bonds of brothers of battle.

I once looked upon the stratagem and felt joy, but it now only brought bitterness to my tongue.

The man who created it was lost.

The office who led the three lines of ten was readying himself to act as a champion. He was a stout, flat-faced man with scars over his bare hands and his face. There was fear in his eyes, but it was steadily being overcome with courage, and it would have only been moment before he led the charge to end the beast’s life with skill born from years of study and habit that the men-at-arms could not have as they labored to feed their families and husband wealth.

It was another stratagem that could not be replicated again.

The man who created it was no more.

How long will it be before this all became undone? The changes to battle which saved the lives of many, that turned back the tide of beasts, and which granted the Empire time it desperately required will disappear. Once again, the battlefield will be filled with foolish charges, dozens shall die meaninglessly, and magic shall be once again held in reserve instead of used to pry open the disgusting lairs of the enemy.

It has already begun, because the Demon Lord took the mind of the man who was the Empire’s salvation as their own, and used him against us.

Hikigaya Hachiman, the Strategos, was now our foe.

I could not control my hate. My control slipped forth from me. The men who kept the beast caged froze as my will threatened to rob them of reason. The goodly officer turned his gaze towards me, his had at his sword, as he aimed to protect his men from a sudden, unknown foe. The manticore, meanwhile, took to the skies as a gap large enough between the spearline opened.

It was a poor imitation of a beautiful woman’s form, covered in the furs of animals, and filled with malign power. However, a sharp mind keyed to survival lurked within the minds of each and every living thing. It desired to live, so it allowed blessed argent to scorch its skin in order to escape its entrapment. It’s snake-tail was readied to fire and cover its retreat. My lapse in judgement, which drew the attention of my allies, ought to have meant its escape.

However, Hachiman once taught me, before he was taken and changed.

Upon the place where it would land, I already stood ready to rectify my mistakes.

Golden, slit eyes widened. Muscles tensed. Claws erupted from furred-covered approximations of the human limbs. A torrent of fire ebbed and flowed within a fanged maw. The heat of the sun paled in comparison to the burgeoning flame, even as the manticore’s true weapon, it’s tail which span out barbs laced with poison hid and readied itself in its shadow.

Once I would have felt fear.

Today, I forced its mouth shut ensuring that it would swallow its own flame, after cutting away all its limbs, and killing its tail with a thrown knife.

Speed, as the Strategos said, decides the battle between evenly matched foes.

However, more importantly, was verification.

I shore off the fiery head of the manticore as it burned and before it fell upon the ground.

“W-well fought, honored one!” The words of the officer were of little importance, but I turned my gaze towards him nonetheless. A wide smile played upon his features. My thoughts regarding his importance faded as he smiled earnestly at the sight of a defeated monster that threatened his life and that of his men. He was of common stock, despite his rank, and so he valued his life and those who followed him. Another teaching that will be forgotten. “Thank you for your aid in this battle!”

“Yes!”

“Thank you!”

“My most sincere gratitude is yours, ma’am!”

The assembly of thirty men and their officer offered their respect. It was a chorus of staggered praise, as they all stood at attention, while keeping their fair distance from me and my slain foe. The damnable war shall last longer as men in cohorts such as theirs are no longer created and brought to bear in battle. How many more will die due to the loss of the Strategos? Why did he have to be taken when victory began to take shape, as though hope itself were dashed after mere moments of being formed?

It was difficult to smile, let alone speak to them, so I left them to their duties after giving them a simple nod of acceptance.

Setting out to venture to the rest of the battlefield, everywhere I walked I found the tactics that the Strategos made, which would all be lost. Without the constant streams of victories from the Strategos, where he outfought and outlived circumstances which would slay the vaunted generals of the Empire, his legacy will be lost to the whims of those who would disparage him without inviting his reputation to speak in his stead.

A flawless, perfect general is without reproach by even the most hateful of the nobility, while one that was dead and missing was worthless and could do nothing as his name was tarnished.

If no one chose to rise up, to act in his name, the war shall not change.

I knew not how his mind worked, with all its complexities and cunning, but within the satchel I kept at my side were my notes. All the lessons I’d learned in his company lay within. The means and methods for man to overcome monsters lay at my side. It was incomparable to him, as he kept secrets due to the nature of the life he was given, however if I were to invest myself…I could hope to be the slightest bit similar to him.

Maybe, perhaps, even forestall the inevitable degradation of his works in his absence.

But before I aspire to such lengths, I would find the one who killed and took the Strategos, then end them. Their lives were forfeit for their actions, but after they stole him and used him against the Empire, their fate was to die slowly by my hand.

…

The messenger from the Central Army came at the appointed hour. The Empire once had a multitude of generals who all vied for power and position, but that had been done away with in the Strategos’s coming, and the armies of the Empire were consolidated beneath four armies. Two were at the border, ebbing and flowing where they were required, whilst one was resting from battle, and the Central army was commanded by the most able to respond to any invasion that broke one of the two at the front.

If only his words were heeded in regards to the use of those taken from other worlds.

Should the number of the Empire’s true soldiery have been bolstered a hundred-fold, in the current system and paradigms he set, there would be nothing to fear besides the greatest of the beasts. And, once the armies were matched on the battlefield, the Empire’s champions will no longer need to busy themselves against the miscreants and fight the true foes of the Empire. The Demon Lord and those who aspire to be Demon Lords would fall one by one to blessed argent, then the world would be at peace.

Instead, as always, I read that thousands of able bodies were being fed to the monsters. Every wasted able-bodied individual was one that could have been clad in armor, given a proper weapon, and held the line against greater foes. How could the Empire hope to stand victorious, if they continued to waste lives simply stalling the enemy advance, when those same lives could push the front forward?

The knowledge that thousands of able-bodied human beings died nearly made it too bitter for me to read the actions of the Second and Third Armies, but I forced myself to partake in the only true treasure that battle offered: knowledge. If I did not take what I had now, then the lives spent to gain the information would be wasted even further. So, I looked upon the parchment, read of the silly, incremental gains that could have been greater, even as I wished to tear the missives apart.

The Empire subsided off of the scraps of battle. Our ability to gain manpower from other worlds consumed the majority of our supply of resources. Every batch thrown to the monsters resulted in less resources than we could gain from a proper battle with well-equipped forces. The stalemate with had merely kept the current status quo, even with the innovations and changes we were putting into action, the Empire only existed due to a sea of blood of its own making. 

Still, it was good that I did tear it apart, because at the end of the missive I learned that the Demon Lord sought to further defile the Strategos’s memory to the Empire.

In less than a single season’s passing, the contested land which the Strategos held for more than half a decade was being settled. Its border was secured by an entire hoard of monsters, as to ensure their claim upon the land could not be claimed. In their dens of carnal debasement, I knew that the news of their victory would spread even to the Empire, until nothing was left of the Strategos’s legacy.

Of Hikigaya Hachiman’s legacy.

I couldn’t let such a thing come to pass, so instead of sending no reply, I had the messenger remain as I seized my quill, my ink, and my paper.

My brigade will follow me. The merits I gained from all my works had it so that I could ask for forgiveness instead of permission. My position was enviable to all. Whereas others would be imprisoned or killed for my actions, I shall be forgiven as long as I fought where I was called. Though I shall go against the whims of the Central Army’s leader, I shall not be punished for my course of action will serve the Empire.

Thus, I wrote of my intent.

I shall crush and retake the land taken from the Empire. Though it was undeserving of being redeemed for its failure in losing the land, I could not bear the thought of it being forever lost to monsters and their ilk.

Though I have rode for many years, fighting where I was needed instead of wanted as I was without equal in the Empire, I shall ride to where I now wish, even at the cost of my freedom for the near future.

For the Empire’s sake, I could not let this current course continue.

…

It was not long before familiarity threatened my confidence. The road towards where the Strategos was slain was a familiar one for I trained in the region myself. My father saw potential in him as a teacher, as I was talented in body, but not in mind. What I had required as a child was a firm hand, discipline, and the seed of cunning that would sprout into a barrier that would keep me safe for all my oncoming years. I had foes outside of battle, cousins who aspired for the lands I would inherent, and even lords who wished for me to not threaten their territory with the rise of my own upon my father’s passing.

Thus, the lands I passed with my troops was too familiar to me.

“Climb the mountain. Yes, the whole thing. Go. Now.” The training of my body had been harsh indeed. However, I needed it as I shamed all others who attempted to train me in the normal manner. The Strategos, however, had taken my measure and implemented all he could in order to make me the strongest I could possibly be. “Then, when you get up there, I want you to fall from the top without dying. How? Figure it out. If you break your neck, that’s your own fault.”

That training taught me the importance of endurance and the importance of properly taking a hit. My stamina exhausted itself during the uphill climb and when it came to fall properly in a series of maneuvers down the mountainside, I found myself nearly dying multiple times over. Then, he had me do it all again until my body could remember it in the heat of battle. No battle ever felt as tiring and no blow ever harmed me as much as the ones I rendered to myself while falling.

Then, there was the matter of intellect.

“Write everything I say down. Why? Because you’re an idiot. If you tell me you’re not, then you’re probably the biggest idiot I’ve ever met.” The camping ground which he had settled his force within was bereft of structures, but I saw them as my battalion dismounted and began to rebuild the encampment. I remembered being lectured personally by the Strategos, after he ensured I could properly read and write along with those under his command. “If you’re interested in being more than a living weapon, you’re going to listen to me, you’re going to write down everything I say, and you’ll outlive and outfight and outthink everyone and everything… even people who call themselves your friend.”

He opened my eyes beyond the battlefield, to the terrors of internal politics within the Empire, and how the Empire would inevitably fall if did not change. The true power of the monsters was revealed to me, as they not only killed but took those who they fought to bolster their numbers, and how decisively defeating them was impossible. To defeat one Demon Lord meant only respite, before another one came to power and renewed the conflict, with every region gained merely meant to act as a buffer and a place for battle. The Empire has lost and regained many of its frontier for centuries upon centuries. Victory is but an intangible dream.

I was raised on songs, on promises, and heroes long dead, so that I would inspire another like myself to rise up and give their lives for the Empire. My purpose was to die gloriously to prolong an inevitable defeat. Then, when my father refused to believe my words, called me back to study elsewhere, and punished the Strategos… Hikigaya Hachiman merely matched my gaze as I mounted my horse and he was taken to be punished by the lash.

“Keep yourself safe and live a long time, brat.”

Those were his last words to me, as the Empire cut away our ties, and refused to put him under my command. From then on, I only heard stories of him, and saw how the Empire adapted to his strategies to tilt the odds in their favor.

Yet after denying me my teacher, and taking everything from him, they failed to keep him safe.

Let alone avenge him.

There will be a reckoning for the Empire.

I will be at its head.

However, for now, I shall sate myself with revenge for another able-bodied and an irreplaceable mind lost.

I will retake this region, even if it costs me my life.