You Asked For A Hero?

“The problem with being an adventurer,” Symon Berylius Knightshaw announced, staring bleakly into only his second goblet of ale – I had the vague impression that he might have lied about his age upon entrance into the Adventurer’s Checkpoint Inn – “is that people think the word is synonymous with ‘bulging muscles and impressive swordsmanship.’

I tell them, ‘if I could slay a dragon with a chunk of metal, do you think I would have chosen a profession in aimless wandering?’ Heck no. I could have been a knight to the King, earning ninety rupees a year and living it up with my Damsel in Distress. But no, they think I’m doing the chivalrous thing and being modest. Then they send me up to the highest peak of their village to slay some massive, fire-breathing dragon as if I do it all the time just for kicks. Do you have any idea how hard it is to get smoldering flames out of your hair?”

He lapsed into a miserable sort of silence and I took that as a cue to down another goblet of whatever I had ordered. It had been yet another bleak day on my seemingly endless journey to the Pierrot Valleys when I’d chanced upon the conveniently placed Adventurer’s Checkpoint Inn – an inn designed to relax and refresh all weary travelers – and had immediately struck up an interesting friendship with three others of my own profession.

Prince Rainier Alejandro Capone III – or Rainier, for convenience’s sake – slapped him on the back in what I could only presume was a show of sympathy. Symon winced.

“I hear ya,” Rainier slurred, pounding on the table a couple of times with his goblet for good measure. He was an exuberant sort of drunk. I didn’t think that learning how to hold in his liquor had been deemed crucial for his education back home.

“Ex’ectations, ex’ectations. Just ‘cause I’m the Crown Prince of Elascius ‘n’ all that, they reck’n all I wanna do is marry Princess Whatserface and have the two-point-five kids with the white picket fence and blasted dog. But no, I told ‘em. No quailing before the King of Elascius for me, no sirree.”

It didn’t seem to occur to him that perhaps the reason why he wasn’t afraid of his father like the rest of us was because, as the sole heir to his father’s kingdom, he wasn’t in any danger of being fed to a moat full of crocodiles. I kept my silence. In my inebriated state, I might have ended up doing something tragic. Like murdering the sole successor to Elascius’ throne. That’d be a bummer.

“So what’d you do?” Symon leaned forward eagerly, upsetting my fourth – or was it seventh? – goblet of ale.

“Hey,” I protested feebly, watching the goblet tumble to the floor. The kid couldn’t last ten seconds without knocking something over. And he was the one destined to locate the God’s Eye? The God’s Eye being the legendary long-lost gem of the gods. Correction: the incredibly fragile, easily breakable legendary long-lost gem of the gods.

The mind boggled.

Heh. Or maybe it was just the ale. Yeah. It was probably the ale.

I squinted. Was that why I was seeing double?

“Then what’d I do?” both Rainiers exclaimed. “Then I upped and left in the middle o’ the night for m’ last year of freedom and a’venture. ‘fore being tied down to some nagging princess and a bunch o’ screaming kids, know what I mean? S’alright, don’t look at me funny like that; I left m’ parents a note,” he added hastily, as if that would rectify the situation. “I’m tellin’ ya, been having the time o’ my life ever since. There’s a song that goes somethin’ like that. But yeah, those Sirens sure know how to show a guy a good time.”

Symon sighed wistfully. “I met those sirens while I was searching for the God’s Eye in the Finnish Seas. Tried to beat me senseless with a spiked club. Thought I was an eel.”

Rainier burst into giggles.

“S’alright.” I shot Rainier what I hoped passed as a silencing glare. “Nobody’s got any respect for peoples like us. Goin’ out on adventures every day ‘n’ putting our lives on the line. Just last month some girl chased me out of Delle like I was some kinda thief o’ somethin’. Me! Never stole a thing in my life. ‘N’ that time they found Princess Ethereala’s underwear in my back pocket – that was just a simple misunderstanding. S’okay. I forgave ‘em for holding a restraining order ‘gainst me. I’m not one to hold grudges. Nuh uh. Not me.” I peered curiously into my goblet. “Hey, I lost m’ drink. You guys seen my drink?”

Symon checked beneath his coaster.

“I bet Kearaylla took it,” Rainier decided. He cast a baleful glare in her direction. “She’s mean, that one. Saw her screaming abuse at that husband of hers. And she stole mydrink. Saw her eyeing it all evening. You wanna ask her if she took yours?”

We all glanced at the sleeping form of the last member of our party, who was currently slumped over one end of the table. Symon eyed the quiver and arrows by her side and shook his head vehemently. I did the same, if only to counter the movement. Why wouldn’t the world stop spinning? Couldn’t it see that I was drunk?

“Someone should poke her to see if she wakes up,” Rainier decided. He leaned over and jabbed a finger into her eyelid. “Hey. Wake up.”

There was no movement on her part and I heaved a sigh of relief. And a little bit of something else too. Once I had emptied my stomach of its contents and the earthquake (that everybody else appeared not to notice) had ceased, I grabbed Rainier’s finger.

“You’d better not. She won’t hes’tate to kill you. ‘Specially if she thinks you’re trying to attack ‘er.” This was sound advice on my part. But hey, I was smart like that.

Kearaylla Selena Oflavian lifted her head and glared blearily around the table. “That’s ‘cause,” she declared passionately, “men stink.”

I gave a start, having been under the impression that she had been sound asleep. Or dead. Either one. Evidently, she had only been partly unconscious. That was alright then.

“Speaking of men,” I began conversationally, hoping to placate her. Intoxicated as I was, I had enough sense to know I should keep her in a good mood. Especially with her weapon within reach. “Speaking of men, where’s Conrad?”

She blinked. “Who?”

“Con-rad,” I repeated. “You know. That guy you showed up here with. He has pretty hair. It’s even prettier than Rainier’s.” (“Hey! I’ll have you, yes you, know that the top hairdressers in the country – no, no, the kingdom! Yeah! The kingdom, that’s the one…”) I paused for a moment, ignoring Rainier’s protests. “Oh yeah, ‘nd you said he was your husband. That’s what you said. I heard you ‘cause you were making such a loud noise ‘n’ arguing ‘n’ all.”

Realisation dawned and Kearaylla instinctively reached for her quiver. Symon whimpered and slid beneath the table from harm’s way.

“Oh. Him. You mean the insufferable jerk who conned me into helping him find his long-lost parents? And then decided it would be just peachy to get me drunk and make me his wife in La Veego? That Conrad?” She poked me viciously in the chest as she emphasised her point, and I resisted the urge to cry. She was a mean drunk, that one. “Oh, oh,” she snorted. “And get this. He’s making me travel all the way to Lessene just so he can assassinate King Pelytheus. It’ll be fun, he says. An adventure, he says. Ha!”

“King Pelytheus,” Rainier mused. “I know him. He and my dad go golfing together every Sunday. Tell him Rainier says ‘hi.’” He burst into another fit of giggles. I sensed something amiss with his reaction but I couldn’t exactly put my finger on it. Hmm. Oh well. Maybe it was just ‘cause there were two of him. Yeah. That was probably it.

“I’m goin’ to bed,” I announced to my friends.

“I’m goin’ to bed,” I announced to my friends’ twins.

“Hey! Wait a minute!” Kearaylla shoved me back into my seat. Another jab to my chest almost made me burst into tears. “What ‘bout you? You haven’t told us ‘nything ‘bout what you’re doin’ here. What ‘bout you? You doing ‘nything important, huh? Huh? Huh?” She peered menacingly into my face.

“Me?” I blinked. “Can’t ‘member.” I wracked my brains for a clue as to what I had been doing before I’d stumbled into the inn. “I think it’s somethin’ like, I dunno, saving the world from impending doom or somethin’.”

Or was that something I’d read in a fortune cookie?

“S’alright,” I mumbled. “I’ll figure it out in the morning.”

Managing to get to my room unscathed was an adventure in itself.