An Unborn Hero

Rose peered up at the black sky, shivering in the cold, violet sunlight. "I need to find shelter..." she muttered to herself.

Alas, there wasn't any. The landscape was lifeless and desolate, an empty expanse of flat stone. The only point of interest was a mountain range in the distance, poking above the horizon like a row of teeth.

"Maybe I can find a cave over there..."

Trusting in luck, Rose sprinted in the direction of the mountains, but however far she ran, they never seemed to get closer.

"I'm never going to make it, am I? I'm going to freeze to death out here, if I don't die of thirst first."

Rose briefly paused her run in order to pinch her face. "No. That's defeatist talk. I've got to keep going."

She ran on for a further hour, the mountains still not getting any closer. Despite her physical occupation and skills, she was exhausted from the long sprint, and the chill in the air was getting to her despite her constant exertion. She stopped for a break, panting, hands on knees to support herself, staring down at her pair of shadows. Alas, the panting only served to draw more of the freezing air into her lungs.

"This is hopeless... Why am I even bothering?"

Again she shook her head, trying to throw out the morbid thoughts. "My parents will come and save me. I just have to hold on."

"Parents which abandoned me..." came the unbidden response. "They sent me away, to face a scary... something. Why can't I remember what it was? I just remember they didn't come with me, even though I was so frightened."

"That's... true. But even if they aren't here, the rest of my party will come. Or Mystery herself."

"Mystery? A [Hero] who's treating me like a storybook character instead of a person? And party members? Grace despises me, and only acts friendly because she knows she's stuck with me. Rrillandral is only interested in the [Hero], not me. The other two don't want to be involved at all, but Mystery is forcing them. None of them would go out of their way to help me."

"That's..." thought Rose, desperate to refute her own dark thoughts, but they were all so obviously correct that she didn't know where to start. "No. They're good people... Aren't they?"

She looked around. Was it her imagination or had the air grown even colder? But the sun hadn't moved since she'd first looked at it, pinned directly overhead in the featureless sky.

"Perhaps I'm just not worth saving," came the next unbidden thought.

Rose squatted, huddling herself into a ball in an attempt to preserve body heat.

"..." whispered a voice, right in Rose's ear, causing her to jerk back up in surprise.

"Who's there?" she shouted. "Who are you?"

Another whisper responded, but it contained no answer. There were no words, or at least, no words Rose could understand. Just a feeling of presence. And perhaps, just a little, a touch of warmth.

"No. I'm not going to just give up and keel over. I have to get to the mountains..." she thought, starting off again at a slower jog.

She kept it up for another couple of hours before her burning muscles became too much to bear. "I'm just making this harder on myself. It would be so much easier to just give up. If only I was stronger, but I'm not."

"But I could be," she reminded herself.

"Yes, if Mystery was here. But she isn't. I'm alone... Alone and abandoned."

She flinched at a sudden sensation on her forehead. She touched it, surprised to find her fingers come back damp. But looking around revealed nothing but the same empty expanse she'd been standing in since... since...

"Something's... wrong. Where am I? How did I get here?" she said out loud.

"..." came a non-answer, right on the cusp of hearing, accompanied by another hint of warmth.

Rose looked around in confusion. "This... isn't right."

For the first time since her arrival, the air stirred, an icy wind swirling around her, feeling like a thousand needles stabbing through her skin. She shivered, squatting down again as she tried to make herself a smaller target for the freezing breeze.

"It's useless..." thought Rose.

"..." came the whisper again, feeling more urgent. Were there other voices, too? Perhaps, but they were so far away, and getting further... This time, the warmth the whisper brought was nowhere to be found.

"It's all useless... I might as well just give up."

"... Dream..." came the whisper, stronger and with a single comprehensible word within. "... Wake... Rose..."

Rose looked up in confusion. "Dream? But I'm not..." she looked around again. "I'm not... asleep?"

"Of course I'm not!" snapped her thoughts. "I'm just making up comforting things to distract myself from the fact that I'm going to die."

"... Wake... Aster..."

Rose's eyes snapped open as she dragged herself back to her feet, the mention of that name reminding her of recent events. "I am asleep! I cast Mystery's spell, and it knocked me out."

"Yes, I'm so pathetic that I couldn't even cast one spell. My 'teammates' were probably so disappointed that they deliberately abandoned me here to die."

"Shut up, me! My teammates couldn't cast it at all, so I did better than them!"

"They just pretended to fail, to save my feelings. I was the only one that truly failed."

Rose blinked, her head starting to clear a little. "That's so bloody stupid that I'd never think it. They'd hardly try to preserve my feelings on one hand and then kill me the next. Whoever or whatever you are, get out of my head!"

"Hehehehe. HAHAHA!" came another unbidden thought. "I am you, and you are nothing but the final stray thoughts of a dying mortal. You will freeze here forever, while I feast."

"Did I just think hahaha?!" thought Rose, before considering her situation. She certainly felt awake, and only had the mysterious whisper claiming that she wasn't. Well, that and the nagging feeling that this place was... wrong. And that some of her thoughts seemed... not quite her own.

Come to think of it, wasn't the sun supposed to be yellowish and hot? And how was one light source casting two shadows? Not to mention this place's tenuous understanding of geography. In retrospect, its nonsensical nature seemed rather obvious.

"Okay... So, I'm asleep. Apparently I have something hostile inside my head that's trying to kill me, but... it can't. It can't hurt me. It needs me to willingly surrender."

The breeze blew again, freezing Rose and leaving her hands and face numb and an unhealthy shade of blue.

"Correction; it can hurt me. But it still can't kill me, or it would have just started off with that. I just need to fight back. And... well, this is a dream. The rules don't apply."

"What am I doing?" thought Rose. "This is crazy! The cold is obviously driving me insane. Stop! Just try to get to the mountains. I need shelter before I lose it completely!"

Rose stood up straight, ignoring the imposter that dared to pretend to be her.

"Rules don't apply, so if I dream of having [Court Mage] levels of mana, then I can do this: for friendship and justice, demon slaying magical girl Aster Blue, transform!"

Rose twirled, transforming into her magical girl form. She believed the magically protective costume would keep out the cold, and so it did.

"Last chance," she said, materialising a pair of swords.

"What am I going to do with weapons?" thought something, wearing her own mind like a skin. "There's nothing here to stab."

"Wrong answer," she declared, stabbing both swords into her second shadow. The one that didn't line up with the frigid sun.

The world screamed and shattered, the distant mountains, the ground, the sun and even the sky breaking apart, falling all around her. The shadow hissed and bubbled, making one last ineffectual grasp at Rose, and then there was nothing but black.

A few seconds passed before Rose realised the reason everything was black was because she had her eyes closed. And there were sounds all around her. Rustling, and quiet talking. Someone was sobbing.

A lethargic-feeling Rose opened her eyes, somewhat discombobulated. "What... just happened?" she asked carefully.

The sounds of sobbing immediately cut out and a pressure over her chest vanished, the face of Grace pulling up into her vision.

The face, which was streaked with tears, flickered through a few emotions, settling on a giant, beaming grin.

"Hey, kiddo. Never doubted you for a second," came an older and more masculine voice.

"Dad! I thought you'd... abandoned me..." she started, realising how stupid it sounded before the words were even out of her mouth. Of course he hadn't abandoned anyone; he just hadn't been invited to the stupid ball. Why had she ever thought otherwise?

Rose looked around, spotting both parents, her entire party, and a couple of others she didn't recognise. Every single party member was wearing an expression of relief, with the possible exception of Rrillandral, who had her usual expression of curiosity, tainted with a touch of surprise. Perhaps the voice had been right about her, but certainly not of the others. To be fair, they'd barely met.

"You were attacked by a spiritual monster. A dream eater. You did well to fight it off," explained one of the newcomers, who was wearing priest's robes. "Casting one out after it has invaded someone's dreams is no trivial task."

"You did more than fight it off. You saved us all," said Grace. "If we'd all gone to sleep at the same time... None of us would have woken up."

"How? The last thing I remember, I was trying out Mystery's spell in my room. Where are we?"

While Grace started explaining to Rose what she'd been through, Mystery gave a metaphorical sigh of relief. The fact that Rose had just survived a serious monster attack was nice, but it was equally nice that Rose and Grace suddenly seemed to be best friends. Seeing Grace cry when she thought Rose wouldn't make it had come as a complete surprise, given her earlier behaviour.

Mystery was also fairly sure that Grace's tears dripping on Rose had helped wake her up. She'd certainly twitched a little when that big one hit her forehead. The power of friendship saved the day!

The monster had struck minutes after they'd left the castle and the safety of its wards, but there had been no visible signs at first. It hadn't been until Mystery had spotted Rose's vitality fading that she'd known something was wrong. She'd immediately flashed red light over Rose as brightly as she could.

ding

For picking up on a stealthy assault, [Soul's Eye] advances to level 33.

"Hmm? Mystery?" Kellela had asked. "Is something wrong?"

"Rose does look a little pale," suggested Grace. "The way she's squirming, she looks in pain."

Rrillandral looked over, then said a rude word.

"Pardon?" asked a shocked Grace.

"However did that get here? No... there's more of them! We're under attack!"

"Rrillandral, slow down! What do you mean, we're under attack?"

"Dream eaters. They're spiritual monsters with no physical body. There's a crowd of them surrounding us. I'm sorry, but one of them has already caught Rose. I should have noticed. I was foolish to relax my guard simply because I was in a friendly location, when we already know that this cycle is like no other. Doubtless the demons have already infiltrated this city to attack our unborn hero."

"Dream eaters?" asked Kellela, never having heard of them. Nor had anyone else in the carriage.

"Never mind the monster lesson. How do we help Rose?" asked Grace.

"We don't. They integrate themselves so thoroughly with their host that killing or forcibly removing them would destroy the mind of the host, too. She needs to fight it off herself, and I'm sorry, but given her low levels, she probably won't be able to."

"What? What are you saying?"

"Rose is probably going to die. Fortunately, they're completely impotent against anyone who is not sleeping. Now that we know they're there, we can..."

"Don't just say she's going to die!" interrupted Grace. "We have to be able to do something."

Rrillandral looked at her in surprise. "Adventuring is a dangerous occupation, even more so if we intend to fight alongside the [Hero]. Death is natural, and it's a rare [Hero] that loses no party members. Rather, you should be thankful that she brought the monsters to our attention. Had we gone to sleep as normal tonight, death would have found us all."

Mystery wasn't listening to the argument, having somewhat blanked at the declaration Rose was likely to perish. Instead, she dipped into Kellela to borrow her mana, casting [Magical Girl Transformation] on Rose. If she wasn't strong enough to fight off the monster, she simply needed to get stronger.

It had no effect. Her outfit changed, but she didn't wake, nor did her vitality recover.

By the time the carriage had reached their new residence, they had a plan of sorts. The only hints Rrillandral could offer were to keep her warm and have loved ones talk to her. Mystery taught herself [Sense Spirit], adding another sub-skill to her perceptive abilities, then desperately made use of [Telepathy], trying to get through to Rose. Her parents arrived. So did a priest, skilled in dealing with spirits, who purged the other monsters. The [Doctor] who had previously given Rose a clean bill of health turned back up, maintaining a steady supply of healing to keep her vitality from running out.

And, in the end, it had worked. The attack had been foiled.

Mystery, having stretched the time limit of [Astral Projection] to its breaking point while waiting for Rose to wake, flopped back into her foetus, allowing herself a few moments of relief before turning her attention to the stream of messages she'd been ignoring.

Mystery (Human)

Age: -10 months

Occupation: Hero (L)

Skills:

- Soul's Eye (U) (34/100)

>> Sense Vitality (U)

>> Sense Soul (R)

>> Sense Mana (U)

>> Sense Light (C)

>> Sense Sound (C)

>> Pierce Illusions (U)

>> Sense Miasma (R)

>> Multi-focal (R)

>> Sense Spirit (R)

- Astral Projection (U) (21/60)

>> Sure Navigation (U)

>> Uncontainable (U)

>> Tether of Will (L)

- Robust (C) (19/40)

>> Hardened Soul (R)

>> Secured Mana (U)

>> Pain Tolerance (C)

- Stealth (C) (3/20)

>> Camouflage Vitality (R)

- Magical Girl Transformation (R) (20/30)

>> Age Correction (R)

>> Gender Bending (R)

- Light (C) (12/20)

>> Heterochrome (U)

- Increased Attributes (C) (9/20)

>> Mana Storage (U)

- Investigation (C) (2/10)

- Cosplay (U) (1/10)

- Mana Absorption (U) (3/20)

>> Drain Mana (U)

- Translate (U) (4/10)

- Telepathy (U) (5/20)

>> Reciprocity (U)

Achievements:

- Early Bloomer II (R)

- First Skill (C)

- Journeyman (U)

- Survivor of Zarklaxxos, the Arcane Infernal (R)

- I Broke The System, And All I Got Was This Lousy Achievement (E)

- Astral Explorer I (R)

- First Spell (C)

- I Broke The System Again, And Now The Administrators Hate Me (E)

- Spell Forger (R)

- Demon Slayer II (E)

- Monster Slayer V (E)

- Curiosity (U)

- War Veteran (U)

- Royal Audience (C)

- Diligent Hero (L)

- Studious (C)

- Pioneering Guider (E)