Long Live the Heir

[Roger Smith]

Short excerpt from a Dersite "kill team" sent to prevent Adam from dying and ascending to God Tier. Crazy death dreams ahoy.

"The Heir is dead. We have failed in our mission. I will take full responsibility for this grievous failure. Back to Derse at once."

Boy, my voice sure sounded a lot more confident than I actually felt. Truth be told, I was just about to lose it. We'd let the Heir die. Man, was the Queen gonna be sore about that. I could already feel the condescension when all that confidence I'd had about this mission was dumped right back on me. All that confidence. Just one simple task: keep the Heir alive.

And boy did we blow it.

The Heir was just laying there. Bleeding all over the place, great big gaping wound. It was a mess, is what it was. And boy...if I'd had any lunch it might just be decorating the walls right now. I'm really not cut out for this stuff. This search and rescue, bloody combat stuff... Damn. Should've stuck with my first choice. I'd rather be a dignitary than a brute any day...

"We're never going to live this one down, are we, boss?" It was one of my compatriots, the only one who I could really call my 'friend', who jostled his way up to speak. He looked just about as down in the dumps as I felt. He'd been the one on watch duty, supposed to alert us if anything funny was about to go down. Freak lightning storm knocked out his gear though. He was as blind as the rest of us. It wasn't his fault. It wasn't anyone's fault.

But it was all of our fault. The Heir was still dead.

"Yeah, we'll never get the chance to forget this one," I said, voice barely at a whisper. "We had one job. I had one job, and I let you all down. The Heir is dead. And now so are we."

"Maybe we can still pull through though. Just because the Heir is dead doesn't mean things are going to completely fall apart."

"It's a nice dream." I turned and looked back at the mountain in the distance. Somewhere down there, in a little no-name tunnel, there was the Heir's home. And just a little ways further, at the heart of a mountain....was his Quest Bed. "....long live the Heir," I snarled under my breath, turning away before the bile could rise any higher in my throat.

The Heir was dead. And as the storm overhead swelled with an all-new fury I didn't even think was possible, we all suddenly realized just what that meant.

The Heir was Dead. The Heir had Awoken. Long live the Heir.