A Hero is Born
His armour was steel, dragon-forged by Humans, plated then layered over his body to provide full protection while maintaining as much mobility as possible. It was scored with over three dozen family names, to provide the blessings and protection of everybody who had lost somebody they love in this war. Even the Sword-Priests of the Order of the Ninth Circle had marked the arms, legs, torso, with their holiest of symbols to provide protection.
Beneath that, he wore a layer of thin chainmail. Forged in the fires of Napra-Sigurn, this chainmail was birthed in the lava-flows beneath the largest of the Sigurn races mightiest Empire-cities at the prime of their power. Each link was near indestructible, made from the shattered remnants of their soulstones, a sacrifice by their ancestors for this one man. It could brush off dragon-fire without leaving a mark, break blades upon its surface.
His flowing robes were mithril-infused silk, woven by the Eridarian’s in their tree-cities around the Dravn Belt. They were impenetrable by sword and arrow, light as a feather, and gleaming with the light of its makers. Six Eridarian Royal Families stepped forth to add their crest to this robe, using their finest enchanters to award the blessings of their family to the wearer. How the Eridarian isolationists wept that day.
Even his blade was that of legend. The Nonman fires deep beneath the ground forged a weapon of great power, a God-slayer to kill the remnants of their brother-race, the Exohumans, and their artificial Gods. This reaver of life was made from the bones of their mightiest Erratic warriors, forged in the unholy sorcerous flames of a Nonman temple, then consummated with a single life; a Nonman himself, his body slain, his soul absorbed into the weapon, opening it to the full sorcerous power of the Unreal, source to all magic. Our hero took it from the hands of the fallen Nonman King, Narcissus, gone but never forgotten.
It was delivered to the Exohumans. Purified in the light of AORTA, their holiest of artificial Gods, she who controls the world around them, it was sealed from the Unreal, leaving the Nonman soul trapped inside, funnelling the fallen creatures full power into the blade and strengthening it with the rage and hatred of a twisted immortal.
Then the Exohumans delivered him to his goal. That was their gift, deliverance. Just like they birthed life into these shards of rock, they would carry him aloft and place him at his destination, standing before the gates to his destiny.
But now he found himself alone.
From his periphery, he could see the creature before him.
An Empyrean, foulest of all sorcerous monstrosities, unleashed into this world.
Twice the size of a dragon, with a dozen arms and four mighty wings, its head a fusion between snake and man. Its features shifted and morphed, pained by the Real it found itself in, unadjusted to the permanency of this world compared to its own.
And this hero, down on one knee, he wept.
His vision crowded by his holy gear. His body weighed down by his armour, cloistered by his chainmail, hindered by his robes. A burden.
And he realised, then, the one dark truth he knew all along.
Just because you are told you are a hero, just because you are equipped like a hero, just because you hold the standing and power of a hero;
This doesn’t make you a hero.
And he was no hero.