The curtains opened incessantly on performance after performance. The people of Terea loved theater, so there was no shortage of actors or audience members to watch them.
People crowded around the stage in front of the temple. The play being performed was a bawdy comedy, one of Nue’s favorites, but nonetheless she left Dill behind to pursue the boy whose name she didn’t even know.
Dill, the man with long, rust-colored hair, whose youth had passed but who was still in the prime of his life, stood alone now. Watching the play without particular interest, he smiled after a moment, scratching his stubbled chin.
Go get him, he had said to Nue in parting, but now that he was all by himself he felt indescribably lonely.
Each time the actors onstage performed some clownish act, peals of laughter erupted from the crowd.
Dill waited. Time passed—time the children had all to themselves.
The chorus who now took the stage interrupted Dill’s thoughts. The comedy had ended and the next play had begun. A mixed chorus of men and women raised their voices in celebration of a hero; this was the heroic play Aegisthus. Dill grimaced reflexively.
A moment later, the chorus faltered as the fearsome sound of snapping timber reverberated through the air.
A dark shadow had appeared, trampling the wooden stage into the ground. It was the giant body of one of the bioweapons ridden by Reincarnators—a Sphinx.
This creature was not the only attacker. The temple’s stone columns fell, cutting trails through the rising dust. As both those who had participated in the sacrificial ceremony and those who had stood and watched the play tried to flee, the staccato pounding of many hooves could be heard shattering the pavement.
The victims screamed in their death throes. An actor onstage dressed as the hero failed to get away in time, and the bulky leg of a Sphinx trampled on his spine, snapping it. He was killed instantly, and the monstrous bull made no cry itself. A scrap of dark curtain fabric caught on its sharp horn fluttered in the wind like a thundercloud.
“Reincarnator!” Dill cried, sweeping his sword out of its scabbard before he had even finished the word. His eyes were opened wide, with his gums visible above clenched teeth. He gripped the hilt of his sword so tightly that the tip of the blade shook. Dill’s face now was nothing like the elaborate expression he had created onstage—this was true hatred.
“N-No! I don’t want to die! Somebody...somebody help!”
On the stage, a priest who had fled his temple was lost amongst the confusion of the fleeing refugees. As he was about to be crushed to death under the Sphinx’s hooves like a grain upon a millstone, a rust-colored wind rushed in between them, saving him from his predicament.
“My name is Dill Steel-Link.”
The first strike was nothing but a flash. His steel blade cut through flesh, then bones of iron, then sparks flew as he finally severed a thick bunch of cables. The Sphinx screamed voicelessly before stumbling on its three remaining legs.
“My name is Prodotis! I am the resourceful strategist, Mentor! I am Scalvos, who drags chains of iron!”
The Sphinx shook its great head around in an attempt to sweep Dill aside with its broad horns.
Dill purposefully drew out the monster’s assault. He could have evaded it easily, but instead goaded it into attacking further. The Sphinx followed Dill’s movements, trying to follow up with another strike—but as its center of mass shifted toward its missing front leg, it fell to the ground with a crash.
As Dill swung his sword down to deliver the finishing blow, he became aware of someone watching him from behind. A Reincarnator crouching in the wings of the stage leaped out at him, a ball of flame burning in his hand. The fireball illuminated the Reincarnator’s pale, expressionless face as he moved to strike Dill directly with the hand holding the flame.
At point-blank range, the flame illuminated Dill’s back—the back that was now defenseless after he had cut off the Sphinx’s head.
But was it defenseless? Hardly!
His chain mail cloak rippled around him. The cloak had concealed the fact that he had rotated his hips dramatically in anticipation of the attack. From this stance he now released a sharp thrust of his sword, like an arrow from a bow stretched to its limits.
“I am Iroas the swift! Kranos of the shining helm!”
A lock of rust-colored hair was burned black and fell from his head. Blue blood dripped from the tip of the sword thrust through the Reincarnator’s back.
“You speak nonsense, barbarian. How many names do you have, all told?”
The Reincarnator who had received a mortal wound to his abdomen said all of this coolly, without a trace of anxiety in his voice. He seemed to have no intention of resisting as his arms lolled lazily and his eyelids drooped almost sleepily.
“I have borne all the names I just announced. On the stage I have played all of the heroes who rushed into battle during the age of the epics, and each time I brought that hero back to life.”
While making a lazy attempt to remove the sword that had pierced his abdomen, the Reincarnator laughed derisively.
“Is this an attempt to spite us Reincarnators? There is no comparison between our reincarnation, based in science, and the childish dramaturgy of a die-hard actor. You barbarians—”
“Return to the Imperial City and find another body to leech from. Until I retrieve the body of Iris Earhart, I will come and kill you again and again.” Dill moved his face up close to the Reincarnator’s. “Again and again.”
Dill cast aside his sword, dulled by the blood and oil stuck to it, and carved into the Reincarnator’s throat with his dagger. A spurt of blue blood washed over Dill’s cheeks.
At Dill’s feet lay the priest, groveling and moaning.
Dill looked down at the man he had just saved with cold, contemptuous eyes as he strode closer with his dagger still drawn. The priest screamed and tried to crawl away. Dill stepped around him, stopping him in his tracks.
“I thought I heard you say that you would remain in the temple and protect the faith. What happened to those lofty words?”
“I—I...” The priest trembled, then began to weep. “Please, just kill me. No matter how sincerely I pledge to remain faithful, I am overtaken by weakness and keep repeating the same mistakes... I will never be strong like you.”
Dill said nothing. Instead, he thrust his dagger toward the priest. The priest shut his eyes and twisted his neck as far as he could to avoid the point of its blade. His teeth chattered with a sound like falling pebbles.
“Please...do it quickly. At least be swift about it!”
“The men of Westa were once brave.”
The blade did not strike, and the priest gingerly opened his eyes.
“You must have heard this proverb—it’s used to describe something that was once great, but has since fallen to ruin. We men of Terea will probably be spoken of by future generations in the same way. ‘The men of Terea were once brave. They built the white-walled city of Aspro Terea in the central plains, then they were victorious in the Holy War to the south, unifying Redguard. Today, those same Tereans are all cowards, mere shadows of what they once were.’”
The groveling priest was not the only one listening to Dill’s speech. There were still many refugees, wounded or stupefied, sitting on the ground. All of them were Tereans whose home, the empire of Megaros Terea, had been destroyed by Reincarnators.
“If you really are Tereans, then I suppose that there was never a time when the men of Terea were brave. It was only the power of the Ex Machina that built the capital of Aspro Terea, and the victory in the Holy War was thanks to the support of the armies of Poreas. I can think of no other explanation after seeing you flee without even trying to fight. You’re just like a herd of cattle.”
Dill was silent after saying this. The area around the stage also fell quiet. As this was going on, other Reincarnators and Sphinxes rampaged around the temple, piling up more bodies.
“Just like that, theater and epic poems have the power to stir feeble hearts. How will you answer? Who has ever ignored the call to action and done nothing? Remember what you saw in those plays just a little while ago. It’s true—we aren’t heroes. But we can drum the scripts into our heads and play heroes onstage. Even heroes are human and therefore fated to die, but their spirits live on forever, residing in our bodies. They will continue to reincarnate. Now, listen closely—” Dill paused for a beat. From his experience as an actor, he understood well that what he said next would have the greatest impact. “We can become heroes.”
Silence fell yet again. However, from this silence, emotions were emerging that had not been present before.