(Twelve years ago)
Thatch had his head stuck in the water of a stream. Pulling himself back up for air, he breathed deeply in relief from being in and now out of the cold water. The forest outside the city was a welcome change of pace for the young man. It wasn’t necessarily that he was a wilderness person than a city person. The trees and everything were relaxing, but he felt rather at home. Not out of a sense of connection to nature, but rather that there just wasn’t anyone out here. He didn’t much appreciate being stared at like a circus attraction, but more than anything, being the center of attention made him instinctively uneasy.
Taking a deep breath and stretching Edwin let his senses extend beyond. He could obviously hear the stream gurgling and the leaves rustling. Snapping his eyes open, he picked himself back up and decided to resume his running. A few seconds after he left the waterside, two people came into the clearing. They were both guys in their early twenties. One was over six feet tall with light skin, sandy blonde hair and a face that was easy on the eyes. The other was only a few inches shorter, with tanned skin but his head was buzzed to the scalp and his shoulders were much more broad.
“Now, Frank are you sure you saw him come this w-way”, the blonde guy yawned, clearly not used to being up before the sun.
“Yeah, didn’t you see him stop to stretch for a moment”, the stockier one asked, “Aren’t you supposed to be the sharp eyed one?”
“Ask me again when I can keep my sharp eyes open.”
“God, Adam, you’re useless”, Frank groaned
“Said the guy with a lesser Patron”, the blonde quipped.
“Oh, get off your f***ing high horse”, Frank groaned, “Being blessed by a sky god doesn’t automatically make you the strongest or most qualified.”
The blonde named Adam turned to Frank, “Says the guy who-”, suddenly his eyes went wide, “Frank, look-”
But it was too late, Frank felt the back of his knee get kicked out while simultaneously an arm like a giant snake wrapped around his neck. He didn’t even have time to register the pain before all he saw was black. Adam watched in fear as a shorter, red haired man casually manhandled his new friend like a child. Thatch set the stocky man on the ground, never taking his eyes off Adam.
“Who are you, and why are you stalking me”, he asked in a low voice.
Adam held his hands up placatingly, “Hey, easy there, shorty, I’m not here to hurt you. I just tagged along cause I was curious, you know?”
“Curious about what”, Edwin demanded.
The blonde pointed at his chest with both hands, “I think we started off on a bad note. My name is Adam Grant and the big guy you… oh so easily knocked out is Frank. We’re both summoned heroes. Like you.”
Apparently that was the wrong thing to say as Adam had the wind knocked out of him, Edwin pinning him against a tree, “Only the High Priests are supposed to know about me, so how are you even aware of what I am?”
“Look, I only just heard about you like a day ago”, Adam warbled out, “You caused kind of an incident at the War temple, so Frank heard, and when we started asking around, people kept dodging us, but eventually we heard the rumors about a guy who got summoned after all twelve of us already came through. It took some bribery but we found out how you go running before everyone is up, so we staked out and followed you here. That’s all, I swear!”
Edwin cocked his head as he looked at the blonde’s face. He wasn’t sure if he trusted it, but based on his previous conversation, the blonde stranger seemed the type to not know when to stop talking. Edwin stepped back and let Adam slump onto the ground. The blonde looked at his still unconscious friend, “Is he gonna be alright?”
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Edwin stepped back, keeping the two of them in full view, “Just rub in between his shoulders and he’ll wake right up.”
Adam was a little skeptical, but he did as told and sure enough, two seconds later, Frank was groaning, “Ugh, what the hell just happened?”
The blonde just patted him on the back, “We got blindsided, buddy.”
Frank was confused for a moment before noticing the man they were searching for, looking at them imperiously, “What gave us away”, Frank asked in an embarrassed tone.
Crossing his arms, “I could hear the leaves rustling, but there hasn’t been any breeze all morning”, he then jerked his thumb towards the blond, “And your friend here isn’t necessarily the type that’s hard to miss.”
Frank gave his companion a sideways glance, “Yeah that sounds about right”, he paused to rub his sore neck, “Holy s**t, man, where’d you learn that? I didn’t even see you coming.”
“Would you mind confirming your friend’s story as to why you’re following me?”
Letting out an embarrassed sigh, Frank confirmed everything that his blonde had told him before.
“What did your friend mean about you two being summoned heroes”, Edwin asked.
“Didn’t the summoners tell you about all that’s happening”, Adam asked.
“They gave me a brief explanation about the demon war and how there’s only supposed to be twelve of you, but they’ve told me absolute d**k about what it is I’m supposed to be doing or what it is you all are.”
The two interlopers shared a glance before Adam decided to explain, “Well, much like you, we’re not from around here. Brought from another world, reality, dimension, that kind of thing. I was chosen as the hero of the Sky god. Guy called Halcyonus. Pretty cool, right?”. He then gestured at Frank, “And this guy is the hero that belongs to the War god called Cassidy.”
“It’s Cassidia, you idiot”, Frank interjected, “And yeah, I just wanted to see the odd man out.”
Adam flinched a little but Edwin snorted a little, “Yeah, that sounds about right.”
Despite looking uneasy, the blonde leaned forward curiously, “So, you really don’t have any powers at all?
Edwin flexed his hand, “Not just that, these people won’t even really tell me what it is they’re looking for. They just toss me into the different temples, tell me about their gods, ask me to pick up some supposedly magic items and hope for the best”, he lightly threw up his hands, “And every time they do, it’s the same thing every time, nothing.”
Despite how goofy he looked at first, Adam had a deep look on his face. He held up one of his hands and a small ball of golden light appeared in his palm, “We’ve all only been here about a month, but I feel like I’m learning a lot. There’s so many things.”
The ball of light split into a few smaller balls. One looked like a compass rose, one looked like a solid orb, one looked like a little candle and the other looked like a small rain cloud, complete with a few drops of liquid and tiny electric arcs. Frank rolled his eyes, “Heh, show off”, he turned to Edwin, “If you’re wondering what I can do, I’m basically a super athlete, I have a head for strategy and I can tell how a person will act based on body language.”
The two heroes told Edwin about the lives they had on their home worlds before they mysteriously appeared in this world. Adam had been some kind of child prodigy back home. Got into good schools but eventually decided he wanted to get away from the world of academia, so he ended up joining something he called the Peace Corps. Edwin wasn’t sure what that was, but it sounded like a bad military marketing ploy. Speaking of military matters, Frank was a junior officer in his world’s military and it had been something he had been aiming for since childhood. Long line of soldiers and war heroes. Joined something known as the ROTC, which as near as he could deduce was like a training camp for children. Evidently, Frank was on track to be deployed before getting, as he put it, ‘snagged.’
“Either way I was getting sent out to fight in a war”, Frank joked, “I just never thought it’d be on a different planet or whatever the hell this place is.”
The two summoned heroes were naturally confused when they heard about how Edwin had no recollection of his old life, since none of the other ten heroes suffered memory loss. Though much like the War priests, Frank somewhat figured that Thatch must have been a fellow soldier before now. He told the War god hero that he sometimes dreamed of gunfire, though he couldn’t remember anything else.
“Hey man, if you ever need to talk about it, my Pops went through something similar”, Frank offered, “He’d get dreams all the time.”
Just then a thought occurred to Edwin, “Not that I really care, but the priests have kind of been trying to keep me under wraps from you other summoned people. You’re not going to get in trouble for this are you?”
Frank just shrugged, “Even if we did, what are they going to do, replace us?”
All three of them laughed a little at that thought. Edwin wasn’t entirely sure he thought of these two as friends, but at the very least, it wasn’t bad having other people around in a similar situation as him.
