The strange buzzing noise that the screen made faded as the image itself disappeared. Silence filled the mage’s tower as the four of them were rattled by what just happened. Communicating through a screen with someone that is in a different kingdom was a weird experience. Not to mention that this was only the second person Cobal met that was from another world and just the sheer intensity that Abu gave off was so different from what he expected. He could see that out of everyone, Eliana was the least unfazed, which was unsurprising. Kenar was fidgeting, his attention aimed at the trapdoor leading to the attic where the end of his life on this world would be found. Mana was processing what was happening, so it was up to Cobal and Eliana to get going. Without saying anything, they opened up the trapdoor and almost made the other two jump when the ladder came loudly clattering down. Upstairs was a dusty collection of strange artifacts, chests filled with coins and a bunch of paintings of strange landscapes Cobal had never seen before, but he pretty quickly assumed belonged to the world that Abu and Mana came from, looking at how alien some of the things looked. But for now they made a promise that the only thing they would pick up was the strange censer that allowed the pirates to get unbound from their curse and pass on to the next world. It wasn’t hard to spot, as it stood there on a plinth, staring right at them with smoke pouring out of it. “It almost feels anticlimactic,” Eliana commented.
“I honestly prefer that to something more dangerous.”
“Agreed.” Cobal picked up the censer and they moved back down the ladder to Kenar and Mana.
“You good to go?” Cobal asked.
Mana nodded. “Just a lot to think about, but let’s get out of here.”
The foursome carefully traveled back down the path they took and made their way to the exit, where they were awaited by Fareh who had a grim look on her face. “Something bad happened while you were in there, Bartew attacked Jarrod and then ran off into the ocean, we don’t know where he went.”
“What do you mean he ran off into the ocean?” Eliana asked.
Kenar cursed. “He must have taken one of the lifeboats.”
“Can that get him all the way to shore?” Eliana asked.
“I don’t know, but knowing him he probably had some sort of escape plan ready. I’m sorry, I really should have seen this coming.”
“Well, let’s take things one step at a time, first gather everyone on the deck of the Tidesetter, and we’ll move from there.” She looked at Fareh. “How is Jarrod?”
“He’ll live, but it’ll take some time for him to recover.”
“Good, come on.”
It was a grim gathering on the ship, with the ghost pirates all nervously awaiting what would happen next. Eliana put the censer on the deck in front of her. “Now, I know this isn’t quite how we expected things to go, but chasing after Bartew will be our next step. We first want to get the people of Ravadier back, so this is goodbye.”
Kenar smiled. “I’m actually kind of sad to be going now, it’s been lively lately.”
“Well, we made an agreement after all.”
He nodded. “And I still want to pass on, it’s been a life way too long and much too filled with strife. I think most of us are in agreement on that,” he looked around at the other ghost pirates, “but making the actual decision is still not easy.” He walked up to the censer and sat down in front of it. “Thanks for freeing us, good luck with finding the captain.” He put his hand out and reached for the censer. He paused, his hand hovering just before the strange smoke emitting object. “You know, this isn’t as easy as I thought it was going to be. I’ve had decades to think about this moment, and I yearned for it for much of that time. We all knew what sort of people we were and who we were dealing with. None of us will sit here and pretend we were innocent victims, but we do have regrets.”
Cobal saw several of the other ghost pirates nod along, with two of them even tearing up a bit.
“All we wanted was a better life, but things didn’t go as planned and we ended up being on the wrong side of things. Our punishment was severe, but it wasn’t anything we didn’t call upon ourselves.” Tears filled his eyes as he continued to speak. “I know I’ve committed some crimes in my youth that I could never take back, and I’ve robbed some people that had it even worse off than me. But I’m really sorry, and I regret it immensely. I just wish I could apologize to the people I hurt.” He started sobbing.
Cobal put his hand on the man’s shoulder. “As acting prince of the kingdom Blueyerd I will pardon any crimes committed and considering the time served as your penance. And as a friend, I forgive you.”
Kenar smiled through the tears. “Thank you, friend.” He put his hand on the censer and collapsed.
“Kenar?” Cobal asked.
There was no response. After a few moments, the body sat back up, looking around very confused. “Where am I? Who are you all?”
“Is this your body?”
“What?” The man looked down. “What does that question even mean? Of course this is my body, what have you done to me? Why am I crying”
“It’s a lot to explain and we will get to that, but for now it’s good to know that this was a success. Please, have a seat over there and give us a little time before we explain what happened.”
The man wanted to argue more, but Eliana’s stern look made him back down, and he sat off to the side, looking around very confused.
One by one, the ghost pirates touched the censer, some more hesitant than others, until finally all but one of the Ravadier villagers had been saved. Bartew – in the body of Cassandra’s uncle Fred – would have to be chased down, but this was a lot of progress.
Cassandra and Eliana explained everything that happened with the ghosts, the possession and how they had managed to bring everyone back just now and were going to take everyone home. It took some convincing to make everyone step in line, but at the end of the day, the villagers accepted from Cassandra that everything that Eliana said was true, and soon the camp was being broken down and everyone was getting ready to head back to Ravadier.
Cobal accompanied Mana back down to their chambers where she sat down. “Thanks, I really need some rest.”
After everyone finished gathering their belongings, Cobal and Mana returned to the tower and made sure it was locked up again. They took the key with them and buried it somewhere on the island that they would be relatively likely to find again. Since Abu hadn’t requested them to do anything specific with it, this felt like a logical thing to do. As much as Mana and Cobal trusted Eliana, they were both in agreement that the fewer people knowing about the location of the key, the better. There was some stuff in there that would be quite dangerous when exposed to the world. Now they were standing on the bow of the ship as the island was slowly getting smaller and smaller behind them.
“How are you feeling?” Mana asked.
Cobal sighed. “Not great.”
“Same here.”
“It’s been tough lately, hasn’t it?”
“Well, what do you expect, we’re heroes aren’t we?”
“Stop it, I can barely see past the sarcasm.”
“I’m starting to seriously wonder why I’m here lately.”
“What do you mean, you’re doing great.”
“Great? What have I done? I’ve sent some ghosts to the afterlife and failed to save a prince from a cult. At least you managed to make Kenar feel heard and at peace in his final moments. I was just there to look on.”
Cobal smiled. “Do you really see things that way?”
“I don’t know.”
“Mana, you managed to climb up a mage’s tower filled with traps and riddles like it was nothing. There might as well not have been any obstacles with how quickly you navigated us through that thing. Do you know how impressive that is?”
Mana shrugged. “I had the benefit of knowing some tricks from my old life.”
“Knowledge can be a big boon when saving the world.”
“One ghost pirate at a time.”
Cobal nodded. “One ghost pirate at a time.” He turned around, leaning his back against the railing of the Tidesetter. “Look, we both know that there are expectations. The hero from another world is summoned here to make the kingdom prosper and protect us from our enemies. Yet all we got was this snivelling woman who didn’t do anything as the prince vanished, war started and now Diana and Guthir are warning us for total collapse.”
“Allright, no need to make me feel even worse.”
“But you’re not seeing the bigger picture here.” Cobal locked eyes with her. “I was never a big reader when I was young, but my mother would read me stories about heroes and knights to instill a sense of justice and pride into me. You would probably call it propaganda or something negative.”
Mana chuckled. “I’m not quite that jaded.”
“Anyway, some of those heroes would save kingdoms and fight wars, yes, but there were others who would look out for the normal people. They never set out to be heroes. They just did the right thing when presented with choices. Being a hero isn’t about finding the axe of Marachath and splitting a mountain in half to reroute rivers and flood a battlefield, or to smite an army from the sky with a single magical spell. Being a hero is doing what you can in the situations you find yourself in, worrying about others before worrying about yourself.”
Mana didn’t respond for a while. “There goes my hero, he’s ordinary.”
“What was that?”
“Nothing, just thinking about some more songs from my own world.” She smiled. “I miss Kimi and Mirgia.”
“We’ll go find them once we report back about this.”
“Don’t you have a marriage to plan first?”
“I think I do.”
The Hesitant Hero will unfortunately go on another one week break after today’s chapter. I need some time to plan for the upcoming final arc of the volume. I will give a new update next week where I’ll talk about my plans and the future of this story. Don’t fret, you will still get an entire finished volume well before the year is over. Thanks for your understanding and I hope you enjoyed this chapter.
Opal Kaharis 