Chapter 1 Draft for The Heroes Must Die
The bar smelt of rot and disappointment.
The kind that lingered in the air with the reek of old gin and sweat.
It had a regular customer today, a man filled with despair. One so devoid of any worthwhile reason to live he searched for it so desperately at the bottom of a glass of whiskey.
Often what he'd find there was numbness, enough dosage to last him just one more day through the absolute dumpster fire he called a life, enough to last him till he found himself here again, in this bar, with this same damn glass in his hand.
It was far from a great life, but it was his, and he couldn't have much else—he didn't deserve much else.
Kai was no unique type of failure.
He was a circumstantial kind, he didn't ask for the life he lived. If he was just as lucky as the rest, he would have awakened as a hero as well, been blessed with abilities and had a chance to save people, to do good—but most importantly, not be so poor.
Instead, now he was a college dropout so behind on rent that he could be homeless at any moment.
"Why give me hope," Kai muttered to himself with gritted teeth.
His life took a turn for the worse six months ago when he was "called."
A special phenomenon that happens to only those who stood a chance to awaken as a hero. Most who are called always end up awakening—in fact, less than 1 percent of those who are called do not awaken.
With such great odds and a future of riches, power, and excitement, Kai dropped out of college, scraped up whatever money he had left, and came to this city to apply into the awakening program of the hero institute.
A special program for all called to make sure they awaken properly.
Kai didn't.
And he was left broke, ruined, and utterly devastated.
The bartender walked to him, a glass and rag in his hand, wiping the inside of the glass with a motion that was more habit than it was necessary.
"Hmm, with how much you're in here brooding, one would think you get paid to do it," the bartender said.
Danny was Kai's friend and perhaps the only one he had left.
He was almost as broke as Kai, and the only reason he was not already homeless was because he managed to get this job as a bartender—but that only barely paid the bills.
"Today's not the day for jokes, Danny," Kai said as he took another sip from the glass, "but if I could get paid for drinking I'd be a millionaire by Thursday."
They both laughed, but reality was quick to set back in like a cold flush of water.
Danny sighed.
"I keep telling you, stop being worried—if they kick you out you can just come crash with me for however long you like," Dan smiled.
"Am I not a burden enough? Now you want me to come crash at your 2-square-foot apartment?" Kai exhaled, emptying the remnants in his glass.
Danny walked to grab a bottle then came back.
"I'm not complaining. Besides, it'll be fun—just like our college roommate days," Dan said as he refilled Kai's glass.
"What would I do without you, man?" Kai sighed.
"Not be an alcoholic, probably, 'cause I'm the one that keeps giving you free drinks," Dan cackled.
"Well then," Kai raised his glass, "here's to being an alcoholic."
Dan smiled and raised a glass of tap water he had been drinking.
"And to your eventual bounce bac—"
Blood splattered.
Warm and thick on Kai's face.
Screams now echoed around him as everyone in the bar began to scramble, the walls of the bar crumbling and the roof about to cave in. Kai still sat, unmoving. He looked into his glass, and streaks of red now floated in the brown of his whiskey.
He raised his hand to his face, his hand tracing across it as his finger touched the warm liquid. He brought his hand forward, and he could see it—it was indeed blood.
Then with a motion, slow as can be and his heart pounding faster with each inch he moved his head, he looked up.
And immediately, it felt like his heart stopped.
He couldn't breathe.
In front of him was Dan, motionless, blood spluttering from his open neck, and to his right, slammed against the wall so hard it was disfigured, was Dan's head.
And just beside his head was the corpse of a Breecher. He could recognize those beasts anywhere. This one had been thrown through a building so hard it did not just shatter the walls—it ripped Dan's head right off his body on impact.
Suddenly, another one of the bar's walls shattered as well as someone burst through it—a woman.
She wielded two knives she held up and crossed like an X, perhaps to lessen the impact of whatever blow sent her flying through.
She turned on the floor of the bar with a groan of pain.
She looked around, seeing no one—all had scrambled and ran from the building, aside from Kai, who just… sat there, a glass in his hand which was now part whiskey, part blood.
"Shit," the woman cursed as she stood up, dark hair once tied now falling like a wave behind her as she turned to Kai.
She glanced at him, then at the headless corpse in front of him and the thrown Breecher to its side.
She swiftly walked over, then pulled his shoulder, forcing him to face her, looking into his eyes as he stared at hers—and the blood on her face was her own, but the one on his was from the only person that still mattered to him in this world.
"I'm sorry. I don't have time, so it has to be you," she said as she pulled a dagger from her thigh, and with a swift motion, she pierced into Kai's heart.
Kai let out a gasp, and gurgle of blood, then his eyes flashed white, and he began to see things—many, many things.
Visions flashing and engraving themselves in his mind as the dagger in his heart began to turn to ashes.
The woman turned away and whispered something into the air.
As she did, a breach opened.
A tear in reality itself as space split open.
She gave a final glance to Kai. "I hope you were the right choice. If not… the gods help us all."
Then she entered the breach.
The dagger turned to ash and his eyes went back to normal. He began breathing heavily, gasping for air, and when he looked down, he had squeezed the whiskey glass in his hand so tight it shattered.
Then behind him, from the opened breach, two beasts stepped out—their forms monstrous and grotesque.
They turned to Kai with old hunger in their eyes and the taste of old blood on their lips.
However, before they could even move, a man burst through, his sword glinting as he sliced through the monsters in quick fashion.
The kills were easy.
These were low-level Breechers, and he was no low-rank hero.
After all, Karn had been dispatched among many other heroes to pursue this world-ending threat, whoever she was.
"Shit, where'd she go… I should inform the others," Karn muttered, before turning to Kai.
"What are you doing here? It's not safe," Karn said, walking closer and grabbing Kai on the shoulder.
Then, it happened in one fluid motion.
Swift and unexpected.
Karn's eyes widened, his words now a gurgle of blood.
Kai pulled the shard of glass he had thrust into the hero's throat out, and Karn instinctively reached toward the gushing red, in a futile attempt to stop it.
Then, as the hero fell choking on his own blood—the one who had saved him from the monstrous Breechers—
Kai still had questions, lots of them.
However, standing over the body of Karn, what he did know with utmost certainty was:
The Heroes Must Die.