Surviving as a Broken Hero

It was, in many ways, a multi-tiered city. Most vehicles came and went below on the wide streets between the carefully constructed and planned city blocks, but it also had its fair share of pedestrian traffic, namely the less fortunate, the lower-leveled, and the other races that had not yet proven themselves.

Almost anyone else would have found the city beautiful. They might have stopped at the numerous fountains that took center place in small, sectioned squares throughout the city. The sound-dampening magic throughout the city made it so that such squares were little zones of peace, and many could be found enjoying an afternoon lunch or quiet conversations in them.

Others might have looked at the passing magic carriages in awe and wondered how the stores, packed next to each other in the buildings the sidewalks skirted, seemed to be bigger on the inside than the outside.

She hated the place. It was all a lie to hide what the elves really were.

Of all of the races, the elves took more pride in their architecture than anyone else. Of course, believing themselves to be blessed, they couldn’t have it any other way.

Each smooth curve, every gaudy golden glint, all of the unnecessarily complex enchantments along even the sidewalks to clear them of dirt to keep them shining and bright…

All of the efforts could have better been spent on their own people, many of whom were corralled away in hidden city blocks, forgotten in corners of the city that were nearly impossible to access, or even hidden away in the underground service tunnels, a city to themselves.

Even as a direct servant to the Emperor, she was ‘lucky’ to be able to travel the main street.

Usually, a Cursed such as her would be constrained to the underground tunnels, away from the eyesight of those she might offend with her nature.

She could have hidden it. A long cloak with a raised hood would have made her seem like almost any other adventurer. Any questions she could just deflect away with the flash of the medallion that was the symbol of her station.

Instead, she walked through the city streets towards her destination, the Imperial Palace, in a sleeveless black shirt and comfortable, fitted pants. Her boots were well-worn, though also well-maintained, showing signs of their color fading and the leather fraying.

A cloak would have made the warm sun shining clearly in the day sky nearly unbearable—though the city had cooling enchantments if it did get too hot.

The boots weren’t what caught people’s attention.

Her left arm ended in a stump just below the elbow, and her hair, tied back in a ponytail, revealed the smooth left side of her head where an ear should have been.

She was more than happy to reveal what the Emperor had gifted her for her service.

The disgusted faces of her kinsmen as they turned their heads from her and the pitying looks of other adventurers meant nothing to her. If anything, it gave her some form of satisfaction that she could upend their perfect little world with her mere presence.

She had done more for her race than any of them likely would. She would judge them, not the other way around.

Finally, the Imperial Palace loomed in front of her, far taller than the multi-tiered city around it. The circular walls in the city’s center were mirror-like and smooth, and the defensive enchantments around the walls ensured the complete vaporization of anything that tried to cross over them from the outside, extending upward to a height that only the enchanters knew the limits of.

Assuming, of course, that anyone found a way to cross the walls that were taller than the tallest building in the city.

The cylindrical walls were more of a foundation than actual walls, though they housed all manner of secret laboratories and experiments within. At the apex of the cylinder, the Imperial Palace itself jutted out far above the rest of the city’s structures.

Rather than take a side entrance, she walked straight down the center of the street, only stopping in front of the gold and iron gates when one of the guardsmen went running up to her, hand near his weapon.

“Halt! This entrance is for vehicles only! If you have a permit to enter the palace, please use the entrance to the side of the road!”

She stopped and looked at the guard, a younger elf who couldn’t have been hired all that long ago. She didn’t recognize him from her previous visits.

He waited for her to comply with his request, but she stood still, staring him down.

His gaze flickered briefly to her ear and the stump of a left arm.

“Ma’am?” his voice was wary.

It didn’t look like the others had told them about her.

Rather than waste words, she tugged on a chain around her neck and pulled a medallion out from where it lay under her shirt.

The prismatic colors of the medallion caught the sunlight, the unique metal unmistakable.

Frozen in place by the sight he had likely only ever heard of, the guard took a moment to read over a System window that only he could see. A System window that she, of course, had never even seen herself and had only been told of.

“Ah… U-uh… I… One moment.”

The guard stammered over his words and rushed away to find his superior.

“Ahh…” she let out a short sigh and looked over the gate. It was more for show than anything else, though she didn’t doubt it could withstand any sort of siege engine thrown at it. It would probably even be easier to break through the walls than the gate.

The doors quietly slid open to either side. Another marvel of engineering. Of course it would have been too mundane to have them open up, down, inward, or outward. The elves, in all their ingenuity, had come to the only conclusion—that the towering gates needed to slide seamlessly into the wall on either side.

She shook her head and smirked. They thought themselves geniuses for having reinvented the perfectly fine wheel.

She left the medallion in plain sight over her shirt because she didn’t want to deal with being stopped and having to pull it out every dozen or so steps.

Others still gave her wary gazes, but the medallion quickly turned those wary gazes into shocked gasps as people quickly looked away and went back to their business.

Walking all the way down the wide street in the column-like foundation, she eventually reached the elevator platforms at the foundation’s center that would take her straight into the palace.

The guards silently let her pass into the elevators—square, enclosed rooms about seven steps across in any direction.

“Imperial Palace,” she said, giving the guard, who was doing his best to not stare, a pointed look.

The guard puzzled over what the words could mean for a moment before she gestured to the elevator runes on one side of the doorway.

“I can’t activate them myself…”

She didn’t have mana, after all.

The guard grimaced, seeming to dislike the idea of having to get any closer to her, and stepped into the elevator. He imbued his mana into the top-most rune that signified the Imperial Palace before hopping out while the doors slid closed.

She’d heard that the humans were also fans of sliding doors in her travels, much to the elves’ dismay.

‘I wonder what they’re going to think of next since they’re not unique anymore. Doors that fold in on themselves?’

They were probably already working on that somewhere within the foundation of the Palace.

Though she had been on the elevator countless times before, she could never really tell if it was moving or not, but the doors silently sliding open to reveal the interior of the Palace’s elevator room reassured her soon enough. It was almost an exact replica of the area where she had initially boarded the elevator.

From there, she had to step onto yet another elevator under a guard’s close scrutiny.

“Throne room two,” she said.

It wasn’t the guard’s place to question her, the elite that kept watch over the Emperor would see to that.

He just looked at her medallion and sent the elevator up. At least the throne room elevator could be operated from the outside.

After another short journey, the doors slid open to reveal a long, rectangular room. With the elevator on one side and doors that were easily three heads taller than her on the other, anyone foolish enough to be there unattended would have to answer to the dozen elite guardsmen lined up, six on each side.

They recognized her, just as she did them.

It wasn’t often that the Emperor’s personal guard gained or lost members.

She walked down the shining hallway, lit by the bright runes traced around the length of the hallway on the floor, ceiling, and walls, leaving no corner without a near-blinding illumination.

They didn’t question her, but their eyes scrutinized her every feature as they activated all manner of observation and divination skills on her passing form to ensure that she really was who she claimed to be.

She stopped in front of the throne room doors and placed her right hand on one side, having to push with all of her strength against the cold metal of the door.

The guards simply watched her struggle against it while she leaned her whole body into it and scrabbled her feet on the blue marble of the floor, her boots squeaking in protest and labored breaths leaving her mouth.

Despite all of the effort it took, the door quietly and slowly swung open to reveal the throne room, and in it, the elf sitting ramrod straight in all of his golden luminescent glory on the throne on the far end—the Elven Emperor himself.