Of the Realm

Would you be interested in doing one where the hero was pulled into another dimension to fight their villain and won, finally getting to return home. Later, the villain returns and follows the hero back to their world. Preferably with a dark and obsessive/possessive villain?

***

“You know, this isn’t exactly the magnificent happily ever after I imagined you having.”

Ice flooded the hero’s spine, the shock of fear stealing the air from their lungs. It had been a nearly three years since they had last heard that voice – at least, outside of their dreams, where they imagined themselves back in Realm all the time. They whipped around, heart stuttering, hands flying up to defend themselves but –

No ready power jumped to their fingertips. In London they were an ordinary person again. There was no magical ether in the air for them, at least not that they could connect to, and their magic blood was just blood, easily spilled. The hero swallowed.

The villain’s head tilted, gaze flicking sharply between the hero’s useless hands and their face.

Several instincts sprung to the hero’s mind at once; fight, run, scream, touch and check that it wasn’t some hallucination. They froze. It was impossible that the villain was standing there, something mythic and dark and as lush as any good fairy-tale summoned up and cast against the comfortable backdrop of the hero’s bedroom. The hero was supposed to have won. The villain was supposed to be dead and gone.

The story was, despite the hero’s longing, over.

And yet, there they were.

“Izel.” It came out hoarse. It came out too many things.

“Hello,” Izel said, a small smiling playing on their lips. “Long time no see, hero.”

The hero scrambled for something clever to say to that, but what would have felt right to say in Realm felt absurd in their dorm room, felt as impossible as the villain standing there, ink and enchantment turned to flesh and blood. 

The door was behind the villain. The window behind the hero was three storeys up, which wouldn’t have been a problem in Realm, but…

The villain slid the lock on the door, not looking away as they stepped closer in the breathless silence. “You know, when I first arrived in your strange land, I hunted you in the mighty warriors of your kingdom, its leaders, its champions.” The villain’s hand rose, reaching out as if to trace down along the wicked scar they had left striking like a pale white lightning bolt down the hero’s throat, disappearing into their shirt.

The hero stumbled back, out of reach, towards the window. Light streamed in, normal boring run of the mill Tuesday afternoon sunshine.

The villain paused, hand still in the air, almost beckoning. Even the dust motes in the air seemed to swirl around their fingertips, as if bending around them, glimmering with a hint of something shining and not of the world. The air in Realm used to the same thing around the hero.

“I kept waiting to see your name,” the villain said, “to see your face. For surely someone like you, who could fight me and win, would be in history books. You would be worshipped. Sung about around campfires by desperate people in memory of hope.” The villain wet their lips. “But you were not there.”

The hero took another step back, hitting the windowsill behind them. Sounds of laughter drifted across the campus, so at odds with Izel’s voice. God, all those people, who didn't have the first clue of the slip of nightmare winding through their midst...

“How are you here? How long have you— I – you –”

“You are nothing here.” The villain let their hand drop. “A bit part, when you were made for more, made for me. Does that not kill you more sweetly than I ever could?”

Despite everything, the hero flinched. They wished they could have said decisively it was only because of the last part and not the sheer embarrassment of a fated enemy seeing just how average they really were outside of Realm.

When they first defeated the villain, and when they were first returned back into their own world to pick up life again, they’d felt like they could do anything. Be anything. They were smart enough to have defeated Izel, brave enough to fight literal monsters. They had inspired people, so many people. And the power…gods, but they’d been powerful in Realm. More powerful than they’d known how to control at first. If they could be all of those things there, they’d thought that they could be the same at home, or at least something more than they were. They'd learned what they were capable of, after all.

But after eight months some of the buzz, the determination, had began to flag. It was surprisingly difficult to remember the version of themselves, the better truer version of themselves, that they’d become in Realm once they could no longer tap into the magic that had been so electrically natural to them there. Difficult when they were no longer there, but back home, and the whole rest of their life was supposed to be ahead of them, full of promise, and how hard or scary could university be after they went to a literal different world and saved it?

Except it had been hard. It was scary. And the hero didn’t feel like a hero anymore. Nobody who looked at them saw the hero of Realm either, just another hopeful in the masses. They were liked well enough, did well enough, but they were hardly the stuff of legends.

“I was never made for you,” the hero managed, too late, some facsimile of the villain’s great nemesis.

The villain did not look deterred, despite their scathing words. They stepped closer again, stalking, and the hero could have sworn they could still taste the rich scent of magic in the air around them. It made them want to howl

That time, damningly and terrifyingly, it was the hero’s hand that rose. It was the hero who ghosted the curve of the villain’s jaw, solid and unmistakably there and not just some horror that the hero had imagined from reading too many books.

The villain’s smile grew.

The hero’s hand recoiled. They felt dizzy.

“Oh, darling.” The villain fingers closed around the hero’s throat, caressing the silver of the scar. “Did you truly think I was dead? I’m magic. Magic doesn’t die.”

“You have magic here?”

The hero realised far too late that, if the villain hadn’t already realised how different the rules were and how much more powerless the hero was, they certainly would after that question.

In response, the villain sent a pulse of magic down along their fingertips as if it were nothing. The villain’s eyes lit up at whatever hunger they saw flare up on the hero’s face.

At the end of the story, the hero was supposed to go home, fundamentally changed in a positive way, ready to claim the rest of their life. But by the time they’d been home for two years, all they could think was that maybe they had made a horrible mistake going home, even if in Realm it had been all they wanted. At least, all they thought they wanted and…

The hero’s knees felt weak.

“Do you remember that night in the weeping gardens?” the villain murmured, following the path of the scar downwards, to its inevitable end above the hero’s heart. “I asked you to be join me.”

“I said no.”

“You were tempted to say yes. Your soul knows its place.”

“Clearly, because I still said no.” The hero pressed themselves back a little more against the window, and squared their shoulders, feeling an intoxicating spark of who they were. Who they really were, tested upon the edge of a blade, of Izel. It made it easier to stand tall.  “So if that’s why you came here….” They jutted their chin up. “Perhaps I need to kill you again to really drive the message in?”

The thought that the villain might chase them across world’s for wanting seemed more impossible than even the fact of them being there, of being still alive, despite the terrible fight of it. It wasn’t something they could dwell on. It was too much.

“Your answer is still no?”

“Of course.”

“Mm.” The villain didn’t say anything further to that, studying the hero’s expression, posture, everything about them or so it seemed. “I had,” the villain said casually, “come to steal you home. To make the grand reveal of my survival to you and all who follow you.”

The hero’s heart gave another stupid little stutter. Their fingers curled on the edge of the windowsill.

“But now,” the villain said, and another pulse of magic flickered in the air like a promise, a viper’s kiss. “Now I think I’ll wait.” The villain smiled again, all teeth. “You can come home when you beg.”