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Heroish

Writer's picture: Gwenna LaithlandGwenna Laithland

This story was crafted with a prompt from Freewrite's Words Are Hard Creative Writing Prompts. If you'd like your own deck of prompts, please consider using my affiliate link. I appreciate your support!


The path before us was impossibly steep. My thighs were already preemptively burning, anticipating the grueling hike ahead. The next three weeks we’d be trudging up and down these ancient mountains, rife with unimaginable beasts, terrible dangers, and horrific ways to die the most undignified deaths. I was fucking pumped. I’d heard the legends all my life. Aspiring heroes would gather their parties of great fighters, magicians, healers, and archers and trek into dangerous lands in search of treasure, damsels in distress, and mythic objects of tremendous power. I had no desire to be a hero. They died too easily. But to be a part of a hero’s questing party, that was the dream that I dreamed most often. Now, against all odds, I was about to see my dream come to fruition.


Yes, it would be hard, but my entire life had been leading to this moment, this journey.

And I wanted to rub it in my father’s smug, misogynistic face. I would, when I got back.


“Why waste so much time on that silly bow?” he’d whine at me. “No sane man is ever going to choose a woman as his ranger. Accept your fate, Phyllis. You’ll be a washer woman or a fishmonger’s wife. Not an archer on a hero’s quest.” Those words, that damnable prophecy of painful mediocrity had plagued me since my father first spat them all those years ago. That and the name he had bestowed upon me at my birth. Who looks at a beautiful baby girl and thinks to themselves ‘I’ll call her Phyllis?’ My father, that’s who.


His words may have stung but they also motivated. I used his backwards ideas to keep moving forward, to stay focused, and to train for a life that was more than fishes and laundry. Years of sacrifice and pain had brought me to this moment, standing at the mouth of a mountain pass, an archer on a hero’s quest. That hero, Herbert the Fierce, had been hunting when his quarry was felled by my arrow. So impressed was Herbert, by my skill and aim, he invited me to join his quest. His last archer had met a rather sticky end the week before. Literally. The last archer fell in a vat of molasses and drowned. According to Evan, the party’s Grand Wizard, they were finding molasses goo in places molasses goo had no business being for days after fishing the archer’s body from its sugary tomb.


I’d immediately said yes to Herbert the Fierce. The following day I’d my bags packed and found them at the tavern in town. The village I’d grown up in was the last bit of civilization before the vast mountain ranges carved their ancient path across the continent, cleaving the country in twain. Only the bravest souls took the mountain passes instead of using the Governor’s Road that led southward to the coast and around the dangerous rocky formations. But Herbert’s quest required we travel into the very heart of the mountain range in search of a weapon of immense power. The party had been traveling for weeks when I joined and had already faced a great many challenges on their quest.


I didn’t care that I’d only joined halfway through. I cared that I was here. Me and my years of dedication and my bow had brought me to this place. I was doing what I was meant to. It was a song that emanated from my very bones.  Herbert had paused in the pathway just before the terrain sloped upward at a knee-wobbling angle. His hands were on his hips, the shining armor that he wore like a second skin glinted in the sunlight. My heart was in my throat. He was going to do it. My very first Hero’s Speech was happening. It was really, really happening.


Slowly, so slowly, Herbert turned, surveying each of us, making the briefest eye contact with the party who’d pledged to defend him to the bitter end. Evan, the wizard with a mastery of lightening, bowed his head in reverence. Walter, a silent-as-night assassin whose skills with throwing knives and daggers were unparalleled, lifted his chin proudly.  Imogene, Herbert’s right hand and occasional lover as well as a necromancer and healer, placed her hand on her heart, eyes moony. Finally Herbert’s eyes found mine. I tried to do something honorable and respectful but I think I just grinned stupidly at him. The corners of his mouth twitched up and I sincerely hoped it was because he found my excitement endearing.


“We are here on the precipice of greatness.” Herbert’s rolling baritone intoned. “At this junction in our journey we pass from hopefuls to heroes inscribed in the annals of history. We have reached the point of no return now. As we enter here, the Passes of Qur’Ylzuf-Strÿxlyqizokqǔqq, we will face down terrors that would have most men weeping were they to behold them. But we are not most men. We’re not even all men. Imogene and Phyllis are women!” The inspiring moment was broken then as Walter let a whooping cry escape him, his fist punching the air in excitement. I risked a glance at Imogene but she was staring, doe-eyed, at Herbert, absolutely engrossed. “At least I think Phyllis is a woman. Phyllis, you’re a girl right?” The entire party turned to me in unison. I resisted the urge to take a step back with eight eyeballs staring me down.


I nearly choked on my words but managed “Ye…Yeah. I’m, I’m a girl. Last I checked,” and immediately regretted that last bit. I don’t think I could have sounded any dumber if I’d tried. ‘Last I checked…’ by the gods, who talks like that? But for my mortification Herbert only smiled his broad, perfect-teethed smile and nodded resolutely.


“Great! Two women will also not weep to behold these great and terrible challenges we shall overcome!” Evan grunted his agreement and reached over, giving Imogene a hearty clap on the back. She stumbled forward from the force of the hit. Recovering, Imogene tugged at the front of her midnight black tunic, smoothing it back down over her generous breasts. Herbert continued. “Our mission, our design is to recover the Spear of Integers...” Evan rushed forward then and, rising on his tip toes, whispered something in Herbert’s ear. “The Spear of Integrity,” Herbert then corrected. “Sorry.” Herbert said, somewhat sheepishly. A new sensation was rising in my throat then. I swallowed the bit of gorge back. The thrill of this quest was quickly fading, fear replacing it. Herbert slogged forward through this tortured effort at a Hero’s Speech.


“There will be times we want to quit. But we won’t. There will be times when we want to stop. But we won’t. There will be times when we want to retire. But we won’t. There will,” Herbert paused, presumably for emphasis, “be times when we want to leave. But. We. Won’t. We just won’t do it, men…” Herbert glanced around furtively “…and women. We will continue on and face all the terrible terrors, the horrible horrors, and the frightening frights.” In a grand, deliberate gesture, Herbert reached across his torso and wrapped a meaty, broad hand around the pommel of his legendary sword, called The Gilded Cleaver. Grasping the great sword he tugged upward and lurched forward as his sword refused to come away from the scabbard. He tried again, this time with more force, and was foiled once more. The sword refused to be unsheathed. Rather than leave it, Herbert glared down at his own hip and used both hands to grasp his weapon, tugging and pulling at it. His armor clattered and rattled as he wiggled the blade around, desperately trying to free it from the scrap of steel that hugged it, preventing its honed edge from taking out shins and chair legs it might bump into hanging at Herbert’s side. Herbert continued grappling with the sword at his side, his feet hopping and skittering across the pebbly ground as he wrestled with his wayward weapon. I was actually going to throw up.


The rest of the party stood frozen watching our hero lose a fight with his own blade. Herbert seemed oblivious to the audience watching him fail basic weapons operation. The Gilded Cleaver had cleaved to his side and apparently decided it would not be a willing participant to his underwhelming speech giving abilities. Walter had just taken a step forward to intervene when a distinctive schlicking sound rang out, echoing off the stone face that rose before us. Herbert had finally loosed the sword and hoisted it aloft, the tip rising high above his head. “The Spear of Integers shall be…” Herbert started to scream but cut off his own words as his arm began to quiver with the weight of a very large great sword heaved over his head. I watched in horror as, rather than just lower the thing, Herbert pinched his lips shut, air puffing out his cheeks like an overeager chipmunk. His face went an alarming shade of maroon with the effort and the quiver turned to more of a wobble. Imogene reached a hand out to her leader just as the tip of The Gilded Cleaver succumbed to the force of gravity, toppling to the right, arching downward toward Herbert’s unhelmeted head. In the same moment, Herbert’s grip gave out and the sword plummeted right into Herbert’s skull.


His armored form slumped and clattered to the ground in a heap of metal and leather and flesh. A great crimson puddle immediately began forming around the pile of person. Imogene screamed. Evan fainted. Walter threw up. Bastard, I thought. That was going to be my move. Instead, I just stared at the very dead would-be hero. I said nothing as I turned on my heel, hefting my pack a little higher on my shoulders, and made for home.


My father still wasn’t right. But a woman is fully entitled to dream new dreams. It was a damn good thing I liked fish.


All rights reserved. No part of this story may be republished, reprinted, or reposted without written permisison from the author, Gwenna Laithland and the owner, Pleasant Peasant Media, LLC.




Again, many thanks to Freewrite for this fantastic prompt deck. This post was not sponsored. It's just a really neat product. One hundred not crappy prompts across eight genres on high quality cards featuring custom artwork by artist Matt Pamer. If you'd like to get your own, click here to pick up the Words are Hard Creative Writing Prompts deck with my affiliate link!

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2 commentaires


M Wilson
M Wilson
15 oct. 2024

This wasn't where I thought the story would go, but this was a hilarious ride. I hope you do stuff like this more often.

J'aime

Renee Watson
Renee Watson
12 oct. 2024

This was really good for a prompted write. Love how you kept the good old gwenna humour in it haha. Sending appreciation from Australia

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