The Heartstone Saga, Archibald Bradford [the snowy day read aloud TXT] 📗

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As Milly had so stoutly declared to the demon possessing Evadne, life begins again and again, and after the conflict was over this proved to be as true as she promised.

But Nameless was not the same man that he was.

He was blind and he was broken.

The price that had to be paid.

After the initial shock was over, he was lucid only for a few hours before the weight of his deeds pulled him under.

Every waking and dreaming moment he was more or less catatonic, while the black voice of despair that had been Evadne lived on in him, whispering and dragging him inexorably towards cold oblivion.

But throughout it all his bond-mates were there to coax him back to life.

Milly all but drowned him in her life-saving milk, the only thing he could stomach for weeks. Erica massaged his temples and purred when his head ached. And Ophelia’s familiar voice soothed his nightmares as she wiped away his sweat when he awoke from them.

Nina, strong, fierce warrior giant that struck down the last Chimera, held him tight and informed him in no uncertain terms that he was going to live even if she had to beat him to death to make it happen.

Even then, the despair that he lived with was unfathomable.

He would likely have fallen to it, and taken all of his bond-mates down with him, had Volka not constantly wrapped him in her golden wings and forced desperate hope into his chest.

The last Dominar of the Valkyrie sustained them all through that dark time.

As for Escrya... duty called her elsewhere: with so many dead Saenga warriors from the various conflicts, she needed to return to her village with Myrina and the others to lay her mother to rest.

But she left with the promise of a swift return, intent on establishing the Amazon colony in the ruins of Wayfelt.

And so the final month of the most violent summer in a millennium passed, and as fall descended the people of Kettering began to prepare themselves and their homes for winter.

It was nearing sunset and Nameless was sitting on the porch of the cottage, a blanket over his shoulders to ward off any chill and a faithful cow at his side, holding his limp hand in hers.

He stirred against her, his fingers twitching in her palm.

“Milly.” He mumbled.

The Minotaur froze, her heart pounding harder in her chest from hearing her name spoken aloud.

She waited, and a few moments later he said it again, stronger this time.

“Milly, where am I?”

A deep low reverberated around him as her emotions got the better of her, but she quickly got hold of herself and explained.

“You are home Master, at our cottage where you belong.” She replied shakily, tears already seeping down her cheeks.

His hand came to life again, his fingers gripping her palm tighter.

“Is that... the sun I feel on my face?”

“Yes.” She sniffed and quickly wiped her face, smiling now; “We’re on the porch, watching the sunset together.”

He drew in a deep breath, his blank eyes closing as he let it out in a long sigh.

“It’s warm.” He mumbled and snuggled up against her.

Epilogue:Legend

As was already a matter of course, the various Amazon tribes loved and revered Nameless.

While the Undines could not stop talking about the size of his cock after he showed it to three of them during his first mission with the Aegis, never mind all that he had accomplished with their Sacred Current.

On top of that, members of the Aegis decades his senior respected him as one of their own, while the esteemed Longinus family of Antlions wanted him to bond with their youngest daughter.

But none of that compared to the monster girls he had pulled out of Evadne’s worst memory.

Because although they remembered little from their time as Tenebrae beyond blood and horrible violence, they remembered him.

They remembered his voice when he called to them, the selfless love he showed to drag them back into the light, and above all they remembered the pain that he endured to save them.

If things had gone just slightly differently in the maelstrom of their shared psyches, he could have found himself with several thousand bond-mates.

Milly would have been thrilled.

Were he still an Empath, he would suffocate in their feelings for him: desperate gratitude, fanatical devotion, and always overwhelming love.

Before the Battle of Wayfelt, he was the new Empath, a rising young star in the Aegis, a mysterious hero, beloved by the Amazons.

Now, even outside of those he saved, monster girls lusted after him and revered him even to the point of making their own precious bond-mates slightly jealous, an unprecedented occurrence.

Soon his deeds were known across all of the city states, his story becoming as commonplace as that of the goddess of creation who was believed to have brought the monster girls into being.

Myrina One-Eye was soon named warleader of the Saenga Amazons, and despite her misgivings about it, Tiana likewise became the leader of the Brael tribe.

With Yana disgraced, Booker stepped down from the Aegis council to help her recover her spirit again, the two of them and Juni going into a sort of self-imposed exile.

Their long struggle finally over, Xalanth and the Lady Essig soon disappeared from the Bastion, but not before formally leaving the massive structure in the hands of the Aegis as a parting gift.

Nameless and his bond-mates had retired to Kettering intent on living out the rest of their lives together in peace, their days of service to the Aegis more or less cut short with his new disability.

The orphan had a long way to go in order to come to terms with the loss of his powers, not to mention his blindness, something that not even the magic of the