Zenith's Greatest Hero

The following takes place in a fairly generic D&D-like fantasy world (called Zenith), it is a stand-alone story, not part of any wider cannon, with focus on character rather than world. So don't be dissuaded by mentions of previous adventures or magical systems, they are not the focus of the story.

The focus of the story is exposure and self-humiliation so if those aren't for you I'm afraid you're not going to like this one.

~~~

"I'm still not entirely sure what you do. Is it magic?" Valda asked, uncomfortable with the plush office she found herself in, looking around for somewhere she felt comfortable leaving her mythical greataxe.

"Nothing so crude. The healing temple referred you to me with problems with your mental health, no spell can simply fix your mind as it isn't 'broken' per say, just in need of guidance along its journey." The half-drow therapist explained while the giant barbarian flopped on her couch, almost breaking it and the floor beneath it.

"I'm not forking out fifty gold pieces a session to meet a bard who can't even do bardic magic." Valda snottily replied, picking some sharpened animal bones out of her pouch to pick at her teeth.

"Then what are you forking out fifty gold pieces a session for? If I was an all-powerful wizard who could wave a magic wand and make you the person you wanted to be, what kind of person would walk out of my office in an hour's time?"

"I dunno, I guess..." Valda began before bashfully quietening up, looking suspiciously around the room.

"Don't worry Valda, the therapist guild is fantastic at providing privacy spells. Nobody can hear what you say or spy on our sessions while you are in this room with the door closed, and my professional practice is entirely predicated on maintaining your privacy. Your ability to speak candidly is vital to my work and I do whatever is needed to ensure that."

"It's fine, so what no healer has managed to achieve, the reason they are sending me to you, is that I no longer feel like myself. I want to feel like I once was. Does that sound stupid?"

"Not at all. One of the reasons your problem does not have a magical fix is because no magic can tell you who you are."

"Magic can't, but half the scrolls in the libraries can. Valda Stormaxe, final vanquisher of Dark Lord Killshade, the most powerful wizard in Zenith." Valda ran her hand through her brown mohican, chuckling at the memory of the months of parades and accolades she received just because it was her axe that finished the job. Her friends got plenty of glory for their part in the fight, but she became the centrepiece. "About 7 years ago, my friends and I swore vengeance after our village was raised to the ground and our parents murdered. I had six years of fighting the forces of evil, saving villages from nearby beasties, breaking curses, hell I single handedly slayed a nycaloth."

"Legends tell of your deeds, what do you remember most of those times?"

"Purpose, pride..." Valda paused in deep thought. "Adventure. The world was filled with fixable evils, and not only could I fix them with my axe, but I was getting better by making the world better. Now they're putting up statues of me on the road of heroes while I sit in my house deciding which charities should get my gold, which causes I can endorse, my muscles atrophying and my skin becoming pale and smooth while I try to do right with my axe on the stand."

The drow therapist never would have guessed Valda's body was less hardy. She still cut an imposing muscular figure, her hardened and scarred skin still carrying the deep tan of months questing under a burning sun. Even now she had traded her trademark mystical animal skin loincloths with a smart outfit made of leathers and furs that was more in keeping with urban life, she still stood out as someone as deadly as they were revered. Her therapist was far more comfortable with living in a city, her formal white suit colour coordinated to match her silver hair and contrast with her dark skin, a professional veneer to calm even the wildest of beasts that found themselves needing her help.

"My strength comes from rage, I can't just put that down because I no longer have anything worth raising my axe to. Everything is either beneath me or too big for me. So my rage just stews."

"So what have you been doing with your time?" The therapist asked.

"When I have time I go to the arena, the one in Towerkeep has strength draining glyphs, people are willing to spar with me if I slap a couple on. Still win every time though."

"It seems like you are trying to recapture the good times with imitations of them. But they're not going to have the same emotional impact. Have you considered trying different types of adventures? Finding something about you that seems daunting, or makes you fearful, then charging at that head-on?"

"Yeah, I miss the fear before the rage." Valda mused.

"So what do you fear? If I told you that I was going to cast a spell of fear on you right now, what would go through your mind?" This question stumped Valda, she was no stranger to fear spells but when she was in the thick of battle it always preyed on a fear that she would not overcome the evildoers, if anything that only made her angrier. She hadn't thought about what she now feared.

"I fear that I will never be challenged again."

"That is a hell of a breakthrough, I'm afraid that it has come at the end of the session, but it certainly gives us room to grow. I'll book you in a session next week, and before that session I want you to do one thing that makes you feel vulnerable." The therapist advised, finalising her notes.

"Alright." Valda confirmed, getting to her feet. "I'll think about that. Thanks, umm..."

"Qilue." The therapist intervened, realising that the conversation had gotten started so quickly she had not introduced herself. "Dr. Qilue Mylyl."

"Thanks Dr. Mylyl, I'll give it a go."

...

Qilue straightened up her office as best she could. It needed to be pristine, not for her next client, the barbarian certainly didn't care for such refinement, but to feel at peace with herself. Valda was the most famous person in Zenith, to be a therapist to Valda Stormaxe meant Qilue felt the weight of being the representative of the therapists guild, the best of them, and the best therapist in Zenith certainly didn't have a messy office. She straightened up her smart outfit and hoped that Valda had gained enough from their first session to want to return. Her anxieties were relieved when Valda strutted through the door with a grin on her face.

"Hello Valda, you seem in a good mood today." Qilue observed showing her into the office.

"I am, I took your advice and then I took it again. It's been an enlightening week."

"I'm very happy to hear that. I also noticed you don't have your axe with you today. You are always free to do whatever makes my office feel comfortable and secure."

"Oh there's a reason for that, besides you are the last person I plan on smiting." Valda chirped as she closed the door behind her. "So your homework, it took a lot of thinking but I figured out something I found daunting. So you were saying about me seeking imitations of my past life right, well I realised I was carrying them around with me everywhere."

Valda opened her pouch and pulled out a list scribbled in erratic handwriting.

"So that axe was enchanted with a whole mess of spells to do more damage. My loincloth gave me a constitution buff and resist elements, my shoes made me run faster, I was covered in buffs and protections just to visit a therapist." Qilue raised an eyebrow. "So I tried walking through town without any enchantments, just me."

"I see, and that made you feel vulnerable?"

"It helped but no, I was still protected by my identity, everyone bows and scrapes at my very presence, something I never noticed until I walk around without my enchanted items. So I bought this!" Valda pulled a ring out of her pouch, then dramatically placed it over her finger and let Qilue watch as her facial features morphed, her skin lightened, and illusionary blonde hair sprouted out of her head. "See, now I'm no longer Valda Stormaxe, I'm just some unknown large woman."

"I see, and how did it feel walking down the street as someone else?"

"It felt great, but I haven't gotten to that bit yet. When I walked down the street in the disguise I felt better, but you told me to feel vulnerable and I still felt very much safe. The way I saw it, my whole adult life was about getting stronger, it is a part of my identity, the loss of a few enchantments and a quick face change wasn't going to make me feel different. I had to leave behind everything that protected me."

"I see," Qilue replied, hurriedly scratching down notes and mentally preparing speeches about reckless self-endangerment, but not willing to interrupt Valda sharing her journey. "I hope you still managed to stay safe."

"That's the best part, I didn't. Every time I went out I was acutely aware of what crutches I was relying on to give me comfort and one by one I removed them. I was reliant on being in a nice area of town with plenty of town guards, so I started doing my walks in Blackbough where they don't patrol. Then I was aware that daylight was reassuring me, so I walked through Blackbough late at night while thieves and criminals creeped in the shadows. While walking at night I saw the drunks and the prostitutes and I realised how much my civility was a sheild."

"How did you remove your civility?" Qilue asked, interested in Valda's thought process.

"Well, you see..." Valda started, pausing to giggle uncontrollably at the memory of the evening. "I walked from the alleyway behind the temple of Beshaba, to an apartment I rented above the pawnbrokers, wearing nothing but my ring of disguise, basically totally naked." Valda fell into laughter while Qilue gripped her notepad tighter. Any other client and she would have been cutting her off, lest her erratic behaviour come back to be a stain on her counseling record, but Valda was different and dangerous.

"You think that was wise?"

"No! Of course not, that was the point, I was rushing into it as a headstrong moron with nothing to lose, just like in the old days."

"And how did your walk go?" Qilue asked through gritted teeth.

"So at first I was super nervous, I was sneaking around hoping nobody would see me. My heart was beating a mile a minute avoiding the reprobates out late that night. As I was sneaking past some bins a drunkard looked right at me, I bet he thought he was dreaming. Then, when I was just across the road from my house, some stranger came out of nowhere and grabbed my ass. Well I squealed then practically tore his arm off, I wonder if anyone at the healing temples will believe his story?" The maniacal grin on Valda's face was starting to worry Qilue.

"So after being caught, you realised how risky your behaviour was?" She asked, trying to steer the conversation back to moderation.

"Um... actually the opposite." Valda replied, starting to show some bashfulness of her actions. "So don't be mad..."

"Valda, even if I showed any judgement towards your actions, you shouldn't be worried about my opinion, I want you to share with me even if it is embarrassing. When you do feel shame, it should come from a feeling of falling short of what you owe to yourself, not my validation."

"Alright, well I replayed that walk over and over in my mind, especially during lonely moments at night, and with a bit of breathing space I realised I still wasn't vulnerable. Someone caught me and I easily overpowered him, that's probably the worst it could have gone. So I went to the arena in Towerkeep and I borrowed some strength draining glyphs." Qilue hid her shock and disappointment, they both knew this was not healthy behaviour, but Valda was eager to tell her tale and Qilue was eager to listen.

"From my sparring sessions I know how my body reacts to the glyphs. I can handle up to 7 before I can no longer walk. The next night, behind the temple of Beshaba, I stripped naked but for the ring, then applied 6 glyphs. I was completely helpless." Qilue leaned forward, her professional decorum beginning to be lost to personal curiosity.

"I was never stealthy, it was never a skill I needed, but I swear that night I was channeling everything I ever learned from Melwyn, my friend who became a rogue. I hid in the shadows before sprinting across walkways and roads. I even fell over a couple of times, not used to my lack of strength. But I kept my wits about me and almost nothing went wrong."

"Almost nothing?"

"So at one point I had to dive into an alleyway without checking ahead of myself, and I landed at the feet of a prostitute taking a break between johns. She was shocked to see me, then she was angry, sge thought I was some new girl, trying to steal her clients with a unique marketing strategy. Suddenly she starts screaming at me, slapping and kicking me, throwing me out into the street in front of laughing by-standers. I have a battle hardened constitution so I barely felt any of it, but I couldn't fight back. They didn't know it but everyone on that street saw Valda Stormaxe, hero of Zenith, naked and beaten by a common whore. I managed to scurry away and nobody followed me, the whore let the crowd know that anyone who did anything with me would have to answer to her pimp."

"That sounds like quite an experience." Qilue remarked, desperately holding back her shock. "So we now need to look beyond that to how you integrate what you learned into your life, without putting yourself at risk. Can I ask you about your sex life?"

"So dead not even Infernazarr could bring it back. Infernazarr was my necromancer friend, he could raise whole armies of skeletons to do his bidding, I make a large portion of my gold from my shares in his construction business."

"Well maybe that's it, you miss your old sexual exploits, what if we took away the risk and harm, and instead looked at getting you back to the sex life you once had." Qilue jumped in, happy to have an avenue of enquiry that didn't put her client in danger.

"OK, when I said dead that wasn't entirely accurate. Things that are dead were once alive, my sex life never existed. I was always focussed on taking down Lord Killshade, my battle companions brothers in arms not lovers in arms. Now whenever I try to strike up some sort of relationship, men are genuinely afraid I'll snap them in two." Valda admitted, calming down from the memory of her ordeal to go back to the drudgery of psychotherapy.

"Well there we go, the sexuality of the experience was novel to you, so you conflated the sexual thrill with the thrill of exposure and vulnerability. Let's see if we can build up a sexual identity for you that's safer than being beaten naked by a prostitute on a public street." Qilue seized on the breakthrough.

"I suppose," Valda reasoned with a sigh.

...

Qilue sat on a sofa in an entirely different office. This was the supervision room for the Guild of Therapists, a place where therapists were required to discuss their cases with another therapist, both to check they're care plans are right and to ensure their patients don't start to affect their mental health. The aged figure of Gelmar Springleaf stroked his beard pensively as Qilue recounted her session notes to him.

"Did you foresee that Valda would react this way to the homework you gave her?" He slowly asked.

"Of course, I always wanted to put the hero of Zenith at great physical and emotional risk." Qilue sarcastically replied.

"Alright, I agree it was a poor way to phrase the question. What did you have in mind when you set that homework?" He rephrased.

"Well what Valda considered a vulnerable action was to be as enlightening as her performing that action. Given the physicality of her life I assumed vulnerability would be an emotional state, like seeing a sad play or being honest with someone she loved."

"And yet you chose not to guideline your homework in those terms?"

"I didn't want to stifle her introspection. Once she had told her story I discovered the scale of her non-sexual past, so I steered the session to the development of healthy expressions of sexuality."

"It must have been quite shocking to hear of such a towering figure, one our lands hold so much reverence for, acting in such a way. How did it make you feel?"

"It certainly required an adjustment in my preconceived notions of heroes. Not to mention that the society we live in didn't stop idolising her just because I saw the person behind the legend. My walk here goes down the road of heroes, I passed the statue of her and it made me giggle." Qilue admitted. "But to be honest, maybe it's just a factor of the life she lives, but I was very drawn into the story of her adventure. The only difference between her legend of the vanquishing of the void wraith of Eternalake, and her tale of defeat at the hands of the prostitute of Blackbough, was the scale."

"I don't understand."

"They were both adventures. They were both tales of threat and overcoming obstacles. I enjoyed hearing of it as much as I would enjoy whatever theatrical production is currently on. I of course did not let on about this, one can enjoy with a critical eye as long as the critical eye is what guides one's practice." Qilue explained.

"I see, well you seem to be responding well to a unique client, just remember professional boundaries and I'm sure our guild will come out of this with our highest profile endorsement yet. Now how are things going with the man who thinks everything is a mimic?"

...

"Hello again Valda. How was your week?" Qilue cheerfully chirped as Valda sulked into the room. She didn't say a word until the door was closed, then flopped onto the sofa, the creaking wood letting Qilue know she had made the right choice to have a local carpenter reinforce it..

"Disastrous."

"I'm sorry to hear that. What went wrong?"

"Well for starters, when I was in a good mood last week I agreed to do a whole bunch of stuff this week, charity and temple appearances, it was exhausting. Then I remembered what you said about sexuality with boundaries, and I decided to take matters into my own hands and hire a male prostitute. I put on a new ring of disguise and met him at the secret apartment in Blackbough so word wouldn't get out. Lots of safety and planning." Although Qilue had told Valda not to seek her approval, she still gave a smile at the level of thought Valda had given to creating a safe sexual space for herself.

"So he arrives, big strapping lad, going for the whole muscular stable boy look, not something I objected to. We started playing around right away, I wasn't in the mood for a chat. I offer to bend over a table for him so I wouldn't risk crushing him with my muscular thighs. He thrusts inside of me and... and..." Valda collapsed into fits of sobs. Qilue passed her some tissues and assured her that she could continue with her story in her own time. She dried her eyes, gave a huge sniff, then squeezed her eyes closed and yelled.

"My pelvic muscles crushed his penis."

Qilue forgot herself for a moment and burst out laughing, taking a few seconds to regain her composure.

"I'm sorry, that was unprofessional of me."

"It's alright, I suppose it is a little funny. I'm so supernaturally buff, no mortal man can conquer my vagina." Valda announced with sarcastic fanfare. "If in being honest I wanted my first time to be memorable and that certainly fit the bill."

"So what lessons are you taking away from this?" Qilue asked, never having dealt with this kind of problem before.

"When I get over this experience and decide to try again, I could get the strength draining glyphs back, weaken myself so I don't cripple anyone brave enough to fuck me." Valda reasoned.