by J D Astra
I took a moment to say goodbye to my siblings and promised them I’d be home in a few days. I left instructions in the kitchen for how to get around in the city, and gave them Ryni’s information. She was excited to show my family around, something I was very grateful for.
We returned to Bastion with ten minutes to spare, but decided to go to Min-hwan’s office. The four of us waited nervously. It was nearly dinner, and no one else was here. I thought for sure that Woong-ji would accept this mission, but perhaps I was wrong. Teaching at Bastion was already a great honor, and sacrifice. Her knowledge of core foundation was pivotal to the school’s success—though I was sure many other instructors could teach it, just not as well.
At ten minutes to, Bo opened the door. She smiled when she saw us and bowed, but did not speak. Min-hwan appeared next, and Bo was the first to approach him.
She bowed deeply, then said, “My apologies, Grandmaster, but I cannot accept the responsibility of escorting the students to Kokyu.”
He grunted thoughtfully, then patted her shoulder. “You’re absolved of the knowledge.” Green light swirled around Bo’s head, and she grew weak in the knees. Cho caught her elbow and held her steady as the munje circled her, then flowed into Min-hwan’s hand.
When it was done, Bo blinked with confusion. She scowled as she looked at us second-year students, then back to Min-hwan.
He nodded. “You made your choice.”
Bo sucked in a deep breath, sighed, then bowed. “Thank you.” She walked from the room without another word.
Before the door shut, Woong-ji slipped through. She grinned. “Sorry, I was held up.”
She walked forward, her new machina leg clanking against the wood floor. She looked between us, then held her hand out to Min-hwan. “I accept.”
Min-hwan grinned and gripped her hand. Green sparks flew away from their joined hands before settling back down around them. “Very good. You will be appointed to the newly created role of Exchange Chaperon.”
I pulled down a deep breath and held out my hand like Woong-ji had. “I accept.”
Min-hwan’s eyes narrowed. “Are you sure? This cannot be undone, except by extreme measure.”
The door whined as it opened again and Sung-ki appeared.
I turned back to Min-hwan. “I’m sure.”
He nodded solemnly and gripped my hand. “Very well.”
My skull tingled, and there was a rush of heat down my arm to his palm that culminated in an explosion of green sparks. A shiver shot through my spine, and I shook my head as the process completed. Min-hwan nodded me off, and I stood next to Woong-ji.
Hana, Cho, Yuri, and Sung-ki completed the same process until the door creaked again. Shin-soo poked his head in, his cheeks flushed.
“Apologies,” he said, and I balked. I didn’t think I’d ever heard him use that word.
He stepped closer and looked to Hana, then Min-hwan. “There’s a lot I want to do here. I haven’t always been the most... honorable,” he said with shame, then looked to me. “But I’m ready to rise to your challenge.” He held out his hand and looked Min-hwan in the eyes. “I’ll go.”
Min-hwan nodded and shook his hand. The sparks settled around them, and the spell was sealed. Shin-soo stood next to me and faced Min-hwan. Seven of us against Dokun. Would it be enough?
“Eight,” Mae reminded me, and I smirked.
‘Apologies,’ I said in the way Shin-soo had.
“You were right,” she said, and I quirked a brow. “Last year you said you could change his mind. Here he is.”
‘It was just a hope.’
Min-hwan cleared his throat. “Prepare yourselves. This summer will not be easy.”
“What?” Shin-soo asked with a scowl. “I thought we were going next semester.”
Min-hwan hummed. “Oh, you are. But not like this. You will be forged in the fire of my teaching this summer. You will be well beyond the other third-years we send, and you must conceal your strength. You are now the first counterstrike. You must discover Dokun’s plans and undermine him where you can. You must buy us the precious weeks and months we will need to survive his plot.”
I bowed low, then stood tall. “We won’t fail. We’re Bastions.”
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Looking for more from J.D. Astra, and need it right this minute? Check out: Zero.Hero Book 1. Or keep reading to take a sneak peek.
THE GREATEST HEROES have already fallen... Now it’s up to Claire and her ragtag crew of Zeroes to save the city.
Low-ranked hero contractors Claire, Elise, Norah, and Piper dream of making it to the top twenty with the Stewards of Light, but their weird RPG powers have them trapped near the bottom instead. Balancing college, part-time jobs, and family matters leaves the girls without much time to fight crime and grind out the experience they need to climb the ranks.
When an unusual threat emerges, the gamer girls are left standing in a city turned upside down with no hero to save them. The underclassmen are outclassed, but they're also the only ones who can stop the spread of chaos. Claire and her friends will have to unravel the mess with clever teamwork and determination and find the top-rank heroes in themselves to save the city before it falls into darkness.
From J.D. Astra, author of the Viridian Gate Online: Firebrand series, comes a new universe of heroes and monsters. If you hunger for anime like One Punch Man and My Hero Academia, with a healthy serving of RPG elements, Zero.Hero Book 1 is for you!
Prologue
NOVEMBER 17th, 2012...
We raced across the dark grassy yard, my school bag slapping against my back and jostling the pieces of the game board inside: Terra’s Heroes.
I’d gotten it the weekend before. My mom always took me to The Dragon’s Horde after she’d done something she felt guilty for. This time, it was forgetting to get me from school. Not like I’d been upset; I’d just gone to Elise’s house and we played Halo. But the reward for Mom’s forgetfulness was a brand-new RPG. Elise, my best friend since age four when I saved her from being pushed off the slide, was more into the FPS, but she indulged me with my tabletop needs, especially when it was something new and shiny.
Elise and I were neck-and-neck as we approached the cellar door. We skidded to a stop, planting our hands against the wood. She grinned, her white teeth stark against her dark skin.
“I think you beat me,” she said, though I was pretty sure our hands touched at the same time.
Norah, our feisty strawberry-blonde friend, was still running. She seemed determined to beat Piper, the short, buck-toothed girl who was the newest addition to our friend group. She was taking it slow, munching on a cookie, completely unconcerned about being last to the hideout. Norah’s mom did make the best chocolate-chip cookies, though, so I didn’t blame her.
Norah panted as she put her hand against the cellar door. “You’re the rotten egg, Pipe!”
“Yeah, but I’ve got the cookies!” she yelled back, holding up the container of freshly baked goods.
N
orah grabbed the lock with one hand and inserted the old, rusted key with the other, then jiggled it around.
“So cool that your parents are letting us sleep over in the cellar,” Piper mused with a bit of chocolate on her lip.
“Yeah, it’s pretty much my room anyway. I set it up earlier today just for us!” Norah said as the lock came free. We hauled open the heavy doors and stared down into the darkness. With a flick of the switch, the stairs illuminated. I took the steps down two at a time to the bottom and surveyed the space as Norah and Elise closed the doors behind us.
There were four sleeping bags lined up on the right wall, canning shelves on the left, and an old box TV next to a round table with four chairs. An overhead chandelier lit the table well, and tie-on pads looped around the back of each seat. There was a plush, round rug under the table that looked like it was from a different planet, but whatever, it was still awesome.
“It’s perfect,” I whispered.
“I’m so glad Claire approves, but what does everyone else think?” Norah asked. A fake-innocent grin spread across her face as she batted her eyes.
My cheeks warmed and I opened my mouth to retort, but Elise jabbed my ribs and gave me a knowing glare. Norah and I didn’t get into it that often, mostly because of Elise’s moderating, but for some reason it always felt like a competition between us. Now there was one more thing that put Norah above me. My place was pretty meh, and there was definitely no private space for us to play games together.
“It’s great,” Piper said as she sat at the table, placing the cookies directly in front of her.
Elise grinned and pulled out a chair. “Ready to play?”
The heat in my cheeks disappeared, replaced by excitement as I remembered Terra’s Heroes in my backpack. I put the ruddy bag down on one of the chairs and I pushed past bags of dice, play mats, and full notebooks to pull free the new, cellophane wrapped box. I hadn’t wanted to let the smell of fresh cardboard and paint out until I could share it with my closest friends.
Norah clicked the tiny space heater to life, then joined us at the game table. I slid my fingernail between the box and the lid, cutting the thin clear wrapping and ripping it off. My fingers traced the art on the front of the box. It was stunning.
The characters’ backstories were all amazing, too. At the forefront was the character I wanted to play: Raven Gressahla.
She was a half-demon Skro, with horns that snaked down to her cheeks, decorated in gems, metal cuffs, and the teeth of her defeated enemies. She could see into the minds of others and wielded the truth of all things. She was the spiritual leader of a village destroyed by the war of two neighboring cities. Her people, the Skro, were destined to lead nomadic lives, unwelcome in either kingdom.
Behind Raven was Groff, the giant Tree Ogre. He was cursed to live a dual life, one of light and the other of darkness, paying for the crimes of all those who came before him. Flanking Raven and Groff were two other females: Xebaria Dark-Dancer and Penelope Denetore.
Xebaria sported daggers to the teeth, tight black leathers, and a mask that obscured everything but piercing blue eyes and tall, pointed ears. She was a Sky Elf, dubbed as such for the floating islands on which her people made their home. The Sky Elf lore went deep on the internet, and I hadn’t had time for all that...
Then there was Penelope Denetore, the character I knew Norah would nab. Penelope was decked out in gold and bronze bandoliers, a short skirt exposing orange-tinged legs and a fluffy tail sprouting from her behind. She was a Foxian, and kinda cute, but I thought it was just a cheap ploy to reel in the Manga readers.
But that wasn’t why I thought Norah was going to pick her. I knew Norah had also done her research on Terra’s Heroes, and I could tell that throwing grenades, whacking enemies with lightning rods, and shooting pistols was going to be right up her alley.
The cast went on and on, about six other playable characters with their own story arc and potential resolutions, but those were the highlights.
I pulled the lid back with a fthp fthp fthp as the air slipped past the tight seal. At the top was the manual; crisp and pristine. I grabbed it as the other girls went in after the figurines.
Terra’s Heroes: The Master’s Guide.
This was one of the first games that provided a basic guide in the box, and then over six hundred pages of lore and story information online. It allowed us to play together, without a game master, since we’d be using one-part chance and two parts internet.
We didn’t need a computer to get started tonight, so I pulled open the first page to the table of contents and scanned over it, then moved back to the box for the next goodie. Under the character sheets was the Encounters, Enemies, and Creatures handbook, but I could look at that later.
“I want to be Xebaria Dark-Dancer!” Piper declared as she slammed her game piece down on the table. It was the black-clad Sky Elf. I wasn’t sure a high DPS, low health class was for her, but she was almost eleven now; it was time for her to make her own choices.
“I will be Penelope Denetore,” Norah said as she grabbed the Foxian figurine, and I smirked.
Something, fear maybe, made my hand reach out and snatch up Raven Gressahla and put her out on the table. Elise looked up at me, her mouth slightly open. I couldn’t guess if it was the character she wanted... but I wanted her. She grimaced and grabbed Groff.
“I’ll be the ugly ogre, I guess,” she said, her voice downtrodden.
I put the booklet aside. “There are more girls, you know.”
Elise nodded. “Yeah, I know. But you idiots are always getting in trouble, and you’ll need a character like Groff in your party. He has healing magic and can harden his tree-person skin to be strong as stone, like a tank.”
I couldn’t help but smile. Elise seemed to hate my tabletop fascination, but she’d actually done some research on the game. She knew, the same as I did, that two DPS and a Mentalist hybrid would be doomed without some muscle.
“Thanks, Elise.” I gave her a fist bump.
Norah followed, then Piper, adding, “Way to take one for the team.”
The energy in the room was palpable as Elise smiled, happy to be the martyr this time. We’d all taken turns being “the boy” since so many games didn’t provide enough female characters for an all-girl group to play.
There was a knock and one of the cellar doors creaked open. “You girls want to watch the meteor shower?” Zack, Norah’s dad, asked. He and Beth were amateur astronomers, and very excited about the rocks falling from the sky. Apparently, there was some big deal on the news about this meteor shower, but who cared about space when Terra’s Heroes just released?
I mean, sure, there were some worrying reports of one of Jupiter’s moons “disappearing,” but it reappeared five days later and lots of people on channel five thought it was something wrong with the telescope equipment. There were other reports of some weird storm showing up on Mars, but that died down a week ago. Some quack scientist said there was an invisible “event” happening in space, headed towards Earth this very weekend, but there wasn’t any real evidence of that, and I certainly wasn’t going to let it ruin the game.
“We’ll catch the end of it,” Norah yelled back.
There was a pause, then, “Alright. Don’t stay up too late.”
“We won’t!” we all chimed in a singsong tune, then giggled as we looked at one another, knowing full-well we certainly would.
The door closed and I sat down, pulling the game booklet closer. “Alright, nerds, let’s lay out the board.”
We got to work setting up the first campaign. There were dungeons and cities and groves, but our main home base would be The Tower of Zewan. There we would train, upgrade our skills, and get quests. We could do all of those things out in the world too, but it was mostly for specialized training, or quests outside of the main campaign.
The board was placed. Markers set. Characters poised for entry.
“Tonight,” I started in my gameteller’s voic
e.
“This morning,” Elise interjected.
“This morning,” I started again without missing a beat, “we embark on a journey to defeat the Cursed Arborium. Who dares?”
“I dare!” Elise declared loudly in a low-pitched, gravelly voice.
Norah smiled, raising her hand. “I dare!”
“And me!” Piper finished, and we put our fists together over the table.
“Let the game begin!” I threw the two ten-sided dice onto the table to determine where we would begin our journey.
The dice came to a stop on four and eight. Twelve it was, though the dice trembled defiantly as if that was not what they wanted to choose. I grabbed the encounter booklet and looked up twelve in the starting combat spreadsheet: Shapeshifters in the deep. I scanned the highlights, being well versed in guiding our ragtag gang through many RPGs, then set the book aside.
“Outside of Terrasil, on the road to the next great city of Feldaust to begin a trade barter, our great Company is of high spirits. But danger lurks in the shadows of the tall trees, and creatures with poisonous fangs that stab deeper than any sword wait for us in the darkness.”
The dice on the table shook harder, then so did the picture on the wood paneled wall, and the antenna on the old TV. There was a rumbling coming from overhead. Was it a plane? We looked up to the cellar door as light, first deep red, then orange, then yellow, pushed through the cracks in the wood.
The table bounced from leg to leg, and I slapped my hands down to stop the game board from being upset. My stomach tightened as the chair trembled and shook my body. The TV wiggled off the stand, its glass face smashing on the carpet-covered concrete floor. Glass jars from the canning shelves shattered, splattering preserved tomatoes across the wall, and the rumble grew to a roar. The light outside the cellar pierced through the cracks and filled our little space with white.
“What’s happening?” Piper yelled as she reached out for Elise and Norah. Their hands found mine on the table, and my wide-eyed gaze jumped from terrified face to terrified face. It was hard to see them, and my eyes burned from the blinding light.
