I got sick of working for a demon, so I headed back home. Back to my hometown. Where they never thought I'd amount to anything, and still aren't impressed with my heroism. Where they scoffed at my name, which was pretty stupid back then, and only got lamer, an achievement they surely appreciate. ("Oh, you're a hero now, 'Jace Wingpoked'? The 'Most Tunnel of Spikes'? What the hell does that mean? You still have to sweep the porch and feed the alpaca, oh 'Spikiest Tunnelone'!")
I'd never actually been to my capital before, so I went to pay my respects to the ruler and leave my legendary battle axe in the royal collection. It's not as notable as I wanted it to be, but hey, there are three titan kills on it. No one in history has that! Must count for something, right?
Then I found out my ruler was a vampire. Surrounded by a protective cult, even. She's been feeding off our people for many years, while the next civilization over thrives. Disillusioned, disoriented, disgusted, after I called her out and killed her and her cohorts, I took off for foreign lands, someplace resembling mine, but far away from it. Where the wind sings as it chaps your lips, where the giant parakeet men chirp lyrically about how you should get off their fucking land, where the rhinos and snakes lounge on the roads like they own the fucking thing. Like home, but with new faces on the currency.
I whacked a desert titan on the way, for the glory of whoever the fuck asked me to do it. I was running low on titan meat anyway -- that stuff is addictive. The first town I reached, I asked for any and all work they could give me, and they gave me an exhausting amount of it, so much that I just had to cut the guy off or I'd never get anything done. First up; a vampire embedded in a community. I set out to interrogate the town.
Some guy in a shack caught my eye, a crossbowman wearing a bit of human bone. I asked him about his past, in which he scored some kills, and his family, living in the area, then confronted him. Turns out he wasn't the vampire. Hm, but he's got experience, and a name like "Sithe Glovenight"...that's way cooler than mine. So I asked him to come along for the night's hunt.
And now I have a sidekick. A useless sidekick. I should've taken a closer look before inviting him, cause I would've seen how 'very fat' he is, and his poor equipment, and bronze bolts. Turns out his kills were people he confronted who weren't even vampires, but he killed them anyway, meanwhile the vampire infiltrating his own town was only two doors down and he didn't find him. Fucking worthless.
I wanted to let him prove himself and work off some of that lard, so I switched to a fighting style I hadn't mastered. I was already in top form in the weapons I had at hand, so I decided to work on my biting skills -- never know when that'll be useful, or necessary. And now I'm on a hunt across a series of lairs trying to bite eyelids off while waiting for this dumbass to bolt them to death. So far he's only managed one kill out of 8, with 5 more to go.
I think after he runs out of bolts I'm just going to let him get ripped up. That should make him famous.