TWBFHA 03

Chapter 03:The Mockery of the Mark

Memories swirled in his mind. Half-formed images of forests he’d never seen. Old men standing atop altars. War-scorched lands teeming with monsters. A floating mass of darkness. The smell of burning meat. The acrid, rusty scent of blood mixed with ash. And unfamiliar fragrances he couldn’t place. Cries of things neither human nor beast.

Time ceased to exist. His consciousness spun faster and faster, teetering on the edge, until it ended. The pain vanished as if it had been a lie; the golden light wavered like a candle in the dark and finally faded.

Alex gasped, face-down on the floor. His lungs burned, and his ears rang. As his awareness slowly returned, his thoughts began to race. Confusion and terror threatened to surge again, but he forced them down.

“Think.”

He exhaled roughly.

“Adapt.”

A horrible realization dawned from somewhere deep in his chest.

Your mother… she had a difficult time birthing you.

Mistress Lu’s words. Perhaps it meant the labor was long. Legally, he became an adult at sunrise, but perhaps he hadn’t truly completed eighteen full years until now. Maybe he’d just crossed that threshold.

And if he’d just now truly stepped into adulthood… logically, only one thing was possible.

Fear seeped into him, cold and unwelcome, but he had to know. With trembling hands, he fumbled on the desk for a knife. Slowly, he cut away the shoulder of his shirt.

“Let it be nothing. Please. But if it has to be something… the Sage. Please, even the Sage’s Mark…”

Alex muttered, squinting as he raised the knife to catch the reflection on its blade.

“No!”

The shining mark reflected on the steel wasn’t the Sage’s staff or the Champion’s horned helm.

What Alex faced was the jester’s cap, the bulging eyes, the twisted face of the Fool, its laughter a mocking jeer. He could almost hear it, a grating, self-mocking cackle.

The knife fell from his hand.

The Mark of the Fool.

He had worked so hard. Pushed himself to get into the world’s greatest school of wizardry. Lost his parents, cared for his sister, endured a quarter of his life under a tyrannical employer.

What had it all been for?

For Uldar to reach down from the “Holy Heavens Above” and brand him with the Mark of the Fool.

“Go away,” Alex gritted out in a low whisper. Anger stormed through him. He lay back on the floor and cursed Uldar with every foul word he knew.

He didn’t know how long he lay there. It was pointless. Uldar wasn’t listening; in the end, the only one hearing his cries was himself. Maybe that was for the best.

“Alright.”

He gripped the desk, teeth clenched, and pushed himself up. It took a moment to steady his breath. His whole body felt exhausted, as if he’d been sprinting.

“Alright… now think. Take stock. What do you know?”

He sat heavily in the chair, clutching his pounding chest. He wiped the cold sweat from his brow.

“Okay. First… I have the Mark of the Fool. The worst of the worst.”

He spoke aloud, trying to corral his scattered thoughts and put them back in order.

“Soon, the church will come for me. I’ll be taken to the capital to fight monsters alongside the other Heroes—all chosen directly by Uldar, all with insane abilities. And I… what’s my role in that?”

He focused, beginning to construct a magical circuit, the incantation for a forceball forming on his lips.

Instantly, his brain erupted.

Memories flooded in like a waterfall, tearing through his mind like a pack of rabid dogs descending on meat. Every mistake he’d ever made practicing magic. Every moment of frustration. Every near-disastrous failure. All of it churned in his head at once, and Alex lost his focus.

The circuit twisted.

“Ah, damn it!”

Alex clutched his head. The warping magic circuit made every hair on his body stand on end.

If this circuit completes in this state, the mana could backfire and knock me out.

Worse, the circuit could form entirely wrong, causing the spell to run wild. The image of the Lu family inn exploding, his second home burning, flashed through his mind, and he nearly panicked. Frantically, he shattered the circuit, cutting it off before it could cause harm.

As he released the mana, everything stopped.

“…What? What was that?”

Frowning, he tried to begin the incantation again. Once more, the flood of memories started. The stupid mistakes from his practice all rushed back at once. The words coming from his mouth were just a meaningless jumble. When Alex, his face contorted, stopped speaking, the flood ceased. His mind grew quiet again.

It took a few seconds to process. Then the horrible possibility struck him.

“No… no, no, NO!”

He hurriedly lit a candle. As the small flame caught the wick, he pulled a book from his bag and slammed it onto the desk. The sound was terrifyingly loud in the quiet room.

‘Our Heroes and Their Struggles Against Ravener’ by Phineus Galloway.

Alex flipped straight to Appendix II, listing the birth villages, places of death, and greatest deeds of each generation’s Heroes. At the book’s end, based on testimony from Heroes across generations, were summaries of each Mark’s powers.

Alex found the entry for the Mark of the Fool and began to read aloud.

“The Mark of the Fool is a useful—if pathetic—Mark. The ‘Champion’ inherits the superhuman strength, speed, and martial skill of past warriors. The ‘Sage’ gains a manifold expansion of their mana reserves, and the ‘Saint’ is granted Uldar’s divine power. But the ‘Fool’ is granted no great ability. In some ways, it is the opposite of the greatest Mark, the ‘Chosen.’ The Chosen inherits weaker versions of all three prior Marks, plus the power to synergize them. The Fool receives nothing. The Mark of the Fool is an impediment to combat or divine abilities…”

Alex’s blood ran cold.

“…or to the use of magic.”

For Alex, the Mark of the Fool was a curse hindering his magic.

Damn it! I was supposed to go to wizard school!

He glared at the mark on his shoulder. The finely glowing jester’s face still seemed to laugh at him, as if foretelling his entire future. With a trembling body, he forced himself to read the rest. If he didn’t, he felt he’d lose his mind.

“…Instead, the ‘Fool’ learns all non-combat, non-divine, non-magical skills with explosive speed. Thus, they can serve as the Heroes’ guide, pilot watercraft, scout enemies, repair equipment (though not craft great weapons), and care for horses and beasts. They learn every skill an adventure requires. Some Fools of the past became excellent painters, jugglers, musicians, and learned other useful trades. Yet Heroes have succeeded in defeating the Ravener even after their Fool died, betrayed them, or left the party for other reasons. But Uldar is a being of infinite wisdom. As the Fool must act as the ‘heart’ of the Heroes’ party, the Mark might be given to young people of good and cheerful character. Perhaps, when past Fools died, their deaths ignited the Heroes’ resolve more than the loss of any other party member. Thus, even absent, the Fool can lead the Heroes to victory. If a Fool reads this, do not despair. Though history may not sing your praises, fulfilling your role is its own reward.”

Alex gritted his teeth and muttered, “…Yeah, thanks for the wisdom, Galloway. I wonder how many Fools believed in Uldar’s ‘infinite’ wisdom?”

He slammed the book shut and shoved it away in disgust. Part of him wanted to take the candle and burn it.

So that’s it?

The good big brother, the revenge-loving weirdo, the future wizard bound for magic school… now, overnight, a babysitter, a jester, a sacrificial lamb for the Heroes? All because a mark was forced upon him against his will?

Alex pulled the book back. He flipped through the records of past Fools, counting the tragic phrases—’lost,’ ‘fell in battle.’ By the time he reached the last page, he was shaking.

Over half didn’t survive the final battle with the Ravener. The survivors weren’t much better off. Some were crippled; others found success as artists or merchants but were mocked as ‘Fools’ for life. While all Heroes bore their mark to some degree, was there any comparison between a ‘Great Hero’ and a ‘useless Fool’?

The records noted most surviving Fools left for other countries.

The deeper you dig, the worse the horror story gets.

So disoriented was he that for a moment, Alex considered trying to carve the mark off his shoulder with the knife.

Dig it out?

He shook his head immediately. That was literal madness.

“Alright, take stock again.”

Explosively fast learning for all skills except combat, magic, and divine power. So, what did ‘all else’ mean?

Alex snatched up a pen and opened a fresh page in his notebook. His handwriting across all his charts was atrocious. He was fast, yes, but the script itself was an ugly, messy scrawl. Alex was infamous in school for his naturally terrible penmanship.

I, Alex Roth, am the unluckiest person in Thameland.

The sentence looked as if an ink-dipped chicken had scratched it across the page. Alex narrowed his eyes and wrote the sentence again below, this time trying to write properly, with focus.

Instantly, the memory flood began again. But this time, it was entirely different.

Every penmanship lesson he’d ever taken, every moment he’d tried to write neatly, every successful instance of good handwriting—each memory surfaced in perfect, detailed clarity. They organized themselves in his mind, and his hand seemed guided, moving on its own. Where the memories of magical failure had caused chaos, these memories were like well-ordered books flying from a library shelf into his hands.

Putting down the pen after the period, Alex stared in disbelief.

The neatest, cleanest script he’d ever produced.

Looks like someone else wrote it.

Carefully, he wrote another sentence. The memories came again, this time accompanied by the image of the sentence he’d just written—what he’d done right, what motions were effective. The third sentence was cleaner than the second. Alex repeated the experiment. Sentence after sentence, the writing grew steadily nicer, gradually becoming a neat script he could produce without conscious thought.

“So that’s how it works.”

The Mark uses memories. Specifically, the Fool’s Mark dredges up every memory of failure and mistake when he tries to do what the other Heroes must do—fight, use magic, wield divine power—disrupting his focus.

But when trying to learn any other skill, it provides all past successful experiences and information in an orderly fashion, allowing him to build rapidly on past successes and avoid past causes of failure.

Alex tapped the paper with his pen, ruminating on what had just happened. Then he wrote one more line.

Question: Is using magic truly impossible?

Alex sat up straight in his chair and closed the notebook. The hard wood creaked. He blew out the candle, plunging the room into darkness. He needed absolute focus now.

Taking a deep, steadying breath, he began assembling the magical circuit again.

Slowly this time.

The memory flood rushed back. Every moment of failure pounded at the gates of his mind.

Don’t push it away!

He accepted it, letting it come while holding a part of the circuit within. Think. Adapt. He repeated the incantation, letting the wave of memories flow past him as he had let all grief flow for the past four years. As each memory passed through, he used the brief gaps to complete the circuit piece by piece. Slowly. Very slowly.

As he neared completion, he recited the incantation. The memory flood grew more violent, threatening his focus. But he blocked out everything. Sound. Distraction. All noise from within and without, focusing solely on the circuit as he had when first learning the spell.

This flood… it was like the noise of MacHarris’s bakery or a busy night at the inn. Loud, but if he went slow and careful… he could get past it. Maybe it wasn’t about enduring the noise.

A completely different thought flashed through his mind, so intense it pierced the wave of memories. As the circuit neared completion, Alex began to focus on the memories of failure the Mark was spitting out. Amid the chaos, he tried to analyze each one. Some flew by too fast, but others were crystal clear.

Where did I go wrong? How did I fail?

He didn’t let them pass. He focused on them. And he tried to do the opposite of what he’d done in those memories of failure.

As a result, the new circuit he formed was shaped entirely differently from before.

The moment he fixed the circuit and closed the magical loop, a tremendous surge of mana spiraled within him.

Vmmmm.

A red light filled the room.

Another forceball hovered at his fingertip. Alex nearly shouted in triumph. It was larger than any he’d ever made before—about one and a half times the size—brighter and more stable. It had taken longer, had been much harder.

But the result… was better.

He trembled with excitement.

Learning from failure.

He opened his notebook again and wrote an answer beneath his earlier question.

Answer: Not impossible.

It was possible. Just harder and more complex. Alex was used to hard, difficult work. Working for MacHarris was hard. He’d done it. Teaching himself basic magic from rotting books in the school library was hard. He’d done it. Caring for Selina, helping the Lu family, passing school with top marks—all hard. But he’d done them. They all had one thing in common: for himself and for those he cared for, Alex could do anything.

He glared at the history book. Not for a god. Not for a god who only sought to command him. Not for Heroes who didn’t need him. And certainly not for a public who’d see him as a laughingstock.

Selina needed him. His sister needed him. And Alex needed himself. He could still use magic. It was slow and difficult now, but without the focus honed by years of pushing past grief, even this would have been impossible.

He needed time. Time to understand the Mark’s workings in detail. Time to study this power, develop it, learn something that could help him. But if he was forced to serve as the Heroes’ lackey, he’d never get that time.

The conclusion was one.

“Looks like another ‘Fool’ is about to go ‘missing,’ Galloway,” Alex whispered, standing up and clenching his fists. “I’m getting out of here. Now.”

He recalled Galloway’s advice to report to Uldar’s priests.

Which means they don’t know where I am yet.

But they would start searching soon. And “Sorry, I don’t feel like fighting the Ravener” wouldn’t be an acceptable answer. He had to leave Thameland as fast as possible. He needed something to conceal the Mark, and before that, he needed to wake Selina.

“Ah… Alex?”

Instantly, Alex froze. He turned his head slowly, stiffly, as if it were attached to a rusted lever.

She stood there, long black hair tied back, a ring of keys clenched in her calloused hand.

Theresa Lu.

Alex’s oldest friend stared at him, mouth agape. Her gaze flickered between the red sphere above his finger and the jester’s mark on his shoulder.

“I came to talk,” she said, her voice quiet. “I heard you muttering strange things through the door. Then I saw red light leaking under it. I asked if you were okay… you didn’t answer.”

Damn it. Blocking out all sound was a mistake…

“So I got the spare key and came in… and that’s…”

Her words trailed off.

Alex took a deep breath. Alright. Time for Plan A.

His pre-prepared Plan A was: Lie.

“So, you see,” Alex said, straightening up and speaking calmly, “this… what you’re seeing here, it’s not what it looks like.”
“It looks like you have the Mark of the Fool on your shoulder.”
“…Alright. What you’re seeing, that’s what it is.”

Plan A had failed. Well, Plan A was a terrible plan anyway. What could you expect from a plan devised by someone named ‘the Fool’?

So, on to Plan B.

…The problem was, there was no Plan B.

“So, um,” Alex’s mouth moved on its own while his mind spun at light speed. “You know… it’s definitely… the worst birthday of my life.”
“You’re going to run.”

Theresa stepped fully into the room. The door creaked shut behind her.

“If that’s the case… I’m coming with you.”

Alex blinked.

“…What?”