Hero's Quest [September 2005]

We read fantasy novels, epic fantasy like Lord of the Rings and Redwall and Wheel of Time. It’s easy to lose oneself in the pages, the rich worlds and the timeless struggles of heroes against villains, questors on a journey, all with a great cost if they fail. The fall of their home, the death of their loved ones, the end of the world itself—this is what hands in the balance of an epic. But of course, after much trial and learning and hard journeying, often after much loss and sacrifice as well, the hero fulfills the prophecy, completes the quest, saves the world, and returns home to the victory feast.

We know it’ll end all right. It’s the journey that draws us in, and the people within the tale. But what of the heroes and those accompanying the heroes? How many readers can fully grasp the extent of the toll such trials take on their psyches? Perhaps leaders of war, perhaps those who have fought in battle, perhaps a few other individuals might understand. But the rest of us—do we truly comprehend?

Here’s my attempt to grasp the impact of the hero’s quest. Here’s my attempt to convey it to you, as well. Imagine.

Your life has always been fairly normal. You have a mother, a father, maybe a sibling or two. You live comfortably enough—food on the table, shelter, clothes on your back. You go to school, you have a few friends, make more or less decent grades. You have your hobbies, your ups and downs, you move through life without more than mundane worries. You know where you’re going in life, what you want to be, the job you want to hold. Pleasant normalcy, no matter how deviant pieces of your life or self might be.

But there’s always a restlessness tickling at the edges of your mind, bubbling in your belly. It’s the vague sense that there’s more to the world than this, more to life; the uneasy nagging push that you should be more, do more—there’s something you’re supposed to be doing, and this isn’t it.

Then one day, a day you’ll curse for the rest of your life, you discover you’re right.

It happens over and over, in the books you’ve read. Bilbo’s quiet life is interrupted by a wizard and dwarves, pushing him to a bigger and darker world. Frodo’s tossed into his destiny and a world he’d only imagined by a ring and a gray-robed magician. Matthias must go on a quest for an ancient sword when rats attack his idyllic home, and prophecy forces a destiny on him. It’s never pleasant. It’s never gradual or easy or gentle. The transition from normalcy into destiny, into heroism, is a jolting, tumultuous shift in worldview, and life can never be the same.

There’s prophecy, and there’s an introduction to a new world. It’s as if your prior life was spent in a womb, and now you’re being birthed into a far more frightening and dangerous place. You’re reborn and given a job to do, desired or not. Perhaps it comes in the form of prophecy, cryptic yet revealing. Perhaps it comes in the form of someone gripping your shoulders and saying, “Here, you must do this.”

You have a choice, of course. There’s always a choice, and that’s the worst part. You can accept your duty, the heavy mantle of your destiny, and all the pain and loss and trial you know it brings with it. Or you could say, “No, no thanks, I like my life. I don’t want this responsibility and its hardships,” and avoid the pressure of destiny.

But it’s not as easy a choice as it might seem—because you know the cost of doing nothing, as well. You know the cost of failure. If Matthias had done nothing, Redwall would be run by rats, and the abbeybeasts would be dead or enslaved. If Frodo had told Gandalf to take the ring and go jump off a cliff, the Dark Lord Sauron would have taken over Middle Earth and plunged it into darkness and despair. For some reason, destiny always chooses well. It’s against your nature to refuse your duty and watch the world crumble because you did nothing. So to you, it’s no choice at all. And so you act.

Let’s talk in specifics, use examples rather than generalities. Let’s create an urban fantasy, since we’re talking epic fantasy here, after all. You discover people can see the future, that magic is real, and that spirits exist and interact with the physical, playing games with humans as the chess pieces. Or rather the truth of this reality is thrust upon you. Circumstances and other people grab ahold of your eyelids and force you to see. Nothing is as it seems. Nothing is as it was. And while you’re floundering in the dark, trying to figure out the rules of this strange new world, you’re yanked along a silver thread of destiny, linked with a few other individuals, and with only a vague idea of what to do and how to do it.

The cost of inaction is this: the end of the world. The end of the world as you know it is inevitable—change is coming, and is necessary. It’s up to you and your small strange group to make sure there’s only an end, not the end. You have a deadline, a vague timeline—beginning of the end in a year, culmination of events in several years, and who knows what after that. The clock is ticking in your mind, and a year is not nearly as long as you always felt it was. You are young and inexperienced, far from full strength and ability, and you can only wonder, “Why me? What am I? What can I do in all this?” Yet you know you have something to do, because you’re in this position, and so you prepare yourself for everything possible. You push yourself harder and farther with each passing day, hoping with all your being that you’ll be ready when the time comes.

Meanwhile, your allies, your comrades, people who have become nearer and dearer to you than family, are going through their own trials. They too feel the burden of destiny, and you can see it in their tired shadowed eyes, the lines in their faces, the slump of their shoulders. They break, month by month. The nights where one will shake, stare blankly into nothing, voice rasping the questions heavy on all your minds. “How can we do this?” “I can’t take this. I can take fighting, I can take getting hurt, I can’t take the waiting!” “It’s hopeless, isn’t it? We’re going to lose. We’re outnumbered, we’re outgunned.” “I’m not doing enough!” You all fall apart, you take turns falling apart and are pulled back together by the rest. Collapse, get picked up again, and then it’s your turn to help the next person who breaks down.

There’s battle. Maybe it’s with swords and knives biting into flesh; maybe it’s with mind and will slamming aside spirits. Either way, you come out of each fight exhausted, battered, limping—yet alive and still sane. Afterwards, while you heal each other and sleep off the pain, you go over the battle and the enemy and wonder what’s next, what the meaning of the attack was, where the next attack will be. You wonder how much longer you can stand it, how many more you can survive. You wonder when someone will fall forever.

The battles, though, are at least reasonably concrete. There’s action, there’s doing, there’s knowing you’ve accomplished something. They’re their own release. It’s the other nights that wear on you and almost always follow with someone falling apart yet again. The nights when a messenger brings news of events; or when you see more of the future, or a future; or when you find a potential change that could topple everything you’ve worked for. There are the bad nights, the ones where you all beat your heads against walls and desks, books scattered everywhere, notes and diagrams of headache-inducing complexity cluttering up tables and floors. Those are the nights when stress rises to unbearable levels, when migraines pound across your skull, when you feel you will snap forever under the pressure—but you can’t, because so much depends on you. So you push yourself further, faster, rip your hair out until you solve the puzzle of prophecy and get the information you need.

All this is only the preparation. It’s part one of a three-part book, the mere beginning of the journey. What happens when the year’s up and all you’ve prepared for finally happens?

On the one hand, there’s relief that the waiting is over. On the other hand, the time of rest is over too, and your life is more chaotic than ever before. You have no room to breathe. You’re run ragged, never able to let down your guard, always glancing back over your shoulder. Sleep is a fragile thing, boiling with nightmares, and every noise jerks you to wakefulness.

You fight a shadow war, guerilla warfare and mystic traps, you and your small group against a powerful foe. The question rises again and again: “How can we defeat them? It’s a losing battle. Will we even survive?” You always know the heroes will win in the novels you read, but this is reality, and you have no such guarantee. The world weighs heavy on your shoulders, and you don’t know if you’re strong enough to support it.

Others start trickling to your group, until you have an army of sorts. Maybe you’re the leader; maybe another in your core group is the leader. Either way, you all have to step up to the plate and lead. The burden grows worse, because now you have lives depending on your decisions. Every death is another sharp blow to your mind, but you can’t let anyone see the doubts and fears that consume you. You’re stretched to the breaking point, but you no longer have the luxury of falling apart. There’s too much depending on you.

There’s battle and change, and coming to grips with hidden parts of yourself. There are deaths of comrades, your closest companions. You wonder whom you’ll lose next, if you can handle it, and if your cause can handle it. You know you have to, despite your grief. You grow bitter about the whole situation, and close yourself off to others. You grow weary, and hopeless, and just want to give it all up. But you don’t, because you’ve put too much into it and lost too much to throw all that effort away.

After the final battle, after the defeat of the foe, you stand exhausted and victorious. But you’re forever changed by your ordeals, and so is the world. You can’t be satisfied with your old life again, even if you could go back. Your purpose of the past years is fulfilled; your destiny is complete. Yet still you live. What does the hero do when his role is done? The books you’ve read end with the victory feast—but the hero must continue on. Where do you fit in this world you’ve helped preserve? Where can you go? Traveling to other lands, other wars, like Martin the Warrior? Or sailing into the west like Frodo, to return to your world’s beginnings?

All you’re left with at the end is exhaustion, directionlessness, and questions. That’s the glorious life of a hero. That’s the reality of the epic. Now do you understand, at least a little, the burden of the hero’s quest?