Chael ☆ Reckless Isekai'd Hero

Hand him a knife, and he’ll laugh. For he’ll aim its point at his heart.

Hand him a rope, and he’ll laugh. For he’ll craft a noose for his own neck.

Hand him a hammer, and he’ll laugh. For he’ll smash his bones over a nail.

No need to tell him what he already knows: there’s something deeply wrong with him. Most people say it to him at least once in the course of their acquaintanceship.

Reliability at a cost. That’s his way. Few fulfill promises or idle curiosities like him, and that’s because most value their bodies and minds more than him. Intent means shit all. See, he’s talented at getting injured, at suffering, at enduring.

Maybe the universe sees potential in this otherwise useless trait because--

One night, he sleeps as Simeon Piazzolla. The house is silent, his father and younger sister already asleep before he got home from his part-time job. He eats a late dinner and finishes a reading for a college class. Crickets chirp in the backyard, and the light in the kitchen flickers. It’s painfully normal in a way he won’t miss until the morning.

Because he wakes up as someone else. At first, he doesn’t notice, simply totters out of bed and bangs against the door frame that is not where he recalls and then a woman--his other mother--calls out an unfamiliar name and he stands there stupid and dumb as reality sets in and this is not this is not this is not--

Nelchael Yabamiah Reuchlin.

That’s him.

Eyes wild in a face he doesn’t recognize, he grabs his alleged mother by her shoulders and shakes her. She cries, distressed by her son suddenly not knowing himself or her. Yes, yes, yes, she swears by this truth: he is Chael, her beloved son, her only family. Please stop. He’s scaring her.

It’s a bad week for Haniel Reuchlin.

First her son, so sweet and gentle, transforms overnight into a stranger, and then he refuses to accept reality. He yells at empty air and the sky, bargains with gods that do not seem to be ones known to her.

“God, Buddha, Allah--fuck, fuck, fuck, whoever. Because there has to be one in charge if this shit somehow happened! I want to go back!”

(He promised his dad to do the grocery shopping. He promised his sister he’d take her to her friend’s house.)

No answer ever comes. Of course one doesn’t. That isn’t how the gods communicate. Her Chael used to know this, born with the silver eyes of blessing ensured Haniel raised him pious.

Shouting in the streets fails to satisfy Chael soon enough. Like he’s testing his luck, he walks in front of passing wagons, wields a cutting knife with his eyes closed, and then--

A sickening crunch, the heavy sound of flesh colliding with packed dirt. He leaps from the second story and later tells her with mania-tinged words he wondered if this is a dream. He breaks an arm and a rib, and he rips open the side of his face. Infection gets to that wound, and one of his blessed silver eyes must be removed for healing to occur.

It is on his sickbed that Simeon, that Chael, that he begins to finally accept his circumstances. He settles, and he apologizes for worrying this woman who is his mother somehow.

He recovers. He assumes the role of Chael, albeit distinctly different. (Never will he say it aloud, but he wonders what happened to the person who relinquished their body to his mind. Someone was Chael before him. Did they swap places? Is the former Chael now living as Simeon? He hates to imagine it.)

Each day spent in this life chips away at his hopes of returning home. He learns about his current circumstance. This is the Kingdom of Razielis. Like many of its neighbors, humans are the dominant species, but its residents also include the likes of elves and dwarves and the fae. Any are welcome provided they follow the gods of the humans.

Except demons. Further to the east is the Great Kingdom of Salomonis and that is where demons all dwell. They worship a false pantheon of gods, blaspheming the sun as holy over the blessed moon. The heir to the Onyx Throne, the child of King Kimaris Pheynix Ronove vi Sielera--it is said they are blessed by the demon gods, able to create flames as golden as their eyes. Their mere mention incites shivers for one day, the demon heir will surely desire to burn all humans as demons do.

And that is the matter which summons a procession of priests to the front door. Haniel whispers prayers under her breath as they examine and approve of her son.

“The gods have spoken,” says the head priest. “Nelchael Yabamiah Reuchlin, we offer to you the Moonlit Blade.”

Chael doesn’t quite understand the gasps and proclamations of gratitude to the gods when he takes and unsheathes the sword.

“As your eyes--ah...eye tells, you carry the gods’ blessing. None but their chosen may pull the holy blade from its sheath. It shall guide your hand in slaying the demon heir. Before they might wreak havoc, you must end them.”

Really, he should question the worth of this task, but the heft of this blade’s hilt in his palm weighs heavy with purpose.

And he is starved for purpose, for anything tangible to work toward. (Maybe this is how he gains an audience with whatever divine entity thrust him into this other world. Maybe he needs to perform a task and then can negotiate his return home.)

The priests arrange everything for him. A horse (a dear brown mare called Manah), supplies, and apparently even lessons in swordplay aren’t needed as the Moonlit Blade imbues its wielders with skill. No point in waiting out festivities for his designation as the gods’ chosen, not when a need to act thrums headily in his veins. In the middle of the day, he simply places a kiss farewell on Haniel’s cheek and departs.

Laughter escapes him as Manah devours the countryside beneath her gallop. Surreality tinges everything. How convenient that these demons all reside in one location. How convenient that he, who has never killed another man or beast or whatever a demon counts as, will channel masterful skill because the gods pointed a finger and said he should be the one.

The first test of the Moonlit Blade is made on a deer. Chael scarcely approaches before an eerie instinct guides his hand and light slices through the air to cleanly behead the animal. Horror at the alien sensation wars with glee that, truly, these gods must exist and possess power.

(He could go home.)

Toward the Greater Kingdom of Salomonis. He takes the most direct and efficient route offered by the ones priests plotted on his map.

(He will take someone’s life, and he will go home.)

Night descends with a swiftness only those lost in thought perceive, and he dismounts Manah to make camp. Over the days and days of crossing the many human kingdoms, habit forms itself into ritual. He gathers firewood, starts a flame with flint and tinder, lays out his bedroll, and begins to assemble a meal for himself. Manah wanders unrestrained to find grass to sate herself on.

A trained individual would be on edge camping this near the Salomonis border, but Chael borrows any skill he possesses from a divine blade. He pokes at a half-cooked hunk of deer over the fire and is decidedly ignorant of any sounds going on in the forest.

His nonchalant demeanor remains unperturbed even when the noises become too loud, too near for him to remain oblivious. A stranger tumbles through the brush and into his campsite, and he makes a mildly confused noise.

“You all right there?” he asks, unmoving from where he squats by his in-progress dinner. “How’d you end up rolling around like--ah. Those are horns, yeah?”

A demon.

Definitely.

He may not have seen one before, but this sounds precisely like what descriptions paint them like.

Still, Chael doesn’t shift from his current position, his sheathed holy sword propped up against a tree a few feet back. It’s an odd thing to stumble into something he’s tasked with exterminating.