History Literature / HereticalEdge

* MistakenIdentity: When Sean was younger, thugs broke into his apartment thinking it belonged to a man who'd tried to rob them. They assumed he was the thief's brother and decided to [[ColdBloodedTorture torture]] him and []MakeAnExampleOfThem make an example of him]]. Thankfully, [[BigDamnHero Sean's uncle Mateo came to save him]].

* MistakenIdentity: When Sean was younger, thugs broke into his apartment thinking it belonged to a man who'd tried to rob them. They assumed he was the thief's brother and decided to [[ColdBloodedTorture torture]] him and MakeAnExampleOfHim. Thankfully, [[BigDamnHero Sean's uncle Mateo came to save him]].

** The closest we have to races that are AlwaysChaoticEvil in this series are the Seosten and the Fomorians, although they're closer to being always [[LawfulEvil Lawful]] and NeutralEvil, respectively. Even then, the first Seosten we meet is a good-natured renegade, and the first Fomorian we meet references one of his people who betrayed their species to rescue humans in the past.
** [[spoiler: And then it turns out that there's an entire Always Good rebel faction of Seosten who go for symbiosis over body-jacking.]]

** The Seosten aren't any better.

* {{Magitek}}: Heretics weapons are this. Examples include Flick's Kinetic-Burst Staff. Avalon's EnergyWeapon generating gauntlets and Scout's [[CoolGun Sniper Rifle]]. Special mention goes to Sean's robot dog, which transforms into a freaking ''minigun''.

** Avalon. [[NamesTheSame Not Flick's roommate]], an organization consisting of descendants of those Knights of the Round Table who followed Lancelot instead of Bedivere after Arthur's death. They're working to end the Seosten manipulations on Earth. [[spoiler: Lancelot herself, also known as Guenevere, co-leads the organization with the ArchangelMichael.]]

* [[TellMeAboutMyFather Tell Me About My Mother]]: Flick has absolutely no desire to learn or think about her MissingMom in any capacity until she finds out that [[spoiler:Sheriff Chambers graduated from Crossroads in 19'''22'''.]] Then Flick finds herself very interested in her mother's past.

* AdultFear: Children being taken away from their parents, occasionally without the parents finding out until it's too late to stop. Or parents having to intentionally cut themselves off from their children.
** In particular, [[spoiler: Flick's mother Joselyn]] ''cannot catch a damn break with this''. She's been forced away from no less than three of her four children over the course of her life. The first two were outright kidnapped, the third was ''almost'' kidnapped (twice!), and there's not a lot of solace she can take in being near her fourth child for... [[MadeASlave a]] [[ChildByRape number]] [[SerialKiller of]] [[{{Sadist}} reasons]].
*** The older children ([[spoiler:Wyatt Rendell and Abigail Fellows]]) were [[SeparatedAtBirth separated]] from each other, renamed, and raised in ignorance of their heritage. The girl was completely locked out of the supernatural world and left unaware of the dangers to her life. She's the lucky one, because her brother grew up in an abusive home under "parents" that didn't care about him and were ready and willing to murder him if ordered. He became an incredibly and ProperlyParanoid man who doesn't trust anyone and is constantly fighting down panic attacks.
*** Her third child, [[spoiler: Flick Chambers]], grew up under the same surveillance as her older siblings but, like her sister, remained ignorant of it. [[spoiler: Unlike her siblings, Flick has the attention of a {{Necromancer}} that plans to enslave her as soon as he's allowed to by the deal Joselyn made to keep him from doing so when she was seven.]]
*** [[spoiler: And then there's Ammon, the son Joselyn has had to watch Fossor raise to be a monster right in front of her.]]
** The Akharu warrior Tiras had to leave his wife and daughter behind in order to fight a war against a race of enemies that would kill them for being part Akharu. He hasn't seen either of them in over two hundred years.
*** Centuries later, his wife Jiao gave her younger daughter (by a different man) Reathma up for adoption in order to protect her from her enemies. She was worried enough that she let the man she gave the baby to rename her for fear of leaving any trace that could connect them.
** Haiden and Sariel Moon were both flung literally worlds away from their twin children, one of whom was also sucked into the same dimensional portal that took them. They haven't been seen in a decade.
** Sands and Scout's mother was abducted by a Stranger while on an outing with ten year old Scout (who still went by Sarah at the time). The "bad man" then attempted to use her likeness and voice to lure Sarah out and take her as well. Thankfully, Mrs. Mason's Alter friend was there and hid Sarah so the Nocen couldn't find her.
*** [[spoiler: Said friend was Sariel, and she didn't so much hide Sarah as fling herself, Larissa, and the Nocen into different dimensions, sacrificing her own chance to get back to her family in the process.]]
** An argument can be made that Crossroads Academy and Eden's Garden kidnap their [[{{Muggle}} Bystander]] students. That's probably how their parents would see it if the schools didn't modify their memories to make them think they sent their kids to a prestigious private school (Crossroads) or a military academy (Eden's Garden). Both organizations leave the final choice of whether or not to join up to the recruits themselves, but those recruits are minors.
*** In very rare cases, the Crossroads Committee is willing to at least discuss abducting Bystander children from their families to be raised by Heretics, although they wouldn't put it in those terms. [[spoiler: They came very close to having Flick taken from her dad after Joselyn disappeared.]]
*** Eden's Garden has a [[spoiler: ''fifty percent'' mortality rate for their trainees]]. We can safely say that the vast majority of parents would ''not'' be okay with that.

[[folder: A - D]]

* AcademyOfAdventure: Crossroads Academy, where young Heretics learn how to use magic, craft weapons, and kill Strangers.
** There is also Eden's Garden, another school (closer to a boot camp, really) which is much more... friendly to Strangers than Crossroads Academy is. Most Crossroads Heretics view it as an EvilCounterpart, but the truth is a [[OneSideOfTheStory bit more complicated.]]

* AllMythsAreTrue: To an extent. Pretty much every mythological creature really does exist, but the [[WeirdnessCensor Bystander Effect]] makes it difficult to comment on the truthfulness of the myths themselves.
** The myths about individuals get massively twisted. For instance, in Heretical Edge's take on the Arthurian Mythos, [[spoiler: Arthur and Merlin are the same person, with Merlin a disguise Arthur used for great magical works to conceal his full abilities, and Lancelot is a disguise that Guinevere put on when she was out kicking ass for the sake of appearances.]]

-> Seeing the light is only the beginning.

* RealityEnsues: Koren attempts to run into a burning fire to retrieve evidence, trusting in her immunity to fire to keep her safe. Unfortunately, she's not immune to smoke inhalation, and as a result she almost suffocates before she's pulled out.

* NotSoDifferent: It quickly becomes apparent that Strangers and Heretics have more in common that most are comfortable admitting. Heretics emit the same WeirdnessCensor as Strangers and absorb the powers of any magical creature they kill (including other Heretics, according to WordOfGod). This is not lost on Strangers like Asenath, who consider Heretics to be another type of Alter. [[spoiler: It's eventually made clear that Heretics ''are'' Strangers/Alters, as their ability to assimilate powers is not only acquired from a demon's corpse, but works by overwriting their own genetics with Stranger DNA.]]

** Fossor is a word for gravedigger that was used by the early Christian Church. Which makes it an appropriate name for a [[TheNecromancer Necromancer]]. Given a few vague comments made about his age, the word may have even come from him.

* PortalDoor: After falling asleep on the school bus, Flick wakes up to find herself alone in a grassy field with a mysterious door. She opens the door to find a school hallway.

->“From the beginning of time until right now, everything that has ever happened was impossible until someone did it.”

* BadassGay: Avalon prefers girls to boys. She is also a total badass with NervesOfSteel, able to transition from calm to asskicking at the drop of a hat.

* ShipTease: The frequent attention Flick pays to Avalon's beauty will start to make readers wonder about Flick's sexual orientation. It eventually helps Flick herself realize she's [[BiTheWay bisexual]]. Beyond that, Flick simply ''gets'' Avalon better than anyone else save Gaia and Seller. She can easily through her roommate's abrasiveness and always seems to know when to stop pushing before Avalon becomes uncomfortable.

* AbsurdlyLongWait: Runner Templeton complains (in an official recording of his investigation of the Hiding Man case) about how his friend Jackie has yet to pay him back for the Brooklyn Dodgers tickets. How long a wait was this? Templeton makes this complaint in 2010. The Dodgers moved out of Brooklyn in ''1958''.

* AbsurdlyLongWait: Runner Templeton complains (in an official recording of his investigation of the Hiding Man case) about how his friend Jackie has yet to pay him back for the Brooklyn Dodgers tickets. How long a wait was this? Templeton makes this complaint in 2010. The Dodgers moved out of Brooklyn in {{1958}}.

* AbsurdlyLongWait: Runner Templeton complains (in an official recording of his investigation of the Hiding Man case) about how his friend Jackie has yet to pay him back for the Brooklyn Dodgers tickets. How long a wait was this? Templeton makes this complaint in 2010. The Dodgers moved out of Brooklyn in *1958*.

* TakeMeInstead: The reason Flick's mother abandoned her. Her kidnapper wanted ''Flick'' but Joselyn was able to convince him to take her instead.]]
* [[TellMeAboutMyFather Tell Me About My Mother]]: Flick has absolutely no desire to learn or think about her MissingMom in any capacity until she finds out that [[spoiler:Sheriff Chambers graduated from Crossroads in 19'''22'''. Then Flick finds herself very interested in her mother's past.

* {{Transhuman}}: Heretics gain their powers by [overwriting their genetics with those of the Strangers they kill. It's debatable if they can even be called human anymore. That said, most are [[ProHumanTranshuman Pro-Human Transhumans]] who still consider themselves baseline to the point where they will react violently to the notion that they're not.

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-->-'''[[https://ceruleanscrawling.wordpress.com/tag/there-are-a-lot-of-words-that-the-instructions-look-through-this-warehouse-full-of-magic-artifacts-bring-to-mind-but-boring-isnt-one-of-them/ Mini-Interlude 35 – Sands and Scout]]'''

* NextSundayAD: According to WordOfGod, the story starts in September 2017, a little less than two years from when it was initially posted in October 2015. Mostly done so the story wouldn't overtake the date too quickly.

* AllThereInTheManual: The author is very open with answering non-spoiler questions. A lot of worldbuilding info such as the date and the mechanics of magic come up in these questions before they can show up in the story itself.
** One bit of information from WordOfGod that deserves a mention is that Flick's paternal grandfather once got into a barfight with some werewolves [[OffscreenMomentOfAwesome and won]]. [[spoiler: For the record, all the supernatural stuff comes from Flick's mother's side of the family. Grandpa Chambers is a BadassNormal.]]

* BadassFamily: The [[spoiler: Atherby]] family is a line of naturally made "wild" Heretics that predate the Heretical Edge and operated for centuries. Their last patriarch, a man named Joshua, preformed a HeroicSacrifice along with his wife to end a Fomorian invasion of earth. [[spoiler: Then their daughter Joselyn went on to start a revolution that grew into a full blown Heretic civil war. Nowadays the remnants of the family (Joselyn, her children, and granddaughter) are all impressive Heretics.]]
** The Moons. Both children are up-and-coming Heretics punching way outside their weight class, Haiden has been rampaging around Seosten space for almost a decade, and Sariel may well be the best spy in the galaxy. [[spoiler: And then there's Tabbris, who has been stumping three thousand year old commandos for years before turning ten, and Spark, who's been single-handedly holding [[PersonOfMassDestruction Puriel]] together mentally.]]

** [[spoiler: Then there's Grandfather, the Fomorian defector. He's not particularly active at the moment, but without him humans would just be a Fomorian weapon-race.]]

** It's not the first time this person has had a good reason. [[spoiler: Joselyn missed out on her older children's lives because they were kidnapped when they were infants. She was imprisoned and later had her memories wiped by the people who kidnapped them.]]
** [[spoiler: Sariel Moon sent her third, full Seosten child back to Earth with instructions to hide within Felicity Chambers and no chance of contact, because the alternative was letting the girl be raised as just another Seosten soldier.]]

* DarkAndTroubledPast: Avalon Sinclaire, the daughter of Headmistress Sinclaire, used to be a student at Eden's Garden. spoiler: Born Hannah Owens, [[DeathByChildBirth her mother died giving birth to her]] and her father was a [[AbusiveParents violently abusive alcoholic]]. She was almost killed by a stranger when she was eleven and was taken to Eden's Garden to save her life. She was happy until an EntitledBastard who had helped her out in the past began sexually harassing and eventually assaulted her, and she killed him in self defense. She was then adopted by Gaia Sinclaire, but now has to deal with Crossroads people that hate Eden's Garden giving her shit for having spent time there and the brother of the guy she killed is gunning for her. Oh, and her father was turned into a vampire and her goal in life is to make herself a SelfMadeOrphan.

* DoNotCallMePaul: Felicity Chambers insists on being called Flick because she ''hates'' her first name. It's a reminder of the mother who abandoned her. [[spoiler: She does a complete one-eighty when she learns ''why'' Joselyn left, although she has to keep up the pretense to avoid letting on how much she knows (and out of habit).]]
* DramaticIrony: There's a fair amount of this due to the story following the ''Literature/{{Worm}}'' model of using third person interludes to expand on an otherwise first person narrative.
** Special mention has to go to the conversation Flick has with her father where he tells her about a neighbor boy who just moved in, is going to be doing some yard work for him, and is excited to meet Flick when she comes home from her private school. He thinks the kid might have a crush on her. [[spoiler: It's Ammon, Flick's mind-controlling younger half-brother who took a cross country trip to find her. And given the way his power works, he ''probably'' used it on Flick's dad.]]

** When we learn that Strangers are not all evil, Garden starts to sound more like Crossroads' GoodCounterpart... until we learn that being "friendly" with Strangers means that the Garden Heretics [[spoiler: enslave or experiment on the non-humans they deem "acceptable" and still regard them as little better than animals]]. This is still better than Crossroads, but it's hardly ''good''.

** The Heretics of Eden's Garden [[spoiler: aren't much better. They don't kill every single Stranger they find, but [[MadeASlave slavery]] is the best treatment a Stranger deemed "acceptable" by Gardeners can hope for.]]

** This is what the Vestil tries to do to the Akharu, but the Akharu's immortality weakened it to a vampiric curse. Pure blood Akharu children born after it was cast aren't so lucky.

** The Vigilant Sons (and Daughters), which Seller belongs to. [[spoiler: This was Avalon's tribe before she killed Torv and had to leave.]]

* FriendlyNeighborhoodVampire: Asenath, who spends her days helping anyone who needs it. It doesn't matter to her if you're a kidnapped kid, a grieving mother, or even a [[spoiler: teenage Heretic]]. She helps people. [[WeHelpTheHelpless It's what she does.]]

* HalfHumanHybrid: Most Crossroads Heretics believe this is impossible. They're dead wrong ([[spoiler:and Alters are in no hurry to correct them]]). It's not exactly common, but there are more than a few running around. Half-humans are also just as capable of becoming Heretics as full humans, and they're generally immune or at least resistant to the Bystander Effect.

** Asenath is the child of the Akharu warrior Tiras and a Chinese woman named Jiao. Although, since she chose to take her father's cursed blood and become a vampire, she might not count anymore.

*** Asenath herself is technically one; while Jiao is now a vampire, she was born human, so Asenath is also a mix of human and vampire (though she has much more vampire than Shiori).

** [[spoiler:These are also the Seostens' AchillesHeel. Attempting to possess a hybrid results in an extraordinarily painful death.]]

** Gabriel Prosser was a literate slave who lived in late eighteenth century Virginia and attempted to lead a [[SlaveLiberation slave revolt]] in 1800, but was caught and executed in RealLife. In this universe, his life was inadvertently saved when a Hangman Demon attacked his execution and wound up bleeding on him, transforming him into a Heretic the same way Hieronymus Bosch was. Due to having the direct human-to-Heretic upgrade as opposed to the diluted version Crossroads and Eden's Garden gets, he's naturally much more powerful than most Heretics. He subsequently refused to join either organization and has apparently spent the time since WalkingTheEarth. Eden's Garden's Vigilant Sons tribe regards him as something of FolkHero who will allow them to win the "inevitable" war with Crossroads.

* HorrorDoesntSettleForSimpleTuesday: Flick's seventeenth birthday is... [[{{Understatement}} unpleasant]], to say the least. This is [[JustifiedTrope Justified]] because she's sent home to spend her birthday with her dad, meaning Ammon and Fossor can get to her far more easily than they could if she was at school. Her eighteenth birthday promises to be [[SerialEscalation even worse]] [[spoiler: because the deal he made with her mother to leave her alone will expire when she becomes an adult]].

* InsultFriendlyFire: Sands has nothing but venom for the [[spoiler: Seosten]]. Unbeknownst to her, an allied [[spoiler: Seosten]] is present and overhears almost of her bile.

* KnightTemplar: Many Heretics are totally assured of the righteousness of their mission to wipe out ([[spoiler:or enslave, in the case of Eden's Garden]]) every single Alter. A few of them will do ''anything'' to accomplish this.

** Vanessa Moon hasn't seen her parents or brother since she was seven. [[spoiler: She's also never met her ancestor, Nicholas Petan.]] [[spoiler: And she only just met her younger half-sister, Tabbris.]]

* NoSell: Felicity, when [[spoiler: Ammon tries to control her,]] leaving him quite confused.

** It's not limited to Heretics either. Asenath is a couple decades past her two hundredth birthday and her friend Twister was born 107 years before she appears.

** [[spoiler: The mere fact that Ammon exists and was conceived within months of Joselyn's abduction proves that sex is an aspect of her slavery to Fossor, who quickly implies that he intends to subject Flick to the same thing when he describes her as a "beautiful young woman." Later on, just to erase any lingering doubts one might somehow still have, he mentions wanting Felicity to provide him with another child.]]

* SmallGirlBigGun: One of Flick's classmates, Scout, is soon given a {{Magitek}} sniper rifle that's as long as she is tall.

* {{Tykebomb}}: Narrowly [[AvertedTrope Averted]] in the backstory. This is what Fossor had planned for seven-year-old Felicity Chambers. Fortunately for her, he was convinced to leave her alone. [[spoiler: At least until she turns eighteen.]]

--> [[spoiler: '''The Hiding Man''']]: [[spoiler: Homo Sapiens.]]