Last Bastion

by Rachel Aaron

  "Sorry?"

  "I said I've got some good news," she repeated, tucking her hair nervously behind her ears, which was so cute he lost his train of thought all over again.

  "What's that?" he managed at last.

  A huge smile lit up her face as she grabbed a piece of paper with the Seattle University logo off her desk and waved it at the camera. "I got in! Number-two library sciences school in the USA, baby!"

  "Congratulations!" he said excitedly, grinning as she started bouncing in her chair.

  "It's all thanks to you, dude!"

  SB shook his head, his character mimicking the motion in the game. "All I did was play FFO. You're the one who aced all your AP classes last year."

  "It is thanks to you," she said stubbornly as her cheeks turned the most perfect shade of pink. "You're the one who does all the editing that makes our videos not suck. With the revenue from our channel, I should have just enough to make tuition and rent for the first year. I'm gonna be living in a three-bedroom apartment with six people, but I made it! Hell, if we keep adding subscribers like we have been, I might be able to pay for all four years without a penny of debt!"

  As genuinely happy as he was to hear all that, SB's real joy was for himself. Getting into her first choice college meant she'd need to keep playing FFO and making videos with him for at least four more years. Better still, he'd discovered that becoming a librarian in the US required a masters degree, which meant another two years, if not more. Hell, if he got really lucky, maybe she'd go for a PhD. Those took forever to get. If he played his cards right, he might be able to keep her in his life for another decade.

  "Anyway," she went on, pushing her hair away from her face again. "I have to take a foreign language for my degree, and I can't think of anything I'd like to learn more than Japanese."

  "It's a wonderful language," he said. "I'll be happy to send you all the manga you..."

  She was smirking at him. It was the same look he usually saw on Roxxy's face right before she gave the order to do something she thought was really clever. "Taking Japanese comes with an added bonus."

  "What's that?"

  "The JET program!" she said excitedly. "I have to get my bachelors first, so it's still four years away, but after that I can go to Japan! Isn't that awesome?"

  SB froze. JET was a program that sent American college graduates to Japan to teach English, which meant there'd no longer be an ocean between her and the tragedy that was his real life.

  "B-But won't that be really expensive?" he stammered at last, desperately trying to keep the panic out of his voice. "It's not cheap to live here. Can you afford it?"

  "That's just it, dude," she said with a grin. "JET is a job. Your country pays me to come over to teach, and that kind of cultural exchange stuff is right in line with my major. Libraries are all about community building. Having JET on my resume will totally help me get accepted into the master's program when I come back, and I'll get to visit you! It's a win-win!"

  The light in her eyes got brighter and brighter as she talked. Normally, he loved Tina's enthusiasm for adventure, but now it felt like she was a train plowing exuberantly toward a broken bridge. Panic rising, he wondered if he should fake a disconnect.

  "Just think!" she barreled on, oblivious. "I'd be over there for a whole year. They might send me to work in the ass-end of nowhere, but Japan has amazing trains. We could finally hang out IRL! Wouldn't that be awesome?"

  She grinned beautifully at him, making him shiver and panic at the same time. Now was absolutely the time to disconnect. He had a macro that would crash his client. The dump shock would make him barf, but it'd be worth it. Anything to put off this conversation. But while he was scrambling for his macro library, his panic must have made it to his character's face, because Tina's delighted smile faded into a frown.

  "What's wrong, Blayde?" she asked. "I thought you'd be really excited about this. You look like I just said I'd killed your cat."

  "I- I..." he stuttered.

  Her frown deepened. "Don't you want to meet up in real life?"

  There was no right answer to that question. When he failed to reply, her face pinched, driving his panic even higher. He knew that look. That was how her face got right before her temper blew up. Wincing, SB braced for impact, but something even worse happened. Tina started to cry.

  She tried to hide it, turning away from the camera and using her hair to cover her face. Unlike him, though, Tina wasn't a good liar. She couldn't cover up anything, and her attempts just made the reality hurt even more.

  "Does it have to do with why you refuse to tell me your full name?" she asked at last, voice cracking. "Or why you've never shown me what you really look like?"

  SB cursed silently. Of course she'd caught on that there was something, but that didn't change that he still had to hide it.

  "Yes."

  "Why?" she asked, still not looking at him.

  "I can't tell you." The words were knives across his tongue.

  "Why not?" she demanded, her temper finally kicking in as she whirled on him. "I don't understand. You've always been here for me. You work three times as hard on our video channel as I do, but you've never asked for a share of the money or anything in return. We're always together in FFO. Hell, people joke that we're married." She dropped her eyes again, and her voice began to wobble again. "I'm not asking for a commitment or anything like that. I just want to meet you. You know, the real you."

  That was the single most terrifying thing she could say. "I'm sorry, Tina," he said, flicking his hand behind his back to bring up James's GTFO macro. "But that's impossible."

  "Why?" she asked. "Are you in a coma? Is that why you're online so much? Are you quadriplegic? 'Cause I'll still come. I'll wheelchair you all over Japan if that's it."

  The "yes" was on the tip of his tongue. She'd just handed him an out that would solve this problem forever, but he still couldn't bring himself to lie to her. Not to his beloved Tina.

  "No, that's not it."

  She stared straight into the camera. "Is it me?"

  "No!" he said quickly. "I--"

  "I know I'm not what American girls are supposed to look like," she said, getting more upset with each word. "I'm as short as a kid, no boobs, no butt, frizzy hair. I'm not anything like what a--"

  "It's not any of that!" he said sharply. "You're lovely! Far better than someone like me deserves to be around."

  "Then why?" she demanded, glaring at him with red-rimmed eyes. "You're the most important person in my life. If there's something wrong, I want to know. I want to help you." Her small hands clenched on her desk. "I-I want to be with you. Please, just tell me--"

  "I can't," SB said desperately. "I can't meet you. Ever. And I can't tell you why. That's just how my life is. It's not something anyone can fix."

  With that, he flicked his hand and activated the crash macro. Its script divided by zero, and the game crashed, leaving him spinning away into the darkness.

  When he worked up the courage to log back in two days later, Tina wasn't there.

  She didn't come back online for two weeks, didn't answer his texts, and didn't talk to him at all. It was like she'd fallen off the face of the earth. Then, just when he was sure he'd ruined everything, she logged in for their Saturday raid like nothing had happened. When he'd desperately opened a private chat, she informed him she'd gotten the flu but that she was better now and ready to raid.

  It was a terrible lie, but he'd embraced it with open arms. They'd had a great raid, and when it was over, he and Tina had gone out to farm reagents together, just like always.

  And neither of them ever mentioned what had happened again.

  ***

  SilentBlayde woke with a gasp, his whole body churning from the vivid memory of anxiety and nausea from the dump shock. The medical tent was darker now, lit by glowing white rocks that had been hung on strings from the tent poles. Other than that, it was all the same rush of injured people and doctors trying to keep th
em alive.

  No one seemed to have gotten to him yet, but his leg hurt noticeably less, a testament to player-character regeneration rates. Doing the math in his head, SB estimated that if it took two hours for him to heal to full in-game without aid, it probably took at least twenty now, assuming he rested the whole time. That was amazing by normal human standards, but he didn't have twenty hours to lie here. He had to get back. He'd just started to push up from his cot when a bandaged hand landed on his arm.

  "You might not want to do that, boy."

  SB jumped. The hand turned out to belong to the heavily injured older man wearing a soldier's padded surcoat in the cot next to him. When he saw SB looking, the old soldier let go of his arm and lifted a bandaged finger to his lips. "Cover yerself. Quick."

  Confused but too wary to ignore a warning, SB grabbed the wool blanket he'd been issued and pulled it up to his chin. Then, for good measure, he pulled his hood down over his head, as if he were blocking the light to sleep.

  It was damn good that he did, because a few seconds later, Malakai, the four-skull captain of the Royal Knights, stalked into the tent.

  SB choked under his hood, eyes going wide. No. There had to be some mistake. Malakai was dead. He'd had to coax Tina into dropping the captain's lifeless body. There was no way he could be--

  "Captain!" The shout cut through the moans and groans of the medical tent as an aide wearing the knight's red and gold rushed through the flap after Malakai. "Sir, please return to base! It's only been six hours since your resurrection, and you are still healing. The Clerics--"

  "The Clerics have done enough," Malakai said, scanning the tent with his sharp eyes. "I will sleep when my work is done, but I cannot rest knowing that--Ah ha!"

  The elven captain strode down the rows of cots and plunged his hand into a nest of blankets, dragging an ichthyian out by his head-fin.

  "Gotcha!" Malakai said savagely. "I knew there would be more players hiding in here!"

  "Waaa!" cried the green-scaled fish-man, flapping his gills in panic as he writhed in Malakai's grip. "I'm sorry! Please don't hurt me! I just wanna go home! I'll never play again! I want my mommy! I--"

  Malakai silenced the sobbing ichthyian with a savage shake. "You want your mommy?" he repeated with a sneer. "You're not even a man yet, are you? You're just a child possessing that body."

  The player started sobbing even harder at that. The captain shook his head in disgust and tossed him to his assistant, who scrambled to catch the slippery fish-man. "It seems the rumor of demon children is true. Add him to the hostages, and make sure his wagon is first in line when we move on the rebel's camp. The sobs of their young will surely cut their hearts open."

  "Yes, sir," the aide said wearily, dragging the crying ichthyian off to hand him over to the knights waiting outside. Meanwhile, Malakai turned back to the tent, his eyes scanning the cots. "I wonder if there are any more."

  SilentBlayde sank deeper under his blanket. Malakai picking up that the players were vulnerable to hostages was a bad development, but right now, SB was far more concerned with the fact that bosses could apparently be rezzed like players. He'd never heard of anything like that back in the game, but there were plenty of NPC Clerics. Hell, three of them were in the medical tent right now. Why wouldn't they have the same Raise Ally spell as the players? They had everything else.

  He steeled his body to keep it from shaking. This was bad. Tina and the others thought Malakai was dead. If he reappeared out of nowhere, he'd catch them completely by surprise. Add in hostages, and the Roughnecks would be left in a terrible position. He had to warn Tina, but he didn't dare move. His swords were still pressing into his back, but there was no way he could kill Malakai in the ten seconds before Shadow Dance ran out, assuming his shadow-based abilities even worked while the Bastion was active, or that he'd be able to damage him at all. He'd barely managed to knock a chunk out of the captain's health when he'd at been full health and wearing all his gear. As injured and stripped as he was, he didn't stand a chance, so as much as it stung, SB forced himself to lie still and breathe normally, pretending to be just another poor casualty of war until, at last, Malakai turned and marched out of the tent, yelling for his troops to fan out and check the other refugees again.

  When he was certain the captain was gone, SB shook his hood off and turned to thank his savior. As he rolled over, though, the words died on his tongue. There was a stack of bloody armor lying under the old soldier's cot--bloody plate armor very similar to Roxxy's, bearing the sunburst sigil of the Bastion's Holy King.

  The wounded knight chuckled when he saw the fear flash over SB's face. "Don't worry, kid. I'm not gonna rat you out."

  "How'd you know?" SB asked quietly.

  The knight started to answer, but a hacking cough cut him off. He covered his mouth with a bandaged hand and lay back, clutching his side, which SB could now see was wrapped in cloth that had been stained nearly black with old, dried blood.

  "You talk in yer sleep," the knight said when the coughing finally passed. "I picked up some of your languages while I was trapped in the Nightmare. I don't know much Japanese, but I'm pretty sure kawaii means cute." He winked the eye that wasn't covered in bandages at SB. "You dreaming 'bout a girl?"

  SilentBlayde felt his checks heat to roughly the same temperature as the sun while the old knight laughed at him. "There's no shame in it," he chided, and then he leaned closer. "Was it a good dream?"

  "She was good," SB said quietly, looking anywhere but the old man as he scrambled to change the subject. "If you were trapped in the Nightmare, why didn't you turn me in?"

  There was a long silence while the knight considered the question. "Don't know, to be honest," he said at last, sinking back into his cot. "I came out of the Nightmare full of more piss 'n' vinegar than all my life before. The first players I saw were doing some real shitty stuff, and I had no problem taking my rage out on 'em."

  His face fell. "They were lowbies. Didn't stand a chance against me. They screamed for mercy, 'o course. 'I thought this was a dream!' and 'I didn't know it was real!' But I didn't listen. All I could think about was the cross-dressing Valentine's Day zapper or the flaming bag of poop achievement or all the raids against His Majesty that I died in for nothing. It all got to me, like a mad buzzin' in my head. So I cut 'em right down, but when it was over, I felt differently."

  "Your remorse won't bring their lives back," SB said fiercely.

  "You think I don't know that?" the old knight snapped. "Why do you think I didn't toss you to the captain?"

  SilentBlayde snapped his mouth shut, and the old knight sighed. "It wasn't that I didn't want my vengeance, but for all that time I spent hating you in the Nightmare, I never actually realized who you were until I cut you down. You're not demons. You're just a bunch of scared kids whose wooden swords got swapped with real ones."

  He sank deeper into his cot, wincing when the movement hurt his wounds. "There just comes a point when you get tired of all the death, you know? It's easy to kill a man when you're mad and he's right in front of you, but suffering never stops there. However this shakes out, I'm still gonna have to make the rounds telling widows how their husbands died and finding new homes for orphans. Assuming I get out of this at all."

  He flashed a morbid smile, and SilentBlayde winced as James's accusations that he was killing innocent men came back to him. Had he made a widow today? Or orphaned a child? If Sir Jamie had been in that group, SB would have cut him down without a thought, and then someone would have to go and tell his loving parents that their dutiful son was never coming home. That he'd died doing his duty, and SB was the monster who'd killed him.

  He had to roll away after that, staring up at the tent's green canvas ceiling as he tried to remember the horror of Founder's Square and Malakai's camp. He needed that anger, that certainty he was doing right, but it didn't come. When he looked back at the memories, all he saw was death. This whole city was full to the brim with it, and no matter how SB tri
ed to justify his part in that, all he saw was James's horrified face and the blood that he--Haruto--had spilled on the ground.

  "We're all wrong, aren't we?" he whispered at the ceiling.

  "Some are right, some are wrong," the knight replied stoically. "But we're past that mattering anymore." He dragged his bandaged hand over his face, and then he started to laugh. "Shit, who am I kidding about making rounds? I ain't ever leaving this tent."

  SB opened his mouth to say that was nonsense, but the old man cut him off with a glare, pushing up on one arm so he could look down on the elf properly.

  "Listen, boy," he said, his breaths wheezing as if it was taking everything he had to stay up. "And listen sharp, 'cause this might the last good I do in this world. We are all at fault for this mess. Some of us more than others, but that don't matter right now. I know it's tempting to mete out punishment, but what's the point of justice if you have to burn the whole world to get it? All these people huddled here--these normal folks and families and people who weren't even in the Nightmare--they ain't got nothing to do with any of this. There's innocents on both sides getting trampled on account of us shitheads, and someone's gotta make it stop."

  He stabbed his bandaged finger in SB's face. "I'm tellin' you this cause I know you're something special. You got one of them legendary rings on your left hand. You've tried your best to hide it, but I know you've got power, and your regrets are as plain as day. So take it from an old soldier who knows: if you ever wanna look yourself in the mirror again, you'll use that power to stop this madness. 'Cause we're headin' for a war. All this hell you see right now, it's just the start. It can still get a lot worse for everyone, and it absolutely will if no one puts their foot down and says, 'No more.'"

  The knight's strength must have given out after that, because he collapsed back to his pillow, panting and coughing up blood. When the attack passed, SB reached out a trembling hand to tap him on the arm.