by Rachel Aaron
"Doing better than you," she said, glancing at his hands, which were surprisingly not tied. "Why am I not surprised you managed to get yourself made into a hostage?"
"I'm not a hostage," James said quickly. "I'm working with the king. We want to stop the--"
"Working with the king?" she cried, suddenly furious. "The dude who wants to kill us?" She threw her hands in the air. "Seriously, James, how do you always manage to find a way to screw me over?"
"I'm not trying to screw you over!" he yelled back at her. "I'm trying to save you!"
"What sort of fucked-up James-logic figures working with my enemy counts as saving me?" Tina demanded. "If you wanted to help, you should have listened to what I actually said! I had one thing I needed you to do, and that was to stay put and not cause trouble. But in true James fashion, you went and did the exact opposite. Now we have a fucking Bird breathing down our necks, and you want me to believe this is your idea of helping?" She clenched her fists. "Do you even know what that word means?"
"It's not that simple!" James cried. "You're the one who didn't listen when I tried to tell you how serious things are. You just wanted me to shut up and follow orders, but I'm not one of your raiders! I'm your brother, and I told you I had a job to do here. I didn't escape to hurt you. I ran away because someone had to warn the king about the undead invasion, and unlike you, he believed me! Now I've brought him here for your sake, and before you say that's not helping, whose order do you think stopped the fighting?"
Tina snapped her mouth shut. That...was a fair point, actually. But that didn't mean she liked it. "So are you responsible for Xthr too?" she demanded. "Great save, bro. Stop the fight by putting us over a barrel. And for the record, we were winning."
"No one was winning, Tina," James said bitterly, his inhuman cat-eyes moving over her bloody armor. "Look at yourself. You look like a murderer."
"Because they made me one!" Tina cried. "Your king-buddy's knights wanted to exterminate us! I will not apologize for defending my people!"
"What the knights did was wrong," James admitted. "But that doesn't make slaughtering them back right. I know you never paid attention to FFO's plot, but have you seriously forgotten everything that happened over our last seven years of gaming? This is Bastion! City of light and sunshine, whose name literally means 'protection.' Malakai's hate might have dinged your faith in that, but that doesn't change the fact that we've always been on Bastion's side. The Once King certainly sees it that way. You can claim the game plot doesn't matter anymore, but you've been to the Deadlands. You know the Once King still wants to kill all the living, but at this rate, he won't have to, because you'll have done it for him!"
"What do you want me to do?" Tina demanded. "Roll over and let Malakai kill us?"
"I want you both to stop," James said, thrusting the scroll he was carrying at her. "Just read this."
"What is it?"
"A peace treaty," her brother explained.
Tina arched a copper eyebrow. "Does it include the enemy's unconditional surrender and an apology for the trouble they've caused us?"
"Of course not, but--"
"Then no dice," she snapped. "I know you're Mr. Both-Sides, James, but this isn't a shades-of-gray issue. Malakai was running a death camp. He wants to exterminate us. I'm not making peace with Nazis."
"They're not Nazis!" James cried. "At least not all of them. Malakai and his knights will pay for their crimes, but the majority of Bastion just wants this to stop."
"If that's true, why did the king let this happen?" Tina demanded, pointing at the mass of people across the bloody river. "Whose army do you think that is?"
James flinched. "It's Bastion's," he admitted. "But you have to understand, King Gregory didn't know what Malakai was really doing. He was ignorant of--"
"What do you mean, 'didn't know'?" she cried. "We kicked down a hangman's scaffold on his front door. There's no way he didn't see that, so either he's lying and you're stupid enough to believe him, or he really is a Buffoon King. Either way, I'm not making a deal. Someone who's that stupid or that deceitful isn't someone I'm dumb enough to trust."
"Can you at least read the treaty before you reject it?" James pleaded, opening the scroll to show it to her.
Tina scowled at the familiar handwriting. "You wrote this, didn't you?"
"Yes," James said proudly, which was all she needed to know.
"Then I'm definitely not going to read it."
"But--"
"No," she said firmly, glaring him down. "You've wasted enough of our time already. I swear to God, James, you'd let Hitler off the hook if he told you a good-enough sob story. But unlike you, I'm not a fuckup. I actually understand the concept of saving someone, which is why you're going to turn around, give the king a little wave, then come back with me. When we reach the raid, we'll make a break for the hall. The fire ward is already set up, and the wind-fire powder should be in position. All I have to do is give the word, and this war will really be over. No treaty needed."
James's eyes were wide by the time she finished. "Wind-fire powder?"
Tina gave him a superior look. "I told you I don't fuck around. We were planning to wear the king's army down then use the wind-fire powder as leverage to negotiate Bastion's surrender, but now that the king's brought a Bird into play, that's all off the table. No one rolls out a super-weapon like that unless they're ready to use it, which means we have to use ours first. Now signal the king so he doesn't shoot at us, and let's move."
"No!" James said. "Would you just listen to me for once in your--"
"Why should I listen to you?" Tina yelled at him. "You never once realized the seriousness of the situation I'm in! While you were off playing diplomat to the idiot king like this is still a fucking game, I was fighting through the city saving actual people from his murderers. There are thousands of players on this island depending on my raiders to protect them, and you're still wasting time on bullshit!"
"It's not bullshit!" James yelled back. "I'm risking my life to save people, too, starting with you! You're my little sister! I love you, and I'll do whatever it takes to save you!"
Those words hit Tina straight in the gut. She wasn't sure what hurt more--how long she'd been waiting to hear her brother say that, or the fact that she was stupid enough to believe him. Not the loving-her part. She'd always known James loved her. It just never made a difference. Loving her hadn't stopped him from breaking her arm when they were kids or eating her birthday cake before she'd even gotten to open the box. It hadn't kept him from using up the college fund that was supposed to be for both of them and leaving her with nothing.
Tina was sure he'd loved her when he'd knocked out SB and run away, leaving her to worry and clean up his mess. That was how James's love worked: he did whatever he wanted, and Tina was just expected to accept it. She was supposed to listen and understand, even though he never did the same for her, because James was special. James was the important one, the one whose ideas she was always supposed to go along with no matter how fucking stupid they were. And when his plans inevitably blew up, Tina was always the one who had to clean up the mess. James never suffered for his actions. Never paid.
Even when they were stranded in another world, he was the one standing with the king, telling her to eat her losses and pain for the greater good. His good. Never hers. James didn't even think to ask if she wanted to be saved. He just showed up and expected her to drop everything and go along with what he wanted. Even when he was standing right in front of her, Tina was still the one left waiting in the rain, still the one who was expected to give up her good for his. And she was sick of it.
"No."
"Tina--"
"Don't 'Tina' me!" she roared, clenching her giant stone fists. "I'm so fucking tired of you telling me what I'm supposed to do! But I'm not letting you fuck this up like you've fucked up everything else. This time, you're doing things my way. Now come on."
She grabbed him by the wrist, her stonekin's giant
hand engulfing his entire forearm. She was about to yank him off his feet when a bolt of blue-white lightning exploded between them.
Gasping in pain and surprise, Tina stumbled back. "What was that?"
"Something to make you listen," James said, planting his feet in the grass.
She gaped at him. "You fucking tased me!"
"Because you were trying to drag me away!" James cried. "But I'm not letting you push me around anymore. I know I've given you little reason to respect me, but this is too important to let you ignore just because I'm the one saying it." He pulled his black staff off his back and stabbed it in the ground like a spike. "I am not moving from this spot until you read the agreement I've worked out with the king!"
For a terrible, furious moment, Tina was tempted to leave him--just walk away and let him burn along with all the rest of this horrible city, but she couldn't. No matter how many times he let her down, James was still her brother, and like an idiot, she loved him. That was what made everything so hard, because no matter how badly he treated her, she'd never been able to turn her back on him, and this time was no different.
She wasn't above manhandling him, though. But when she reached out to grab him by the scruff of his neck, James danced away from her hand, lightning arcing from his fingers as he readied another spell like she was his goddamn enemy.
"What the hell are you doing?"
"What I said," James replied firmly, his eyes dancing in the white crackle of his lightning. "I'm not going with you. Not until you listen."
"That's not a choice you get to make," she said, grabbing for him again. "We're going now. End of discussion."
He shoved out his hand at her as she came in, shocking her with enough lightning to make her wince. When she glared murder at him for it, James glared right back, showing her his sharp, feline fangs as he hissed.
"Make me."
Chapter 19
James
"Make me."
The words felt like hot rocks leaving his mouth, but James didn't take them back. There were only two options when Tina got this angry: surrender or attack. Surrender was usually the easier choice, which was why it was always the one he'd taken. This time, though, the stakes were simply too high. He had to make her take him seriously, even if it meant his life.
That wasn't melodrama. It was hard to put into words just how terrifying his sister looked right now. Her stonekin towered over him, an eight-foot-tall, half-ton monolith of blood-soaked armor and shaking fury, all of which was directed at him. Tanks weren't known for their damage, but James was dead certain she could turn him into paste.
Challenging her alone like this was a colossally bad idea, but even though the king, Ar'Bati, and Flameboyant were just a few dozen feet behind him, it didn't even cross James's mind to call for help. If he got others involved, the war they'd risked everything to stop would just start right back up again, and anyway, this whole thing was his fault. The reason Tina didn't trust anything he said was because he'd always let her down. He'd failed her so many times he couldn't begin to count them. He didn't know if standing up to her now would make a dent in all that bad blood, but he couldn't afford not to try. If he let her drag him off now, everything he'd sacrificed to achieve would be lost, and not just him. Fangs, Flameboyant, the king, the gnolls, Windy Lake, the kingdom of Bastion itself--they would all be in danger if he failed again.
He'd rather die than let that happen. His only hope now was to prove that this once--this one time--he wasn't the same old James. If he could just get her to see him as a worthy opponent instead of a screwup brother, she might just hear him out. It was a long shot, but it was the only shot James had left, so he held his ground, clutching the Eclipsed Steel Staff firmly in his hands as he faced off against his sister.
"Are you really going to do this?" Tina sneered, looking down on him with emerald eyes as cold and hard as the stones they were made from. "You know you don't stand a chance, right? You're not even wearing real Naturalist armor."
She grabbed for him as she finished. Not slowly as she had before, but fast, her giant arm flying at him like a stone bat. For a terrifying moment, his whole body clenched in fear as the half ton of magical rock coated in legendary armor came hurtling toward him. Then a decade of martial arts practice took over, and James moved without thinking, ducking under her incoming arm and sliding the unbreakable length of his Eclipsed Steel Staff between her knees. When it was in position, he turned sideways, levering the weapon like a bar to knock her off balance.
Or rather, he tried to. The moment the staff hit her legs, it rebounded as if he'd stuck it into a moving car tire rather than a person, smashing him in the chest. The force took him clear off his feet, and he crashed to the ground a few feet away. Panicked, he scrambled back to his feet in the bloody grass, but Tina wasn't on top of him as he'd expected. She was still standing where he'd just tried to trip her, her face pressed into the palm of her stone hand.
"J, please stop," she begged. "This is super embarrassing. You're just making yourself look bad. I wouldn't care about that, except you're also making SB look bad since you supposedly beat him."
Remembering the promise he'd had Flameboyant write in the alley, James swallowed a retort about his fight with SilentBlayde. The Assassin was standing at the front of the Roughnecks' raid fifty feet up the grassy hill, talking with great animation to the other Roughneck officers while keeping a worried eye on Tina. But while James was relieved to see that SB had made it back safely, he knew he'd get no help from that quarter. No one was as bad as SB when it came to slavish devotion, but the other Roughnecks were also still loyal to Tina. If she said fuck it, they'd follow, then he'd lose everyone. This was the most important fight of his life, so when Tina gestured at him to stand down, James clutched his jaw and shook his head no.
"Dude, really?" Tina demanded. "You know I'm going to kick your ass. I don't want to have to hurt you. Stop being stupid."
"It's not stupid to fight for what you believe in," he said firmly, tucking the treaty into his backpack before turning to face her head on. "You say I always give up, but I'm not running this time, and I'm not coming with you. If you want me to go, you're going to have to force me. If I win, though, you have to promise to read my treaty and take it seriously."
Tina rolled her eyes so hard it looked painful. "Fine," she groaned. "But remember: you asked for this. Don't cry when I drag you out of here by your tail."
She cracked her giant stone knuckles as she finished, and nervous sweat began to bead behind James's pointed ears. She was so much bigger than he was--bigger and stronger and covered in armor even more magnificent than the king's. Every instinct he had was screaming at him to bolt back to Ar'Bati before she turned him into another bloody stain on the grass. If he left this battlefield without her, though, James knew he'd never see her again.
That was even more unacceptable than the shame of running away. He'd rather be beaten to a pulp than lose her yet again, so before she could get into position--before she'd even stopped rolling her eyes--James dropped into a crouch and sprang, using his catlike reflexes to launch himself straight at her face.
Her emerald eyes widened with surprise, but her tanking instincts were too sharp for such cheap tricks. A split second after he jumped at her, her shield was in position, covering her body in a metal wall. He couldn't even see her behind the door-sized slab of sun metal. But the giant shield meant she couldn't see him, either, and he used that to his advantage, landing lightly on the sun-metal wall on all fours before grabbing the top of Tina's shield and launching clear over it.
Feet flying over his head, James flipped over Tina in a perfect arc. It was a move his human body could never have pulled off, but jubatus were as agile as the cats they resembled, and the Agility gear he'd chosen to wear instead of heavy caster robes only made it easier. He was completely in control as he flew, grabbing her head in his hands as he passed over. When he had a firm grip, he twisted in midair, wrenching her head to the left. He
wasn't trying to break her neck--even if he'd been willing to, he didn't have enough force to crack that much stone--but the sudden turn forced her to step sideways to keep her balance. The moment she moved, James turned again, throwing all of his weight and momentum to the left in an effort to knock her to the ground.
Even though his Strength and Agility were nothing like hers, James was sure he could've rolled a bus with this move. There was just no way she could balance all that weight on one unsteady foot. But though he'd executed the move perfectly, he'd underestimated Tina's tanking skills. Though Roxxy stumbled, she did not go down, leaving him scrambling on the wrong side of the throw as he crashed into her armored back.
It felt like slamming into a wall. James lost his grip on her head and dropped onto the ground with a grunt. He was already rolling to get out of the way, but Tina was too fast. It was almost unfair how such a giant stonekin could move like lightning, whirling around to slam her shield down on top of him, pinning him on his back in the bloody grass.
"Hah!" she crowed as James struggled. "Ready to stop yet?"
James ignored her and pushed with all his limbs, but the difference between them was just too great. All the strength in his body wasn't enough to budge the shield she held down with one arm. If he was going to have a prayer of keeping the fight going, he'd need to use magic. His Stone Grasp spell was powerful enough to punch her shield away, but if he summoned the stone hand beneath him, he'd wind up caught in its grasp, which would be comically bad.
He could alter the spell. He'd already done so once when he'd summoned up stone hands to grab Lady Siku and her guards. That time, though, he'd just been holding the normal spell longer than it was supposed to last. For this situation, he'd have to change the way the hand itself worked--tweaking it to push instead of grab. That was a big change for a spell called Stone Grasp, and he'd have to do it on the fly. Tina was already leaning her weight on her shield to slowly increase the pressure, clearly hoping to flatten him into submission. If he was going to get out, it had to be now, so James decided to give it a go, releasing the shield to grip his staff as he wove the orange-and-golden flows of earth together.
