I do not hurt that much.
It has been too long.
I cannot possibly still hurt this much.
My pain was not supposed to get in the way.
I no longer know what to do.
The impression ended, and as the dwarven Testifier stood panting, I caught the confusion in his eyes.
And I saw the surprise and shame in the eyes of his two friends behind him, who had clearly not realized how much their normally stoic friend had blamed himself for their own fates.
The surrounding robed Testifiers looked ashamed and confused by my friend’s outburst. Eadric’s words had pushed everyone into an uncomfortable stalemate, where their suspicion of my group had been derailed by an accusation of wrongs that they clearly weren’t ready to admit, much less figure out how to address.
Hey, Wes? Breena spoke up, I think we’d better make this our cue.
I had been thinking the exact same thing.
Go for it, I encouraged her, and the pink fairy flew out of my pack and enlarged herself until she was almost four feet tall. Her wings fluttered and began to glow with sunset-hued light.
“Greetings, people of the Golden Sands,” she said in her formal ‘herald’ voice. “I greet you all on behalf of the Challenger of Avalon. Is there any here who does not recognize me, or requires that I prove my identity?”
Stunned silence greeted her presence. The atmosphere in the room shifted to a state of awe.
Headmaster Yama finally seemed to snap out of her frozen incredulity. She faced Breena and bowed low.
“Holy Fairy,” the taller woman said in a reverent tone, all trace of her earlier suspicion now long gone, “it is a great honor, and a greater joy, to see that you have come in our hour of great need.” Something else passed across the Headmaster’s face as she turned back to regard my three Testifiers. To my surprise, she bowed just as low to them as she had to Breena.
“I owe you three many apologies, and especially to you, young Eadric. You were right. I did not fight as hard as I could have to prevent your capture. None of us did. We all failed in our duties to you. And I have compounded that failure by regarding you with suspicion the instant I saw you again. You have every reason to be angry with us, and just as many to mistrust our local chapter. But you have answered our need all the same, by trusting us enough to guide the Holy Fairy to our location. I accept your suspicion and rage, young Shaper Eadric, and though it will take time, I will do what I can to appease both.”
“Thank…you,” my friend said, his voice thick with conflicting emotions.
From beneath my hood, I gave a final glance at the figures still surrounding us, and decided that they really were surprised and hopeful freedom fighters, instead of nefarious double agents plotting an ambush.
Breena gestured toward me as I stepped forward and lowered my hood.
“I present to you all Wes Malcolm, the Challenger of Avalon,” the pink-haired fairy announced, still speaking in her formal, lofty tone. “He has come here after liberating the Woadlands, the Sun-Jeweled Seas, and even Avalon itself. I now charge you with offering him the same aid your people have offered the Challengers of old, for the sake of liberating and restoring your world.”
“Hello,” I said, making eye contact with Headmaster Yama before turning around to stare at the rest of the robed figures. “As she said, I’m Wes Malcolm. Apologies for my late arrival. It took an upsetting amount of time to break out of my prison and then liberate three other worlds. But I’m here now, and I’m going to drive the corrupted Earthborn off this world, just like I have done for three of your sister worlds. And just like before, I won’t be able to do it alone. Every bit of help you can give me, every shred of support, will help save more of your people, as well as the lives of the rest of my own soldiers, those who have already had their own worlds liberated and are now coming here to assist in making it happen all over again. We both have plenty to lose if one of us betrays the other. But we have far, far more to gain if we all work together toward retaking the Golden Sands. Help me drive the false Challengers out of Mejem, just as I have driven them out of Nedjena. Then, help me eradicate them from your entire world, until you have your planet back, your culture back, and your freedom back—and they all gain the only thing that’s rightfully theirs: a gruesome, painful, and certain death.”
Chris’ Perspective
“Sooo…” I began, studying the face of someone I thought I knew from a different lifetime, though I wasn’t sure, because he had magically changed the color of his skin, “Travis?”
“Yes,” the currently dark-skinned man replied in a contemplative voice, “I am the one you once called Travis. I have not yet discarded that name—though I have since become something more.”
His eyes flashed as he spoke, with a kind of fanaticism he’d never come close to showing at his old job.
Which was an odd thing to think about the former youth pastor from my hometown’s church, whom I hadn’t seen in a very long time.
“Travis, right,” I replied, glad I had gotten the man’s name right, but still feeling very, very uncomfortable. The worst part of it all was that he couldn’t be much older than Dad’s current wife, which meant he actually wasn’t that much older than me—ten years at the very most, but probably much closer to six or seven. “How, um, how are you feeling? Do you feel different than before?”
“Different?” The man blinked as he considered the question. He looked up at me, since he was currently much shorter in his current form. “Yes…different…I do feel different,” he murmured, as much to himself as to me. “I feel…progressed.”
“Oh, okay,” I said as we continued to walk to the Pathway.
We were currently in Pangea, crossing through a Malus outpost that had been built over a nearby Pathway. In the distance, I heard the roar of some great and powerful beast; either one that Dad’s people had domesticated, or just one of the many local, wonderful wildlife specimens the world had to offer.
For that reason, it was my least favorite world. I had never been a huge fan of the whole ‘natural paradise’ concept—not when it involved large, powerful creatures all too willing and able to eat me in a handful of bites.
But then again, it wasn’t as though I woke up every fucking morning with the ability to decide for myself what I wanted to do for the day. Speaking of which, I reminded myself, back to the current conversation.
“That’s right,” Travis said, “I keep forgetting you wouldn’t understand. Your father held you back from Aegrim’s blessings. I never knew why. It wasn’t my business, at any rate. In fact, Barnes warned me not to even ask at the time,” the oddly meditative man volunteered, peering up at me curiously. “I was one of his people, not your father’s. It wouldn’t have looked good if I’d started investigating you. That was also why I kept a distance from you during church.”
“I hadn’t noticed,” I replied blandly, and frankly, it was true. Church had been a fucking waste of time even before Dad’s people had gotten ahold of it. “But I thought Barnes was under Dad, too, technically.”
“He was, by contract,” Travis explained, maintaining that dreamy, reflective tone as we walked toward the local Pathway to the Golden Sands. “Originally, he was a key pastoral member in a mega church in Atlanta, and I was one of his networkers… that feels like so many ages ago,” he reflected idly, glancing off to the right. Another loud roar sounded, reminding me that I hated this place and every goddamn one of these magical fairy worlds. Whatever happened to just relaxing somewhere with a beer and not worrying about anything wanting to kill me at any moment? Heck, I would have taken being grounded in my room instead. At least I would have gotten to nap in peace. But Travis was still talking, and the information was actually semi-relevant.
Plus, despite his time with the Horde, he wasn’t nearly as fucking disgusting as I had been expecting.
“But yes, Barnes brought me down here because of a deal with Lord Rhodes,” the former youth pastor continued.
“He had offered a lot of money and secrets. Crucial secrets, specifically regarding Malus magic. That had been the clincher that brought us in. Not many in our charter knew more magic than Barnes did, so it was an appealing proposition. Even if we did have to exchange the prestige of a massive congregation in Georgia for a much smaller church in some unimportant suburb in some unimportant town in Texas. It was worth it, all the same. Especially when your father finally confided the secrets he had learned from the thing between worlds. That was the progression I was speaking of, young Tyrantson: moving from the small handful of blessings which Aegrim had given the people on Earth to learning those he had granted to his own children. It is a… a deeper thing. A new fathom of becoming something more, far away from the distracting surface.”
“Huh,” I said, not sure how to respond, “great.”
Still, I reflected, as far as every other sick bastard went around here, Travis didn’t actually seem that bad.
“It would be wonderful, if it weren’t for all the grief I now feel,” my former youth pastor continued. “Because I now know there is so much farther I can fall. So much more treasure in the darkest depths. But I cannot reach it yet, and that limitation pains me. So many things lie just beyond my grasp, waiting just out of reach, because I am damaged.” His tone became mournful and strange, like a therapy patient who was confronting something deeply personal.
And of course, there was a nagging suspicion in the back of my head, telling me that I was somehow supposed to be his counselor.
“My Pit hopes that you will be able to help me, Chris,” my former youth pastor confided, “and it hopes, by extension, that you will be able to help it as well.”
“Yeah, that Volg guy said the same thing,” I replied, wishing there was some kind of gauge I could look at to determine just how much What The Fuck I had left in me. “And Dad said that it was my job to work with you guys. So I guess I’ll, um, give it a try.”
“I am grateful,” Travis said as he lowered his head. “Whether you are successful or not, I will always remember that you tried to help myself and the other Knights.”
“Right,” I said awkwardly, still not sure I fully understood the significance behind my former youth-pastor-slash-secret-cultist calling himself a ‘knight.’ “Let’s, um…let’s get to work, then. Volg said you need help with wanting to kill Wes Malcolm?”
“Not… not exactly,” the other man replied. “I want to kill him. We all want to kill him. But the grief is getting in the way. Do you realize what he could have become, young Rhodes? Do you realize what we all could have become, if he had chosen his birthright, instead of rejecting it time and time again?”
“Yes,” I said firmly, lying through my teeth.
I really didn’t need to learn anything more about their obsession with Wes Malcolm.
“I will speak of it anyway,” Travis continued. Fuck. “Because I doubt you can clearly understand it, even if Volg has already explained it. Do you realize how much of this was our fault, young Rhodes?”
We had stopped walking, mere feet away from the Pathway. I blinked, uncertain as to just how creepy this conversation would become.
“Huh?” I blurted eloquently, as my disbelief warred with my indignation over implying that I was somehow responsible for any of this shit. Not my fault, not my fault, I reminded myself reflexively.
“But it was,” the man insisted. “He was Aegrim’s heir. Which made him Malus’ heir as well. But we gave up on him. Because of the actions of his father, we wrote him off as a bad seed, instead of nurturing him, helping him overcome the behaviors he had learned from his recent ancestors.”
I met his eyes to see if he was joking. But whatever Travis had become, he was now one hundred percent serious. His strangely dark eyes shone with a conviction I didn’t understand, and didn’t want to. He believed in his message, and his guilt regarding said message, with every fiber of his being.
“Travis,” I said carefully, deeply resenting both Wes and my father for this situation, “no. No, okay? Wes would have never gone along with any of this shit. I mean, the totally wonderful and wholesome vision your Pits had for his life. Rejecting that sort of thing was ingrained into him. So much that even his classmates made fun of him for it.”
“I know, Chris,” the transformed man said in a trembling voice. “I remember. I remember my role in encouraging the others to mock him. It was my job as well, remember? It was all of our jobs. We thought it would help trigger access to Avalon, or at least prevent the traitor-prince from gaining the same power his father did when he finally stumbled into these worlds. But we were wrong, young Rhodes. Look at what he has done, the horror he has wrought—that we helped him wreak.”
I sighed and covered my face with my hand.
“Travis,” I tried again, “I need you to listen to me. Wes Malcolm was, and is, a hopeless cause. I know that. I’ve spent most of my life learning that to a painfully clear degree. I was with him longer than you were, remember? You only came on board right before we—Dad’s people,” I corrected in time, “murdered his father. It was your job to help ostracize him.”
“And instead, I helped him finally become the monster he believed himself to be,” Travis said sadly, staring down at the savannah grass beneath our feet. The distant monster roared again, but a series of howls followed the sound, as if in challenge. I wondered, once again, just why we were so set on conquering this world, and why the local Pangeans bothered to live here when they could just hop through a Pathway to another world. Maybe the whole universe is just stupid. But I forced my attention back to the stupid matter at hand.
“If that was the case,” I countered, trying my best to be the unlicensed counselor my father and his demon-dragon friend wanted me to be, “then Wes would have become the very predator his father was framed as. And then there wouldn’t have been a problem when he encountered his first Pit, remember?”
“That’s true.” Travis blinked, and my stomach rolled. “The Pit would have not judged him in the same way that the prey on Earth did. But that means…” His eyes widened, and then blinked again.
Only vertically, instead of horizontally.
Like he was blinking with a different, second set of eyelids.
“That means that he chose the judgment of prey over the acceptance of predators. Over more power. Over more family. He had to have known we would have welcomed him. He had to have seen the affection and fealty that the lesser children would have offered him.”
“Yeah, exactly,” I said, suppressing a shudder. Even growing up under my father’s shadow hadn’t been enough to prepare me for this level of twisted. “You offered him everything you could. Practically on a silver platter—er, whatever your guys’ equivalent of that is.” And don’t tell me, I begged silently. “But you’re not the first to try to get Wes to change, okay? In fact, you want to know a secret?”
My former youth pastor blinked again, once more with his new set of eyelids. He leaned a bit closer to me, and I fought not to show my disgust.
“I tried to get to him to change, too,” I whispered fervently. “I hated my job. I hated rounding on Wes Malcolm all the time. So I tried to get him to compromise. Show that I’d go easier on him, if he’d just back down a little bit. Be a little less of the thing that killed your first Pit. I went for the subtle route with him, instead of the blatant assets your Pits offered, and you know what? He rejected that, too. In fact, he rejected it every single time. Even when it would have made both of our lives easier. He lost everything while trying to be the person his father wanted to be, and he still made the same choices. Do you realize what that means?” I persisted, feeling somehow relieved that I was able to vent what was an ancient frustration of mine. “It’s not either of our faults. We tried everything to save Wes Malcolm. Hell, we did everything we could to just change him a little bit. But he refused. He made his own choices, and now we all have to live with it. And the only way to live with it is to make sure he doesn’t.”
&nbs
p; That wasn’t true, actually. If Wes had died, I would have followed at some point. There was no way Dad wasn’t going to turn on me eventually. It was just what our family did.
That was the only thing I let myself remember about my real mother.
Smothering a grimace, I forcibly wrestled my thoughts away from that topic before I could shudder again. I needed Travis to believe that I was trying to help. I needed everyone to believe that I was trying to help. Otherwise either Dad or Malcolm’s MILF would get suspicious, and then they’d decide that feeling suspicious was tiring, and that they were better off without leaving me alive.
So I had to be the most useful motherfucker around, to whoever I was talking to at that moment.
Then hope beyond hope that Malcolm’s people won when the final battle came around.
Or, possibly even better, that the two groups would kill each other off.
Actually, that did sound like the best outcome, and it angered me to realize how bothered I was about admitting it to myself.
Knives in the Night Page 15
