Byzantium, the house of Team Friendship Forever, an intimate dinner between the migrating madness outside.
The friends commiserated over their harassment offline and online, and Henry gave some Tyrant pro-tips on how to minimise danger until the public hype had settled down. If they wanted to escape civilisation for a while, he offered to lend them any of his IRL hideaways - since Handsome Dan wasn't rich like the rest, Henry'd be willing to pay for the flights in exchange for him signing a lucrative underwear modelling contract.
Quickly, however, they moved on from their problems in this fashion. The magic of Henry’s cooking took its effect, his friends’ sunken spirits lifted by each meaty mouthful.
“...I do wish, H., you could invite him into the fold,” Anderson was saying. “The tales of Mr Jangala contain something lost but necessary. The whispers of an ancient desert. The music of man’s primordial nature dream.”
Henry rolled his eyes. “You’re missing the bigger problem. Our programs are centred around Saana. The second anyone integrates into our system, they’re being thrust into the tug-of-war between pre- and post-digitomodernity. Most, due to their starting point, are pulled backwards, but the exchange runs bidirectionally...”
Their dinner conversation had been dominated by this pretentious topic, Anderson probing about the artistic patronage through Flaming Sun. Henry found this amusing. These ventures that passed under the radar of most gamers would be the most impactful of his career, producing results that would long outlast the death of Saana.
Abigail had given him a frosty shoulder for a while. She was mostly butthurt due to his refusal to put her on his 2’s and 3’s teams for the tournament - he’d picked some of Suchi’s more promising trainees, favouring those who weren’t so starstruck to underperform from nerves yet starstruck enough to obey his demonic training regime, unlike these lazy, useless schoolfriends. Eventually, Abigail’s interests in the one-v-one won out over her resentment. She plied him for secret duelling tips, and Henry gave her fake advice that would screw up her assassinations for a couple of months.
Nosy Cathy, at one point, skirted around yesterday’s date, noting the absence of the two girls. Henry, who’d moved on, stated outright that the love triangle had collapsed on all sides, how he’d rejected Rose, finding the stalker assassin aesthetic unattractive, and how Silver in turn had rejected him because his gaming career overwhelmed her. Cathy growled him, saying that this indifference, this coldness, was exactly why he’d failed, no girl wanting to be with someone so callous. Henry could have logically refuted this, some of the chicks he’d beaten up at the stadium gifting him love letters, but he didn’t care.
Dan ate handsomely quiet throughout, seeming to be the single Team Friendship Forever member struggling with the gravity of The Tyrant revelation.
That part of the ongoing scandals, Henry’s former occupation, was barely mentioned by anyone. His schoolfriends were noobs who’d started playing Saana after the wars and therefore couldn’t quite understand the big fuss. In this sense, they typified the latest generation of clueless youngsters, already beginning to forget him post-conquest. It’d been six months since the last major campaign. In that short period, a hazy dividing line had grown to separate the newbies and the old guard. For the long-time players, his tyranny had a visceral presence, a mix of nerves, despair, frustration, anger, thrill, and awe imposed upon their spirits when he’d landed his armies on their shores and sacked their castles. For the newbies, he was more akin to a myth. A second-hand story, a vague sentence spoken in reminiscence or explanation for the origins of an abstract system of governance, that’s what ‘The Tyrant’ represented. Much of the current public fascination actually stemmed from the celebrity hype transferred from Alex’s post-conquest shenanigans, like the tournament relocation.
The goldfish memory span of the gaming community made Henry a little sad. But he was also thankful. Operating in the shadows of anonymity, he'd never had the goal of leaving a legacy, and their forgetfulness gave him some hope for moving on.
Dan, seeming to reach a resolution to his handsome pondering, private messaged him.
-Danontherightwing: Big Bro, can we speak alone for a moment?
-Henry Flower: Sure. I've set this whole week aside for one-on-ones.
The pair climbed down into a basement space for storing the random garbage the team had picked up during their adventures. There, Dan wafted around an issue he was at pains to ask directly.
Henry cut straight to it. “Oh, you want to know if I’m the bad guy?"
Dan nodded with difficulty. “Big Bro...are you a bad guy?”
The kid gave a helpless look, willing to accept whatever answer was given, hoping desperately for a denial. Today, little Dan had searched through his previous observations of Henry’s peculiarities, through the oddly sober remarks slipped in every now and then. He’d gathered information from online articles and listened to the outside perspectives of the Villagers, Slumdwellers, and tournament migrants gossiping in the streets. In the end, not being smart enough to work things out, he would put his faith in Big Bro’s hands.
Henry reflected briefly on the question. He recalled the similar inquiry from the Senior Director he’d executed the day before yesterday, the scar-faced man wanting to know if he was a good person. Then, the answer had been no, although he had tried to clear a way for the good people to exist.
“Yep,” he answered Dan. “I was the bad guy.”
Unlike with either the Senior Director or Justinian, he wouldn’t add any further nuance in defence of himself. With those two, doing so had served a greater value, sending off a dying man with a small, complicated amount of peace, shaking a kid out of his delusion and convincing him to accept a life-changing job opportunity. For players like Dan, however, these innocents who dwelled on the plains and for whom the mountain was merely a hazy image on the horizon, Henry saw nothing positive in attempting to change their opinions. Let them perceive him as a confusing maniac, an oblivious, embarrassing clown, a cartoonish hero or villain, a real villain, or whatever else. Any of these he deemed preferable to the nihilistic tragedy of comprehending his complete perspective, of, first, gazing accurately upon the details of his career and then, worse, gazing at the alternatives that’d preceded him and reaching his own conclusion that he was totally justified. He would not complete the abominable image for these kids. If a few rare individuals like Dan or Silver managed to pick up Henry's own, more recent half, he wouldn’t provide the missing complement. Their hatred was healthier than their acceptance; their ignorance was healthier than both.
But, honestly, neither of these people had observed the full extent of his side - in this epilogue moment, the After, little of what’d passed had left a visible trace. His deeds were rapidly degenerating into ideas and words, superficial devices that stored only a condensed sliver of existence and, in and of themselves, without any binding to a deeper sentiment, compelled no significant moral judgement or action. There was a silly conceit to this supposed ambiguity. Anyone who’d actually been present, who could have borrowed his eyes and watched his hands administer such titanic quantities of misery—in a videogame or not—they wouldn’t be asking whether he was a good person or a bad guy. They’d be stuck at the question before that one. Was he even human?
“I’ve said it before, Dan,” Henry continued, “your impression of me, this ‘Big Bro’ stuff, is comedically wrong. I was the bad guy in Saana. The main one. I killed tens of millions.” He shrugged. “And now I’m moving on from that. If you can’t, if you want to try ‘kill’ me in retaliation out of a sense of justice, I’ll be accepting duels all week. Formal challenges are preferred, but, if you decide to jump me during dinner to improve the odds, my feelings won’t be hurt by any sense of betrayal - truthfully, I’ve only reached the stage in life where I can start to consider caring about friendship again. Or, if you want, we can get it over with right now."
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Henry waited a moment in case the kid was keen for a videogame 1v1, his fingers hovering over his dagger.
Dan, staring at him with horror and dismay, logged off in tears.
Henry was mostly content with this outcome. The psychotic part of himself seemed to be disappointed in the kid, a bizarre reaction that he foresaw nothing but further madness in exploring.
Not even shrugging, he climbed back upstairs and told his schoolfriends that they’d had an argument and the handsome lad could explain the rest if he returned.
The awkwardness that followed was broken by the arrival of Team Friendship Forever’s sixth member.
Brian turned up superbly late, dressed still in the purple-gold spandex outfit from last night’s masked soirée. His costume had undergone a slight modification, studded with glass-imitation jewels and tassels, and he’d somehow grown a stomach-length beard.
“What’s up with all the guards?” Brian asked, confused by their extra presence outside.
“Tyrant reveal,” Henry answered. “Prevent the Village getting destroyed by my enemies.”
“...Tyrant...reveal?”
Abigail and Anderson chuckled; Cathy muttered a prayer.
Henry waved dismissively. “Videogame nonsense.”
With his schoolfriends finally gathered, Henry turned to his main purpose for summoning them. Regrettably, he had to inform them of his decision to quit their Village and their arena team. With The Card back in his fingers, the agreement with Alex to hang out with these schoolfriends had ceased. But, more importantly than this, he wanted to save them from further harassment.
What they’d faced so far was but a teaser, a minor consequence of being caught in his periphery. If he left, this would dwindle out soon. If he didn’t, if he continued training with them while millions watched and studied, this game would become unplayable for them. Assassins would jump them whenever they visited a city, would hunt them as teams in the wilderness. This pursuit would chase them across the characters they deleted. Any quest would have to be carried out alongside a permanent guard escort, isolating them from the rest of the playerbase, and anyone with enough kindness to overlook the security would probably be an assassin waiting for a slip-up. In order to get a break from their guards, they would have to play as he had, like a hounded rat, adopting fake avatars, fake accents, and fake mannerisms. Still, again and again and again, they would be caught and betrayed, until they had to pose the joy-killing question of hostility to every new person they met without exemption.
"Yeah, all of that tends to run counter to the goal of cultivating the miracle of friendship through fun and more fun", he concluded, paraphrasing one of the team mottos. "It's not a very fun way to play a videogame. You'd be better off quitting. Are you prepared to quit?"
His friends weren't, their own adventures only beginning.
Cathy didn’t believe him. She accused him of exaggerating the problem in order to ditch them and win another stupid videogame tournament, calling him petty for being unwilling to lose 1 of 15 tournaments. This wasn’t the case, Henry explained, showing her the outline of the conditioning schedule he’d been manipulating them into performing that would have enabled them to win the 6v6. He, The Tyrant, was capable of a group-combat victory with any trash or them, who were worse than trash.
His insults made her furious, but an acceptable furious from which he managed to work her down by promising he’d pop by in disguise for one or two of The Slum’s community events if they avatar swapped. He might also squeeze in an IRL visit before he flew to sunny Alaska next Tuesday after the tournament. He'd decided to hang out with his hippy pal peaceloveharmony for a couple of days; he'd get some sage advice from this predecessor in quitting before beginning his global meanderings, starting probably with a Tibetan mountain yogi retreat.
The rest of Team Friendship Forever were sad to see him go, but they understood. Even if they hadn’t, there was nothing they could do to stop him. Their strange school friend, reunited with them for only a week after years apart, had come to dwell in an entirely separate universe.
The group shared food and drink, toasting to what had been and what could have been, to the friendship and fun that continues forever. At the height of their revelry, before things could get too drunk and sentimental, he slipped away.
Cathy followed him outside, wishing him farewell in their little Byzantine house's garden.
Henry, still a bit high from the stew, thanked her for the underhanded attempts at help and apologised for being a useless friend who couldn’t reciprocate a fraction of the same concern back.
“But don’t worry about me,” Henry used a fist to pound his chest and the calm heart within. “I’ll turn out fine.”
“Of course!” Cathy gave him her best smile of confidence. “This is nothing.”
“Really,” said Henry, not missing the doubt creased in her lips. “One of the hidden buffs of such an abysmal social IQ is a racial immunity to Psyc damage. Can't be hurt by what you don't notice.”
“I’ll pray for you.” Cathy, displeased by this gamer analogy, wrinkled her nose at a recollection of him berating Justinian during their duel - the matches hadn't been very notable for most players, but the Byzantines had discussed it due to the in-fighting. “And please stop with the blasphemies. You might not notice everything, but God does.”
Henry laughed at that, having no intention whatsoever of complying. If God took offence, he could fly down from the sky, and Henry would kill him, too.
They hugged it out for a bit, then he made to leave. He equipped a uniform for The Empire’s guards, used his ring to spoof an NPC, and changed his posture and gait.
In no hurry, a retiree, he strolled through Byzantium’s residential quarters. His disguise proved quite effective. The little girl who imitated Justinian, Lady Kittykat, passed by him hand-in-hand with her father, and both—in more beautiful ways than one—failed to recognise him.
While pondering friendship, Henry admired the recreation architecture around him with as much feeling as could be summoned after one busy week staying here after a much busier life. He did his best to appreciate the charms of this quaint settlement that these Villagers had built within the surrounding impoverishment. He traced his fingers along the scattered sculptures. He sniffed at the courtyard gardens effusing with healthy greens and plump pinks after a recent watering. The workmanship and dedication truly were commendable. Although the result didn't amount to much, any flowers that could blossom at all in such arid soils deserved respect.
The Greco-Roman structures mingling with the amicable air reminded him of noble Cicero. Amongst the man's much more important works on statecraft and education, he'd written a cute dialogue on friendship. 'You might just as well take the sun out of the sky as friendship from life', he'd said. Friendship was the greatest gift from the gods. With a friend, one doubled one's joys and divided one's woes.
Henry thought there was something in those ideas. Then, again, the same treatise also asserted that friendship was only possible for good men, tyrants able to count on nothing but suspicion and anxiety. Probably something in that, too.
Suchi's warm night breeze carried the new music of youthful festivity that could be heard ever since The Empire's arrival and the even newer spices of the world congregating for his small tournament. Rowdy chants reached him from Byzantium's adjacent communal area. Henry spotted a drunken Villager hauling a block up the Achievement Pillar, which jutted over the roofs and into the night sky. They were a Performer specialising in comedy theatre, from his recollection. They must have won a prize during last night’s soirée.
"Good for you, kid," he whispered to them and the rest. "Good for you."
But Henry’s disguise had flaws. Heading for the exit through the communal area, he stopped to watch the Performer climb the towering structure, rising amidst the chanting Villagers, some of whom were strapping their own prize blocks on for their chance to add their own. While paused and thinking, he was caught by Walker.
The grey-haired gentleman who led this Village—and one of the few players Henry’d met in Suchi with a similar passion for classic literature, having a much more mature view on the subject than Anderson, whose interests were mostly aesthetic—gave him a wave from the crowd. The Village Head did so covertly, trying not to alert the drunken ruffians around them.
At the man’s gesture, Henry swapped his ring identity back to his default to receive a message.
-Graeme Walker: If it isn’t our very own, HL, author of the Post-Maximalist masterpiece Infinite Leaves. I take it you’re sailing away from our holy city of Byzantium. Before you disembark, would you like a cup of tea? Some warmth in the belly to soothe the coldness of separation?
-Henry Flower: Hmm...the tea, I’ll skip - my belly’s stuffed already. But a cultured conversation for once, I wouldn’t mind the warmth of that.
Henry, a retiree, seeing no particular harm in the offer, having enjoyed the few one-on-ones they’d had previously and in the mood for another, followed after the man. The two snuck into Walker’s office, where they shared a brief exchange about art and the other lofty pursuits of life that few of these youngsters cared about anymore.