Collected
Chapter 10
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Murder!
Hypocrite!
Like hippo! Is purple!
So much for your self-imposed rules! ‘No killing innocents’, my foot!
Rulebreaker.
You had no right, you scum! You had no right!
Took life! Never gives!
Look that girl in the eye right now and try to explain yourself! We dare you!
Broken and sane voices were merged as one, to the point that Kamali couldn’t differentiate between the two. She’d managed to drag herself over to where a small group of spirits had congregated on the large rock island, with Dahlia in the center. With her was the man whom the Collector had consumed in Gordius Town, his eyes sunken and darting about with a level of scrutiny. And the other?
Myra. A child that seemed lifeless inside, hardly responding to anything. Dahlia was practically dragging her around, whispering to her in kindly words that went through one ear and out the other. Just looking at her made too many feelings well up in Kamali.
She turned away at once, clutching her chest, before pressing her lips at the other unfortunate sight a distance away from here. Another group of spirits had congregated, with Earl a notable figure amongst them. Their bodies blocked her line of sight, but she got glimpses of Freya lying still among them. Her voice echoed over the spirit network, babbling to herself.
Failed her. Failed everyone. Should’ve finished him first — the pain! Have to get up, have to save her—
Dupemaw had left her delirious. Her words were somewhat more coherent than other Broken, but she was still clearly teetering on a ledge of no return. Chances were the woman wouldn’t make it.
Earl had been luckier. He only had been grazed by Dupemaw’s electricity, but he still gripped his shoulder tightly, burn marks on his transparent orange body. It spooked Kamali.
“Not often that someone has the ability to directly hurt us.” Kamali turned to find Nina of all people, the short rosy ghost watching the scene with a somberness that didn’t fit her. “It’s horrible.”
“This?” asked Kamali, before gesturing to Myra and the other man from Gordius Town. “Or that?”
“Everything.” Nina let her head droop. “Don’t have the energy to be angry at Avrom like the others, honestly. I’m far too exhausted, and all I did was spectate. Innkeepers aren’t any good at fighting, and anyway, I don’t think I’m as brave as you were.”
Her, brave? “I only made shades of the dead attack Beastmaster.”
“And you could’ve been killed for being out there to do that. You were brave.”
The thought muddled Kamali’s head, unable to see what she was talking about. That wasn’t her, she was just a cockroach. Cockroaches weren’t brave, they were just survivors. All she did was help Myra survive.
And she failed.
“Jarsh’s here.” A deadpan chirpiness entered Nina’s tone as Kamali took notice, the Broken spirit floating onto the stone island in his usual slumped posture, eyes on Freya. The other spirits had stirred at his approach, blocking him from getting close, and a furious Earl had brandished one of his blades. “Hah. Old jerkface seems to forget he’s nobody’s boss now.”
Kamali raised a brow at Nina’s phrasing. “I’m surprised he wasn’t with Dahlia’s group,” she muttered.
A sardonic chuckle. “He did that thing where he drifted toward Myra and that other new guy Avrom collected, I’m guessing? Probably gave you the creepy look too when you first showed too, yeah? Bunch of us think he’s still got some instinct to hunt down fallen souls or whatever, brute’s too stuck in the past.” Nina folded her arms behind her head, laying back. “Makes me realize I’ve been here for too long — unlife really sucks for a socialite like me, darn it. You’re itching to interrogate Avrom?”
“Nina?” Kamali looked between the girl and Jarsh. “What are you talking about?”
“Eh, somebody will tell you eventually. Have fun up there!” Nina winked, before rushing to another spirit that stood aloof, instantly engaging her in conversation. Kamali groaned, before looking skyward.
Forget Jarsh for now. There were bigger things to deal with first.
The Collector had taken refuge in a place amongst the woods, a distance from Gordius Town. Kamali left his prison with Spirit Call, warping herself into a small glade under a sun that had begun its descent from noon. Birdsong tweeted out, a lovely melody in a lovely forest that Kamali found no appreciation for — the solemn cries of crows would’ve been far more fitting.
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A huff made her spin around to the Collector, sitting in the grass with hands clasped tight around his head. Kamali could feel the pressure he exerted on it, the way his eyes squinted — she was getting pretty good at sensing what his body did. The rage of the various spirits he held prisoner seemed to affect him poorly.
“Come to belittle me, I see.” The Collector turned his head her way. “A tiny torment compared to what you think I deserve, isn’t it?”
He seemed vulnerable, the way he was right now. Kamali stared, waiting. The Collector sighed.
“You know I am a monster.”
“That isn’t an excuse.”
“I do not feel like excusing myself.”
“But you had a reason for what you did.”
Silence. The birdsong began to feel uncanny in the back of Kamali’s mind. Her stern expression broke into something softer, revealing how lost she felt inside.
“Why?”
The Collector gave a deep rumble. “Could you not tell?” he asked, with utmost seriousness.
Kamali could guess. It fit in a way with the nature of the Collector. “You meant the whole thing about Myra being a survivor.”
“I did.”
“Her Role and Rules?”
“No Role. But I believe she’d make for a good Telekinetic Mage someday with her skills.” The Collector shook her head at a wide-eyed Kamali. “Maybe Beastmaster cared about that, but not I.”
A budding psychic. People who could move things with their mind were not that rare, but still notable enough. At Myra’s age, with her lack of a Role to help, she was arguably a prodigy. “But you cared more about her survival?” she questioned.
“The girl—”
“You killed her.” Kamali buried her face for a moment, feeling emotions well up in her. “You said you wouldn’t kill innocents.”
“She has no family to go back to. Her soul was screaming for a way out, a way to live and be free. She didn’t want to die there—”
“So you forced her into yourself?” yelled Kamali. “You added to some little girl’s trauma, thinking she’d prefer you over everything else?”
“What do you want?” The Collector grew steamed, pulling himself to his feet. His arms left his forehead, his own anger seemingly shrouding his spirits’, and Kamali involuntarily took a step back. “It was one life! One amongst many others I could’ve far more easily saved, but I did what you asked! I put myself and my spirits in mortal danger, put Freya on her undying throes—”
“And?”
And?
And?
And?
Kamali’s voice overlapped with several other spirits, the now it was the Collector who stepped back, groaning in mental pain. “What do you mean ‘and’?” he said. “Beastmaster and his mutant wolf pet have anti-spirit abilities! Freya couldn’t so much as phase out of Dupemaw’s maw, for goodness’s sake! Was I supposed to send you all out to strike him, and put your lives on the line?”
“That’s not an excuse to throw away hers! There’s far better ways you could’ve handled—”
Kamali went stiffer than a gargoyle turned to stone as the Collector threw off his smiling mask. All the heat within her frozen over at the sight of his true warped face — complete with fanged black teeth and demonic eyes. One violet one on the right, and far, far too many tiny ones on the left, all of varying colors.
An unnatural fear branded her from those eyes. “Was I supposed to let Myra continue to be a target?” barked the Collector, and Kamali saw her rigid self from his perspective, the left side a disorienting mess of overlapping visions. “Where could she hide? What else could I do, when fighting a force that outmatches you, except put her in the one place he can’t reach her? All I wanted was to end this thirst for souls that I have! I planned to live forever in peace and quiet, away from all these troublesome factions I wanted no business with, but no! I decided to break my own rules and ruin Beastmaster’s fun, all to make my family of spirits happy, and look where that got us! Just how much do you want from me?”
Kamali found herself choking on her breath. Odd, because she didn’t need to breathe anymore. The Collector approached her, scowling.
“What do you want, child?” he said. “What?”
The command helped Kamali speak. The rest was her own willpower, pushing against the fear. What was it that she wished for, above all? It was simple. The Collector was a force to be reckoned with, even if he didn’t realize it. If he really, really was the not-so-crooked creature he kept trying to pose as, then what she wanted was—
“For you to actually make a difference,” Kamali blurted out.
“For me to shut down Beastmaster.”
“This whole t-thing wouldn’t have h-happened—”
Kamali’s mind froze up again as the Collector stomped toward her, the pressure of his eyes crushing her. “Of course you want that,” he huffed, rolling each and every one of those eyes in ridicule. “You want the big bad monster with a heart to stop the bigger, badder monster from getting away with the theft of the countryside.”
Of course she did. Beastmaster meant to claim this entire land for the Fervent Indulgent. Kamali couldn’t stomach that idea, and she doubted the Collector liked it either. Not with his hostility to them.
“But I can’t,” the Collector went on. “Not without incurring the wrath of greater forces that will spare no effort afterward to remove us from the chessboard. Not without doing to you what I did to Freya — and believe me, I care very deeply about every last one of you spirits trapped within this cursed body, if at least because I feel the need to make it up in some way.”
His head went to the side, and Kamali felt some of the pressure fade away, giving her space. Only so much, however, for his large right eye kept watch, staring her down. “But you do not understand. You are not the Collector. You don’t live with the weight of being a monster that must feed on souls, that must survive on his own, shunned by the world.”
“T-then why did you become him?”
The Collector’s eye narrowed.
There was no heat in Kamali’s meek, whispery voice, having lost it from the fear the Collector had afflicted her with. And yet, with the heat gone, an icy edge had been left in her words. “You became a monster,” Kamali said. “Y-you don’t enjoy it. Why?”
Usurper.
Throne stolen!
Broke him! Broke the Collector!
Kamali had only been trying to get her footing back into the argument, but the sudden interjections from the Broken caught her off guard. She gaped as more and more them clamored over each other, before the Collector hissed a command for them to hush.
The other spirits too had stopped speaking, though Kamali thought Nina had made a tiny little giggle. “You wish to know, Shaman?” said the Collector, his gaze making the forest air heavy. “I didn’t want the Role of The Collector.”
A pause.
“I stole it from Jarsh.”
Five words, and it left Kamali’s mind completely numb.