Chapter 54 - Show some Humanity

“I’m human.”

There it was, out there for all to see. I said the thing I’d been dreading to reveal for the majority of my time on Ralqir. The knowledge was radioactive. It damaged everyone it touched, and they might not even feel the effects of that damage until much much later when I was long gone.

At least that was the situation according to Jassin. I’d been willing to go along with that interpretation of the situation too, all the way up to the point of my secrecy becoming an integral part of the trap I was in. How was I going to help these people if I had to hide from them? Those were two very difficult things to have on my plate, made even more impossible by them being opposing forces. I was convinced, now, that I could not do both. Either my secret was going to indirectly get someone else killed or get me killed, and I had way too much shit to do to entertain the idea of being dead.

My revelation hung in the air like the ringing of a bell, one that couldn’t be unrung.

Everyone in the cell blinked, looked at each other, and turned back to face me, each in their own time.

Geddon gave voice to the collective sentiment.

“Wow. Uh. Is it… treatable?” he asked, reaching up to give the top part of his mane a scratch.

I could feel the corners of my mouth turn down, losing their fight with Ralqir’s gravity. My disappointment was immense.

Right. The word ‘human’ wasn’t available to any but the privileged few, probably people with direct access to the Dark Lord’s notes.

“Uh. Okay.” I began again. I’d need to do this carefully. “I’m from another world.”

I stopped, checking for signs of understanding with the rest of the group. I didn’t get as much as I wanted, especially from Geddon, but they were at least all paying attention. Everyone was up against the bars now, hands resting on the metal. Trix was the hardest to read. He was looking down at the Bishop, ears drooped, hair bristling.

“I’m from another world that’s not like this one, another universe, in fact. Where I come from, a very select few people are Exotics- uh, practitioners, and they are either born to other practitioners or chosen at random or at least in a way that we can only guess is random. That’s not important, I guess. Sorry. Back home, I was no one. I was a crippled kid from a shitty rock at the ass end of space. I’d carved out a sort of niche in my community as the guy who can fix things. I was good at that, and they were okay with me doing that as long as I stayed out of sight. Then, for no reason other than pure, stupid cosmically impossible luck, the System chose me and sent me here. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not complaining. I was being impaled at the time, and anywhere would have been better than right there. I’d just seen my only friend in the world murdered, and I was about to join him, and then the cosmos were like ‘Hey, kid. Here’s a whole new life.’”

I pointed at the back wall of the building that I hoped was to the South.

“My new life started somewhere over that way, in the middle of a forest where the first living being I saw tried to eat me. Since then, I’ve been hunted, enslaved, eaten, blown up, immolated, disemboweled, and, most recently, cursed. Worse, though, is that I’m pretty sure I played some kind of role in the current apocalyptic conditions we’re living through, and I have no idea just how large my share of the blame is.”

They were all looking at me now in that way I feared they would, like I was a stranger. I didn’t blame them. I was a stranger. It didn’t make things easier, though.

I sighed and let my eyes drift down to the floor.

“I’ve been telling the truth. I really do want to help. I started small, just… trying to save who I could, but that was in the short term. I have no idea what to do to keep the rest of the planet from becoming like this place. Deep down, I think I’m still that guy that’s good at fixing things, but I’m way out of my depth here.”

“You’re the fulcrum,” Trix breathed. “The harbinger of change.”

I did a non-committal wobble of my head. “I’m ‘a’ fulcrum, I guess, though I contend that I am a person, not a thing. I don’t want to act as a fulcrum. The last one that came here didn’t do you guys any favors, and he’s not looking so good nowadays anyway.”

Trix’s use of the term sparked recognition in everyone else’s eyes. The sisters’ demeanors changed the most, from trepid curiosity to stunned realization with a healthy bit of fear. I could see them putting the pieces together in real time.

Sissa spoke first. “Assuming this is all true. You know nothing, do you? About our world.”

I shook my head. “Not much. I picked up what I could from the people I met.”

“I should have known. I’d say something, and you’d get that look in your eye like I’d just given you a precious gift or asked you to do Miur calculus. The whole time- Light and gods of old, we thought you’d just never left the monastery- Wait. How did you know to impersonate a Rising Sun?”

“That was kind of foisted upon me,” I answered with a shrug. “I was hairless at the time, so I guess it made sense.”

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“No it doesn’t” Sissa sputtered. “There’s a whole- You have to- Ugh. The whole gods’ damned time?”

“Yeah,” I sighed.

“He did seem very talky, in hindsight,” Geddon observed.

“I’m not very good at lying,” I replied. I’d been getting by on being vague, the immediacy of our circumstances mostly, and probably a nudge or two from my Gray Man skill, but I really didn’t want to open that can of worms. I’d already lied to these people. Best not to spring mind altering magic shenanigans I had no control of onto them just yet.

“I couldn’t just come out with the truth, though. If this,” I gestured down to the unconscious bishop on the floor. “If this had happened the first day I’d shown up on Ralqir, I’d simply be dead, and I’m pretty sure, at that point, all of this would have happened anyway given time.”

Sissa put her hand to the side of her head and stared into the middle distance as she thought. “From a strategic perspective, you… probably made the right call. I could think of two- no, three different groups of people that would want to use you. Oh. The dragons. Some of the dragons would definitely be tempted to reverse the Purge. Wait. The wretch down in the tunnels. It knew, didn’t it?”

“That’s the impression I got,” I replied with a nod. “It knew a lot. Too much.”

“So, you killed it,” Trix said. The accusation hit me out of nowhere.

I blinked. “What? No. I killed it because it was going to eat me and then the rest of you.”

“Furball, don’t,” Samila warned the Volpa.

“No!” Trix shouted. The anger in his tone shook the air and left the others silent.

“No,” he continued. “Brother- No. Just Ryan, I guess. Ryan has been lying to us since the beginning, and I believe that his slaying of the only other being that knew his secret is a valid subject to question. I know not everyone spends all their time in the sanctuary like I have, but you should all have at least some understanding of how dangerous the fulcrum is. There is a reason they are represented as the tip of the triangle, at the intersection of light and dark. He indulges in both aspects. He hides when he must, kills when he must,” Trix stuck out an accusatory paw to draw everyone’s attention to the unconscious Bishop. “brutalizes when he must. This, I could forgive of an animal attempting to survive far from home, but he is not an animal. Upon first contact with our civilization, his first instinct was to lie. What we see all around us right now. This is the cost of those lies.”

“I-” I began, but stopped myself. Would defending myself accomplish something right now?

Yes, I had lied to them all, but it was with sound reasoning at the time, given what I knew. I didn’t realize the scourge-touched were already in Eclipse or that the scourge-touched were after me, specifically, or that my presence would be such a big damned deal to everyone.

Did my ignorance actually matter, though? What happened happened, whether I intended it to or not. Would someone buried under a landslide care if the person further up the mountain meant to trigger it?

Trix shook his head, mournfully and looked down to the floor. “Brother- Damnit. Ryan, the night we met, do you remember?”

I nodded, thinking back to Kolash escorting me through the streets and into their Sanctuary. The altars. The glass. Trix and his sandwiches.

“Yeah,” I replied.

“Volpa do not have the best of reputations,” Trix lamented. “Did you know that? Of course not. That’s obvious now. We, as a people, are known as deceivers and cheats. We lie, we steal. It is a way of life. If you are taken in, it is commonly accepted that you trusted too easily and somehow deserved it. Our magic is the same way. It is mist and shadow. The illusion of power. There is no substance to speak of, nothing that survives a light brush with truth anyway. We are all like this, or, at least, the vast majority, enough for other species to not care about the exceptions.”

He was shrinking before my eyes, like a balloon losing air. I wanted to reach out.

He continued. “So, when you came into the sanctuary that night and trusted me to share in your voice… It was a minor miracle to me. Instant trust from an accomplished warrior. What a joyful gift, a reward for living my life without guile. The very next day you had me watch your back in combat. Me! You trusted me! Then you gave me the means to fight. It was horrible, bloody, beautiful stuff, and it- was- real. You made me believe I belonged here, among heroes doing something that mattered.”

He took a deep, shuddering breath, finally lifting his head with what looked like a monumental effort to look me in the eye.

“And it was all because you didn’t know any better.”

That was it. He said no more. Neither did I.

Everyone stood silent and watched Trix weep. It was a quiet thing, no theatrics or wailing, just soul crushing sadness eating someone from the inside.

Eventually, Samila reached, tentatively, down to put a hand on Trix’s shoulder, but he shrank away, getting down on all fours and scrabbling into the darker parts of the cell before curling up in the back right corner.

I shut off Detect Iron out of respect for his privacy. Of all the things I could give him right now, that was probably what he wanted the most.

Then the spell was broken by the Bishop letting out a long, wet snore at my feet.

I squeezed my eyes shut and tilted my head back in hopes the changed angle could rattle loose the right thing to say. I came up with nothing.

Instead, I figured it was time for action rather than talk.

I patted down Kolash and came up with the keys.

Finally, as cell door swung open there was nothing left that separated us. My friends all stood there, though, hesitant to-

Samila surged forward and nearly bowled me over, her arms around my back, her face buried in my chest.

“That all sounded very lonely,” she said, looking up at me with those big, golden, dragon eyes. They had stars for pupils. I’d never noticed that. “And I’m sorry about your friend. I’m sure he was wonderful.”

I made a wordless noise that rushed out of my throat and got stuck somewhere near the back of my tongue. The room blurred until it was just blue and gold.

“Uh-” I turned my head, tried to take a step toward the door, to get away, shield them all from… I didn’t know.

But Samila was holding on tight.

I reached up to push her away, but I didn’t have it in me. The tension and stress I’d been holding for months left me in a rush leaving me empty and weak, the muscles in my body no longer having the strength or will to carry on without. I, eventually, stopped struggling. Someone else put a hand on my shoulder. I wasn't sure who.

Then I, for the first time since I became an Exotic, let myself just be human.