“Hey, sleep somewhere else you miscreant!” A woman yells at a man lying on the street. The collar on his shirt no longer intact, exposing the top of his chest in addition to the missing patches on it. The thread on the cuffs on his pants have started to split, the frayed ends stuck together only by the mud that hardened there.
The man wakes up, disoriented. He looks around and is confused as he finds himself in the capital of the Sacrosanct Empire, a place he thought he left behind after he slew their previous king, his grandfather.
The last thing Xander remembers was that they were searching for York Laboratories when they encountered a talking man inside a distortion. He picks himself up off the street and heads towards the nearest inn, intending to clean up there.
The second he tries to enter the innkeeper stops him, “Hey, we don’t take street rats here, piss off!”
“Right, sorry, I forgot,” Xander apologizes, having forgotten that he somehow ended up with this ragged appearance.
He changes direction, heading towards the royal guard’s barracks. He sneaks in past a couple of unsuspecting guards into the shower. As the water begins to run, he strips off the clothing he ended up in, looking at the mud and god knows what else that is plastered to his body.
He rubs himself down, making sure to get the grime off his body. His hand moves over his body, causing him to feel relieved when he feels his muscles, thinking maybe those had disappeared along with his gold.
Xander exits the shower and heads towards the changing room next door hoping to find an extra set of clothes, not intending to put back on those rags. A man who was sitting in the room spots him.
“Hey, at least cover yourself with a towel,” he yells at Xander.
“What you’ve never seen a naked man before? Anyway, you got an extra pair of clothes, I forgot to bring something to change into,” Xander asks, noticing the man is around the same size as he is.
“Yeah, sure, I got extra,” the man tells him as he goes through his bag and throws a pair of fresh clothes to Xander.
“Thanks, I owe you one,” Xander tells him as he squeezes into the new pair of pants.
“Who are you by the way?” The man finally thinks to ask. “I’m Jorge, nice to meet ya,” Xander laughs in his head at his Jorge impression as he walks right by the guy out the door.
Once Xander gets outside he starts to evaluate his situation. How did he end up here and what happened to the others? This causes him to realize that his wedding ring is missing. Did he leave it in the shower? He starts to ponder it before remembering that he didn’t have it when he woke up on the street either.
He feels chills already afraid of what Gwendolyn is going to say when she realizes he lost his ring. After not finding out anything from checking around the city he decides to head to the place the others are most likely to be if they are here, Lunette’s laboratory.
Xander heads South through the woods, as he walks along he rubs his fingers over where his ring usually is, thinking about what he is going to say to Gwendolyn to explain all of this.
“Hey! What are you doing alone in the woods?” A patrol demands to know, catching him off guard.
“Oh, I am just traveling south,” Xander plays it off, not able to think of anything else that would make sense.
“You are traveling all by yourself?” One of them questions, that being an oddity.
“Yup,” Xander casually responds.
“What is your name?” The other asks, finding this random guy suspicious.
“Jorge,” Xander uses the same fake name as last time.
“Is everything okay here?” Xander asks, usually patrols through the woods wouldn’t be this uptight towards someone that looks like Xander does.
“Yes, sorry for inconveniencing you, but if you see either of these two let us know,” he holds up two pictures of people Xander recognizes, they are Kali and Lunette.
He tries his best to hide his shock as he calmly responds, “I will let you guys know if I see them”. They bid him a good day as he continues on, finding himself outside Lunette’s hovel a few hours later.
He sees a light inside and pushes open the door, seeing both Lunette and Kali inside sitting around the table.
“What do you think you are doing here! You left us! Abandoned us! You left your friends to die! Get the fuck out of here!” Kali begins to yell at him the second she notices him.
Xander is shocked; he tries to get an explanation, asking, “What is going on? I don’t remember any of this”.
“Don’t pretend like you don’t know what you did,” Lunette spits angrily.
“Seriously, the last thing I remember was marrying Gwendolyn and then falling into an underground civilization,” Xander mentions, trying to determine how far past those events they are.
“Now I know you’re delusional, who would ever agree to marry a guy like you? I can’t believe you would actually start to make up people,” Lunette starts to laugh at him.
Xander asks while in shock, “You two don’t know Gwendolyn?”
“No, I’ve never heard of her, stop making people up you can’t trick us,” Kali tells him. Xander stops, starting to think how all of those years with Gwendolyn could have disappeared so easily, or how he could have fabricated them himself… but he knows that can’t be true, it would be impossible to make that up.
“Get out! I told you to leave,” Lunette repeats herself, trying to get Xander out of her sight.
Xander puts out his hands in response, asking, “Hold on, why do you guys hate me? Explain to me what I did”.
“You abandoned us! Back in the city you just let them take him, now they have Drakthar and he’s going to die,” Kali starts to sob, but is still able to yell through the tears.
“Yeah, Kayde too,” Lunette adds, Kali not mentioning the bigger picture.
“But we took down the Purity around half a year ago,” Xander points out, trying to get them to remember what has happened to them.
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“No, we didn’t! We were working on it and that’s when you let Drakthar and Kayde get captured,” Lunette explains what is really going on.
“Fine, let’s go save them. There is no use if you two just wait here and do nothing,” Xander suggests, looking to rectify whatever happened in the past.
“We can’t enter the city, we are wanted by the military and the church,” Lunette states incredulously.
“Just make yourself one of those rings, you know the ones that change your appearance that you invented,” he tells Lunette, confused as to why getting caught merely entering the city would be a problem for her.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Kali asks, never having heard of such an invention.
“Lunette made us all rings that mimic the appearance of someone else… you know what if you don’t have them let’s just throw on some hoods and let’s go,” Xander gives up, keener on getting inside and redeeming himself no matter the risk.
“We would be found out right away, right at the front entrance,” Lunette points out the obvious lunacy in his plan.
“We can enter through the sewers, the same way Kayde always used to go in and out,” Xander suggests, not finding this to be a problem at all.
“Fine, if you know a way in let’s go,” Lunette agrees, not willing to pass up a chance to get Kayde and Drakthar back. The three of them promptly head into the city through the sewers. The second they reach the surface they see a large group gathering in a nearby plaza.
Initially, they believe this to be a good thing, that they can use it as a distraction for them to find their missing friends, but when they glance towards what is going on in the plaza they notice a raised platform in the center.
There are a bunch of prisoners standing atop it in chains; Drakthar and Kayde are both among them.
“I am going to warp over there and then warp them back here, just get ready to run when it happens,” Xander warns them as he starts to get ready.
He tries to warp between them, but it isn’t working. For some reason, he can’t teleport himself.
This helpless feeling washes over him, as he looks to the other two, “It's not working… I can’t use my powers”.
“Another excuse, you aren’t their friend, are you? You pathetic excuse of a…” Kali starts to tell him off before he heads towards the front, planning to save them even without his abilities.
He goes around the back of the wooden platform, readying his sword to cut through their bindings.
But before he gets anywhere close, a guard grabs him, disarming him easily before laughing, “What do we have here? You trying to free some of our captives?”
Other guards join this one and help hold Xander down, who is struggling to escape. He can only watch as right in front of him an executioner lowers Kayde’s head into a wooden stockade, and prepares to lower his axe down upon his neck.
The sight unnerves Xander as Kayde’s head is swiftly removed from his body at the neck, it rolling up right next to Xander.
He looks down and expects to see Kayde’s lifeless face, but instead, he is still alive, his haunting eyes looking at Xander one last time as he tells him, “Guess this is it for me. See you in the next life buddy”.
Kayde dies with a smile on his face, one of the guards around Xander ending it by crushing the head beneath his foot, sparks fly out as Kayde finally breaks, the smile froze on his smashed face.
Xander looks back up at the platform, this time it is Drakthar’s turn. He is lowered into the stockade and the executioner prepares his axe like before. Xander tries to break free, but there are too many guards holding him in place. He can only watch as the executioner lowers his axe towards Drakthar’s neck.
The blade isn’t able to cut completely through, catching in the back of his neck just above the bone. Drakthar starts to laugh maniacally, blood shooting out of his mouth as the executioner tries again, relentlessly slicing down over and over, causing flesh from the back of Drakthar’s neck to become mangled and bloody eventually killing him from loss of blood instead of the intended beheading.
This is the sight that sticks in Xander’s mind as the guards collapse the platform and the citizens file out of the plaza. The guards let Xander go and Kali and Lunette approach him.
“I am going to kill you! You bastard!” Lunette screams, drawing her rifle at him and firing. Xander barely dodges it by falling to his side. Lunette, hysterical at missing the man she blames for Drakthar and Kayde’s death, raises her rifle again, this time sending a bullet through Kali’s head before putting it up against her own and pulling the trigger.
Everything Xander has just witnessed causes him to cry out, “Why? Why is this all happening? What did I do to deserve this? They’re all gone… everyone”.
“Hey I need you to calm down,” one of the guards that was holding him tells him. Xander doesn’t even hear him, too caught up in the images of the moments just before this one, each of his friends’ deaths replaying in his mind as he desperately tries to turn back time… but it isn’t working. Helplessness is all he can feel as the guard knocks him out for disturbing the peace with his screaming.
When Xander wakes up he finds himself in a familiar place, the cell he spent the majority of his time in, while on his most recent trip to Sacrosanct Empire. He sees the same broken cot, the mat still laying on the floor, and the adjacent room where he would get visitors.
This time the visitor doesn’t come in through the door in the side of the room, but instead through the meal slot at the edge of his cell. Xander watches as Drakthar’s decapitated head shows up in a tray, his lifeless eyes made to look directly up at him.
As Xander leans down to close Drakthar’s eyes he hears the door open behind him. He turns around to see Alexandros leading a tied up Gwendolyn into the room next to his.
“A promise is a promise Alexander, I told you that if you didn’t cooperate I would kill your new family. So I am here to make good on my word. I see you got Drakthar’s head, delivered just like I said it would be. And now for the main event,” Alexandros starts to gloat.
“I killed you. I watched you die. How am I back here?” Xander starts to mutter to himself.
“I don’t understand Alexander, you have been here for the last year and a half, I am not privy to those wistful dreams you have every night, but I can assure you that you haven’t left this room in a very long time,” Alexandros informs him, a little confused as to what Xander is talking about.
“No… I got married and then we fell…” Xander tries to remember, trying desperately to convince himself that this cannot be real. But he doesn’t wake up, there is no escape from the nightmare he is living in.
“Enough of your delusions, if I can’t get you to pay attention maybe she can,” Alexandros notes as he removes Gwendolyn’s gag, allowing her to speak to him.
“Xander! Xander, please help me!” Gwendolyn starts to beg as soon as she can speak.
Xander tries to switch her with himself so that he is the one who is trapped instead of her… but he can’t, his powers are gone just like before.
“Yes, come on Alexander, save her,” Alexandros mockingly agrees, knowing nothing can be done.
“I can’t… I don’t know what happened to me, but I can’t do anything,” Xander starts to cry as he pounds his fists into the transparent wall separating them.
“Xander please!” Gwendolyn continues to beg as she struggles to get free.
“I’m sorry Gwendolyn, but it looks like he isn’t going to do anything for you. I hate to be the one to point this out to you, but you don’t mean anything to him at all,” Alexandros taunts her, relishing in the idea of pitting them against each other just to see if he can.
“No… that’s not true, I love you, Gwendolyn. I love you more than anyone else in this world,” Xander gets out between sobs.
“I know. I love you too, I’m sorry I got caught before I could save you. I know I am going to die… so just remember…” Gwendolyn’s words stop, they are the last one that leaves her mouth before Alexandros ruthlessly snaps her neck, making it so she is not able to say the last thing she wanted to tell Xander.
“No!” Xander yells as his slamming against the wall intensifies. Alexandros lowers the wall causing Xander to stumble forward, leaning down to be at Gwendolyn’s side once he realizes the wall is gone.
Before he can make it to her Alexandros grabs him by the head, using one hand to push him back. Alexandros slams Xander’s head against the back wall, knocking him out once again.
This time Xander awakens in a place he has only ever been twice before, one of those times he was too young to remember it. Before him is his mountain village, the one he was born in.
The scene in front of him is one of pure chaos, the wooden structures all around the village are ablaze, covered in a raging fire that the villagers are helpless to prevent. Xander comes to realize that his friends are among the flames.
He sees Drakthar, Gwendolyn, Kayde, Kali, Lunette, Fore, and Jorge stuck, screaming out for his help, as they are slowly burnt alive in front of him. He calls out each of their names as he runs forward, but with each step, the village and screams of his friends seem farther and farther away. He stops, collapsing to the ground as the hopelessness of seeing his friends die over and over again breaks him.