Chapter 90 - Friend

At the end of a long day, one of the longest in Leon’s memory, both boys sat side by side upon the top of Cliff Mountain. They gazed down at the world below their dangling feet as the sun set at their backs.

They were all alone now. The snowblade tigers had grudgingly agreed that according to the rules, Ash had won since he had been the one to claim the ragdoll lamb. Skyle had then smilingly offered to give Ash his brush downs in Leon’s stead, and after a few fierce looks, the snowblade tigers had all been chased away under Reikard and Kassandra’s watchful eyes.

Now that they both stood shoulder to shoulder and looking down at the world, there was a comfortable silence between the two friends as neither felt the need to speak until they were ready.

“Skyle, there’s something I have to confess.”

“Hmm?”

Leon peered down into his hands as though he could read the future between the lines of his palms.

“I know why Leena tried to kill you. And you were right, she wasn’t a bad person.”

Skyle nodded slowly, looking into the distance. “Yeah, I know.”

“You.. Ah, I don’t know how to say it. I’ve been trying to find a way to explain this to you these past two days, but hell if I know. So I’ll just say it outright. You’re sick, Skyle. You’ve been poisoned, and there’s an evil taint burning in your blood.”

Leon’s fists trembled as his nails dug heedlessly into his own flesh.

Skyle didn’t even turn back. “Yeah, I know.”

“Huh?” Leon looked completely dumbfounded.

“I said, I know. Not about Leena. I don’t know how she knew, but I found out about the taint just yesterday. I didn’t know you knew as well.”

“Wait, so you know about the Shadowblight?”

“Huh? No, what Shadowblight? My mother was forced to drink some poison back in her own-”

Skyle stopped, then blew out a breath as he ran a finger through his hair.

“Look, Leon. I know there’s a taint in my blood, and I will die in a few years unless I can find a way to cleanse it.”

“Then why didn’t you cleanse it when you had the chance, you damn fool?”

Leon finally burst out, unable to hold back anymore, screaming at Skyle with rage twisting his features.

In spite of the sudden outburst, Skyle gazed back at Leon with a strange calm to his face.

“So, that's what has been eating you this whole time? Were you awake back then, at Sanctuary?”

Leon didn’t move, but the pain in his eyes told Skyle everything he needed to know.

“I see,” he said, then turned back to gaze into the distance.

“What do you mean, I see. You damn idiot, you could have chosen to heal yourself. You could have lived. So what if my talent was burned to ashes because of my own damn uselessness? You have to watch out for yourself in this world, you stupid bastard. No one else will. You don’t just sacrifice everything, all you have for a total freaking stranger and hand over your life just so they can have some stupid magical gift back.”

Leon panted raggedly as he clutched at Skyle’s shoulders with both hands, desperately shaking him back and forth as spittle flew from his lips.

Skyle slowly turned his head to gaze back at his friend.

“Is that what you would have done, Leon?”

“Yes!” came the immediate, furious reply.

Skyle smiled then. It was a slow curling of his lips, and it reached all the way to light up his eyes with an inner warmth.

“Liar.”

It was Leon’s turn to look away then. He bit his lips while his chest heaved up and down. His fingers were still digging painfully into Skyle’s shoulders, but neither boy seemed to notice.

“I.. I don’t know how to.. be like this, Skyle. I haven’t let myself care so much about anybody other than myself. Not after..”

Leon’s voice slowly trailed off as his hand unconsciously wandered down over his chest. There, Skyle knew, lay the old scar that ran all the way from his friend’s chest to his hip. Leon had once called it the price of trusting too much, and that he could never afford to pay such again.

“She was most likely lying about the cure, you know?”

“It doesn’t fucking matter,” Leon growled, his response immediate and final.

After thinking about it for a while, Skyle realized that Leon was right, and it really didn’t matter. So he let out a slow breath and tried again, this time digging deep into his own heart and dredging up the rawest truths that he could find.

“I won’t say cheap stuff like it was my own choice or that you’re worth the price or anything silly like that. Instead, I want you to understand that if I had chosen my own life over yours back on that day, I would have never been able to respect myself again.”

Leon suddenly winced, as though he had been struck by a physical blow.

A warm hand covered Leon’s. The bigger boy looked down, unable to speak.

“I don’t ask that you win over my respect, Leon. You have already done that many times over, no matter what you yourself think. All that I wish for you, my friend, is that you can one day respect yourself.”

Leon’s massive shoulders hunched over as his head sank down further. Both his hands were shaking as they clutched at Skyle’s shirt as though clinging from the edge of a cliff.

“You have no idea about the things I have done, Skyle. The evil deeds that are the lifeblood of civilized society; the bread and butter of the aristocracy.”

Skyle tilted his head as he watched his friend, but said nothing, waiting.

“You have your family and your tigers. You live in your farm and have everything you need. You know nothing about the world and its evil. Sanctuary, it was just about the monsters that try to kill you. You die, it’s over, it’s quick - easy. Even worse is our world, and the monsters that slowly turn you into one of their own, until you wake up one morning and look into the mirror, and realize that you have no idea who it is that is watching you through your own eyes.”

A convulsive shudder ran through Leon’s body then, like the last struggles of an asphyxiating fish flopping out of the water.

Skyle’s soft, almost inaudible words pulled Leon back from the edge of a harrowing abyss just then.

“You don’t have to live in that world, you know?”

A contemptuous sneer escaped his lips before Leon could snatch it back. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yes, I do.”

Leon lifted his gaze then, and his eyes were filled with vitriol and fire. “You don’t get to talk to me about leaving my world behind when you’ve lived in your sheltered little corner of paradise your entire life, you naive, spoiled bastard.”

Skyle opened his mouth, but after a moment closed it again without a sound. Then, he moved his hand to Leon’s shoulder, and with a sad little smile, shoved Leon off the ledge as hard as he could.

Leon outweighed the smaller boy by at least 80 pounds. It took all of Skyle’s strength to just barely manage to push Leon off the edge and send him plummeting before so much as a cry of protest could escape his frozen lips.

A stunned expression of utter disbelief flashed past Leon’s face, but the shock only lasted for an instant before he instantly burst into motion.

“Draco!”

Even before the words had fully left his lips, a shimmering aurora of burning scarlet flames burst out all around Leon’s figure. The fire summoner flung out his hand and a shimmering lance of fire stabbed out toward the wall. This lance of fire plunged deeply into the wooden structure, sizzling hotly as it sheared its way down its surface. It was attached to Leon’s wrist by a glowing chain of scarlet energy. The chain immediately arrested Leon’s downward momentum, after which Leon thrust out his other hand behind his back.

From this hand, a brilliant flare of golden fire burst into the night. The howling explosion pushed Leon upward with sudden, irresistible force. His feet easily cleared the top of the wall, landing back upon the ledge with barely a flutter of wind. The chain at his wrist and the aura of burning flames both vanished the instant his feet touched the wall.

All throughout, Skyle sat at the same spot he had occupied before, seemingly not having moved at all. He didn’t even turn to look at his friend as Leon walked forward, then after a moment of silence, sat back down next to him.

A stiff breeze carried with it the smell of charred wood and ash. Both boys sat there for a long moment while they each sank into a comfortable silence once again.

“Fine, you’ve made your point. You’re right.”

Skyle finally broke into a smile at this. “See? You’re not so stubborn after all. You just need to be pushed sometimes.”

“You’re right that it is my choice. But it is, Skyle. It is my choice. I see that now. I guess I’ve always known. It is what I was born to, what I am destined for. How can I just turn my back to all of that?”

“So long as you always remember that it is a choice.”

Leon threw his head back and gazed up into the sky then.

“Yes, you’re right.”

Skyle turned to smile at his friend once more. “Then you realize that you can also choose who you become?”

Leon chewed his lips while he gave this some further thought.

“Yeah, I can see that,” he nodded. Then after a while, he too smiled. “I know now who I want to become.”

“Oh yeah? Who’s that? Grand Duke of Draxas?”

Leon shook his head.

“Lord Fire Summoner Saint?”

Another shake of the head.

Skyle’s brow furrowed then.

“What then? Emperor of Solaria?”

Leon had to chuckle at that. “No, Skyle. Someone much better, much grander than any of those.”

Skyle screwed up his face in deep thought, and Leon laughed out loud while he gave his friend a playful nudge on the head.

“Nevermind that. It is an ambition that is far too lofty for your lowly, peasant mind to comprehend. Let’s talk instead about you and what our plans are moving forward.”

Skyle looked like he was drawing a blank. “What do you mean?”

“What exactly happened to you these past couple days, what were those terrifying surges of energy that almost ripped the roof off your house, who the hell your parents are, when or how you went back to Sanctuary.. You know, that kind of stuff?”

“Oh.”

Leon poked his friend in the ribs. “Hey, no holding back on me now.”

“Yeah, I suppose not.”

So, Skyle told Leon what he knew about his parents’ past. He shared with him what had happened at Sanctuary, and about the darkness invading his soul. He spoke hesitatingly about the taint of his blood and the curse of the Aktaris.

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“Wait, so the Shadowblight really originates from the Aktaris in your mother’s homeworld?”

Skyle shrugged. “I guess so? From what you told me, the symptoms sound very similar to what ma described.”

“But that means that the Daemons have either allied, conquered or infiltrated the world of Lyria already.”

Skyle frowned for a moment, then stretched out his hand. With a mental summons, Fierro’s journal appeared in his grasp.

Leon blinked at that. “Hah, you’ve learned some new tricks.”

Skyle flashed a smile, but immediately started to riffle through the pages until he finally found a specific entry.

“Here, look.”

“Uh, I can’t translate that gibberish, alienboy.”

Skyle tried not to roll his eyes as he read out loud.

“The daemon horde continues its relentless onslaught, and leaves nothing but despair in its wake.

Sixty years, and what do I have left? My wife left this world before me, and all my children have spilled their blood fighting the daemon juggernaut.

I despair of this world. What hope can there possibly be before the inexorable tides of the daemon legions?

These days, I find myself thinking back on those days, back when it was all better. When the world was bright and that word, hope, it lit a fire in everybody’s eyes.

Back when I had a sense of purpose, when I was proud to look in the mirror and see a Knight Protector to the Lady.

I should have died on that day, spilled my blood and given my life on those steps, even knowing it was in vain.

Would it have eased the pain of bitter betrayal in the Lady’s heart? I know it would have done so in mine.

It is a regret that I shall carry to my dying day.

My lady, forgive me. Your servant has failed you. May you allow this unworthy one to swear fealty to you, should I be fortunate enough to encounter you in the next life.

Now, there’s only death before me.”

Skyle looked up from the entry, and found Leon as fascinated as he himself felt.

“I remembered this entry back when I first opened the journal in Sanctuary because of how sad it sounded. Now it begins to make sense. The Daemon Horde must have been waging war against ma’s world for all this time.”

“You think they’ve fallen yet?”

Skyle frowned for a moment, then shook his head. “If they had, ma would have said something about it. It leads me to think that some sort of breakthrough or truce was reached.”

“Why don’t you just ask your mother about it?”

Skyle shook his head, gnawing on his lip. “No, she said she wished to tell me more, but could not for the time being.”

Leon muttered something under his breath that Skyle didn’t quite catch.

“Huh? What?”

“I said, sounds like the typical bullshit story where the piece of crap author tries to seem all mysterious and shit, instead of just giving us the straight answers we need.”

Skyle smiled wryly at that. “If only this were just another story.”

Leon’s smile withered. “You’re right. This is dead freaking serious, farmboy. Forget all that shit about Daemons and other worlds. We have to find you a cure right flaming now.”

“Do you.. Do you think there’s a cure?”

The last of that sentence seemed to drift away with the wind, along with part of Skyle’s own soul.

A smartly delivered slap to the back of Skyle’s head almost made him fall off the ledge this time.

“Oww!”

“Don’t you start getting all weak and self-pitying on me now, you selfish prick. You chose to save my life at the cost of yours, so you better damn well find a way to cure yourself or I’m going to kill you.”

“You realize what you said doesn’t make any sense, right?”

Leon raised another threatening hand and Skyle surrendered with a chuckle.

“Fine, fine.”

Skyle drew a deep breath then, turning to look at the orange glow of the setting sun reflecting from the mountain below.

“You know, it’s not the taint or my blood that really hurts. I mean, it is sad and worrying, but I could grit my teeth and fight through it all.”

“Then what is it?”

“It’s Ria.”

“Oh god, the dream girl again?”

“She’s was not just a dream, Leon.”

The hushed tones instantly shattered the bigger boy’s derisive sneer. After a moment of watching his friend in somber silence, Leon finally spoke.

“What do you mean, was?”

Skyle began to cry then. Tears began to slide slide down his cheeks in a relentless torrent, and he knew he should be past this but he just wasn’t. He knew he should feel better about it, but he did not. He had a feeling weighing down his soul deep, very deep down, that told him he would never feel better.

Leon opened his mouth as if to say something, but the words failed him. His look was one of sorrow and frustration at his inability to help his friend. In the end, he had to settle for laying a comforting arm around his friend’s shoulders as they were wracked by heart-rending sobs.

“She died for me, Leon. She watched over my soul for hundreds of years, teaching me about life and what makes it worth living. She spent every day by my side, crying away my tears and laughing with my smallest joys. Now she’s gone. But you know the worst part? The worst part is that I can’t even remember her face anymore. I don’t know what her voice sounds like. I don’t even remember the color of her eyes or the feeling of her skin. She’s gone because she’s been torn from my memory and I can’t find her again no matter what I do.”

Leon sat quietly throughout this outburst, then sat quieter still as Skyle slowly, and in painful detail, explained all he knew of Ria. It was a heart-breaking tale, more so because of the obvious love that burned deeply in Skyle’s heart as he spoke of Ria.

Secretly, this shocked Leon because he had never heard of, let alone seen with his own eyes of love like this. It had clearly unmade his friend, and such power terrified him. Even more so because Skyle truly couldn’t even remember what Ria looked like anymore, let alone even the sound of her voice.

The girl Skyle loved now was a simple ghost, a shadow that would forever dwell within his heart and make its presence known only by the all-encompassing weight of its absence.

“I’m sorry,” Skyle said a long time later, wiping the last of his tears away from his cheeks.

“For?”

“For not telling you earlier.”

Leon waved that thought away.

“Ria, she knew about my curse, but I don’t recall her telling me anything about how to cleanse it.”

“You said you hardly remember anything about her at all.”

“No, I do remember some things. I remember many of her words. I remember her selfless spirit, her gentle wisdom, her incredible courage.”

“It sounds like you remember all the most important things, Skyle.”

Skyle drew a deep breath, then nodded. “I guess I do.”

“This taint, it’s important too. At least, to her it would be. She would not mind fading away from my memory because she probably knew how much pain it would cause me. This taint though, she would have found a way to tell me how to cleanse it.”

“So did she?”

Skyle shook his head.

“Seems like she either knew but didn’t tell you for some reason, or she didn’t know at all.”

“She knew.”

“How can you be so sure? Did she say that?”

Skyle shook his head, then smiled at Leon.

“She knew, because I could feel the hope in her eyes when she looked at me. It was like the sun rising after a long winter. She believed in me, Leon. I will not let her down.”

Leon tilted his head thoughtfully, then pursed his lips and nodded.

“Well, I’m not too sure about this whole love thing. To be honest, I’ve never really believed in such myself. But if that’s what it takes to get your ass moving, I’m not gonna complain. Love all you want, farmboy.”

Skyle nodded. “I will. I will find her again.”

“And I will help. Even if I think it’s a fool’s errand. Because I’m your friend.”

“Thanks, friend.”

Leon chuckled awkwardly at that.

“So, what’s the plan?”

“I plan to continue delving deeper into the Desolate Star Technique. Not only is it making me stronger by the day, but I feel like the secret to defeating my curse lies there as well. I will seek power by any measure I can, so that I can one day find Ria again. I will never give up, never surrender. How about you?”

Leon avoided Skyle’s eyes, staring down at his fist as he slowly opened, then closed it again.

Skyle waited, because he knew such decisions could not be lightly made.

“I will return to my own world, Skyle. I will snatch the reins of power from my treacherous siblings and the cold-hearted bastard that is my father. I will rise to the top of this world, and grasp power no mortal has ever known. When I do so, I will find a cure for your taint. I will banish your curse if it is the last thing I ever do. This, I do solemnly swear.”

Skyle looked like he wanted to say something, but in the end he closed his mouth with a wry smile.

“I will not take such a choice from you, Leon. I won’t thank you either. I don’t think things like that are needed between true friends.”

Leon nodded at that, a fierce smile upon his face.

“I won’t thank you either, Skyle. Let this be the unspoken understanding between us.”

Skyle nodded, more than happy with that.

“I will conquer the known world, Skyle. I will become Duke, then King, and finally Emperor and God. I will scour the ends of the world and burn it under the searing heat of my will until it yields and I finally find your cure, Skyle.”

“And I will rise within the shadows. I will become the Dark King whom no one knows and everyone fears. I will master the legacy of my blood and the powers of the Desolate Star. I will transcend my own limits, and meet you at the very top. We will one day become gods, you and I. Then I will flick your precious cure back at your face.”

Leon chuckled at that.

“Do you think we will be like that?”

“Like how?”

Leon narrowed his eyes as a rare, wistful smile rested upon his lips.

“Gods, each of us sovereigns of our own realms, fighting side by side and conquering worlds.”

“We will.”

“How do you know?”

“I just do.” Skyle shrugged, then smiled, remembering a similar conversation in a far away land.

“Yeah, me too.” Leon smiled as well.

Deep within his heart, Leon once again made his silent vow.

“Above all, beyond Kingship or even Godhood, I swear I will become a man who is truly worthy of your respect, my friend.”