“Care to explain yourself?” Orion yelled as he gripped the clearly injured Felsteg by the jerkin and pulled him up straight. The man appeared half dead, with numerous cuts to his face and significant swelling in his eyes and nose.
“You guys are in danger. My Party—”
“Your party?” Arika demanded. “Was it your party that stabbed the defenders in the back with daggers?” She raised an eyebrow at the black, softly glowing daggers sheathed at his side, emphasizing her question.
Orion glanced down at the green glow emanating off of the daggers, surprised that the system would consider Felsteg a friendly entity.
“N-no.” He coughed, held upright only by Orion’s trembling fist. “The other rogue, he—” Felsteg cut off, his eyes going wide.
A barely audible thud sounded, along with a gasp and the shattering of glass. Orion turned, but only saw a wall of color as a green cloud rushed at and engulfed him. He gasped instinctively, his mouth filling with a chemical taste as the cloying gas filled his lungs.
His body burned. He coughed and tried to hold his breath, but his lungs instinctively gasped for fresh air. No fresh air could be found, however; his chest filled once more with the sickly gas.
He realized he’d fallen to his knees, so he tried to crawl his way out of the noxious cloud. He didn’t know exactly how far he got before he collapsed completely, but it wasn’t far.
He blacked out on his side, coughing and wheezing for air.
***
The first sense that returned to Orion was that of a splitting headache. He squinted his eyes open to the sun high above him in the sky and quickly shut them again. Groaning, he rolled from his back to his front and to all fours—or tried to, anyway. He could roll to his front, but he found his arms and legs unmoving.
Flashes of his memory suddenly returned; a thud, the shattering of glass, an all-encompassing cloud of toxic gas, the sensation of being unable to breathe, and the choking and coughing that brought back a familiar rush of adrenaline and anxiety.
He opened his eyes to the glaring late-morning sun and tried to reef his arms from his side, but thickly knotted rope held them firmly to his torso.
He reached for his abilities. He tried to Portal away, then he tried to Swap the ropes off of his body. None of his abilities worked—they felt out of reach, like they were locked away from him.
Something struck him in the side—hard. He let out an involuntary groan and tried to curl in on himself, but the rope restraints covering most of his body held him still, as did the boot that firmly planted itself on his chest after the blow.
He clenched his jaw, trying to work through the pain and see what was happening. A dark shadow blocked out the sun as his vision sluggishly returned to focus. Dark, shoulder-length hair draped down around a face bearing angry eyes and a look of disdain.
Cain grunted dismissively as he continued to stare down at Orion, his boot still firmly planted and holding Orion still.
“Cain? What the fuck are you doing?”
“Haven’t pieced it together yet, moron?” Cain sneered. “Though I guess it’s surprising you can talk at all considering how much paralytic toxin I dosed you with.”
Orion’s thoughts swam, and he struggled to piece together the puzzle in his mind that would make sense of what was happening. His thoughts felt thick and syrupy as he tried to force himself to focus.
He recalled defeating the giant snail, then Gileal left, then… someone had shown up… Felsteg! He had shown himself, but he was beaten and bloodied. The last thing he said was a warning of another rogue.
The look of panic on Felsteg’s face crossed Orion’s mind. That had been the last thing Orion saw before the world descended into chaos. A thud from behind, an involuntary gasp, shattering glass, and poison. Cain disappearing from the fight and not returning despite being completely healthy, the dagger marks in the back of the southern defenders, the soft green glow that had been on Felsteg’s daggers as he got closer to Truth, and the lack of glow on Cain’s daggers when he glimpsed him upon their arrival to the boss battle.
Orion’s eyes widened as the realization struck. The look must have been plainly visible on his face, because Cain smiled and put more pressure down on Orion’s chest with his booted foot.
He grinned sadistically. “You realize the situation, then?”
Orion looked around, seeing the prone forms of both his party and Cain’s, all of which were similarly covered in rope. Gizmo was on the ground beside him, unrestrained but not showing any signs of life—his usually colorful screens blank. Orion’s gaze paused on the unconscious form of Arika before he returned his eyes to the man standing above him.
“You… why would you do this?”
“I’m not one for explaining myself, but I suppose we have some time to kill before our primary targets regain consciousness, don’t we, guys?”
“Yep,” and, “Sure do,” two voices responded, the former deep and gravelly, the latter nasally and whiny.
Two people stepped out from behind Orion’s head and into vision. Brick and Kauri. They dragged someone between them, limbs held tightly to his side with rope in the same manner as everyone else.
It was the beaten and bloodied form of Felsteg, somehow looking even worse for wear than when he’d last seen him. He had fresh cuts on his face, and his nose was so misshapen as to leave the man unrecognizable.
“You’re working with these monsters?” Orion spat.
Cain laughed.
“Can you really call anyone else a monster when your party-mate and girlfriend spent the first few days in this world murdering people in cold blood?”
“She was tricked into doing so by your new friends!”
“No,” Kauri said, “She was tricked into doing so by this monster.” He let go of Felsteg’s arm, as did Brick, causing the unconscious man’s body and head to fall to the street.
“Bullshit!” Orion yelled. “I was there when you guys tried to kill me—repeatedly!”
“And?” Brick asked. “Do you really think we had a choice? After we joined Felsteg’s party, it was do as he said, or get killed ourselves.”
“That’s such fucking bullshit. You could have stopped at any point. You could have stood up for yourselves if you really didn’t want to go along with it. And you!” Orion turned his head to Cain. “How can you really complain about Arika when you are the one that killed all those people at the southern gate?”
“In my defense…” Cain gestured at Brick and Kauri. “That was all of us.”
“That…” a soft voice groaned. “That was you?”
Orion turned his head to see Frida squinting up at Cain. She had a small pool of blood beneath her, and the back of her cloth robe was tinged with the still-wet liquid.
“Ahh, you’re with us now, too,” Cain said, ignoring the question. “Good. That means it shouldn’t be long before the rest of you wake up.”
“I thought you couldn’t use your paralyzing toxin ability yet?” Frida’s face scrunched in confusion, the gas still clearly affecting her mind. “You said it couldn’t—you said—”
Cain laughed uproariously.
“I said I couldn’t use it. That’s right—a half truth. It gives me the ability to bottle up the charges, each time increasing the area of effect and potency. What I really meant was that I couldn’t use it until it had gotten strong enough to take everyone down at once.”
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
He giggled and swept his hair out of his eyes.
“And the best part of all—I get bonus experience the longer an enemy is under the effect of the toxin, even if that enemy would not usually grant me experience. I’ll kill you all and get rewarded for it.”
“Why?” Frida asked, the puzzled look still on her face, “You—You stabbed me…”
Cain removed his foot from Orion’s chest as his head spun towards Frida, a touch of madness on his face.
“Yes! You’re right, I did stab you! Because you’re a fucking coward who is willing to forgive that whore and her master that told her to kill us!” He gestured at Arika and Felsteg. “You’re all cowards. Every. Last. One of you.”
Frida’s face sobered slightly at his words and she glared hatefully at him.
“So you think it’s totally fine to murder scores of people at the southern gate potentially killing everyone in Valbrand with the monsters that would then enter the town, but you literally stabbed me in the back because I was willing to forgive someone that killed us a single fucking time?”
Cain cackled, more than a hint of madness entering his laugh.
“How can you not see it? Their actions MADE ME THIS WAY!”
He stopped laughing abruptly and gritted his teeth in an inhuman snarl. He walked over to her, his face becoming hidden from Orion.
“Do you think any of this really matters anymore? Do you think any of the deaths actually matter? None of the NPCs are even real!”
“Of course they matter! Every life matters!” she yelled with tears in her eyes. “I thought we were friends. We worked so hard all this time, we had so much fun together… all for you to betray us like this and throw our lives away?”
“Friends? Do you really think I could trust cowards? We stopped being friends the moment you sided with that psychotic bitch, you just didn’t know it yet.”
A noise of derision escaped Orion’s throat.
“You have no right to call anyone psychotic. Do you really think these two goons won’t stab you in the back the same way they did Felsteg?”
“We didn’t stab him in the back,” Brick said. “He’s the one that ordered us to go all goody-goody after he got his memories back—like that shit changed anything. He made us go down the path of killing people and stealing from them, then tries to pretend like none of that happened, and that we’re the bad guys for not wanting to change. He didn’t even ask, just ordered us, thinking we were his dogs that would follow every whistle.”
“Exactly,” Kauri agreed. “He betrayed us, not the other way around.”
Honeypot wheezed a laugh that ended in a cough. “I’m curious, Brick. How is it that you manage to stand upright without a spine?”
“The fuck did you say to me?” Brick walked over to Honeypot and looked down at him.
“Let me get this straight,” Honeypot said with a weak voice. “You claim Felsteg made you kill people, but you also freely admit that when he tried to get you to stop killing people, that was the moment you decided a mutiny was in order? You blokes jumped ship the moment he tried to stop you from being the giant piece of shit that you are—”
Brick kicked Honeypot in the side with a terrifying blow, his armored boot almost folding Honeypot in half. A pained grunt escaped Honeypot as he slid half a meter from the blow.
“Say all the words you want. It’s like Cain says; we would never have been like this if we didn’t meet Felsteg, right Kauri?”
“Right! If not for us meeting him, we would have been honest people in this world.”
“That’s why we need to exercise him and his bitch of a dog like you said, right boss?” Brick asked Cain.
Honeypot laughed with a pained tone. “It’s exorcise, or maybe you meant excise?”
“You wot?” Brick asked.
“While I’m not surprised you don’t know what exercise is, I believe you meant to say excise or exorcise, you mouth-breathing, brown-nosing, back-stabbing, testicularly-lacking—”
“Shut up!” Brick yelled and kicked Honeypot again, cutting off the tirade. “I know what I meant to say!”
Honeypot folded again, skidding to a stop and letting out a pained groan.
“Why not kick someone your own size, coward?” Shadow asked with a voice like he’d been drinking all night.
Orion glanced a look towards the warrior, having to bend his back to see him. Shadow was glaring hatefully at Brick, and to his right, Angus was stirring. He could make out the limbs of Truth and Archer from behind the two warriors’ giant frames, but he couldn’t see any movement from them.
“What—What’s doing on?” a feminine voice asked, and Orion twisted his body to see Arika looking around in confusion.
Cain stepped over Orion, heading straight for her.
“Nice of you to join us finally. We’ve been waiting ever so patiently!”
“W-What are you talking about?” Arika asked, and Orion could see panic blossom on her features as she tugged at her firmly restrained hands. “What’s happening?”
“Shut up, bitch!” Cain snarled and kicked her in the stomach. “Speak when you’re spoken to!”
She gasped in pain as he struck her abdomen, and Orion let out an involuntary noise that was somewhere between a grunt and a growl at seeing her hurt.
“Don’t enjoy seeing your girlfriend kicked, huh?” Cain asked Orion with a wicked smile. “Why don’t you do something about it? Oh, right, you can’t!” He laughed mockingly before turning back to Arika. “Not everyone has forgiven your actions, and as your friend so eloquently put it, you’re going to be excised as a result.”
“Huh? W-what? What’s going on? Orion—”
“I said shut up!” He bent down, grabbing her by the hair and causing her to yell in pain. He started dragging her further out into the blackened street.
“Let her go!” Orion yelled, but Cain paid him no mind.
“You’re a craven piece of shit, you know that?” The gruff voice of Angus asked.
Arika yelled again as Cain dropped her head to the ground.
He marched over to Angus.
“I’m craven? You are the ones that betrayed ME!”
The silence that followed was broken by a snort from Angus.
“Pathetic.”
“Angus is right, Cain,” Archer added with an audibly dry throat. “You’re the only coward here. I can’t believe we saw you as a friend.”
“Like I give a fuck what you think! You’d rather kiss the ass of the person that killed us and took everything we had than face her in battle.”
“If you truly felt that way,” Truth said weakly, “you should have told us. You should have brought your concerns to us, and we could have spoken about it. That’s what a friend would do.”
“That’s what a man would do,” Frida added. “A coward would plot and scheme behind everyone’s backs.”
Cain cackled again, the sound oozing with madness. He laughed long and hard, having to pause afterwards to catch his breath. He sighed contentedly, then raised his head and took them all in, tied on the ground before him as they were.
“You know, I considered leaving you all alive. I really did. Other than Felsteg and Arika, of course. I planned to leave you here on the first floor. After all, you’re all victims of circumstance as well. You would never have betrayed me had they not corrupted you.”
He unsheathed a dagger, inspecting the jagged edge with an unmoving eye.
“But now, I think I’ll enjoy killing each and every one of you. You’re too far gone. Like diseased livestock, it’s probably best if I put you down to save the herd. We'”
Archer scoffed. “You already said you were going to kill us all for the experience, you deranged psycho. Did you already forget your own plan?”
Cain paused at the words, squinting and looking disoriented for a moment before continuing. “Regardless, the point is that it’s your own fault you’re going to die.” He straightened up. “I’ve had enough of your goading.”
He walked back towards Arika.
“We wouldn’t want the event to finish and death no longer be permanent, would we?”
A wet coughing drew Orion’s attention as the misshapen form of Felsteg began to regain consciousness. He rolled to his side, groaning with the effort. He continued to cough and hack as Cain waited for him to finish.
“Perfect timing, Felsteg. We’ve been waiting for you,” Cain said with a fake smile after the coughing subsided.
Felsteg felt his teeth with his tongue before spitting out a bloody tooth at Cain’s feet. The spittle that accompanied the tooth landed all over Cain’s boots, adding extra blood to the already stained man.
“Line them all up against that wall,” Cain said, ignoring the gesture and pointing at the charred wall of a wooden home. Some of the lava rain had landed on the building and left scorch marks across its surface, but the fires had guttered out before engulfing it entirely.
“They’re all finally awake, and it would be rude of us to deny the rest of them the show, would it not?”
Brick and Kauri started moving them roughly to the indicated wall, dragging them and propping them up so they could see out in front of them.
Cain went back for Arika, grabbing her by the hair and dragging her towards the middle of the street once more. She made a pained face, but didn’t cry out.
Orion had to try something. He had to stall for more time for the toxin to run out or someone to come find them. Could he bait Cain into more dialog? He was right next to Arika, so trying to insult him more might end up with a dagger in her throat. As Brick and Kauri set him against the wall, he called out desperately.
“Wait!” he tried. “If your goal is to hurt Arika, shouldn’t you kill me first? You should kill me first to hurt her, right?”
“Orion, no!”
“Shut up!” Cain slapped her hard on the face.
“Let me go!” She said through gritted teeth.
He bent down and hit her again, staring into her eyes.
“Fuck you!” She spat in his face. “Let. Me. Go!”
She pulled at her constraints, face contorting as she desperately tried to free herself from her rope-bound prison.
He giggled with glee.
“Doesn’t feel so good to be under someone else’s control, does it? It doesn’t feel so good to be hopeless before the power of another, does it?” He kicked her in the side, causing her to grunt with pain.
“Orion’s right,” Honeypot said. “Kill us first, that way—”
Honeypot cut off with a grunt as Brick punched him in the side.
“That’s enough from you, boy.”
“It’ll hurt her more if you kill us first,” Shadow said. “Kill us first.”
“Please, guys,” Arika said softly, a tear running down her cheek. “I don’t want—”
“Enough!” Cain roared, unsheathing a dagger and taking it to Arika’s side in one swift motion. He slammed it into place between two ribs. She gasped.
“Every time one of you speaks, she gets stabbed again!” He stared them down, daring anyone to test him.
Orion’s brain spun as he tried to think of a solution.
Silence spread over the street.
“Fuck,” Arika wheezed, “you.”
She started to shake, and what Orion thought was crying turned out to be something much more fierce. Tears still ran down her cheeks, but she stared hatred up at Cain, jaw clenched firmly together, facial features trembling in anger, and eyes resolved to defy her captor.
“I won’t be controlled by anyone, let alone you. You won’t break me, you piece of shit.”
Cain held the knife to her throat, bending down to stare her in eyes.
“What was that, bitch?”
“I said I won’t be controlled, you sanctimonious piece of shit.” She shook with her anger and frustration, tears falling, but no cry to be heard. “You. Won’t. Break. Me.”
Cain smiled cruelly as he pulled his hand back.
With a swift motion, he plunged the dagger into Arika’s neck.