“What’s wrong?” Liz asked quickly.
“Nothing,” I gasped in pain. “It’s all - fucking - psychosomatic.”
“Can I heal you?”
“No. Probably. Actually, now that you’re here. The System told me… I got a brain injury. Can ya help me… with that?” The pain ripped away all artifice in my vocabulary, and I had no interest in doing anything other than saying the words necessary to communicate with Liz.
“You have a brain injury?”
“Yeah. Car crash… ten years ago.”
I slowly returned to my feet as Liz approached me. She put a hand on my shoulder, causing some of the beetles to scatter in fear, before saying, “Heal Injury.”
A new pain passed through my head as my gray matter was knitted back together by Liz’s magic. Within seconds, the world around me seemed much clearer. Naturally, it’s hard to describe the effects of suddenly increased intelligence to someone who hasn’t experienced it, but the Mages, Priests, and Alchemists know what I’m talking about. My thoughts began to run faster, and my recollection of previous events became much clearer.
Naturally, this just meant I felt the beetles much more clearly. Another groan of pain escaped me, and I tried to keep my thoughts away from the pain by opening my [Menu] and looking at my character sheet once more.
Name: Vinzadir
Class: Eldritch Alchemist
Level: 6
MDC: 20+48/48
Body: 14
Fortitude: 16
Power: 13
Speed: 14
Mind: 19
Reason: 20
Perception: 19
Memory: 20
The slight sense of satisfaction I felt upon seeing my stats go up was a small comfort to the immense pain coursing through my body. There was nothing I could do to lessen the pain in any way, however. All I could do was find some dark corner to crawl into and wait for the hallucination to end.
“Did that help?” Liz asked.
“Nope. It just got worse, if you can believe it.”
“What’s happening to you? What are you seeing?”
“It’s nothing,” I said, wincing heavily. “I need to sleep. Please excuse me.”
Slowly, I began walking away from the RV and toward the outer perimeter surrounding Fort Bragg. I only managed to walk a few feet before Liz grabbed me by the wrist, and I stopped.
“Vincent,” she said, worry obvious on her face. “This is the most emotion I’ve ever seen you express. It’s clearly not nothing. Tell me the truth.”
I really wanted her to get out of my face, so I gestured to my arms where thousands of insectoid legs crawled over my muscles and sinew. “My mind’s telling me that bugs are crawling under my skin. I’ll be fine in an hour. I just need to wait out the pain.”
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“Holy shit…” Liz muttered.
“I could show you what it feels like, if you want,” I said, chuckling at the dark joke.
Liz paused for a second, as if she was seriously considering my offer. After a long second of silence, she said, “Sure, why not? I already experienced one of your hallucinations, why not another one?”
“No way,” I said, blinking in shock. Strangely, Liz’s willingness to experience such terrible pain on my behalf made me feel incredibly happy. “That was, uh, a joke. There are several reasons why I won’t do that, but… thank you for offering.”
“Don’t mention it,” Liz said, smiling. “Sharing your pain with others lessens the strain.”
Liz went back to the party soon after, and I retreated into the forest like Dr. Jekyll fleeing to his room. It was bad enough that Liz saw me in such a state. I absolutely did not want the others to see me in that moment of weakness.
I curled up against a thick tree about a hundred feet away from the campsite and tried to will myself to sleep. As I leaned against the tree, I realized that Liz was right. The pain of the hallucination had been lessened by my knowledge that someone else in the world cared that I was in pain. With that pleasant memory present in the forefront of my mind, I fell into a pleasant sleep. I hoped that, for once in my life, I would not be plagued by terrible nightmares.
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I stood once more in the old graveyard on the campus of UNC. Many late nights I spent standing in that graveyard, standing in a circle and chanting in Latin. This time, however, it was the middle of the day, and I was surrounded by Uruks and Gargoyles rather than tired college students.
It was the middle of the day, and the three dozen pine trees lining the graveyard had lost their leaves due to the cold winter air. Hanging from every single pine tree was a fresh corpse.
Seeing the bodies hanging in the air with terrified expressions pasted on their dead faces filled me with sadistic glee. I couldn’t recall why, but I knew they deserved it.
I stood at the top of the gazebo in the center of the graveyard, looking down at a battered and bruised Human who was pinned against the ground by three Uruks and a blond man with pointed ears. The man held against the ground had light brown hair and bright blue eyes.
There was something about the prisoner’s expression and countenance that annoyed me greatly. In his eyes, I could see an unwavering stubbornness and naivety that would make him absolutely impossible to negotiate with. This, paired with a powerful charisma, assured that he would be a problem for anyone he deemed his enemy.
The elf holding the man down spoke, breaking the silence. “Lord Octavian, the prisoner has confessed. We can say for certain that he was the one who killed Carlos Vega.”
Oh, that explained the people hanging from the trees, then.
Slowly, I stepped off the gazebo and walked toward the prisoner. My heavy Lord Regalia clanked as I walked, and the face-concealing helmet I wore made it somewhat difficult to see. Strangely, I realized that I could see out of my left eye once more.
I knelt down next to the prisoner and looked mercilessly upon him through the slit in my visor. “Is it true? Did you kill him?”
“Yes,” the prisoner said proudly. “We wanted to kill you, but killing your right hand man was a victory in its own right!”
“What should we do with him?” The elf spoke to me with concern in his voice. He was concerned that I would make the wrong decision and offer this [Hero] a trial as I had done in the past. Not this time. I had run out of mercy a long time ago.
I folded back the black hood of my cloak and removed the iron helm of my Lord Regalia. With cruel black eyes corrupted by the influence of the Archons, I looked into the prisoner’s terrified face.
“You really are Human,” the [Hero] said with shock and terror in his voice.
“Before I sentence you,” I began in a rasping voice, “I want you to know one thing. I don’t care about your anarchist movement or your rebellion against my nation. You have to die for one simple reason.” My face tightened as I fought the sorrow rising in my chest. “Carlos Vega was my friend.”
“W-what…?”
“Impale him.”
I cut the prisoner off before he could say anything else. My face broke out into a wide grin as I saw his skin turn white and a look of utter despair descended upon him.
“No, you can’t. Save me!” The prisoner chanted those two words, attempting to use some skill, I was sure.
Nothing happened, and my laughter filled the air. “None of your tricks will work in this graveyard!”
The Hero screamed out in denial as the Uruks brought out a long metal pike. I would have preferred it to be made of wood, but Spiritwood would be unable to penetrate his thick skin. Reinforced Mithril was necessary for such an occasion.
As the spike was slowly shoved through the Hero’s body, I sat on a gravestone and watched with rapt attention. When the Hero’s screams reached a fever pitch, my laughter rose to meet it.
For more than an hour, hollow laughter rang out in the central campus of UNC. It was a sadistic, rasping sound that filled the air like a miasma. Anyone that heard it knew that Lord Octavian had finally, truly lost his mind.