Chapter 61 – A Shattering of Friendship

At the same time, without uttering a word, Adam and Caine craned their necks to where Oliver fought the Root monster. He looked back when he saw Adam and Caine, lying on the ground in front of each other, without fighting. They stared at him in utter disbelief.

Oliver’s expression switched to an icy calmness. ‘He’s a good actor,’ Emily’s voice echoed in Adam’s head. ‘He even did espionage missions.’ Oliver spoke words Adam couldn’t hear and the Root monster froze in its tracks. Instead of attacking, it gently picked Oliver up and placed him on the petals of the massive flower on top of its body. After a dismissive wave of Oliver’s hand, the monster whipped out two massive tentacles towards Adam and Caine.

Adam gaped at the sight; his body was frozen in pure shock. “No, Oliver, after all we…” Adam stammered softly. “Why?”

Caine turned over and started crawling away. “Adam, wake up! We need to leave, now!”

Adam saw his body move alongside Caine, the man he had hated only minutes ago. It was surreal, like a dream, as if Adam saw a memory happen before him. Barely conscious, his mind numb and slow, Adam pulled himself forward over the wet ground. A gaping wound, an abyss of sorrow, had opened in the place where Oliver’s friendship used to be.

Adam remembered the dream where he had hugged Caine until he felt the daggers in his back. Only this time, it was Oliver who stabbed him. Oliver smiled at Adam before his mind’s eye. ‘Aves knows you aren’t perfect. But I believe you, buddy. And I’m with you to the end,’ the bastard’s voice echoed in Adam’s mind.

Shadows of tentacles covered Adam and Caine as they crawled. Adam elbowed forward, gritting his teeth in his attempt to ignore the gruelling pain. But I’m so tired… His arms weighed like lead; his legs screamed at him to stop.

When the massive limb came for Adam, he was barely able to roll away. He lifted his arms to defend himself, but it was all in vain. The Overgrowth vines and thorn bushes that made up the tentacle snaked their way around his ankles, knees, neck, and arms. Adam grunted in pointless defiance, but his arms were pressed to his back as a thick mass of vegetation bound him. Beside him, Caine was lifted upside-down by his ankle before the vines bound him as well.

Slowly, the tentacles moved Adam and Caine towards the flower on top of the monster’s body, on which Oliver stood. Another mass of branches and thorns held Emily, red-faced in fury and gagged with purple leaves. There was no sign of Desdemona.

“Finally,” Oliver said with a blissful haze in his blue eyes.

“Miserable piece of shit!” Caine spat, his face almost purple with rage. “You Tainted both of us! You turned us against each other and planned all of this!”

“Oh, I planned it for years, dreaming about this exact moment,” Oliver said calmly. “You’re an irrational, unpredictable bunch of pellet-headed idiots, so I had to improvise a lot along the way. But I did it. Caine, you finally turned up at the right spot in the Realm. And all of you tired yourself out way too much by fighting each other, handing me the perfect opportunity on a silver platter.” His chest rose with pride when he inhaled as if savouring a well-deserved moment of glory. “I won.”

“You won?!” Adam screamed. “You stabbed us all in the back! You tore apart all the bonds we had! And for what? You—”

“Silence them,” Oliver said, with a grin on his reddened face.

The vines that bound Adam tightened while thorned, purple leaves gagged him. His screams were muffled, so he vainly bit into the leaves with all the strength he had left.

“Peace and quiet,” Oliver whispered. He smiled in a mix of euphoria and manic rage. “And now, for the first time since our childhood, the lot of you will listen to me for once. To silly, short, stupid Oliver! The perpetual victim of all your dumb jokes! Funny, huh, to ridicule me all the time, like your stupid prank in the stables? Hilarious, to break down my every chance for a bit of status! Every single one of you always looked down on me; being better at fighting, better at love, better at careers, better at everything! But not anymore...”

He beckoned at Caine to come closer. Caine tried to wrestle free, but the vines held him tight as a vice and brought him forward.

“How does it feel?” Oliver breathed, mere inches from Caine’s trembling face. “To not succeed for once, ‘Mr. Gifted?’ Our very own ‘prodigy,’ bah! You never had to struggle to succeed. You’re just a gifted piece of shit with rich parents, that couldn’t bat his eyes without rising ranks within the Starwing Order.” Oliver’s smile tore with rage. “Arrogant swine! Every day you reminded us of all your great achievements, knowing perfectly well that I grovelled in the dirt! Scrambling for mere change! And the one time I had someone who loved me…” Oliver’s purple face trembled as he got even closer. “You remember Erica, don’t you, from back when we were eighteen? Don’t lie…” Almost tenderly, Oliver lifted Caine’s chin. “I saw you two in your memories of the Green Hare.”

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Oliver started screaming in a high pitch, his eyes bulging in fury as he punched Caine in the face. In his howl, he spewed out what seemed like years of delusional, bottled-up rage and kept hitting Caine wherever he could with wild, unpractised swings. “She. Was. MINE. You. ASSHOLE!” Oliver screamed between punches. Caine scrunched up his face in pain and grunted. “For ONCE I had someone to call my own! Did it feel better than all your other women, huh? To steal one behind my back?!” Oliver screeched. “Oh! But luckily, I had a good ‘friend’ who knew all along!”

At Oliver’s gesture, the vines yanked Adam towards him. Adam squirmed and wriggled, trying to find an opening, a chance to get free, but the vines were too tight. Oliver’s fist hit Adam on the nose, on his temple, and in his stomach. “Too bad you forgot to tell me!” Oliver screamed between his panting, the blue vein on his forehead almost seemed to burst with fury.

Oliver grabbed Adam by the hair. “Oh, does it hurt? Is our big man not strong enough?”

In Adam’s fury, he felt the blood rush to his face. He bit the gag of vines and leathery leaves as hard as his exhausted body allowed. His eyes bored into Oliver’s with all the pain, all the hate he had inside him.

Oliver stared right back and got even closer. “Never thought I’d beat you, eh? The one you never bothered to tell about Reminiscence, while you’ve taught Caine all about it.” He backhanded Adam hard enough to make him momentarily see yellow flashes. “See where your damned Forbidden Arts have gotten you? I told you so often. At every turn, I tried to save you because I’ve seen you go down that path before, to your own destruction. Do you know what that’s like? To be powerless to save someone you truly care about?” Oliver’s lips formed a thin line after he spoke the words. Old pain lay behind the furious eyes. “That you didn’t Believe, risking the world’s destruction, was horrendous enough. but to blow up Ziecherhein, the holiest site of Aves…” Oliver closed his eyes and shuddered. “Indescribable. And then, I brought you here. The perfect opportunity to learn about Reminiscence! To remember all you once knew. And what do you do? Turn back to the Forbidden Arts and the same mistakes!”

With a burst of strength, Adam’s teeth cut through parts of the tough vines. Without a chance to spit them out, he swallowed the bitter vegetation. “You never cared about—”

Fresh vines and leaves bound his mouth again. Adam groaned and struggled, but it was futile.

Oliver laughed humourlessly. “You knew I was going to ask out Emily! You promised you wouldn’t go after her! And who do I see snuggling so closely in the Green Hare?”

Caine gave Adam a surprised, indignant look at that.

“You actually believed you were married, and you still did it!” Oliver bellowed.

Adam was stunned. He even seized his attempts to bite through the vines. A cold weight seemed to grow in his stomach as his mind struggled to process what Oliver had just said. ‘Believed?!’ No. No, no, no, you can’t mean...

“Oh, Catherine is married to Caine,” Oliver said matter-of-factly. “Sham of a damned relationship, but it’s true. Truly fascinating what the Taint can do, huh? Try to deny you deserved it, I wonder what the soldiers who died in Ziecherhein would think of it.”

Adam was too stunned to struggle. He remembered how Catherine didn’t recognize him and fought to protect her child. How she had a tattoo he didn’t recognize. How Adam had trouble remembering the little things together, that his memories about her and Eric felt tampered with. They were tampered with, they were all fake. I… Adam remembered Eric’s smile when Adam supposedly sang him a happy birthday song.

Caine looked at Adam with a pitying, apologetic expression. It’s true. He knows I’ve been Tainted to believe otherwise. I’m… alone.

Something broke inside of Adam. For so long he’d persevered, struggling despite all the pain and hardships. To save his family, to see them smiling at him again. Only to find out they had never smiled at him at all. Tears formed in the corners of his eyes. The grim realization set in that he had nothing to go back to, nothing but regrets and darkness.

Oliver turned away from Adam, letting the Root monster drag him away with an absent-minded wave of his hand. Then, he turned to Emily.

For a while, Oliver just stood there, staring at Emily in silence, as she tried to squirm away.

Oliver spoke softly, with a quiver in his pale lips, “I would have given you the world. Everything you ever wanted.” Oliver swallowed noisily. “I planned out every letter, writing and rewriting them a thousand times. To get them perfect. Hoping my words could give you a glimpse of all you mean to me.” He shivered, and a familiar blue vein bulged on his forehead. “How often I’ve dreamed about you. How many hours I watched you, admired you from the shadows, these past years.”

Emily stopped her struggle for a moment. She stared at him with utter astonishment in her wide-open eyes.

“What? It was to keep you safe!” Oliver bit off the words. “Zachalynn didn’t trust you so she wanted you gone! So, I did all I could to keep you from harm, to gather proof you weren’t a Pendulum.” He closed his eyes and shook his head. “I was so… disappointed. You just blindly followed your brother all along.”

Emily’s eyes narrowed in rage. She screamed at him through her gags and struggled despite all the new branches that grew around her to keep her still.

“The truth hurts, doesn’t it?” Oliver whispered. Then he clenched his hands, his reddened face torn with rage. “But how much do you think it hurt me, to see you with men who didn’t deserve you? To watch in the shadows during your dates, telling myself you didn’t know better. After all I’ve done for you! After the promotions I arranged for you within the Starwing Order! After I showered you with letters, attention, and compliments! And then you dare turn your back on me and go with mindless muscle-heads who treat you like shit?” He panted, his throat quivering in indignation. “I EARNED YOU!” he howled at the top of his voice, eyes bulging.

Silence fell over them. The only sounds were the vague clatter of rain and the distant fight between the Roots and the Thalers.

Even though the endless loss and the shock of what Oliver had become hadn’t subsided, fury took over within Adam. He struggled against the vines with trembling muscles. Once again, he bit the vines with all he had, eating through out of pure necessity. Earned?! She’s not a possession! She’s not some coat or rank you can buy or earn! She’s a human being!