Xaver sat upright in his cot, the small wolf pup on his lap, as Milly and Rain arrived at the clinic. Milly found it disconcerting to see the man absentmindedly stroking his familiar’s furry head while he stared forlornly out the window. It was the most affection Milly had ever seen from her former friend.
“I’m glad you’re finally awake, Xavier,” Rain said genuinely as she plopped herself on the end of his cot.
Xavier glanced over at Rain and Milly. He stopped petting the puppy and ignored the creature’s insistent head bumps that asked for more.
“The healer woman told me you’d survived,” Xavier replied. His voice cracked from lack of use. “You’re a tough one.”
Rain tapped his leg. “I’m not the only one who is tough. Thank you for saving me back there. It was very brave.”
“… Gorath was worth a lot of experience,” Xavier said dismissively, though Milly could see an uncomfortableness in his eyes at Rain’s gratitude. This man – who had been self-centered for as long as Milly had known him – struggled to take the compliment. “It wasn’t all about you, Rain.”
“Well, that just means some of it was about me,” Rain replied, skillfully dodging Xavier’s attempts to distance himself.
Caught speechless, all Xavier could do was shrug.
This isn’t the same Xavier I knew back at Acicentre, or even from the Arena. I don’t know whether that is a good thing or a bad thing. And, frankly, I don’t have the luxury of time to find out. Not anymore.
“When will you get out of the clinic?” Rain asked him.
“Day after tomorrow,” Xavier said. He shifted uncomfortably on his cot, which caused his familiar to hop off his lap. The puppy bounded across the cot, sniffed Rain’s hand, and gave her a lick. Rain started scratching the creature’s head, and it wagged its tail excitedly.
“I like your new puppy. Your prize from Tutoria? I saw this little guy in my own dream, but I went with the grey cat instead. His name’s Anchovy. Did you name this guy yet?”
“… Cerberus,” Xavier responded.
Milly rolled her eyes.
“He’ll be powerful when he grows up,” continued Xavier. “It was the best prize Tutoria had. At least, he was the best I could buy with only five points.”
There was envy in his voice.
Envy and something else? Worry? He didn’t even make it to the main battle. He knows we all got more points and better prizes than he did. He’s realized he is not as powerful as he thought he was, and that scares the shit out of him.
As Rain and Xavier continued to make awkward conversation, Milly studied her former friend.
In truth, Milly didn’t know what to make of Xavier anymore. Before the contest, he had been self-centered but tolerable, at least to her. Like many of their coworkers, Xavier did not have a good life. He was as alone as she was, and they became, at least on the surface, the closest thing to friends that either one of them had.
When the contest began, Xavier was so excited. It was his dream come true – to live his life in a video game. He’d taken her under his wing and showed her the basics. He’d given her the bravery she needed to venture beyond the tower. Without Xavier, she would have been no different than Minerva – scared and waiting for a CEO to kick her from the tower.
Yet as the contest went on, Xavier grew more competitive. More desperate. He’d left her behind – left everyone behind – to go it alone, believing everyone would just slow him down. He’d been so certain that his video game expertise would make him the most powerful player in this game. It had certainly helped, and he had grown quickly, yet it had not been the boon he thought it would be.
Milly had saved him from the goblin. Calista had taken down the giant centipede. Rain had done the critical damage to Gorath and Milly had finished him off. Xavier, the gamer, had been saved over and over again by three women whom he believed lacked the expertise and drive that he uniquely possessed to be the victor, as he had been in so many video games back in their old lives.
Each time they had saved him, it had driven him further away, and let more of his anger take over.
Did I see his true colors at the Arena of Choice when he tried to take all our rewards? Or did something happened in that Arena that drove him over the edge? While the Contest had changed Xavier, as it has changed all of us, it was the Arena of Choice that truly transformed him into what he is now. That was the moment our paths truly diverged.
Milly had seen such a transformation once before when she lived on the streets. There had been a young man that she’d see at the soup kitchen. He had been kind once, despite the abuse he had fled from. But he’d found his solace in drugs. Over the course of a few months, Milly had watched that once kind man deteriorate day-by-day. He became angry and hostile, and abusive in his own right. He’d had lucid, sober moments when his true personality shined through, yet he always returned to the drugs, and those moments became fewer and further between. In the end, the addiction claimed him fully, and no one had mourned his passing.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Xavier reminded her of that man. An addict, only his drug of choice was power. She remembered Xavier’s black blade, and she wondered what god her former friend had met in that cave at the Arena of Choice. What god had sent him down this path of self-destruction?
Milly wished she could help him. She wished she could have her friend back.
But three weeks is a long time in the God Contest. She was a girlfriend and a mother now, and the safety of her family trumped any loyalty she had once felt to the injured man before her.
“If you pop by Rain On My Parade when you get out of the clinic, I’ll fill you in on what you missed,” Rain concluded, giving the puppy one final scratch as she stood up. “I’ve made a potion for you, as well. It’s what we discussed before you left.”
“Yah… sure…,” Xavier said half-heartedly. “We’ll see.”
Rain glanced at Milly, worry in her eyes.
“Be kind, Milly,” Rain said telepathically to her. “We’re all in this together, remember.”
Milly didn’t respond. She gave Rain a quick hug and watched her head over to the elevator. A quiet tension fell over the medical clinic as the elevator closed.
“Some game, huh?” Xavier mumbled, as if desperate to fill the silence. “If we could do it all over again…”
“You killed Passi’s clan,” Milly said coldly as she cut him off. It was a statement of fact that left no room for debate.
“What?” Xavier replied, confused. “You mean that little fucking fairy monster? Why do you…”
The shard of ice that shot from Milly’s palm embedded in the wall behind Xavier’s ear. He reached up and touched his earlobe, and his finger came away with a touch of blood.
“Don’t you ever… ever... speak about her like that,” Milly spat with a fury she had never known. “You destroyed her life. You scarred her more deeply than you could possibly know.”
“Have you gone mental?” accused Xavier, as he healed the cut on his cheek with his healer’s touch. “She’s just a fucking monster!”
“No, she’s not,” spewed Milly, her anger in control of her words. “None of the fairies are. They are real, just like you and me. A new species, stuck in this game alongside us. Only they don’t know it’s a game.”
“That… that’s not… I was told…,” Xavier stammered, his face a mask of utter confusion as Milly’s declaration sunk in. “How do you even know that?”
“It doesn’t fucking matter how I know it, Xavier. It’s true. They are real, and you killed them.”
“Well… how was I supposed to know that? They look like monsters to me, and this game is all about killing monsters,” Xavier tried to justify. “How many monsters have you killed? How do you know some of those weren’t real?”
“They aren’t. It’s just the Fairies and us,” Milly insisted, though Xavier’s questions raised a tinge of doubt within her that cracked through her anger.
Xavier face was filled with both anger and, to Milly’s surprise, an increasingly intense sense of guilt. His anger wasn’t directed at Milly though. It was directed at the black ring on his finger.
“I guess you want an explanation. Or are you looking for an apology?” Xavier inferred.
“No, Xavier,” Milly said coldly before he could try either one. “I want you gone. Tonight. I don’t want to see you anywhere near Passi or Cally. Go back to the wilds and stay away from the fairies.”
“You can’t be serious, Milly,” Xavier protested. “You can’t do that. You’re not fucking in charge around here. You…”
Milly’s shot her arm out, and she lifted Xavier into the air by the throat using her telekinesis. She dangled him there, as his legs flailed and his hands desperately grasped at the invisible force around his neck.
Cerberus yipped loudly and tried to rush for Milly’s ankles to defend his master. Milly used channeled through her second hand and forced the puppy flat to the ground. Xavier glanced towards his new familiar, and his efforts to free himself doubled.
After half a minute, once Xavier realized he could not get free, Milly let the telekinesis fade. Xavier crashed down onto his cot, coughing. The wound on his chest reopened, and a trickle of blood began to soak into his shirt. Cerberus scampered over to his master. He stood defensively in front of the prone man and growled at Milly.
“You… you bitch…,” Xavier spat between coughs. “I’ll… make you pay… for that.”
“No, Xavier, you won’t,” Milly said defiantly. “You were stronger than me once, but I’ve far surpassed you. You pose as much threat to me as that familiar of yours.”
Xavier looked towards his former friend and saw the absolute certainty in her eyes. He changed tactics.
“Give… give me my sword then, and I’ll leave the day after next,” he bargained. “You have it, right? My black blade?”
There it was. Xavier’s addiction. Milly had suspected it could be the source. She had tasted its power once before when she had drained Gorath, and even that small taste had ignited within her a wish for another.
“If you don’t give it to me, I’ll die in the wilds,” Xavier added, growing more desperate. “Then you’ll be the murderer here, not me. You’ll have murdered your friend.”
Milly just stared at him coldly.
“It was given to me by a god, just the same as Rain and Calista. It’s meant to be mine,” Xavier added. “You have no right to take it from me.”
Milly withdrew the black blade from her inventory and held it in her hands. She could feel its dark power in her hands. It called to her, and she knew its connection to Xavier must be that much stronger.
She considered for a long while, watching Xavier’s eyes, fixed on the blade, grow more desperate with every second that passed.
“Who was the god?” Milly finally asked.
This time, it was Xavier that considered for a long while. She watched him subtly slip the black ring off his finger and stuff it in his pocket.
“Cizen,” Xavier finally muttered. “Some Mayan god of the dead.”
The revelation struck Milly like an hammer.
Cizen? The third architect of the thirteenth God Contest? I find Oracle’s memories, Rain becomes Hephaestus’ protégé, and now Xavier is connected to Cizen? This can’t be a coincidence. This is important, and I can’t ignore what it could mean. Do I take the risk?
Milly tossed the blade at Xavier’s feet. He looked up at her with surprise.
“If you use it against any person or fairy – ever – I will kill you. Do I make myself perfectly clear?” Milly threatened, and she left no doubt about the seriousness of her pledge.
“Yah… yah, I get it,” Xavier said, his hands caressing the blade. “I won’t. Only monsters.”
Milly walked towards the elevator, her point made.
“The… the whip,” Xavier said as she pressed the call button.
“What?” Milly asked, not bothering to turn to face him.
“Gorath’s whip. I need it for Cerberus,” Xavier said.
“That’s cruel,” Milly scolded.
“He’ll grow big. As big as Fairy Killer was, and Gorath needed that whip to control the beast. You don’t want Cerberus going after those fairies because I can’t control him, right?” Xavier explained.
Milly opened her inventory and took out the solid black whip. She dropped it unceremoniously at her feet as the elevator doors opened.
As she left the clinic, headed for home, Milly saw Xavier, still cradling the blade in his lap, slip the black ring out of his pocket and place it back on his finger.
She shuttered as she remembered the decayed god from the memory orb.
Cizen. It would explain much. How much of Xavier’s behavior is his own, and how much is driven by the touch of that god?