The fire blazed high into the night, and Celia enjoyed its warmth.
It was more in her mind than anything else, that she knew for a fact. She had no flesh to be warmed by it, though she did feel its warmth deep within her porcelain skin. And the heat leeched the moisture from her clothes and hair, which been dragged through the snow as she led the way up the mountainside to the highest part of the peak that wouldn't be lethal to her still-breathing comrades.
“So,” said the Muscle Wizaard, settling in next to her. “You look like you've got a lot on your mind.”
She glanced up at the large man. He'd started the hike up the mountain barechested, but Cagna had made him put on a crocheted sweater at some point. It was bright green with red stripes, and that combined with his red hat and loincloth made him look like one of the more northern varieties of elf. There was a kind in the far north that were said to specialize in toys, and he looked like the result of a liason between one of those and a frost giant.
“I wish I did,” Celia said, hugging her knees to her, then spreading out her skirt so that it would dry faster. “If I had more to think about, it wouldn't hurt so much. My mind wouldn't be stuck in one spot. All I'm thinking about right now is how I failed.”
“How we failed,” Said the Wizaard. “None of us got to the airship before it lifted off.”
“It was my fault. If I hadn't... I had to... you have to shout the activations or they don't work,” Celia rubbed her hands against her face, feeling porcelain clink together. “I didn't think they could reach us at that distance. I wanted to power up the armor and lead the way, and for everyone to follow while they focused fire on me. But I didn't communicate that, and once you're in the Steam Knight activation cycle you have to see it through or it fizzles.”
“So you couldn't tell us the plan, and we had to do what we thought was best. It's okay. That happens. It's like when you've got a good setup, and the other guy no-sells it.”
Celia blinked. “Excuse me?”
“Oh. Uh... it's wrestling words... things... terns? No wait, those are birds...”
“Terms?”
“THAT's it! Ohhhh yeaaah! Wrestling terms. So here's the thing, most wrestling is pretty simple unless both people are pretty evenly matched. But people don't pay to see wrestling unless it's a really good show. So when you know you're gonna get in the ring with another guy you try and talk to them beforehand, and work out a fun match for the crowd to follow. Really get them popping. Uh, that means excited and cheering and all.”
“I'm following you so far,” she said, dubiously.
“Yeah. And no selling is when you hit a guy with a flashy but weak move to make the crowd excited, but he acts like it didn't do anything at all. And yeah, most of the time it didn't, but you want the crowd to think it did, so they get excited. When he doesn't act hurt, then that's a no-sell. He's not selling it.”
“I'm still not sure what this had to do with the fight. Those cannonballs definitely would have hurt.”
“Yeah, but... uh, hang with me here. You don't always have the chance to talk to a guy before a fight. So you have to kind of read your partner, figure out how things should go, and wing it and hope he gives you good opportunities, and you catch all of his hits and play them up. Take a bump, I think that's called.”
“So I didn't read you well enough?”
“More like we didn't read you well enough. We didn't do enough talk beforehand, didn't have time to plan much, and you were using stuff we mostly didn't know about. So we improvised and it didn't work out.”
“I'd argue that it did,” Thomasi said, melting out of the shadows as he settled across the fire. “Your bear friend defused the situation without any serious bloodshed on either side.”
And oh, that was a roiling mass of emotions. Disappointment and shame and an undercurrent of anger, twisting inside her gut. She snapped her head aside, staring into the darkness past the tents.
“Oh no,” Thomasi said, standing and hurrying around to her. “I'm sorry. What did I say?”
“The truth,” Celia said, her voice thick, almost feeling like her throat was choking. Impossible without proper lungs, she thought, but here she was. “I was trusting Threadbare to follow my lead. But he didn't. He... he no-sold my hit.”
“I'm sorry,” Thomasi said, and she heard mud squish as he knelt next to her, saw a gloved hand on the periphery of her vision. “I didn't mean to stir up bad memories.”
“You didn't,” Celia said, her voice sharp. She hugged herself, ignored his hand.
“I'm sorry, but I think I did,” said the lanky man. “But we can talk about something else.”
“No. No,” Celia said, squeezing her eyes shut. “You did, damn it all. You're right. But that's a me problem, not a you problem. I need to be stronger. I can't get distracted by nonsense.”
She heard him shift, heard him sigh. “Bastien, could you give us five minutes please?”
“Sure thing, Tom.”
For someone so large, the Muscle Wizaard was light on his feet when he wanted to be, and she barely heard him as he moved away.
This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.
“You're not on a good path,” Thomasi said, in a low voice. “And I'd like to talk about that, if that's all right with you.”
“I know it's a bad path,” Celia said. “We almost got blown to smithereens, and we failed our first attempt. We need a win here, and soon, or morale will suffer more than it already has.”
“No, not that,” Thomasi said. “I mean that you're struggling with a death wish, and I'm going to guess that's been going on for a rather long time.”
Celia's eyes snapped open, and she swiveled her head to stare at him.
His face was somber and sad. “Can we talk about that?” Thomasi asked. “I'll understand if the answer is 'no.' It's hardly my place to demand anything, least of all this.”
Celia searched herself, tried to find the answer. But her intuition was silent. Threadbare had tried this several times, with more vague words, and more caution. And he'd always backed down whenever she told him that now wasn't the time, or that there was nothing he could do.
But Threadbare was family. This man, what was he? What did it matter if she answered, and the truth hurt him? There was no chance he was connected to the source of the problem, no chance he could feel in any way responsible.
No consequences if he thought her weak, or unhappy.
“We can talk about it,” Celia said, her voice subdued and soft. “Ask.”
Thomasi nodded, and looked toward the fire. Just as she thought he'd decided against asking her anything, he looked back to her and said “Have you wished you were dead? Or wished you could go to sleep and not wake up?”
“I don't sleep. Not anymore.” She was hugging herself again, she realized, and forced her arms back to her sides. “And I don't think I've ever wished I was dead, but—” she stopped.
But what?
She looked up to Thomasi where he knelt. His eyes were warm in the firelight, and his top hat reminded her of Threadbare's so much that it hurt. “But I wouldn't mind if I was dead,” she said, slowly. “That's the truth of it.”
He nodded, and his voice was matter of fact and calm. “Have you actually had any thoughts of killing yourself?”
Crack, went her skull in the chambers of her mind. “Yes,” she said, shutting her eyes. “For about half a year, now. It was getting harder to shut them out. But I don't have time for them, because I have to save Threadbare.”
“I see...” Thomasi pulled a stick from the pack they'd filled with wood and lichen on the way up, and tossed it into the fire. “Have you thought about how you would do this?”
“I have,” Celia said, staring into the fire herself. It was easier than looking into his face right now. She knew it was an act, knew he couldn't be that calm and ask these sorts of questions. Nobody could, not unless they were entirely heartless. “I'd just have to shatter my skull, then refuse to go into any soulstones. From what Graves tells me it'd be over in a few minutes. Without any pain, even.”
Thomasi chewed on that, almost literally. She saw his cheeks suck in, as his jaw moved. He's composing himself, she realized. It almost did some good to see a sign of humanity in him... which was strange, because he was obviously human.
Except... there was something off about him, she realized. Something about the way he moved, and carried himself. Something that had been nagging her as they went. Something wasn't right, and she couldn't say what it was.
Oblivious to her sudden suspicion, he continued. “Have you had any intetion of acting on these thoughts of killing yourself? Or is it more a case that you have the thoughts but definitely won't act on them?”
“I won't,” Celia said quickly. “I can't be weak. It would cause too much of a mess for everyone.”
“So you don't have a plan to do it?”
“No. No I don't,” Celia said. “That would... no.”
“In the past three months, have you done anything, started to do anything, or prepared to do anything to end your life?”
“No! No, I just said...” she stopped.
“Yes?”
“I haven't prepared anything per se,” Celia said slowly, “but there's been a number of things that I've avoided starting. Things that I left overdue, because I knew I wouldn't finish them. Friends that I've avoided because I didn't want to put the effort in when...” her voice trailed off.
“I've good news for you then,” Thomasi said. “I don't think you're in danger of suicide.”
“Of course not!” she snapped. “I'm not. That would be...”
“...weak,” Thomasi finished. “But you are under a lot of strain. And you're starting to not care if it DOES kill you. I think... there's a condition where I come from called PTSD. You're showing signs of it.”
“A condition? I can get Fluffbear to get rid of that easily, if there's a hidden condition affecting me,” Celia glanced up the slope to the south, where a lone teddy bear in shining armor patrolled by moonlight.
“Ah... no. It's not that easy,” Thomasi sighed. “This world... well, the way it works, is that not everything that affects your mind shows up on your status screen. Like Kayin's ADHD, for example.”
“A Dee what?”
“That's a whole other explanation. Let's just say that the mind is an amazingly flexible organ. So to a certain degree, it's going to accept shifts and changes as just adapting to new situations, rather than conditions. I have a feeling PTSD would only show up on a status screen if it got to an extreme case.”
“So it can't be cured by a Cleric?” Celia frowned. “I've never heard of invisible diseases before.”
“That's because it's more about behavior than anything debilitating, I think. Under certain situations, PTSD and ADHD are helpful. But they cause problems when you're out of those situations. Combat and hardship are dangerous places, but most people don't spend the majority of their lives in them. So if you evolve to survive at all costs in the most horrible of circumstances, then things get better... well, it makes sense that certain behaviors are going to be hard to unlearn.”
“Oh, that,” Kayin said, melting out of the shadows and nearly making Tomasi jump into the fire in surprise.
“How did you...” Celia said, then shook her head. It was Kayin. You never quite knew where she was on a good day, and this wasn't that.
Oblivous, the catgirl doll continued. “Commander Tane used to tell us about how a lot of old soldiers he knew got so good at fighting that they couldn't handle peacetime. That they'd try it and it just didn't make sense anymore, and they felt like everyone was just waiting to jump them when they weren't looking. It, uh... it didn't end well for a lot of them.” Her eyes strayed over to Celia, and Celia looked away.
And as she did, she saw a shape in the sky. “Incoming!” she snapped, backing up and glancing around to the nearest tent.
“Oh yeah!” Kayin said. “That's probably Madeline. She whispered me, that's why I came back here, right. I was going to tell you she was here!”
Celia's eyes went wide. “Finally! Please go wake the rest up, gently. And Kayin... thank you. We'll strike camp and get ready to go now.”
The catgirl doll scampered off cheering.
Thomasi turned to go as well, but stopped when Celia tugged on his pant leg. “A moment, please,” she said.
“Of course?”
“Thank you.”
“You're welcome of course, but I'm not sure I did much.”
“You gave my problem a name,” Celia said, and felt her face settle into a clench-toothed grin. “And if it has a name, I can fight it. I can hunt it. I can figure out how to deal with it. So thank you, for pointing me toward the right enemy.”
Thomasi looked down at her, eyes wide and glimmering in the firelight. “I can't promise I'm entirely right. I just think this is the problem.”
“It feels right. So until I learn something different this is what we'll go with,” she said, and patted his leg. “Now let's get going. I've got an ass to kick and a bear to retrieve.”