AN: Beta-read by
Carbohydratos,
Did I?,
Gaia,
Linedoffice,
Zephyrosis,
Mizu, and
Misty Raven-chan.
Chapter 67: Broken Hearts Can Mend
About a week after my return to Wyndia, I stepped out of my last afternoon lesson—today we'd been dealing with the logistics of shipping grain—to find Nina ready and waiting for me, hands on her hips and an absolutely fearsome pout on her face. "Why are you avoiding me?" she demanded.
"Why do you think I'm avoiding you?" I asked, confused.
"You've been hiding from me ever since you got back!"
"I've been busy—"
"I know when you're busy!" she interrupted me. "You're not busy after lessons, but no one will tell me where you are! Do you not want to play with me anymore?"
Lina's reflex was to assure her that I
did still want to play with her… but did I? Did
I, the Lina who was also Cass, want to play with her, or was I still reluctant to engage with the 'main characters' because I didn't trust my ability to treat them fairly?
Was that fear itself causing me to treat them unfairly?
What sort of weird narrative symbolism have I wandered into now? I wondered, uncomfortably reminded of my conversation with Deanna shortly after the end of our
Trek vacation.
"Lina?" Nina asked.
"Of course I still want to play with you," I said, and if it was a lie, it was a lie I was damn well going to live up to. "I'm sorry I've been distracted. What do you want to do today?"
Her response was to grab me by the hand and drag me down the hall.
———X==X==X———
Our destination turned out to be one of the larger courtyards in the palace, where Ryu and Teepo were playing with marbles in the grass.
"We're playing Hide and Seek," Nina declared imperiously.
"We're busy," Teepo said.
Unfortunately for him, Ryu defected immediately. "
I'll play with you," he said as he rose to his feet.
"Aw, Ryu, I need someone to play with!"
"Then you should play Hide and Seek too," Nina said, turning her weapon-grade pout on the boy. When that failed, she escalated to an equally dangerous scowl.
That worked.
"Here are the rules," she said, once Teepo had gathered up the marbles. "Three of us hide in the courtyard—"
"Just the courtyard?" Teepo asked.
"The castle's too big. We'd never find each other."
"Isn't that the point?"
"No, the point is to
hide, and that means the seeker needs to know where to look," Nina explained, visibly annoyed by the interruptions. "Lina's going to be the seeker."
"Why me?" I asked.
"You're too tall to hide."
"Am not."
"You
are tall," Ryu observed.
"I'm not even a hand taller than you are. Even less if you count that silly hair."
Ryu smoothed down the stray hair self-consciously, only for it to spring back up the moment he removed his hand.
"You can hide after you find us," Nina said.
"I'm going to hold you to that."
"Have to find us first!" she said. "Close your eyes and count to one hundred!"
I folded my arms and gave her a stern look. "That's way too long. I'll count to thirty."
"I'll be hidden in ten," Teepo boasted.
"You'll be
found in ten," Ryu told him. Teepo stuck his tongue out in response.
"Okay, thirty," Nina confirmed. "Close your eyes and start counting!"
After a count of thirty, I began to search. Ryu was the easiest to spot—that stray hair of his was sticking up from behind the bush he'd chosen. Nina had climbed a tree in the hope that I wouldn't look up, but a decade in a world where people could fly had drilled that habit into my head. Teepo was the hardest to find; he'd managed to wedge himself into a hedgerow in a way that couldn't have been comfortable.
"I won," he crowed as he fought free of the poking branches.
"I found you, though," I said.
"You found me
last," he informed me.
———X==X==X———
Hide and Seek went on until the sun dipped behind the walls of the courtyard, leaving the area too dark to continue. "Now what do we do?" Ryu asked Nina.
"Hmm…" Nina adopted the classic thinking pose for a few seconds before coming to a decision. "Let's draw!"
"Okay!"
"Drawing is boring," Teepo complained.
"What do you want to do?" I asked him.
"We're going to draw," Nina insisted, hands on her hips.
"You and Ryu can draw, and Teepo and I will do something else."
Nina brought out the pout again. "I
knew you didn't want to play with me!" she whined.
I didn't
not want to play with her, but I also didn't want to drag Teepo along if he wasn't having fun. "Okay, I'll draw with you," I agreed, "but then Ryu ought to keep Teepo company. It's only fair."
She glanced between Ryu and I, forehead wrinkled in thought.
"Me and Ryu will draw!" she declared, whisking the boy away before she'd even finished her sentence.
Teepo sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "What do we do now?" he asked.
"I don't care. What do you like to do?"
He hesitated. "Usually I sneak off once they're not paying attention and bother Rei."
"Do you know where he is?"
"Sleeping on the roof again, I bet." Teepo glanced wistfully at the roof overhanging the edges of the courtyard, then remembered I was here with a start. "Um… thanks for getting Nina to leave me alone, I guess," he said, his attention spent worrying the grass with his toe.
"You're welcome," I said. "Do you not get along with Nina?"
"I don't like her. She's mean."
I was fairly sure Nina didn't have a mean bone in her body. "What did she do?"
"She's always bossing us around and making Ryu do stuff."
Ah. "You don't like her because Ryu is spending time with her instead of you," I said.
"That's not true!" Teepo whined. "I don't care if Ryu likes her."
I folded my arms and gave him a look.
"Fine," he grumbled. "Maybe I miss Ryu a little."
"You need to find things to do on your own so you're not missing him when he's busy."
"Hmm…" Teepo paced back and forth as he thought. "Like what?"
"Why not attend magic lessons with me?" I suggested, recalling his comments on the journey over.
That got his attention. "You'd let me?" he asked. "Really?"
"Really."
And that was how Teepo came to join my morning magic lessons.
———X==X==X———
Playing with my sister and her friends gradually became part of my routine. My visits to the house dropped off, though I still made sure to go every week. I wasn't the only one sneaking out, either; Ryu and Nina had become fast friends, and often stole away into town to play with the city's children, sometimes with Teepo in tow.
My presence here had done Nina some good; as the second in line to the throne, she was afforded a bit more leeway in her behavior than I was, and she used every bit of it. On the other hand, her behavior did me ill, as I was often blamed for being a bad influence on my sister. The fact that she would have been just as willful without me was unfortunately impossible to demonstrate.
As for Zeke, dealing with him was… interesting. He was definitely not 'neurotypical', but his situation was too unique to have a label ready to go. He didn't have any issues communicating, but wasn't very good at interpreting or understanding emotions. He was likely smarter than I was, but had next to no emotional intelligence. He had every skill in the world and zero experience with them.
The good news was that he was curious enough to ask questions.
"Why do humans create art?" he asked me during my next visit.
"Why do you think?" I asked to disguise the fact that I had no idea.
"Deanna says that it fulfills a specific psychological need," Zeke said. "I asked why an organism would evolve a form of consciousness requiring such arbitrary behavioral rituals. She said it was an emergent property arising from the increased ability to communicate ideas and forge interpersonal bonds, but I didn't understand it."
"Hmm," I said, because I didn't understand it either.
"Do you create art?" Zeke asked.
"Me, personally?"
"Yes."
"I've tried," I admitted. "Most of it wasn't very good."
"Is it less fulfilling to create bad art?"
I had to stop and think about that for a while before I had an answer.
"I think so," I said. In hindsight, it probably wasn't the right thing to say.
In other news, Zeke's Imposter Syndrome was
bad; he simply couldn't accept that anything he did had any merit. Sculpting clay? Just geometry. Cooking a meal? Basic chemistry. "Stop
patronizing me," Zeke snapped when I made the mistake of praising his performance of Beethoven's Piano Sonata no. 21. "I don't compliment you for breathing, so don't compliment
me for being able to use my hands."
"He reminds me of me at that age," I told Deanna after he'd closed the piano with a hairbreadth more force than was appropriate and stormed out of the room.
"Really?"
"Yeah. I mean, I never
said it, but I didn't believe anyone who tried to tell me I was good at anything. I was sure people were only complimenting me because they felt… I don't know, pity or something. I think it stemmed from seeing adults make a big deal out of other kids doing things I found easy—like, I don't know, grade-appropriate math or following instructions—so even when I struggled with something, I just assumed they faked admiration for
everything kids did, rather than actually being impressed with me."
"If you'd been born forty years later, they'd have shoved
you in the robot," Ace said.
"What?"
He chuckled at his own joke. "You could put that whole speech in Shinji's mouth and the only part that would be out of character is the self-awareness."
The look of annoyance I gave him was not playful in the slightest. "Give it a rest," I grumbled. "There's more to me than some giant robot I'll never build, much less operate."
"That's not what I—"
I didn't want to hear it. "Anyway," I said, turning back to Deanna, "I was really
aware of my status as 'a kid'—I think most kids are, a lot more than adults in my world and time gave them credit for—and I think Zeke is feeling something similar."
"He's very aware of his status as a 'new' person," she agreed. "He can't avoid it; every thought or feeling he has is a reminder of how much he's been changed by the import."
"He
was changed, wasn't he?" I asked. "I mean, it's sort of unavoidable, but…"
"He compared it to having one's mind forced through an extrusion mold," Deanna said.
I cringed at the image. "That sounds… nasty. Like a violation, I mean."
"It may have been," she admitted. "Importing him was about more than putting him in a human
body; it was also about giving him a human
mind to go with it, with all that entails."
"I'm assuming Max asked for consent, first, but did Zion have the awareness to meaningfully
give that consent?"
"Difficult to say. If he didn't, then the decision would fall to Max regardless, would it not?"
What, like a pet?
I sighed and looked around the room for a change of topic. "Do you think he 'gets' anything from activities like that?" I asked with a nod towards the piano. "Pride, satisfaction, fun?"
Deanna nodded. "I think he does, or he wouldn't keep doing them… but I also think he dislikes feeling that way. Not only is he insecure about his 'merit' as a person, he resents having his behavior controlled by 'primitive neurochemicals'."
"Pretty rude to call us 'primitive'."
"When it comes to our brains, he's not wrong." She tapped a finger to her temple. "Everything we 'are' is running on a crude evolutionary-designed neural network—quite literally—and there are a lot of generalization errors and over- and undertraining."
"Mental illnesses," I said.
"Among other things. I was thinking more along the lines of inherited behaviors—like the reward systems related to food being based strongly on caloric content, rather than a more nuanced analysis."
Ace nodded. "Classic undertraining error."
"Are you sure you're not just trying to excuse your sweet tooth?" I joked.
"There is no excusing my sweet tooth," Deanna admitted happily. "I was going somewhere with the topic, though: the Imposter Syndrome you were describing is an overgeneralization error. You saw people praising things you didn't find impressive, and concluded that
no one found those things impressive, and that the praise must then be insincere."
"Pretty much, yeah."
"You said you
were sure people were patronizing you," Ace said. "You feel better now, I hope?"
"In some ways," I said. "I'm willing to take people at their word when they say they find something impressive, at least. On the other hand… it's still hard to take pride in things I find easy, no matter how impressive they might be to others. I can't measure difficulty objectively, so all I have to go on is 'well, that
felt easy'."
And now that the 'chain lets me cheat shamelessly, an awful lot of things 'feel easy'.
———X==X==X———
Teepo continued competing with Nina for Ryu's attention, with moderate success, and spent a lot of the remaining time in lessons with me. Our temperaments were well-suited for each other; he was stubborn and excitable, while I was flexible and laid-back, so we rarely clashed on anything. At my encouragement, he added more lessons to his schedule, including reading (which I had long since mastered even as Lina) and swordsmanship (which I had mastered
not as Lina). From what I overheard, his attitude made him unpopular with his tutors, but he
was learning, and quite quickly, at that.
That wasn't to say we paired off. Teepo and Ryu were still thick as thieves, and ended up as partners in swordplay lessons; on the other front, Teepo slowly came to accept Nina as a new member of his growing family. I, on the other hand, was apart—and wasn't that for the best? My presence hadn't distracted Ryu and Nina from their immediate bond of friendship, but there was both an extra princess
and an extra dragon in the palace. Teepo developing a crush on me would be awkward; that crush growing into something more would be abominable. I was
thirty fifty years old, now! It was all well and good to try and
act twelve, to treat others as Lina would treat them, but that didn't erase the fact that I had far too much experience and knowledge for it to be anything but an act.
The worry brought to mind Lisa's brutal takedown of my moral character decades ago. I was sure that memory wouldn't have faded even without the help of my perks.
My desire to do right by Nina meant I still participated in their games, but not as a member of the group—more like an older aunt humoring her nieces and nephews. That didn't mean I wasn't fond of them, of course; Nina was adorable, Ryu a ray of sunshine wherever he went, and Teepo sweet even if he seemed to have picked up a bit of the tsundere role I'd rejected. I would call them close, childhood friends… but I couldn't claim they were
peers.
Of course, Nina didn't—
couldn't—fail to notice the change in my demeanor. "Was it very scary, being captured?" she asked me a few weeks later, while we were sharing afternoon tea as part of our etiquette lessons.
"It was," I said.
"Is that why you don't act like you used to? Because you were scared?"
I wasn't sure whether I should confirm or deny the accusation, so I was thankful she didn't demand a response.
"I heard some of the Knights talking," she continued. "They said"—Nina scowled and put on her best impression of a grizzled soldier, which was comically poor—"'Fighting for your life turns a boy into a man.' You had to fight, didn't you?" Dora tutted in the background, but didn't step in to stop us just yet.
"I did," I said.
Nina considered that answer enough, and the conversation moved to lighter, Dora-approved topics while we finished our tea. Lina, it turned out, enjoyed tea—which marked the first time I could clearly identify one of my new 'lives' as having markedly different tastes. I wasn't sure how I felt about that.
I rarely saw the third member of my erstwhile traveling party, and only learned about his activities secondhand. Rei spent more than a month lazing around the castle, napping in increasingly bizarre places, before his wanderlust got the better of him. Father was reluctant to give the man who'd saved his daughter such an undignified thing as a
job, but Rei was
bored and there were always things needing doing. After a long discussion I wasn't privy to, he became a sort of freelance monster hunter, dealing with the things too far off the beaten path for guard patrols but too dangerous to be left alone.
He often came back a right mess, and was forced to bathe before even the servants would suffer him at their table. I don't think he ever got over his dislike of water, but he learned to bear it with something approaching dignity; his table manners improved as well, though they always reverted a bit after an 'adventure'. Occasionally, Teepo would tag along, eager to demonstrate his advances in magical and melee combat, but Rei seemed to prefer hunting alone… probably because he could use his 'super mode' without fear.
Beyond my limited viewpoint, the world kept turning. It took some time to organize, but Father sent out the Knights as he'd planned, Captain Rupert at the helm. The poor man had lost his station following my kidnapping, and only regained his Captaincy so he could lead the expedition to track down the fugitive mayor. "I still begrudge him his failure, but he is the best choice to lead the quest," Father told me, the occasion serving as another lesson in ruling. "There is nothing the man wants more than to avenge his mistake and clap McNeil in irons, and that gives him determination no other Knight can match." Nina and I saw the Knights off from the parapet, waving kerchiefs in celebration of the column marching in search of Justice.
That the Justice they sought would lead a man to the gallows was something neither Nina nor I were blind to.
———X==X==X———
Time passed, and spring was nearly giving way to summer when the quiet pattern of our lives was interrupted by the Knights' return, treasonous Mayor in tow. The success of the mission led Father to finally forgive Rupert for allowing me to be kidnapped on his watch. I'm sure finally having someone to hold to account for my disappearance was a load off the Captain's own mind, as well.
Father forbade me to speak to McNeil, but I couldn't help my curiosity, and snuck off to the Dungeons after dinner a few nights after he'd arrived. Rei was out again, Teepo alongside him, but Ryu and Nina were as adorable as ever, and I smiled fondly as I watched them across the table before excusing myself the moment the meal was properly over. The bustle of servants clearing plates gave me the perfect opportunity to slip away.
McNeil had been given the worst cell in the empty dungeon, farthest from the stairs (and the light). He had not been handled gently, either; his face was puffy and bruised, one eye swollen shut. A heavy iron manacle around one ankle chained him to the wall, the skin around it already badly blistered. As a final indignity, the once-proud man was dressed in rags and had lost so much weight his skin hung loose on his frame. When I stopped in front of his cell, he opened his one good eye, saw me, and simply closed it again. Tears ran silently down his face.
Even though he'd attacked me, I couldn't help but pity him; he was in a miserable state. What had I hoped to gain, coming down here? Closure, I guess… but I certainly didn't feel any better, seeing him reduced to
this.
It's justice, I told myself,
he assaulted a member of the royal family and conspired against the Crown. He was also, in a word, pathetic. There was no satisfaction to be found here. He was headed to a kangaroo court and a swift execution… but the court was only such because his guilt was beyond any doubt. He'd
literally attacked me, and it was to his great misfortune that I'd escaped to tell the tale.
Was it worth it? I asked myself. Coming down here at all had been foolish.
"No," McNeil said, and I jumped. "No, no… not worth it… never worth it."
I hadn't realized I'd spoken out loud—I needed to stop doing that.
His eye was open again, looking up at me, pleading. "I… I panicked… please, forgive me…"
I shook my head sadly. "I forgive you, sir… but I will not save you from the consequences of your actions." He didn't reply, so I sighed and turned to go.
"Princess!" McNeil said suddenly. "I… please, you must listen…"
I approached the bars cautiously, wary of a trick, but if I wasn't incorrigibly curious, I wouldn't have come down here at all. Unless I misjudged, the chain binding him was too short for him to reach the door, anyway. "Yes?"
"I… I only wished to do as my ancestors had done. They grew a hamlet barely worthy of the name into a thriving town… and enriched themselves, most of all." His good eye darted about the room, barely resting on me at all. "I just… I am not a great Mayor. I am not even a good man. I just wanted to make my ancestors proud…" he trailed off with a whimper.
"Is that all?" I asked.
"No!" he said. "I… I… I worked with people." His voice fell until it was barely a whisper, forcing me to lean against the bars to hear him. "I met a man from
Syn City who offered to buy surplus grain… no questions… I accepted. It was only a little, at first, but then he wanted more… and if I refused… he could expose me to the Crown…"
"And had he done so, you would have been fined, perhaps even stripped of your titles…" I said, "…but you would not be here, beaten and bound for the gallows. You could have turned back at anytime."
"But what could I do!?" he wailed. "He had power, and people… the people you saw… they can reach anywhere!"
"Anywhere?" I asked skeptically.
"Anywhere," Sunder repeated from behind me, putting a knife to my throat.
"Hello, master McNeil," Balio said, voice dripping with scorn. "Spilling secrets?"
Where were the guards? I looked down at the heavy knife, and realized there was already blood on it.
Oh, no…
"I… no, never! It was a distraction!" McNeil said quickly, climbing to his feet as fast as his injuries allowed. "Please, let me out! I didn't mention
Mikba at all! …oops."
Balio let the man sweat for a few seconds, then shrugged. "It doesn't matter," he said. "We're taking the princess anyway. Ransoming her will make this job worth doing."
"It's our lucky day, bro!" Sunder took the knife from my throat to gesture with, which gave me an opportunity to squirm out of his grip and drive my elbow into his crotch as hard as I could.
Crunch.
From the distinctive feel of elbow-hitting-metal, he was wearing some sort of armor over his most sensitive bits, but I knew from experience that all that did was transfer the force to the barely-less-sensitive inner thigh. Sunder dropped like a rock, and I sprinted for the stairs, yelling at the top of my lungs. "Guards!" I yelled. "Guards! To the dungeons!" It was worthless; dungeons like this were built with the
intent that people wouldn't hear the screaming coming from them, and I doubted the intruders had left the door open on the way down.
"Get back here!" Balio yelled, racing after me. It wasn't a close contest; his legs were twice the length of mine. I had to duck and roll out of the way to avoid him grabbing my hair, which let him get between me and the stairs. "Nowhere to run, Princess," he warned me.
That wasn't quite true, because I knew from the game that there was an exit hidden somewhere in the darkness behind me… but I had an enemy in the way there, as well. Sunder wasn't down for the count; he was rolling on the floor in pain, sure, but that might well change if he thought he could get his hands on me.
"I'll go through you," I said, falling into a fighting stance. I had my bangles now, and was eager to enact some payback for the humiliation he'd given me.
Balio looked confused for a second, then burst into laughter. "
Through me, she says," he said in a tone that could almost be described as giggling if it wasn't dripping with malice. "She's going to go
through me. Hahahaha–
eat lightning, Princess!"
A single step took me out of the bolt's path. "Watch your backstop," I quipped as the most conductive object behind me screamed in
even more pain, then launched a spell of my own. I might as well not have bothered; Balio simply powered through the flames, fist drawn back for a punch that nearly took my head off.
I won the first exchange of blows, taking advantage of his overconfidence to dart in and deliver a handful of bangle-boosted punches to his stomach and chest—which was as high as I could reach—before he realized his size wasn't going to win him the day. Things got a lot harder after that. I could consistently slip away from his strikes, but once he started fighting smart, I couldn't get in close enough to deliver solid blows of my own without risking a hit that would wipe me out. All I was doing was losing slowly… and if Sunder ever stopped whining about friendly fire and actually helped, I wouldn't even manage that much.
What was the alternative? He was too fast for me to disengage, and even if I could, the narrow stairs out of the dungeon wouldn't leave me enough room to dodge another lightning bolt. The entire encounter felt like a hopeless boss fight, and I
hated it. I was a stronger, more skilled fighter than should be humanly possible, and it
didn't matter. What was the point of all our perks and powers if the world would just railroad me right back into being a damsel in distress?
Fuck. That. A slim chance was better than none.
Balio came in swinging again, but this time I dove between his legs instead of dodging back, rolling back to my feet and scampered for the stairs. I wasn't fast enough. He grabbed me by the arm just above the elbow with a yell of "Gotcha!"… but I'd planned for that.
The cry of triumph turned into a yelp of surprise as I grabbed his wrist and
pulled. Every muscle in my tiny tweenage body screamed at me for trying to Judo-flip an eight-foot-tall slab of muscle and body odor, but I
did it: Balio went heels-over-head into a pile of half-rotted barrels stacked haphazardly near the wall, sending splinters flying everywhere.
To my dismay, physics had the last laugh; the act of throwing someone ten times my weight sent me tumbling backwards, further from the stairs and the dead guard at their base (
don't look don't look don't look) and closer to Sunder, who had finally gotten over the twin indignities of groin-attacks and friendly fire. He caught hold of my arm while I was still struggling to my feet and tried to put me into a joint lock, but my physical perks made me flexible enough to simply bend with the pressure and slip out from under him when he tried to force me to the floor. Then it was
my turn to grapple, climbing onto his back and getting both arms around his neck.
His eyes bulged as I cut off his air, a corona of static building up around us as the Bangles tried to figure out an appropriate thunder-themed response to strangling someone into unconsciousness. Hopefully they came through with one soon; Sunder was still struggling, bashing me against the walls with his back to try to get me to let go. I grunted and cursed with each blow; the impacts jostled me just enough to let Sunder get a gasp of air, and every breath he stole was more time before he'd pass out. Finally, he fell to his knees… and
kept kicking. The bastard just
would not go down.
"That's enough, Princess!" Balio yelled. "You lose!"
I looked over at him in surprise, wondering how I'd managed to forget about him, and nearly fell off Sunder in shock.
What the hell were they doing down here?
Nina and Ryu must have been hiding behind the barrels I'd tossed Balio into, because he was holding the pair by the back of their shirt collars, one in each hand. They hadn't gone down quietly; Ryu's face was more purple than pink, Nina looked like she'd survived a tornado, and all three of them were covered in splinters from the barrels.
"Surrender! Now!" Balio yelled, practically brandishing them at me. The threat was clear.
I loosened my grip just enough to let Sunder start wheezing, but I didn't let go just yet. "Put them down," I commanded.
"Let me think… no."
"Bro…" Sunder whined.
"Put them down, and I'll give you enough of a head start to leave before the rest of the guards get here. Make it out of the Kingdom, and you'll be able to keep your heads."
"I have a better idea… surrender, and I won't kill the kid." He shook Ryu at me.
"Bro…!" Sunder was still trying to get a hand between my arm and his neck, to no avail.
Not a chance. "I don't trust you to hold up your end of the bargain," I said flatly. "Let him go,
then I'll surrender."
"Do you believe that I
will kill him if you don't?" Balio asked. He smirked at my silence. "Then it seems to me that you don't have a choice, your highness."
"Broooo…"
Don't be stupid, I told myself.
They're going to kill Ryu anyway. Balio's hands are full and Sunder's nearly down. If you run away and summon the guards, they'll have one less hostage and far less time to escape.
Nina will never
forgive you if you stand by and let him die, my mind replied,
nor would you forgive yourself.
.
.
.
"I surrender."
———X==X==X———
Balio dragged Nina and Ryu back to where Sunder was massaging his throat. "You got the rope, bro?"
Sunder grunted in the affirmative. "This Princess is way too much trouble," he complained as he pulled a couple lengths of rope from… somewhere… and bound my wrists and ankles together. "Feels like someone tried to hang me again." He punctuated his whining with a spiteful kick to my gut, sending me reeling backwards into the wall.
"Whatever, bro! We got both Princesses now!" Balio tied Nina's hands to her sides with another rope, then shoved her towards me. It was lucky they'd bound my hands in front of me so I could catch her as she stumbled, since she couldn't steady herself. "Now get McNeil out of there while I off the kid."
"Sure thing, bro."
"No!" Nina and I screamed.
Ryu tried to put up a fight, but he was already spent; Balio manhandled him onto the ground without difficulty, pinning him face-down with one hoof as he drew a short sword.
"Please! Don't hurt him!" I begged. "We had a deal!"
"Look on the bright side, your highness," the bastard said, his voice full of false cheer. "You're a great judge of character!" And with that, he drove the sword straight into the boy's back. Ryu spasmed twice, then fell still.
I did my best to shield Nina from the sight, pulling her head into my lap to cover her eyes. I didn't avert my own until I could no longer see through the tears.
I'm going to kill them, I promised myself as I buried my face in Nina's hair.
I am going to kill both of them. Slowly.
"I'd say 'nothing personal'…." Balio told the body, "but you did help the Princess escape from us last time, so it is personal after all! Hurry it up, Bro!"
"None of these keys fit the manacle! Are you sure we got the right aaaaaaaAAAAAHH!"
Nina and I snapped our heads up at the scream and saw… oh, damn it, I'd forgotten! The first time Ryu ever turned into a dragon on-screen, he did it because he'd been stabbed with a sword by one of these two fuckers! He wasn't dead!
Yet.
"Calm down, bro!" Balio said. He walked back to Ryu's prone form, picked up the sword, and gave the whelp an experimental poke. "Huh, he's out cold. How much do you think a live dragon's worth, bro?"
"I don't know. A lot?" Sunder went from 'panic' to 'greed' without missing a beat. "More than a Princess, I bet!"
"My thoughts exactly, bro. We'll take him too! Gimme that," Balio added, snatching the keyring and quickly popping open the manacle on McNiel's ankle. Task complete, he walked back to us, hauled Nina up, and shoved her towards Sunder. He grabbed my bonds and dragged me to my feet as well, though standing was hard with my ankles tied together. "Hmm… we can't carry all of them."
He better not expect me to hop all the way out of the castle. Still, I took the hint and turned towards where Sunder had Ryu's whelp form on one shoulder and Nina on the other. She'd been doing her best not to cry, but when she saw me her resolve broke, and she wailed in sorrow.
I wanted to say something to comfort her, to assure her that we would be all right, but I couldn't. I was too busy staring at the sword that was sticking point-first out of my chest.
Oh my God he fucking killed me.
"We'll get rid of the one who can actually fight," Balio said casually. The blade made a wet rasping sound as he yanked it out, and I tipped backwards into darkness.
———X==X==X———
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.
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———X==X==X———
"Lina? Lina… please…"
There was a voice, calling… me? I tried to focus, but it slipped away. My thoughts were sluggish. Had I been drugged?
I opened my eyes. It didn't help much; everything was horribly blurry and out of focus. "Hhhh…" I tried to say something—'hello', probably, or maybe 'what happened?'—but my tongue wasn't working right.
"Lina!"
I tried to sit up, only to have something—some
one?—fling themselves onto me. What had happened? I'd been heading to the dungeons—
The person currently hugging me pulled back, letting me see who it was—as well as I could see anything, at the moment. "I'm so glad you're all right," she said.
"Ni…na…?" Good, my voice was working. Mostly. I blinked, trying to get things back into focus. "Wha…"
"You almost died!" she wailed, grabbing me again. "I thought you were dead! I thought you and Ryu were dead!"
Oh, right I'd been stabbed. To
death. Except apparently
not to death, since the Jump was still going and I was alive.
"We searched for months," someone said. I turned my head to my left and saw Rei, identifiable only as a massive orange splotch on the other side of what I assumed was a hospital cot.
"When we got back and heard what happened… Teepo immediately announced that he was going on a quest for a cure. I barely had time to pack a lunch…" He laughed awkwardly. "We searched all over… made some new friends, ran into Marco again, even found Ryu and Nina while we were at it."
"H… ow…?" I asked.
"Your gem," Rei said. "You had a magic gem… it kept you alive, barely, sort of in-between life and death… we ended up going all the way to Urkan to find another one…"
That didn't seem right—
My thoughts were interrupted when Rei took a turn hugging me, pulling my upwards to bury my face in his fuzzy chest.
"But…" Rei said once he was done rubbing my face on his pecs. "Ryu and Teepo went into this old temple and…" He sniffed. "…they didn't come back…" Then
he burst into tears. I awkwardly reached out with weak arms and pulled him close, letting him sob into blankets covering my lap.
My mind was doing its best to race, even with the fog that still hadn't fully cleared.
Of course. I should have known that the moment I let myself get complacent, the plot would jump back on the rails; I'd seen the same thing happen more than once in
Worm. At least my voice not working saved me the trouble of trying to figure out how to express the confusing mess I was feeling. They'd gone to the end of the earth—more or less literally—to help me, and now Rei believed the boys had died in the attempt. What could I possibly say to that?
Wait, they traveled to
Urkan. The world was nowhere near as small as it had been shown in the game. "How… long…?"
"Four months," the slightly-more-in-focus-than-she'd-been-a-moment-ago Nina-colored blur said, making a motion that I guessed to be wiping her nose with the back of her hand. "It's autumn."
I obviously wasn't in my right mind yet because all I could think was,
that's a pretty short time-skip.
———X==X==X———
