Valle

I was about to return to my hometown not only as its champion, but as its king. And the thought terrified me.

“Just one more day, eh?”

My voice was confident, excited...by design.

Hearing it almost made myself feel encouraged, as if everything would be just fine. It was a voice I had adopted when Cresna needed more than a hero, it needed a legend to remain optimistic in face of the war. At some point, I had come to believe in it. And why not? I have created miracle after miracle…even if it was not always like that. Act as though the impossible is to come to pass—and then see what comes true. If a miracle does not happen, then chances are everything is lost anyhow and there will be no further harm done. But if by chance I was able to achieve it…well! Then the people would have something to celebrate. And it had worked so far.

“Truth is, I’m starting to get nervous,” I said, in a voice I almost didn’t recognize. It had been a long time since I had used it—my real voice, when theatre and thrill did not compel me into my usual being. “We haven’t seen what happened to the world since stats died. Since monsters came back. We have yet to see one of those monsters ourselves, but things cannot be going well out there. And now we are going back to Cresna. Is everyone doing okay? I hope father is doing fine…and that they accept me as their king.”

Logically speaking, there was very little chance of that happening. Cresna had requested—loudly—for me to rise in rebellion against the Empire. To side with the Sun Wolf rather than oppose him, if nothing else. At the time, I thought war was too reckless. Now, however…it was more than reckless, it was downright insane. And yet it was the course of action I had chosen.

“And here I am, going to Cresna, hoping to get out of this with Estella’s help…the more changes, the more things stay the same, eh partner?”

It would have been nice to have this conversation with Nevada, but it was not yet to be. We had promised our futures to each other, but that hardly meant our trust had reached that level. It was painfully clear that we both desired different things; she wanted an empire, I wanted Cresna’s freedom. Those goals were not necessarily mutually exclusive, though compromise would come hard. We are supposed to be each other’s greatest allies, and yet we cannot show weakness lest the other take advantage of it. There was some amusement to be had there.

Nevada not being an option, I had turned to my old partner.

My sword.

“It’s been a long journey, hasn’t it?” I asked. “I’m sorry—I removed your stats after our first duel with Carr. Hope you didn’t mind…I still feel bad about it sometimes. Will Estella be mad over it? She didn’t make you herself, but you were her parting gift.” It was strange. Often, I was more honest speaking with the sword than I was when just thinking about things by myself. Something about it drew an honesty out of me I did not know I possessed. “Wonder why I still even care what she thinks.”

That wasn’t true and I felt it in my bones. “I wonder why I’m not mad anymore,” I muttered. “She abandoned Cresna. She abandoned our dreams. She—she abandoned me.” It was an odd feeling, speaking things out loud. Sometimes you are aware of your own thoughts, but an unexpected intonation betrays a feeling you had not quite noticed. “Always knew she didn’t own Cresna anything. But I thought she owed me something. And that was a childish thought of mine. Rather uncool for a champion, eh, partner?” Over the years my frustration melted away and I sincerely wished she was doing as well as she could. When news came she had become the world champion she dreamed of being, I felt no resentment over her…though I did feel a tinge of jealousy.

“I am Cresna’s Champion first and its king second,” I said, firmly. “Even right now, what stands out in my mind is that I must give them reason to believe me. To give the people hope that I can vanquish Johan and protect them from those monsters. And the stats I relied on my whole life are leaving me for the first time…rather scary, eh? Still, I will manage. We will manage. No matter what.”

Carr

It had been a while since I had found myself in this void. For a period of time it felt as though every time I fell asleep I would find myself here in my dreams. Not my dreams. This is real. It was horrible. There was nothing that I feared more than the night. When I fell asleep, I would often find myself back here, and other times I would find myself dreaming of the day Danner and the others were murdered, relieving it in gruelling detail. Things had gotten easier for a while. My dreams had become more infrequent, and my visits to the void were more infrequent.

“Piss off void,” I muttered.

But they still happened, and they still killed me.

I fell to my knees and found myself shaking. Show up, Devil. Give me something to be distracted about. Someone to be mad about. Shit. The oppressive loneliness of the void had nearly killed me before, when I was traveling through it out of spite hoping to get to Johan, to get back at him for what he had done. Yet even this felt easier.

It’s easier to be in the void knowing that Celle is holding my body back in the real world, I thought, and a sudden involuntary smile cheered me up. I can feel her warmth. It makes things so much easier.

Coming here voluntarily was new to me. But it was necessary. “Where are you?” I shouted, more edge in my voice than I meant to. That much emotion showed I cared too much. That I wasn’t comfortable. And to be frank, exposing my weaknesses wasn’t something I was very keen on.

“Fancy meeting you here,” said a familiar voice.

I looked up and smiled—it wasn’t the Devil. It was Isabella, who smiled at me mockingly, but warmly. Her extended hand felt like a blessing, and I knew she would tell I had been shaking when she grasped it. But she did not comment on it nor did she mock me for it. Instead, she said, “You cold?”

“Huh?” It was an odd question. You didn’t feel cold in the void, necessarily. It was a weird place where neither light nor heat seemed to exist, and yet you did not perceive the absence of either. “What do you mean?”

Isabella smirked and looked down at me. “Well, you are sort of naked.”

“Oh. Yeah.” It was one of those things you are supposed to care about but can’t quite bring yourself to. “Well, so are you.”

“Indeed. Let’s not focus on that at all”—Isabella glanced down at me and then went on determined to ignore her hypocrisy—“and just move on with investigating this place—that’s what that necklace is for, right?”

“Yeah, that’s what we are here for”—I looked down at her as well for a brief moment—“so let’s get on with it.”

“Indeed.”

“Let’s.”

It was a weird dynamic in that we were both expecting the other to crack a joke, and when neither did, the tone became mildly awkward. What kind of joke can I make that wouldn’t be crossing a line here? How about— “Hey, Carr?”

I turned around to face her. “Yeah?”

“Are you okay?”

That wasn’t what I had expected. “Why do you ask?”

“Because you don’t seem okay.”

“I’m fine,” I protested, stomping at the invisible darkness of a ground beneath us and producing no sound, “I am fine, I am—”

“Tell me the truth or I’ll tell Celle you were checking me out.”

Outrage was not quite the emotion I felt, but it came close. Something more like shock that she would dare to lie in such a manner. “I was not doing that!”

“Sure you were”—Isabella again glanced down at me—“the entire time, really.”

“I was not”—I mirrored her glance once more—“doing that at—oh come on, that doesn’t count! You just did that!”

“Sure did and sure it counts.”

“I—” Ah, fuck it. Even without the Devil’s powers she is still a giant headache. “Yeah. I am not okay.”

It surprised me that when she spoke next, Isabella’s voice was filled with an honest warmth when she asked, “Do you want to talk about it?”

Would not have assumed you to be capable of sensitivity…guess the Devil’s powers leaving did change you in a way, huh? “I am just—it’s not a pleasant memory to be here. It feels claustrophobic, lonely and…weird. But I will live. Thanks for asking.” The polite question to follow that up with would have been ‘Are you okay?’ but I didn’t feel like I was in the mindset of helping anyone at the moment. I would just have made things worse. “Let’s get on with it—the library is right there. We have to look things up.”

Isabella nodded, and gently put a hand to my back to help me walk forward. She didn’t say anything until we stopped at what appeared to be the library the devil had mentioned before and we remained in silence while searching through those many books—most of which were written in languages we could not understand. What’s even the point of being here?

“Hey, Carr?” she asked suddenly. “Can I make this weird?”

I looked at her, then glanced down at myself and frowned. “This is already pretty weird.”

“No, I…I mean seriously. There is something on my mind and I need to ask someone for some advice.”

My smirk left my face and I said, “Of course.”

“My parents hate me,” she said, in a strangely detached tone. “They hated me for never making a name for myself despite how much they invested in me. So when they moved, they left me with grandpa and…I never really heard from them again. Don’t even know if they are alive. Don’t even know if I care.”

I didn’t know what to say. Isabella never talked about herself and it wasn’t as though the two of us talked often. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“And grandpa is…gone now. I don’t know what happened to him, but Carter isn’t Duartes. Not anymore. I hope to maybe drag grandpa out of there someday but…I am going to assume he’s dead for now. It’s how I’m dealing with it.” She paused. “I don’t really have any family left. My mother’s side of the family has never been fond of my dad’s side, and my dad’s side—well, it traces back to your world. There’s nobody from there here.”

“I am here,” I said. “I sort of count.”

“I am not sure that exactly counts.” Isabella’s voice was stern, but there was a smirk on her face. “Look, I just wanted to explain why I was asking for advice on something and not make it even weirder that I was coming to you for help.”

“And what I’m trying to explain is that it’s not weird to come to me for help.” I paused to consider my next words carefully. A sudden urge to help her had overcome me, and I felt guilty that it had only showed up now rather than when I knew she had started to deal with everything. “I am your friend. And I am from Earth. We share some heritage, you know? Technically.”

“Technically.”

“So…” This is going to sound weird. Shit. Do I really want to say it? But looking her in the eye, it felt like the right thing to say. Because I saw myself there. “I know what it’s like to be alone and without a family. And…I know it sucks. So I know I’m being unreasonable when I say this, but…well, I am from Earth. And you’re…partially from Earth. So, in the absence of something better, you can just consider me the closest thing you got to family. Like a shitty third-degree cousin you meet for the first time when moving to a city you never heard of. What I mean is—if you’re comfortable asking me for advice, I’m comfortable giving it to you. Don’t be a stranger.”

She studied me with a curious expression in silence and this made me uneasy. I know what I said was a little weird, but she had opened up the conversation pretty weirdly too so she couldn’t really blame me for that one. Shouldn’t have said anything, but the way she seems so down, it feels better to let her find me stupid than for her to think she’s the stupid one for asking for help.

“If you really don’t mind,” she said, in a strangely quiet tone, “I might take you up on that and make you my shitty little cousin.”

“I’m pretty sure I’m the older one.”

“Can I ask you my question now, then, shitty little cousin?”

Her smirk made me feel relieved. Good, she’s cheered up. After what happened with Duartes there is no way she’s okay. “Go on.”

“I really want to kill Johan more than I want to live. Thought that was one thing we had in common and I don’t really think that’s true anymore.”

Ah. So that’s what this is about. “No,” I replied, as gently as possible, “it’s not true anymore.”

“You still want to kill Johan, though.”

“I need to. He’s an invasive species in this world and he needs to be erased.”

“But there’s things you care more about than killing him right now. You said so last fight and—I heard it from the others who were on the ground level. Fedal told me all about it.” There was an unexpected note of fragility in her voice. “How did you manage to care about something more than killing him?”

I thought about giving her a non-response, but she had opened up enough that I had to do the same. I still thought of holding back some of my feelings, but then I remembered I had told her to talk to me as if we were family. I have to live up to my own words at least. “Anger is really seductive. Addictive, even. Whenever something goes wrong you can always just let anger poison your mind, cloud everything so you can’t see anything…including your own emotions. I feel like I was using my anger to keep myself from feeling things. Then I started to think of things I care about outside of Johan.”

“Celle?” she asked.

“That was part of it,” I acknowledged. “But that’s also why I didn’t really start anything with her for a while. Didn’t think it would be fair to make our relationship what was keeping me sane. Might make her guilty in case things didn’t work out. So I wanted to really get a feeling for something else first. To find things in my life I enjoyed doing by myself, sort of give myself a foothold, you know?”

“And did you?”

“Yeah. I want to travel, I want to see new things, I want to—” A familiar image came back to me, a nostalgic scene of myself learning to fence as a child…and that old, annoying figure watching over me. I miss that old bastard. God, that bastard had really helped me when I was young. I wanted to be that person to someone else too. He has been on my mind a lot since I fenced Carter. “I want to be a coach one day,” I said. “I want to win a lot of tournaments, don’t get me wrong. I haven’t given up on being the best in the world yet. But…I also want to train more people. To give them a chance to dream, to give them a place to just forget about everything and focus on improving themselves.”

“That sounds nice.” Isabella drew a deep breath. “I have been obsessing over Fedal’s curse lately. To keep my mind off of my own problems. Guess that isn’t healthy. I have to figure something out at some point, just…shit, how do I even figure out what I want? I know I need to have something going on in my life to not get so warped up in revenge but…all I want is to kill Johan.”

“Let me be very clear. I am not saying you shouldn’t look for revenge. I am so down with revenge. Just—gotta have something else to look forward to after you’re done with that.”

“Yeah. And I don’t know how to find that.”

I hesitated, considering our current state, but still thought it was a good idea to walk up beside her and put a hand to her shoulder. “You’re not alone. You got your friends with you. And Fedal—”

She turned to me with a bitter smile. “After that speech about wanting to have something going on before you get involved with someone, you really think I don’t have something that would keep me from going down that rabbit hole?”

“Ah. Guess so. Still, that doesn’t mean closing yourself off from him.”

“Yeah. I know. I just don’t want to add to his concerns. His curse is seriously messed up already.”

I nodded. “Ah… ‘that why you jumped at the chance of coming to the void? To see if we can find out something about this?’”

“I also wanted to figure out anything that might help us against Johan, of course, but that’s certainly part of it. Figured maybe I can help him out with his shit before dumping my shit on his plate.” Isabella smiled bitterly. “Or maybe I just care about him and I’m trying to find excuses for it.”

“And that,” said a new voice, “will not do. Fedal must figure this out on his own.”

[Martim the Sinner]

[Level]: 18

[Swordsmanship]: 634

[Sword]: 402

The figure stood out for many reasons. He was on horseback, for one—after a fashion. His mount was a strange, skeletal creature that vaguely resembled a horse, yet even in my ignorance of the animal I knew those bones did not belong to it. Another matter that stood out was that the man wore a cloak, in this area where none except for the Old Gambler had been able to wear any sort of clothes that I knew of.

Most importantly, this man should have been dead. Fedal had killed him.

And yet he withdrew a sword from inside of the skeletal horselike creature and pointed it in our direction. “You are not creatures of the Void. Banish yourselves or I will have to fight you.”

Many thoughts occurred to me. Who is he challenging? Me? Her? Both of us? We have no weapons—we came here without anything. We don’t even have clothes, let alone weapons. We should be unconscious in the real world right now, this doesn’t make any sense…what happens if we die here? This is too risky. We should back off. We should consider our options. None of them were things I voiced. Instead, I shouted, “Fuck you, fence me!”

And to my surprise, there was an echo behind my voice. I was not the only one saying those words. Isabella had also said them.