A Gamer's Guide 362

Lett had always been good at pretending. When he was younger, his favourite game was pretending to be a dragon, and his brothers would pretend to be kings and knights out to slay him. Sometimes, he would go a bit too in-character, and he’d refuse to die. Then his brothers would tattle on him and the game would be over before it had turned fun. 

This time, the game wouldn’t end so quickly. 

The mount moved like he did. That was the last gift Desput had given him. Later on, he’d teach him how to properly control him, separate from his actions. In truth, having to move himself to move the mount was a bit annoying. Though, not annoying enough to sap the fun out of it. 

Lett was very good at pretending. So good that sometimes he didn’t even notice he was doing it at all.

“Rawwrr,” Lett said, raising his arms and stomping his feet. The ground thundered under the weight of the mount. The church had almost fully burnt out. That was fine. He could still see well enough to keep playing. Far down, someone was pointing an arrow at him. He smashed his hand down, and the soldier went splat and the drake went crunch. The only thing missing from the experience was that he couldn’t actually feel what the mount felt. He could only observe it as an outsider. “Run away, run away,” he said, pretending to be a great big evil, “the apostle of kings is coming to get’cha.”

Now that he’d gotten used to it, the spears and arrows didn’t hurt so much. He wasn’t sure why he’d cried out earlier. It was fine. Wasn’t he supposed to be an apostle? And a strong one, too! Apostles didn’t die to arrows and spears. Their deaths were more dramatic. Real. 

But he still made a show of it hurting. Ouch! Ouch! They were so mean to him! Bullies, the lot of them. Just like the other kids. Just like…

Lett realized with non-faked surprise that he’d lost sight of Kitty. Of course, he knew that the human had a strange knack for drawing gazes away from him, but that didn’t make him any less obvious once noticed. And yet, he was nowhere to be seen.

That wasn’t any fun. He didn’t want to put on a show for no one. Someone had to see how horribly cruel he was being, just like Desput wanted him to. That he was finally in a role that fit him. Not the jealous apprentice, not the bedbound cripple, him. This was who he was, who he was always meant to be. See how well he played the part! 

He had even figured out how to make the mount breathe fire! One purple whoosh and a third of the toys had all gone away, and the forest was burning again. Wasn’t he talented? Wasn’t he good? He wasn’t going to be a burden anymore, was he?

Yes, that’s what he had to remember. This show was for Desput. To prove to him that he had made the right choice. That Lett was worth his strength. That he deserved his love. 

Fwish

An arrow whizzed by his face. Even though he wasn’t supposed to, he found himself flinching at the unexpected attack. Bad. Bad. He was supposed to be scary and evil, how could he allow himself to flinch? He wasn’t afraid. He had to be strong. Puffing out his chest, he turned to where the attack had come from.

Her again. Kitty’s odd friend. 

The one who shot him before.

Even though the arrow didn’t hurt as much anymore, it still ached. Revenge rearing in his chest, he turned towards her, the mount following suit. Burning her wouldn’t feel good enough. He had to crush her. Destroy her. Smash her into smithereens. That would be right. Blood for blood. 

Forcing himself to grin, he raised his wing, preparing to destroy her and her alone. She was so small. A mere ant. Easy to smash, easy to—

There was a pinprick. No, even less than that. From right above the mount, he couldn’t tell what had happened. But, all of a sudden, he couldn’t move his arm. Sliding forward through the air, Lett allowed his gaze to grope for an explanation. There it was. Below the raised wing, jimmied into a specific spot between the arm and chest, was a sword and spear. Even as he looked straight at them, he couldn’t comprehend what he was looking at. 

And then there was the silence. He was noticing it now. All of the live soldiers around him had gone away, not in fleering terror, but as an organized retreat. They were almost at the forest, some looking at him not with fear like they should have but rather with the cold, biding tenacity of a man waiting for the sun to fall. 

For Lett to fall. 

But he wouldn’t. He couldn’t. Not now that he was finally being useful, playing a proper role! Despair lurched in his chest, tasting so much of garbäärs and sweet sugar that it made him sick. 

He had to get them. Squish them. Get them all before—

A mass of cold knotty limbs and pale flesh crashed into him, tackling him so hard that for a moment he forgot he could float, and that moment was enough. They singled through the air, Lett’s mind reeling and floundering with the abrupt shift in scene, but understanding very clearly that the thin, skeletal arms clutching around him could only belong to one man. But the mystery of how he had reached him was only solved when the both of them, within seconds of beginning their ascent, fell onto the still-raised wing of the mount. As they fell like marbles down a slope, Lett’s eyes registered the pronounced yet completely unfelt marks of claws, crawling all the way up the side. 

And he hadn’t even noticed.

Dread spread like poison to every inch of his body, and yet, he found himself unable to act. The world spun around him, distorting his vision into smears. The ground was getting closer. The ground, littered with smashed, crushed, mangled, destroyed bodies, some half-alive, some beyond death. “NO!”

Something caught their fall, leathery and cold, no longer buffeted by a picnic cloth. The arms that previously held him split open and Lett spilled out, rolling and falling across the bumpy head of his mount, unable to muster the strength to recall his levitation, now only aware of the ground far below, the scorched earth, the bodies, the bodies, the bodies. Vertigo clawed at him, pulling him down, his fingers slipping on anything he tried to grasp, and for all his sudden power, all his divinity, he knew, now more than ever, that he was only a child, and liable to die as they often did. 

“No, no, no,” he whimpered, hands pawing at nothing, his life flashing by in an agonizing replay of bedridden days and nights and fire, burning. “Please, save me, please—”

A large hand gripped his arm, and Lett clasped onto it like a drowning man, his breath burning through his throat and his heart pounding like drums in his ears. Weightlessness disappeared and his feet touched solid ground. Deep, all-encompassing relief replaced every ounce of dread that had previously held him, and he sighed with all his body, stumbling forward and right into the arms of a very good friend. “Oh, Gods, oh,” he muttered, his face turning hot and his legs becoming weaker and weaker. 

For a moment, Lett held Kitty, and allowed himself to be held. He was once more a child, having his boo-boo kissed and patched up. As he stood there, he failed to recall the last time he had held anyone else as tightly. The last time was also Kitty. And now…

The game. The soldiers. Like a club to the skull, he remembered why he was there and what he was doing. Disgust roiled up inside him and he thrust Kitty away from himself, taking several steps back to regain some semblance of regality. Apostle of kings. That’s what he was. 

But Kitty looked so hurt. Not like the dead wide-mouthed killed ones below. That wasn’t it. No, Kitty had the same expression as a man slapped by his closest friend. 

Betrayal, Lett realized. He looks betrayed. 

“You,” Lett began, because he had to begin his evil speech somewhere. Only, once he had said the word, nothing else would come. His mind was on fire and the air was hot and choked with the scent of burnt sugar but he couldn’t think of what else to say. It was the shortest, yet most comprehensive evil speech he had ever done, if only because it was also the only one he had done.

Unheeding, as deaf to it as the wind is to the sea, Kitty crossed the distance between them in three steps, and then slapped Lett across the face. Lett didn’t even realize that it had happened at first. There was a crack! and then his cheek hurt. But then it sunk it, and fiery heat flared to his cheeks as indignation worthy of the apostle of kings arrived, with all the cannons and trumpets necessary. 

“How dare—”

And then the bony arms were around him again, tight and inescapable. 

“Let go of me! Let—”

He was pressed closer. Something wet seeped into his collar. “Damn it, Lett,” Kitty mumbled into his back. “I was so worried. Oh, God, I thought he was going to kill you.”

Although Lett was indeed angry enough to light the world on fire, he was not even halfway mad enough to extinguish the sheer confusion that now took hold of him, squeezing his eyebrows into a furrow. “What? Why would—”

“I was so wrapped up trying to keep everyone safe, but then it kept going, and when I realized it was going for you… I expected the worst. Damn it. I’m so glad you’re okay. I don’t know what I’d do if you weren’t, if you…” Kitty was down on one knee now, putting their heads at an equal level. His face was pressed into Lett’s neck, voice choked by sobs. And Lett had no idea what to do. “I should have noticed before. No—that isn’t it. I did notice that you were in pain, that you were bad, but… I was afraid. Scared of how others might take it. Scared of how you would take it. I never wanted you to become like me.”

A million insults and accusations tore at Lett’s already scathed and scratched heart. But it all felt like nothing. The deaths incurred at his behest were nothing. Nothing felt real, except for the bony creature that now sobbed against him, as childish as Lett. 

In all of it, Lett could only muster one thing to say. “I don’t care what you wanted. You’re the only person I’ve ever looked up to.” Tears of hot bleeding frustration trailed down his eyes and he felt a hatred like never before. “There’s no one else I’d rather try to be.”