Tsk. Pathetic. Who needs to sound otherworldly in order to sound threatening?
“There’s a window”, Vic said. “Crashing through it sounds pretty obvious to me.”
A chuckle, there. But a petty one. He knew something she didn’t. Insufferable.
“You will not be able to escape out of my castle, so close to my inner sanctum. Escaping is futile.”
Vic stared at him, slowly grimaced, and ever so slowly pointed at the stainglass right next to her.
“There’s still a window there that I’m about to jump through.”
He made a single step forward and started talking again.
“You fail to realise how quickly I found you. Have you never considered why I immediately knew of your whereabouts? Foul thing”, he said, mask tilted towards her. His tone of voice was so insufferable. He was talking like one of her very condescending teachers once did back then, asking in front of her father why she couldn’t keep her attention for an entire course without doodling in the corners of her notebooks. Like that had been a crime.
“I might just chuck you through that window if you keep begging me so kindly not to jump through it. Like this, everybody wins! You get what you want, I get what I want! That’d truly be an outcome to make everyone happy” she said, and rolled her eyes. She emphasized it. She was aggressively implying that he was too stupid to have understood it the first time around.
She saw him clench tightly one of his fists. Was he… frustrated? Good, good.
“Aw, does your tall, dumb mightiness care that much about his precious stainglasses?” she asked in the most annoying teen voice she could manage, “I didn’t take you for a vain pompous-
He gooped away.
She looked immediately behind her, only to feel a goopy grip clench on the shadow armour around her neck and throw her back against the wall.
It wasn’t as violent as she’d expected. Cracks weren’t even formed behind her.
She immediately found back her footing and got back up.
“Aw, why did you throw me so gently? Are you growing soft on me? Oh- or not, it’s your precious preciously jewel-encrusted walls, you care about them, right? T’would be a shame if I just destroyed-”
“Silence, you foul brat”, he said, and there was an abrupt pressure in the room. There was something wrong in the thick air, until all looked far too bright. Her mana sense around her surroundings became blind. It was all oversaturated, and she couldn’t get a taste of anything. Oh. His eyes were fucking glowing.
Vic simply reactivated layers beneath it. Whatever. Maybe it was time to talk him down.
The warning disappeared. Well, that had been simpler than expected. Just a few layers of shadow armour and her terribly-sounding problem had poofed away.
“Hey, calm down, old man. Lost your way to the hospice? I can bring you back down there”, she said, and smoothly, slowly brought her hands up. A little sun spit would shut him up nicely.
A low grumble, like the one from a beast. The pale, cold blue glow from the holes in his mask slightly subsided for a weird reason. She’d just insulted him, right? Why would he be calming down?
“You.” he said.
Vic frowned. And fake-yawned.
“Me”, she said. “Your point, being?”
“What”, he said, slowly “are you?”
That did earn him a sharky smirk from her.
“Good question. I’m human. Pretty sure, boopety boop”, she said, and booped her own nose while ogling her own booping fingers.
It was good to be silly sometimes.
But suddenly, he raised his staff, and it began folding on itself until it disappeared in a burst of magic. His two hands opened on his sides, showing off how truly, he meant to be pacific.
She squinted.
“In my own domain, you stand no chance. Luckily for you, I have questions”, he said, “and I require answers.”
She grimaced at him.
“Dude, that’s literally your problem”, she said.
His left fist clenched ever so slightly.
“Do you not remember how our fight ended?”, he said, he said, like he had the gall to say that, “It was only through chance that you survived.”
“WHAT”, she said, “Bullshit, BULLSHIT! I freaking let you live! YOU DUMB GOOSE!”
A pause from him.
“You fainted. You failed your spell”, he said. “You, creature of destruction, failed, and yet I chose to spare you, to better understand how such a foe could have been sent to my capital. You are not blameless-”
“BULLSHIT”, she said, “You LIAR! You didn’t spare me, I spared YOU! ALL OF YOU!”
“You did not”, he said, and tilted his head. “Why pretend so?”
She cackled back like she had trouble breathing.
“I FREAKING CAN’T BELIEVE THIS”, she took a big breath, “I sabotaged my own spell”, she calmly said, and took another even bigger breath, “IN ORDER NOT TO KILL YOUR ENTIRE CITY OF GOONS EVEN IF THEY CLEARLY MADE THE BIG MISTAKE OF FOLLOWING THE TURD TALL CHUNGUS THAT YOU ARE.”
There was silence, for two seconds. Then he spoke.
“Impossible”, he said, and he sounded so sure and certain of himself it was insufferable. “That can’t be true, and is not true. You failed. What does lying to me bring to you? An uncertain joy of making me doubt yourself? Speak, foul creatu-
“You’re fucking kidding me”, she said. She stopped looking at him and brought fingers to her eyes to rub them. “I spare a whole fucking city and this is how I’m thanked. You’re all so fucking ungrateful I don’t think I can be even more pissed than I am right now.”
“I’m seething”, she kept going, and looked back at him, and he hadn’t moved, “I’m fucking enraged right now. Do you have any idea what a bad FUCKING day that was for me? You’re an insufferable bastard, a conman of a cult leader, and a gaslighting liar.”
He wasn’t moving. Somehow he spoke, like he had anything of worth to say.
“What is… gaslighting?” he asked. Yeah, and he chose that to focus on instead of the stream of other words she’d used to describe him. And no, it’d be stupid to answer him. If he learnt what “gaslighting” meant, that’d probably make him mutate and become even worse than before.
“Nothing you’d need to know, you fossil”, she said. “No but really, imagine things from my point of view for a single fucking second. I come to a city. Stumble upon you. Get my nose broken on you. Get later on hunted like a lowly criminal for just NOT seeing you there. But first no! I get to a contest. I win it cause, duh”, she paused, and rolled her eyes, “I’m awesome. Of course I win. And then that pRICK of a priestess comes and attacks me from behind when I’m about to get my prize?? Is that a regular thing you do? Do you backstab all your first place winners? Is that an actual trick you do in order not to pay prizes to winners?? Are you that much of a greedy, greedy cult leader? Or did that really just happen because I broke my nose on you??”
He was just… staring at her. She started pacing back and forth.
“Then I do SELF-DEFENCE, because I’m not about to get kicked in the butt and not react to that in any way, and as I’m followed by your little brainless goons that just think because someone screamed ‘LOOK THAT’S AN EVIL CREECHURE BEAT IT UP’ that they need to catch me like I’m some sort of Pokemon”, she took a big breath, “and when THAT fails, you come along”, and she pointed at him there, “And you’re all ‘GUH GUH fear me I’m a god’, but it’s whatever, nobody can beat me”, she said, and put a hand on her chest, “so things escalate. At that point I’m still not killing anybody because I’m pretty sure I can get out without killing people who made the mistake of ever believing in you.”
And he was still there, staring, even if she was insulting him. That was definitely off. What sort of eldritch thing was he up to beneath his mask? He hadn’t stopped oozing divinity. Her mana sense was still blind. What was he up to?
There really was no need to find out. As soon as she was done she was crashing through that window. Or maybe… she’d do it when that’d annoy him the most. In the middle of one of his monologues. Yes, yess that would be nice.
“You were saying?” he said.
“Yes yes”, she replied, batting him off, because he really didn’t need to get the impression that anybody needed any sort of input from him, “I didn’t kill when I could spare people. You forced me. You literally forced my hand you dumb dipshit. You pushed me into a corner, and when you finally managed that? You act surprised when I lash out? I made it to the wall. I was nearly there.”
“And that’s when you chose to… spare”, and he said the two following words very weirdly, “the city.”
Holy shit.
Was he being sarcastic?
She stared.
“You’re fucking kidding me. You don’t believe me”, she said.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
His mask tilted.
That fucking nitwit.
“There is a simple solution to figuring out the real picture of the truth. I do have a confessor that will be able to untangle truths from lies”, he said. “If you’re so sure of yourself, do stay, of course. But I understand if you run away now, Victorya. It’s not so often that you must be confronted with a mightier, honour-bound man who forces you to confront the simple fact that your lies do not remake reality.”
She blinked.
“Fuck you”, she said.
“Is that an admittance of the fragility of your constructed story where you… happen to be the hero?” he said. “The one where you do not hear the calls to justice, the one where you throw yourself into what you’d call a delicate situation when you’ve practised blasphemy and worse”, and oh, he was starting to monologue.
“BRO I wasn’t going to give myself up to CULTISTS, that’s literally the worst sane idea in the entire world”, she interrupted.
“Oh? And you’ve known many cultists?” he asked.
“I’ve known enough fucking cultists not to trust a single one. They’re all deluded fanatics that want nothing more than to use every part of the world and its people to sacrifice to their nitwit gods”, she paused, and pushed a finger on her chest. “And that very much included me. Do you think I’m just that fucking deranged to give myself up? Do you? Do you?”
“You are quite deranged, brat”, he said. “Which still doesn’t tell me if you would accept facing my confessor.”
Vic chuckled and rolled her eyes.
“What, you gonna try to lead me to a dimly lit dungeon cell where I’ll get answers indelicately tortured out of me? Really? You’re gonna do that to me and think I’m rolling with it? I didn’t think you thought I was stupid.”
A chuckle echoed back.
“No such thing, indeed. I fear you’d…” he said, “Simply rush away from that path if you could help it.”
Vic rolled her eyes.
“I’m not doing that but not because I’m lying. I’m not lying. I spared your shitty city because I felt like it. You’re a dingus if you think I’d fail a spell when facing you.”
“And yet you would refuse to speak to a confessor that would enlighten us both so readily”, he said.
“NAH”, Vic said, “As tempting as proving you wrong is, I’m just not going willingly back to the dark cell you put me in just to get interrogated. If that’s what a smart move sounds to you, then I’m not as smart as you.”
“What about accepting to talk to a confessor that would come to you?” he asked, with a barely bothered edge to his voice that he might have been trying to hide. Her insults were getting to him. And oh, his question sounded premeditated. He’d been planning something.
“And give you time to get reinforcements?” Vic laughed. “I’m not that stupid come oooon.”
“What if she was simply a few corridors away”, he said, and Vic froze, “Simply because I called her to me before you realised you wished to run from your lies? Would you still run away then?”
Vic had frozen, but not in fear.
There was a beaming smirk on her face.
“Wait… You’re telling me that I actually get to prove you wrong, shit on you for that and crash through that window? That’s a freaking good deal!” she said.
There was an extremely condescending chuckle sent back to her.
What an arrogant piece of shit.
“I’m giving her thirty seconds or I’m leaving”, she said. Better put on some boundaries or she was going to get yanked around, and that just couldn’t do.
Another one of his dark chuckles came to her ears. He really needed to stop being such a smart ass, or he was going to find the consequences of doing that very quick.
“Then I’m afraid you truly cannot run from the truth”, he said, and he sounded weirdly joyful. He spread his hands out, looking like the cult leader that he was.
“Then”, she imitated arrogantly, “I’m afraid you truly cannot run from the truth”, she repeated, mimicking his speech to make him understand how annoying he sounded. She had no doubts that she was failing to do so because he most likely was very, very self-centred.
“I do not sound like that”, he said.
“I do not sound like that”, she said, repeating the parody of his posh accent.
He clenched his left fist again. Huh, was it his dominant hand? She’d store that information around her brain for later use.
He was about to reply when very hurried footsteps came into the long room.
She pulled her tongue at him right before the arrival of the confessor. He didn’t get the time to say anything about that.
“My liege”, the confessor said. She was the same elf back from the spell contest. Was it… Ama? Eva? No way had it been Eva. She would have remembered that.
“Confessor Aema”, he said. Oh. Damn, she was bad with names.
“And me! Lil’ Vic!” she added high-pitchedly to be annoying.
Two heads turned to her. One oozed of frustation, the other was very neutral. Curiously, the one who was showing off their emotions was the one wearing a mask.
“Yeah yeah, it’s me”, Vic said to the confessor, “Sorry, I’m afraid we don’t have chairs”
Vic sat down, still wearing her shadow armour on, which made it look like she was levitating when the shadow armour took on its more transparent hues.
“The floor will have to do”, she beamed, and looked at the cursedblood emperor. “Sorry for your old bones, old man”, she said. “I’m so sad it can’t be helped.”
His mask was fully turned at her. He looked at her from beneath it.
He waved his hand around and roots shot out of the ground, wrapped themselves in weird cocoons, and when they disbanded, two perfectly comfortable fancy chairs were left.
“You may stay on the floor, Victorya” he said, “You seemed so used to the ground, I wouldn’t want to keep you away from your roots.”
She squinted.
“You speak a lot for someone who begged me to spare him when he was at my mercy”, she said.
He didn’t reply. But the way his hands were firmly clenched on his knees spoke of another story.
The confessor awkwardly looked between them.
…Wait, had he not replied and lied through his teeth because the confessor would have known about it?
Wait a minute. That implied something very important.
The confessor could have higher loyalties than the one of the cult leader she was working for. Maybe…
Was the truth all that mattered to people of that profession?
The confessor slowly tapped her fingers against the ones of her opposite hands. She looked stressed. Why was that?
“My liege?” she asked. “How may we start?”
Vic stared. What was going on behind that boring mask of his?
And why was the confessor acting like this? Was this situation so unusual? Was she supposed to be in another type of room for a specific type of truth ritual to take place?
“I spared the city. Go tell him. I’m saying the truth”, she said, “and nothing but the truth. I spared him, I didn’t mess up my spell. He’s full of shit.”
A blank look was given to her by the confessor. She gulped.
She slowly turned to ‘his royal annoyance’.
“She believes”, the confessor said, “that she speaks the truth”, she said.
Vic frowned.
“I don’t believe that I speak the truth. It’s the truth”, she said. “I spared him.”
The cult leader didn’t react. He didn’t move. It was almost comical, how tall he looked compared to all the people sitting next to him.
And yet…
“Perhaps her injuries might have made her remember things wrong”, he smoothly said.
Vic’s mouth gaped open.
“What”, Vic said.
“It is fairly possible that your evasive little mind crafted an easy to swallow lie out of the misremembered pieces of your own failures in order to protect its own confines and allow itself to keep going”, he said.
“OH”, Vic said, “YEAH SURE”, she licked her lips there like there was blood on them that wasn’t her own, “But I don’t remember having taken a hit to the head, care to explain that?”
“Magic works in strange ways”, he said, and he was implying something there, and feeling glee because she didn’t know what he was talking about.
“Okay, does that include all the stupid magic and divine and demonic and spiritual shit you tried to pull on me while I was asleep or are you implying something else?” she asked.
He lost his breath for a second. He straightened up, looking more imposing than before.
“How do you know that”, he asked, no, demanded.
She smirked.
“Oh, magic works in strange ways”, she said, doing a little circling motion with her index finger.
His gauntleted hands dug in the ripples of his own deep blue robes.
“She speaks… the truth”, she said.
Vic turned her head to the confessor.
“You”, Vic said. The elf stared back and didn’t move.
“How do I prove that I spared him and all his city? He needs to know. I am perfectly sane of mind and body when I say this. I spared him. That’s the truth.”
“It cannot be”, the Bloodcursed Emperor seethed, “It is unthinkable. You lost.”
The confessor didn’t reply.
“I didn’t. I let you win. I spared you. You would be dead otherwise. And half the city too, most likely. I’m so kind, so kind, don’t thank me”, she said, batting her hand. “You ungrateful prick”, she helpfully added, in case he didn’t know.
“My liege, she thinks… she speaks the truth”, the confessor said. “She thinks it very much, my liege, when she said that she was sane of mind and body.”
The confessor gulped.
Oh that poor sweet elf. Knowing the attitude of the man-child sitting tall next to her, there was no doubt that she could die for saying the truth. And for such a noble cause… truly, Victorya couldn’t let someone die for so little.
“Listen, it’s not her fault that she has to say this to you. I know, I know”, Vic said, “I know how hard it is to be wrong, but you’ve got to accept it. You were wrong, Cursedblood Emperor, and sadly, you can only accept it. It’s okay, buddy. Everyone’s been there. It’s okay. This doesn’t change anything you didn’t already know about yourself.”
His face had turned to the confessor. And yet, he spoke to Vic when he opened his mouth once more.
“How do you know that name?” he asked.
Vic blinked.
“What name? My own name?” she asked.
“No, you brat”, he spat. “I was asking about mine own name.”
Vic blinked.
“The Cursedblood Emperor one?” she asked. What was the big deal?
“Yes”, he said, and he sounded very cold and threatening there. Oh boy.
“Well, I just do”, she said. She wasn’t going to explain the game system to anyone. Those sorts of secrets worked best as they were: secrets.
“She believes she speaks the truth”, the confessor said.
“Elaborate”, he asked, but to Vic, leaning a little forwards, now his head fully turned to her.
Vic thought for a little while.
“It’s hard to explain”, she began, then tapped her fingers against her arm with the shadow armour on. “There are things that I just know”, she said.
The confessor nodded again to Alberon, so Vic continued.
“I don’t know how, but when someone is a big threat to me, or when I come across a new place, I simply know what its name is. Sometimes I also know what attributes it has”, she said.
The confessor nodded to Alberon. Her posture was stiff.
“What do you mean by that? What do those opponents have in common?” he asked.
Vic thought for a little while.
“I guess they were all… magical in a way? Perhaps…” Oh. Vic’s eyes widened. “Perhaps they were all related to a divinity?”
She saw the confessor nod, but before Vic continued, the “dude that was there” asked a question.
“Is it the same for the places you ‘simply’ know? Are they also related to divinities?” he asked.
Vic stopped.
She stared at the ground, frowned, opened her mouth, and closed it.
Wait a minute.
He might be onto something. Except… wait. No, something was wrong.
“Are the Wastes related to a divinity?” she asked, looking at him.
He tilted his head.
“Not as far as anyone knows”, he said.
Vic frowned.
“Well there are many corpses there”, she said.
The cursedblood emperor simply nodded his agreement.
“There are”, he said.
“Maybe there’s something big and fucked up and very dead there”, Vic said, frowning. “Huh, when I think about it…”
Then she realised in whose company she was and decided she wasn’t going to reveal her plans and deductions now in the open.
“I’ll have a big something to check out, I guess”, she said, uncaringly. She wasn’t lying in any way so it was fine. She spotted the confessor nodding, so yeah, it was fine.
Vic rubbed her own chin.
“I guess all the names that I just know might be related to divinities, huh”, she said. At least she got something out of this unnecessary meeting.
“That is good to know”, he said, and he sounded fairly pleased there.
Wait a minute… was he pleased because he thought that he was considered a divinity by the game system?
“Well, all the threats that I know about aren’t necessarily divinities”, she said, like she wasn’t saying that precisely because of the little cursedblood emperor next to her. “I think it just has to be related in some important way to a divinity, even if it’s very little.”
“I see”, he said, and nice, his self-satisfaction was gone, and replaced instead by a neutrality that hid as much as it could. “Victorya, could you explain who sent you here?”
Vic frowned, and made a bewildered grimace to him.
“Bruh, I already told you and your goons, I don’t get why you’re making me repeat it over and over again”, she said. “I have no master, mistress, boss, divinity or anyone ordering me around. I’m here because that was the closest city I spotted after doing my own thing in the wastes for a while.”
There was a very heavy pause after she spoke. The cult leader and the confessor stared to one another, and then the confessor nodded.
The Cursedblood Emperor sat very still.
There were five more seconds of silence.
“You follow no divinity? You have no patron god?” he asked.
Was he deaf?
“What would I need one for?” she asked, frowning. What a weirdo. She’d already told him that.
“Answer the question, Victorya”, he asked.
“No, don’t have one”, she said.
“Do you only follow your own whim?” he asked.
Vic stared, steadied herself, and put her hands over her knees, now sitting in a lotus position.
“Yeah, I guess”, she said.
Oh, right! He probably needed to know the following…
“And no, me crashing on you wasn’t premeditated, and me coming into your city wasn’t, it was all very stupid”, she said.
She could nearly imagine the squeaky mechanical noise as his neck turned to look at the confessor.
The confessor spoke, for the first time in a while.
“She… believes she speaks the truth”, she said.
Vic heard something very specific then. It was the sound of the cursedblood emperor smacking his lips. It was something she really wished she could unhear.
“Ayaaaa!” she interrupted “Surprise surprise! This whole confrontation was very stupid.”
She pointed a finger at the cursedblood emperor, who still hadn’t moved from his sitting position.
“And it’s all your fault”, she said.