by Daryl Banner
Then a pair of masks are at the door, each grabbing a leg of Link as they drag him away.
And Kid hurries after them through the door. She doesn’t even stop to glance at herself under the table—the little girl who is likely still staring, stupefied, paralyzed, at the spot at which her father was just lying. Good luck, little one, Kid thinks to herself as she races after the masked men.
0223 Rone
He was flying somewhere, afloat in a dream of his own making when he feels the undeniable brink of orgasm rush toward him. He chases after it with the excitement he used to feel as a child, first learning the limits of his Legacy as he’d barge toward a brick wall, ready to phase through it at the last second, unsure if he’d smash face-first into the brick or drift through it like a cloud.
That wall looks like Ruena Netheris. She opens her arms, ready to embrace him. Then she’s on a bed, spreading her long, beautiful, smooth legs. She’s naked and her breasts call to him. “Rone …” she whispers in the swirling nothingness.
Rone spills, wave after wave of unimaginable pleasure as he empties. It doesn’t matter that it’s inside Edrick’s ass as the pleasure boy rides his hard cock, despite Rone lying there like a child’s rag doll. It doesn’t matter that his real love, Ruena, is somewhere else in Atlas, far away, maybe in danger, maybe perfectly safe, maybe dead by now … none of it matters.
“More,” hisses Rone as he tries to move his arms, but feels the delightfully heavy grip of chemical in his blood.
The pleasure boy is there somewhere stuffing Rone’s cock away into a pair of underwear. Through a haze that’s become of Rone’s vision, he sees his outline. Edrick looks down at him.
“M-More …” repeats Rone with only an ounce more of urgency.
“More what?” returns Edrick. “More of my ass? Or more of my chemical down your throat?”
“More …” Rone breathes deep, sucking sweet, delicious air into his shallow lungs. “More. Please. More.”
Edrick stares down at him, slowly coming into focus as Rone lazily blinks and blinks and blinks. Edrick’s expression is flat. There is no fun in his eyes. He just took another ride on Rone and keeps getting what he wants over and over, and still there’s no joy in his eyes. There’s still no joy.
“You’ve had enough,” mutters Edrick sourly. “And so have I.”
“More …” moans Rone, frustrated.
Edrick lifts himself off the bed, puts on a pair of tiny golden shorts that cover just to the bottom of his ass, then sashays out of the room and into the main bar where the customers are. Rone slumps back onto the bed, giving in to the fairies and sparkles and blankness that wait for him behind his eyelids.
Over the past several days—however long it’s been since Edrick took him in—Rone has spent the majority of his time lounged over one of the three lavish beds that sit in this back room where Edrick takes his highest paying clients. Some have asked what purpose Rone serves, and Edrick tells each of them to ignore him and makes up some story about Rone being a past client that got so drunken and happy with Edrick’s top-quality service that he passed out just like a two-year-old. It always seems to do the trick, and Edrick gets to work making some more coin. Sometimes other pleasure boys will join him, including two who have come seeking refuge from the Lifted City after the Fall. “Slummers will pay some pretty paper for Privileged ass,” he’d told both them and Rone.
Once, Rone slumped out of the room and staggered over to the bar where he sat on a stool and stared, dead-eyed, at the broadcast, which displayed nothing. The chemical in his brain began to show a hallucination of some execution before his eyes, and he watched each and every person he ever knew being killed by Impis Lockfyre. He felt nothing as he watched each of them die.
Suddenly Rone is sitting up in the bed. He feels like a long period of time has passed, but can’t tell how much. A day? A week? He feels unsettlingly alert and aware of his surroundings. He glances down and finds his pants missing, only a pair of small baby blue briefs hugging his cock and balls tightly.
He’s on his feet, then regrets rising so quickly, sitting right back down as his head spins. He blinks several times, takes a deep breath, then rises off the bed more slowly. Still dizzy, he staggers toward the door and pushes it open.
The bar is somewhat populated—at least twenty or so men, if Rone had to guess. Half of them turn in his direction, and he is met with a slew of hungry eyes and quirking eyebrows. Rone ignores them all and totters drowsily across the room. The eyes follow. He makes it to the bar and slumps onto a barstool, pressing his face into his hands to drown out everything he sees.
“What’s your rate, pretty thing?” grunts a man at his side.
“Half a pint of chemical,” answers Rone, muffled through his palms. I’m a chemical slave now. “Just drown me out and I’m happy. Help me feel nothing.”
“I could put it in you and fuck you raw as you like,” the man says. “You won’t feel a thing. That still cost me a pint?”
“Fuck off,” mutters Rone.
The man bristles. “The hell you just say to me, whore boy?”
“You want something to fuck?” asks Rone, lifting his face from his hands to look at him. Goodness, you’re ugly. “How about you take a finger or five and go fuck yourself? It’s the economical option.”
The man makes a furious grab at Rone, but he goes straight through him. Rone, solidifying just his hand, grabs the man by the back of his neck and thrusts him into his barstool face-first, but phases him halfway into it. Then Rone releases his hand and slumps away carelessly, leaving the screaming man trapped with his upper torso lodged somehow between the legs of the barstool, his ass up in the air. A few patrons seem to find it more amusing than horrifying, taking turns slapping the man’s ass and calling him names.
The noise in the bar cuts in half at once. Rone hears a familiar buzzing, and then a funny voice cuts through the room, louder than all the rest. It confuses Rone until he turns around to face the bar again and finds all of the broadcasts showing the bright and equally-as-confused face of Impis Lockfyre. His skin is powdered white and his eyes are lined with a deep red color that fans out at the temples. His lips are a kiss of pale, smeared red. One pupil is a pinhead of black and the other, a spiral of red. His face fills the whole screen.
“Is it working?” asks Impis, staring at the screen.
“I did all I could,” comes a soft voice.
Rone blinks and wipes his eyes. I know that voice.
Impis taps the screen. “HELLO??” he calls into it, the whites of his eyes flashing bright, too bright. His left eye twitches once. “Are you there, my lovely Atleans? I made that word up just now. It’s cute. I claim it. Atleans. Atlas-eans. Atlaseans.” He starts mumbling to himself, confused suddenly.
“I … I tried what I know,” the soft voice comes again. “I read a book about the electrical infrastructure of—”
“Ugh, your words.” Impis pulls away from the camera ever slightly to address her. “Thank you for your service. Oh! Come, yes! Introduce yourself! ATLAS,” cries Impis, facing the camera again. “Meet my newest Chaot! Hey, Atlas, isn’t that what you like to call my friends? Chaots? I heard the word from a person we dropped from the edge of the city. You do know we were doing that, right? A soul a day for every day Ruena was not brought to me?”
The camera shifts only slightly, but it’s just enough to catch sight of Erana, who stands there awkwardly with her glasses at the tip of her nose. Her eyes are dead and her lips are slightly parted. The long braid that had become of her black hair is disheveled and somewhat unraveled, giving her a tousled, manic sort of look.
Rone’s heart breaks. He can’t breathe suddenly, listening and watching. If there’s a trace of chemical in his system, he can’t feel it.
“But Ruena was brought to me. Quite lucky for you. And yet …”
Impis grabs hold of the camera, each of his thumbs visible on the sides of the screen. His teeth clenches as the words come out.
Murmurs are rising among the men at the bar and around the room, their eyes wide with alarm.
“My Chaos Bolts will continue to fire. Oh, I have such a delight with each and every emission. I orgasm on the likes of all of you, and my orgasm is red, hot light. Have you ever seen true power?” asks Impis, suddenly sounding as light and flippant as a friend chatting over cuddled pillows. “Power like this? Oh, if only I had these damn broadcasts working since the start. I would have shown you each and every life that falls from the sky. Yes, yes, I think I’ll do that. Oh, what a show! What a show it’ll be!”
Then the Mad King cackles, flecks of his spit dressing the lens of the camera. He backs away from the camera, laughing maniacally as if invisible fingers are assaulting him, tickling every inch of his body. He thrusts forward—a tickle at his back. He doubles over—a tickle on his abs, on his sides, around his neck. He splutters and howls.
Other laughter joins him on the broadcast. Anyone near him are now laughing. Even Erana. The madness spreads before Rone’s eyes, contained to the unfortunate ones within his vicinity up in the sky somewhere. The sound is deafening, the broadcast in the bar blasting with sickening laughter. Someone gets too close to the camera and knocks it over, and the whole world shifts, staring up at the shattered pillars of the Crystal Court, revealing where they are.
And then the laughter ends at once, as if Impis deliberately chooses to end it. Flat-lipped, Impis stands over the camera, staring down into it, and for a moment, it’s like he’s standing on top of the whole world. “The one who brings me Ruena Netheris will be showered with riches and power. I will assign you the position of …” Impis’s eyes detach as he looks up, thinking of a word. Then he grins and peers back down at the camera. “Marshal of Treasures. Yes, yes, yes. Treasures lost and treasures found. Find my treasure, my precious Atleans,” he hisses, and then the broadcast goes dead.
Rone can’t move his face, as if still staring at the Mad King on the broadcast. Erana … He turns away and pushes back into Edrick’s room, stunned. He can’t even blink. Erana … If he blinks, he’ll lose sight of one of the two women he loves. One is trapped up there with the Madness upstairs. One is lost down here in the Madness below. Or has Ruena escaped back to our spot in the sky? Are they both up there?
“Why did I ever leave …?” Rone mumbles to the empty bed in which he’s spent so much time drowning in a pool of numbness. “Why …?”
“Rone,” comes Edrick’s voice at his back. “You alright?”
Rone doesn’t answer, mumbling something unintelligible into his palms, which now cover half his face.
“I’d ask if you need any clothes,” murmurs Edrick, “but then I’d disappoint literally everyone in the bar, myself included.”
Rone spins suddenly, facing the pleasure boy. “Did you not just see that?” he nearly shouts, exasperated at once.
Edrick smirks. “Yeah, so? The Mad King’s got a new toy. That’s all he needs. Another toy. He’s got red lightning and he still needs more toys. It doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t change anything.”
He has Erana. It changes everything. And the syringe … “Oh, no.”
Edrick lifts his eyebrows. “What?”
“I need my clothes,” demands Rone, dizzily glancing around him at the floor and seeing nothing. He stumbles into a nearby dresser and rips open the drawer, but all he finds inside are a hundred pairs of skimpy underwear in every single texture and shape and color of the rainbow.
“You arrived in only jeans, and that sad pair of jeans were in tatters. You had no shirt or shoes or … well, anything else. Not even underwear.”
Rone trips over his foot and falls into the bed, then stumbles back to his feet, the room spinning. “Give me pants. Anything. A shirt. I need to go.”
“Wait, wait, wait.” Edrick is standing in front of him at once. “You can’t just leave like this.”
“I have to stop him. I’m the one. The syringe … her weapon …”
“What syringe? What weapon?”
“A treasure beneath the floor …” Rone mumbles the words. He thinks of the “treasure” of the slums beneath the “floor” of the Lifted City. Is that it? Is the serum a medicine for the slums—the treasure beneath the floor? A medicine to cure the city of the Madness? “The weapon in my arsenal …” What’s the weapon? His Legacy? Passing through walls? Walking straight into the throne room and injecting the Mad King with the deadly, neutralizing serum … which he left in an alley someplace?
“Stop.”
Rone stops, gripped by the arms by Edrick. A mixed look of fear and sadness floats in Edrick’s eyes. Rone never thought it possible, for emotion like that to appear in the eyes of a boy like this.
“I’m still owed,” murmurs Edrick in a voice that’s hardly there.
Rone swallows. He can phase through the pleasure boy’s hands and just run, but he chooses not to. He lets Edrick touch him and he considers the pained look in the boy’s eyes. Did I use Edrick, or did Edrick use me?
“You wanted me to make you feel love,” Rone says, “long ago. It was your bargain that we could never fulfill. Twice now I’ve been here, accepting your help.”
“And twice, I’ve scared you off into the Lifted City. Twice. The love of my life, always running away.”
“I’m not the love of your life.”
“Aren’t you?”
“No.” Rone brings a hand to the back of Edrick’s neck, then pulls the boy toward him, planting a kiss on his forehead. “You’ll find that thing that makes you love, Eddy. It’s not me. Or my cock. Or my pretty blue eyes.”
“They aren’t that pretty,” Edrick lies, pulling away. “Besides, you think you’re the first one? Maybe I have a weakness for helping fools like you who’ve lost their way, broken down and desperate, at their very worst. Maybe I … I just want someone to feel sorry for … and then to hold.” He lets go of Rone, appraising him for a moment. “My brother calls me Eddy. It’s weird that you just did.”
“You’ve a brother? Is he as similarly big-hearted and wanton of pity?” Rone sits down suddenly, his head reeling sideways. “Fuck.”
Edrick crouches down in front of him, folds his arms over Rone’s lap and rests his chin in it, looking up at Rone. “If we’d spent a little less time guzzling cock and chemical, respectively, maybe we would have talked a bit more and gotten to know one another. You might have found that we have more in common than you know.”
“Maybe,” agrees Rone, then glances down at Edrick’s face in his lap. “Eddy, I need you to take me to the street you found me on.”
“No, nope. It’s weird, you calling me that. I feel like I’m in my brother’s lap. Weird, weird, weird.”
“Please. I need you to take me.”
“Why the rush?” Edrick lazily runs a finger up and down Rone’s thigh. “Can’t you stay here another night or so, you sweet, blue-eyed creature? The Madness can wait.”
“The Madness has waited.”
“I won’t even touch your cock,” he insists. “I just want to cuddle. Just a little bit of cuddling. Maybe a kiss or two, if you’re open to it.”
“Your forehead just got one.”
“I want one on the lips. Please, Rone.”
“My sister died for that syringe that I carelessly left in an alley somewhere. With any luck, it won’t have gotten stepped on or stolen or ingested by a cat. Please, Edrick. Take me there.”
Edrick sighs, his breath blasting over Rone’s exposed thighs. He relents at last, rising from the floor and crossing to a large armoire across the room. He open it and pulls out a simple grey shirt and a pair of jeans. He flings them onto the bed nearest to him, then
fishes out a pair of shoes and socks, setting them on the floor. Without another word, Edrick walks out of the room, shutting the door at his back and leaving Rone alone to dress.
The shirt fits too snug and the jeans grip his ass like a pair of lover’s hands, but he accepts them anyway, the baby blue briefs on underneath. The brown shoes are loose and worn, so even though they are smaller than Rone would prefer, they are still wearable. He emerges from the room and finds Edrick by the door to the bar, waiting for him with his arms crossed and a smirk on his face. No, he’s not happy about the favor he’s doing Rone, but he’s doing it anyway, and for that, Rone is infinitely appreciative.
They walk the streets for twenty minutes, Edrick wrapped up in a red, shimmery jacket that cinches at the waist with a cord and covers only halfway to his knees. When they happen upon the street, Rone isn’t even aware of it until Edrick grunts, “Here.”
Rone plunges forth, searching for the item. He squints and goes to his hands and knees. He experiences four and a half minutes of excruciating, heart-crushing disappointment as his eyes find nothing.
Then a glint catches his eye by the dumpster. He rushes to it and picks the delicate syringe off the ground, issuing a sigh of delight and feeling like he could cry. His head still spins and the gleeful tinge of citrusy joy that is chemical dances around in his chest, but he has reunited with Cintha’s only gift to him, and for that he is grateful.
“Good luck,” calls out the pleasure boy before turning to go.
“Wait.”
Rone closes the distance between them. Edrick’s eyes are dead as he stares resentfully at Rone. When the two boys are together, Rone puts a finger under Edrick’s chin, lifting his face upward.
A little spark of curiosity enters the pleasure boy’s eyes.
Rone thinks about the woman—the women—he loves. He thinks about Ruena Netheris, his Queen. He thinks about Erana Sparrow, his Muse. He feels the fingerless touch of their passions and what it’s like to spend endless lazy days entangled in blankets and pillows on the lavish floor of a half-fallen Lifted City mansion. I want to return there with them someday. We will make our peace less temporary. The overwhelming stuff of love surges into him, filling and overflowing.