by Samuel Small
Jake watched him go and spared a fearful glance at Thun, who relaxed his muscles and stared at the figure as it left.
Jake dropped to his haunches and sighed. He let his sword fall to his side and stared at the grass swaying in the frigid breeze. He ran his hands up his forehead and through his hair. To think he’d encounter Montasir of all people… and as an enemy. He was lucky to have made it out of such a thing alive.
“Jake, you know that guy?” Thun asked.
Jake looked up at the boy. He still stared at the place where Montasir’s figure had disappeared. He turned to Jake, his eyes especially cold, and a spark of electricity ran up his head then disappeared as his hair stood on end.
“He said something interesting about a connection to the Republic. I thought Lindsey mentioned you were from that area too.” Energy began to swirl into his palms as Jake slowly got to his feet, making sure to bring his sword with him.
Thun casually looked at the energy that was gathering in his hand, as if checking a nail. “Funny thing, you were kinda vague about where you learned to use that sword of yours. Hell, I even remember having a difference of opinion with you a few days back. Do you remember what it was about?”
The Republic.
“That’s right, the Republic. So tell me Jake, are you a traitor?”
Jake only looked on, stunned. He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t think there was anything he could say.
“I thought so,” Thun said, then smiled. The same fake smile Bolt wore so expertly. He shot his hand forward.
Jake jumped away as the beam carved into the earth. It was loud and sounded like pure energy grinding against itself in a blinding display of power. Jake could do no more than stare at it, terrified, as it sliced into the ground.
“The Republic. It’s always the fucking Republic!” Thun cried out, his voice almost distant because of the loud discharge. He moved his arm, which shot out energy and grasped it with the other to stabilize it, then began turning it toward Jake. The boy ran as the energy moved closer to him.
“You lied to us every step of the way! You pretended to be our friend! We made you one of us!” The energy was gaining on him, and even with the handicap of trying to fight against his own power Thun was still able to move his arm far faster than Jake could run. At this rate, he was going to be turned into a smoking corpse. The energy flashed and coalesced, and Jake jumped as far as he could. He managed to avoid the lighting, but barely. He could feel its hot energy inches away from his back before he sprang up, and his already bedraggled hair reacted to the static in the air.
Thun’s features were warped and devil-like under the twisting shadows of the flashing lightning. He turned his head toward Jake, ready to bring the line of electricity back around. Then, something passed by in Jake’s peripheral vision, slow and calm. He turned, shocked that the figure came so close to him without his noticing. Bolt walked toward Thun, not even giving Jake a glance. The energy continued to tear into the earth not far from where Bolt walked. Thun, for what it was worth, looked about as confused by Bolt’s demeanor as Jake was.
“What the hell are you doin’?” Bolt called over the twisting waves. The energy lashed into the air, blowing the boy’s jacket around his body like a sail.
“What do you mean? You heard what I said! He’s a traitor working with the Republic!”
“You mean you didn’t know?”
The energy stopped abruptly and Thun’s hair returned to normal. He stuck his chin out, uttering a confused “Huh?”
“I thought it was kinda obvious. I mean, I’ve known for at least a few days now.”
Thun looked at Bolt, confused, then to Jake in anger. He looked from one to the other, his expression changing with each turn. Finally, he shot out an arm, gesturing toward Jake. “Well then, why the fuck did you let him go along with us?”
Bolt, not missing a beat, placed his hands behind his head and looked toward the sky. “Hmmmm, I dunno. Experiment, I guess.”
“That isn’t it,” Thun began, and Jake tried to take a step closer to engage in the conversation and maybe find some form of resolution, but the larger boy turned to him and shouted. “Stay right there or I’ll fucking fry you!” Jake did as he was told.
“Come on, by the time I figured it out he was already our friend, and it’s not like I’m gonna suddenly kick a friend out of the group over something as silly as a difference in opinion.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Thun said, then strode toward Bolt so that their chests were nearly touching. “We don’t live in the fantasy world you believe in,” he said then walked over to Jake, making heavy steps in the grass. When he reached him, he extended his hand, palm up.
“Your jacket,” he demanded. Jake stared at him, initially confused as to what he meant. “Your jacket, now!” It hit home and Jake stripped off the Lightning Gang jacket as fast as he could and put it in Thun’s open hand. The boy clutched it and slung it over his shoulder.
Now painfully aware of the cold, Jake shivered and wrapped his arms around himself. He could feel it running down every fiber of his upper body now, and was well aware of the thin white cloud his breath created. Thun looked on, aware of his pain yet seeming indifferent to it.
“Out of respect for his fantasy world, and the dream he has for it, I’m going to leave you alive today, with the option to stay that way. In a few days I’ll be in the Republic, assisting with the rebellion. If I see you as an enemy combatant there I will kill you.”
His eyes were cold and dark, giving no hint of the person Jake had come to know in the past week. He lingered in front of Jake for a moment longer, then turned and stomped off toward Bolt. “Come on, let’s go.”
Bolt looked at Jake, shrugged, then followed Thun. Jake watched them walk away out of his life for good. The next time he’d see them they would be enemies.
“Wait!” he called out.
Bolt stopped immediately and turned, but Thun continued to move forward resolutely. “The Republic isn’t all bad, not by any stretch of the imagination. It takes care of its people, provides medical care, basic housing, and food rations, even to those unable to work. It’s a society that genuinely cares for people, and you want to overthrow it and replace it with the government of a genocidal maniac!”
At this, Thun did stop and slowly turned, the jacket that formerly belonged to Jake swaying. “If it genuinely cared for people, it wouldn’t have done what it did in Niflheim. As for the genocide, if you think the issue is that black and white then you deserve to die alongside the rest of the Republic’s soldiers.”
Jake opened his mouth to respond but Bolt’s expression caught his eye. He looked at Jake, closed his eyes, and shook his head. Jake knew he was right. They’d made up their minds already, the same as him. They were determined, and no amount of talking would change anything. He nodded at Bolt and he nodded back. “See you on the battlefield,” that nod said.
***
For the next few days, Jake traveled around the realm aimlessly. He crossed Deathridge, and when he did – free from the toll thanks to his and his former friend’s efforts – he saw Lindsey. She smiled when she saw him and waved.
He pretended not to see her.
The girl slowly lowered her hand, then turned around to continue carrying on with whatever business it was that she had been doing. Jake was tempted to ask whether or not she’d seen Bolt and Thun, but was afraid of what the answer would be. Instead, he continued past the stone town, which would have undoubtedly given him a warm place to stay, and off into the dangerous regions beyond. A dead boy haunted his dreams that night.
Chapter 9
The next day, Jake had a pain in his neck but continued his journey to the Republic, his work and job complete. He went to a store and picked up a heavy winter coat, paying with the last pieces of gold he had. He wore it around himself tightly, but it did little to keep out the bitter cold.
Walking across the dead fields, Jake felt a slight wetness touch upon his palm. He lo
oked up and little flurries of snow began to sway back and forth from the heavens like shredded paper. It made it feel colder and he regretted not purchasing a hat, but he accepted this drop in temperature in the same way that he accepted what he would have to do when he got back to the Republic, and trudged onward.
A few hours later the snow gathered in shallow drifts and Jake was making furrows in it, his feet sinking into the crisp coating with each step. Now happy that he had pants that kept the cold from creeping up his ankles, Jake walked onward to a village that might shield him from the storm that was coming. He didn’t have any money to spend on accommodation, but perhaps he could slay some Malice for people plagued by them in return for a bed. If not, there had to be an abandoned barn or something for him sleep in.
When Jake entered the village, he found the gate unattended and the streets empty. Each building had solid footprints leading out of them, running up the street. Jake decided that something strange was going on and followed the tracks.
Up ahead were the village citizens. All of them. They were gathered in what he assumed was the center of the settlement by a statue that was erected there, milling around nosily. Some mercenary or another must have vanquished the Malice in the area for a nominal fee, as that would explain why he didn’t encounter any on his way in.
His heart skipped a beat, and for a moment he thought of Montasir’s visor and the lifeless eyes behind it. He shook his head, knocking off a few clumps of snow from his messy hair. That was impossible. He had headed straight here, what was the likelihood that Montasir did the same? The person standing in the middle of that crowd was bound to be a complete stranger, just some pompous mercenary who—
“Eh? Is that bedhead?” someone said from within the crowd. The people parted to give the person within a clear view, and Jake was eye to eye with Dante, dressed in a black poncho that swayed in the breeze and concealed the position of his limbs. His hair had grown a bit longer in the past few months, and also floated to the side. He stared at Jake with an eyebrow raised.
“No fuckin’ way,” Dante said, and quickly broke through the crowd, making his way to Jake. The villagers attempted to follow him to this new stranger, but he turned around. “I already told you, I don’t want your money. If you really want to help, give me a place to stay and maybe a decent meal. Other than that, leave me alone.”
The villagers stood before him like willing dogs, waiting for their next instruction. In frustration Dante grunted and whipped his entire body around. “Fuck off will yuh!?” he shouted, and they made a hasty retreat. When they were back inside the relative warmth of their houses Dante turned to Jake, fuming.
“Bunch of fuckheads, all of ’em. You help ’em out a little and they cling to your ass like leaches.” His appearance may be slightly altered, but he was still the same loudmouthed and reckless guy Jake always knew. He smiled weakly at the recognition.
“Geez man, you look like shit,” Dante said.
Jake looked up at him, seeing the expression on his face – not exactly concern, more like confusion, as if he had never expected to see Jake in any kind of sorry state that wasn’t of his own making. Jake looked down at his clothing. The winter coat he had purchased was old and worn out, sporting holes and rips throughout, and underneath it he was still dressed in the commoner clothes Major Miles had given him. He supposed he did look like shit.
“Not your clothes,” Dante said, then gestured toward Jake’s face. “You. What the fuck happened?”
Jake almost opened his mouth to tell him, but reconsidered. He shook his head and opted for the truth, all be it the minimum.
“Just a mission for the Republic. It was a long one and super hard.”
Dante nodded absently at the statement. “Yeah, yeah. Those assholes do know how to work yuh super hard, I’ll give ’em that.” The orange-haired boy narrowed his eyes, then looked around the area. Although they were alone in the square, a few people peered at them through drawn blinds. He scowled at them, then turned back to Jake. “You wanna catch up someplace else? There’s some shit I wanted to pick your brain about.”
Jake agreed, but hoped that whatever Dante had to say had nothing to do with the Lightning Gang.
***
“A giant ‘shitmonster’?” Jake asked, bewildered. “Do you mean Malice?”
“Is that what they’re callin’ ’em? As far as I know, they looked like shit, smell like shit, and are a pain in the ass. That’s three for three, shitmonsters!”
Jake stared back at the boy with an eyebrow raised. The least he could do was stay up to date on the terminology. Despite his objections, Jake understood that insisting Dante should call them anything other than shitmonsters wouldn’t accomplish anything, so he just lowered his head. “Yeah, shitmonsters – sure.”
“Well, there’s a giant one going around fucking everything up!” Dante raised his arms high into the air as the snow continued to fall around him. It was as if he was a child telling Jake about a big bear he’d seen or something. Jake sighed and almost blew him off, but then a memory came to him: one of a destroyed village, riddled with pale corpses and debris.
“Wait a minute, when you say big do you mean big?”
Dante looked on, apathetic. “Yeah. Big means big.”
He didn’t get it. Jake waved his hands over his head and shook it. “No, by big I mean big. Like large enough to crush an entire building underfoot?”
“Hmmmmm,” Dante placed a finger on his chin. He looked around at the scenery, the dim lights of the center of village glowing in the distance, then scanned the barn that Jake would have been sleeping in if Dante had not been offered a place to stay the night. “It’s possible. I haven’t seen it for real, but the villages it has been to have been real fucked-up by it. Like, I mean fuuuuuuuucked-up.”
“Yeah I think I know the one you’re talking about, but we shouldn’t have to worry about it. The village I was at was past Deathridge.”
“Nope, it’s nearby, I know that much for sure.” Dante shook his head and brushed Jake’s explanation aside as if it were nothing. Jake was a little annoyed about it as he’d just seen a village it had destroyed, and opened his mouth to object but Dante placed a hand upward to silence him and continued. “I’ve been tracking it for a while now and I can tell you for sure that it’s in the area. Why, just a few days ago this place was crawling with those shitfucks.”
“I don’t see what that has to do with anything. There’s Mal— ‘shitfucks’ everywhere. The fact that they were here in greater numbers probably just means the area was ill-equipped to deal with them.”
Dante looked at him as if to ask, ‘are you serious?’ Jake didn’t get it, but he knew the boy well enough by now to know that he was going to give him a decent, if inarticulate, account of why he thought as he did.
“The shitfucks aren’t that much different from the Voids. I mean, yeah, they’re a little tougher and sure there’s usually a few big ones in the batch, but it isn’t more than a village can handle. At the very least, if these guys were even trying to kill them the place wouldn’t be crawling with ’em. They’ve been around for months, so the threat would be completely gone by now if there was a limited number of the bastards.”
“‘Limited number’? You aren’t suggesting that they… reproduce?” A terrifying image shot into Jake’s mind, far more terrifying than the sight of the destroyed village or even the tragedy at Niflheim. He shook his head and wished it away.
“Nah, not like that. I mean they’re shit monsters but I don’t think they, well, you know. I think someone shits them out.”
“What?”
“Yeah, the one that’s going around, that’s the big shit: patient zero of the shit. Everything else running around is the shit’s shit.” He inclined a finger upward proudly, like a professor giving a lecture. Jake didn’t know what to think other than Dante must have gone absolutely bonkers, but then his brain started to translate and remove some of the Danteisms from his speech, and he thought
he started to see the bigger picture.
“Are you suggesting all the Malice… the ones that we’ve been fighting, they all originate from this larger one?”
“Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m saying.”
“So, if we were to find and kill that one… we’d be able to eliminate the Malice in its entirety?”
“Yeah, that’s why I’ve been lookin’ for it for the past few months. I figure if I can kill it—”
“Don’t kill it,” a voice said from behind. Jake felt uncomfortable, like he didn’t want to turn his head to face the speaker, but he willed his way through the feeling and turned around. When his eyes locked on the figure, they bulged.
Standing alongside the barn was the spiky-haired demon boy. He still wore the same black suit and held his hands before him in a formal posture. In the fading evening light, Jake could tell he was slightly transparent and could make out little droplets of snow fluttering behind and even within him, as well as the lack of footprints he left. Jake began to draw his blade, but felt a light pat on his shoulder. There stood Dante, who lowered his head and shook it.
“Don’t worry about him, he shows up from time to time to say some cryptic bullshit.” The demon boy scowled at him, clearly angry, but Dante let a playful grin show upon his features. “Word is he got in trooouuble. Can’t go around murdering people no more. Damn shame.”
Why was the demon who killed everyone in Niflheim and Magnum Undo standing across from him now so passively? If he was in trouble, did that mean that he had a boss, one even more powerful than him? How long had Dante been in contact with him? All the questions assaulted him at once, and Jake thought he’d been hit on the head with hammer. Not one coherent word passed his lips – it seemed they all tried to escape at once, and he mumbled and pointed all around.