A Gamer's Guide 361

“No,” I mutter. “No, you can’t—”

“Charge!” someone behind me cries, and now the soldiers are back on their drakes, spears brandished and ready, moving with all the grace and intentionality of seasoned warriors. All heading towards the downed dragon. All heading towards…

I notice a gleam among the cavalry that haven’t attacked yet. Arrows. Bows. 

They’re going to shoot him again, I realize. They’re going to shoot arrows at Lett. Hurt him. Kill him. My blood runs cold and my dead heart weighs heavy in my chest, aching like a lump of raw lead. You can’t hurt him. He’s only a boy. This isn’t his fault. You have to stop this. Stop, before he—

There’s a scream. Another one. Lett, screaming again. The soldiers are attacking the dragon, and even though it’s a four-winged dragon, even though it’s supposed to be so strong and powerful, their spears are piercing it. Little toothpicks poking holes in the hide, making it bleed a liquid so thick and viscous it can only be likened to grape syrup. It isn’t even fighting back. It’s just lying there on its side, jaw slacked open, unbreathing. “Stop it,” I mutter. I try to move towards them, to stop them, to tell them to leave them alone, only to suddenly be thrust back by a wall of solid air, my feet leaving the ground for a moment. 

The dragon moved its wing. As though it was swatting at flies. And the soldiers… Broken. Mangled, like tin soldiers tossed around by a great dane. It hadn’t even been on purpose. Not malicious. It just swatted at them, and they died. Not all of them, though. Some are still moving, even though their arms are crushed and their femurs have turned to dust. Those who hadn’t been hit directly had been blown away by the sheer strength of the movement. And for one horrifyingly endless moment, nobody says anything.

A piercing scream cuts through the silence like a knife, slaughtering it, disembowelling it to allow further shouts of terror and horror to abound. I can hear Sythe crying for people to recuperate and continue their advance, and many do listen, but some run. Some, acting on instincts they’ve surely spent many years oppressing, freeze solid, hoping that if they stand very, very still, they might not be spotted. A stray drake rushes past me, dragging along a mangled corpse, its head flattened into a mosaic of red and white and organ-grey.

Above, Lett is still clutching his arm, looking down at us. I can hear him. His breathing, panting and fearful. His heart, beating as fast as if he was running a marathon. I can hear him too. Eyes wide, trembling, face set in a death mask. Then, something shifts. My heart feels it before my senses notice it.

His lip quirks up. “Heh.”

And all of a sudden, I’m not looking at Lett anymore. I know I’m not. As surely as I know there are stars in the sky and life eventually leads to death, I know that Lett is not up there anymore. There is no doubt in my mind that the god of kings has corrupted him, mind and body, and unless we stop him here and now, there is no hope for this world anymore. This isn’t Lett. This is an usurper of worlds, a killer, a dragon-rider, a monster, a—

Another arrow flies at him and Lett ducks, whimpering, his eyes wide with fear and his body jerking at the pain that moving his arm brings.

A child. 

I reel where I stand. Following the same movements Lett is making, dancing along to his pathetic, terrified waltz, the dragon hits blindly, its massive wing striking the tops of the trees I saw Rice under. Wood groans and screams, nearby drakes scattering in terrified clumps, the trees rendered into stray wood and splinters. 

My feet begin to move. Rushing, now, I fly towards where she was, where she should still be, Rice, my friend, who can’t be hurt, not like this, not—

Grandma rushes past me, her saddle empty. 

The ground beneath my feet turns snowy but I keep running, desperate, my head filled with static and my ears filling with the sounds of a child lashing out at those hurting it and all the people dying because of it. 

I reach the felled trees, some crushed, some bifurcated almost as though by a saw, some having exploded into living chunks by the force of the hit. “Rice?” I call out, dumbly. “Rice?” again, and now I can see the other soldiers that were here. Not all are dead, I comfort myself. Only some. Not all. She could be fine. She has to be. She’s strong. She wouldn’t die from something as stupid as this. That would be dumb. I can’t let her die like this. No. Not for this.

Groaning soldiers in heaps of broken bones. Some have their crushed gory remains mixed with the equally crushed but splintered remains of the trees they were standing next to. 

Is that her? I ask myself, looking at the mangled, unrecognizable splatters of mashed-up man. Is that her? Is that her? Is that—

A silhouette flies past me and I spot a curl of swirled ginger hair. My hands flash out and I grab a hold of her, pulling her close, tight, in my arms. I can smell it. It’s her. She’s alive. In my arms. She’s—

Something in my arm goes crunch and I feel her hiss through clenched teeth.

“Rice?” I say. I can see her now. Her hat is gone. That’s not right. She has to wear her hat. Otherwise, she’s not her. And I can only see one eye. Wild with pain but determined and strong and… I notice her left arm. It’s the wrong way around. “You’re—”

“It’s an apostle,” she says, the pain of speaking making her grunt. “Not a herald.”

“The dragon?”

“No. The—”

“We have to go,” I tell her. “Lett’s in trouble. I have to talk to him.”

She stares at me as though I’m insane. “You—” she’s interrupted by a scream and the force of an earthquake striking the ground, bringing us down to our knees again. I take a hold of her shoulders, my gaze flitting between her and the battlefield. “We have to kill him,” she whispers sharply at me. “The god of hunting spoke to me. If we don’t kill him now, he’ll become what is essentially a god. The divinity is loose in him now. He hasn’t ascended beyond his body yet. That means we can still kill him.”

“That means…” I blink at her. Well, isn’t that something? I feel myself smile. “Then, I can still save him.”

“What?” As I stand up, she tries to pull me back down, but I won’t allow her. We have no time to waste. “Prince, what are you—” Unable to stop me, she clicks her tongue, grabbing me forcefully by the arm. “Damn it, man, are you deaf?! That isn’t Lett anymore!”

I cock my head at her. “Did you stop becoming Rice when you became an apostle?”

Her face contorts in confused, desperate despair. “No, but this is different. You have to understand that—”

“He’s still Lett,” I say, my heart and mind speaking as one. For once, there is no confusion between them. What I know and what I feel are fully congruent. A harmony resides within me and I am going to sing it even if it costs me my life. I smile at her. “Rice, I need you to do something for me. It might kill you, and for that I’m sorry. But I need you to do this. No one else can.”

Her chest is rising and falling. The movement is bringing pinpricks of pain to her from her mangled arm. In the end, she turns away from me, her face becoming hidden by her wild tufts of hair. “Damn it.” A stray bit of wind moves her hair, and now I can tell that she’s smiling. “I never should have trusted you with my heart.”

“Finders keepers,” I say. 

She chuckles, turning to me, her blue eyes gleaming like aquamarine. “Alright. What do I need to do?”

My smile widens into a grin. “Distract him.”