The Restored: Chapter Five

The Arenamaster’s body exploded into a shower of light and sparks, and Alyphize vanished. Her magic lifted off of me, and I sucked in a deep breath. That was a mistake, as even with the wet shirt over my mouth, it set off a round of coughing.

Behind where the Arenamaster – or I guess, the illusion of the Arenamaster? Projection? Simulacra? Some sort of strange demonic copying spell? Whatever she had been. 

Behind where it had been stood Mist, her sword held aloft, her slightly thinner coat flaring out behind her in the wind kicked up by the acceleration spell that she’d been using. 

She shoved her sword into her belt and extended her hand. 

“Get up,” she said. “It won’t take long for Alyphize to send new projections of them through here, and they’ll be ready for war. I doubt she’ll just transport a single bomb this time – she’s going to have her full arsenal.” 

I coughed again, grabbing her hand and pulling myself up to my feet. 

“There are still people down here. They’re trapped.” 

A conflicted look spread over Fake-Mist’s face, and she sighed, then ran a hand through her hair. 

“I can’t save them, and you’re not in any shape to either.” 

She was right, and I knew that. For all the curse wreaking havoc on me had been mental and spiritual, it had still hurt my body in a very real, very painful way. 

“Fine, but we need to get Deepwater,” I said. “I trapped him on a rooftop.” 

“Oh, I know,” she said. “I already freed him, but he’s gone. I don’t know if he’s going back to the portal, or if he’s going to try and escape the city, but he’s gone.” 

“Let’s go,” I agreed. 

Though I had been severely battered, my Aura was still reasonably full, and I cast the spells to fly, then moved out into the fire again. 

“What are you doing?!” Fake-Mist snapped.

“Going to open one more passage,” I said. “Come with me, or run if you want.” 

“Fine,” she grumbled. “Just… Hurry. It won’t be long.”

“Only three main passages left,” I commented. “I can’t save anyone, but I can clear the way.” 

“I’ll take two,” she said. “See if you can keep up, old man.” 

At that, she lifted higher into the air and blurred away, picking up speed quickly. 

She was true to her word, as I broke open one passage, then met her in the third, where she had already opened it. We flew through the passage, then floated around to a different part of the undercity, and started walking through an abandoned office building to sneak back under the cordon and get to an official exit. 

“So,” I started as we landed and began walking along one of the normal undercity streets, not wanting to draw attention to ourselves. 

“So,” she responded, before trailing away into nothing. 

“You saved me,” I said. “Why? I can’t say that I’m exactly complaining, I’d have been dead without help, but…” 

“The screaming,” Fake-Mist said. “It was the screaming, and then the laughing.” 

She was quiet for a moment, and I didn’t press her for details, even if I wanted to know what she meant by ‘then the laughing’. After a few minutes of the pair of us walking in silence, she gave them of her own volition. 

“Zone set up wards for days, all around Cipher Nightclub, to lock people in. Basic force wards, nothing fancy, but it made me feel off,” she said. “I don’t mind killing. I did it in the Saxum Night Arena. But they were fighting. Even when we attacked the hotel, the people there could run or fight.” 

I thought I understood something like that. I’d gone through something like that, when I’d first performed an assassination, and Odril had exacerbated the problem. It hadn’t been people burning, but it had been a man sitting quietly in his home.

“But not these people,” I said quietly. “They were trapped, burning to death, or choking to death on smoke. They couldn’t fight. Most of them weren’t sorcerers that could move the earth and escape. Almost all of them were ordinary people, and many of them were on enough mind-altering substances to make it so they couldn’t focus enough for a spell, even if they could normally have used magic to escape.” 

Fake-Mist nodded, shuddering. 

“Then the screams started,” she said. “It wasn’t a quick death, crushed by stone, or falling out of a building, or a bullet to the head. They screamed, but even that turned into choking coughs and spluttering as they died. I saw a kid die, and the Arenamaster’s magic just… Pulled the power in. It kind of hit me in that instant, in a way that it hadn’t before, that by protecting Zone, I was partially responsible.” 

A part of me wanted to point out that she was responsible for much more than that. She was responsible for several murders, and the attacks she’d perpetuated hadn’t exactly been free of innocent casualties. 

But I didn’t. 

There would be time for that. She was probably already starting to see bits of it, shining through the cracks, but she would need to address that on her own in time.

And besides, if I were to condemn her for her actions, then I’d be equally deserving of condemnation. If I hadn’t been given a second, third, fourth chance, then I’d never have been able to escape. If I hadn’t been given leeway in college for acting out against Lake and Sal, my rivals at the time. If I hadn’t been allowed to carry some military supplies that I probably shouldn’t have been, as a way to self-soothe and convince myself I was in control. 

If I’d been condemned only on the basis of what was, then I wouldn’t be here.

I was no philosopher, but there was a great deal of rhetoric around the idea of the second chance. 

Some believed that second chances should not be extended, or at least should not be extended for certain crimes and actions. That there were acts that would, by their nature alone, make a person unable to be redeemed, or unworthy of redemption. 

My aura flexed and warped strangely as I thought, the aftereffects of the now-broken curse still itching at me. 

Others believed that everything deserved second, third, fourth, fifth, and more. That anyone could change, and that, given enough chances and the tools to prevent someone else from being hurt, they would be able to change. That nobody was beyond redemption. 

I spun my aura into a long thread, then wove it into tight ropes, which dissolved into a hundred strings to wind again. The old aura shaping exercise was familiar and helped soothe things out while I thought. 

Because, of course, most people weren’t truly so extreme. In my experiences, most people fell amongst the moderate area, and did believe in second chances. Often, those chances became ultimatums – if someone didn’t shape up when given a second chance, then they would be given no more chances at all. Perhaps it wasn’t literally the second chance. It might be the third, or the tenth, or any number, but the sentiment remained the same. 

I didn’t know how I felt, where I felt, or what to do with Fake-Mist. After all, she, like me, would be called undeserving of a second chance by most. Let alone a third chance, or more. I was sure that there would have been a very real argument to be made that the most moral choice I could have made when facing her was to capture her once, then kill her when she kept escaping. 

Except I couldn’t. Because if I had been treated entirely with that same attitude, I would have died when Odril had been sealed. The druid who had done it would have just cut off my head. I had failed my second chance.

But I’d still gotten to be alright in the end. At least, I thought that I’d managed to turn out alright. I’d spent a decade living the normal civilian life, working on airship repairs, before any of this had caught up to me. 

Even if there were people who thought that this young girl’s murders, her arson, her terror attacks, made her irredeemable or unworthy of redemption, I couldn’t think that.

I had to make sure she wound up alright, because in a way, that was proving that I was alright, and that I had been deserving of the chances I’d been given. Even if I wasn’t sure that I had deserved them. 

All of this too, wasn’t even factoring in her upbringing. I understood that in a way that I thought most of the world might not. It’s entirely too easy to say that certain things are just common sense, or that they’re natural. But our upbringings shape us in ways that we don’t even tend to think about. Things that seem natural or basic are often learned behaviours. 

That might not justify murder, but when someone like her was raised, being told that it was for the good of everyone? When someone like me was raised without the ability to contact others and discuss their points of view? If Odril hadn't been there to provide support and whisper against the Arenamaster, would I have broken at all?

Was someone following lies they had no ability to see were lies different from a farmer choosing to stockpile and not sell their goods, so the farmer’s family would have enough to eat through the winter, even if they likely had enough already? Was the farmer responsible for the deaths of those who would have had food if they’d sold? Or was the societal expectation of feeding the family first, even if they probably had enough, able to free them of that burden, because probably was not certainly? 

I thought that perhaps the landline had caused a lack of empathy. When it is as simple as finding a phone booth or the apartment floor’s phone to reach someone and find their opinion, it allows the mind to expand, which is good. But it creates a lack of understanding, too. A lack of ability to understand what it is like for those raised, trapped in the dark, and unable to take actions that others might consider easy.

I let out a low, weary sigh, and Fake-Mist looked at me. 

“You alright there, old man?” 

“I’m thirty five, I’m not old,” I grunted. “And just… Lost in thought. We aren’t so different, you and I. But you said something about laughing?” 

“Yes. As I was standing there, watching the fires, Veriotix started laughing.” 

The name sounded vaguely familiar, but I probed, to make sure I was right. 

“Veriotix, that’s your demon?” 

“Yes. He was a demon of the Throne of War, before he joined under Alyphize. He watched the fires and laughed, and then when I was conflicted, he laughed harder and suggested I throw myself into the fire and join them, if I was so weak. That was when something inside of me snapped, and I left. It was while I was coming back through the fires to try and find where Zone had hidden the ward controls that I noticed that they were broken, followed the chain of breaks, and found you. And… Zone.” 

I reached out and pulled her into a hug, squeezing her tightly, and to my surprise, she wrapped slender young arms around me and held back tightly, like a child clinging to a parent’s leg. 

“You did the right thing,” I said. “You did better than me. I don’t know if I could have been as smart and determined, if I were in your shoes. It took Odril, my demon, talking to me to help me get out of it.” 

Fake-Mist looked up at me, and through the eye holes on her mask, I could see tears welling up. I gently let go and started to take off the mask. She flinched, and I let go, but she finished peeling it off, then threw it on the ground at her feet, and stomped her foot down, cracking it.