Chương 31: I Need to Kill?

POV: The Dark Lord, Milo Miles The sight I had seen stopped me cold. Mr. Aldric's inn was burning. The shopfronts stood caved in and smoking, the very ground where the night market had stood just last night now strewn with rubble and flame. Luke was loosing fireballs left and right into the buildings, gleeful, while Nyx hovered above it all, watching her work like a foreman. A few robed figures lay sprawled and unmoving near the wreckage; probably patrol mages. Out of every place in Lycora, Nyx had picked Eremiah.

Though, that was on me. I had told her anything goes, and I did not tell her to avoid Eremiah. I didn't get to finish the thought. A hand seized me by the collar and hauled me around, and it was no surprise whose it was. Evelisse's eyes burned into mine; fury and disbelief tangled together, something raw underneath both.

"Did you do this?" Her voice came low and shaking.

"N-no — I mean, not — to some extent, I guess, but I didn't—" Behind her, Nyx's head turned toward me, and the words dried up in my throat. I couldn't find a single one that wasn't damning. I looked away. That was answer enough. She made a sound; half a breath, like something breaking, and threw me down to the cobbles. She turned away from me, and in the same motion Nyx came in low and fast, a kick aimed at her head. Evelisse caught it on her crossed gauntlets, the impact ringing off the metal.

Nyx flipped back through the air and steadied, hovering just out of reach. Evelisse murmured something fast, and the translucent blue gauntlets and greaves shimmered back over her limbs. Nyx leveled a finger at her; purple lightning crackled to life around her hand and lanced out, faster than thought. It caught Evelisse, sparks crawling over her, locking her up for a heartbeat — Then a wash of blue light burst off her skin and the sparks scattered like struck flint.

She looked, for a moment, like something out of those power-up scenes I had grown up watching. Which also meant she was, I was fairly certain, extremely angry. She launched. A kick at Nyx, who ducked under it mid-air, but Evelisse was already bringing the greave down on the follow-through, the heel of it cracking across the back of Nyx's skull and driving her straight down into the stone. Crap, this is bad. Should I help her? I should. Probably.

But helping Nyx meant raising a hand against Evelisse, and whatever was left of the thing between us would be gone the second I did. Not that it was in great shape at the moment. I pushed myself up. Luke had pivoted, hurling an ice blast at Evelisse. She broke off and shot upward, a flight spell already under her, only to meet a fireball coming the other way. She punched it out of the air without slowing. While her attention was split, I bolted for Nyx.

She was already up by the time I reached her, one hand rubbing the back of her head.

"Care to explain this mess?" she said, sour.

"I will, after we're back." It came out higher than I wanted.

"We need to leave.. This is about to get a lot worse—" Nyx clicked her tongue. Then, before I could so much as brace, she snatched my wrist and yanked, then let go just as fast, so I went skidding across the cobbles on my side. A fist slammed into the stone where I'd been standing. Evelisse has seemingly destroyed the cobblestones there. Okay. Either she wanted me dead, or that was meant for Nyx, or perhaps both of us. Luke dashed over beside Nyx. I scrambled up.

Evelisse planted one foot and shoved off it, launching at Nyx with a punch wound up behind her. Nyx twisted clear by a hair, and I moved. I lunged, caught Nyx's wrist in one hand, threw my other out and clamped onto Luke's, and reached for the teleport spell with everything I had. The world folded. For one sickening instant the plaza, the fire, Evelisse's furious face all stretched and smeared sideways, and then grass. Cool air. The quiet clearing in front of my hut.

I had cast it mid-lunge, so I hit the ground rolling, the three of us spilling onto the turf in a heap. My stomach lurched, the teleport leaving me green around the edges, but I swallowed it down and stayed still a moment, just breathing. It was quiet. Only the wind moving through the leaves. Though, inside my head, I heard a few pings. I rolled onto my back. Nyx was already on her feet, standing over me, blocking out the sun with her arms crossed.

"You," she said, "have got a lot of explaining to do, pig-brain." I suppose I do. Nyx and I went inside and sat on the chairs across from the fireplace, then I told her everything. My plan to do a little harmless exploring. Accidentally saving Evelisse's older sister. Staying the night at her place. The evening out with Evelisse. The quest, the injury, Ywain being the Hero now, the Church's attack coming tomorrow, and flying back to find Eremiah in ruins.

I had braced for a slap, or a suplex, or some creative combination of the two. Instead she heard me out to the end, chin resting on one knuckle, eyes half-lidded.

"That's all of it," I said.

"I know. I messed up. A lot, this time."

"Yeah. You did." She didn't raise her voice, which was somehow worse.

"You goofed off and spent two days swooning over girls. On top of that, it was after the Hero ditched you back in the forest."

"But now we've got this thing going, sort of, and I really think she's coming aroun—""Whatever, Milo." She waved it off, a tired flick of the wrist.

"The point is, I'd love nothing more than to crack you over the head, haul you back out there, and bounce you off the earth until I feel better, but I can't even work up the energy for it right now." She sank back against the chair.

"Tomorrow the Church comes. And the fact that they swapped Heroes on you means they're done playing around. So we need to talk about—" Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

"Nyx, sorry. Can I ask you something first?" She exhaled through her nose.

"What? Be quick."

"You didn't kill anyone back there. Did you?" Her eyes rolled.

"No. I kept Luke to half-wrecking the houses, gave everyone time to clear out before he finished the job. Nobody died. Happy?" The knot in my chest loosened a fraction.

"What about Lunessa? Evelisse's sister."

"Couldn't tell you. I don't know what the woman looks like." Right. Of course she wouldn't know.

"But you didn't touch anything past the plaza, where we fought Evelisse?"

"No." So Lunessa was probably fine. Her house sat well clear of the plaza. I let the relief settle for half a second before the next thought arrived and soured it: a fight like that, out in the open, the Hero trading blows with a demon and a three-eyed girl in the middle of town. Every soul in Eremiah would know the Dark Lord had been there now. And Evelisse would tell her sister that I was the Dark Lord. I sighed and let my gaze drop to the floorboards. There went the dream, then. It hadn't lasted long.

A shadow fell across me. I hadn't heard her move, but Nyx was standing over me now, close, and when I lifted my head her face had gone hard in a way that wasn't her usual mockery.

"Are you blaming me for this?" she said. I blinked up at her.

"What? No! Why would I be?"

"Because since the second we sat down, every question out of your mouth has been the same shape." She didn't look away.

"Did anyone die? Is the sister all right? And in about ten seconds you were going to start grieving whether your cozy little setup with the ex-Hero and her pretty sister survived the afternoon." Her wings drew in tight against her back.

"You built yourself a whole life in two days, and now you're sitting here mourning it like I'm the one who took it from you."

"I did not say that."

"Again, you didn't have to. I can read it on your face." She folded her arms.

"Some lonely, pitiful guy, thrilled to finally have people who'd smile at him, and now he's sulking because the girl he ordered to do a job went and did the job."

"Nyx, I'm not blaming you, okay? You're putting words in my mouth. I just want to know if anyone got hurt back there—""There it is again." Her wings snapped half-open behind her.

"I know what you want to know, Milo, and I–I don't like it! Is anyone hurt? Is the sister hurt? Not once, not one time, have you showed gratitude for me." I opened my mouth, then closed it.

"I held a whole town hostage by myself today," she went on, voice climbing.

"I kept Luke on a leash so nobody died, I tracked the patrol mages, I picked the targets, I did all of it while you were off getting your hair tousled on a flying date. And I did it because you told me to. Because I was covering for you." She jabbed a finger at my chest.

"And the thanks I get is you sat in that chair running down a checklist of every girl you're scared you disappointed."

"That's not—" I caught myself glancing toward the window, before I even realized I was doing it.

"I just— Evelisse is going to tell Lunessa what I am, and after everything, they're both going to—"" Them again." She threw her hands up.

"God or devil or whatever, Milo, do you hear yourself? You're hours away from people showing up to kill you, and you're sitting here mourning two women that barely did anything for you!"

"But they mattered to me!"

"And what am I, then?!" The words cracked out of her before she could stop them, I think she spoke them louder than she'd meant. The fire popped in the silence after. She stood there a moment, chest rising and falling, glaring like she could take it back by force. Then she turned away from me entirely, stalking toward the far wall, her wings drawn tight and rigid against her back. She stopped at the window with her back to me, arms folded, staring out at nothing.

"... Forget it." Her voice had gone flat. She didn't turn around. One hand came up and pushed through her hair, slow, and stayed there at the back of her neck. The silence stretched long enough that I started to understand what was sitting inside it. Seeing her like that made me feel small, childish. And I suppose I had been. I had taken everything lightly this past week.

Maybe it was the years of anime and manga I'd grown up on; all those stories where the protagonist pulls off impossible feats, where crowds chant his name and girls fall for him without him having to try. Some part of me had landed in this new world half-expecting the same deal. And with how things had been breaking my way lately, I had let myself believe it would all just sort itself out in the end. But without Nyx, I would have been finished on day one.

I still thought wiping all of Lycora off simply because of me would be too far, but most definitely, I would have been discarded; Deemed incompetent and deleted, end of story. Some stubborn, childish corner of me wanted to argue that I had thanked her before. That it wasn't as though I'd never shown her any appreciation at all. But I knew that wasn't the point. I stood and crossed the floor toward her. Before I could close the distance—"Don't come any closer." I stopped where I was.

"Nyx. I'm sorry. I know it probably doesn't mean much to you, but—""What I want," she said, turning to face me at last— and her eyes had lost every trace of the mockery I was used to. No smirk, no roll, no theatrics. Just something hard and tired and dead serious, gold gone flat in the firelight.

"—is for you to stop being blind. The Church replaced the Hero while the old one is still alive and perfectly capable of fighting. That has never happened. Not once in the whole rotten history of this cycle. You understand what that means? Somebody on the side of the Order that's supposed to back the Hero wants you dead badly enough to break their own rules to do it."

"So they don't actually care about the balance," I said.

"All that cosmic-equilibrium stuff."

"Apparently not. Not this one." She crossed her arms.

"While you were off on your little date, beaming at the former Hero, telling her how nice she looks with her hair down, all that drivel, Greg pinged me through the link. He's dug up something." I blinked. How did she know what I'd said to Evelisse? There was no way she'd been watching. If that was a guess, her intuition was genuinely frightening.... Or maybe I was just that shallow. That easy to read.

"Turns out," Nyx went on, "the one gunning for you holds a grudge against Greg. Some while back, Greg spilled coffee on the woman's shirt."

"... What?"

"And then Greg got promoted. Bumped up to managing whole worlds, while this one stayed behind, stuck babysitting Lycora." She shrugged.

"It's envy. Plain and stupid." I stared at her.

"That's…that's so petty."

"Sure it is. It's also enough to get you erased and me out of a job." She paused, like the second half of that had come out before she'd cleared it.

"... Not that I'm worried about the job at this point. Or about you."

"Then what are you worried about?" I asked. She let that sit a beat, then pressed on before I could poke at it.

"The point is, tomorrow the new Hero comes for you, and he isn't going to hold anything back. You felt it in that last fight. He's strong. Stronger than the former Hero. So I need you to snap out of whatever this is." She held my eyes.

"I need you to kill whoever shows up tomorrow." Her voice didn't waver.

"No more pulling punches. No more half measures. No more putting people gently to sleep and calling it a day."

"Tomorrow, you fight to kill. Or tomorrow you die."