Chapter 223: Giving In Versus Giving Up

  The enemy Vixen Portal Commander B attacked. With a wave of its rapier, the ground began to split apart, and a trail of ice rushed towards his own Vixen Portal Commander, who seemed to be caught unaware. Anything struck by that attack would be encased in ice and completely removed from the fight for a good while and remain defenseless in the face of highly damaging, follow-up ice attacks.

  “Watch out!” Zach shouted in warning to his red-haired card, who nodded, then jumped up into the air to avoid the ice-based crowd control attack from the enemy opposite her.

  “I see it!” she called back, her expression lighting up with delight as though she were entertained and having fun—and that was putting it mildly. She looked ecstatic. Her lips pulled back in a way that was as maddening as it was joyous. And come to think of it, it was only now that Zach realized her skin was back and all signs of mutilation were gone. A few minutes earlier, he’d witnessed her rip her own face off. But now it was just…back. For whatever reason.

  Doesn’t matter. Keep moving forward!

  “We need to get on those level-62 healers!” he called to her. “They keep patching up the other adds and we can’t make any damage stick!”

  “True, true, true, true!” the card yelled back at him. “What should we do about it?”

  Zach pointed towards the enemy’s back row. “CC everything other than those two healers, and I’ll have the other cards pull off so they don’t break it.”

  “Good idea!”

  The general advice from those who believed in persistence was to “never give up” and to push onwards against all odds. Zach generally believed in this as well—but with certain exceptions. Sometimes, such as now, one needed to give up on something in order to avoid faltering in the pursuit of something else. And in this case, that “something else” was the possibility that his friends were alive—and that he could save them. But for this purpose, he needed to willfully sacrifice something, too: his mind and his sanity.

  So, he simply “gave up.”

  He submitted.

  He stopped fighting it.

  Rather than despair at his rapidly deteriorating mental state, he chose to accept it. If his mind made him see things, well…he’d see them. If his mind made him hear things, he’d hear them. That was all there was to it. Of course, in doing so, he now had to hope and pray that he was actually moving forward: that he was actually here in this tower and wasn’t foaming at the mouth in a mental hospital somewhere.

  For the past minute, Zach had been fighting alongside his delusion, speaking with and coordinating with a figment of his imagination: with himself. He watched as his card leapt upwards, spun around midair, and, while upside down, it delivered multiple fast slashes with its rapier at the air, which caused several of its own trails of ice to rip apart the stone floor. Then it landed right-side up just as all five attacks struck their targets, encasing all but the two healers in blocks of ice, which would hopefully last long enough for them to tear apart the staff-wielding, level-62 healers.

  Yet, even as all this took place, Zach could not help but wonder: was that actually even what just happened? Had his card actually just succeeded in crowd-controlling the three Orcs and the two red-haired spellcasters? Certainly, if it had in fact succeeded, it could not have done so in the way he’d seen it. It could not have jumped into the air and spun around that way, as a card could not make such movements. Nor could a card jump to the side and dodge an attack upon receiving a warning as though it were sentient.

  Best-case scenario: Zach’s Vixen Portal Commander had, in fact, just frozen five of his enemies, but it had done so in an ordinary, mundane way, and Zach’s severely ill mind had added in the extra details such as the jumping and the flipping.

  Worst-case scenario: Zach was standing still and drooling while his cards got obliterated and he was about to be killed. Or maybe he wasn’t even here at all. Maybe he was passed out near his belongings outside, or he was bleeding out on a lower floor and this was his dying fantasy.

  No-case scenario: Zach had actually witnessed his card perform those aerial acrobatics: maneuvers that the mob he’d captured wasn’t even capable of doing, nor was he, as its owner, capable of commanding, as no such commands existed.

  Hopefully, the truth was in the first scenario. Because, if so, it meant he had somehow managed to channel his delusions in a way that was working for, rather than against him. And even if he wasn’t seeing things as they were actually occurring, it wouldn’t matter as long as the truth was close enough.

  But even that seems impossible.

  If nothing else, at least his delusions were slightly less terrifying. Things had actually changed rather dramatically a few moments ago when his mind had basically broken and he’d begun cackling out laughter. Following this bout of uncontrollable laughter, he’d outright asked his card if it was willing to fight.

  “Yes! Yessss! Let us fight and kill, Zach!” it had said with an astonishing amount of eagerness. “I want to see what adventuring is.” His card had pointed at itself. “I will control this one, and you control the others.”

  The extreme eagerness in its voice had made Zach wonder if this was borne of his own subconscious desire to adventure. And if not, then from what? From what part of his damaged mind was this coming from?

  At any rate, the horrific sights and sounds had died off the moment the fighting began, and now, here he was, collaborating with his own self, his mind having fractured somehow in a way he couldn’t even begin to understand. But what he did understand was that, if his delusions even slightly resembled reality, it meant that his mind, even as it suffered, was somehow unleashing a hidden potential or something. Because there was no way he could possibly pull this off while sane.

  Right now, it really, truly felt like there was a distinct, separate mind taking control of his Vixen Portal Commander, reacting with the same speed and attentiveness that one would expect from a separate entity solely focused on controlling one thing as opposed to many. And this was not something that Zach could ordinarily accomplish. His fractured mind was almost miraculous in what it was able to do.

  But again, that assumed that what he was seeing was even close to reality.

  He hoped so.

  As his cards, his war-mount, and the red-haired Vixen Portal Commander rushed the two healers, Zach couldn’t help but take note of the way the red-haired card’s shrill, psychotic laughter flooded this third-floor encounter area. It was a sound that carried such madness, but also such joy and delight. She alternated between swinging her rapier and casting magic, and she did so as though every attack she delivered was a miracle unto itself.

  In no time at all, one of the two level-62 healer mobs died, the male, bald-headed human falling forward onto its face and then slowly vanishing thereafter. The other one fell shortly after.

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  Several loud cracks emanated from the general direction of the remaining five mobs, with three of them breaking free of the ice that was encasing them. Seconds later, the other two also escaped, and now, with the tables turned and the healers dead, Zach’s force had a much easier time dealing with the enemy, though the two Vixen Portal Commanders would prove difficult.

  “We should focus on the Orcs and have our own Orcs attack the Vixens,” Zach said.

  “Okay, okay, okay!”

  Of his six Legion Portal Guardians, he sent four of his dual-wielding Orcs after the two Vixen Portal Commanders, A and B, siccing two on them apiece. He also sent his war-mount in to provide some extra damage. This left him with just two cards still under his control and three enemy Orcish elites needing to be dealt with. Zach sent one of his Orcs to Legion Portal Guardian A, and another to B, and then he joined his delusion in fighting together against C.

  “Let’s rip it to pieces!” his card shrieked with such utter desire and excitement.

  Zach wondered what part of his subconscious these words and desires represented, because it genuinely did not feel like anything from within—at least not quite in this way. If this was how he truly felt about adventuring, then he really did not know his own self. Because while he definitely craved more adventuring in his life, he did not think he felt quite this level of hunger—of starvation for it.

  But clearly, he did, because why else would he be hearing and seeing this?

  Drawing his primary sword as well as his rapier, he charged forward, and then he and the red-haired manifestation of his inner psychological trauma—or whatever it was—converged upon Legion Portal Guardian C.

  And with that, they got to work.

  *******

  Anelia grunted. She was losing her patience. And she didn’t like the way Denisoa and Adim were laughing at her as they adorned her in some silken, snobby, fancy attire spun of a red-gold fabric that she normally wouldn’t be caught dead in.

  “Can’t believe you’re making me wear this,” she said.

  “Oh, stop,” Denisoa said cheerfully. “The queen and the princess are personally coming here to visit us despite how exhausted the queen must be from her visit to the merfolk. This is an honor! You have to dress like it.”

  “She comes here all the time.”

  “Yes, but this time it’s ceremonial.”

  Standing in front of a mirror near the first-floor living room, Anelia sighed and forced herself to put up with this ritual in humiliation. But it was really hard: especially when Denisoa put a fucking red ribbon in her short hair. Anelia was not accustomed to such a feminizing look.

  Adim beamed a smile at her. “What, umm…excuse me? Excuse me?”

  “Yeah, little guy?” Anelia asked, smiling down at him.

  “When is Peter coming to play?”

  “Soon,” Denisoa said. “But you two can’t play until tonight after the ceremony. You both need to be on your best behavior.”

  “I know, mommy.”

  Adim and Peter VI had become best friends to the extent that, as of a few months ago, Kalana had begun bringing the boy over twice weekly after school for playdates with Adim. And he’d always arrive riding on that high-level creature-thing called “Ruby.”

  Ruby causes so much trouble, though, she thought. Not that she’s to blame.

  After the first few visits from little Peter, he and Adim had begun taunting the other children in Den of Ziragoth about how they had “Ruby” and how this made them the “coolest.” Naturally, this had prompted the other kids to want to play with her. They had refused, a fight had started in the middle of town, and all of this had led to Princess Kalana herself scolding the boys over “not sharing.”

  “But I don’t wanna share!” Pete had protested. “I only want Adim and me to play with Ruby. Everyone else just gets to watch.”

  Suffice to say, this had resulted in quite the lecture from the young princess, who had chewed the boys’ ears off about the importance of “sharing.” Personally? Anelia wasn’t a big sharer herself. Or at least…she never used to be. The old her certainly didn’t share a whole lot. But these days, she found herself becoming more and more interested in being a good example for Adim than she was in upholding the tenets of her past self.

  With another sigh, she allowed Denisoa to dress her up with lipstick and eyeshadow, and then she watched as the woman stood back, nodded with approval, and gave her a thumbs-up. “You look beautiful, baby,” she said.

  Anelia didn’t see it. She never looked beautiful. She never went for beautiful, either. It just wasn’t her thing. It didn’t match the self-image she had of herself. As things stood, the decorative, far-too-fancy robe Denisoa had bought for her—with money she could barely spare—was only just large enough to conceal Anelia’s massive muscles and broad shoulders, though it did have a transformative effect, albeit an unwanted one.

  Today’s a big day for these people, she thought. I’ll put up with the discomfort for their sake.

  Although the work rebuilding, repairing, and even expanding Den of Ziragoth was not yet completed, today did, in fact, represent a major milestone. As of late last night, when a cottage on Cooker’s Road entered the town’s power grid, every home in Den of Ziragoth finally now had modernized heating, air conditioning, and electricity. True to her word, Queen Fylwen Vayra had not only succeeded in having the town rebuilt, but she’d done so in a way that left it better off than it had been before the dragon attack—at least superficially.

  Mentally, the scars would take much longer than a year to heal.

  But there was still so much to do. The farmland, which was the core of this town’s economy, had a great deal of work remaining as part of its restoration, and with the people of Giant’s Fall still suffering through an economic crisis, there were now many new arrivals looking to live here. Incredibly, the only thing Queen Vayra required of would-be regional immigrants was to sign a loyalty pledge to the Guild of Elvadin.

  Not only had the Den of Ziragoth’s population already climbed back to pre-dragon-spawn levels, but as of two months ago, it had exceeded them. And at this rate, the population might actually double or triple in two to three years.

  So, yeah. Today would be a celebration of this milestone, along with the hope of many more to come, and Anelia, for her part, was learning to change and adapt along with the town. For almost a year, she had lived here as one of them. At first, it had been very difficult for her to set aside her former life as a bounty hunter. But with each day, it became easier and easier.

  She smiled. “Adim, you look so cute in your little suit.”

  “I don’t like it,” he whined, tugging on his tie. “It’s so uncomfortable and itchy. I wanna play with Peter.”

  “Later,” she said to him. “For now, you—”

  “Peter!” he cried out excitedly as the front door to Denisoa’s home opened, and a little blonde-haired boy rode in atop the so-called “raptor” mount. “Ruby!”

  “Hi, Adim!” Ruby chirped as she and Peter waved to him. Adim ran halfway over to them, stopped, looked back, and then made a wide-eyed expression at Anelia and Denisoa.

  “Can I play with Peter just a little bit? Please? Please?”

  Denisoa turned her eyes to Anelia, who shrugged. “Maybe we should let ‘em play for a few minutes. The ceremony doesn’t start for a bit.”

  She smiled, then looked at the two little boys. “Okay, fine, but only if Princess Kalana says it’s okay.”

  “She already did,” Peter said happily. He patted Ruby’s back. “Adim, come on!”

  “I’m coming!”

  He ran over and hopped atop the mount, and the two exited the home.

  *******

  “Central Command, this is Vazzal Shelen. I’ve got visual on the bounty.”

  “Are you sure it’s him?” an enthusiastic, eager voice said into the Comm.

  Concealed and out of sight with the rest of his team, Vaz was on his belly beneath tall stalks of grass on the outskirts of town. Having been staked out here for a great number of hours, the cold was starting to get to him, and his ears felt like they were numb. But this was a score that was worth a little frostbite. Gods, this would be the most lucrative bounty of his entire life.

  “We need confirmation,” the voice said into his Comm. “A hunch is not enough.”

  Vazzal lifted his binoculars to his face and took a second look. He was sure. This was definitely the bounty. The information was good. “That’s him, all right. But the target is not alone. He’s with another boy approximately the same age and a high-level mount.”

  “Do not harm the target under any circumstances. Kill or capture the other boy and the mount, but do so without injuring our king. If you harm the king, you harm humanity!”

  “Relax,” Vaz said. “I’ll make sure the little shit gets to Tomb of Fire safe and sound, don’t you worry. But I don’t think we should make a move today.” He again studied the situation, nodding to himself as he did so. “Yeah, this is a bad day. The queen and the princess are here. And the intelligence I have suggests the boy comes around a lot. We should wait until—”

  “No! Every day without the heir is an insult! A shame! We cannot risk losing this chance. The job must be done today. Rest assured, we will have eight strike teams in your area to assist with extraction. All you have to do is bring him to us and we will take him the rest of the way.”

  Vazzal tapped his chin several times before replying. “Going after him with the queen and the princess around adds an extra layer of complexity. It’s gonna cost you another five million.”

  “If you can deliver the king to us within twenty-four hours, you’ll have an additional ten.”

  “Now you’re talking my language.”

  Keeping out of sight, Vazzal continued to monitor the situation. The moment it felt right, he would make his move.

  And then he’d be rich.