Author's Nightmare: Chapter 163 (Patreon)

Beam POV: Day 152

Current Wealth: 164 gold 15 silver 29 copper

Training was, usually, a practice in relaxation for me. Soothing in its familiarity, keeping the mind calm and still by pushing the body to a great enough extreme to distract by association. It wasn’t working today though. There was no extreme great enough.

I put everyone through their paces, even as I found my own to be increasingly impossible for them to match. If there was one problem with my constant growth, it was that I was finding it ever harder to actually get myself sweating in practice. Arthur still helped with that much. 

That, and I had a lot more people to train alongside Helena.

For the past few days we’d been getting a slow, steady trickle of new recruits. Some from Swanhen, those had been with us from the start, and some from Elswick, spurred on by stories of our crushing victory against the orcs. It hadn’t happened like that of course, but pointing that fact out hadn’t seemed like the sort of thing that got us additional subordinates, so I kept my big mouth shut. 

Training wasn’t going as smoothly as before, for a few reasons. I was among them. It was hard to stand there and look heroic when I knew my brother was missing because of my own failing. The more obvious my lie became to me, the harder it was to tell. It didn’t matter that I was hurting us by not selling it, I just…Couldn’t. Helena compensated of course, but that was still compensation at its core. 

With over a dozen men who’d already gone through training and fought with us twice, we were progressing slower than before. And it was because of me and my inability to fucking get over myself.

Well bitterness wasn’t helping any, either. If it were I’d already have saved Solitaire through sheer volume. Perhaps then Shango would actually be speaking to me instead of barricading himself in Solitaire’s lab just to get out of it.

“It’s not your fault.” 

I jerked around, reflexes fraying every nerve I had as the unexpected voice rang out. My fists were already balled and ready to fly by the time I finally looked up to recognize Argar’s face solemnly gazing down at me. 

“Thanks.” I told him. “Thanks Argar, I know but…That’s still good to hear, thank you.” The lie came easily enough, at least this one, I knew, would be sparing someone else a bit of grief instead of causing it. I headed off without much pause to train alone after that. 

Difficult, to train now. More difficult to do it alone. I’d started swinging around big blocks of lead and steel. Thick, heavy things that each weighed about as much as a small child. They’d have been hard enough to bicep curl when I first arrived, but now they made perfectly workable training weapons to build all the muscles that went behind a sword swing. More particularly, the ones that went behind a sword swing you were trying to kill a man in armour with. 

These last few months, my arms and back had gotten bigger than at any other point in my entire life. I’d probably gained one or two dozen pounds even with the drop in my nutritional quality, and I was only packing on more muscle as time went by. 

No help for me, after all. Not from that fucking monster in my head, not unless I was doing something pointless like winning a shitting tournament. I’d have to rely on my own muscles. Even when it didn’t serve the monster’s own interest to ignore me. 

Hold on, there was a thought. What did Solitaire always say? Everyone who even slightly glances at me is trying to kill us. No, not that, the other thing. Don’t listen to what people say, look to what they do.

The entity had been very overt about how powerful and scary it was, but it also had a clear interest in me…Doing things. Fighting. Winning. Using its power. That last part was a contradiction clear as day, why the hell would the thing that wanted me to use supernatural powers not give me those same powers? Why would it cheer me on for throwing myself at the King of Blades like a one-man wrecking crew, then fail to give me advice or help or whatever my next fucking class ability would be when my friend was being dragged away and taking all our munitions with him?

Look to what they do. Well, this one wasn’t doing anything. What did that tell me?

My mind must still have been slow from the exhaustion and mental batterings I’d taken over the last few days, because it took me a good long while to figure it out. 

Are you there?

No reply, so I asked again. And added a few flavourful coaxes onto the words, remembering how easily the entity’s ego bruised.

I know you’ve been lying to me, I know you’re weaker than you’ve been pretending, I know you can’t do half the things you’ve been pretending not to want to. The jig is up. Deny it.

If you dare, I liked to think my tone had added. Truth was I didn’t have the faintest idea how well sarcasm made the leap across one mind to another. Mental-only communication was still new ground for me. 

Fortunately, I wasn’t left to aimlessly ponder for long. A familiar voice racked through me.

You goad me.

I didn’t let the sudden presence in my thoughts unnerve me, though it was bloody unnerving. Just replied. 

Yes, I goad you, do something about it.

Silence. I spoke again. Thought again. Whatever.

I’m not going to stop bothering you until I get an answer. Am I right?

Another silence rang out, long enough that I almost kept going before, at last, I got my answer. It wasn’t a long one, wasn’t a complex one. But it conveyed everything I needed to hear and more. 

…Yes.