A Gamer's Guide 438 (Patreon)

Outside his door, back against the sheer stone wall, paper in hands, sat Rafiloe. By this point, she had read and reread the paper at least half a dozen times.

Her eyes slowly moved across the words, one by one. We’re all worried, she repeated in her head, trying to make the words stick, and we all want what’s best for you. But it’s been two weeks now, and…” She glanced at the clock. One minute until thirteen ‘o clock. One minute left. It wouldn’t be enough. Half of last night hadn’t been enough, either. Yesterday hadn’t been enough, either. The words were too slippery. Always falling out of her hands, out of her mind.

But it had to be said. She was the only one who could say it. Hopefully, if she was lucky, he’d listen to her. If he didn’t, then…

The clock flipped over. Thirteen ‘o clock.

Standing up, Rafiloe allowed herself a single pause, her hand on the door. She sucked in a deep breath. It’ll be fine, she repeated, as she had so many times before. He’ll listen.

Then, she pulled the door open, and entered to find the entire floor covered in viscera.

“Oh, Gecko!” Kitty said, sitting in the middle of the floor, a rat in each hand. That’s what it was. As her eyes slowly moved across the gore-covered floor, she recognized that what she was looking at was the pailful of rats she’d brought him this morning. About two dozen of them. Now, only four remained, two in his hands, while the other two seemed to have… changed, somewhat. For one, they had turned entirely white, from tail to snout, including their eyes. And, secondly…

“Are those wings?”

“Yeah!” Kitty said, hopping to his feet, dropping the rats in his hands as he did. In two smooth steps, somehow succeeding in not slipping on the copious amount of blood and guts on the floor, he reached one of the winged rats, leaning down and picking it up as soon as he did. The white rat remained perfectly still in his grip, folding its wings across its back with animal grace. “See? I succeeded! I did it!”

“Did, um… what, exactly?” Rafiloe said, still standing in the open doorway, because if she took even a single step inside, she’d be stepping in whatever it is rats are made of.

Across the room, Kitty’s slightly manic expression twitched. “What else? It’s a herat! You know, like, a herald, but a rat? A herald-rat? Herat! Pretty clever, huh?”

Without any input on her end whatsoever, Rafiloe’s lips silently tightened into a line. Though the blood and guts wasn’t exactly her favourite thing to look at, there was something else that was off about it. It was so… vivid. The redness of it. Compared to how red the blood was, the room itself almost seemed monochrome, all the gilded frames and the fancy rugs and the ornate murals comparatively muted in colour, all in different pastels, none truly strong in colour. All moving on a slow, steady march towards that final color: white.

His smile, slightly too wide, trembled. “I thought about it all night,” he said, wide, staring eyes moving between her and the rat in his hands. “See, heralds, you have to give them divinity, right? But not too much, or they pop. Four drops of milk—no more, no less. And I was kind of hoping… Well, I don’t really know what heralds can do, exactly, but I thought, maybe I could use them to go outside?” The chuckle that left his lips struck Rafiloe more as a wheeze than anything else. “Yeah, no. I tried. Sent one out, got the… the… normal result. You know the one.” The look in her eye must have said something, as he quickly held up his hands, saying, “No one died, though! Everything turned out fine. It wasn’t—it wasn’t bad, or anything.”

“Could I, um…” Rafiloe glanced down at her feet. “There’s something I’d like to talk to you about.”

“Oh, yeah, absolutely, but before that, I just want to show you something real quick, okay? Hang on, let me…” He released the herat mid-air, but rather than plopping down into the glossy viscera, it began flapping its wings, gently hovering mid-air. Unheeding it, Kitty scrambled across the floor, grabbed Rafiloe by the arm, and dragged her inside, only pausing to close the door before abducting her all the way to his bed, where he sat her down at the foot of it. “Okay, so…” With a snap of the finger, the floating herat ambled its way through the air, taking a seat on Fennrick’s outstretched finger.

“Kitty, I’m sorry, but I really need to—”

“Hold on to your witchy hat, because you’re about to witness a miracle of hope, grander than any you’ve seen so far! The curtain rises. The audience gasps. Folks, give it up for… the great herat!” Kitty’s eyes promptly rolled into the back of his head, and with no warning whatsoever, grin still plastered on his face, whole body as straight and stiff as a board, he keeled over, like a felled tree, but without anyone to shout timber! in his wake. He hit the floor, back-first, with his skull eliciting a meaty crunch.

She watched it, completely non-plussed, hands folded atop her lap. We’re all worried, she repeated in her head. We all… we… The words were slipping. One by one. Soon, there’d be none left.

She saw, teeth gritted, as the herat previously in Kitty’s hand clumsily heaved itself atop his unrising chest, wings and arms fanned out for balance, until it finally had a proper stage. It turned to her, eyes pink, gave a tiny bow, and then proceeded to breakdance atop his ribcage with disturbing skill. It danced in silence for a minute or two before finally dropping into a pose across Kitty’s chest, wings splayed out and tiny rodent chest rising and falling from exertion.

She stared at it blankly.

It did jazz-hands.

“Kitty, could we talk? Please. It’s… it’s important.”

The rat blinked up at her. A twitch of the wing, the pink faded from its eyes, and then the chest it stood atop rose, forcing the little rodent to go tumbling off as Kitty heaved himself to a sitting position. He brushed the hair out of his face, righted his glasses, and gave her a long, neutral look. “Okay.”

Her hands were so damn sweaty, but she couldn’t wipe them, she could only wring them, her eyes on the floor, on the blood and the mashed-up organs. “It’s, we think…” She bit her lip. The words were all jumbled up in her head. “Don’t read my mind,” she said, weakly. “This is important.”

“...Okay,” he said, but she knew he’d caught a glimpse. She could tell. It was evident in his eyes, in the way he turned away, just slightly, his face scrunched up, silkskin folded in ways it wasn’t meant to, a shadow across his gaze.

“It’s been two weeks already,” she said, hoping the more obvious words would save her. “Two weeks, and… And…”

“You’re worried about me,” he muttered, not meeting her eyes. “You’re all worried about me.”

“Yeah. We know how hard you’re working, trying to make this projection thing work, but it just… It…” She clenched her hands. The more she said, the paler the room became. Bit by bit. Colder. Her heart beat steadily, refusing to go any faster, refusing to let her mounting worry find a physical outlet. “It’s fine, you know? We… The people who see you… They’ll learn to know the new you. You don’t have to look exactly like you used to. People will still know you, and they’ll still like you. It’s fine. You just… Staying in here isn’t good for you.”

“I’ve been through worse,” he interjected sharply. “So much worse. Many times. This is a cake-walk in comparison.”

“But it’s still bad! Even if it could be worse, even if you’ve had worse… It doesn’t make this any less bad than it is. And it is bad. I know it is.”

“I’ll survive.”

“Sure. You’ll survive, but… There’s more to life than surviving. Like living. Eating good food.” She ran her thumbs across one another. Sweaty, sweaty. “We think… We think if you could get out a bit, even just once a day, it might do you good. It could—”

“People could die, Gecko. You do remember that, don’t you?”

She flinched. Of course she knew. She’d seen it more times than she could count. Not with her eyes, but with her mind. Through memories and visions in crystalline white and red that she wanted nothing more than to forget. “I know,” she said, despite it all. “I know, but… We have to try. If not, then…”

“I’ll figure it out,” he said. “You were thinking of—” He made a face like he’d drunk coffee grounds. “There’s no point to a deadline. Rice will be here in two weeks, and then when she sees me I’ll prod her memory for how she sees me and I can use that to tweak my projection. It’s fine. I’ll manage until then. You don’t need to worry.”

“But… But what if…” The question lodged itself sideways in her throat. For two weeks, neither of them had dared ask it. She always assumed he’d figure it out before she got there and everything would come to a head. But then he didn’t and now all she has is this pale room and the question, aching and raw.

“She’ll see me,” he said, standing up and turning his back on her. He wandered over to the window. Something about his back seemed awfully small to her. Small, and scared, and… “It’ll be fine,” he muttered to the room. “Everything will be fine in the end.”

“Okay,” she said, because after everything she’d been through, Rafiloe was still only human. In many ways, she was as small as he was. Her gaze fell to the floor, to her slightly reddened shoes, stained by the viscera. She was such a damn coward.

“The nice thing with the herats, and why I was so excited about them,” Kitty continued, mildly, his voice distant, “was that, now, Buccina and Garath will be able to go to Loathe Summit.”

“...What?”

He turned his head slightly, enough for her to see half his face, backlit by the gray sky outside. She wasn’t sure if he was smiling or not. “Yeah. They’ve been cooped up here for two weeks—I can’t imagine how bored they’ve been! This whole thing… We were meant to be going on an adventure, you know? See the world. Meet people. But instead I wanted to check this place out, and now… Two damn weeks. Yeah. They need to get out of here.”

“They won’t leave without you,” she protested, standing up from the bed. “Especially not Buccina, not with the way he looks up to you. How can you even say that?”

“But I will be coming along! Just as a herat. Of course, I won’t be able to act through it without them seeing, well, you know… But that’s alright. They can just put me alone with the goddess of dragons, and then while I talk to her, they can talk to the dragons there about, like…” He gestured in the air. “I don’t know. I’m sure there’s something. Two weeks ago, it felt really important that we get there, but now… Oh, well.”

“They won’t agree to that,” she said, stepping up to him, resting her hand on his arm. “They love you. Asking them to continue the adventure without you… I know staying here sucks, but it’s not like they hate it. They’ll be fine. Buccina’s actually been doing great progress as the pope of hope, he’s figuring out his council of cardinals, and he’s got some really promising people to choose from.”

He turned his eyes back to the window. “Just… ask them. If they don’t want to, I can’t exactly force them. It’s only…” A little huff. “Shit, man. I don’t want to be the reason they’re miserable.”

“You’re not,” she muttered. “They’re fine. I’ll ask them, but… I really wouldn’t get your hopes up.”

“Okay. Thanks, Gecko. I hope it goes well, and…” He quirked a smile at her. “A surfboard? That’s what you’ll be flying around on?”

“Hey, that’s confidential information!”

“Can’t choose whether to have a witchy pin-up girl painted on it or an awesome dragon, huh… That’s a difficult one. What about both?”

“Both? A witch riding a dragon?”

“No—no, two boards. One with a dragon, one with a witch. How’s that?”

“Two boards… Dang. Truly, you are on a level far above us mere mortals.”

He chuckled warmly, the sound melting the tension out of her bones. “I try.”

She smiled at him. “Thanks.”

And for a few minutes, everything was fine, and she felt certain that everything would be okay. Nothing else even seemed possible. The sun in his smile was too bright to consider rain.