CHAPTER 25
"Out. Out. Out. Out.” Ran recited as he wandered. "I want out.”
Not enough to be out of Wordheal, or even off Nameless. He needed, demanded, nothing less than to be so far gone that if someone ever made the mistake even of trying to remember him, they’d go too.
Eyes worked, but he saw nothing. Ears, but heard nothing. The chasm separating his person from the repulsive world’s was so total that even his enemy’s cry could not cross it.
There were men approaching. "Too much going on these days,” one said. "Even with Ferapa, it’s too much. Too much.”
"I need to unwind,” agreed his companion. This second man’s jaw was frozen in a snarl. "Need a night to play.”
The first shoved the second, "Don’t talk! You nuts?!”
"Everyone goes,” growled the second. "Move, shaker!”
The second man shoved the meandering Ran into the wall, but Ran didn’t look up.
"Whoa, what was that? That was a kid! You want Guard down here?”
"Lucky that’s all he got.”
Their voices dissolved, and Ran, eyes closed, pressed his face into the brick.
He ought to cry, didn’t feel enough to cry, insides felt cracked, withered. Dust was within him somehow.
As if gravity had failed. Worse. As if that force that keeps all men sane, called by other names like 'logic’ or 'love’ or 'law’, were somehow present, and this he could know, but the forces within him, the receptors that made sanity discernible, enjoyable, livable, were cauterized and dead.
Torture.
Better by far would if only gravity were failing. If he fell off the world into the slow, cold expanse.
The Gift teaches love, some part of him, well-trained by Kiyo, reminded.
Such nonsense. Love required measure, ways to recognize it from hate and all measures between. This was forbidden to him.
Through closed eyelids he saw a red light above, looked up. Thesaur Hole, the dive bar’s red-piped neon read.
"Thesaur,” Ran said.
He walked again, said the word countless times before the familiar lines and dark windows of Cree’s stood before him. Had he not known it for a death place, he'd have seen nothing wrong.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
"Why here?” he asked. He knew, of course. He reached into his pocket, drew out the stupid, useless biblio, craned his arm back and threw. Glass shattering mixed with the padded sound of him running away.
"Thesaur." He walked for a long time before he heard the voice.
"You don’t even know the words you use! Stupid boy!”
"Witch.”
Tirezaya’s duel eyes narrowed. "Brave, telling off an old, homeless woman. Turn around, little coward!”
"Leave me alone.”
But she stepped in front of him.
"Leave me alone,” she mocked. "Idiot. Fool! One. ONE. Not two.”
Ran tried to walk around her, she blocked him.
"You’re only ever fast when you run away, coward! You fear it so much that you know it and you don’t know it.”
"You’re craz--”
"Crazy is fine! Stupid is not!”
The wind resounded against him, stifling a scream like a hand over the mouth. That horrible smell, the taste. He knew it but didn't. He retched.
The bitch laughed.
"I don’t care,” he chocked out through spit.
The woman stopped laughing. "What?”
Ran trembled. "You heard.”
"Once more, fool, this time with feeling.”
Ran loosed a cry pitiless and wrathful as any rageaholic of the Olde Honour sheilds. "I DON'T CARE!"”
The wind stopped.
"Ran?” a different voice said, and Ran forgot about the woman.
Pilgrim stood over him, hood up. Unusual concern that did not suit him twisted his face. "Thank Rokk. Why you yelling?”
Ran struck out like an animal.
"Man,” Pilgrim went from concerned to frightened, tried to hold Ran's shoulder. "Slow up. What--”
"Don’t! Don’t talk to me like we’re friends, ass! Shaker! I asked you for help! You told me you would help! You gave me shaking nothing! I’m so dumb for thinking you could! Even for one second!”
"Calm--”
"No!”
"Ran--”
"NO!”
Pilgrim’s arms dropped, he took a step back, and for a moment they stared at one another. Pilgrim whispered. "This is the way it happens. It has to happen this way.” The man smiled weakly.
Ran was frothing rage now. " This isn't so stupid rokkist shit. I don’t even care why you’re out here! This is real! I met Ferapa today. He threatened me because of you! He told me if your not with him at Gift tomorrow he’ll make me pay. He threatened my family!”
Pilgrim hood flexed, somewhere inside a neck cracked. Then a whisper. "What?"
"He demands you come tomorrow! He thinks we’re buddies or something. I tried to tell him you’re just some nut but he won’t listen. He's a nut! He’ll kill me! Kill all of us! He might do that anyway!”
Through the haze of hate, through the layers of wrath and fear Ran had slowly been building up since Ferapa, through the doubt and anxious gut and dullness of sense, through all of that, Pilgrim’s face was a horror. Not angry, or deadly, or evil. Just blank, and Ran gasped.
After a moment, the bald man swallowed. "I’ll take care--”
"I don’t care! Just do what he says! Shake off and die after you do what he says! Leave me alone!”
Alone. Ran smiled at the thought. Alone. Didn’t sound half bad just now.
"You’re not alone,” Ran heard the man say as he walked past him without turning back.
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Rina watched the boy come in from the darkness of the kitchen, Doe unsheathed.
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Nail, stood in the shadows of behind the lad’s door, prayed as he walked past.
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E almost fell off the roof across the way, so sure the kid spotted her through the window, but when she peeked again, he was face down in bed.
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"Bro?” Tek called. Ran had climbed into his bunk with his bag, clothes still on.
"Go to sleep.”
"What’s wrong?”
"Go to sleep.”
"Kiyo told me to tell you to finish your letter.”
"Go to sleep.”
"Did Nod find you? He was looking--.”
"Shake Nod!” Ran hissed. "And shake you if you don't stop drooling all over that moron! Go to sleep! Leave me alone!” Ran felt Tek roll, but he said nothing.
Nameless. Nameless. Nameless. Alone.
Ah, thought Ran.
