A Gamer's Guide 367

The dirt beneath my bare feet is soon replaced by soft, squishy mush. I can’t feel it, though. My feet simply pass through the must to instead step on the ground. 

How does this even work? What logic governs this whole thing? I don’t understand. 

Once I’ve arrived at the dragon, I turn around to find that the rest of them have failed to follow me. But I’m not worried. Deep inside my heartless chest, I can tell that this is okay. Some newborn aspect in me that wasn’t there an hour ago whispers to me that they aren’t the ones I’ll need. Not really. They do not hope for this to work. Not truly. 

But I do. I hope. Standing here, face-to-face with a four-winged dragon dubbed Pesticide for his world-ending slaughter, I feel nothing but gentle, thrumming hope. 

I hope this goes well, I think to myself. If it doesn’t, I’ll be a bit upset. 

The voice deep inside me guides my feet away from the dragon’s head and towards its chest. It’s a long walk. The neck is at least a hundred meters long, with each wing being twice… No, thrice that length. In comparison, Goss was nothing but a chick. This is a full rooster. Putting my hand out, I let it slide across the dragon’s skin. I can’t feel it and my hand is phasing into the flesh, but I still enjoy the feeling. 

Soon enough, I arrived at the chest. There, I can feel the strumming hope in my chest find resonance. It is easily the size of a house. I wonder how big the heart must be? Of course, it isn’t beating anymore. Four-winged dragons don’t need their organs to function, so they tend to go away after a while. But there is still a heart in there. I can tell.

I can also tell that that is where I need to go. Right in there. 

I put my hands against the skin of the chest, seeing but not feeling how they sink easily into the flesh, like knives through water.

“Why are You doing this?”

There’s no need to look over at her. “You said he was in pain, didn’t you?”

“I did,” the goddess admits, “but that’s hardly reason enough. Pain absolves no one.”

“I know.”

“Then why?”

I hum. “It feels like the right thing to do, I suppose? I’m not sure, honestly. It would be a whole lot easier to kill him and do away with this whole business.”

“I see,” she says. “Before You go, there is something You must know.” I nod at her to continue. “At this moment, although Your soul is complete, it is weak. Like a newborn, it is liable to quick death. If You enter in there, Your soul will be bared. There will be nothing to protect it. Indeed, his soul will be bare as well, but he has nothing to lose. You may lose everything. Are You certain that this is what You want to do? Risking Your divine soul and life for a being that will doubtlessly reject Your pleas?”

“Yep,” I tell her. “Right now, there’s nothing I’d rather do.”

For a few moments, I can feel her staring at me, watchfully, contemplative. “I pray that You return soundly, My friend.”

“Me too,” I say. 

And then, I plunge myself into the dragon’s chest, and everything goes black.

Darkness. Shadow everlasting. Dusk eternal. Rough stone against my bare feet. Everything black.

“This is where they kept you,” I mutter, surprising myself both at knowing that and at the thing with my voice having gone away. 

The darkness slithers. Dry scales on sooty stones. “No,” rasps a voice from beyond. I turn towards it to find the darkness opening, widening, crescent moon to full moon, and then the eyes. “This,” it hisses, “is where I was born.”

“Yes, it is,” I say. The darkness unfolds and gapes open and is replaced by whiteness, eternal and all-consuming and blinding and bad. The floor is like polished white marble, the pillars are white, rising high, high, high, into an endless white sky. 

“This,” the voice says, deep and guttural, “is where you were born.”

The ground beneath my feet is splattered with blood. Splat and it spreads, as though an invisible person was wiping at it, further and further, more and more, all the way up the pillars as far as it could go. “That was always such a hassle,” I say.

“And you could never reach the tops.”

“No.”

“Nor the sky.”

“You can’t paint the skies red,” I tell him.

The darkness grins from the shadow of a pillar. “But you can.”

We’re above, now. High up, the wind roaring, but not as loudly as the fires below. Far below, the world stretches all the way to the horizons, dotted with fires. I spot three cities and at least two dozen villages, each one surrounded by dragons, like fruit flies circling rotting bananas. Even the forests are beginning to go up in flames, vomiting deep black bouts of smoke and ash into the skies, up, up, up. Skies choked with death. Hundreds of dragons, and the biggest one of all below me, with a crown of five horns and a belly-laugher loud enough to reach all four seas.

“Hear ye, hear ye!” he cries, chortling. “The screams, plundered from their chests! Famished fire, ravenously eating! And the sky—”

I look up. The sky is falling, painting the smoke-filled, carrion-stinking skies a vibrant, bloody red.

“It’s red,” I say.

“Yes, my God! But I did not paint it for you—no god other than her is worthy of such praise. How lucky I am to be visited by a god who rejects his own divinity! Did you perhaps come to be eaten? No, no, I know you did not. Irony is not to your tastes, though you still have a penchant for spawnlings. Oh, how you miss their taste! Nothing else compares, does it? Yet you only ate it roasted once. Ah, what cruelty you insist upon yourself!”

“In that sense, I suppose we are very alike, Garrie.”

Garath the Pesticide’s throat rumbles with what could be a laugh or a growl. “Indeed we are, Lo. How I pity your kind, to be barred the supreme escape of wings.”

“I wish I could say the same, but I hold no pity for you.”

“I know.” With a mighty flourish, Garath casts me off his back, though I know I have no need to fear. In an instant, we are back in the black room again, his form reduced again to a pair of eyes, though now they are small, and only at the level of my chest. “Even now, knowing what they did to me, you will not pity me.”

“I will not.”

A wheezing sound which I only half-recognize as a laughter fills the room. It could just as well have been the hissing of gas. “To be purified four times and yet remain sinful is my great flaw. Yet I still served my Goddess right. I purified the world as She purified me and when She took the side against me I let myself be turned not to ash but to an even greater weapon for Her to use. A fiery sword to rid the world of cruel, petty goblinkind.”

“I know,” I say. “Just as you know me, I know you.”

“Our souls have become one, yes. Your white infinity, my black captivity. Our red, fiery accolades. You have the same dead heart as I do.” The darkness slithers, closing in on me. “Oh, what a life you’ve led! The depth of your love, and the loss of it all. Gain and loss, all in a cruel cycle. Still, you come here, demanding gain once more.”

“I do.”

Something cold and smooth wraps around my leg. Yet, I feel no fear. None whatsoever. Because, even though we’re talking, we already know how this is all going to turn out in the end. “Had he asked you, you would have ended the world. That is what I did.”

“And he did exactly what you wanted.”

The scene shifts again. The streets of a city, bustling with people. Children rushing by. Merchants shouting out their wares, drakes hissing and huffing, the poor and downtrodden begging for coins. 

Above, seemingly as light as a feather, sits Garath, resting atop the roofs of houses without care. Had I not known with every fibre of my being that this place was more dream than reality, I would surely have found the sight odd, downright comical. Instead, I turn to watch as two children rush by—one with hair as black as soot, the other flax, almost golden—clad in nothing but rags. A pair of men soon come chasing after them, demanding they return what they took. 

I watch the scene unfold, and say, very lightly, “For this, I envy you.”

“Another reason for my pity. All the luxury of a king, yet deprived of the most simple love. Indeed, you would have made for a powerful dragon.”

Again, the scene shifts. Now, a battlefield. Dust and ash form an impervious fog, only broken by the silhouettes of goblins and dragons in combat and the occasional burst of blinding fire. “Home,” I say, not because I know it, but because I can feel it. 

“There,” Garath breathes. “Now. Watch.”

That I do. Sweeping from up high appears a dragon, shimmering in gold and blue, splaying out his wings to stall its descent before spraying from his mouth a stream of fire so concentrated it becomes white, melting the soldiers into their armour. Then, as elegantly as a lady arriving to a ball, the dragon lands, shaking his head free of any lingering soot.

“He was an amazing dragon,” I say. 

“A truer brother than any. Had I willed it, Ferruem would have gone to his death in a heartbeat.”

“How pitiable.”

“And yet, when the end came…”

Shifting again. The muddy ground is replaced by arid sand, the reddened sky turned to stark blue. Across the dunes stand an army, led by a giant easily larger than most dragons, alongside several dragons, one of them shining in shimmering gold and blue.

“He would not go with me to my death.”

The scene overlaps itself. Blue skies aberrantly shimmer with gray, deep clouds jumping in and out of existence alongside a thick layer of soot atop the dunes. Then, beyond the dunes, between us and the army ahead, comes a goblin, staggering and stumbling over the heavy soot. Before he can fall, though, he’s caught by a silhouette of pure glowing white.

“I refused to let him die,” I note. 

“Your most cruel trait,” Garath agrees. “Even for myself, you refuse death. Any suffering is worth enduring if it brings survival. That is your cowardice.”

“It is admirable that you chose to face Ferruem, despite everything.”

“You admire a fool,” Garath growls. 

“No. But I could.”

“Yes. Again, your reason to come here. Had I been more cruel I would have laughed at it. Though, it is not naivety, is it?”

“No, it isn’t.”

“Unfortunate. Naivety is far easier to deal with. Such fools can be killed without recourse. You, I must handle differently.” He lowers his head, and I watch as it with ease blots out the sun. His gleaming red eyes affix themselves onto me, and I watch, mildly curious and nothing more. “Well then, Lo. You have seen my heart, and I have shown my life. Are you still of mercy?”

I cock my head at him. “You have seen mine, too. Is it not just for me to ask the same question of you?”

His lips curl into a ghastly, reptilian smile. “Indeed. It is as you say—a dog must recognize its master as such.”

“I’m not much of a master to follow.”

“And I am a poor pet to have. Yet, here we are.”

I chuckle. “So it is true, after all? Should one look into the heart of any man to see his true self, one would always find a friend peering back up.”

“Indeed. Pity me, and I shall pity you. Trust me, and I shall trust you. Love me, and I will die a thousand deaths in your name.” His head moves closer, and I let my hand fall upon his snout. “Be mine, and I shall be yours.”

“Alright,” I say. “Then, let’s hope together that this works.” 

I slit my claw along his nose, as though I’m splitting open a bodysuit, the seams undoing themselves. The dried featherless scales of dull black part and from within emerge fresh down like that of a baby bird, whiter than snow, whiter than lilies, whiter than the sunspot you get from looking at the sun for too long.