Xala held his hands behind his back as he looked out over the arenas of Dimside. He had taken him and Colhern back to that spot when their lips first touched. Xala wished to celebrate here. When they arrived, Colhern took a few steps back to lean against a nearby pillar. As Colhern caught his breath from what they just went through, Xala smiled. He took deep breaths through his nostrils and sighed with great satisfaction. It was a rush. Just like last time. Just like Crimsire, the combining of different factions toward one goal brought Xala a great deal of joy and peace. He could visualize the movement of minds and bodies toward liberation. Through Vulcan and Halifax, he heard the voices of the people along the outskirts of his mind. The People of Mischarer, the Cultists, had ushered their preachers into the streets with gusto. The preachers spoke and their crowds were getting bigger by the hour. Bit by bit, Fae Town was listening. Perhaps only one person at a time, but each one person connected to many more. He likened it to the spread of contagion. The more people conversed, the more they interacted, the more they were encouraged to, the more it would spread like a plague of life, rather than one of infection and disease and sickness.

  But what should he call this contagion? What should he deem his plague? Last time, Morl decided to call it a Black Plague, as that was the color of his banners. Xala’s fingers pinched and rubbed the hem of his shawl contemplatively and wondered if he should simply reuse the name. Black was the color of darkness, exactly where the surface had pushed the mages of Feltkan into. It was the color of the abyss. Xala would force the surface to look into the abyss and see his plague taking shape and rise up before they could react.

  His plague could stretch farther, compound, and spread to every inch of Feltkan, then the neighboring Alegwa and Ariz, on and on until it touched every corner of the world. He had not visited those places, but if a philosophy of mage and null and Cursed equality were known far and wide, that would be paradise on merces.

  “Xala,” Colhern held his head in his forearm as he leaned against the column he kissed Xala against, “What the fuck?”

  “Huh?”

  “What, the, fuck?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Colhern moved his head so he could side-eyed Xala and said, “I feel so fuckin’ lost right now. I,” he gritted his teeth, “I don’t even know what I’m confused about. I have no idea where to start.”

  Xala stepped closer, leaned over the edge, the wind whipping at his hair as he tried to get a better view of Colhern’s face, and said, “You’ve never encountered a place like that, have you?”

  “No. No I haven’t.”

  “Neither have I. I’ve only dreamt of such places.”

  “There, that, what the fuck do you mean by that? How? How were you dreaming of a place full of blood magic, freaks, and mages as twisted and fucked up as those Snatchers?!”

  Xala took a deep breath. He stood up straight and leaned on one leg as his toes sat over the edge.

  “Xala, when Katya said you were a Universalist, you said you didn’t know if you were good at the occult. Was that another lie?”

  Xala’s heartrate rose. It was a subtle thumping in his ears. Colhern wanted honesty. Perhaps, just perhaps, it would not hurt to give in and discard the veil of secrecy, “Yes.”

  “Fuck,” he brought his other hand to his face and dragged at it, as if he were trying to scrub all the emotions away. His head dropped forward and he swallowed hard. “You’re a full blown master, aren’t you? That’s why they called you Master Svoboda, huh?”

  Xala did not know what to say. He had no idea how to comfort Colhern at this moment. He even laughed out loud, caught off guard by the fact he had just pulled off a silver tongue maneuver on an extremely powerful Master of the Dark Arts, but could not find the words to say to a null.

  “What’s so funny?”

  Xala took a few ragged breaths, glanced over at an expecting Colhern, and said, “This is the first time I’ve been speechless around you, and wasn’t flustered or blushing.”

  Colhern’s lip twitched into a smile before it fell even further into a frown. “Don’t change the subject.”

  “Wasn’t trying to.” He said solemnly as he faced the arenas below. “What now?”

  It was Colhern’s turn to claim the silence between them. Wordless pain etched itself into the bond between them. Xala could feel it, or at least imagined it so clearly that it was real. Colhern sighed and said, “Does anyone else in Fae Town know?”

  “Uhm, a few. Your mother might be one of them. But, I don’t know for sure.”

  “Fuck. I think I know what you mean. If she does know, but hasn’t said anything, then that can’t be good. Who else?”

  “Remember that Dusk-Kin I got this from?” He clicked his nails against the wooden talisman around his neck. “They definitely know. They even remember me from Ikarn.”

  “Where are you really from?”

  Xala’s face twitched. It was not that he had forgotten Colhern knew that Ikarn was a lie, but that Xala had repeated it so many times in his head it was a habit to say it. He glanced over at Colhern, slid his tongue across his teeth back and forth, and eventually said, “Okra.”

  “What the fuck.”

  “Crimsire, Okra.”

  Colhern’s hands clenched and unclenched. “How old are you?”

  “Four-hundred-forty-four.”

  Every new revelation was a punch to the gut. Colhern pinched his nose bridge and said, “Uh-huh. So,” Xala knew there were too many words to say and not enough time in the world. “How, uhm, why,”

  “I was imprisoned for the last four-hundred-twenty-two years. I woke up the same day we met. That’s why Feltkan, Trymora, the modern world, is so new to me.”

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  “Oh, well, uh, that clears that up, I guess. Why were you in prison?”

  “I do not know for certain, but it likely had something to do with rebelling my station.”

  “Which was?”

  “I was in the Court of the Red Emperor. I rebelled against him. As the city was besieged, I lost consciousness and woke up in my prison.”

  “You’re an elf, how were you possibly in the Court of,” then it clicked. “Oh. Holy fuck.” He was piecing it together quickly. It impressed Xala the more his face switched between disgust, recognition, and shock. He sighed deeply, peeled himself off his forehead, and turned to face Xala fully. He saw pity for the slave amidst that rage for the deceiver. “Xala, you survived the Imperial Collapse. It sounds like you didn’t even experience it. So, I’m curious, are you excited for revolution because you didn’t see the impact that one had?”

  “I have since learned that an entire continent is dead. All of my friends, all the people I ever knew, all the people I ever loved and hated, are all dead. I may not have seen them die, but I know what happened. I know we put our faith in an Occultist over a Tyrant. I know nothing is left of my homeland. I am excited for revolution because tyrants must be taken down before rebellions are led by occultists.”

  “You’re an occultist.”

  “I’m not a leader. I’m a whisperer. Others will lead this movement. Others will take over when the dust is settled. I have no such aspirations.”

  “How will you be able to control it if you aren’t leading it?”

  “You do not need to lead to control something.”

  Colhern looked down at Xala with a tinge of revolsion, “You’re going to be puppeting the leaders. That’s what you’ve been doing. You,” the gravity of the situation was hitting him faster and faster, “You already met up with the cultists, got their attention, and we just spoke to the Grave Snatchers. The Feathers are next, aren’t they?”

  “Yes.”

  “Damn.” He bit his bottom lip and turned away, facing the arenas below. “Then what?”

  “As Fae Town unifies, the surface becomes the next target. Mass propaganda campaigns, flooding the Lyceum, planting the seeds of equality within the minds of the nulls and subjugated mages above. When the people of Fae Town rise up from underground and flood the streets of the surface, the civilians above will be too confused to fight alongside their military, which will also be infiltrated. The generals and state officials will be turned against their leader, and turn their weapons on their own when they see the full might of Fae Town.”

  “That’s so insane,” Colhern breathed heavily, clutched his chest as if to hold his heart in his chest, and swallowed hard as dread washed over him. “How? How the fuck have you been moving like this? You’ve been here, what, three days?!”

  Xala smiled meekly, “I see the end goal very clearly. Thus, the methods to get there become obvious.”

  “Do not make jokes right now.” Xala pulled the corners of his lips down by sheer force of will and watched Colhern’s gears turn until they overheated. Finally, Colhern swallowed hard and said, “You,” he groaned, “you completely fucked me over. Sure, I get it, you simply couldn’t tell me the truth. But, what do you think would have happened between us? You just lie and start rebellions behind my back all the time? Twenty-four-seven?! What kind of fucking idiot do you take me for?!”

  “I, I don’t think you’re an,” his lip twitched uncertainly, “idiot. I figured I would tell you the truth at some point, but I needed to trust you.”

  “You wanted my blind trust? Xala, you got into bed with me. I was inside your fucking mind! Why not show me then?! Why not show me the instant you had a chance? I was drunk! I would have, I don’t know, understood? More than I do now!”

  Xala stared up at Colhern as he towered over him. What a fool he’d been. This was his nature. This was his pattern. There was no chance of escape. Why bother trying? Love was a wretched thing to have for another person. Love of art is merciful, in that art cannot hurt someone so pointedly like this. Like Xala did him. He felt as though he had shrunken in his own body, into an abyss, and now looked up out of his body through two circles in the dark. “I couldn’t.”

  “Huh? What was that?”

  “I couldn’t.”

  “Pfft, alright.” Colhern stepped back and leaned against the column. He crossed his arms and scowled at Xala, “I wish I could get people like you. Liars. Even with your past, whatever you haven’t told me, how can you lie so easily? To my face. Every fuckin’ hour we’ve been together, you’ve been workin’ me. You’ve been sneaking behind my back, faking a whole persona, and straight up fibbing over everything. Fuck. Was any of it real?!”

  “Most of it.”

  “How can I believe that?!”

  “Because you are the only person I have ever enjoyed being intimate with! You made me feel safe, and I wanted to do the same for you. You comforted me in this,” his hands flexed as he waved them out over Dimside’s view, “bizzare nightmare! You made me feel sane in an insane world!” He breathed heavily and quickly as he went on, “Every intimate moment, every kiss, every sweet nothing, every bit of body language, was genuine. I believe this with every ounce of my being! You are what matters to me in this new world.”

  Colhern’s tears welled up. That crushed Xala. He could not even tell when his own started to spawn. Colhern wiped them away with his sleeve and said, “I felt the same way.” He sucked in a bout of air and held it for a second, just to see if he could, before he let it stumble its way out through his lips. “I can’t do this.”

  “Col,” Xala whispered desperately as Colhern turned to walk away. “Colhern,” he kept walking toward the exit. “Ajirla,” he kept going, toward the tunnel that led into the cavern and descended back to the barracks, “AJIRLA!” Xala threw out his hand, clawing at the imaginary bond they shared, and reached out to grab onto it. As he did, raw magic began to lift off his hands. As it did, the untamed arcana ripped at Xala’s disguise. That ivory hand blackened as pieces of pale flesh burned off and floated into the atmosphere like ashes. His blackened hand revealed itself, and his long, black talons slid out of his fingertips, replacing his nails. The gruesome sight of his true, black hands offended the very light that tried to reflect off it. A rippling black mist entwined with a radium green smoke, a representation of Xala’s aura, of his soul, buried beneath all the faces and souls of his victims, hissed and slithered through the air and around his hand. The black magic sizzled and popped its way down to the tips of his claws and reached outward as tendrils of shadow toward Colhern.

  As his hand was revealed, Colhern looked back, his eyes widened in shock, and as the tendrils of Xala’s magic floated towards him, he gripped the glaive behind his back, unlatched it, and spun it around to cast a dome of brassy brown-yellow light around him.

  Once the barrier was summoned, Xala’s magic reacted angrily against it. The magic itself twisted and writhed to form monstrous shadows and gnashing maws, before it reeled back further and slithered back into Xala’s hand. The light irritated Xala’s eyes and made him reel back, too, shielding his face with his gruesome, clawed hand.

  “By Lilith,” Colhern gasped as he stared at Xala through the warbling light of his ward.

  Xala squated on the ground, huddled into himself, as he extended his unblackened hand out to deflect more of that blinding light. Xala rasped as he peeked through his clawed hand back at Colhern. Their eyes met, and in that moment, Xala knew he was alone all over again.

  Colhern dismissed the ward, held the glaive at his side, and stared across the distance down at Xala. “That ink…it’s covering your whole hand.” His eyes scanned the rest of Xala’s body, watched the lavender ink fade and the rest of Xala’s tattoos slithered and bubbled up to the surface of his elven body. “It’s,” Colhern almost wretched, held it in, and swallowed hard as he uttered hoarsely, “That’s fuckin’ disgusting. Xala, all those Inscriptions, you should be fuckin’ dead.” Colhern twisted away and made his way down the hallway, down the staircase, and out of sight.

  Xala’s heart rattled in his chest. His face felt hot. His blood ran cold. His entire body felt like a prison. He scratched at his throat until he drew blood just to feel something else. Anything else. This was a pain Xala did not know he could feel. A pain he had never felt before. It was cruel. It was an insidious pain that made no sense to him. He hated it. He wanted to feed. He needed to get out of his own skin, out of his own body, and find something new. He needed to kill.

  He needed to conquer.