Edge Cases

114 - Book 2: Chapter 51: Interlude - Xothok

Xothok was... antsy. He hated using that word to describe himself. It was a stupid word, for small, stupid people. What use was anxiety? He'd never had to worry about it before, because before, his main concern had been about getting food. There was nothing to worry about besides that, and that was a pretty easy thing to worry about: either they had food, or they didn't.

But the Guild was giving them food, in the most baffling show of trust that Xothok had seen along with the fact that, as far as he could tell, they weren't actually being kept at the Guild. They were given a place to sleep, and all they had to do to get food was head down to the mess hall; they didn't even have to fucking pay. They just had food given to them.

It wasn't great food, by any means. It was... palatable. What they needed to eat to survive. Hardly a luxury meal, or even a great comfort like the kind you could get at the more tavern-like section of the Guild, where they served big, meaty dishes, but he couldn't... complain?

Besides, the people in the mess hall sometimes snuck them good meals, even. He could tell when they did it, because their own meals would be the gruel they were fed, and that meant they were feeding the bandits their own lunches, which was... what? Why?

He didn't fucking understand, and he hated it.

The worst part was probably the fact that he could have left. He was pretty sure any of them could have left. Max had stopped them from leaving when they tried to escape her, back when she was escorting them to the Guild and by the gods was she terrifying when she was in battle, everywhere she needed to be and nowhere she wasn't, with not a single person being able to get past her guard but when they'd actually arrived...

She arranged for them to have beds, and told them they could have food whenever they wanted. If they wanted to join the Guild, they would have to apply, and they would have to start from Iron. Not even Bronze Iron.

And then she left?

And he had to deal with the riot that ensued, with half the bandits under him demanding answers he didn't have, a quarter of them asking about joining the Guild, and the last quarter determined to leave. They'd even tried to leave, for a while, except they'd quickly gotten hungry and turned right back around, because the food was just... there.

So that little rebellion had ended as quickly as it had begun, and it was frustrating, because Xothok couldn't fucking decide what he was supposed to do. He didn't want to just bend over and become an adventurer not only had the Elyran Guild fucked them over, but it felt like joining the Guild would be something like admitting defeat but more and more of the bandits wanted to join, and it was getting harder to find reasons not to.

If that wasn't enough, Byrrhon was still causing trouble he was the only one that was, constantly picking fights with adventurers, even though each time Max handily shut him down but it was starting to wear on them, he saw. Byrrhon might single handedly get them all kicked out.

And then there were the dreams.

He hadn't gotten the image of that stupid spell out of his head. The one that armored adventurer had cast that filled the air with frost and fire, the one that scattered lit fireballs into the atmosphere. It had sparked something inside him that he couldn't quite place, and now, every night, he would stare at the night sky and feel something inside him ache.

Xothok just couldn't place why. Part of him wanted to blame it on some sort of curse, but he already knew that wasn't true. All his men had seen the same damn spell, and most of them hadn't had the same reaction. Two had a similar reaction, but Two was... he wasn't sure what was going on with Two, actually. Sometimes the man seemed even more despondent about the sky than he was.

His dreams were related to this, he was pretty sure. He was still staring up at the sky in his dreams but he could never remember clearly what the sky looked like. It was different, definitely. There was something about his dreams that were different from reality. What that difference was just refused to stay in his mind once he woke.

Except every so often, there would be a flicker of recognition. Usually during the night, if he happened to be awake; he would have a moment when he would remember...

But then he would forget again, and the moment would pass, and even though he'd made attempts to write it down made attempts to speak to others what he'd written remained meaningless to him. It was like the words he'd written simply passed through his head.

Which brought him back to now, tonight. The real reason he was feeling so antsy, and the reason he was sitting here thinking about things, when normally he was the sort of person that would act. He'd have to try something different, if writing it down didn't work. He needed to wait for the moment he remembered, and he needed to find any sort of way he could communicate this back to himself.

Because Xothok was starting to understand that there was a part of himself locked away from him.

He stared up at where the moon hung in the sky, at the dark-blue sky beside it. The moon was a light-green disk in the air, a perfect, featureless circle. Something about that seemed strange, even though it had been that way for as long as he could remember. He felt that small ache in his heart again...

...and then something began to unravel.

Somewhere far away, someone cast [Starry Night], and a small part of Xothok remembered. It had taken time, and many casts, and he'd had to personally see the spell for it to even begin to awaken that part of him, but now that it had now that he knew there was something he was missing, and was trying to remember something broke.

Just for a second.

Stars.

Not just stars, but his entire class he'd been an [Astral Navigator], or something very similar. There was an error on his status sheet that he couldn't see that his eyes kept glazing over, every time he looked at it

there were marks on the walls, his various attempts at trying to remind himself of what he'd forgotten, a half-dozen messages written in code and implication that he just couldn't see

There wasn't time to be overwhelmed. He'd been through this before, more than once. Every time he wasted those precious minutes where he remembered, overwhelmed by the density of what he'd lost. Overwhelmed by the density of what they'd all lost, really.

He wasn't the only one.

Byrrhon had loved the stars. Two had a name. Something that was core to their selves, stripped away. Even now, with his memory of the stars returned, there were pieces and details that remained lost to him. He suspected they were lost forever. That this small piece had returned at all was a small miracle.

Writing didn't work. He'd written a message for himself, last time, and his eyes glazed over the message the same way they glazed over the error in his status. He made a quick mark on his arm using the quill anyway he couldn't remember what he'd forgotten, but this helped him remember that he'd forgotten something, and it had worked last time.

Then he scattered spilled ink onto the parchment he'd prepared, letting it spread and seep into the paper. He'd planned on writing another message to himself, but it was obvious that that route led nowhere; he'd tried enough times. Now he used the skills of his false class to his advantage, [Steal]ing away fragments of ink to make the appearance of those stars in the sky and just so he wouldn't misunderstand the makeshift painting for something else, he stole away a large, spherical section of ink, too, to represent the moon.

He wasn't sure this would work. There was every chance it would simply fail again, and he

he needed to ask for help.

That was the point of the Guild.

He'd seen it, in bits and pieces, in fragments of memories that were no longer his own. An Elyran house that focused on astronomy and navigating the stars among the stars or beneath them, he didn't know, and didn't remember but they'd worked together with the Guild. He remembered something a clerk had told him.

We're just here to help. But sometimes people don't know when to ask for help, you know? No one does everything alone, but in Elyra in particular there's this sentiment that you should do things by yourself, or just within your House; secrets layered upon secrets that end up holding back progress. Seriously, if you ever need to, just... ask. We're always here.

He hadn't liked asking for help even when he'd been whole. That was even worse when he'd become a bandit, because just asking for food that was already scarce never worked out well, and the one time they'd asked to join the Guild they'd been turn away. Xothok wondered for a moment if that was the real cause of the resentment he'd been harboring towards the Guild.

The fact that they'd offered to help, and they hadn't helped, in the end.

But now they were here, and it was obvious that the Guild was more than what the Elyran branch had been. Now that he thought about it, there were other signs that the Elyran branch was unwell, as well details he hadn't noticed before

He didn't have the time to think about this. He had to make a decision, before the clock ran out on whatever spell that stupid armored adventurer was using

Fucking fine.

He slammed the door open.

It was simultaneously relieving and exasperating to find that Max was already there, right outside the door relieving because he didn't know how much time he had left to remember, and exasperating because he still didn't know how she managed to be where she needed to be. She wasn't wearing her usual confident grin, though. Her brows were furrowed, and she stared past Xothok into the room, trying to see if anything was going on with the rest of the bandits.

"They're fine," he snapped, not even sure if he was right.

Max frowned at him. "Are they?"

"They're not the problem right now." Xothok was vaguely aware that he sounded ridiculous. "I need"

The lizardkin stopped, his words catching in his throat. Why was it so fucking hard to ask for help. He gritted his teeth. "I need help."

Max's eyes sharpened. To his relief, she didn't poke fun at him the way he'd half-expected her to do. "What's happening?"

"I keep forgetting." Xothok fought the fog that was starting to creep in. Picturing the night sky somehow helped keep it clear, filled with those specks of light filled with stars. "Need to remember."

"Ah, shit," Max muttered. She glanced into the air, presumably at an invisible system window. "Is this the same it might be... Hold on. Guildmaster's on her way."

The Guildmaster was coming. The Guildmaster was coming? Why did this involve her? Part of him recoiled, not ready to talk to the person in charge of all of this. A woman came down the stairs, then, at precisely the wrong moment, and he almost opened his mouth to lash out

he recognized her.

Why did he recognize her?

The woman frowned at him, and then the Guildmaster spoke. "It's the same infolock," she said to Max. "I haven't made any progress against it. I think Gerard in the Anderstahl branch has made some steps getting around it, but his success has been pretty limited, too."

"Sounds like we don't have a lot of options." Max glanced at Xothok, and her eyes turned sympathetic; he hated it.

"This infolock is tied... very deeply with you." The Guildmaster stared at him, and hesitated. "This is an opportunity we would not normally have. There may be something I can do here, but it is not without cost."

"Just tell me what the fuck it is."

"A perception lock." The Guildmaster looked serious. "You're tied very closely to this infolock, and that's the only reason this is possible at all but I can tie off this part of you, the part that remembers. Which means you're going to have this part of yourself severed from you, and it'll be like... a voice on your shoulder. Someone you can talk to, that remembers, but someone that's not you. And you'll be everything else everything that remains."

Xothok paused.

"That's just what I am already, isn't it?" he asked. "I can remember some shit now, but it's not enough."

The Guildmaster remained silent, and that was answer enough.

"Do it," he said.

He wanted to see the person he could have been.