{{ FLASHBACK: START ; DATE: [[May 8. 2038.]] }}
Godspeed's perverse eyes focused on my being, blinking those chaotic, vortex-red eyes slowly, like a lizard sunning itself on a rock. He didn't seem urgent. He didn't seem aggressive. He barely seemed wholly present in the current reality. He was just mild, almost affable, leaning back with his thumbs hooked in that heavy belt of his.
"It will be the only way to validate your current build," he said, his tone deceptively laid-back.
I tried to scan his face, desperately searching for the humanity under the digital skin, but what I found was… nothing of that sort. This man… this thing… felt wrong. I couldn't even say he was robotic; it went deeper than that. When he shifted his weight, the dry dirt of the street didn't just puff out. It wanted to groaned. Whatever footprints he left behind seemed deeper, heavier than his visable self should allow, as if his avatar carried the weight of a dying star in its pockets.
'He's a danger,' my instincts screamed, the same warning system that flared whenever an on-call customer from work escalated from "angry" to "unhinged."
'This guy… He like, at his core…. He makes me feel unsafe.'
I took a step back, raising my hands in a pathetic defensive gesture. A bargain. I always try to bargain. It's what I do. De-escalate. Find the middle ground.
"Look," I started, forcing a nervous chuckle to bubble up through the tightness in my throat. "I get the enthusiasm. Really, I do. Gamer grit. The grind. But maybe we start smaller? Like… a camp? A little squad? Maybe just a slightly bigger-than-normal hobgoblin that has a name? We don't need to jump straight to regicide."
Godspeed barely reacted. He simply fanned his arms out wide, and with a glitch-like stutter, the air around him pixelated. Clusters of weapons materialized from the digital seams of the world—staffs, daggers, swords—all cheap.
I hopped back, avoiding the dull edges and serrated sides of every worn blade and splintered staff that fell scattered around him and I. Why did he need that many? I remembered him breaking my sword earlier with two fingers. I stared at his grand arsenal of low-level junk, only to…
'Wait…'
A bead of sweat slid down my face, originating more from my flaring nerves than the heat.
'Don't think about it.'
I roll my shoulders, trying to ease the tension that was building and befuddling my mind.
'Let's call it only as we see it. Nothing more.'
'He… I guess the reason that he has so many weapons is so he can have a revolving door of tools. He probably doesn't see the point of upgrading; rather go through the inventory like disposable cutlery. Dozens of weapons, used like his own armory.'
"The settlement," he repeated, his voice unmoved by my logic, dragging me back in, "it's your strongest bet here."
I opened my mouth to argue again, to tell him that 'Hell Month' sounded like a marketing term for a gym membership I'd cancel after three days, but the words only died on my tongue, as if they were pressured by him to disappear. But, once again, he just stood there. Quiet. And heavy.
I looked at that red hair of him, wild and matted. At the eyes that swirled like milk mixing into coffee. Just staring into them made me feel incredibly small, like I was shrinking in real time. My defiance—that hot, angry spark I'd felt in the coffee shop—flickered violently. It threatened to go out.
Who was I kidding? If I walked away, I'd just go back to failing at circles in the sand. Or worse, go back to Mr. Henderson and the call queue and the crushing gravity of my untidy apartment.
And then a step further.
I'll go back to being alone.
This man was a walking panic attack daring to do me in, a presence that terrified me to my core, but he was offering a hand. A dangerous, potentially radiated hand, but a hand nonetheless that reached out before any other.
My posture slumped. The fight drained out of my shoulders, leaving me feeling hollow and undeniably lesser.
"Fine," I heard myself say, my voice sounding distant and reedy, like a child agreeing to eat their vegetables because they're too tired to scream anymore.
'I feel like a Stockholm Syndrome victim.'
Godspeed smiled upon hearing. It didn't reach his eyes, though.
He clapped me on the pauldron, the impact heavy enough to make me stumble.
"Good to hear. First lesson at dawn. Don't be late."
Serious. Way too serious he felt. Long gone was the man from the alehouse scamming me of money. Gone was the affable, laid-back weirdo who chugged bad stout with a lazy grin. It was someone foreign standing before me now, outlining a plan of torment with the calm precision of a military strategist. His posture was straight, his focus absolute. The easygoing slouch was replaced, a coiled energy ready to strike in its place.
And again. Always bothersome.
Always unnerving.
It was his swirling eyes, which I had purposefully dismissed as a strange cosmetic choice, that now seemed less like a quirk and more like a warning—a pair of churning vortexes that promised chaos.
I crossed my arms again. Trying to hold it in. The vibrating.
The Tremors.
Tremors of fear I hadn't felt since our first encounter in the desert, one that I thought would leave me as only a speck of red on gritty gold dunes. 'Danger,' an internal voice repeated to me, over and over again. Godspeed was, to me at least, a walking, talking question mark. I didn't know a single thing about him. I didn't know his real name. I didn't know why his hair was that impossible shade of red, or why his footprints in the sand sometimes seemed heavier, deeper than they should, and other times vanished entirely. I didn't know why the practice staves, hilts and edges seemed to crack, split, and break on every side, strewn over one another like a graveyard of weapons, only for him to produce more the next time we meet. Only to throw out a new bunch everytime from… somewhere.
'And for some reason, this danger was willing to help me?'
"That's… n-no," I finally said, the word a weak rebuttal against the sheer force of his plan. My voice came out as a strangled whisper, so I cleared my throat and tried again, forcing some strength into it. "A month? A whole month of… of whatever that is? For one settlement? That's ridiculous. There has to be a faster way. A simpler way." I was rambling, arguing with myself as much as with him, my hands gesturing vaguely as if to ward off his proposal from encompassing me. "Look, maybe… maybe we could scale it back? Just focus on the weapons for a week? Or maybe find a smaller target? Like, a bandit's camp, maybe?"
He didn't argue. He didn't try to negotiate. He didn't even blink. He just watched me, his expression a placid, unreadable mask that caused, with every passing second, the flimsy structure of my argument to crumble. My frantic bargaining felt childish, pathetic against the immovable wall of his conviction.
'But what if?'
A second voice—no, a third voice, smaller and quieter in the back of my mind, spoke up. It spoke over that feeling of danger of mine. It was the voice that had pushed me to clean my apartment, the one that had told me to log back in. It was a voice that was so, so tired of being weak. It pointed out the terrifying truth: as unsettling as this man was, the thought of him turning around and walking away, leaving me exactly as I was, was somehow even scarier.
I let out a long breath, the last of my resistance deflating with it. I dropped my arms to my sides.
"Okay," I said, the word tasting like surrender and something else I couldn't quite name. "Fine."
I met his unwavering gaze.
"I'll do it."
{{ FLASHBACK: END ; RETURN TO PRESENT DAY: [[May 9. 2038.]] }}
I came to with my face down in the sand. The world slowly stopped its violent spinning, settling into a dull, throbbing ache that seemed to emanate deep in my bones.
"A s-second," I begged, my voice a muffled rasp against the sand. "Just… give me a second, please…"
There was no verbal reply. Instead, I heard the soft, slithering sound of boots sliding through sand. It was Godspeed sliding, a smooth, controlled descent, posing and stanced as relaxed as can be, as if he were some B-tier action hero in a post-apocalyptic flick. He came to a stop a few feet away, a silent, imposing silhouette against the harsh sun.
My plea for a ceasefire was answered not with words, but with action. The silhouette moved, and a shadow fell over me. I looked up just in time to see the butt of his bo staff plunging directly toward my face.
A jolt of pure adrenaline shot through my exhausted limbs. "Shit—!"
There was no time to think, only to move, rolling violently to my left. The staff slammed into the sand where my head had been, sending up a spray of grit that stung my cheek. I scrambled backward on my ass, my eyes frantically searching for the damn stick I'd been holding. There. A few feet away. I lunged for it, my fingers closing around the worn wood just as he raised his staff for another overhead strike.
I got the block up just in time, holding the staff horizontally with both hands.
CRACK!
The wood was unable to hold on. It exploded, the top half of my bo staff flying off into the desert while the bottom half was driven down, the jagged end digging a furrow in the sand inches from my leg. 'What is that, number five today?'
Without missing a beat, Godspeed tossed his own perfectly intact staff at my feet. It landed with a soft thud. As I stared at it, he waited a beat, and from the shimmering air beside his hip, another one materialized from his inventory.
'This cheap bastard,' my mind seethed. 'Won't even buy me an ale, but he's got an endless supply of these damn things. Probably paid that shitty blacksmith a fortune for them.'
But in that split second, as his hand closed around the hilt of his newly summoned weapon, I saw it. An opening. The same kind of opening he'd been lecturing me about. An instant of vulnerability.
'Fuck it.'
I didn't wait. I didn't get into a proper stance. Being fueled by pure, spiteful adrenaline, I launched myself forward from my ass-down position on the ground, a clumsy, charging lunge. I grabbed the staff he'd given me, swinging it in a wild, desperate overhead arc while he was still getting his grip.
He was fast. He got his own staff up to intercept at the last possible moment. But he wasn't expecting the aggression. He wasn't expecting the raw, uncalculated desperation. My attack wasn't clean, but it was committed. His block was solid, but my momentum carried through. The tip of my staff glanced off his, deflecting just enough to continue its path.
TONK!
The sound was small, almost comical, but it was the most beautiful sound I had ever heard. The very end of my bo staff connected squarely with the top of his head. It wasn't a powerful blow. It wouldn't even leave a bruise, much less any actual damage to his hp. But it was a hit. A clean, undeniable hit.
I was so shocked I'd actually succeeded that I just stood there for a second, my staff still raised. He didn't move, his head still slightly bowed from the impact. A bump was probably already forming.
Then, the victory hit me.
"HA!" I shrieked, a wild, triumphant sound ripping from my throat. "I GOT YOU! I FUCKING GOT YOU!" I started parading around him in a circle, pumping my fist in the air. "Don't care! Doesn't count if you weren't ready! You said it yourself! Use the openings you see! And I saw it! I FUCKING WON!"
Godspeed slowly raised his head, a single hand coming up to rub the spot I'd hit. He looked at me, my victory lap continuing unabated, and a slow, wry smile touched his lips. He didn't look angry. He looked… amused.
He began to clap. Not a real applause, but a slow, deliberate Clap. Clap. Clap.
"Good," he said, his voice laced with a strange hint of approval. "Fighting isn't fair. You have to take advantage of the weaknesses you see." He lowered his hand, his gaze turning analytical. "It might be ninety-nine to one in my advantage, but you finally got your one."
I stopped my gloating, breathing heavily, a wide, genuine grin plastered on my face. It was the best I had felt in hours. Days, even.
"That's all right with me," he continued, completely unfazed. "Now that you've gotten a taste for the first pillar, it's time to get started on the second."