A Gamer's Guide 363

For a moment, Kitty continued to hold him. Then, he leaned out, wiping his tears, though still not standing up. Remaining on his knees, Kitty affixed Lett with his gaze. And in only a single moment, Lett knew that he was no longer being looked at with pity or worry. Kitty’s eyes were clear, genuine, and as hard as rosilver. “Why wouldn’t you speak to me?”

Lett felt small. He was a child, now. Of course, technically speaking, he would soon be an adult. But in front of Kitty, he was only a kid. A kid who had misbehaved, and was being rightfully reprimanded for it. 

The anger began to return. Injustice at everything. How dare he? 

“You never listened to me. No care about what would happen if you left me there. You saved me, which makes me your responsibility!”

He was being unreasonable. It was a very clever ploy, and he felt very good to come up with it. If he was unreasonable and unapologetic and very, very annoying, then Kitty would turn away from him again and he wouldn’t have to feel bad about everything he’d done. He could continue his whole apostle thing, and never look back.

(And then Kitty wouldn’t have to look back, either)

But Kitty only blinked at him, his eyes big and clear like those of an especially clever wingdrake. “Huh. Yeah, that’s right, isn’t it?” A little smile came to him, exposing his sharp teeth. “You’re my responsibility, which means that Aunt Gyrdle can’t complain if I take you. That should convince her, right?” 

Now it was Lett’s turn to blink in clear befuddlement. 

“No, wait,” Kitty said, his expression falling. “I can’t make you come along. If you do and you end up dying I’ll feel horrible. Which is impressive, because I usually don’t feel much of anything.”

“I don’t care,” Lett said, his voice trembling with horrible corrosive hope. “I don’t care if I die if it means going with you.”

All gaiety left Kitty’s face. The abrupt shift was so jarring it became frightening rather than comical. “You value your life too little. Do you understand that people love you?”

The question was odd, and a bit out of left-field. “I fail to see the relevance.”

“You do, huh? Hm. Alright, here’s a better question: what will you do if we go on an epic adventure and I die?”

“I don’t know.”

“Yes you do,” Kitty said, eyes glimmering because he did know. “You’d try to get revenge. Or maybe you’d try to kill yourself. What do you think? Kill others or kill yourself?”

Lett felt very, very cold. “That’s…” 

“I know. It’s a heavy subject. But I need you to know that if you come along with me, it might not just be your own life on the line. Heck, thousands might die. I don’t know. What you see down there crushed and mashed like ripe tomatoes is nothing. You don’t like looking at them, do you? I can tell. It’s in your eyes. Maybe you think that makes you weak, but it doesn’t. It’s very strong to feel that, and not repress it like I have. It’s one of the many reasons I admire you.”

“You admire me?”

“Aunt Gyrdle does, too. I think she doesn’t want to be too obvious about it though, because she knows you’ll leave eventually and she doesn’t want you to feel mixed about it.”

“That’s dumb.”

“It is, isn’t it? Trying to keep people from missing you when you’re gone… Ridiculous, isn’t it?”

Lett couldn’t muster an answer. Kitty only chuckled.

“Yeah, I don’t know what I was thinking, either. I guess it’s some sort of self defence. I don’t want to hurt people by being loved, but then you hurt people by doing a bunch of stupid shit instead. It’s ridiculous, isn’t it?” His smile was so warm. Friendly. Loving. Not like the smiles Desput had, all full of lonely madness. Kitty smiled with love, all the way up to the eyes, with complete abandon. “I’m lucky I still have people who put up with me, even though I do stupid shit.”

Frustration had made a mangled wreck of Lett’s heart. There was a voice in there he hadn’t heard before, speaking as softly as a mouse with a heart as big as a dragon’s. 

I want to go home, it said. I want to go home. Please. Please, let me go home. I’m scared and I miss mommy. 

Beyond the bars of horns, far down below, the soldiers were looking up at him, far fewer now. Everything was charred. Acrid smoke burnt his nose and made his eyes water. His whole body hurt from exhaustion and scrapes and arrows and trembling tight-fisted frustration. “I—I don’t…”

A pair of big hands encapsulated his, holding them tightly, yet lovingly. They were cold, and clawed, and had an odd, dead color to them. “Are you afraid of them?”

Lett couldn’t speak. All he could muster was a single childish nod. 

“I see. It hurts to break character, doesn’t it? You must have been practising for a long time now. Maybe the whole past month. All for this moment, of being perfectly evil. And now I’m coming here, busting your parade, telling you to walk off the stage and tear off your costume to go face the crowd. It’s a massive thing to ask, but I’ll let you in on a little secret.” Here, as though uncovering a massive scheme, Kitty leaned in very close, hiding his mouth. Lips close to Lett’s ear, he whispered, very softly, “You’re never really off the stage.” And he smiled. Lett, heart thumping in a mixture of fear and amusement, was unable to tell if the smile was genuine or not. And yet, he knew instinctively that it was entirely well-meaning. “If you really are going to become like me, then you will be cycling through a lot of masks. You might even forget what your real self looks like, but… There’s no shame in that. Pretending is part of growing up. It’s all one big game of pretend. Being sincere… That’s a true act of bravery.” His eyes trailed away, downward, all the way over to the soldiers, and to Holly and Glyph. “If you step off this stage, you won’t be receiving any applause. They’ll never look at you the same as before. There will always be gazing following you, fearful, terrified that you might relapse. And maybe you will. It might happen many times.”

Lett felt weak to his knees. 

“In the end, though, I do believe you can find a scene that no longer feels like a stage play. People you can be with who make you forget you’re even wearing a mask to begin with.” Kitty turned back to him, smiling so gently it hardly even felt real. “Will you let me be one such person?”

The world swam in a myriad of colors. He could hardly see anything anymore. No longer could he control his legs, treacherous things, and they gave out beneath him, folding like broken wood, and he fell into Kitty’s strong, welcoming arms. “Please,” he whimpered, as little and weak as a child. “Please, take me home.”

“Alright,” Kitty said, holding him tighter. “Let’s go home.”

It wasn’t conscious, but the mount… no, the dragon began to lower its head. At some point during the past half hour, Lett had understood—as intuitively as animals learn to walk—how to control it. He hadn’t needed Desput to tell him, after all. Maybe he wasn’t so bad at this. It felt good to know that he could be good at something. Despite the dizzying descent (not that he saw much of it, his face pressed into Kitty’s chest), he felt okay. In sounder mind, he might have described the whole thing as a dragon having its wings plucked and crashing to the earth. But it didn’t feel like that. It only felt like being held, cold as the embrace was.

There was a thump as the dragon’s chin touched ground. 

Kitty held him tighter. “Don’t look,” he whispered. “I’ll carry you, so keep your eyes squeezed tight.” There was no need to resist. Lett only nodded, and allowed himself to be lifted into Kitty’s arms. A bony, corpse-like hand patted the back of his head. “They won’t attack you. I told them to stay back and trust me, so if they decide to attack you anyways, they’ll have to get through me first. There’ll be no more blood on your hands, I assure you.”

“Thank you,” Lett muttered weakly. He closed his eyes shut tightly, and allowed himself to be rocked by the steady rhythm of Kitty’s gait. 

One step, two steps, going down a slope, down the nose of the dragon. And then a hop, and…

Squish. 

A tremble gripped Lett’s body, expelling breath from his lungs.

“It’s okay,” came Kitty’s voice, soothing and calm. “Don’t look. It’ll all be over soon.”

Squish, squish, squish, squish.

Like stepping on overripe fruits. As they moved away from the dragon, away from the smouldering cinders of home, the warmth receded. The fire had been very warm. Comfortable, almost like a hug. It was going away now. The arms that held him were cold and hard but they were true, not like the fire. So, even as Lett began to shiver and his throat burned with the frigid, biting air, he did not feel cold inside. No, deep inside, he felt very, very warm. As though someone had lit a hearth inside his chest. 

It was nice. Lett pressed himself closer to Kitty’s chest.

Then, he realized that the squishing had stopped. 

“Hang on, not yet,” Kitty said, letting him down, and turning him away from where the dragon and the cinders and the mush was. Lett’s feet touched fragile, burnt grass and he finally opened his eyes. 

Hundreds of staring eyes met him. Wide. Fearful. Dark with an emotion Lett wanted nothing better than to burn out of their skulls. Not even the ground beneath his feet felt stable anymore. Behind him, like a fifth limb he’d only now learned to wield, he felt the dragon, his rage personified, unbreathing, unmoving, but there, ready to obey his every unsaid order—even if it meant doing away with everything he hated and loathed and wanted nothing to do with save for maybe to kill it and to grind it to dust and burn it and—

A hand fell on his shoulder. Cold, but there. “Hey, relax,” Kitty said, and Lett did. His shoulders fell and he turned away from the gazes, the horrible, piercing gazes, and up at Kitty. A warm smile met him, entirely fearless. “I’m here.” 

He was. However, what made Lett truly relax, letting his fists loosen, was the simple realization that many of the gazes in front of them were looking at Kitty in that same way as well. Like that. 

Lett wasn’t alone. Kitty was there. 

That was all he had ever wanted.