Malorum

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"Neque porro quisquam est qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit..." "There is no one who loves pain itself, who seeks after it and wants to have it, simply because it is pain..." - Cicero, de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum (The Extremes of Good and Evil)

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"Firia, how very rude of you!" Xelloss reached up to his cheek, carefully wiping away the spit with the back of his glove. As his fingers wandered back to the sword resting beside him, he sighed. "I just want to explain something. Is that so callous of me?" And with that said, he lifted the sword and stabbed it through her.

Firia didn't know why she screamed. The sound wouldn't manage to leave her chest before the blade pierced it, and even if it could, it wouldn't affect Xelloss' reasoning. She was going to die here, hanging from a tree until Xelloss untied her corpse or some other beast on this island found it. Screaming only seemed natural, she supposed.

"You're not dead." Xelloss sat across from her, his legs dangling from the thick branch there. His fingers played restlessly across the sword's hilt, and his face was...no, not impassive. Interested. Almost amused, but too serious for that. "I try to tell people these things, you know? Often they don't realize them and they just lay there. You're thinking too hard. That's what it is. But you're not dead, because if you were dead you would understand." He stood up, looking over the forest. They were in the highest branches of the tallest tree on Wolf Pack Island, and there was quite a remarkable view from here. Xelloss wondered for a moment why, unlike him, mortals and other sane thinkers rarely paused to admire the view during tense situations. "Perhaps it's our vision."

Firia blinked. "What?" Her body tingled from adrenaline and her emotions rocked in confusion, but Xelloss' last words infected her thoughts for some reason. She should be asking him why she was alive, or why he was torturing her like this. That's what she should be doing. "Do you see as the dead do, then?"

The mazoku froze. "Do I...oh. I'm sorry. No, I was just rambling. See, it's swords I wanted to talk about." He tossed the blade up and grabbed the hilt, fumbling it for a moment. "Swords and then other things. But swords first. My, the moon is bright tonight. I can see the firepit from here. Can you...oh no, not from that angle. But you can see the stars." He sat on the wide branch that Firia was tied to. "You see?" He raised the sword to her view. "Swords. Well, one sword. But I mean swords in general. Don't cringe, Firia." He pulled the blade farther away from her chest. "Sorry. I didn't think it would scare you that much."

Firia thought back to a few moments ago. Xelloss had stabbed down towards her chest, fast and exact...but it hadn't penetrated her. It went straight through the tree trunk under her. No. Next to her. It had never touched her. He had...Firia thought back...slowly...in that split-second before he would have skewerd her, had Xelloss pulled to the side?

So he didn't want to kill her then, but wanted her to think he was going to. But only in that instant.

"You're crazy," she whispered.

"In a moment." Xelloss balanced the blade across his palms, as if offering it to her. "We'll talk about swords first. Are you okay? You're not dead, you know. Or did I tell you that?" He shook his head, sighing. "Yes, I did tell you that. Linear time, Xelloss, linear time."

Xelloss is crazier right now than I've ever seen him before. Firia stared up at the stars. I didn't think that was possible.

"Now, I have a sword." Xelloss' voice was calm and patient - he had the tone of a teacher. "And I also have a knife." His fingers flicked into his sleeve, drawing out the knife that was tucked away there. "Look at them. It's strange, isn't it? They're so similar. See?" He tapped the two blades together. They rang together in a strange metallic harmony. "Both have blades, hilts, guards. Each blade is made of sharp, sharp steel. They both work exactly the same way..." -a smile cut across his face- "...hold on to one end and cut with the other. You could say that the only difference between the two is size..."

The sword was propped up lazily on the log below Xelloss, his right arm clumsily balanced on the hilt. The knife, however, stayed in his left hand. His fingers twirled it gracefully about, moonlight tracing liquid paths along its blade. The mazoku flipped the knife through the air with barely a thought towards what he was doing. Firia suppossed it was an excercise, a habit, maybe a talent. He looked so thoughtful, so serious and calm.

"...but that's not it. That's not it at all. There is all the difference in the world between the sword and the knife." He stood up, his body unfolding as gracefully as the knife had danced in his fingers. He pointed the sword out to the open air as if he were facing an invisible opponent. Firia noticed that his stance was a little off and his grip was weak. "What are swords for, Firia? They are for killing. Killing things, killing people, animals, dragons...anything, really. Even plants. There might be a bit of a struggle in the process, but in the end, swords aren't meant for anything but death. A quick death. No escape, and no time to scream until it's too late."

"Yes. You showed me that." Firia flexed against the ropes for a moment out of nervousness from Xelloss holding a sword in a striking position near her again.

"Yes. I did." Xelloss glared at the sword. "Thrust, and then death. That's all there is. It's so simple, and so very pointless." He shoved the blade into the wood beneath him and let it go, watching it stand there. "The knife, however..." he flipped the small blade up and watched it glitter before deftly catching it, "...is different. Knives are not killing weapons. They can be used to bring death, true, but this is not their true purpose. Killing with a knife is like sweeping a temple with a broom made of its holiest scroll. It's blasphemy to the blade, Firia. Sacrilege." His mouth slid over the word as if he were tasting honey. "It may be joyful to commit sacrilege, but even my kind feel the taint of it afterwards. Even my kind know filth when we're swimming in it." He gazed into the silver of the blade, lost in its depths. "To kill with a knife is blasphemy to us. To kill with a sword is unthinkable. To kill..."

His gaze snapped away from the blade as he rose in one swift movement. He began to pace, upset nerves obvious in every step. "To kill without thinking, Firia! Without breathing! Don't you see that this is the highest crime of all to me? To my kind!" His arms swept through the air, gesturing wildly. "How can one bear to bring death to another being without prelude, without...without a serenade, without...foreplay! What is death without anticipation? For we who eat the pain of others, to end a life that is so rich with potential pain without drawing out that pain, tasting it, savoring it till the bittersweet end...for us, that is unthinkable!"

Xelloss stopped, gasping with frenzied energy. His eyes locked with Firia's. In that moment, Firia saw a monster and a child living together in the same soul.

"You..." Firia's eyes widened, incredulous. "You're sorry for the massacre in the Kouma War!"

Xelloss collapsed at her feet, fell draped across the branch like a dead animal. "It all ended so quickly, Firia, so quickly...I just waved my finger and they died...like moths smoldering in a candle-flame, but faster." He dragged in a breath, and let it out just as slowly. "Much, much faster. It...it was sickening. They all died in a blink. Alive, and then dead. They didn't even feel it. They didn't even know it. Just...dead." He curled up, his entire body shaking with a horror that Firia knew she would never be able to understand. "What kind of mazoku kills like that? But I was the strongest, the fastest, the most clever of all the servants. Lei Magnus chose me because I was better than all of them. He told me that himself. It was no flattery, it was simply the truth. My Lady of the beasts made me well, and with care. Lord Ruby Eye knew this, and he told Lei of it. Lei, the consciousness of a God funnelled through time, strained through a human soul, and brewed in the Sea of Chaos...he was pretty fucking crazy, Firia." She blinked at his change in tone, wondered how he could make a jest made in the heat of sorrow. "Only a creature such as Lei could have ordered the Mazoku race into an all-out war. It's against our nature. We assault in cunning, in darkness, and we do not kill...quickly." He shuddered one final time, then sat up. "We are the living blade, Firia. Death is strange to us, but suffering is kin."

Firia realized, as Xelloss paused, that she was even more frightened now than when Xelloss had pretended to stab her. But the ropes were just as firm now as they had been then. "Why..." ...is he telling me this? Firia couldn't even bring herself to ask.

"Why am I telling you this?" The knife swirled again in Xelloss's fingers, and once again Firia became even more frightened. "Because I'm rambling. But I want you to understand, and I just have to ramble to get to my point, to make myself heard, because it's..." He sighed and flung the knife into a nearby branch. It quivvered with the impact, just like Firia's heart. "It's complicated, Firia, alright? I'm crazy as it is, it's so hard to form coherent sentences that don't in time nonderstand your under flesh without sense with seeing. The moon is too loud and I need speak to fill me the red, red gaze always pulls hurts bad to feel it never you feel. Never ever reven ALL OF YOU feel. The world is full of Nonderstanding."

"You just spoke Mazoku to me." Firia mentally held her sanity with an iron grip.

"Mazoku is not spoken. It is felt."

"I...don't think I understood it."

"You wouldn't."

"Because I'm not a Mazoku?"

"Because it is not understood."

Firia nodded, wishing she weren't making as much sense of this as she was. "It is felt."

Xelloss looked up. "You...you might understand, then."

"But you just said-"

"No. I meant...you might understand me." Xelloss' eyes had a new depth to them - an edge of desparation, the fear of hoping for too much. "That's what I brought you here for. I just..." He began to pry the knife up from the limb it was logded into. "I just needed to see if you'd understand, before I wasted my words..." He grunted, pulling upwards. "...before I gave away secrets..." He sighed, giving up. "I can't budge this damn thing. Here, you give it a try." As he snapped his fingers, the ropes gave way, gliding off of Firia like silk.

Firia stretched and felt her back pop several times. She made her way over to the tree slowly, wincing at cramps. "Is it jammed in that tight?" She grasped the hilt of the knife. To pull it out took hardly any effort at all.

"Heh. Guess a dragon would have a better time of it." Xelloss took the knife and wiped away a trickle of sap with his cloak. He turned to the branch Firia had just occupied, paused for a moment, and then clucked his tongue. "That was sloppy of me."

Firia looked over at the branch and saw nothing. "What?"

Xelloss sighed. "I meant to cut you free with this knife. Then I forgot to think in terms of linear time. I can't cut you free now unless we do very odd things with reality, and it wouldn't be worth it." He sighed, sinking down to sit on the branch. "It's so hard to think in this world's terms. That's why we're crazy, Firia. Because we don't think like we're sane. That's what I brought you here to tell you." He looked up. "Here, sit down. We'll be here for awhile."

Firia lowered herself to the branch, watching the moon. Since she had been brought here, the orb had slowly rolled down the the night's arch. Now it was far from the peak, closer to the horizon. It was larger now that it was closer to the horizon. Or at least it appeared so. Just as Xelloss appeared safer now than he was at the beginning of this conversation. Perhaps he was so.

She leaned against him. "Are you telling me this because I renounced my tribe when I discovered its crimes of the past? Or because I felt sadness for Valgaav, even when he would have been our destroyer? Because the Lord of Nightmares chose me to raise him a second time? Because it was too dangerous to bring Lina into your Lady's stronghold? Or maybe just because you do these things on whimsy, and I seemed an absurd person to pick?" She paused, and laid her hand on his. "Was it because of what we-"

"Yes." Xelloss broke off the sentence, killing it with blasphemous speed. "That is why I didn't bring Lina."

Firia bit her tongue for bringing that up right now, but stopped cursing herself. After all, Xelloss hadn't pulled his hand away.

"It's hard, Firia. It's so hard to live in this world where everyone thinks differently, everything acts against all that my race knows and lives by. I didn't show the strain when I was traveling with Lina's band, but it was so hard. To live with a group of humans, act like them, speak like them...appear as if I'm thinking like them... Once there was a town under seige, when we were just beginning to explore your continent. People were burning, screaming...and dying, as they often do. Lina and the rest wanted to run and save them, and were appalled when I didn't think similarly. It didn't strike me to do it, and when they suggested it, well...I suppose to them it made sense. I realized that after they pointed it out. It was just that, in my vision, the people were already dead. They were walking corpses, even before the raid started. I had forgotten to narrow my scope, as it was, because I was anticipating trouble on a godly scale, soon to come. I was on the lookout for it, and forgot that everyone around me could only see in terms of linear time, small-scale. They were all looking through a pinprick in the shroud of time, whereas I had already ripped it aside to gaze at the whole. In the whole, they were already dead, ALL of them, because that is the cost of mortality. In the smallest scale of things, the townspeople could be saved. In the scale of my vision, there was no hope for them. It was a bad mistake to make, but on that mission, there really was no point in making myself seem humane. I am not, after all, human.

"But earlier, when it was necessary that they think I was human...Gods, Firia. It was like hiking a mountain chain in shoes ten sizes too small. Fortunately, I was a quick study in the movements and nuances of alien species long before I had to make that journey. I had the motions memorized. But walking with them, speaking, listening...I can do these things. I can read and write upside-down and backwards, too, but it's extremely difficult to do so for any extended period. Thank Ruby Eye that I didn't have to be in constant attendance, that I could leave. I managed to take a break just about every day, in fact. It kept me...I can't say it kept me sane, can I? Because I've never been sane by the world's standards. Well, it kept me sane by my standards, and that was enough."

"Is that why you kept leaving during our mission against Dark Star?" Firia asked. "I always thought you were reporting back to Zelas."

Xelloss shook his head. "I was only reporting a little bit. The point of my Lady sending me in in the first place was that I was a servant who could make decisions on my own. Sometimes I was busy with...well, with a lot of things that had to do with making our mission succeed, but mostly I was leaving so that I could stop feeling human."

"I thought it was because of me." Firia held her breath.

The mazoku sighed. "...No. I annoyed you a lot more than you annoyed me...though I must admit you definitely had your moments. I liked you there, actually, because you were an easy meal, and a welcome distraction, and because I knew you could see farther than Lina and her friends. Just a little bit. Enough so that I knew someone was there who could possibly be just a little bit closer to how I think than they were."

He listened to her breathe, listened to her barely shift, felt her weight settle against him, felt her heart do the same. Again. Just like that night. It was firmly centered in his mind, like an island of calm framed by the eye of a hurricane. Shored up and solid. It was so rooted in that he didn't even have to remind himself of its position in linear time, that completely absurdist map of events. It made no sense to arrange things by their distance from each other on a single axis. The real impact of events...their significance to each other...had nothing to do with order. That was why that night felt so close to Xelloss now, a twin to this night, this moment.

That night, I almost believed she was as crazy as I am.

"...So what did you want to tell me?" The voice cut through--no, didn't cut his thoughts at all, slid into them, eased its way along.

"..." Xelloss' nerves rose, began to grip his mind, warn it, drive it to action. "I..." To panic, alert for a frenzy. He didn't want to say it. No. "I...don't know." Sunk. Sunk and drowned and flailed and--

Firia's hand squeezed his. "It's okay. I don't understand."

But she did feel. Her mouth told him this by way of his lips.

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END

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A note - I never managed to fit this tidbit in, but the reason Gaav can use a sword, in Xel's mind, is because by mazoku standards he is insane.