Suddenly Worn Threadbare
DISCLAIMER: Yggdra Union © Sting. I do not seek to profit from this writing.
(Human jackals for every human disaster – when feathers be not mine)
It was getting harder and harder to stay at the castle.
Durant and the others kept on giving him meaningful looks, and Durant and the others could seriously just fuck off. There was no way in hell he could just loaf around in Paltina watching Yggdra and Roswell glow in premarital bliss without going crazy, especially because Elena was never around fucking anywhere when he got back. They had no business being happy in front of his face like that, not when he still had nowhere to put all his anger and pain, and if they couldn't understand that then he had no obligation to be around them.
The problem was that going out was just the lesser of two evils, or some shit like that. No matter where Milanor went, it didn't change the burden he was carrying. And no matter where he went, Kylier would never be anywhere again.
The thought of trying to follow her had crossed his mind before, but he'd always ignored that as stupid. If they were able to meet again due to something like that, she'd just get mad at him for wasting his life, and it would ruin everything between them. Besides, all those Meria priests were always going on about how suicide was a sin. If he wasn't already going to hell because of the war and all those damn idiot dead peasants, he didn't need to push it.
But all the same, living in a world without her was agony.
Where was he supposed to go and what was he supposed to do now?
All he knew was that he didn't have the answer, no one else seemed to either, and he was really getting fed up with the reality of that.
So with nothing left to ease the pain, he just walked and walked and walked, vaguely hoping that he might lose the agony somewhere. That it would lessen. Like how moving around after your foot fell asleep made you want to tear out your hair less than either holding it up in the air not touching anything or keeping it touching the ground.
The people of Fantasinia, and Orlando and Verlaine and Norn, seemed to be doing well enough. There was a time he'd've been overjoyed by that, by the overseers of the south being told in no uncertain terms what their duties were supposed to be and what they could do with their complaints if they didn't want to listen. Yggdra was the boss, and even if she'd given up her sword, her will was a thing made out of steel and individually there were a lot of people who would stand up to reinforce that will even if there wasn't technically an army anymore.
Nowadays, though, it just pissed him off to see the rebuilding. Watching people lick their wounds was fine—at least he knew he wasn't the only one miserable—but the atmosphere of hope all throughout the continent made him want to gag.
Embellia was no good. The war had broken Embellia a little; the dividing lines between human and Undine were strong and ugly and even stronger and uglier given the way the Royal Army had settled the war. He didn't like watching Nietzsche trying to patch things up, and so he didn't go there.
Hell, being in Bronquia might suit him best—if that wasn't a land filled with so many bad memories for him. In addition to which, everyone he knew had forbidden him from going there on the grounds that he would get lynched (he'd argued that they all knew he could take care of himself, but been ignored), and the men at the border would never let him through alone.
And of course Lost Aries was out of the question. He didn't want to have to face her family, didn't want to have to face his memories.
So.
It was early spring, with the earth underneath his feet starting to wake up and the breeze still carrying something of a bite to it. Even the turn of the season made him angry: He wanted the cold, he wanted the world around him to stay dead, to match his mood. Even the impending explosion of plant life felt like the world was laughing at him.
He wanted to be left alone—and it was still cold enough out that the shore ought to be far enough away from other people. And so he headed for the coast.
Long before he actually reached the beach, he could see the wide gray mass of the sea on the horizon. There were hints of land off in the distance, as the lines of the land spun away toward Karona and then traced the coast of Bronquia, but aside from those lines and the waves, the water was unbroken.
An island had sat there in the middle of the ocean once, unearthly purple and gold, bolder than brass. It was probably lying at the sea floor again, and good riddance to it.
Milanor shut his eyes to shut out the memories and breathed in. The air tasted strongly of salt, and its coldness burned his lungs. Something inside him almost eased.
He looked at his feet as he walked slowly towards the waves, watching the grass give way to sand below him. He could make a million similes about the way the earth steadily went bare and crumbly underneath him if he felt poetic. Which he didn't. Poetry was for girls, and for fops like Roswell—and basically just for people who didn't have hate and resentment for the whole world roiling up inside them every minute of every day.
So Milanor jammed his hands into his pockets and looked up, and that was when he saw the body lying on the sand bank.
For just a moment, he forgot his anger, forgot his resentment, emptied out entirely but for the hard thud of his heart at the back of his throat—and he ran. The body didn't look like an old corpse—maybe that person was still alive, just unconscious, and needed help.
The person was small and pale and dressed in dirty rags that might have been white robes or a dress or a long tunic, and had messy blond hair that looked like the shade of Yggdra's held underneath running water for a few hours too many. There wasn't blood. When Milanor knelt down and put his hands along the person's shoulder and hip to shake them, he felt body heat through his gloves.
"Hey c'mon, you gotta wake up, this is no place for sleepin'—"
Finally he managed to roll the body over with a great clatter of metal, and his heart thudded again, violently, unwelcomely. He jerked backward in instinctive revulsion, but was otherwise frozen in hate.
No. This was fucking impossible, he'd seen this man killed and good fucking riddance—
(but then he'd seen this man kill himself and reappear perfectly fine a little over a week later)
—and there was no fucking way he could just, after everything he'd done—
"…"
Damp with the waves, half-covered in a fine crust of sand and grit, Nessiah raised one near-skeletally thin hand and touched at his face. Milanor remained frozen. He felt as though he'd just flipped over a log in the woods and found something slimy and squirming and disgusting, too vile even to stamp out.
The masked face turned towards him, and Milanor felt his expression contort itself with loathing. When that hand reached in his direction, he knocked it aside viciously, the anger in him giving a satisfied kind of rumble at the hoarse pained sound Nessiah made.
Transfixed as he'd been, that was all it took to break whatever hold Nessiah's inexplicable appearance had put on him. Milanor stood, turned on his heel, and walked away.
"Wait—"
Something about the plaintive sound of the voice gave him pause. What was it? He had no reason to care, every reason to just keep walking (every reason to turn around and commit murder with his own two hands), but there was just—a vaguely familiar note, or—
"Wait—please, wait—"
When Milanor looked over his shoulder, Nessiah was dragging himself upright, staggering, reddish-purple marks blooming over his arm where Milanor had slapped him away.
His guts clenched, and he turned and stalked away without another word.
Milanor headed towards Castle Paltina, blind with wrath, not knowing where else to go, dimly knowing that he'd have to make a report of this to someone or other.
Clumsy steps and crashing through the brush behind him told him Nessiah hadn't given up on following him yet.
…He ground his teeth, felt his vision tunneling with the ugly force of his rage, and kept walking.
The sun had not quite set when he reached the capital, and he stormed through the emptying streets without much care as to the way people stared at him. All he wanted was the castle gates, and something done, or the official okay to do something himself and the excuse to finally vent that festering hatred on a bastard that deserved it down to every last drop of blood.
The soldiers standing guard in front of Castle Paltina stared at him, then began to murmur amongst themselves. A few of them scurried into the castle itself, as if frightened off by Milanor's appearance.
Good, he thought savagely, and continued to stomp his way up to the gate itself.
Durant was walking up out of the castle depths by the time he actually reached it, and only when he forced himself to stand still did he realize that he was out of breath.
"Sir Milanor, what is it?" Durant ran the last few paces, looking alarmed. He must have been startled by the black look on Milanor's face. "Is something amiss?"
He pointed behind him. The faint sound of bare feet dragging on the stone bridge told him Nessiah was still there. "Is there anything that isn't fucking amiss with that?"
Durant's gaze followed the direction of his arm, and his eyes widened a little, his thick brows drawing downward. His body turned towards the other knights with him, though he didn't stop looking past Milanor at the intruder behind him. "Fetch the Queen," he instructed in a terse undertone.
"There's no need," a distant voice said. Milanor blinked.
Yggdra was walking briskly up the corridor with her staff in hand and Roswell about a step and a half behind her. It had been a long time since Milanor had seen her face to face, and even though her looks hadn't changed much in two years, there was something—something about her posture, the severity of her expression—that made him wonder if she'd grown up completely somehow since they last met.
She got closer, and he got a closer look at her figure. He'd heard, of course, but actually seeing the swell of her lower belly was completely different from being told that the queen was pregnant. The small satisfaction he'd gleaned from the knowledge that things were being done about this snuffed out instantly, strangled by a complex tangle of bitterness and grief and anger and hate.
If Kylier had lived, then maybe she would've been pregnant with his children by now—
He wanted to stifle the thought, but it just kept bouncing and echoing around in the inside of his skull, leaving him standing there stupidly as Yggdra looked at him, then stared past him at Nessiah.
She went a little pale, but the determination in her expression didn't shift a jot.
"I can't say I wasn't expecting this to happen eventually," she murmured, and shook her head a little. "How did you find him, and where?"
"On—on the beach." It was hard to get the words out past his hate. That man—it was all that man's fault that he and Kylier couldn't be like Yggdra and Roswell were like now. But if he wanted the bastard to pay, then he had to speak, so Milanor forced himself. "Son of a bitch was layin' in the tide an'—and didn't wake up 'til I took a closer look."
"Did he say anything?" Yggdra was frowning at Nessiah now.
"No. Just for me to wait—and like fuck I was gonna."
"He followed you on his own?"
Milanor nodded.
"I see." Yggdra rested her hand on her lips, still staring at Nessiah. "Then, I believe I'll speak with him for a while, and then we'll have to decide where we'll have him stay."
His ears must be lying to him. Everything had gone to silence and white fuzz after Yggdra had spoken those words, after all.
"What—what the fuck d'you mean, 'where we'll have him stay'?" he asked. His voice was shaking with barely-contained rage. "This bastard—why the hell would we do anything with this bastard but kill him? After what he's done?"
Yggdra turned to him, and he stepped back. He'd forgotten how the blue of her eyes could freeze, could radiate power like a card about to release its Skill.
"And what good would that do, now and in the long run? If he's come back once, he'll come back twice; we would only be inflicting needless suffering." He started to protest that it would never be needless, not if it was inflicted on the one whose fault all of this was—but Yggdra didn't give him the chance. "I am done with pointing fingers, with laying blame for the war and all the lost lives on anyone in particular. All of us bear fault. Our only choice is to change the way that we do things, if we desire the world to become a better place—and I am going to make the world a better place, for the sake of the future ahead of us.
"And quite apart from all that, I wish to speak with Nessiah. He followed you here instead of just going off and doing as he pleased; there must be some reason for that."
Milanor couldn't even speak. What was even happening? He'd been so sure that Yggdra would—would understand, would be more than happy to punish Nessiah the way he deserved, but—
"Durant," she said in a slightly raised voice, "would you escort Milanor to a place where he can calm down, please? I believe he needs a little time to himself to cool his head."
"At once, my lady," Durant responded, and a heavy hand descended to Milanor's shoulder. He bristled and tried to shake it off, but Durant's mailed fingers only clamped more tightly—he couldn't push the taller, heavier knight away.
So Milanor tried not to growl as Durant led him into the quiet of the castle. He did not look behind him once as they went.
She brought Nessiah into one of the sitting rooms. He moved like someone painfully aware of how out of place they are; he stumbled for all the world as if he wasn't yet accustomed to the weight of metal along his arms. His pale skin was covered in scratches from chasing Milanor through the forests, and his right arm was covered in ugly green-and-purple bruising. The doctors would later tell her that his bones had been damaged—not broken and not badly cracked, but damaged all the same.
There was something odd about the way he held himself, the way he moved, the way he spoke. Yggdra thought to herself how curious it was—almost like she was with a complete stranger.
"Talk to me," she said to him, and he complied.
"He doesn't remember anything."
Milanor stared out the window. It was cool in the stone storage room, and he sat with his feet dangling off the edge of a crate as he slouched against the stack behind him.
"Roswell says that something most likely went wrong when he transmigrated into his new body—something that's affected his mind and his memories. We don't know if he'll stay this way if he continues to live like this, but Pamela's theory is that if he dies again, the next time he returns to life he'll be himself. It's anyone's guess as to whether he'll even remember this when he does."
If she'd expected that putting him in a cool room with dim light would douse his anger so quickly, she had another thing coming. Milanor looked at her where she stood in the doorframe. Hatred and rage were jagged stones and broken glass in his chest and stomach.
Yggdra simply went on speaking. She was watching him with her eyes bright and hard, and he realized that she knew his outward calm meant nothing. "He's fixated on you. There's no real explanation Roswell or Pamela can give me as to why, but—"
"I don't care," he interrupted. Words felt like weapons, and he fully intended to use them. "Who gives a flyin' fuck as to whether he remembers that he ruined lives? I still remember, and I'll never forgive him. Never. Not after what he did to her. Nobody in their right mind'd forgive the bastard."
Queen Yggdra, sole sovereign of the world, just looked at him and shook her head regally.
"I forbid you to kill him."
"Then at least get him the fuck outta my sight." He wanted to spit at her.
"I cannot do that either. It's safest to keep Nessiah where we can watch him, at least until we know what we're going to do with him."
Rage forced him to his feet, and he clenched his hands tightly against the urge to lash out.
"Until you know what you're gonna do with him."
Yggdra continued to stare at him. "Yes, because I have too many things to worry about right now. Finding a helpless former enemy a different home can wait when the castle is as good a temporary fix as any."
"Too many things? Like what, weddin' plans? Tryin' to handle the fallout of your ferretin' around with Roswell before your prissy priests could approve it?"
"Things like how to dissolve country borders without ruffling feathers enough for another war," she replied softly. There was force behind her quiet words—not venom, but white heat. "Like a court that fights every move I make, a court with corruption poisoning its heart like tar. I cannot weed out the honest politicians from the liars so easily, and it must be done, because by now they have realized that I am not my father, and they mean to take my power away if they can, knowing that I mean to cut theirs away. Things like making sure that my people know what I know about Bronquia, so that this does not become another situation like Fantasinia and the Vanir, with all our bitterness and discrimination on either side.
"I want the world my children grow up in to be a better one than our own, I want the people of our generation to learn from their mistakes, and I work for that every single day, Milanor. It will be years before I am done. The matter of Nessiah's housing will be dealt with. Until then I'll see to it that he's cared for here, and I fully expect you to leave him be."
He couldn't stand still, and so he paced, feverishly.
Her words were sensible, and he hated that, hated that he couldn't tell her that she had all her priorities backwards. She was being a leader, and being responsible. But all the same, Milanor could not just reconcile that knowledge with the way he felt.
He forced his legs to stop carrying him the length of the room and swiveled, gripping his hair with both hands in frustration. "Where the fuck is Elena? If I have to deal with this, this bullshit then at least—"
Then at least he needed someone. Someone on his side, someone who would help him through.
"She's away." It shocked him, how cold Yggdra's words were. "She'll be away for a while."
Milanor could only stare, indignant, and Yggdra stood and stared back unflinchingly.
"I'll put it in plainer terms for you," she said to him. "I won't allow you to hurt her any more than you already have."
"I—I never—"
"You might not have intended to do so at the start, but you pushed all of the pain in your heart onto her. A girl who was your friend, Milanor. And if you blinded yourself so completely to the bruises you put on her skin, then you've changed more than I feared."
Her frozen blue eyes were condemning him—without hate, just anger and disapproval. It was so condescending, he could've thrown up.
"You—" So many words wanted to escape him that he could barely stand it. "I saved your life. You used to rely on me." Had she forgotten what she owed him—him and Kylier both?
"And you used to be a kind man who believed in not harming the weak," Yggdra replied simply. Her voice had very little tone to it; it was a mild statement. Still, the words rankled.
When he didn't reply, she took a step to the side as if to leave, and stared at him long and hard.
"Nessiah is my guest here, as are you. If you lay hands on him you'll be put in the stockades for a while to think about your actions." She was quiet for a moment, watching him as if considering something, and then said: "And if you can find it in yourself, I'd like you to hear him out if he tries to approach you."
She left him standing silently, freshly outraged and mutinous.
Whatever vague hopes Milanor had ever entertained that he might be able to avoid dealing with the bastard, they were dashed almost immediately after Yggdra finally let him out of the storage room. Within the day, Nessiah was trailing after him again.
Either he'd been told not to get too close or he was afraid to, and the end result was that he was generally about twelve feet behind Milanor wherever he tried to go. Milanor knew that some of the castle folk found it funny and laughed about it amongst each other while comparing Nessiah to a puppy. It failed to amuse him.
Everything inside Milanor raged for him to turn around and throttle the little bastard, and only the dregs of his respect for and friendship with Yggdra held him back. He questioned himself about it sometimes, late at night, when he could finally be alone. What, in the end, did he really have to prove to her? She'd already told him what she thought of him now, the conclusions she'd jumped to because of whatever Elena had said or done. Honoring Kylier, paying Nessiah back for what he'd done to her, should be more important, shouldn't it?
He compromised with himself, decided he could stay his hand for as long as Nessiah stayed away from him or in the periphery. Then he rolled over angrily and questioned his choice again.
It was always hours before he could fall asleep, and he bitterly missed Elena—she'd never complained about anything, she'd never turned against him, and in a pristine city of the holier-than-thou like Paltina where there were no whores, it was mighty difficult to procure himself a good hard fuck when he needed one. He thought of Kylier to wear himself out, and the bitter grounds of her absence weighed more and more heavily on him every morning after he did.
And as the days went by, Nessiah continued to inch closer and closer, shortening the distance as he followed Milanor bit by fucking bit.
(He would whirl around corners when the sound of footsteps grew too loud so that he clipped Nessiah and shoved him backward because it let him claim it was an accident. If Nessiah only didn't shadow him so closely it wouldn't happen. He also slammed doors in Nessiah's face every chance he could. It wasn't touching him. Milanor wasn't breaking his word at all.)
Many times, Nessiah seemed about to speak when Milanor turned around to glare at him. The mere sight made him want to vomit with hatred, and every time it happened Milanor would turn and stalk off at a speed Nessiah couldn't keep up with.
The sound of chains followed him everywhere, until he began to think crazily that Nessiah was like an iron ball shackled to Milanor's own ankle, a punishment from Yggdra for some imagined sin, sent to drive him mad at last.
It was ridiculous. But as one week rolled into another, the sight of Nessiah creeping along ingratiatingly behind him made wrath explode in his head faster and faster until he felt like he himself was going to explode.
That day, it was late into the afternoon and there wasn't really anyone around.
"Milanor—"
There was an ugly, dizzy swirling behind his eyes, and he stopped dead, slowly turning to face Nessiah where the prick stood wringing his hands about four paces behind. There was anxiety in every line of his body, and he held himself oddly, as though shrinking inward to project the image that he wasn't a threat.
(But there were other things besides that that seemed off about the way Nessiah was standing, the way he moved—things that Milanor had given up on pinning down, things that somehow hurt his head to even notice.)
"I have fucking had it up to here with you always followin' me around," he snarled, unable to choke back the words anymore. "Whatever the hell you want to say to me, say it and get outta my sight."
Nessiah flinched, but his hands formed ungainly fists and fell to his sides. He was shaking—it brought Milanor a dark kind of joy to see that—but he still stepped forward.
"Milanor, I just—"
"Spit it the fuck out."
"I just—I don't want to—to see you like this anymore," he all but shouted. Milanor's chest emptied out for a moment, and he stared blankly, suddenly not comprehending the words being said to him. It was like he'd just lost all sense of reality. "You're always sad and—and angry and—and I want you to smile again because what was it all for unless you can still smile, Milanor? If there's anything—if there's anything at all I could do—"
Milanor just stared. He shook his head dumbly and began to laugh.
Nessiah fell silent. Milanor could feel the bastard staring at him, could sense that uncertain gaze drilling through him, but couldn't stop. He covered his eyes and bent over, unable to breathe; he laughed until he thought he might cry, until he thought he might die from lack of air.
Finally, he made himself stand up straight, swallowed the urge to keep laughing, and stepped forward so that he and Nessiah were only arm's length apart.
"What you can do for me to make me smile, huh?"
Nessiah didn't reply. Milanor could practically see his hackles starting to go up, far too late to make any difference.
Milanor grabbed him with both hands and swung him into the wall, swung his leg out to kick Nessiah's out from under him, and slammed his heel into the side of the bastard's ribcage when he fell. There was a satisfying crack, and Milanor felt bone give way under the blow—much more easily than he'd thought it would. Nessiah let out a sharp cry, a shriek, like a shot bird, and curled his legs up underneath himself, shielding his face with both arms. Milanor leered and ripped one of the old portraits off the wall, swinging it and swinging it and swinging it until it finally bent and cracked over Nessiah's flank.
Why had he held himself back at all? This was unquestionably the best he'd felt in ages—the best he'd felt in at least two years, the best he'd felt since Kylier had died and this hypocritical little piece of shit had defiled her, body and soul. Fuck Yggdra and her high-minded ideals. They were wasted on somebody like this, and if Milanor was the only one who cared enough to dispense justice, he might as well enjoy it.
Nessiah began to uncurl on the floor. He was shaking hard, and there were already bright red welts and ugly blue bruises springing up where Milanor had hit him.
"What you can do to make me happy, huh?" The urge to laugh started bubbling up again, and Milanor suppressed it by grinning instead. "You can always just die. Die for what you did.
"Or would you rather make up for it? Start again? Maybe take her place?"
He reached down and laced his fingers through the chain attached to Nessiah's left arm and dragged the bastard to his feet by it. There was a splintering sound, and Nessiah made another pale animalistic noise as Milanor released the chain and grabbed him by the throat instead, digging his nails in.
Nessiah was hyperventilating by now, skin shiny with sweat; if he'd had eyes they probably would have been glassy with panic. It was perfect. Milanor felt like he was flying, like he could sing. He'd needed this. He'd needed this for so fucking long.
He ought to stop listening to other people and start taking care of his own fucking needs a bit more.
"Well?" He leaned in, his heart skipping at the way Nessiah pressed himself against the wall with no escape. It wasn't enough yet. He had to hurt Nessiah so much more before Kylier's pain, Milanor's own pain could be compensated for.
Nessiah stayed frozen until Milanor reached out and gripped his thigh, tearing at his flimsy skirts—and then seemed to panic all at once, squirming and scratching and trying to push Milanor's hands away uselessly. Milanor was wiry and strong and had gotten through the war based on his own sheer power—a helpless, complacent magic-user couldn't possibly shake him off.
He was screaming something—Nessiah was crying and screaming something, but his words didn't reach Milanor's ears at all. He felt detached from the world by the heady pleasure of finally taking the revenge he'd wanted for so long.
The floor was rumbling. It gave him the slightest moment of pause, and then he turned as he realized distantly that the rumbling was the galloping of footsteps.
Then his face exploded with pain.
He felt the bridge of his nose crack under the sudden blow, pain bright and ugly and sending him reeling, gasping, choking out curses.
Nessiah slid nervelessly down to the ground, and the first thing Milanor saw when his vision cleared was his prey curled up jittering on the floor, blind face turned towards him with something between terror and betrayal branded upon it.
Then he looked up, glaring at his unknown attacker.
It was Yggdra.
She stood there, feet planted wider than her shoulders, eyes like flame with her scepter in one hand, the other hand in a fist that had smears of Milanor's blood on it, somehow managing to exude enough force that Milanor couldn't even move—somehow managing to look like a threat despite the great big pregnant bulge of her belly.
"Restrain him," she said coldly, and strong hands he barely recognized as Durant's forced his arms behind his back.
"He's not who he used to be anymore," she said; "he's dangerous. I know you want to help him, but you mustn't go near him anymore."
Nessiah did not answer. His frail body was covered in bandages, and bruises peeped out from every one of them. It made Yggdra sick to even look at them, sick down to the pits of her soul to remember the look on Milanor's face as he'd stood there doing everything he could to inflict hurt. Even Black Knight Leon had never looked quite so sadistic.
At last, a small shake of his head.
"It's Milanor," he whispered. "What else can I do?"
Yggdra couldn't answer.
They sat in silence for several minutes, and then Nessiah took a deep breath.
"I have dreams, sometimes," he said. His words were faltering at first, as they usually were, but they settled at the midpoint between form and mind. "I always get a sense of déjà vu from them, as if I've just forgotten them somewhere. In the dreams, there's someone I love. Someone who loves me back. His hands are gentle and he's full of warmth.
"They're just dreams and they're not mine, but somehow I—I wake up from them and I just don't know what to do anymore, I really don't."
Yggdra watched carefully. Nessiah was staring down at his open hands with a bleak expression that didn't suit the person he'd washed up on the beach as.
"You mustn't approach him again," she told him once more, gently. "Milanor is beyond our help now."
"But even so, it's still Milanor. What else am I supposed to do?"
It took a day and a half for a healer to come in and fix his broken nose, and when one finally did, it knitted crooked.
Milanor swore at her, and she gave him a dirty look and told him that he couldn't possibly expect first treatment when he was the one who'd started the fight. He was still swearing at her when the door closed behind her.
It was two weeks before he was allowed out of the stockades, and by then Milanor was good and pissed. He'd done nothing wrong—he'd been defending Kylier—didn't any of them care about her anymore at all?
But Yggdra and Roswell and Durant simply looked at him out of cold eyes, and so Milanor didn't bother arguing with them.
He was standing on the ramparts with his hands in his pockets under a clear midday sky when Nessiah crept up at the other end of the long stone walk.
Milanor felt the black thing rise up in him again, but Nessiah stayed far away this time, so he just glowered. The little bastard still looked to be in a sorry state: He was covered in greenish-yellow bruises, and thin bandaging wrapped around his limbs here and there. Milanor was savagely glad.
"Get the fuck out of my sight unless you want more where all that came from," Milanor snapped, and Nessiah quailed visibly, but he stood steadfast.
"I want you to be happy again," he said. His voice was high and strong, and there was some sort of familiar note to it. "Isn't there anything I can do?"
"You can die," Milanor spat back.
Nessiah was silent for a moment, and then:
"Will that really make you happy?"
"Absolutely. After what you did to me—to her—" He wanted to say more, but the words stuck in his throat and wouldn't come out.
Nessiah seemed to consider him for a long moment—and then he smiled.
It was a tearful expression, almost loving, and Milanor knew that he had seen exactly that look on someone's face before, but that he must not remember where.
Lightly, Nessiah stood on the crenels of the rampart, twirled once on tiptoes, and vanished abruptly from view.
A moment later, people screamed, and there was an ugly crunch.
Milanor stood and stared, an odd feeling coming over him. He ventured forward and peered over the edge of the wall, and there it was—Nessiah's crumpled corpse on the flagstones below, bones shattered, limbs bent at odd angles, blood rapidly seeping out in a wide puddle. The citizens who had seen him jump were standing in a wide frightened circle about the body, as if fearing it might bite them.
He should have been overjoyed. Instead, he had a strong urge to vomit.
Someone in the crowd below shouted suddenly, pointing upwards: He'd been spotted.
Milanor stood there, frowning down at the senseless scene, until Durant and the knights arrived.
"I don't know what the fuck happened, but—but good riddance," he said, and even he could hear the defensive tone to his voice. He stood in the middle of the carpet leading up to Yggdra's throne, where she stood staring at him as though looking at something repulsive. Roswell stood on her right side, half-squinting the way he always did when he was biting his tongue.
"You fool," Yggdra said quietly, and Milanor fell silent.
She lifted herself from the throne, and there was some difficulty in her movements. All that extra weight, most likely. Still, she didn't reach for her fiancé's hand; she forced herself up on her own, looking down at him like an angel passing judgment.
"You don't realize what you've done."
"I got rid of a piece of shit that—"
"It was Kylier," she shouted, and there was no composure in her now. She was bent forward, face screwed up tight, her words suddenly shrill with emotion.
Milanor's head went blank. "What?"
"I tried to tell you so many times, but you wouldn't listen to me! Nessiah's transmigration—it went wrong, and all his memories were gone—he was empty except for an imprint of Kylier's memories, because the two of them had touched souls! Couldn't you see it? Nessiah never spoke like that! Nessiah never acted like that! 'He' never would have! You—you've been so obsessed with Kylier's memory that you lost sight of everything else, even the real her, and now you've killed all that was left of her!"
"No," he said dully.
"You knew her once," Yggdra told him. She wasn't shouting anymore, but her voice was thick with tears, which was somehow worse. "Before you got this way, you knew her better than anyone else. All of us realized it. You must have seen it too."
"No," he said again, because bile was rising in his throat. All his rage, all his bitterness, had been washed out of him. Only emptiness and a dull sense of horror was left.
"She said she wanted you to be happy," Yggdra said softly, and her words echoed in the marble room like ripples in a pond.
No one else spoke.
Milanor shook his head once, then again, and turned in a slow circle to stare about the room. This had to be somebody's idea of a shitty prank. It couldn't possibly be real.
But he knew, and he realized by the looks on the faces of the courtiers and the knights and the few members of the army who still resided here that all of them knew, and that none of them would move to save him now.
Kylier, he thought numbly.
And he remembered quite suddenly that he had only realized his love for her a few heartbeats before she had died.
Still he felt nothing.
Milanor turned towards the door and began to walk.
He walked out of the castle, and out of the castle town, and then across the long bridge lined with Fantasinia's phoenix flags, and then out of Paltina itself. He walked and he walked, and he knew as he walked that he was never going to return.