"I don't know why I came here! Why I left the labyrinth! It doesn't make sense! I know it doesn't make sense! The battle was lost, yes, but not the war! We were fine if I'd just… just left it all as it was!"

"That is correct, yes. But you did, and so here we are. Now that we are here, let's try to figure out the why."

"But that doesn't help" I protested, tucking my head between my knees. "Solving that doesn't help! It's irrelevant!"

"How so?"

"Because it should never have even gotten to this point, Caster!"

"…I'm not sure-"

"Yes, you are! You know it too! I know you do! How many times have you told me already?! That all I needed to do, all I should do, was sit down in the labyrinth for the entirety of the war!"

"I-"

"All the times I lectured the kids! All the times I told them, repeatedly, that Caster and Assassin were late game units! That their optimal play was to sit back and let everyone else do the fighting! I knew it! I knew it weeks ago! The best, most optimal play was to just sit back and do nothing!"

"…"

"The fight should never have happened to begin with! This fight should never have happened at all! It wasn't optimal in the slightest! I know that! I knew that! Yet I did it anyways! I pushed for it anyways! And I don't know why! It doesn't make sense! I know it doesn't make sense!"

"It's not just this fight either! It's every fight! Every single, damn fight I was a part of! All stupid! Pointless! My plan to get Rider and Berserker to fight one another?! A complete disaster, and it wasn't even needed in the first place! Who cares if it leads to their elimination faster?! It doesn't matter if it happens days or even weeks faster! They never outlast us regardless! Regardless! Speeding up the process means nothing! Achieves nothing! I know that! It's so obvious anyone could see that! So why did I fucking do it?!"

"Or the first time the kids tried to take the fight to Rider! Why the fuck was I there?! I didn't need to be there! It was stupid of me to be there! There was no reason for me to be there! Fuck, I nearly died from being there! And for what?! What was the point?! Even if we won there, so fucking what?! It doesn't help us win any more than we were already winning! All it does is help everyone else!"

"…You're always going on about beauty this and that and whatever, child. Is that not why you did everything?"

"But that doesn't make sense! Yes, I want to see all the beauty I can, but it's simply not possible to see all the beauty to ever exist! I can't possibly be everywhere and see everything! I know that! I've never had an issue with that! I've passed up on seeing beautiful things before all the time! So why didn't I do that now?! It doesn't add up! It just doesn't!"

"Hell, if anything could let me see all the beauty ever to exist, it would be this stupid Holy Grail thing! Becoming God would let me see everything! Know everything! Past, present and future! It would have made more sense to just play it safe and look back on events once I became God! By every metric, that was the most optimal play! So why didn't I just fucking do it?!"

"That was your wish for the grail, child? To become a god?"

"That's the thing Caster! I don't… I don't know! Yes, ok, in a particular moment I said that it was! I might even have felt like it was too! But if you'd ask me that days or even just hours later, I don't know if that would still be the case! In any given moment I can say something! Anything! I've always been good at that! But I don't know if it's genuine! I don't know if that's how I really feel, or if that's what I'd really want! I don't know if I just found the thought amusing in a moment and ran with it to give myself some… some sense of purpose to fight for this thing! I don't know if I just found the idea of messing with and pissing of Rider and the priest funny, and thought that would be one hell of a way to do it!"

At this point I was even numb to the feeling of the tears running down my face as I looked up at Caster.

"I don't- I don't know what the truth is anymore, Caster. And it… it terrifies me…"

Even though the haze and the darkness, I could see the confusion on Caster's face. Sense it.

"What do you mean you don't know what the truth is? Surely you remember what's happened to you."

"I remember events! Certainties! I know some things must have happened, because it all leads to here! But how I got here, I- I can't remember! For each event I see hundreds, even thousands of different ways it happened! Different things being said! Different things being done! The end result is the same, undeniable truth but the process of how it all got there I don't know! For all the different ways I… remember things only one of them can be what actually happened! Only one of them can be the truth!"

"…Or none of them could be the truth, because you've built up so many walls you can't even see it anymore."

"Exactly! And that possibility, the idea that I can't even remember the truth at all, scares me even more!"

"…"

"…"

"…Ok" Caster let out a small, barely audible sigh. "I can… I can somewhat understand all that. What I don't understand, child, is why are you lying to yourself?"

"Pft hehe" I couldn't help but laugh slightly as I laid back, looking up at the night sky. "That much I do know."

"…Then why do you do it? Help me understand, child."

"It's the same reason why everyone continues to lie when they're caught, Caster. For anything. …Living a thousand lies can be easier than living even a single truth."

The stars in the night sky… Shining bright as always. Just like she did. Just like my angel…

"…I used to hate it all, you know? Everything. Everyone. Every day growing up was more beatings and scorn. More mockery and abuse. I could never do anything right; say anything right. No… even when the other kids did it first, and got praised and respected for it, oh no… The moment I did it, it was bad. It was wrong. It was never acceptable. I was never accepted. They were hypocrites. They were all hypocrites. And I hated them. I hated every. Single. One of them."

"And every night. Every night, until I was ten years old, I would pray to God. Just one. Just one person who would treat me like all the others. One person I could call a friend. That was all I wanted. Not once were my prayers ever answered. Not once did it stop. Did any of it stop. And I would always get told that everything was according to God's plan for us all... Fuck that. Fuck! That! This was God's plan for me?! Fuck that! Fuck God! They would burn. They would all burn! This world would be razed to cinders, and I would dance upon the ashes! And if that had truly been God's plan for me, then heaven would burn too! I would tear God's kingdom down, brick by fucking brick, pull him off his throne and kill him myself!"

"…"

"But then I… I met an angel. None of those fake, spiritually nonsense shit angels, but a real angel. And she… All the hate, Caster. All the- the pain... She took it all away, somehow… And she admitted it. That man and monster really were one and the same. But even so, the world… the world was undeniably beautiful. That despite man and monster being synonyms, humanity was undeniably… beautiful… She showed me all of that. Proved to me all of that! And for the first time I felt… happy. For the first time I saw the light through the endless darkness. For the first time through the endless ocean of grey… I saw colors… And it was all so beautiful. Humanity. The world. It was all so unimaginably beautiful… And I refused to go back, ever again. I refused to be put back in the cage ever again!"

"…I finally found a group of people too. A group of people that were like me. This new me. I'd finally found friends, Caster! Not just one! Friends! Multiple! And we dreamed, Caster! We shared our dreams! We shared a dream! Together! We were going to achieve it together! For four years we worked towards it. Four years I scarified for it! Pushed everything else to the side for it!"

"My family couldn't understand it. They thought I was throwing my life away. That I was just wasting my time. That I was lazy. That I didn't want to work. That all I cared about was my computer, the one thing that never once judged me in all my life. But that wasn't it. No matter how many times I tried to explain that wasn't it, that it wasn't true, they- they wouldn't believe me. They wouldn't believe me! I'd told too many lies already, they said! My actions proved otherwise, they said! But it was right there. It was right there, Caster! We were so close! We had it in our grasp! And once we had it, I- I could show them! Prove to them that it hadn't been a waste!"

"…And then they… ditched me. Just as we'd made it; as we were about to truly start! They… they all ditched me. They said… something? Many things? I can't tell anymore what it was, exactly, but they ditched me. Left me behind. Had been planning it for months. They'd betrayed me. Used me! All I'd sacrificed for it, for them, was for nothing!"

"Immediately it all caught up to me. Everything I'd pushed aside. All the school work I half-assed. All the exams I never really studied for. All of it caught up to me with that one betrayal. I barely graduated high school. Certainly didn't have the grades to go off to university, or even college. I had nowhere to go. Nothing to make of my life! And to my dad I'd- …I'd only proved him right!"

"All my life my dad would lecture me. He never understood why I preferred the company of machines to people. I was always disappointing him in some way or another. I was nothing like my sister; nothing he could ever take pride in. I was far, far away from the child he wanted me to be. He would always say that I needed to- to change! That no matter what I said, no matter what I did… it was wrong. In some way it was just wrong! Even if everyone else was doing it that way, me doing it was wrong! Me saying it was wrong! Me thinking it was wrong! It didn't make sense to me. It just did not make sense! And the older I got, the more the lectures hurt. The more he'd say, the more he'd vent all the frustrations he'd had with me that he never said before… I never escaped at all, I realized. I'd simply changed the locations. It wasn't at school where the pain and misery was. It was at home. Everywhere at home, except for my room. Except for my computer, where I could be with my friends, even away from school."

"And yet, despite the misery and pain. Despite the countless nights I was in tears, I… I found the lectures comforting, in a way. Because I knew, deep down, he only said it all because he still cared. Because he hadn't given up on me yet. Because he still had hope for me. That's what the lectures meant. He had yet to give up on me. But even he finally ran out of hope… The day I graduated, he… he didn't show up. Didn't bother to take the time off from work, like he could have. Like he'd always done. Could barely stand to look at me when he got home. Only spoke to me one, that entire night, to ask a single question…"

"…"

"…"

"…What was the question, child?"

"…What do you plan to do now…"

"And what did you say?"

"The same thing I told you" I chocked out a laugh. "The same thing I always said when he asked me those kinds of questions. I don't know. And I'll never forget what he said after that. The last thing he said to me that night. The last thing he said to me in seven… nearly eight whole years now…"

"…"

"…At least you're used to failure by now… That was the last thing he said to me that night. The last thing he ever said to me at all… The few times I tried to take to him after that, or ask him a question, or try to get his help on something… he'd simply ignore him. The rest of the time I was home, he'd… He lived as if I didn't even exist. I'd finally screwed up past the point of no return. I'd gotten him to finally give up on me, and it was all because of me. Of what I'd done, and chosen to do. And that hurt… When I it finally dawned on me why he was ignoring me, that… that hurt more than anything ever had."

"…"

"I'd lost everything. Between that, and my friends ditching me, I… I'd lost everything. So I-"

"You went back to the only thing you knew before? The burn everything approach?"

"Heh, not quite… The world was still, is still, undeniably beautiful… Humanity is still undeniably beautiful… I like seeing beautiful things. About all I could do with my life at that point was consume things, after all. One way or another. And so that's what I did. I set out, and consumed all the beauty I could find. But do things? Influence things? I couldn't care about any of that. Besides, nothing I could do, would ever have done, would have been right anyways. Nothing I did was ever right, after all… So I'd sit back and watch, for the most part. If something good happened to someone, and I saw? Great! Good for them, genuinely. It put a smile on my face, seeing them happy..."

"But?"

"But if something bad happened to them… Great. Seeing them miserable, it… it put a smile on my face as well. Genuinely. Still does, really. And if anyone even dared try to slight me, well… I am very, very good at making people's lives absolutely miserable, without them ever knowing it was me. Had plenty of experience growing up, after all. Of course, the opposite was true too, but, well… Very few people ever acted like that to me. Certainly, none in years…"

"…Perhaps I'm mistaken, master, but it sounds to me like you have a decent grasp on things."

"Do I though? If you were to ask me all of this in a few hours, Caster, would my answers still be the same?"

"I wouldn't know."

"And that's the problem, Caster" I laughed through the sniffling. "Neither do I."

"…"

"…I do know this for certain, though. When I was young, really young, and I first started getting into gaming and such, turning my back on people in favor of machines… My dad… He tried once to explain something to me. What it was, I can't remember, but he said this: life is a game. And he's right! Just like he always was, he's right! Life is a game! Hell, it's the greatest game anyone will get to play! But I… I am a shit player at this game, Caster. When it comes to playing this game we call life, I am terrible. Perhaps even the worst, I freely admit!"

"…"

"And I'm tired, Caster. I'm tired of the running. Tired of the hiding. Of spinning webs. Of drifting through this existence of endless consuming in a vain attempt to- to… I don't even know what, really. Tired of… of losing… Of always losing, no matter what I try to do."

When I'd run out of tears, I couldn't recall. Everything just felt numb. Cold. Lifeless… I felt drained. Exhausted. I couldn't sit up. Couldn't even tilt my head up to face Caster. Didn't even really want to, either, I don't think? I just focused my gaze on the brightest, shining star in the sky, as I'd come to do often at night, ever since the start of high school...

"I'm tired, Caster. So very tired… I just… I just want it all to end…"

With a final, deep breath, I accepted this resignation of mine. I could delay my defeat in this game no longer. But I'd put up a good fight. Lasting as long as I did… all these years I did… I could accept it. I could accept it.

Sorry, Caster, but it's time for me to see what comes next. I wish you the best of luck, with the rest of your game…


A/N

Whew! Sorry for taking so long, and thank you all for being so patient. Between trying to write this thing, which is honestly likely to be the most complex bit of this story to write, and write my exams... Finally this is at least done! Sadly, still have one more exam to go, this week...

I do hope this isn't too confusing to read. Most of it is Nathan talking, but there are some lines from Caster. However, I didn't want there to just be walls of text when Nathan is talking a lot, so I tried to split them into smaller blocks. Let me know if it's confusing for you all to read; I'll mess around with the formatting some more and see if I can make anything clearer that way in the event it is proving confusing to follow.

Don't think it'll be an issue, but I'm also the author and I know what I want to to be like, so... probably not the best judge of it xD

See y'all in the next post (after my final, final exam) o7