Chapter 76: Questions of Life
Perspective: Tyron
They sat in the officer's lounge. It was late. Most people had already left. But they stayed on, not to drink, just to talk. After the strategy meeting everything was starting to feel a little real, so talking felt good.
At the start, it had been the expected groups, people talking to their friends. Jennifer had been spleefing away with Voidblade; Astro and his guild talking gravely and yearningly about old times, absent friends; Steve talking the ear off Urist, Wolfric and his brother; Fire and Shadow catching up with their Eye-and-Claw friends; and Tyron had, of course, been talking to Seth and Rathina, with Kir relaying the occasional comment from Glowstar up on the cliffs.
It had been strange, seeing people talking to their normal friends. The people they had history with. Fire in particular was just… strange. Seeing him talking and laughing with Brad and Andras, as though nothing had happened. Tyron had always known him as such a serious, detached guy and he still wasn't exactly Mr. Expressiveness over there, but there was an ease to him in that conversation that made the whole thing feel uncanny. He wondered if other people thought he looked weird talking to his friends.
"Already look weird," Kir had quipped.
He smiled. He felt Rathina's fingers in the fur of his arm.
"Astro is a terrible influence on you."
But slowly, people peeled away for sleep or duty or whatever, until a somehow weirder group remained, sitting on the central pit of sofas. Rathina sat at his right. Steve and Jennifer sat opposite him. Shadow lounged on a sofa off to the left, flicking through a book hardly taking up any space on account of her small stature. Astro sat at the other end of the same sofa, listening to a guy called Andras who had way too many artificial limbs for Tyron's liking.
"...so, there I was, standing on the mountaintop, finally facing down the Roc I had been tracking for the past days. It was there, defending its nest. No eggs, but that didn't matter, the client paid for claws, feathers, and bones. The battle took quite a lot out of me, more than one of these scars is from that damn bird's kicks. So, here's how it went down…"
Tyron thought on his own scars, hidden beneath his fur. He wondered if they would ever become visible if he carried on adventuring long enough.
"Okay, you've told us about some of your mightiest battles," said Rathina conspiratorially, "But what's the absolute easiest, you've ever had. What day did Andras Thornhook go into work and think, 'By Notch, I can't believe they're paying me to do this?'"
Tyron caught her eye. He wondered what she was driving at. She winked. She always had some game going.
Andras roared with laughter. "That's got to be the time that snooty alchemist asked me to track down 'a lock of cursed hair', well that's what I did. On my own head! The curses might stop me from growing my hand and leg back, but that one time they came in useful. Naturally had to wait a month for it all to grow back so he wouldn't know."
"Fascinating," Rathina said. "Do you ever think about what you'd do if you retired?"
"Okay, what's this about?" Tyron asked her through Kir, suddenly wondering if this was a conversation she was having with Andras, or one she was having with him via Andras.
"Well, Shadow told me he's an NPC. So, naturally, I asked 'What's an NPC?' And apparently, it's like anyone but you in a dream. He is just based on the thoughts of anyone who enters their Server. But now, he's outside the Server. No strings attached."
Thank Notch, it wasn't one of those conversations.
"Oh… That is weird. So, you're trying to figure out how… I don't know how to put it."
"Ty, this is a telepathic broadcast, I literally get the idea."
Tyron snorted with laughter and tried to play it off as a sneeze.
"But yeah, I just want to see how complete he is separated from that. How close can you wind up to being a person when you're just made up of inputs from other people? I mean, he existed for a purpose, but now he's served that purpose for so long and he's received so much data from so many people, you have to ask, what is he now?"
Suddenly, something felt off to Tyron.
"Wait…"
"Boom, pranked! This conversation was secretly about us!"
"Okay you got me. I'm a bad boyfriend for not getting it out sooner."
"Relax, I just like messing with you. But seriously though, what are we doing once this is all done?"
"Well, if we beat Freak-"
"-Okay, when we beat Freak, what are we doing?"
He sat back and thought about it, momentarily cutting off his thoughts from Kir to avoid just blasting an incomprehensible stream-of-consciousness out there. He'd spent a long, long time trying to take Herobrine down. Then he spent a long time just sort of moving between places, hero-ing away without much thought for what his goal was. He liked helping people, he liked being a hero, but now that the big bads were beaten, could he really just go on adventuring forever? He caught a glimpse of Andras' rolling, blue prosthetic eye-crystal, and wondered once again when his scars would start showing. But then again, people would never stop needing help, and if he just stopped being selfless and started prioritising his own wellbeing, was he really all that heroic to start with?
"I think I want to find a plains biome somewhere, build a house, and start farming. Not even to sell or eat, maybe just to go into town and give it away to random people. I don't know, farming sounds fun."
He nodded contentedly. Bravery had to be rewarded, he'd said it himself.
Rathina turned his head to him and looked sincerely into his eyes.
"That sounds pretty chilled out. I'd be up for that for a while."
He felt his cheeks go red and looked down. She pecked him on the forehead.
"Anyway, that's me for tonight," said Rathina. "Thanks, Andras, great stories."
People said goodbye to her. Shadow even looked up from her book. Then, Steve proposed grabbing another drink from the bar, and Andras proposed Drandinian Heavybrew.
"I don't know what that is, but I'm willing to try!" said Steve.
"Great, we'll need a bucket!"
And Andras dragged him off to the bar. Jennifer looked at Shadow, realised she was smirking, and decided to keep an eye on this brewery process. In her own words, "I won't stop him brewing the stuff, I just want to know what we're dealing with."
Astro turned to Tyron.
"Rathina seems lovely. You make a great couple."
"Thank you, pal," said Tyron. "I never would have thought we'd end up together. I met her when she ambushed us in a forest. Not a great start, but I guess she's grown on me since then."
"You'd be surprised," quipped Astro, alcohol restoring a little bit of his sarcastic wit. "I'm pretty sure getting ambushed by Kay in the forests of Zine Craft was when I…"
He stopped talking and developed a very sad aspect.
"How are you feeling? This can't be an easy time for you," prodded Tyron.
Shadow took on a look of stern concentration behind her book.
"I could be better, but I can't complain. Aaron, Secret, and all are here now. They went through it all alongside me, and I have them to talk about it with. But… Somehow, they're not angry, at least, not angry enough. I expected one of them to complain about it, but they almost seem glad to see him. How can they just be okay with him wandering around free? They were actually there for all of the awful stuff. I just caught the tail-end of it."
Tyron thought on it.
"Maybe that's why. They saw the gradual decline, you just saw him after he'd already started getting punished. Like, it was kind of a shock to you, and you couldn't reconcile the image you had of your friend with the guy who did all this heinous crap."
Astro took a deep gulp of his drink, then slammed it down.
"You might be right there. I just… It took me so long to acknowledge that he was a bad guy, and yet he gave that big speech, and I was almost ready to forgive him then and there. And I don't know what it was. Was it because of reflex, like tying your shoes or riding a horse? Or did he actually say something worth forgiving. Is there this magic sequence of words that makes everything okay?"
Suddenly, Shadow muttered profoundly:
"These fragments I have shored against my ruins. Why then I'll fit you. Hieronymo's mad again. Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata. Shantih. Shantih. Shantih."
Tyron and Astro reshuffled themselves into wary positions from which they'd better be able to take off. Was that a spell? Was the pressure getting to her again?
"Friendly coup?" Kir tested nervously.
"Sorry, you're going to have to elaborate on that," Tyron asked. "I don't understand. At all."
Shadow giggled. "It's a quote. An old poem."
Astro chuckled and nodded.
"That makes sense. Yes, but what does the poem mean?"
Tyron breathed a sigh of relief.
"It's complicated, it's this weird, fragmentary thing packed with spiritual mantras, quotes from old books and references. It makes no sense until you realise it's based on the story of a king who could only be healed by someone saying the right words. But no one who ever came to heal him ever knew what they were. So, the narrator's going through all these famous phrases, trying to accidentally hit on the right one and make everything okay. Those last words are an old saying of one of our world's religions, I think."
Tyron and Astro looked at each other. Steve, Jennifer and Andras came back with their bucket of Heavybrew.
"Okay but how does that tie back to Astro?" Asked Jennifer with a cocked eyebrow. "Sorry, there's not many people here so I heard you from across the room."
"I said about Kay saying the right set of words to make me almost want to forgive him," said Astro. "So, I suppose you're saying, maybe he did. Does that 'Shantih' phrase bring the narrator comfort?"
"The poem ends ambiguously," clarified Shadow, sitting up. "Those are the last lines."
"Oh, so is it supposed to trail off in a pessimistic sort of way?" Asked Tyron. "As though he'll be doing this forever?"
"Well, does the king get healed in the original story?" asked Steve.
"Yes, eventually."
"Then, surely there's an underlying assumption that there are words that will, one day, work and set everything right? And that it's therefore worth seeking them endlessly even when the world appears to offer no likelihood of a definitive cure?"
Jennifer looked at Steve with complete surprise at his poetic turn.
"I'm sorry, you just came back here with a literal bucket of the dirtiest drink I've ever seen - and I know I only discovered alcohol a few weeks ago, but that's still saying a lot, and now you want to wax lyrical about the pursuit of meaning?"
"You're right, let's drink."
They each dipped a mug in and felt the shock of warmth and the choke of spice as it filled them. Only Shadow failed to react as she drank it. It was as if she was drinking water instead of strong alcohol.
"What I don't understand is, you're ascended, right Shadow?" Asked Steve, evidently on a hot streak with his curiosity that night. "You underwent a whole ritual to do so? But I've heard you and Astro talking about it, and you almost talk about it like it was an accident and you're still finding out the damages. What's the deal? I saw the steps involved when I was looking through Fire's notes once, and it sounded messed up yeah, but also really deliberate. You have to prepare a potion, carve some runes in yourself… Did you just not know what would happen?"
Shadow replied: "It has to be deliberate, it requires a lot of infrastructure to get all the components, not to mention the enchanters and mages needed for the ritual itself. We performed the ritual a great number of times before it was attempted on me. Fire needed to be sure everything was just right. The goal really was just to set me free from being imprisoned in my own mind, with the known side-effect of magical empowerment. Everything else, we didn't anticipate, couldn't have anticipated.
"That said, it was a painful ordeal. Having runes carved in my skin, feeling my blood drain, the burning runes embedding themselves in my flesh, the magic infusion… definitely not something anyone would agree to without good reason."
"Would you do it again?" He pressed.
The mage thought for a moment. "Difficult to answer, knowing what I do now. But I think so, it gave me a chance at a proper life outside of the server's world. Outside of the memories, the pain is temporary."
Steve sat back, still eyebrows furrowing a little deeper still. Tyron rolled his tongue over his teeth, drawing it back like an arrow to shoot down any follow-up question from Steve. He meant well, but he got the impression Shadow was trying to mask discomfort with politeness. Or maybe Tyron was just projecting. Even with her powers stabilised, Shadow remained as hard to read as ever. All he knew was that if anyone but Rathina had asked him what he wanted to do after this, he probably would have gotten very tense very fast.
Thankfully, before Steve could cross the line and make things awkward, Kir drew Tyron's attention to a black-haired woman marching sternly up to them.
"Reaching out, but won't respond. Seems mad."
Tyron pushed his drink away, apologised and turned to face the new arrival. Just as he did so, a question came out like a slap.
"Are you Dragoknight?"
She was tall, black-haired, and pale-skinned. Perhaps in her early thirties. She wore a black V-neck, ripped gray jeans, and half an arsenal of weaponry - a machete, a steel bow, a knife which looked pretty redundant compared to the machete, and pouches containing everything from bandages to worn rope for climbing to bloody rope for garroting. And, despite being encumbered with all those weapons, she had this strange gracefulness to her. It was like watching Rose if she couldn't magically produce knives but still insisted on throwing just as many.
Tyron decided not to waste her time.
"Yes, that's me. Tyron Dragoknight, Shelter Commander, at your service."
He stood up and offered her his hand. She looked at it, cocked an eyebrow, then briefly seized his furry hand before letting it fall.
"I'm Lupe, of the Remaining - formerly known as the Liberators."
Tyron drooped his eyes respectfully as he realised what this was about. He wished he hadn't drank before this, it would either make him seem detached or make him feel even worse. Maybe both.
"Then you got my message about-"
"-About David and Destiny. Yes."
Tyron searched for something to say until the silence became conspicuous. Jennifer came to his rescue:
"I'm sorry. They went down doing the right thing. We should have done more." She shot Tyron an encouraging look, telling him to go further down this path.
"Yes," the Dragoknight agreed. "I didn't get to know David or Destiny half as well as I should have, but they were good people. And neither of them lost sight of their purpose. David went down protecting Destiny, and Destiny went down protecting-"
"-Went down killing the big bad, yeah I get you, don't oversell it," said Lupe. "Thank you though."
She smiled slightly.
"Well, is there anything else I can help you with?"
"Yeah, Clarke, Kami and I just got here. They're still looking for a room. I'm interested in doing a little farewell ceremony for David and Destiny. Do you have the bodies?"
"We gave David a burial at the time. It's a ways off but shouldn't be too hard to find if you don't mind dodging Tower patrols. Destiny died on their territory. We don't know what they did with her, but bearing in mind her plan involved a tear in reality…"
Lupe nodded solemnly.
"That sucks. In which case, do you have any belongings of Destiny's? We could bury them next to David."
"Yes, certainly."
Tyron reached into his inventory and pulled out a key ring, then flipped through them until he found the right one.
"This should be the key for Destiny's room, it's in the officers' quarters. Do you know the way or-"
"-I'll be able to find it."
"Okay."
Lupe rolled the key over in her hand.
"Destiny's room," she smirked. "Glad she finally got to settle down for a while, at least. She never loved all the rushing from place to place due to cataclysmic enemy ambushes."
"Who would?" Tyron laughed. "Running from Herobrine's servants, it keeps you fit but it's not great for that homely feeling."
Lupe chuckled and out burst a wide grin for a moment, like the sun on a cloudy day.
"Is the gravesite near the frontlines?"
"Yes."
"Then we'll have the ceremony on the day of the attack. After that, we'll help you finish this."
"Thank-"
"-Don't thank me, it's a point of principle. Besides, thank you for the key, Dragoknight. That means a lot."
She turned away, tossing the key up and down in her hand. Her other hand was plunged deep into her jeans pocket.
"You can call me Tyron," he called. "Just so you know."
"Noted."
"Friend?" chirped Kir.
"If it helps you sleep at night, sure," she said with a wink.
Tyron waited until she left, then sat down with a heavy sigh of relief.
"That was stressful. Turned out better than expected though, she seems nice."
"Tell me about it," snorted Astro. "I was pretty sure she was about to try and kill you."
"Really, that bad?"
"Well, maybe not that bad, but definitely something like a big rant about how we all let Destiny down - which, we absolutely did. Good idea on leading with that, Jennifer. I think it defused things a lot."
"She looked upset. She needed to know her anger was justified," answered Jennifer with a shrug. "And like you said, we did let her down."
The mood suddenly dropped a lot. A faint melancholy landed on their shoulders, like a bird with really sharp talons. Andras didn't seem to know how to engage with this, lacking a lot of necessary context. If Tyron hadn't known it would make him feel terrible, he might have let himself a stifled laugh at the sight of a hardened adventurer struggling to deal with an unpleasant lull in the conversation.
Shadow spoke up: "Not to make this into a game of misery poker, but you know, if you really think about it, I was the last person with the opportunity to stop Destiny. If it makes you feel any better about your part in her fate, the final responsibility was mine."
"Well, no," said Jennifer. "That's not fair either."
"Yes, you made an executive decision based on a pretty dire set of circumstances. Not necessarily a good one, but you made a decision," said Astro.
"It feels like the rest of us just let Destiny slip through the cracks," agreed Jennifer. "Steve and I made a token effort at first, but after she went off to establish this place with Fire… I guess we just stopped trying. We had our own stuff to deal with."
Astro nodded limply. Tyron couldn't help but agree.
"I guess, we all got so wrapped up in our own problems that we lost sight of our goal. Destiny didn't, she kept going for it. We should all have tried to be a bit more like her."
"Well, let's not whitewash things," Astro challenged. "She kind of shut down after Fristad died - not that I blame her - and as a result Freak was able to manipulate her. She sacrificed herself taking down the Entity, and that was a brave, brave thing, but do you honestly think she was happy in the end?"
"Is that really that important?" asked Jennifer, a little confused. "Aren't we heroes supposed to be selfless?"
Steve sat back, chewing his lip.
"We're not all heroes here, Jen," said Astro with a morbid shake of the head.
Tyron pressed past this. "Okay, she wasn't a paragon, but the big issue is that she shouldn't have had to make that sacrifice. She only felt she had to because of our collective decisions, but she did it anyway."
"Well, when could we have changed things so she didn't have to do it?" asked Jennifer. "You know, for next time."
Tyron took a swig of his drink and nervously put it down. It connected with the table a little hard, and some heavybrew spilled out.
"Don't do that to yourself Jennifer," said Astro. "You're never going to find the perfect sequence."
Tyron's mind slipped down to a memory he tried not to examine. During the first prison break. The failed one.
Shadow nodded. "At least not the first time, and the power needed to do it over would allow you to win without having to find a sequence at all."
"Maybe if David hadn't been so dinged up…" Tyron said. "In the first breakout I… I jumped that first enderman even though Bul wasn't there. Freak had been working on me for weeks, I couldn't control myself. I was just so… angry."
He sat back, staring into space.
"Not your fault," said Kir.
But in that moment, to him, it was.
"I - I should have just waited until we saw Bul, so Glibby didn't show up, so David's gauntlet didn't burn his arm, so Freak didn't get the drop on him so easily…"
Everyone got very quiet. The spilled heavybrew slipped from the table, drip, drip, dripping on Tyron's foot. He noticed that his glass had chipped the surface where he put it down.
"Okay, I've got it," said Steve, stifling a belch.
"Got what?" asked Astro.
"The words that'll make everything okay, from earlier."
"Oh. Okay then, philosopher, I think we all need it."
Tyron allowed himself a bitter chuckle. Steve continued undeterred.
"Well, here's my reasoning: despite all the stupid drama, the mistakes we made, the fights we lost, I think we've all been trying our best. And that hasn't always been good enough, but we can't change the past, and without it we wouldn't know the bar we have to clear. So, I think the words are: 'I'm glad I know you people. I know you're giving it your all. And don't worry, you don't have to be perfect, you only have to be good enough.' So, there."
Steve took another swig. Tyron smiled at him. Astro furrowed his eyebrows and looked at the ceiling. Jennifer rubbed his shoulder affectionately. Shadow leaned back into the cushions with a smile. Andras stroked his beard in contemplation.
"Also," Steve continued, turning his head to Andras. "This heavybrew stuff is great." He turned to Shadow. "I can't believe you and Fire have been holding out on us this long."
"Apparently Fire shared it with Kay, at least according to Warnado, but that was before I came to Nexus. But I do wonder if the fungus the base substance is harvested from would grow in other worlds."
Steve howled with laughter.
"Shadow, I was joking, sheesh," he wiped a tear from his eye. "But also, thanks for the earnest response." A pause. "I am glad I know you people."
Tyron nodded, his faint smile becoming a wide grin as Steve's eyes drifted closed, and his head lolled onto Jennifer's shoulder.
