Raul Chamgerlain sat with his back to a tree in Washington Square Park, trying not to listen Berserker's stream as he pissed on a nearby bush, three limbs on the ground, one leg raised like a dog. The evening chill was starting to set in and Raul had no idea where to go or what to do. He couldn't safely return to his dorm room in Weinstein Hall. He and Anatoli were roommates. That situation had oscillated between lovely and thrilling for three months, but now it was just complicated. Jerry's ritual had changed everything. Raul's cellphone battery had died, and his charger was in that room, a room he didn't dare return to. He couldn't reach his friends and he didn't know if he would be next to go after Bobsom. He needed to get a new charger and find shelter, and Berserker's social graces weren't making it easy.
Berserker finished urinating and sat down crosslegged in front of Raul. With his hands on his knees, he assumed something resembling human posture.
Raul knew that this was Berserker, but he wasn't sure how he knew that. He hadn't been told. Berserker certainly hadn't told him. Berserker hadn't told him anything. Raul was starting to think that Berserker couldn't even talk. At the very least, he had zero interest in speech. His face bore a constant expression of tired disdain, apparent through caked-on layers of grime. Raul felt he had received the short end of the stick. Onson had summoned a cool-looking orc lady and Karli had Jesus Christ. What did he have? Berserker had muscles, sure—he was clearly jacked—but he smelled like shit and just grunted at everything. A washed up mute Conan.
Despite the lack of spoken communication, Raul found himself understanding more of his situation as he watched Berserker roll around in the underbrush. He had been thrust into a summoner's battle royale. His dog man had to crush some skulls. The other summons had to die for Raul to win, and one way to accomplish that was to kill the other summoners. Raul shuddered as he pictured Bobsom's putrefying face.
If he'd been asked that morning, "Hypothetical: you and your gang summon a bunch of weird aggressive entities and are forced to fight until only one remains. You can improve your odds by killing your friends. What does everyone do?" he would have said firmly, confidently, without a hair's hesitation: we will all survive. It would be a game to us, maybe a spectacle. We would send our summons against each other and sit back. Eat some popcorn.
But Bobsom was dead and now Raul wasn't sure he'd ever truly understood his friends. He watched Berserker reach down and grab his own crotch, then quickly looked away as the man's hand began jerking back and forth beneath his rags. Feeling a pang of envy for Berserker's apparently boundless sense of freedom, Raul shut his eyes to stop from staring. He didn't understand how Berserker could do this, not even remotely discretely, but maybe he'd never understood anyone. He had always been alone. Even his younger sister had abandoned him when he'd come out. New York was a fresh start. Raul. New name, new confidence. And for a while, it was working. Six new friends, dear friends, friends he could hug, friends he could kiss, friends he could talk to about his problems. But that was in Jerry's gentle presence. Optimism had abounded in that small office.
What would those optimists say now?
Jerry had vanished and his ritual had killed Bobsom. Raul thought of that sweet neck turning purple, the soft fuzz of Bobsom's chin blackening, flaking. As quickly as Raul had won this new life, he'd lost it. It was hard to believe, and the rationalizations developed themselves at light speed. They'd never been that close. The group had been artificial, their relationships constructed by Jerry to incomprehensible ends. Jass had never liked how he and Bobsom spent their Tuesdays, rolling dice in the Geek NYC Monster Hearts game. Anatoli's brocialist sect had never put itself on the line to defend trans lives. And don't forget Onson, skyping his mom in Sweden, a little too proud to have a black friend. These people, however darling, were still raised in partriarchy, in racism, in heretonormativity.
Raul was tempted by a question that came into his head—what really IS socialization, anyway—but he brushed it aside. He didn't have the time nor the pressing need to philosophize about society. Instead he waited for Berserker to finish, reviewing what he knew.
Actions spoke louder than words.
He and his friends had, in fact, entered this battle.
One of these friends had killed Bobsom, or had him killed.
He had an incredibly strong, if incredibly filthy, man ready to fight for him.
The rest followed.
"Berserker?" he asked tentatively, eyes still closed, when the sound of the man's exultant panting subsided.
A grunt of affirmation, and Raul opened his eyes. Berserker crouched before him, once again on all fours.
"I wanna survive."
Another grunt.
"I wanna win."
A gleam in the dirty man's eye.
"So let's talk. Go over your powers, my part, strategy."
Berserker smiled and stood, stick suddenly in hand. He mimed hitting someone over the head with it.
"Talk, Berserker. Can't you talk?"
Why talk? Raul found himself wondering. Words are just used to hide the truth and justify the rules that allow one class to dominate society at the expense of others. If something is useful, it will be clearly expressed in actions, in the states of things. Raul laughed quietly.
"I guess we just go find a fight."
Maybe returning to his dorm room was the correct move. If Anatoli was similarly afraid to come home, Raul would have a safe and comfortable base of operations. And if Anatoli was there, Raul could take Berserker for a test drive.
"You get me," he said, "and I'm your Master, so listen up. I tell you the plan. We adjust based on how things develop."
Berserker grimaced at him, but did not urinate on him, so he continued.
"We go back to my place. I need to provision. We'll prolly run into one o' my—I mean, another Master. Anatoli. If we can beat his Servant without hurting him, I wanna try, but bottom line we gotta win. Keep me alive."
An assenting grunt encouraged him to stand, brush himself off, and walk the couple blocks to Weinstein Hall.
Berserker followed him.
The streets were empty. The whole area around Washington Square had been evacuated when Jerry's office blew up, and the barricades were still up. Raul took a half-block detour to pass along Greene Street, and he looked up to see that where at 4:30 there had been a crater in the side of the building, Jerry's office now seemed perfectly intact.
He wasn't even surprised.
He reached Weinstein Hall and debated what to do about Berserker. Could he simply bring him in? The residence hall hadn't been evacuated. It was just on the other side of the area that NYPD had decided to cordon off. Students would be milling about, many just now having their dinners, and while Berserker might not look too odd a sight in a public park, he definitely wouldn't fit into the chic lobby.
Somehow, Raul couldn't make himself care. He walked through the front doors with Berserker in tow. He wasn't sure how—he'd never been so calm, so effortlessly gregarious—but he smiled back at the students in the hallways who stared. Berserker followed him in near silence, and they took the elevator up to the seventh floor.
From the elevator Raul could already tell trouble awaited. He could see the door to his room as the elevator doors opened. It was ajar, the lights on.
He gestured for Berserker to follow him out into the hall, stepping quietly, wondering at his luck. There was no one else in the hall. All the other doors were closed. It would be just him and Anatoli, Berserker and whoever Anatoli had summoned. And in a straightforward, one on one fight, Raul felt confident. Berserker was strong, bestial. Who had Anatoli summoned? He couldn't remember—was it the archer? The pirate? Either way, he didn't think Berserker's odds could be too bad in close quarters combat.
Raul crept along the hall, back to the wall, heart racing as he approached his room. His stealth was wasted, however. Two doors away from his destionation, Berserker suddenly let out a guttural cry and leapt forward, stick in hand, charging ahead and into the room. Raul backed away, not sure he approved of Berserker's gracelessness but very happy to leave the confrontation to his Servant.
Some crashing noises ensued. Raul heard what must have been a desk collapsing, and then Berserker was thrown into the hall, landing on his back. He scrambled to his feet just in time to dodge the swing of an immense sword. The sword's wielder was hidden from sight, still in the threshold of Raul's room, but the blade was so massive its length crossed half the span of the hallway.
Raul backed further away and watched in awe as Berserker spun back into action and swung into the doorway, stick producing a bone-cracking sound. The sword fell to the ground, causing a slight tremor in the floor, and then Berserker reeled backward clutching his shoulder. Raul blinked. There had been another crack, and at first he couldn't place it, but then another two followed and Berserker shuddered in pain, staggering back from the doorway, blood seeping into his rags in three places.
A gun.
The sword lifted back into the air, its hilt and wielder still inside the room, then moved forward as its wielder walked into the hallway. It was the green-haired guy with a crown, the one who had appeared at Jass's side that afternoon. His left arm dangled by his side, and he held a sword clearly forged for a giant in his right hand. His posture suggested the blade be made of paper, so effortlessly did he hoist it into the air.
Berserker cowered, bleeding as the man raised his giant sword for the finishing blow.
"Wait!" screamed Raul.
"Wait?" asked the swordsman, glancing down the hall. "A curious entreaty, to demand patience now. My Master called a parley and you came seeking blood. I think we shan't wait."
He swung his sword down, but the seconds Raul had bought were enough, and Berserker rolled out of the way before jumping onto the man's shoulders, clawing at his face with his hands and biting at his hair.
"Hold still!" came an unfamiliar female voice from within the room.
The swordsman dropped his weapon again, trying to bat Berserker off with his good hand.
Raul felt helpless. He didn't know why he had felt confident a moment ago. He didn't get the memo about a parley. He was in the dark. Jass's Servant was here, and there was a woman he didn't know inside. And there was a gun.
Help, he thought, help! Why won't the doors open, why won't other students come out? For the first time in his life Raul wished for security to appear, for someone trained in violence to intercede on his behalf.
No doors opened. No one came running. The entire floor of students somehow ignored the ruckus. Of course. None of Raul's cries for help had ever been answered.
The swordsman managed to dislodge Berserker and, blood streaming down his own face, threw him to the floor.
The two glared at each other for a moment, both wounded, and then Berserker turned tail and ran away, scampering on all fours down the hallway toward the elevator. He didn't say a word as he fled, leaving Raul to collapse to the floor, feeling more vulnerable than he had since leaving everything behind in Indiana.
"Raul Chamgerlain, I take it?"
Raul found himself unable to begrudge Berserker his escape. He knew he, too, needed to run. Fight or flight, a basic binary for animals. And weren't men merely animals? What did that make Raul, he wondered as he knelt there dumbly—more or less than an animal, than a man?
The swordsman retrieved his sword, then made it vanish it by waving it. He stepped aside, clearing the threshold, and pointed into Raul's dorm room.
"I think you should talk to my Master. And make sure your cur doesn't interfere again."
Raul snorted. How like a man, to talk down to a dog.