The Border City Ord 12

Win pounds his fist into the stone platform overhanging on the side of the mountain. He can’t muster up a spell to harden his skin. It would be improper to do so. It hurts. It hurts each time his fist touches the ground. He can’t stop. He can feel the skin on his knuckles get worn and scraped away. It hurts. But even as each blow leaves drops of blood Win cannot stop. He cannot stop crying. Looking out onto the landscape in front of him, he cannot stop wailing, hoping somebody might hear him in the empty world before him. He never knew Anzo, and he hated the man he did know, but he cries nonetheless. He cries that Anzo’s evil was rooted out, his ambitions stopped, and that there was nothing left without it. He could give Anzo nothing, neither judgement nor a reason to live, and this was the result. With bloodied fists and a tear-streaked face, Win continues to cry.

Calliope runs through the dank tunnels, only the glow of the spirits to guide her. She had followed Win’s order at first, and intended to return Clara to the inn, but felt strongly the desire to follow after him as she exited the prison tower. She entrusted Clara to another, only able to hope she would be delivered home safely, and quickly returned. She found the open entrance to the passageway easily and went forth. Slower than Win, she was unable to catch up.

Calliope gingerly lifts herself through the cracked stone door. There was nothing but a strange pedestal and orb in the center, and a lone man slumped against a wall. Without any path but a single staircase, Calliope begins to climb.

She steps out onto the overhang. At the edge she sees Win, hunched over on the ground. She can hear the thumping as he slams his fists into the ground from the other side of the platform. She stops for a moment, unsure if she should continue on. Win begins to scream out, his voice high-pitched and harsh.

“Get back here! Don’t run away! Don’t be a coward! Weren’t you supposed to be a warrior!”

Win goes silent, simply pounding the stone over and over again. Calliope walks towards him. She feels she has to say something, with her own voice, not a pen. But no sound will come out. She doesn’t know what to say. She doesn’t know what words would be right. She doesn’t know how to help him. Whatever she says can’t be taken back. Spoken words can’t be crossed out or erased so simply. And a darkened page, each word, each sentence, scribbled out, would do him no good either. Calliope remains silent, frozen in place, hoping that at least her presence behind Win could help him.

Win seems to notice her as she stands right behind him. He rises, his body almost floaty, blood dripping from his fists. His eyes have no light in them, and his demeanor is that of a man defeated. His light blonde hair shines in the light of the sun, all the more stark against the darkness of his face. His blue eyes that ought to be bright with his success are so dull they almost frighten Calliope to look at.

“Calliope, is Clara safe?” Calliope begins to pull her notebook out, but Win stops her. “My vision is blurry. I wouldn’t be able to read it. You don’t need to answer. But…” Win trails off, unable to bring himself to finish the thought. “Have you realized how pointless it is to keep following me around? I’m utterly pathetic. I really am nothing more than a husk incapable of changing anything. Everything is so vapid. Everything is so pointless. All of us are so weak that we’ll never amount to anything. And yet we hurt, and we steal, all in the hopes that it will make us matter. But we never will. That’s humanity’s foolishness. That’s humanity’s greatest crime. It’s cowardice. You know—!” Win stops himself from continuing, but now that he has begun, he cannot end it. “I’m nothing but a dead man walking. The dead should be nothing more than a memory to be left in the past and held in the heart. A dream you wake from in tears. A face you see in the clouds. The dead should let time move on without them. I shouldn’t be here anymore. I should be one of the people left in the past. And yet I still breathe. I walk. I live. A revenant that does not belong to this time or this world. That’s all I am. That’s all I should be. And yet I still want to live. I want to be of the present. I miss my family even though they should leave me behind. I want them to do nothing but yearn for me until their dying breath even though we don’t belong to the same world anymore. So no matter how much I miss them, I can never see them again. I don’t belong with them anymore. And yet I can do nothing but yearn. Everything in the world pains me. I cannot help but think of them. As though they were the ones to die rather than me. But I’m the one who left them and who will be left behind. And, you know, I was wrong for so long leading up to my death. I rejected them and all their kindness, all because even then the world would not be beautiful. I mistook that for their ugliness and scorned them. And now I can never even apologize. Not that I even have the right. I haven’t changed in the slightest. I’m but a coward and a fool. I’m the worst of us all. But I’m the pale shadow cast by a coward at his dying breath, so what else would I be.” Win throws a forlorn glance over his shoulder, over the edge of the platform. “And although I scolded him for it, am I truly capable of saying that Anzo was wrong? What’s wrong with eternity? What’s wrong with living on as a coward and a fool? In the end I wanted him to live. And I’m no different from him. I would give everything I am to be with them again. Without them this world is utterly meaningless. Completely vapid. Devoid of anything truly beautiful. Only in nature’s bounty, which their world shares, can I find solace. Because this world is fraudulent. Nothing but a beautiful dream meant to plunge me into the depths of despair. So it all must be ugly. And any kindness must be a falsehood. And any joy must be fake. Because they are the only ones who deserve to see me smile, and it’s for them alone I would change. In a fake world I’m content to be the same coward. And in a world so vapid and cruel I’m content to hate it and reject it to my dying breath once more. Because even now living is meaningless in the grand scale of things, and even my death meant nothing in the end.” Win looks at Calliope. Her face, so worried, so sad, and so devoid of true understanding, pains him deeply. “Sorry. None of that made sense. It didn’t matter. Let’s return to the inn for the day.”

Win takes a shaky step forward, his heart clearly still disordered. Without turning away from him, Calliope matches his step. With uncertainty clouding her mind, she grabs his shoulders. Her grip is weak, but Win can’t take a single step more. She stares at him deeply. She wants to say something. She knows she needs to tell him something. Yet even as the words bubble up in her heart she cannot help but fear them. She can’t find the right ones. Even as the words rise to the surface, they feel so wrong on her lips that she cannot let them pass. The only thing she can do is write. A single sentence spanning two pages. The sentence is not overly long, nay, it’s quite the opposite. On the first page a single word, another on the next. The words are bold on the page, each stroke of the pen definitive. It reads simply, even in Win’s blurry eyes.

“YOU’RE KIND” Win can’t meet her gaze, unwavering as she looks at him.

“Thank you. I… don’t think I could have taken it if somebody spoke it aloud.”

Win falls to his knees. Again he is on the ground, his bloodied knuckles spilling onto the stone. Again Win weeps.