Malevolence Turf War (We gotta teach you this lesson, old man!)

“I believe you and I can help each other-” Harow began to say, but Trudy turned out to be quicker on the draw. The sphere of Malevolence warbled, and suddenly extended itself across the space between the two in a thin stream that quickly wrapped itself around the bottle and pried it out of the man’s fingers. Flying back, it hit Trudy’s palm with a meaty thud, and she immediately lost all interest in Harow as she began fighting the cork.

“In what universe are beer bottles stopped with this stupid thing? This is why I never bought wine back home…” The Archhag muttered, while Harow looked blankly at his empty hand.

“I mean, we are where we are,” Bao answered, trotting up to his wayward companion for the first time in a while, while offering his larger hands to strangle the bottle. Harow watched the two struggle with the cork and remembered that they were the monsters Rulio and the Kingdoms were so concerned about.

“Miss Trudy,” Harow forced himself to say, regardless of how strange it sounded coming out of his mouth, “The Kingdoms are worried about what you’ve been up to, but I believe I can show everyone that we have a common enemy.”

Lissandra’s face looked at him suspiciously. “...Who’re you?”

Harow stared, as if struck – it was enough to make him recoil.

“That’s Harow?” Bao answered instead. “He’s, like, the dude who killed the Menace. The main character, basically.”

“Oh…”

“Oi, Trudy, just hear him out, okay?” Jane insisted as she joined the trio. “The sooner we prove we’re the good guys, the sooner we don’t have to worry about a kajillion armies coming after us for being made out of evil stuff.”

“Hey, you’re speaking our language!” Bao cheerily remarked, oddly ecstatic, which seemed to only be compounded by his final success making the bottle open with a resounding pop.

“Why are you taking his side?” Trudy grumbled, raising the bottle to her lips. “And where did you come from? Hell…”

Harow was getting good at determining when the corrupted powerhouses were using their mental connections to each other, and Trudy was apparently trading private words with Jane.

Something Trudy “said” while she was busy swallowing the drink made Jane jerk with shock and realization, as she looked at the Archhag and the swordsman with some new sort of understanding.

“Wait, we’re the same…? You’re also from…?”

“We four really need to sit down and figure this out,” Trudy stated, firm, gentle, and matter-of-fact all at once, free hand on the chimera’s shoulder, before she looked over at Harow. “...’Common enemy’, huh. Give me one name to prove it.”

Harow was quick to answer. “Liev’s Malevolence research has turned up in Forness, and Jane helped destroy some of it, which is why we’re here looking for his whereabouts. And why we need your help.”

“Is it going to get the University off my back?” Trudy asked. “Zel and Constance have been kind of interesting company, but I’m getting tired of being chased around by them. I’m not surrendering to them either, since I’ve got half a mind they’d just kill me or pry me apart for research.”

Given Headmaster Trint’s seeming overzealousness, Harow wondered if Trudy wasn’t as paranoid as she sounded.

“Let’s see if Liev left any tracks here,” Harow offered in turn. “Then I can announce that you’re too important to keep here. There won’t be any worries as long as I promise that I can keep you in check.”

“Would you really try to keep me in check?” Trudy snorted in amusement, eyebrow raised, but her bluster shrivelled a little under the Beacon’s hard stare.

“I’d like not to have reason to.”

Trudy ultimately blinked first, looking away with a furrowed brow. “Tch, fine. If you want my help, I’ll offer this much.”

Glass flashed through the air, letting Harow catch not a bottle, but another bauble.

“There’s more?” Harow said, with some surprise.

“As many as I can detect,” Trudy explained. “Tessy had the lion’s share, but it seems there’s still pockets of the stuff being squirreled away. University can’t find them at all, and I have enough trouble finding them.”

“What, really? I must be a bloodhound for the stuff.”

Everyone turned to look at Jane, who was licking her lips with a snake-like tongue.

“It’s faint, but your bauble’s got a scent that I can taste elsewhere. Maybe it’s connected.”

“You could have told us sooner,” Bao groused.

“Oh, don’t start.”

“We have what we need to work with,” Harow briskly concluded. “Let’s not waste any more time.”

Letting the chimera take the lead, the four stalked through the night streets until they stood before a shuttered old restaurant, the kind with a basement that would be good for storing things in the dark and free of attention.

As one, the group moved through the unlocked front door, which was already telling enough. Before their feet had even alighted on the floorboards, they heard creaking and saw the dim flicker of torchlight rising from the descending staircase.

Harow had never seen him before, nor had Jane, but they knew from Trudy and Bao’s instantaneous tension that they very much hated this frail, almost grandfatherly wisp of a man.

“Harow, good sir!” Liev was momentarily startled, but smiled kindly regardless. “Your esteemed company is welcome. I knew they would send you for me sooner or later, but you really caught me by surprise this time. No doubt, thanks to your friends. They have always been frustrating me since they escaped my allies in Fortress Town.”

Trudy’s expression was fierce, as was her pointed finger. “Stay right there, Liev. I’m gonna kick your–”

“I just finished laying a trail of gunpowder here to a pile in the basement. Enough to level this building.” He let his hand drop, the torch hovering over stained floorboards. “One drop and we’ll all go up – as will this block. Will you take the risk?”

Trudy kept pointing threateningly, but she didn’t offer anything further.

“Thankfully, all the Astral Energy I’ve been storing has been moved out – ah, Malevolence. My apologies. I should warn you, though,” Liev pointed out, his voice losing none of its dissonant merriment, “you mostly caught me in the act of covering my tracks. Not much for you to find here, I’m afraid.”

“Whatever you intend, Liev – this stops. Today. Nothing good can come of this–”

Liev merely gave a patronising laugh. “Ah, such is the wisdom expected from the Beacon of the Kingdoms. Dry, predictable, narrow-minded thinking. Believe me, sir, I sympathize – a man who knows only how to fight can only go on their experience, even if it is repeating the same old, tired doctrines and dogmas. There was tragedy, yes, but this creation is only shunned because we think we can’t control it. It’s exotic matter capable of many things – of rewriting the laws of creation itself. Things even the Spirits of the world can’t manage! The longer we’re afraid of it, the longer it’ll keep being a blight on this world instead of a resource.”

“Just so you know,” Jane sniped, “I cleared out a little infestation problem: a huge-ass rat that gorged itself on the stuff. You think that is usable?”

Liev, smile unfading, dismissively waved his hand. “In every experiment there is always trial and error – just as there is, eventually, proof.” He outstretched both arms, almost radiant with a perverse sort of pride. “The three of you show how easy it is for the body and the mind to integrate it. The three of you, and your friend Paul in the north show the potential of what it can do. It can even help you, Harow.”

The Beacon already had his sword at the ready, pointed and keen. “Give me the torch, Liev.”

“I recognized them when I first saw them. I know you did, too. Bao, Trudy, Paul, and now Jane. It’s not just mistaken identity, Harow – they were your companions once, before the Menace killed them all.”

Harow didn’t want the pieces of the puzzle to fit together, but what he didn’t say, the others were already realizing. All the confusion, the repeated references to other people. Yulien, Lissandra, Sylvat.

It was such a childish, desperate little fantasy, the distant hope that perhaps… the names might be wrong, because they just needed to wake up. That perhaps, Malevolence could really be an answer. At least one long enough, until the bodies were stabilized, purified, perhaps…

“Astral energy knits together flesh and returns the dead. Can our vaunted Spirits do that? Think, Harow: the final insult to the Menace from the Stars – undoing five years of war. Turning this power against its maker for the good of all! All the people you’ve lost, that I’ve lost. We can bring everyone back–”

“Liev. I’m not Yulien.”

Harow looked back, and saw Bao’s placid expression.

“Maybe I share some bits and pieces – a body, a blade – but that’s not the same thing as coming back from the dead. It’s not that simple.”

It was a blunt admission, and one enough to shake Harow out of his distracted stupor. Letting that short spike of guilt pass through him, the Beacon returned to pointing his sword at Liev.

“Liev, my comrades have nothing to do with you. You’re endangering the Kingdoms, plain and simple.”

The old man shrugged. “When you're my age, you learn to ignore bad opinions.”

Trudy, at this point, had also learned to tune Liev’s out as well. “Oh, screw this–”

The orb of Malevolence twitched and reached out to snatch the torch – a moment of decisiveness that Liev had prepared for. He didn’t fight the confiscation, but he, too, was an old hand at battle, quick to unsheathe a blade that he used to cut through the torch itself, spending a spray of loose flames and sparks in every direction.

“What the–”

“Hey, stop those–”

It was many things all at once, especially as the floor almost immediately started sparking with far more powder than Liev had given away. The floor itself was lit ablaze in moments, while the staircase became a roaring cannon collecting all the pressure that was about to build up in the basement.

Everyone responded in different ways, with Harow and Bao shielding Trudy with their broader frames, while she called all the Malevolence she could to widen and harden before them. Liev leapt out the window, while Jane chased after him.

Their surroundings erupted into formless chaos, light and thunder descending upon them in but a moment, when flame and pure concussive force tore the deserted restaurant apart.