It is ironic that the greatest enemy to the Eight was one considered unclean and monstrous. For centuries, they considered the Dragon King a bloodthirsty tyrant. Of course, what else could he be? He was an illegitimate born, a patricidal warmonger, and more horrifying to scholars, a staunch traditionalist. They objected to virtue; virtue's greatest defender was considered a bastard and a murderer.
-The Necromancer's Notes, Scroll 4432h, 54th Column, History Wing
***
"A report?" Thaen asked. He stared up at Laidu. "I need to write a report?"
"Yes," Laidu said. The two of them were back at Saefel Caeld Manor, in Laidu's room. It was nearing nighttime, and Thaen was getting anxious. Or antsy. It was a toss-up; both looked the same. "This all needs to be documented so that the process can be observed and filed away in case I make a breach of conduct, and they can use this as evidence for or against me."
"Oh," Thaen said. "Wouldn't it be better if you don't write a report? That way there's no evidence against you?"
Laidu sighed. "Thaen, that's stupid."
We know he's stupid, Kasran said. Just wring his neck and get it over with. He annoys me. He offends my delicate sensibilities.
Your 'delicate sensibilities' a new voice, a female voice smooth as honey, snapped back, are to kill anything that moves.
Bah! Kasran smiled. Laidu could feel him grin, feel the venomous anger rise in his own heart, Kasran's emotions frighteningly indistinguishable from his own. It would be fun.
He felt it, felt Kasran's nigh-lustful imagination. He felt Thaen's neck under his arm, the fine fur covering the tendons and muscles of his neck. He could feel the life being crushed out of him, feel the-
That's enough, Laidu said. He willed the image away, filling his mind with KYra, with the smell of her hair, the touch of her lips on his. It worked for a bit, and Kasran was silent. If only it worked on the rest of the voices. Then Laidu might have some peace and quiet.
Thaen started writing something on the desk. "You know, I went on a date with Indra's friend. Mirsari, remember?"
"I remember you saying something." Laidu consciously kept his voice down. He wanted to shout, just from the din of the phantasmic voices in his head. It sounded like a throng of angry people, all shouting at him, all angry at him, and there was nothing he could do to get them to calm down.
"Well, guess what?" Thaen gave him a smile. "I got a kiss from her. Before I was rudely interrupted by you and your job."
"Oh?" Laidu wasn't terribly interested. He loved Thaen like a brother, but the second the Vesperati started to talk about his love life, it was as effective as the most potent of sleep medicines. It bored him, bored Laidu to no end.
"Yes. I could have had a romantic evening with Mirsari, who I must say, is not hard on the eyes," Thaen said.
"If you're a bat."
Thaen ignored that. "Instead, I helped you. I felt obligated to help my brother out and do a job that, need I remind you, last time, I got whacked in the head by a freakishly quiet butler and thrown into a sack that reeked of pig guts."
"Will you just shut up!?!" The words came out of his mouth before he could think. They were a reflexive reaction, and that scared Laidu. What did that say about his heart, that those words were the first to bubble up from the surface, words of anger, words of hate?
Thaen was silent, his red eyes wide. "Thaen," Laidu said, "I'm sorry. I don't now what came over me-"
"That's a lie," Thaen said. He didn't accuse Laidu with those words, but he spoke them out of concern. "You know what caused that outburst, don't you? You're just afraid to talk about it." He paused. "It's the voices you have, isn't it?"
Laidu nodded. "They're getting worse, a lot worse." Thaen nodded, sitting down on the desk Laidu was sitting at. "The worst part is that they imagine things, and I see them. I dream their dreams. Before, I could tell where my thoughts ended and their thoughts began, but now it's harder to tell the difference."
Thaen wrapped his arms around Laidu's neck. "Just now, I imagined crushing your throat. Or someone else did, and I can't tell the difference." Thaen nearly jumped off of him. "Don't worry, I'm not going to act on it or anything." He looked his friend -his brother- in the eyes. "Don't... just don't freak out. I'm not going to listen to them."
Thaen rolled his eyes, and there was both fear and spite in his voice, both of them acidic, both of them cutting Laidu's heart and soul. "Forgive me if I avoid being near you, seeing as you're vividly fantasizing about my death." He looked frightened of Laidu, as if the brother he adopted was a monster. "I'll get you the report later. For now, I need to get home. I'll show myself out." And like that, he was gone.
That look in his eye was unmistakable, especially from Thaen. It was equal parts fear, betrayal, and anger. It was the face of someone who had felt that they had been betrayed. He knew what Thaen felt, or he could imagine. His brother, turning into a monster right in front of him. It had to be painful and infuriating at the same time.
He rose to his feet, closed the door, and sank down, head in his hands. He was a monster.
Don't fight your nature, Kasran whispered. You'll lose in the end. But it isn't losing, admitting what you are. You'll find it liberating, trust me, when you abandon yourself and become a monster. After all, that is what you are. There's no use fighting your nature. There is no way you can win.
Laidu wept.
***
Despair clung to him, wrapping around him like a slime or some sort of stain. It made the shadow of the darkened room, the comforting night in the Solstael Manor, seem desolate and empty. The room was filled with something that was painfully nothing. The room had a presence, and that presence was a profound emptiness, a void that made Laidu's soul ache. Despair was with him, poisoning his heart, and he didn't care.
The emptiness of the room matched the hollowness Laidu felt in his heart. His head still swam from the voices, louder and indistinct. They were smaller, weaker, but there were so many of them. Before, when he fought Kasran, or told Rhaem to shut up, it was like wrestling with a goat (which Laidu had done before). It may be strong, but there was only one. Now, with the other voices, it was like fighting a goat and a swarm of stinging flies. There were too many.
He had saw their imaginations again. It wasn't Thaen this time. He had seen Kyra in front of him, her rich finery torn off, her flesh marred and bruised, choking, bleeding, dying. He had tried his hardest to dispel that sight, that image, but the thoughts were too strong. They forced their way back into his mind, and every time he tried to push it out of his psyche, he had to conjure it up again.
So this was what going mad felt like. This was what insanity entailed.
He would have wept, as he had done maybe an hour ago, but he felt drained, all the tears dried from his eyes. He had wept all he could a long time ago, it felt like, exhausted himself.
There was a knock at the door. "Who is it?" Laidu asked halfheartedly.
"Just me," Kyra said, slipping through the door. She turned, and immediately, her eyes widened. "Are you alright?" she asked. She could tell something was wrong immediately.
He stared up in his bed, not moving. "I... I'm losing my mind," he said. "I can't stop the voices, and all they're doing is getting worse." He sighed. Despair was his poison, not hers. "What's wrong? Why are you here?"
"No. Just a nightmare," Kyra said. "Still dreamed of being caught in that Ajandi wagon." She sat on top of the blankets Laidu lay under. "Can I help? With your madness, that is. Tell me if there's anything I can do."
Laidu shook his head. The voices grew excited, more excited as Kyra moved closer, and his heart began to beat faster and faster, blood pounding through his veins. "I don't think there's anything you can do," he said. "Just, don't go immediately."
"I'm not leaving," she promised, holding his hand. Her hand was soft and gentle, the refined hand of a gentle noblewoman, but a true noblewoman, who had the graceful and gentle spirit of nobility, not just the blood and pedigree. She was a noble in every sense of the word, the mythical noble that legends spoke of. "I promise you that. I'm not going, not tonight."
Laidu looked at her. "Wouldn't your father object?"
Kyra stared him in the eye. "He would. And I don't care. His reasons for objecting are baseless and wrong." She leaned down on her elbows next to him. "Concerning this, my father is wrong. Dead wrong." She moved closer to him, nestling herself in the crook of his arm, above the covers.
Her hair was soft as silk, smooth as satin. Her skin shone in the cold moonlight, luminous like silver. Her eyes shone, with all the compassion and warmth in the world, the kind of eyes you could stare into for a few eternities, the kind of eyes that inspired poetry and romance.
And as he turned back and looked into his own heart, into his own mind, into his own soul, Laidu realized something. Before, he had said he loved her, but his father had cautioned him against calling any thrill of the heart love, cautioned him against calling any girl that played his heartstrings like a lute beloved. Infatuation was what Father had called that passion in his heart. Infatuation, the viper with sweetest venom.
But as Laidu looked into his heart, he didn't see the fickle face of infatuation staring back at him. He saw what Kyra, beautiful and fair, but he saw her fractured, imperfect. He saw a woman who loved him, but a woman who feared what others thought of her, enough to lie and hide who she was, a woman terrified of the mere thoughts others had in their head. He saw a woman who was ignorant of much of the world, but wanted to learn.
He saw Kyra, all of her imperfections, and he loved her anyway. He would be willing to die for her, and if he knew he was to die for her sake, he'd be singing on his way to the headsman's block. Thinking about her, the voices quieted, not because they weren't there, but because the thoughts of Kyra were that all-consuming. She was more important than his sanity, more important by far.
She shifted, wiggled her way under the covers, and leaned her head on his chest, and at that moment, Laidu was absolutely sure that he was hopelessly in love with her.
A thought entered his head, arising out of the madness. The thought made him concerned, not the least bit because that thought was utterly mad, and utterly his. A new kind of madness. It called to him, resonating in his blood, thundering in his heart.
They said that certain types of madness compelled those who suffered it to act irrationally. Their madness inspired them to do things that they shouldn't do, called them to endanger themselves.
It was a form of stupidity, yes, but it was one Laidu knew he had, one he couldn't get out of his head.
He drifted off to sleep, resigning himself to the madness. Now, he didn't care. He stroked Kyra's hair as she gently kissed the crook of his neck. Not passionately, but in an absentminded, sleepy manner. "I love you," she murmured. "Honestly, you're the best thing to come to this town."
"I love you too," Laidu said. His arms wrapped around her beautiful frame. He was mad, mad twcie over, and now, part of him didn't care.
***
He awoke alone.
He missed Kyra's scent, missed the touch of her hand. Instead, he awoke to a stern, though not disapproving look from Marcel.
"Um...good morning, I guess," Laidu said.
"Get dressed," Marcel said, "and come with me."
Laidu rose unsteadily. The constant babbling of the voices in his head made him more than a bit dizzy. He spent some time, and more thought than he should have, to get dressed.
But, once he was dressed, he followed the butler through the manor. "Is something wrong?" he asked Marcel.
The butler nodded. "If it was up to me, you would not be in trouble. That, however, is not the facts of the situation." He sighed. "I do not believe you have been fully informed about the conditions of your residence here. Lord Solstael had asked a maid to, every night, at such an hour so as to assure you're asleep, and he charged her to search your quarters and report to her what she found."
"He was spying on me, in other words," Laidu said. Figures. Lord Solstael clearly didn't trust Laidu, but the Ranger didn't mind. He was used to the natural suspicion that seemed to accompany him.
They're suspicious because you're a monster, Kasran said. Unlike you, they see what your nature is. They're not trying to lie to themselves.
"Yes," Marcel said, "to put it crudely." He passed by a door and led Laidu through the door to a small, rather dark and dusty room. "Forgive me, but I am afraid you mus break your fast here. I cannot allow you to dine in Lord Solstael's dining salon. It isn't my choice, rest assured, but I must not disobey my master. He, after all, is the one who employs me, and as such, the contract I signed required me to offer my strictest obedience to my employer." Marcel offered a chair to Laidu "I hope you understand."
"Not really," Laidu said, sitting down. "I'm still not entirely sure what happened," he said.
Marcel was quiet. "Allow me to fetch your breakfast, and I'd be happy to elucidate the precise nature of your perceived transgressions." With that, he vanished.
Laidu needed to occupy his mind with something, so he turned to the items in the room around him. It appeared to be a storeroom of some kind, or a workshop, or a bit of both. One wall had a pegboard with various tools hanging over a desk. The other walls had more cases for fine porcelain and Qin plate, all covered in a less-than-healthy amount of cobwebs and dust.
Marcel arrived back with a giant platter of food, with eggs, breakfast pastries, and fruits, among other delicacies. "Please, dig in."
Laidu did just that. Laidu stared at the food laid before him, enough for five men, for a moment, before devouring it with gusto. Within fifteen minutes, all that was left was scraps. "So, let me guess," Laidu said, "the maid saw me and Kyra asleep together." He didn't mention the new madness that overtook him, the madness that showed up, the counterpoint to the voices in his head.
"Yes. She rushed to the head maid, one of my partners, with lurid tales of licentiousness and indecency." Marcel rolled his eyes. "And while my employer is, in most instances, a very practical and rational man, in this case he was more than happy to assume the worst of you and declared that you wouldn't share any more of his hospitality." He paused. "That is why you're breaking fast in my workshop."
"Ah," Laidu said. "I'm also going to guess that Kyra's barred from seeing me?"
"I assume so," Marcel said. "Lord Solstael chose more colorful language to describe you, I'll admit, but he was adamant about that."
Laidu nodded. "So, I'm homeless again. Not the worst thing in the world. I've suffered more than that."
Marcel shrugged. "I took the liberty of requesting a room for you, for one month, at an inn. A fine inn, not a bawdy tavern. This one is known as the Dragon and Candle."
Laidu was taken aback. "I... thank you," he said. He didn't know how to respond. The voices in his head said it was out of pity, because Marcel thought he was weak and useless, but Laidu questioned that.
"Don't mention it." Marcel met his eyes. "I mean that quite literally. This comes from my wages, and I don't want it to seem like I have two allegiances."
Laidu nodded. "That's fine. I won't tell anyone." He paused. "Though, can you answer two questions?"
"If I am able to," Marcel said.
"First, the tailored clothes," Laidu said. "Am I allowed to take them?"
"Normally, it would be considered most discourteous, but seeing as you are effectively banished, I would not blame you." He smiled. "And your next question?"
"How can I find Kyra?"
Marcel frowned. "I was given explicit instructions to not reveal that, or any information about where she'll be." Laidu sighed, and his shoulders slumped forward. The love he had for Kyra made him want to be with her; the new insanity wanted something similar. But now, there's no more of that. "But I can tell you that she is blessed and taught in the tradition of the Luminous Doctrines. I can also impart to you that her favorite preacher is a Ten-Zuani man, named Parhashan in our tongue." Laidu nodded. He knew several brothers from home who left to the lands north, to teach. "He, I can tell you, preaches at the Chapel of the Blessed Sage Alaqin."
"That is the chapel Kyra attends?" Laidu asked.
"I cannot say that," Marcel said with his lips. The gleam in his eyes said otherwise. "Make no mistake, I must obey my master's commands. But I want what is best for him, and his daughter."
He turned to leave. "There are very few men of honor left in Caeldar. Kyra has talked of you, and I have seen the signs. She loves you, and you're a good influence on her. And, if I say so myself, she is a good influence on you." He sighed. "Now, I must chase you out of the manor," he said. "Orders, as you understand."
Laidu nodded. "I understand," he said with a smile. Marcel had just given him a gift. He knew where Kyra would be.
That was enough for him. And that was more than enough for his new insanity.