Episode 23

They left the room, watched at every step by the stone eyes of the statues. Leaving behind what he had experienced, outside his body. Leaving behind the spell or whatever that was.

For the moment. At least for the moment.

Jonathan wanted to come back here, if only once. He felt it was important to understand why the Count's memories were here, or how that thing worked.

Right now it was just too much. Fuck, now he was even struggling to keep his eyes open. If it wasn't for Elizabeth's help, he wouldn't get anywhere.

It was always nice... to have someone by your side you could count on.

Right, brother?

He wondered if Leonard was feeling his absence, too. Even though he was responsible for things ending up this way.

"Well?"

Surely he was. It would be impossible for him not to feel anything, after all these years. Although, of course, he didn't care.

"Well what?" Jonathan answered absentmindedly.

"What do you mean? That's all you're going to explain? You said it's a long story, but I don't care. It feels so little after risking my neck over and over again."

She'd risked it. More than he'd thought, he had to admit. However...

"I risked it more than you did. But... okay. I guess maybe I summed it up too much. He was a soldier in a war as stupid as any other."

Of course, there were always motives that seemed good. That justified everything in some way. Resources, territory, money. In the end it was nothing more than senseless killing.

That was the problem with human beings.

That morons, suffering from imbecility, would swallow any bullshit.

And the smart ones were also smart enough to fool themselves. So they were all idiots, after all.

"One more sent to die. One of the bunch. Yeah, he wasn't a nobleman or anything."

"I see."

She didn't seem too surprised.

Well, despite being treated like a god, Count wasn't exactly the highest rank.

And, somehow, he gained the trust of many of his peers... enough for them to drop everything with him. And go off to find a better life or something.

That was what bothered him the most.

Jonathan was aware that there was a gulf of thousands of years between the Adam he knew and the boy he had been back then, yet it still bothered him.

There was nothing worth following. Or to trust.

And he shouldn't have anything good. No one's love or trust. No one's, for fuck's sake.

"They ended up on that island. By pure chance they stumbled upon that island and decided to settle there and not on another, just pass by."

"Pure chance, huh? "Elizabeth muttered. Looking ahead, not at him. Of course. She had to pay attention to the road as she was the one directing both of them. Jonathan was still having trouble keeping his eyes open, though this talk was helping. Anyway, the magic of hate awakens human hearts and clears the mind. "What a crappy luck. For us. And the whole world."

True enough. Adam was a blight on the world. His family had been just one of many he had tortured, murdered and thrown into the fire. Just one among... a countless number, over thousands of years.

By killing him, he would be doing the world a favor. But he didn't care about that, either.

The world had never done anything for him.

"At first everything was fine, I guess. But things went awry. Tensions. Fights. "He felt he wasn't doing a good job of explaining, but it wasn't his fault. He lacked the necessary context. He supposed only the outcome mattered. "And he ended up dead. Betrayed.

"Like you."

Oh, she just had to point that out, didn't she? He should have seen it coming, but Jonathan grimaced as if she'd thrown him a surprise punch.

"I wonder if that's a coincidence, too. Or if it has to be, somehow. Similar circumstances."

"We're not alike. Not at all..." Jonathan said, too fast, too tense, raising his voice too much for it not to be obvious. That what he felt was fear rather than indignation. "Of course it was a coincidence."

"You're not following me, are you? Even if the circumstances had to be similar, it would still be pure luck that he matched you. So it doesn't mean anything, I'm not saying you're like him. At least you're still human."

At least he was still human.

At least, yes.

But for how long?

The long trip up the stairs was finally over. The conversation had died earlier, though. They left the cursed temple and climbed into the boat again. Of course, it was Elizabeth who took the oars this time too. That she wouldn't dream of him helping her. Or that he could do it in the first place.

If Jonathan could he would, though he'd done enough, but this shit had been too much. Complete insanity. And he just wanted to rest. He needed it.

They passed by the corpse of the sea monster, on their way back to the city. It would be impossible not to, as it now shadowed the entrance. It was a perfect decoration for this city of the dead.

He didn't want to spend the rest of his life under that shadow.

"Do you think he was ever a good person?" Elizabeth said suddenly. He didn't have to ask to know what she meant this time.

"Does it matter?"

"It's something to talk about while I'm rowing." She put quite a bit of emphasis on that I'm, as if it wasn't clear enough already. Anyway, at least having something to focus on would help keep his eyes open.

"Can you be a soldier and a good person?" It was a rhetorical question. Jonathan already had an answer. And he had been pretty sure of it, for years.

"Well," she shrugged, "he might not have had much of a choice in the matter. Especially if, as you say, he was a peasant."

Forcibly conscripted and sent to die for the interests of other people who didn't know his name and never would. Who, at best, would award him a medal once he was already dead and buried.

He didn't like to think of Adam as a victim of anything, but it wasn't possible, it was even the most likely.

However...

"It's not a question of whether he was forced or not. Once you kill someone, maybe you can come back from that. Just one person. Maybe also two, three, four. Why not? But when you lose count... when you have no idea how many people you've killed.... Then there's no way to come back from that."

The gulf between a normal person and a murderer was as unbridgeable as that between the natural life expectancy of a human being and the one Adam had experienced."

Yes. It couldn't be more different.

I wondered if he should say what he was thinking. Elizabeth and he weren't friends, it was a mutually beneficial relationship. But he felt like he wanted it to be more.... real? Honest. He felt he owed her that.

"And you know that. You spent years pretending to be a normal person. Rich, powerful, lacking nothing. But when things went wrong, just look how easily you went back to killing."

Elizabeth didn't get angry. On the contrary, she nodded her head. She seemed only mildly surprised. He had no idea why.

"I didn't expect you to be so.... How should I put it? Idealistic.

He had been called many things, but never idealistic. Or a good person.

"Idealistic? I don't think very highly of humanity."

"You just said the opposite."

Okay, he didn't know what he had expected, but not that kind of answer, definitely.

"You just said that murder corrupts you, that then it becomes...the instinct of an animal. You know what I think? That all people are animals."

He hadn't expected it, but she wasn't wrong. He couldn't say anything at all to that.

Looking at it that way, he was idealistic. Even naive.

He had never believed he would think of himself that way, but....

Elizabeth was not wrong.

——

This isn't real, was the first thought that went through his head.

But he couldn't hold on to that for long. The sweat running down his face and clinging to his skin was very real. His chest heaving up and down, to the rhythm of frantic breathing, with hardly any air, was very real.

The fear that made his heart pound like a hammer hitting the anvil was very real.

Real and painful.

He was running.

Running through the dark night, cutting through the forest. At a great speed he was circling the trees, leaping to avoid obstacles, discarded branches or logs, the occasional corpse of some poor bastard. He also ducked when necessary. But he never stopped running.

Always running, never once looking back.

An explosion of pain in his arm. He felt the teeth clamping tightly together in his flesh. One of the wolves had come out of the darkness, throwing itself at him and had caught his arm.

Jonathan did his best not to scream, biting his tongue, though it was useless. Because everyone knew where they were. And more so now, that he could smell the blood in the air.

His hand groped for the knife.

Jonathan grabbed the hilt and quickly drew it, stabbing the wolf in the forehead. Once, twice, three times. That was all it took to kill him. But once he was dead the bite of his teeth didn't relax, quite the contrary.

He had to shake it off with one hand.

Jonathan's arm hurt as much as if it was going to pop off his shoulder.

Once he managed to shake it off, he kept running, desperate. Leaving behind him a mirror of blood. The fear was beginning to fade, his heart progressively beating slower, verging on a normal rhythm.

It wasn't because he felt safe. It wasn't because he believed he could make it.

Quite the opposite.

Unconsciously, his body was... giving up.

His feet carried him to a clearing in the middle of the forest. This wasn't a good thing either. A big wide space, nothing but forest and night everywhere he looked. Nowhere safe to run to. No place to hide.

Just his pursuers. The wolves.

With eyes as red as fresh blood, they came out of the darkness, circling. The circle was slowly closing. It was as if he was trapped in a room and the walls were coming down on him, crushing him.

"Fuck. Fuck. Fuck"

Inevitably, they were upon him.

His whole world was reduced to teeth and fur glistening in the moonlight. A moon that soon turned blood red, like those eyes? No, it was just his sight, which was covered in his own blood. A curtain of blood covered the world.

Strangely, he felt neither fear nor pain. Not even resignation.

He saw a wolf with his entrails in his mouth. He saw it bite. And then...

He opened his eyes with a start.

On the bed.

——

Jonathan got some rest. More or less, although his dreams were plagued by nightmares. But at this point he couldn't dream of anything good. Only of what he didn't have. And he'd never had, through his own fault.

But beyond that neither of them got much rest.

They had a little chat, agreed, and, prepared, set off. They took the same route he had taken not long ago, only with an army of the dead at his back, killing every guard he encountered along the way.

The road to the same destination, in fact. To the port.

Jonathan approached the corpse of the sea beast. Elizabeth too, but kept a safe distance away, her back against the rock wall and her arms crossed.

Watching nothing else. This was going to become a habit.

"Are you ready?"

Jonathan chose to be honest.

"I'm as ready as I'm going to be in an hour. Or tomorrow. Or a few weeks from now."

He didn't like this, but she had convinced him that it was necessary. With a very simple argument that couldn't be refuted. Jonathan just hoped it wouldn't go wrong. The worst possibility was not that it wouldn't work, but that it would and he wouldn't have control over the beast afterwards.

He took a deep breath.

Nothing bad needed to happen. Everything should work as it had so far.

"It will have to do," Elizabeth said.

His soldiers were nearby. Observing, too, if you could call it that. The survivors of the first battle with this thing. That is, not too many.

Jonathan reached out a hand to touch the corpse. It was shaking slightly, it was too noticeable, but he didn't feel embarrassed at all. He focused his power, his skill.

At first nothing happened and Jonathan was relieved, despite the fact that it was almost as bad an outcome as it turning against him.

But then the whole corpse began to shake.

Jonathan gulped. The moment of truth. There was no reason to think it would turn against him, he was aware of that. But if it did...

He wasn't sure he could kill it a second time.

The creature came back to life, rising from the waters, which churned around it, spilling everywhere. Like some kind of waterfall, almost. Or a tsunami approaching the shore.

He had said Elizabeth had put herself at a safe distance. But not in the case of a fight; in that case the distance wouldn't have been prudent at all, thanks to the reach of the tentacles.

It had been for this.

Jonathan ended up soaked from head to toe, as he had no choice but to get closer. While she had at most gotten a few drops on her shoes.

He grunted, pushed his hair back from his forehead.

The monster had risen. It had risen and... nothing. It was looking at him, waiting for his orders. It went well. Of course it had.

Of course it had. There had never been any reason for it to go wrong.

But what a relief.

He'd sent it down. Down into the depths of the water from which it had emerged, until they needed it.

"This was necessary. Otherwise, the Count might have done it for you," Elizabeth said, from her safe, dry position. That was the argument that had convinced him. They had enough disadvantages already, if that came to pass they could be as good as dead.

He could respond that she should call him Adam, so as not to give him unnecessary airs, to remind herself that he was just a man and perhaps be less afraid of him. But that wasn't what he said, in the end.

"Yes. I know."

——

The sea was like a reflection of the endless blue sky. It stretched all the way to the horizon, blending into it and getting lost, almost. Sometimes it gave him the feeling that it was really endless.

That any day they could try, but they would never make landfall, they would remain forever.

Especially in recent times.

As captain, he was at the helm, moving the ship and shouting orders when necessary, practically by instinct. Without realizing it. Even though he had never been the one doing these things. Even though the captain had always been Jonathan.

He was directing the crew anywhere, really.

They didn't have a specific destination, but rather an approach. Pirates were luck seekers by nature and could get by anywhere. Get by. Survive. Thrive? That was more complicated.

"Something wrong, Captain? You seem distracted," Bartholomew told him, suddenly appearing at his side, he didn't know how he hadn't seen him coming. He had to be distracted.

He should have told him to go back to his post, but he felt like talking to someone besides himself, spinning in the claustrophobic wheel of his own thoughts. Besides, he felt he was close to making a decision.

"I've been... thinking about a lot of things." Sincere. Straight and to the point, he really wanted to talk about this.

"If I can help you... Even if it's just listening."

Yes. Someone who would listen was enough. Neither Bartholomew nor anyone else could solve his problems for him, anyway. Except Jonathan. He had always been good at reading other people and finding the right words. Jonathan, surely, would have been able to do that.

Therein lay the problem. Partly.

"I've been thinking, why exactly did I betray Jonathan? It's not a joke."

It sounded like a bad joke, but it wasn't at all.

"Because it was necessary. Because otherwise we would all have ended up dead. Sooner or later," said his surprise companion, slowly and after a while.

In the meantime, the ship continued to move towards the horizon. Destination or no destination, it didn't matter.

Leonard nodded his head. Without taking his eyes off the path.

"And that's still true. Don't get me wrong. I wish things had ended differently, but I don't regret saving your lives."

Indeed he didn't, even though most of them were little more than strangers. As odd as it sounded. Life was complicated.

"But that only benefited you. Why did I kill him?"

"I'm not sure I understand what you mean, Captain. Your life was in danger too."

He was speaking to him with great respect.

Too much, perhaps. It was a little creepy, made him feel like a rich nobleman or something instead of a pirate captain. Bartholomew hadn't given him that impression so far, but he supposed he didn't stand out when everyone was kissing Jonathan's ass out of natural admiration. Now he was the only one who treated the captain with similar devotion.

Anyway. That didn't matter now.

Maybe it had never mattered, nor would it ever matter.

"My life? "he repeated, squeezing the helm harder and harder. Until his knuckles went white. "To raid ships, get blackout drunk, go to sleep, and do it all over again? That's my life, isn't it?"

Bartholomew was silent. As expected. He looked at him, not knowing how to react. It almost seemed as if he was hoping that he would simply move on to another topic and they could put all this awkwardness aside.

But Leonard wasn't even thinking about him, now.

Leonard had said he wanted to talk to someone, but again he was talking to himself, lost in his own thoughts. Even the sea stretching out in front of him or his crew, which was all around him, was blurry. Out of focus.

"Is that really the only reason I killed my brother? The only person I trusted and the only person who put his trust in me? Now you must understand why I have doubts."

It was all too obvious how uncomfortable Bartholomew was, even out of the corner of his eye. He was, like everyone else, experienced in raiding ships screaming like an animal while swinging on a rope, sword in hand.

Awkward conversations, though?

That was another story.

But that wasn't the only thing that made him uncomfortable.

"Spit it out. Whatever you're thinking. You shouldn't be afraid to be honest with me."

He wasn't that kind of captain.

Though that begged the question of what kind of captain Leonard was in the first place. He didn't have an answer for that. None. If he went around the ship, asking the crew, he was pretty sure he'd get a lot of answers.

But they would all look alike.

That is, generic, safe, to-please-you answers.

"I was thinking it doesn't matter, sir. What's done is done."

Leonard nodded his head slowly, again. There was nothing more certain. It was too late to change anything. He had made a decision, parting ways with Jonathan forever, and he couldn't even properly regret it.

"That's true. Even if you could put everything together again.... Nothing would ever go back to the way it was." Of course, that wasn't possible.. He had gone too far. "But I don't want to go on living this way either."

Looking back, the only good thing he could see was the man he had called his brother. He would have been happy with him by his side, even if they had become farmers.

"There were good times and bad times.... But it was never a life worth living."

There has to be something more, he thought.

He turned the helm suddenly. Violently. And he gave orders, turning the ship, changing course. Before the conversation began, he had felt close to making a decision.

Well. He had already made it.

——

After several long days of anticipation, in which he had barely slept, they finally arrived at their destination. He was very sure. But as they laid eyes on it, the Count felt no joy. Although neither did he feel disappointment. It had to be admitted.

"Elesbury..."

It wasn't that he had made a mistake. This was where the bell had been calling him all this time.

He could still hear it, in fact. Not ringing any louder, but ringing faster, like a heart running amok with excitement. Like his own heart.

It seemed to be telling him: hurry, hurry, hurry.

He had expected to find something completely new on the other side, and he guessed this was it.

Jonathan. His equal.

At last, another human being in this bleak, ephemeral world, full of leaves that were lost in the wind. Perhaps the bell had been calling to him for the sole purpose of their meeting.

No, for sure.

Would Jonathan have felt the call too? Of that he had no doubt either.

So he probably knew he was coming. And would be waiting to welcome him with open arms. Although he supposed that was unimportant.

"Sir, shall we prepare to attack?"

Two people.

There were only two people in the town of Elesbury, which had been plunged into darkness and filled by the dead.

But it would still be too dangerous.

"Not so soon. We need more men, more ships."

As the Count was accustomed to, no one questioned his order despite the overwhelming advantage they possessed over their enemies.

——

Early in the morning the alarms sounded. A ship was approaching the harbor and that could only mean trouble.

When they got close enough, they saw that Adam was near the fore mast. With his arms folded behind his back and no fear whatsoever. Of course.

Adam wasn't human enough to know fear.

But he was going to show it to them before he killed him.

Jonathan raised a hand, closing it into a very tight fist. He was going to, of course, make the sea monster he had resurrected a few days ago leap into action. He was coming at the head of a single ship, not a fleet. It should be possible.

"Wait. I'm not here to fight."

He knew Adam's intentions very clearly. And it wouldn't change anything, even if what he was saying was true, but he stopped himself.

He had to be saying that for a good reason.

It's not like Adam needed to bluff, even with only one ship and himself, though he was perhaps worth a hundred men (a hundred men who, unlike him, couldn't kill him), he had overwhelming numerical superiority.

Or at least that Adam knew of.

He had no idea about the sea monster sleeping beneath the waters, waiting all this time. Right under his body, now.

His heart was beating a mile a minute.

Because he was aware that the end was near. One way or another.

Because he was aware that he had the upper hand in these circumstances, but the situation could get out of hand with incredible ease, anyway. One heartbeat, one exhalation, and everything could be irrevocably twisted.

"I just want to talk."

"Talk?"

"With you, of course. You're like me. Do you know how hard it is to walk through this arid desert all alone?"

He was burning with rage.

It was the first time he'd heard his voice in person, but it churned Jonathan's fucking guts. He didn't care what he had been or who he might have been. Right here, right now, he was evil incarnate. A weed he should pull, even if it was his only good deed in this fucking world. Achieving that would even justify his miserable life.

Maybe it was the rage clouding his mind, but Jonathan didn't understand what he was getting at with all that.

"What are you talking about?"

"I want you... No, I need you by my side."