Questing Sucks! Book II (49 page)

“Does it bother you?” she repeated. “Knowing that I’ve killed people. Does it ever disturb you?”

Now
this
was an easy question to answer. Perhaps this was going to be far simpler than Sehn had originally imagined it would be.

“Of course not,” Sehn replied to the dream version of Cah’lia. He laughed at her. “I alone have killed enough people to put all of the world’s population in jeopardy. Fear my savagery, Cah’lia! The Great Sehn shows mercy to no one!”

He must have spoken the wrong words. Almost before he’d even finished speaking, the heat from within his chest faded, and the spell he was chanting in his mind, which at some point had become background noise, disappeared along with the heat.

His eyes popped back open all on their own. He was breathing heavily, and his entire body was caked in sweat—so much so that he needed to remove his shirt until it dried. Once he’d slid it over his head and set it down on the sand beside him, he glanced over his shoulder and saw that Nero, Rina, and all the mages aside from Archmage Bennet were now lying on the sand, sleeping. Even David, Bennet’s greater summon, appeared to be fast asleep. Bennet had his eyes trained on Sehn, and despite observing him from such a distance, Sehn could still make out the barely visible form of the Archmage raising his thumb in approval.

How much time has passed
?

It must have been at least five or six hours. But how? It seemed impossible; it could not have been more than two hours at the most. Sehn tried to figure it out. His sense of time was warped, both because it was impossible to tell the passage of day and night in this unnatural world, and also because everything felt hazy in his head. Ultimately, he realized it didn’t matter how much time had passed. All that mattered was that he ended up succeeding in what he was attempting: the greater summon.

I should keep going
.

Once his sweat had dried, he put his shirt back on, feeling somewhat chilly now despite the temperature not having changed once since he’d been sent to this bland, empty world. He considered resting for a short while, but he decided against it. There was no point in wasting any more time. He wanted to be done with this as soon as possible.

Unlike his previous attempts, it only took him twenty minutes to reenter the trance-like state, which made it so that the spell repeated again and again in his mind like background noise—something that would continue even if he diverted his attention away from it.

Unfortunately, after mentally congratulating himself for how awesome he was in only taking twenty minutes to get back to this point, he shouted out a loud victory cry, which caused him to instantly lose focus. Then his cries of victory turned into loud swearing, which woke up four of the High-Mages despite his voice having to travel across a fairly large distance to reach them.

Factoring in the time needed to threaten and personally insult each God and Goddess, it ended up taking another hour for him to get back into the right state of mind. And once he was certain that he’d entered the trance, he wasted no time in getting back to where he’d left things off. Immediately, he brought forth the image of Cah’lia.

I’ll get it right this time
,
he told himself.
Whatever happens
,
I will be sure to—

The thought cut off abruptly the moment Cah’lia returned to the center of his mind. Sehn was nearly knocked out of his trance at the sight of her. Blood rushed into his nether regions. He couldn’t believe his eyes—or rather his imagination’s eyes, or whatever was seeing her.

Cah’lia had never been one to dress heavily, but seeing her like this…Sehn’s imagination must have put her in a very, very hot desert, one that required her to dress even more lightly than she usually did. She was clad in nothing but a small red top, one that took away most of the guesswork. A skimpy pair of matching red underwear also assisted in raising his heart rate. The rest of her figure was on full display.

Much like she had the last time, she noticed him there, gawking at her through the lens of his mind. For whatever reason, this brought a seductive grin to her face. She strolled towards him, her hands on her hips and her back straight.

“Sehn,” she purred, “do you love me?”

“Yes,” he whispered. He wasn’t sure if he spoke the words aloud in the real world as well. He was too absorbed in this false reality to tell. In either case, it seemed she could hear them, which was all that mattered.

“Why don’t you tell me that more often, then?” she asked. “Why don’t you tell me how you feel?”

The question was difficult—too difficult—and Sehn did not answer it. He couldn’t. And in failing to do so, he felt his concentration slip, though he wasn’t sure why. Suddenly, he became cognizant of the fact that, right now, in this very moment, he was
making
himself chant the magical words to the summoning spell rather than have it continue automatically in the back of his mind. It was something akin to thinking about breathing. He became aware that he was chanting these words, and because of this, it forced him to continue saying them manually if he wanted to keep saying them at all. This drew some of his attention away from Cah’lia, and the image of her began to fade.

“Tell me…why don’t…tell me…love…”

Her words became softer until he could barely hear them. Her face began to darken as though she were retreating into shadow. Soon, all Sehn could see of her were her eyes. He was losing her. That much, he was sure of.

“I’m…going…
I
…”

Sehn tried to hear the remainder of what she was saying, but he failed to make out more of it than a word or two; her voice became too muted. Eventually her eyes darkened to the point where Sehn could no longer be certain that he was actually seeing them or merely imagining that he was, which was eerie in a way since this whole thing was taking place in his imagination to begin with.

“Please don’t go, Cah’lia. Just give me a chance! You don’t understand. I can’t…I don’t…”

Why was she making him do this? Why couldn’t Cah’lia understand that Sehn wasn’t this sort of person? Why couldn’t she accept that he was not the type who discussed these kinds of feelings—these “bleh” sort of emotions that ran too deeply to rid himself of?

“All right!” he shouted in his mind at her, hoping that she was still listening. “I’ll tell you why. It’s because…it’s because I’m afraid you won’t say them back to me. I’m afraid that I amuse you and nothing else. I’m afraid that you do not…love me too. Or that you would laugh at me for feeling this way. That you would mock me!”

As though the words were magic all by themselves, Cah’lia reappeared, illuminated again beneath an orange glow from an imagined sun, standing before him in a similarly imagined desert much like the one he was trapped in now, only with normal-colored sand and a small pond behind her that Sehn had failed to notice earlier. It was a tiny little oasis, at the center of which lay a shallow pool of clear water.

“That’s the truth,” she said.

“The truth?”

She nodded. “What you said: it’s the truth. You just don’t like to admit it. Hey, Sehn?”

“Y-yes?”

“Do you like it when I kill people?”

“You don’t do it for fun.”

“That wasn’t my question. Do you like it?”

“I’ve already answered this question.”

“Say it again.”

“The answer is yes. I love murder and death!”

Without warning, the sun blinked out of existence. The desert, the oasis, and the sky also disappeared, and all that remained was Cah’lia, who like before was now fading away rapidly. There was darkness everywhere, and also missing was the heat within himself that seemed to come and go depending on his answers. This told Sehn that he’d screwed up yet again.

But why?

I know why
, he realized.
It’s because
I lied
.

Sehn felt uneasy. All of this made him uncomfortable. This wasn’t how he liked to do things. This was a pain that went well beyond what even the most horrifying acts of physical torture could raise within him. This spell…why did it require him to be this way? Why did it require such abject humiliation?

As she began to fade, likely for good, Sehn called out to her. “Wait! Don’t go!”

“Answer…the question,” she whispered, her voice quieting.

Sehn forced moisture into his mouth. He became agitated at the sight of shadows absorbing her body until, much like the previous times, only her eyes were visible. In just another moment, they too would fade away, and he’d be forced to start all over again from the beginning.

No
,
she
won’t! The truth struck him with a jolt that went straight through his heart.
There won’t be another chance
.
I just know there won’t be
.
This is all I’ll get
.

The way Cah’lia faded…somehow, it left the impression that, should Sehn return to try this again, he would not be granted the same opportunity. At least not for a very, very long time. He didn’t know how or why he knew this, but the lack of knowledge did not lessen the certainty that he was correct. Whatever it was he wanted to accomplish, it had already begun. If he stopped now, it would not work again. This was his only chance. He could not allow himself to fail.

“Cah’lia!” he called out to her. “I don’t like it!”

He waited for her to reappear. Much to his terror, she continued to fade. So he shouted even more loudly despite knowing it was all just a voice in his head. Again and again, he shouted those words to her.

“I don’t like it! That’s the truth!”

It didn’t work. Cah’lia continued to vanish, and Sehn panicked. She was leaving him. He had to stop her. Somehow, he had to bring her back. And if only the truth could make that happen, then he would speak it—all of it. Even more than she’d asked him for. He could not let her disappear. Anything but that.

“The truth is I despise it when you kill,” he said, hoping she could still hear him. “Cah’lia, it sickens me it…it is…I just…I just don’t like it. It is wasteful. Don’t you understand that conquering the world means nothing without people in it? What good would our kingdom be without subjects? Yes,
our
kingdom. You and me. I want us to build one together. And there’s enough death. I worry that I will die soon. I try not to think of it, but…Cah’lia, I’m not ready. I’m not ready to die. And I’m not ready to see you die. Or to see you make other people die. Death is all around us. Why make more of it? There is no fun to be had in a world without life.”

As quickly as it had faded, the heat in his chest returned, warming his body; this time, he felt it in his toes as well as in his fingertips. He even felt it in his jaw and inside his head. Simultaneously, the sun in the sky burst back to life, illuminating Cah’lia and the desert he’d imagined her in. Only, this time, she was no longer dressed erotically. Now, she wore heavy furs, and she carried a spear.

She stood over another man—a human whom Sehn did not know. Upon closer inspection, he realized that this man was literally faceless; his eyes, nose, and mouth were all hidden behind a wavy, otherworldly blur. Cah’lia’s boot was on his throat, and she was hovering over him, the point of her spear only an inch from his right eye.

“Stop,” Sehn said to her. “Cah’lia, don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t kill him.”

“Why?”

“Because you don’t have to.”

“You don’t even know who he is, Sehn. It’s just a faceless soldier. Why do you care?”

He looked at her, and there was a grin on her lips, one that gave off a sense of expectation. A cloud covered the sun, causing shade to dim but not darken the world around her as she shifted her eyes in his direction.

“Don’t…kill me,” the faceless man pleaded.

“I won’t,” Cah’lia said. She pointed at Sehn. “
He
will.”

She removed her boot from his throat, turned to face Sehn, and then took several steps towards him. She shifted her grip on the spear and then held it out to him as though wanting him to take it from her.

“Here,” she said.

Sehn eyed the weapon, and he shook his head. “I don’t want it.”

“But I want you to do this for me.”

A mixture of pain and confusion struck him at the same time. Sehn knew this wasn’t the real Cah’lia, and he knew that Cah’lia would never behave this way or put him in this position, yet he understood there was meaning behind this dream-like state—even if he wasn’t sure what.

He reached out and took the spear from her. Then, without a moment’s pause, he tossed it off to the side. This made her frown. The look of sheer disappointment on her face wounded him deeply, yet at the same time, it caused the heat in his chest become even more intense. Sehn wasn’t sure if that was a good thing.

“I thought you loved me.”

“I do.”

“Then why won’t you do what I asked you to do?”

“I can’t.”

“No? I thought you were great.”