Chapter 1131 (1/2)

I’m… I’m not real, am I…?

In those few words that Vualla said, Randidly felt an existential exhaustion that he could only barely comprehend from his months struggling along as solely an image. It was a question asked with the raw vulnerability of one who is about to collapse.

Randidly opened his mouth before she even finished asking the question. Where his emotions might be in a tumult, his instincts were not. “You’re real, Vualla.”

Perhaps it was because Randidly had lived a lonely childhood where being ignored and dismissed was common. There were times he had looked at the dusty mirror in his dark bedroom and wondered what he had done wrong to be so universally isolated. To that reflection partially obscured by a t-shirt hanging over the mirror frame, Randidly had asked repeatedly what he had done to deserve this.

And in fits and starts, Randidly had learned that these dark emotions and whims of fate were all just fear wearing the guise of truth. The walls he had built were hollow, designed to reassure him that his current state was not his own fault. And in fact the fake walls he built were the very reasons that such long shadows lay across his Path.

Yet then the System arrived and gave him another shot. The necessity of survival slowly guided Randidly to knock down all the mental and emotional blocks he had placed over himself. And the whole process had been liberating. To the point that Randidly remained conflicted over the fact that the System brought significant benefits to his life.

Yet now to see Vualla struggle against that same loneliness… and to realize that everything Randidly felt about being singled-out and doomed as a child was actually true for this Vualla…

No. I will not let this happen. Heat and certainty spun in Randidly’s chest. Outloud, he repeated himself, although some part of him knew it was just as much for himself as for her. “You’re real, Vualla.”

When Vualla looked up at him, her eyes were glassy and hollow. She released great, gusting breaths, her shoulders rising and falling with each exhale. “But-”

“You’re real,” Randidly replied again, even more firm this time. His own breaths accelerated as that heat in his chest rose to the point that it seared his chest and constructed his lungs. It seemed like fire was jumping back forth between them, pounding and urging their hearts to accelerate along with the heat of the connection. “You’re real.”

Vualla blinked. There were tears in her azure eyes as her gaze lowered back down to the ground. “Randidly, you don’t need to-”

“You’re just as real as I am, Vualla,” Randidly hissed. But the violence and urgency of his words surprised him. He could feel the Grim Chimera raising his head and howling in fury, gnashing his teeth toward fate. In addition, Randidly couldn’t claim to have any understanding of how someone could do something as powerful as duplicating a person. Especially when it seemed likely that the person in question was already dead.

But even if he had suspected that Vualla was… something else, to face that truth now-

“And even if-” Randidly’s breath hitched for a second and he allowed the air in his lungs to hiss out toward the ground. Then he derailed that sentence and continued to let his words tumble off his tongue and into the air between them. “No matter what, we can find a way-”

“Randidly.”

The word was so heavy with genuine bemusement and not a little impatience that it stopped Randidly dead. And so Randidly slowly looked back up at met her gleaming eyes. Vualla was still crying, but she rolling her eyes with a fragile smile traced across her mouth. “We aren’t children anymore. We are soldiers, right? We… need to face the truth. Of what I am. It’s only if we do that we can-”

“Fuck truth,” Randidly whispered, and he meant those words more than he had meant anything in a long time. To his surprise, he was smiling widely at Vualla, and her own smile grew in response.

Because this was what caught the Grim Chimera’s eye and now pulled Randidly closer to Vualla. There were times where it was very difficult to be strong. This was one of those times. Yet now, here, even as Randidly was doing his best to reassure Vualla, it only took a few seconds for her to shake herself out of the tragedy that gripped her and turn her empathy toward him.

“Fuck truth,” Randidly said again.

Vualla shook her head. “We already have said that we will be the ones to tear down the Nexus… and now you want to upend reality? Randidly Ghosthound, I almost suspect you are simply talking a big game to try and impress a lady during her moment of distress. Which would make you quite the opportunist.”

“So you are saying this is an opportunity?” Randidly’s mouth boldly replied, even as his mind scrambled to keep up.

Vualla blinked and then blushed.

That heat between them intensified further. Randidly could feel the two Fates, the same Fate, that disfigured glove, roaring between them as they were soon carried away by the growing heat and smolder. But it was only when the heat began to spiral around the two of them that Randidly realized it wasn’t just emotions that he felt. It was desire and affection and shared loss and shared discovery and shared sense of powerlessness. It was a craving to change the world.

It was a prayer.

The Nether Ritual.

Randidly’s concentration on the heat was broken when Vualla brought her fist slowly up and bumped it into his chin. But then after the skin was touching, she held her knuckles there, pressed against the rough stubble along his jaw. “Don’t be dumb. Wanting something can’t make it so.”

“But you can feel how much I want it,” Randidly breathed and he wasn’t sure exactly what they were talking about anymore. Maybe it was the moment, seeing the iron of Vualla’s spine emerge even as she was forced to question her own existence, but a strange explicit honesty was born in him as he stared at her annoyance in her scrunched up nose and furrowed eyebrows. “And that matters.”

Is this me talking or the Grim Chimera? Randidly wondered. The Grim Chimera chuckled.

Is there a difference between us?

Some less emotional parts of Randidly felt stirred to action. This is a bad idea. Becoming further involved in Vualla.

But look at her now, proud and defiant against her doom. Randidly shivered. Even if it’s an act… I refuse to take a step back now. Not when she fights against the same tyranny of the corrupt power of the Nexu that I want to end.