#chpt10

He hadn’t truly understood what Ayla had meant two years ago, about how the horrors of a mission gone wrong were all she saw with closed eyes, how the failings haunted her nightmares and how she couldn’t recognise the face staring back at her in the mirror. He could understand it now, and by the Gods, he wished he didn’t.

Duradel. Turael. Hazelmere. Sloane. Cyrisus. Ghommal.

Their names and faces danced in his head. Their deaths played over and over again in his mind’s eye, and when he dreamt, they looked at him and asked why they died. Lucien’s laughter echoed in his ears, twisting to come out of the mouths of merrymakers who inhabited the tavern. And all the while, his guilt rested heavily on his shoulders like a worn cloak, his thoughts turning spitefully inwards.

The sound of a deliberate tapping pricked at his ears, sending pain through his head with unrivalled precision. He hunched in on himself and turned his head slowly to glower at the new source of discomfort. Recognising the figure striding forwards, seemingly oblivious to his suffering, he felt what was left of his pride shrivel up in horror, as if thinking of the ranger had summoned her.

However, Ayla did not pause as she walked past his table, and Aleks couldn’t help but feel indignant. She must have seen him, she must have. And yet, she hadn’t even had the courtesy to look at him in his misery, not even a passing glance, hadn’t even said hello. He wasn’t that overcome by drink that he was unrecognisable, so she must have seen that he was there.

He watched her walk up to the bar and ask the bartender for a drink. There was a shake of the head from the barman, but the woman persisted. She pointed at something behind the man, on one of the shelves, and pulled out a heavy coin purse. After a moment’s consideration, the man gave her a tiny glass and a little bottle. She paid three times as much as Aleks had for his stout, picked up her purchase and walked straight to the mage’s table, sitting down directly in front of him.

She was in her bleached dragonhide armour, which reflected the sunlight painfully in his direction and made her appear to glow like some ethereal creature. Her hair was loose and almost reaching her shoulders, a far cry from the look she’d had when they’d met, and was supporting a white archer’s hat, complete with feather.

If he had been sober, he might have called her beautiful, holding herself with confidence and grace. In his hungover-trying-to-still-be-drunk state, however, she was an eyesore, watching him fall apart with pretentious judgement and feigned sympathy.

“You look terrible,” she stated as she uncorked her little bottle and poured the clear liquid into her tiny glass. After corking the bottle, she held the glass with both hands and sipped it delicately. After draining half the glass, she set it back on the table and leaned back in her seat, watching him. “So, I guess this is the part where I ask if you want to talk about what’s wrong. But as I already know the answer to that, why don’t we skip that part?”

“Oh go away, Ayla,” Aleks grumbled, looking dourly into his tankard. He would have been ruder to her, like he had been with Tiffy, but he knew better than to be overly antagonistic; even drunk, he knew better. He lifted his glass and took a long drink, almost draining it, before glancing up at her. “I’m not in the mood.”

“Clearly.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“So I’d gathered.”

“And sitting there isn’t going to make me change my mind!”

“Of course not.”

Aleks glowered at her for a moment, hating that she was being the very epitome of calm collectedness. Her face was impassive, showing nothing to indicate the events even bothered her.  Instead, she just continued to look at him, watching, waiting for him to crack and talk to her.

He downed the last of his stout and waved to the bartender. It took a minute before his empty glass was replaced with a full one, and his coin purse a little lighter. He took his first mouthful of the swill, the bitter aftertaste burning the back of his throat.

She was still watching him. He tried to ignore her, but found it increasingly hard to do so. Her very presence was drawing out the desire to talk, in a way that only his brother could rival.

Might as well get it over with.

“It’s all my fault,” he announced quietly into his mug, though he knew she’d heard him. He didn’t see any movement, nor did he hear a request for him to speak up or repeat himself, nothing. He carried on talking to his ale. “If I hadn’t been at the Chaos Temple, no one would have had to come and save me. They wouldn’t have died. I was the one who defeated the creature guarding the Fist of Guthix! I might as well have given it to Lucien! And now he’s even more powerful, he might even have the power to become a god. And it’s all thanks to me!”

He’d said it. He’d finally said it. It almost felt good just to get it off his chest, to admit how badly he’d screwed up. And yet, at the same time, it felt like he’d just sealed his fate, damnation for all eternity and everything that came to failures like him. But, as he already knew: he deserved this pain.

“Wow, how terrible for you,” Ayla commented dryly. She reached for her glass and sipped from it, completely unaware of the indignant fire she’d lit in his stomach, of the rage he felt at his pain being acknowledged so derisively. She returned her glass to the table and played absentmindedly with the rim. “Although, I do think you’re giving yourself too much credit.”

“Credit?” Aleks spat, choking on air. He stared at her, mouth open in shock and disbelief.

How dare she mock him. How dare she make light of the fact that six people were dead, and their enemy was now even stronger!

“Yes, ‘credit’,” she answered. She leaned forward and brought her hands up to rest beneath her chin. She returned his outraged look with a gaze that had suddenly turned steely and unimpressed. “Do you really think the mission would have gone any better if you’d done something different, or if you hadn’t been there at all?”

“Yes!” Aleks argued, his anger at her finally boiling over. “I recruited everyone. I went to the Chaos Temple and dealt with Movario at the Cavern of Guthix. I solved that puzzle and took on the Balance Elemental that was guarding the Fist! Everything that went wrong was my fault!”

“I recruited half of them, so don’t even try and sell me that one!” Ayla sniped back at him, her sharp tone instantly silencing any objection he might have had. “And no one had to join up, they all volunteered for this mission. And they all chose to go and save you when Lucien attacked, they all knew the risks!”

He didn’t answer her; he didn’t know how. A small voice inside of him was agreeing with her, telling him that she was right. But he was somewhere between hungover and returning-to-drunkenness, and it had inflated his pride such that every other part of him was either ignoring that voice or trying to shut it up, unwilling to admit defeat.

“And as for what happened beneath Lumbridge swamp,” she continued. He realised a second too late that his silence had given her the opportunity to speak. She had realised that he couldn’t counter-argue her, and so was moving to the next point. “It wouldn’t have mattered who went down there, whether it was you or me. We both would have handle the obstacles and we both would have left the Stone unprotected.”

“The Fist of Guthix,” he objected moodily.

“It’s the Stone of Jas, and you know that’s what the infernal thing is called!” She snapped, glaring at him for interrupting her over something she clearly thought was trivial. She huffed and seemed to deflate a little, like a bird smoothing down its feathers after being ruffled. “My point is, either of us would have defeated the Stone’s protector and left it wide open for Lucien to steal. It was only you going down there because you thought you might learn more about the God you’ve decided to worship… and because I needed to help Idria sort out the group from the Guardians who were going to teleport in if you needed help.”

“They didn’t help much, did they?” he pointed out, half muttering into the tankard as he took another mouthful. “He still got away with the Fist.”

“Yes, well, we were trying not to get ourselves killed by those twisted demons he’d summoned, in case you’d forgotten,” she answered him snidely. “And we weren’t all powered up from touching the Stone, now, were we?”

He felt his stomach drop as he remembered that she had been in the temple as well, fighting beside Idria to take out one the tormented demons. A quick glance to her right forearm reminded him of the moment she had taken a swipe from the demon’s claws in her friend’s defence, the wound now tightly bandaged.

“Right,” he mumbled ashamedly.

“Either way, Lucien would have gotten the Stone, end of story,” she said, her tone finishing the debate. She took her tiny glass and sipped the last of her drink. She stared at the glass for a moment before sighing and putting it down, looking back at him expectantly. “So, now that we both know that the mission would have been a catastrophe, with or without your help, what’s the real issue here?”

He sighed as he realised that she didn’t understand, couldn’t understand. He had gotten people killed, again. He had screwed up a mission, again. He wasn’t fast enough. He wasn’t powerful enough.

It was dealing with the daganoths all over again.

“Do you want to know why you’re sitting here, drowning your sorrows?” she finally asked him after a few minutes of silence, tilting her head slightly to catch his attention. She had no idea how much his heart clenched at her question, but seemed to take him looking at her as permission to continue. “Because everything you’ve said today has been about you. ‘I did this’ and ‘I did that’ and ‘this is my fault’. It’s as if you think you’re the most important man in Gielinor.”

He opened his mouth to protest, and then shut it again. He was about to tell her about everything that had happened in Rellekka, before realising that that was what she was hoping for. She wanted him to tell her more things that had happened to him, that had gone wrong because of him. If he did, then he was proving her right.

She was goading him. No, she’d been doing it all morning, he was only now realising it.

“Do you really think that everything you’ve been through is so terrible?” she questioned, her face suddenly full of sincerity. She wasn’t asking just to throw him off balance, she actually wanted to know. “Do you really think it’s any worse than what I’ve been through, or what Thom’s going through in Morytania? Do you really think that?”

“What do you want from me, Ayla?” he asked sullenly.

He pushed his mug away and gave her his full attention for the first time since she’d sat down. He knew he was giving her too much power over the next few minutes, but he found himself uncaring. He wanted an answer. He saw her expression flicker slightly as she noticed the change in him, saw the defiance and hidden desperation in his question.

“I want to know what you want, Aleks,” she answered after a minute of silence between them. Her sincere expression hadn’t changed and he knew she was being honest. “I want you to make a choice about what you want to do with your life. Because right now you’re standing between the life of an adventurer and the boring, unexciting life of a museum scholar, and trying to live both is only going to hurt you. You try to own everything you do, everything that happens to you, like a scholar must for recognition, but that attitude makes you take the blame for things that, as an adventurer, you have no control over.”

Her words struck a chord within him. She was right. He was dipping his hands in both pots, and he’d finally gotten a finger bitten, so to speak. So, if he couldn’t live two lives, and he had to commit to one…

Which one did he want?

If he was being honest, he wanted to pretend none of this had happened, go back to Varrock and spend his days dating pottery from the Second Age in the museum. But, he also wanted to make a difference in the world, and dating pottery wouldn’t do that. Also, if he gave up now and became a scholar, the others would have died for nothing, for a coward who ran away at the first sign of trouble. Lucien would still be out there and would still be a threat. If he gave up, there’d be one less adventurer out there to stand up to that maniac.

“I want that bastard’s head on a pike,” he said finally. He grabbed his tankard and drained it before squaring his shoulders and giving Ayla a levelled look. “I want Lucien dead, and the world safe from him. After that… after that, then I can figure out what I want to do with my life.”

“Well, it’s a plan. I guess I can get behind that,” she nodded solemnly to him. She pulled his tankard towards her and uncorked her little bottle. She poured a tiny amount in his glass before adding the same amount to her own. She corked the bottle and raised her glass towards him in a toast. “Justice for our friends?”

“To the death of Lucien.”