Collide Gamer

“Alright, I’ve had enough of this gimmick,” John announced.

They had just returned from a trip to some madman’s zoo, filled to the brim with extremely aggressive porcupines. It had been entertaining in a way, but also the last surprise that John could stomach for that evening.

“You want to call it a night?” Maximillian asked.

“I want to sit down somewhere steady and hammer some more drinks with you lot.”

“I’mma… have to throw in the towel,” Ted drunkenly mumbled. It was impressive that he had lasted so long, considering his pace. “Thanks for havin’ me… I know I ain’t… as close…” It was the sentimental confession that took a very drunk man to make.

John wasn’t going to deny it, neither was he going to confirm it. He just patted Ted on the shoulder. “Thanks for being here, man. You’ll get home fine or do you want to crash on a bed for a few hours first?”

“I’ll get home,” Ted slurred. There was just enough will in his eyes that John believed him. Hands were shaken in goodbye. The general swayed off. The final confirmation John needed that Ted would be fine was that he made for the staircase. He knew to go get a ferry to carry him over to the Military District. As generals, he and Chemilia had a permanent quarter there.

The trio moved into the Palace. At first, it drew John towards the gathering rooms, but he sourly noted that they were being used as the meeting places of various guests. He couldn’t blame them for going with the intended purpose, but it went against the quiet he craved now.

“Let’s go to my room.”

“Your room?” Magnus asked. “You mean your apartment?”

“No.” John pulled his eyebrows together. “I suppose I never did show you this one…”

They just had to climb the stairs, then the workings of the Palace had the door appear right in front of them. It was unassuming and John wanted it that way. He pushed it open, revealing his scarcely used office.

It was an odd room. A central walkway separated two wings, each filled with plinths and glass cases, containing various treasures that John kept for purposes of memory. The walkway went up to a desk that was, for all of its hardwood quality, relatively simple.

“Your trophy room?” Maximillian asked.

“Yeah.” John stopped by the plinth closest to the desk. Affectionately, he put his hand on the glass case that covered the golf ball underneath. The item had brought him much solace over the years.

Magnus noticed his tipsy emperor’s attachment. “What’s the history with that?”

“It’s a golf ball I took back from the game with Abraham. I toss it around when I need to think,” John said and stepped away from the plinth. “Make yourself at home.”

“Not a very homely room.” Though Maximillian’s tone was jovial, he was correct. The room was not designed for long-term dwelling. It was too open, the colours too cold, the items too manifold. It was like trying to relax in a museum. All the same, they put three chairs around the desk and cracked open the next drink.

John made the switch from vodka-O to gin tonic. Now that he was home, he was willing to actually fry his braincells. When he tasted the mixture, the alcohol was a clear note beneath the bitter tonic water. After all the sweet orange juice, it was a harsh and pleasant hit.

“What about that one?” Maximillian asked and pointed at a small pile of metal shards, covering the range of the elemental colour spectrum.

“Remnants of the first Sylkarion I used,” he explained. “It’s all Celexium… probably could have a better use for them.”

“And that?”

“That’s the pen I used to sign the peace deal with the Lake Alliance.”

“And that?”

“Pipe I smoked during my meeting with the Hidden Tradition.” The Gamer’s face turned a bit sour when he recalled the occasion. “It’s when I met Ahanu.”

“He still hasn’t forgiven you?” Maximillian asked.

“And he won’t – he can’t.” John emptied the glass in one quick draw, eager to get the fire in his veins. He quieted the burp against his knuckles, then poured himself another glass. He made the next mixture a bit stronger. “I built walls out of his people’s corpses. What kind of leader would he be if he forgave me?”

“A good one,” Maximillian stated and crossed his arms. “Buddy, it’s not your job to take the sins of the world on your shoulders. The Hidden Tradition was trying to leverage an ordinary deal during extraordinary circumstances. You forced them to pull their weight. Ahanu shouldn’t have put you in that position to begin with.”

John sipped on his drink in brooding quiet. He was thankful that Maximillian took his side like that, but he couldn’t earnestly believe this. “That’s one of my favourites,” he said, to force the topic to change, and pointed at another trophy. It was just a gun-sword, a contraption that some Abyssals favoured because it added an extra option to the traditional slashing weapon.

“Where is it from?” Magnus asked.

“During Collide’s first weeks here, after we had taken over Liberty Island, Scarlett and I managed to goad a coalition of the locals to attack. We crushed them utterly. I kept that sword as a reminder.”

Maximillian produced an amused sound. “You really like your trophies.”

“It’s my gamer’s mind.” John spun in the swivel chair, a decision he regretted swiftly. He came to a still, but his perception didn’t, he was getting drunk quickly. Not that it had taken much to get him there. “Categorizing, ordering and inventorying help me destress. Plus, I like to stroke my ego by being surrounded by marks of my success.” He put a hand on the curve of his neck into his shoulder, where a set of human teeth had left a permanent mark. “And to check it by surrounding myself with marks of my failures.”

Maximillian poured himself a full glass from a bottle of wine. The expensive red looked misplaced in a glass that not only was shaped for regular drinks but also had contained them several minutes ago. “…You know, I hate being the one to compliment you, but it’s your night and you deserve to hear it out of a friend’s mouth for once, instead of your little army of lovers.” He wetted his lips on the drink. “You know you’re almost comedically good, right?”

John snorted. “I’m not a good person,” he disagreed immediately. “I try to be, but I am not. The best I can be is decent.”

“Bullshit!” The harsh word did not come from the gravity king. Both John and Maximillian turned towards Magnus, who swirled the whiskey in his hand with undirected anger. “I’m not going to sit here and say that you’re some saint, but neither am I taking your self-deprecating spiel right now.”

“Yeah, I have no idea why or when you convinced yourself that someone with power can never be good, but you don’t deserve to put yourself through that all the time,” Maximillian remarked.

‘Is this how Eliana feels when I chastise her?’ John wondered shifting uncomfortably at the genuine concern that his friends were offering him. It was a nice feeling to be cared for, but it made him too self-conscious. ‘I hate it,’ he thought to himself. “Virtue requires adversity.”

“Have you ever considered that it’s adversity enough for you not to be a tyrant?”

“Inaction cannot be moral.”

“Why not?” Maximillian asked. “This is something about your moral philosophy that I never understood. You ground yourself in your failures when you could envelop yourself in your exceptionalism instead.”

“That way lies the delusion of grandeur.”

“It’s not a delusion, John! Look around you!” Maximillian gestured at the trophy room. “You’re an emperor, by Romulus and his realm! In two years you have made yourself one of the most powerful men the Abyss has ever known. A bit of indulgence would serve you well. You make the rest of us men of calibre look shameless with your humility.”

“Which is all the more confusing since you keep acting on the will to power,” Magnus muttered into his glass.

John just leaned back in his chair, chewing the inside of his cheek. “Look… if I don’t put myself down like this, I just don’t trust myself to not lose myself in arrogance.”

“Problem I am having is that you are so determined to make yourself ‘not a good man’ that you take on responsibilities you shouldn’t and avoid honours that are rightfully yours.” Maximillian shook his head. “You’re still the person that fought two years against the fact that you were a de-facto monarch already.”

“That was a unique circumstance.”

Magnus immediately disagreed, “It was the emergent decision of who you are. You like solving other people’s problems for them. You see a continent and decide you are the one who can fix it.”

“Which is profoundly arrogant – until it isn’t,” Maximillian stated. “Because you’ve done it.”

“And I have boasted about it plenty,” John responded. “So, what is this about me being humble?”

“You are boasting in the weirdest of ways,” the king pushed back. “You aren’t shy about what you have accomplished, but it never goes deeper than your skin. You give an entire speech about lifting thousands out of poverty, then end it by saying you’re not a good man. You’re surrendering the moral position that is rightfully yours. You are the sovereign.”

“And on the balance of my actions-”

Magnus threw his hands in the air in exasperation. “You did good! You are a man that did good! Gaia almighty, John, stop with the loathing!”

The Gamer was about to shout something back and barely stopped himself. He was getting annoyed now – not because they were wrong but because their tone irked him immensely. Had they not been his friends, he would have dismissed them because of the disrespect. They were his friends, however, the best ones he had.

Maximillian spoke quietly and insistently, “I will impart with you a revelation I had recently… we are going to raise children, you and I.”

The words made John suddenly sit straighter. On the fronts of marriage and fatherhood, the gravity king was just a few months ahead, but a few months could make a mountain worth of difference.

“One night I lay awake in bed, staring at the ceiling, thoughts circling around how I would raise my heir. For over an hour, I wondered if I could ever be up to that task. I still wonder, I admit.” Maximillian drained the red from his glass, then poured himself another glass. “All I know is that no unworthy man will educate my children in the proper way of governing the world. I must believe in my own virtue enough that I think it’s worthy to be passed on.” The dark eyes of the king suddenly focused on John. The irises had a purple tinge to them, a manifestation of the quarter elemental nature of the man. “Would you have your children be raised by anything short of a good man?”

“Of course not,” John surrendered.

“Then you have to give up on the moral system that makes suffering so much more powerful than accomplishment. Whatever makes you understand yourself as not a good man, it’s just a stop gap on you learning proper humility… which you don’t even need.” Maximillian stopped and shook his head. “I will say it again, you are almost comedically good. It’s a detriment, really.”

“I thought that this was supposed to be a compliment?” John asked, dryly.

“It was, but then you had to be all ‘woe is me, I do not suffer enough to be good’… It occurs to me you’d probably be one of those monks that whip themselves in another life.”

“…Yeah, could be,” the Gamer agreed with a sigh. “I get your logic… and I don’t know if I can change that about me.” He took another sip. “I’ve seen people and have myself overcome many flaws over the years, but some just keep rearing their ugly heads. No human is perfectible.”

“Or elf or succubus or dwarf or…” Maximillian listed a couple of races, before drifting off. “You never fixed your habit of using ‘humanity’ in your speeches.”

“It’s difficult,” John groaned. “I just try to use ‘people of Fusion’ wherever I can. How is it that you don’t have a word that encompasses all of the sapient races? The closest we have is Abyssals and even that is commonly used for magic-knowing humans. It doesn’t actually include elves and such.”

“Ask a linguist,” Maximillian responded.

“How do you get around it then?”

“I just don’t hold speeches that cover such grand topics as the very nature of all sapient life,” Maximillian responded. “I am a humble king.”

John and Magnus snorted in unison at that assertion. “You spend more money on your socks than I do on my house,” the Fateweaver pointed out.

“Because I am a king.” Maximillian struck a regal pose, though he did so with a bit of sway in his seat. “It is my obligation to present myself in a manner befitting the quality of my rule. As embodiment of Austria’s prosperity, I must appear every bit as glorious as my reign is.”

“See, that’s the kind of statement I don’t want to make,” John groaned. “I feel like sentences like that usually come out of tyrannical madmen.”

“You know what the difference between tyrannical madmen and you and I is? We are right!” The gravity king rolled a shoulder. “It is a sign of weakness and moral cowardice not to dare venture where lesser men have before, for fear you may be mistaken for one of them. Will you carry the torch of your duty or will you be paralysed because you are measured to those that have failed it?”

“…You know, I think I am going to ask you for some pointers on raising a prince at some point,” John said. “Not sure if I want my son to grow up as self-certain as you are, but I doubt it’ll serve them to be raised like they’re the kids of a middle-class engineer.”

“Indeed, it would not. Those of power are best raised to be familiar with that power. There are a few books I can lend you once you head over.”

The night ticked on by, minute by minute, hour by hour. They sat there, as three, chatting and drinking, until their tongues were heavy from liquor and their vocal cords roughened from annoyed sneers, loud laughter, and simple talking.

When it came to it, they simply all decided to pack it up and retreat. All their stays were within the Palace, though they symbolically split at the door, letting the magical paths take them home.

John entered his apartment to the smell of breakfast and the bowing of his maid. “Welcome home, Ma-“ they managed to say, before he drunkenly stumbled forwards, falling into Aclysia and Beatrice’s arms.

“Love you,” he mumbled, then demanded, “Carry me to my bed!”

He was out the moment he hit the mattress.