Vayal Academy

“Hattie?”

“Yeah?”

“This sucks.”

“Tell me about it.”

“You wanna keep looking for an exit?”

“Probably not, right? We should just wait for another team to win.”

“Gods. To think we got so close… You know, if the vamps didn’t get all crazy…”

“There’s plenty of blame to go around, Alyx.”

“Really? I think you comported yourself well. I certainly found you impressive.”

“Stop that. I’m serious.”

“I don’t see why you even care. This worked out well for you. You’ve had Mae locked down since they put us on the same fucking team for some reason.”

“Their reasons were good.”

“Oh, there you go again. Daughter of the Legion. Daddy’s Little Jackboot. Never met a rule she didn’t like.”

“So what? What’s wrong with following the rules? With doing the right thing?”

“They’re not the same! Most of the time following the rules means doing the wrong thing.”

“Like when?”

“Like when the rules say kill your fellow woman. Burn her house down. Salt her fields. Conquer and destroy. War’s a sickness, Hattie, and it only happens when people follow rules instead of instincts. An instinct never wiped a culture off the map.”

“What are you talking about? Monsters have instincts — it makes them maim and tear. Civilisation is-”

“No, no, no! Hattie! You’re crazy! We’re good people when we strip all that away. Like, sure, mistakes happen, maybe someone gets clubbed over like, I don’t know, a really nice berry bush, or, you know, whatever, but that’s the aberration. That’s the freak. That’s the kind of guy who gets thrown out of the tribe for being a freak. The guy swinging the club, I mean, is the freak. But instinct, Hattie, that’s a beautiful thing. Our instinct is to kiss and hug and touch. This whole contest is how they sort things in a tribe-based society.”

“What? No it’s not. This is a contest of rules. This is civilisation; the Empire.”

“If we were doing this the Empire’s way I would’ve killed you, and that’d be the end of you. You wouldn’t mean anything to me, because you’d be an enemy. But instead you mean a great deal to me-”

“Don’t do that.”

“What?”

“You know.”

“...”

“...”

“I’m sorry, Hattie, but I really don’t.”

“I didn’t want to be a Seer, okay, I wanted to be a Destructionist, like my mother, and I was even happy to go with it when the orb went blue for a minute. But I am. I’m a Seer. That’s the way it has to be. I’m accepting it, but I can’t control these abilities, as much as I want to, so I don’t want to spy on you-”

“You’re just drawn to me.”

“But I keep doing it. I keep seeing you. I’ve seen you fuck Nym, Vila, Indel. And, and, you-you, Gods, Alyx, you have Vila on a fucking leash, you have Nym falling over herself for even a look of approval from you, and I don’t even think that’s the last of it-”

“I mean it was just once with Svelgi.”

“Svelgi?!”

“She’s in my class!”

“So all this and more, right? All this, and more. But you want Mae, you want me. Why? You just wanna go through these women-”

“Woah, woah, woah. Woah. Hang the fuck on. You make it sound like a bad thing.”

“It is a bad thing! Using people-”

“No. I don’t accept that.”

“Accept it? It doesn’t matter what you accept. I’ve seen it.”

“No. No, Hat, you- you haven’t. You’ve seen a lot of love, and that’s it. That’s what it is. That’s what it all is.”

“What you do to Vila-”

“Is love. What else could it be? I think she’s delightful.”

“You can’t possibly love them all.”

“Can’t I? I’m from a tribe — there were like eighty of us, out in the forest, and I loved every single one of them. Not all in, you know, that way, but a lot of them, yeah, in that way. We’re all born with love to give. We’re all born with so much love to give. And I can love Mae, and Nym, and Vila, and Svelgi — Svelgi just for a night, but that doesn’t make it any less real.”

“I- Alyx, that- That just can’t be right. Running around with Nym behind Syrene’s back-”

“Come on. I’m helping her. She doesn’t know what she wants to do with Syrene. Doesn’t know if she loves her, hates her, no idea either way — the one thing she does know is that she likes getting me off. She loves it. And I love it too! Just like I love her. She’s my friend.”

“...”

“...”

“...”

“...”

“Alyx?”

“Yeah?”

“I don’t really get you, still. And…”

“Yeah?”

“Tell me something?”

“Of course.”

“You’re telling me ‘I love Nym, I love Vila, I love Mae.’ But I’ve never seen you tell them that.”

“W-well, that’s, you know, that’s irrelevant.”

“I don’t think it is.”

“...”

“I think it’s relevant.”

“...”

“It’d make what you’re doing a lot better, if you told them.”

“What!? They know. They know I love ‘em, they don’t need me to- to, you know, restate it every time.”

“Do you love me?”

“Of course.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Of course. You’re my friend.”

“But you won’t say it.”

“It’s not like you’ll say it to me.”

“I only love Mae.”

“Okay now that’s just not fucking true. You love Indel. We like, all know you love Indel. Did you really think nobody realised?”

“Indel is…”

“...”

“Uhm.”

“...”

“Indel’s…”

“Someone you love.”

“No!”

“...”

“Mae’s the only one for me.”

“Oh Gods, Hattie, you can just be exhausting sometimes.”

Ten minutes pass in silence.

“Hey, Hattie, you wanna take something?”

“What?”

“Wisterwile?”

“I don’t… Look, dad taught me not to-”

“Come on. It’s literally an arcane simulation. It’s like the safest possible place. And once you’re out, Mae can sober you up. Wouldn’t you rather like, pass the time? It’s so fucking boring down here.”

“I’ll drink with you. Drinking’s fine.”

“You’d do wile with Mae.”

“I would.”

“Gods, she’s got her claws in us. You, now, I guess, given the win. Here.”

“Fucking hell, how strong did you make it?”

“Well we gotta make up for lost time. We’ve been down here, what, an hour? Two?”

“One and a half, I think.”

“So let’s drink drink drink until someone gets over the finish line.”

“Who’s gonna win, do you think?”

“I mean if Invention are secure enough that they can send two team members on a little side mission to fuck with us… probably them. At least we took Sai out.”

“You think so? We’re not dead.”

“Shit, guess so. Well, even if she’s alive, she’s probably stuck down here, just like us.”

“Better hope she doesn’t find you.”

“Eh, Hattie, it’s all water under the bridge, you know? It’s all good. She understands that it’s a contest, you know, a game? She’s into it. I doubt she’s happy with me, per se, but I’m sure she knows it’s just another strategy.”

“I’d be pretty pissed, if I were her.”

“Yeah? If I did that with Mae?”

“Even when you did it with Indel.”

“Hah. You’re admitting it?”

“Just a little.”

“I needed a Princess on short notice. You’d do the same, if you were behind.”

“I mean. I guess I can’t fault you. It was for Mae, and, yeah, I understand your motivation. I’d do anything for her.”

“We both would.”

“...”

“...”

“Hattie?”

“Yeah?”

“Want another drink?”

“Please. Thank you.”

“I’m so fucking jealous of you.”

“You’ve got lots of other girls to console you.”

“Not enough.”

“Okay, Alyx, not to retread old ground, but how can that possibly be true?”

“Okay, okay, alright. Let’s put it this way. And let this be the end of it. Because you’ll either understand what I mean, or it’ll be totally foreign to you, and you’ll have no idea at all. And if you don’t, then nothing I do could possibly explain it to you: I have a lot of love to give. When I see a girl like you, I just wanna make her happy. And if you’re happy on your knees, then, I mean, well that just works out for all of us.”

“Okay let’s say that I’m someone who feels the same way; someone who loves you. And the thing that would make me happiest of all is for us to have a normal relationship, where it’s just the two of us.”

“In that case I’d unfortunately have to let you go. And it would be very painful if this hypothetical girl was you because, again, you’re gorgeous, but there’s nothing else for it — I really do just love and love and love. I’d hope you understand that, but if not…”

“It just seems crazy to me. Like I cannot wrap my head around it.”

“Yes you can.”

“What? No, I-”

“You love Mae; you love Indel. You’ve already got your head around it. Then it’s just one small step off the cliff, one tiny little hoof forward where you admit you have these feelings, and you don’t run from them, you don’t try to hide them. You say ‘Mae, Indel, I like you both, and I want to be with both of you.’ They’ll get it.”

“Mae said quite explicitly that she won’t get it.”

“No. She said it’d get too confusing with three people fucking. That’s not mutually exclusive with us all dating. We’d just take turns. Or show off for her. Come on. Admit it. You loved that night, after the Banquet. Cos I sure did.”

“...”

“Come onnnnn.”

“Yeah. Okay. Fine. It was fucking hot. I-”

“Would do it again?”

“Maybe. If Mae asked.”

“Hattie?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m really drunk.”

“Me too.”

“Can I lie on you?”

“Sure, why not.”

“...”

“...”

“Wow.”

“Wow?”

“Your tusks are really pretty from down here.”

“Oh. Um. Thank you. I… Are you sure?”

“Undoubtedly.”

“It’s just, I never thought anyone would…”

“Like them? Like you? We’re all falling over ourselves for you. You’re like the most popular girl on campus. I think even Abana’s obsessed with you.”

“I don’t like that.”

“Oh yeah she’s like, fucked up in some major way, clearly, but that’s religion for you. I guess Posy’s real nice though — almost too nice.”

“I’d like to get to know her better.”

“You know she’s like me?”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“Okay, well, yeah, mostly she’s not like me. But she was born wrong, like me.”

“Woah; are you allowed to just share that?”

“I mean. I don’t see it as something to hide. Or be ashamed of. I’m proud of my choices. She should be too. Other than the choice to become a priestess. That’s fucked up.”

“Her beliefs are-”

“Oh, forget the beliefs — she’s not allowed to fuck! Can you believe that? And she’s so cute, too. It’s almost cruel, like, to the world, cutting herself off like that. Just like Mae’s being cruel to us. Although you bare some blame.”

“What?”

“Hattie, if you’d just listened to me, we could’ve- look, isn’t this nice? Me lying on your lap? Passing a skin back and forth? Getting fucked up together? We could’ve skipped all these events and had a week without classes, me and you, spending all this nice time together. You think Mae could resist that for long?”

“I-”

“...”

“I worry you’re trying to backdoor your way into cancelling this contest, now that you’ve lost it.”

“Come on.”

“You have to admit-”

“Okay. Yeah. I might do it. It’s the sort of thing I might do. But not to you; not to Mae. I really do- look, do you, do you really not get it by now? This is all about you. All of it. I want you to see that I care. I want you to see that I, I don’t know, Hattie, I just- I can’t take my eyes off you. I wish you’d give me a chance.”

“...”

“...”

“...”

“...”

“I think you’re like. Insanely sexy, Alyx.”

“You do?”

“Yeah.”

“You really mean that?”

“Gods, yes. I… Sometimes I watch you, with the visions — again, by accident, let me stress, by accident — but, I, hah, I start to understand why Mae likes watching so much.”

“Hattie, don’t even worry about it; you can watch me any time. Vila loves showing off — she knows so many tricks.”

“Uhm. Okay.”

“I love when you blush. Purple’s such a lovely colour.”

“I-”

“I can stop.”

“No. It feels nice.”

“You’d think it’s the first time someone’s stroked your cheek.”

“I-”

“Hattie?”

“Yeah?”

“Can I kiss you?”

“Uhm. Oh. Uhm.”

“Hattie?”

“Y-yes?”

“I… love you.”

“You can kiss me.”