I soar above the jungle, towards Quetzalcoatl's domain.
Gorgon might get into trouble without me around to look after her, but all the same, I can hardly stand back and let Chaldea live. There is, after all, the chance, however slight, that they could disrupt Mother's plans, and that cannot be allowed to come to pass.
My hostess looks startled when I land in front of her, before assuming a combat-ready stance and ordering her little charity cases to hide.
"Oh, relax, Quetzalcoatl," I say, waving my hand airily. "If you really thought that I didn't already know about this little… hobby of yours, then you're sadly mistaken. I'm well aware of your little… wrestling league, and this isn't about them."
"Then what is this about, Kingu?" she asks, shooing away some curious soldier that got too close with one hand. "I doubt it's a social call."
"Perhaps it is!" I offer with a smile. "After all, your sunny disposition never fails to brighten my day."
She glares at me, but I keep going. "And that energetic jaguar of yours never fails to amuse. Where is she, by the way? I was rather looking forward to her cat puns."
That was a bald-faced lie.
"I'm afraid she can't make it at the moment. Dreadfully busy, and all that." Quetzalcoatl doesn't let her iron control over her features slip as she looks me in the eye. I almost respect her for that.
"Really?" I keep a friendly smile on my face. "I'd be happy to help her with that. After all, even if we're all competing, we're aiming for the same goal, aren't we? We all want the humans dead, and the gods reigning supreme once more."
"Oh, absolutely," she assures me, not letting her affable mask slip as she lies through her teeth. "But Jaguar was very insistent about not needing any help. It'd hurt her pride if you went and tried to aid her."
"Oh. Well, I'm sorry to hear that I can't help." I smile, watching her relax ever-so-slightly, before I go in for the kill. "Although I've always thought that you work her a bit too hard. After all, she's so loyal, and eager to please! Really, I heard a rumor that she was killed by the Master of Chaldea. Wouldn't you be heartbroken if that had actually happened?"
"What do you want, Kingu?" she asks, her face hardening.
"I wish to hunt down and kill the forces of Chaldea."
"They're not here anymore," she says with a sigh. "They left after they killed Jaguarman."
"Really?" I lash out with one hand, and my chains pierce straight through the chest of the guard who was eavesdropping early, dragging him towards me before I crush his skull with one hand. The body dissolves into the telltale golden motes of a Servant. "Does that include him?"
She sighs. "Just go."
"A pleasure talking with you as always, Quetzalcoatl. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go and deal with your vermin problem."
And then I'm off in the air again, ready to swat the flies of Chaldea.
It takes me nine minutes to reach the sniveling little cowards. They're waiting for me, out in the open. Their master, next to some sort of night in purple, and a bearded fellow in colorful finery. Easy pickings.
"
First Folio."
What the Hell?
I'm not in the forest anymore.
Lacquered wooden planks lie below my feet, and a red curtain hangs before me.
The Master of Chaldea, Flynn, I think his name was, is standing about five feet away from me, looking at me expectantly.
I blink in confusion. What… what just happened?
He edges a bit closer to me, and then whispers, out of the side of his mouth, "Dude, it's your line."
I do the only rational thing and shoot a clay sword at his face. It hits, reducing his head to a bloody paste.
Right, all of this should fade any second now. With the Master dead, the Servants will start running out of mana, and-
"Are you okay?"
There he is, the Master of Chaldea, hale and hearty as ever, looking at me with genuine concern.
Right, right, everybody has the occasional off day, I know that. I shoot him again, and this time, I don't take my eyes off of-
"Look, Director, I think Enkidu's sick!"
SON OF A WHORE!
"Can we please send him to a doctor? I'm not sure what's going on with him, but…"
"No!"
I turn, and I see the bearded man, sitting in the front row the countless seats below this elevated wooden platform Flynn and I are on.
"I will not coddle a defective tool," the man says coldly. "Mary, this one's no good! Dispose of him like the rest!"
The floor drops away beneath me, and I find myself falling, at least until I land on something soft.
Seriously, WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING RIGHT NOW?
I look down to see what I just landed on, and I freeze.
My own face stares back at me. Again, and again, and again. A thousand empty eyes stare sightlessly into the darkness, and a thousand broken bodies lie limp and lifeless. I stand atop a mountain of broken tools, left to rot in the silence beneath the stage.
Just like me.
---
"Alright, welcome to the land of the living, Enkidu!" Flynn says, and I start. "Whoa, easy there, buddy. I get it, born less than a minute ago, but we've got a job to do!"
"I… did I die?" I can't stop staring at my hands. I'm here. I'm alive. As an afterthought, I shoot Flynn in the head. It doesn't stick, but it does shut him up for a second or two. I was… I was in the darkness, but now I'm here. Alive. Did I die down there? Or…
"Am I the replacement?"
"Um… yeah." Flynn scratches the back of his head, while I stare at him in silent irritation. "Look, I make no promises, the director's a total prima donna, but you can do just fine as long as you remember your lines. You've got this, Enkidu."
"My name is
Kingu, I snap, giving him a glare.
"Right, getting into character already!" Flynn slaps me on the back. "You're gonna do great. Alright, script's on the table, and your cue is in another couple of minutes. Try not to miss it, you know how the Director is."
What is he even… ugh. Whatever. I look at the sheaf of paper he pointed to, out of curiosity alone, mind you, and I feel the bottom of my stomach sink.
The Chaldean Theater Group Proudly Presents:
The Death of Kingu
A Tragedy in Four Acts
WHAT IS THIS?
"And I… I have just the plan," Flynn announces dramatically from the direction of the elevated wooden platform we were on.
There's an uncomfortable silence. I suppose I was supposed to enter, but frankly, I can't be damned to play along. I'm too busy flipping desperately through the paper, reading as it almost seems to… illustrate some sort of chronicle of my demise.
"Worthless piece of crap!" the Director roars. "Mary!"
The floor falls away, and I am in my graveyard once more, discarded and-
---
"You doing okay, Enkidu? The last you kind of flaked out on us," Flynn says. I pay him no mind. It's time to end this farce.
I storm out onto the stage, look the Director in the eye, and then I smite the insolent human down. I rise, my chains weaving about each other, bringing ruin to all. And then I hit. "NAMMU DURANKI!"
Then, I'm back on the stage, and nothing has changed.
"NAMMU DURANKI!"
"Is there a point to all of this?" the Director asks, looking bored.
"I AM KINGU, YOU INSOLENT HUMAN FILTH, AND WILL NOT PLAY YOUR GAMES!" I scream. "NAMMU DURANKI!"
"Splendid. This one's both defective
and crazy." He looks up. "MARY!"
I try to jump out of the way, but the floor still drops out from under me, and I am in Hell once more.
---
"Enkidu?" Flynn asks, looking worried. "Are you okay?"
"I…" Am I losing my mind? "I'm fine."
"Look, if you're not up to going out there and giving your lines, then I'll do my best to stall so you can get your head on straight."
I don't need his… Wait. "Lines?"
"Yeah, for the play?" he looks dismayed. "Oh, Jesus, it's worse than I thought."
"What?" I follow along in bewilderment as he leads me along to some sort of… padded bench and sits me down on it.
"Listen. You and I are
actors. We pretend to be fictional people to act out
plays. We read lines of dialogue out loud, and perform predetermined actions in order to tell
stories, all according to the script. Any of this reading a bell?"
"I suppose?" I say weakly. Nothing I do seems to change anything, so… maybe if I play along with the insanity, it'll all be over quicker? Or am I insane? Am
I the crazy one?
"Good, because if you flub your lines, the director's going to chuck you into the Failure Pit." Flynn shudders. "So here. Read through the script. I'll stall for time."
"Thank you."
"No problem. It's the least I could do to help."
---
The play continues on, and Flynn is as good as his word. He helps me rehearse my lines, and he's there for me when I get tossed into the Pit.
I get tossed into the Pit a
lot.
Flynn does too, once or twice. I'm there for him when he wakes up.
It's when we're practicing our lines, one night, between the endless rehearsals, when he asks me.
"So, I noticed that you keep fumbling your lines. What's tripping you up?"
"It feels wrong." I blurt out without thinking.
"What does?"
"The whole play," I admit reluctantly. "It feels like… well… like… Um. A while back, I thought I was Kingu."
"Any idea why?"
"No, no, it's just… some stupid reaction to the stress, I think. I had a whole different version of the script that I thought was reality, and, ah, I'm probably boring you right now."
"No, no, go on, I wanna hear what you came up with."
"Well…" I hesitate, before dismissing my fears as silly. It was just a dream, anyways. Just a stupid dream. "In… well, in my version of the script, the Tiamat up in the north? She wasn't the real Tiamat. The real Tiamat was sleeping under the sea, and she created me to help her wake up so that she could make a new version of humanity."
"What?" he sounds legitimately shocked.
"Yeah, I know, pretty stupid, right?"
"Dude, THAT SOUNDS AWESOME!" he's beaming at me, and I look down. "What else happened? I want to hear everything! It sounds
so much better than the script we've got!"
I blush. "Y-You really think so?"
"Yeah. Hold on, I want to take notes. I'm going to try and talk the Director into using your version of the script." He fumbles around, and eventually produces a notepad. "So, underwater Tiamat, huh? So where does the Tiamat in the north fit into all of this?"
"Well, that was my doing, actually…"
---
It's the last scene, and I feel like I'm about to puke. Flynn actually
did manage to talk the director into revising the script, and since then, we've actually been making progress! We're almost out of rehearsals! Just
this one, final scene to go.
So of course I'm terrified that I'm going to get chucked back into the Failure Pit. Flynn's here with me, though, talking me through my anxiety.
"All right, Enkidu, you've got this! You
know you've got this!" he pats me on the back as we sit backstage in our costumes, him in the white uniform, and me in my white gown. "Come on, let's go over the scene again."
"All right. So, I confront you after leaving Quetzalcoatl behind, and then, I deliver my dramatic threats, you give your one-liner, and then I get stabbed in the back by Suzy." I sigh. "And then I give my dramatic dying monologue. Okay, you know what? I'm just going to stay it: This ending sucks."
"I know," Flynn says ruefully. "The one-liner's not very good either. But we've been at this for weeks, and I for one, really want this damn dress rehearsal
over."
"True that," I say with a tired grin. "But still, why would Rule Breaker kill Kingu in one shot? I t doesn't make any sense."
"Hell if I know," Flynn says. "I think the Director said something about her breaking it or something? I didn't really get it. But I
do know that once we ace this on the first try, and the Director finally lets us leave, we're getting drinks to celebrate, and the first round's on me."
I grin, and we start to make our way up to the stage, when I catch sight of the prop in Suzy's hands.
"Um, Flynn?"
"Yeah?"
"Are you
sure that's a collapsible dagger?"
"Yeah, pretty sure."
"It's just kind of, well, twisted, and I can't help but worry…"
"Hey." Flynn gives me a look. "Would I lie to you?"
"Yeah, you're right." I give him a smile. "I trust you."
And then it's out onto the stage, and everything's going smoothly.
"Fool!" I roar, hamming it up as I gesture wildly. "So long as I hold the Grail within me, I will never die!"
"So you say, dear Kingu," Flynn says, but it's missing his usual energy. "But my teacher is a mighty witch, and she's not one for rules."
I feel the dagger sink into my back, and I'm in the forest again, as the Director shuts his book, and my best friend, the man
who was playing me from the start just stares at me sadly.
I feel the world crumble around me.
"RULE BREAKER!"
And then I feel no more.
