(TPOR) Chapter 82: Back My Play (Patreon)

Zed woke up with a searing headache. It was as if someone had poked his brain with a needle, treading a path through his eye.

His head lay helplessly on the grass and there was a commotion ensuing around him. Loud voices filled the air and a threat or two flew by.

He rolled, turning on his side and was met with countless pairs of feet, more than two armored. Whatever was going on, it was worsening his headache.

“You’re awake.”

Zed squinted through the soft touch of the bioluminescent flowers of the forest to see Big Man Desolate watching him.

“It was a bit touch and go there for a while,” Desolate told him. “We thought we wouldn’t get you back. At all.”

Zed stared at Desolate only one question coming to mind.

“Do you bleed?” he asked.

Big Man Desolate blanched and Zed knew he’d taken him by surprise.

“Hell of a time to pick a movie quote,” Big Man Desolate said.

Zed nodded slowly, looking around. Despite how slow his nod was, his head ached as if someone was tossing his brain around in a big box.

“Yea,” he said, still looking around. “A movie quote. Which one was it, again? I tend to forget the details of these things.”

“The one about the superheroes fighting each other,” Big Man Desolate answered. “Are you sure you don’t need to remain lying down?”

Zed hadn’t even known he was getting up. Regardless, if his body wanted to get up, far be it from him to stop it.

He pushed himself to a seated position and rested his arm on a raised knee, supporting his head with it. He had memories to sort through and felt he needed a grasp on the current situation going around him while he did.

“What’s up with them?” he asked Big Man Desolate, gesturing at the gathering with a tilt of his head.

“Oh, that?” Big Man Desolate chuckled. “Just some guy trying to get his imagined relationship back together.”

Zed gave a slower nod as though he understood. Big Man Desolate continued on but Zed was no longer interested in whatever he had to say. Instead, he stared at the notification in front of him.

· You have unraveled [Pocket memory(incomplete)] (who am I?) 1/4.

· [Pocket memory(incomplete)] (who am I?) remaining 3/3

· Duration to next unraveling: 00:04:42.

Zed stared at the notification, unbothered. Now that he knew what it was, or at least what it was supposed to be, he wasn’t so bothered by it. It wasn’t an unknown. Perhaps there had been a part of him that had known at an instinctual level what it was. Or maybe he’d simply continued trusting it from the very beginning because it had been guiding him, leading him. It had given him some sense of direction.

“So that’s what you are,” he muttered to it.

“How did you find out?”

Zed refocused his attention on Big Man Desolate, the hair on the back of his neck standing on edge. There had been no joviality in the man’s voice. In fact, there had been something deadly in it, something menacing.

“Find out what?” he asked, watching his tone, doing his best to sound inferior. Even now, he couldn’t feel the man’s aura. He couldn’t begin to guess just how strong he was; how much damage he could inflict.

“How,” Big Man Desolate started slowly, “did you know what I am?”

“Uhh… I don’t know what you are,” he answered, suspicious. “And shouldn’t the correct word be who you are?”

Big Man Desolate watched him like a cop watches a suspect for a moment before letting out an easy breath. The growing tension between them broke like a cut thread, gone as if it had never been, and Zed wondered what that was about.

“So that’s what that’s about,” Big Man Desolate said. “Your little friend just has to pray your friends think she’s worth continuing to fight over considering how she handled your other friend with the accusation and all that.”

“Shanine?” Zed asked. “What happened to her?”

“Are you sure you’re okay, man of culture? I just told you the whole story. Alright. I’ll go again. What happened was—”

“Can I get an abridged version?” Zed asked gently.

Big Man Desolate paused. “Okay,” he agreed. “Long story short. Abed just stepped in, saw his long thought dead girlfriend who is actually a whore he pays for a lot, and wants her back. Your friends, however, are quite opposed to it, so are the VHF guys.”

Zed got up too quickly and was hit with a bout of vertigo. He staggered once and Big Man Desolate watched him skeptically without moving to help.

Zed placed a hand against the side of his head, trying to stop the world from spinning around him. His mind swayed with thoughts of his new memories. He’d been one of a few kids in a research institute before the second awakening, and he’d had friends. It was hard to think he’d been acting almost civilized with them. The entire memory he hadn’t even cracked a single joke. Just how much difference existed between him then and him now.

An unconscious hand touched just under one of his eyes, another difference coming to him.

“Hazel,” he muttered to himself. He couldn’t believe he actually hadn’t been lying when he’d told Ronda his eyes hadn’t been green before the second awakening.

I was just talking out of my ass, though.

“I’ll gut him like a trout and take her!” someone bellowed from the gathering. “Even if I have to go through you. No one takes what is mine from me.”

“I was never yours!” Shanine shouted back.

“Don’t be like that, darling,” the person who’d shouted said in a soft tone. “I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you, but I’m here now. I’m—”

“Don’t touch her!” another person barked, the voice feminine, and everything burst back into a chaos of voices.

“See,” Big Man Desolate said, as if it explained anything. “Always knew Abed was delusional.”

Zed said nothing, his mind trying its best to focus as it split between Shanine’s voice and his still flooding memories.

He could remember more than just the scene he’d seen. His time in the institute at the hands of the mages had most likely been fruitful for them, but his new memories helped him explain some of the old ones that had plagued him since waking up in this forest.

For starters, he was the sixteen-year-old boy. Young and reasonable. As for the memories of other people he’d had, those were called dreamscapes, artificial memories mind mages had somehow drafted his mind into for reasons he didn’t remember right now.

No, he disagreed with himself, not artificial, something else’s. he was sure of it.

Whatever it really was, it was felt too real to be artificial. Too complex. And he doubted a Rukh rank mage was strong enough to pull off such a feat. He’d seen mages of that rank and none of them felt that powerful.

“Wanna go see what’s happening?” Big Man Desolate asked him.

Zed nodded.

“But let me be sure I’m getting this right,” he said. “Abed wants Shanine because she’s his girlfriend, but Shanine doesn’t want him because she was never his girlfriend.”

“Yup. Just a night woman with services he paid a lot of money for from time to time.”

Zed wanted to nod but couldn’t risk the headache.

“Hey, Freddie,” he said, instead.

Big Man Desolate looked at him with a soft smile that was terribly wrong on his desiccated face. “Yes, man of culture.”

“Back my play?”

“And what’s your play?”

Zed shrugged. “Mages don’t need to be good, but some of us can be.”

A solemn look crossed Big Man Desolate’s face for a moment and he shook his head sadly. “You have no idea what magic can do to some people, do you?”

“Magic hasn’t changed me, though,” Zed said with a smirk, even though he doubted every facet of his own words.

“Are you sure?” Big Man Desolate asked, a knowing smile on his face. “Can you truly say you haven’t changed, man of culture?”

Zed refused to dwell on it.

“Back my play?” he repeated, instead.

Big Man Desolate shrugged. “Why not. I’ve always wanted to keep Abed away from something he wanted, anyway. It’s the only reason I’m still in that useless town.”

Zed’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”

“He wants the town to himself,” Big Man Desolate explained. “He’s even trying to get VHF to help him take what control the others have from them. I, personally, don’t want him to have it.”

“Why?” Zed asked. “Because you don’t want to let go of your power?”

“Nope. Don’t really care about the place, or the people. I came here for other reasons.”

“Then why? Do you hate him or something?”

“Nope, never met the man in my life. And if I’m being honest, he’s kind of okay compared to the others. I mean, one of them’s a pimp preying on weak little girls.”

“I believe that’s horrible,” Zed said. “But there’s always worse.”

“True,” Big Man Desolate agreed. “But there’s always better, too.”

“If that’s not the reason you want to take from Abed, then why?”

Big Man Desolate shrugged.

“You have no reason?”

Big Man Desolate gave him an impish smile. “Will ‘just because I can’ suffice?”

Zed simply shook his head. He didn’t really care; he’d just been curious. What mattered was that Big Man Desolate backed his play.

Why was not important.

As Peter used to say, I don’t care how I got it as long as I got it.

Zed paused, befuddled. That’s a stupid thing to say.

“Alright,” he said. “Let’s go keep Shanine from the hands of a pervert. I’m sure there are likely rules of engagement so you’ll handle that part.”

More than ever, Zed wished he had Nurifa around. In the institute, his friendship with the boy had served as a deterrent to conflicts. No one wanted to fight with someone who was friends with a boy large enough to look down at the top of an adult’s head. A small feeling rose within him at the thought and he knew what it was even if he didn’t like how it tasted.

He missed the three boys he hadn’t remembered since waking up.

Without dwelling on the emotion, he sequestered it away in a corner of his mind where he could study it later and took a step forward. The brief conversation with Big Man Desolate had done his headache some good and it didn’t hurt so much anymore.

Zed took a step forward and his leg wobbled under him. He tipped forward and the ground rushed to meet him.

“Shit,” he muttered, staring at a new notification before he hit the ground.

· Duration to next unraveling: 00:00:02.

· Unraveling [Pocket memory(incomplete)] (who am I?) 1/3.

· You have unlocked memory [A Dubious Escapade].

“Man down!” Big Man Desolate announced, and Zed heard the glaring lack of alarm in his voice. If anything, he was more than certain he could almost smell the amusement.

For the briefest moment, he wondered if the man was the right person to be backing his play. Then he heard the mage’s voice right next to his ear.

“Oh yea,” Big Man Desolate whispered. “I forgot to add that Madam Shaggy’s also here. You know, the man you’re trying to insist is a woman. And just in case you didn’t know, she’s your girl’s actual owner, so it’s going to be hard to back your play all the way. Not that I won’t, though. After all, we men of culture have to learn to stick together.”

Zed tried to complain, but no sound came from his throat. Instead, pain gathered around him and plunged him into darkness.

His memories came rushing up at him and Shanine was a bygone, forgotten like a desolate wasteland after countless years.