Chapter 33 Antagonists
Somehow, Em had gotten away. Maybe it was cruel fate. Maybe her ex-friends decided she was no longer worth it. Maybe it was a cliché trope. All that mattered was that she managed to write herself out of Mercer Village and whisk herself away as far as possible.
Inky might’ve been dead and no longer able to communicate with her, but at least the broken pen could still teleport her about—even though it couldn’t resurrect itself, which was a damn problem.
Rain pelted at Em and thunder growled from the dark skies. Her bruised ankles dragged a little more behind her as she limped forward. She spat and winced past the frigid showers, all of Novella weeping in grief at her sins.
The ripped edges of her sleeves soaked up the drying bits of blood from where Sasha had sliced her, slowly washing away in the rain.
The horrid words of her story still clung to every inch of her skin, taunting her with the hundreds of failures and mistakes she’d made.
The dark hood she stole might have hidden her face, but she could see the small print along the tip of her nose, tucked in the notches of her collarbone, and weaving down the front of her blouse along her breasts.
Ahead, the Cursed-But-Once-Uncursed-Tower loomed. Its shadowy presence cut through the dark storm, silent and still compared to her hammering heart. The sulfur reek of orcs filled the shrieking winds. Gnarled trees leered at her past the flickering lightning in the clouds.
Even with all of Novella in her grasp, she had nowhere else to turn to. If anyone might understand her or possessed the power to resurrect Inky, it was unfortunately Kriqir.
Em’s blood smeared along the cobblestones behind her, staining the puddles. She clung to Inky’s remains against her chest, the feathered pen tickling at her wheezing collarbone as she gasped for air. Her head still spun with exhaustion.
Maybe, she chewed on the sour temptation forming, I’ll just give up and hand over the damn dragon relic to him. Maybe Kriqir can put me out of my misery.
Then she could forget this shitty plotline forever.
Sure, she’d never become a Main Character again, but after killing Sasha’s human form, Em doubted she would ever be redeemed. She’d fallen right down the final vortex of tropes: a protagonist-turned-villain. Except everyone else had betrayed her. None of the others had tried to defend or help her.
So, it wasn’t really her fault in the end.
The entrance to the Cursed-But-Once-Uncursed-Tower was wide open, a gaping mouth waiting to swallow her whole into the darkness that lay beyond.
She shivered, chills cutting into her bones.
“Is it too late for me?” she asked Inky’s broken shaft.
The pen remained silent and dead.
Deep down, Em felt rotten. She was stretched thin and ripped apart, like she’d been shredded down to the very last thread of her soul and left to wither away with no release. She tugged at her torn dress, fighting to preserve what ounce of dignity she had left.
The necromancer’s lair just watched, waiting for her to make her decision.
I could go back. Try to make things right with the others again, even if they don’t deserve it. Try to reset the shitty plotline for the countless times.
“At long last,” a sudden hiss sent Em’s heart into her mouth. She gasped and turned around.
A shadowy figure leaned against a nearby tree. Beneath the flicker of furious lightning, past the veils of cold rain, Kriqir the Living stood inspecting his manicured nails. His silvery eyes rose to meet her beneath his mask, and the slightest sneer creased along his face.
“You now see why I’ve set out to take over Novella,” the necromancer said.
“We’re nothing alike.” Em didn’t even believe herself.
“You know that’s a lie.” Kriqir’s smirk flashed in time with another bolt of lightning. Thunder rolled across the world, everything trembling in the dark, stormy night.
“One singular day as a Great Author was all it took for you to see the vileness required to rule this forsaken world of chaos and death. We need order. I have the magic; you have the tools. Together, we can reset this broken system into something new. Something glorious.”
“You’re a killer and a selfish bastard,” Em spit rain off her numb lips.
“And didn’t you just wipe out an entire region due to a minor inconvenience?” Kriqir’s eyebrows arched in challenge. “From what I’ve watched and seen about you, I have every right to believe that we are becoming the same.”
Em squeezed her eyes shut, trying to hold on to the last bit of hope that she could still be saved.
“We are villains, my dear fool.”
“No.” She clenched her jaw, shrinking back from him, refusing to look up again.
“You cannot deny it.”
“I can still change this.” Em held up the broken pen for him to see, frazzled and limp and lifeless as her hopes and dreams. “I can rewrite it all. I could even delete you.”
Kriqir snorted, crossing his arms. His defiance was reflected in his youthful age, reminding her they were more similar than she remembered with every passing heartbeat.
In this storm, with nothing but rain and desperation between them, he was just another determined, lost teenager, broken and beaten down by an unforgiving world.
“So why haven’t you?” he demanded.
“I…” Em couldn’t find the words.
“Why not just end this all here and now, fool?” Kriqir cackled. “Delete me, the plotline, your traitorous party. Undo everything and teleport yourself right back to the morning of your birthday when Faylorn of Rowling, Institute of Magics fetched you for his pathetic prophecy.”
“I can’t.” Em swallowed back the dread rising in her as she exposed the damned truth into the open. “It wouldn’t fucking matter.”
“No, it wouldn’t.”
She turned Inky’s pieces about in her shaky hands, her inked fingertips smearing across the plumage. “Even if I reset everything, it would happen all over again,” Em said. “Just like Stephanie designed it to be. I can’t… I can’t change fate.”
Roden’s dreaded slogan. The damn truth in the end.
“Exactly.” Kriqir snapped his fingers, pulling away from the tree.
The necromancer took two long steps toward her, keeping distance from her as if she were the one to be wary of.
“It’s all going to happen again exactly as it was written to be, no matter what you do.
So why bother? Why try to complete a story anyway? ”
Em’s breath hitched.
“Why try to fight me? Why stop me from winning? Why not join me?” Kriqir ranted on.
“We can’t change the past, but we can sure fight for a better future.
Either you fall a hero into a curse of tropes and horrible questlines, or you embrace your newfound destiny as an antagonist, and together we overthrow this system. ”
“No.”
Kriqir’s eyes narrowed.
“No,” Em repeated.
“Either you join me, or I will have to kill you,” Kriqir said, voice dropping into a sharp rasp. His eyes reflected the flashing lightning again. “I set out to overthrow the Great Authors, just as you did, fool. Except…” he lifted his chin. “I did not make the mistake of becoming one.”
Em wrinkled her nose, shifting her weight between her weary legs. Just how fast could the necromancer run? And how well could she sprint in her torn dress across slick ground?
In her pocket, the dragon relic grew warm, buzzing with hungry magic to destroy Kriqir. If she wanted, Em could end everything right there. Finish the shitty questline and go home.
But after everything she’d endured, she wasn’t going to let it defeat her.
“I may not particularly like my story,” Em said. “And I might have failed at saving my fucked-up story, but I will not hurt Novella anymore.”
“It would be a cleanse; a necessary purge,” the necromancer croaked.
“We must rid our world of these chaotic, self-driven characters who think of nothing but their originality. See how they fall in their own failures, dear Em. You know firsthand the disaster an untethered adventurer can be under the wishful guidance of a selfish author.”
“No.”
Kriqir’s hands curled like hooked claws. A thin stream of green mist flowed from his manicured nails, streaming in long, snaking threads across the rainy ground. Steam sizzled and rose in the wake of his magic, curling toward Em.
“I won’t offer again, fool,” the villain growled.
“And I won’t let you decide how this scene plays out,” Em argued back. She pulled the dragon relic from her pocket, its chunky, unassuming green surface reflected in the gloomy storm. “Either you do what the hell I want you to, and you fix my pen, or I’ll kill you.”
“That pen won’t do anything for you, fool. If you want to save yourself, you must embrace your destiny as antagonist,” Kriqir cackled. “Join me as a villain. End this quest as a victorious queen. You can rule alongside me, the Greatest of Authors, and I, the emperor of a unified, peaceful Novella.”
Em sniffed. “Joining you is cliché.”
“Even after everything…” Kriqir snarled past bared teeth. “You still think you can make a feeble attempt at originality? Foolish girl, you are nothing but a wretched Great Author who only thinks about their own goals and not for the greater good.”
He prowled toward her, but she held the dragon relic out between them like a sword. Like she had moments ago to Sasha and Roden. Em internally cringed, the warm stickiness of their blood still haunting her skin despite being washed away in the rain a while ago.
Kriqir recoiled at the sight of it, hissing and shuddering. “Fool.”
“You’re a necromancer, right?” she asked.
Kriqir didn’t respond. He just glared at the green relic in her hands.
“Can you bring inanimate, sentient objects back to life?” Em went on.
“I…” Kriqir blinked past his silvery mask, befuddled. “I actually have no idea.”