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It’s thirteen days after— after everything— when he sees Bal is online.
Ambrosius wakes up from the same nightmare he’s had for the last twelve nights. Twelve, because he never slept that first night. In the dream he is holding his sword, and it’s never felt more like part of him. When he goes to drop it, when he sees what he’s done in the fractured green light, even as everything is falling to pieces around them, it clings to his hand. When he looks down, it’s actually become part of him. Wrist and blade fused into one another. He hears the horrible rattling sound somewhere near his feet, but he can’t make himself look. The Queen is dying. Is already dead.
He wakes up. The novelty of the nightmare has worn off now. The first time he woke up screaming and the whole dorm scrambled out of their beds, jumpy and angry and frightened. Now it’s just a gasp.
He rolls over, reaches for his phone. Pulls the blanket over his head to hide the light, and because the warm dark cave, the stale air, feels safe. He’s done this since he was a kid. Bal hated it. Complained that he felt like they were suffocating.
Bal isn’t here though.
Ambrosius squints into the comforting haze of blue light. Thumbs through a few videos. Opens and closes a few pages. Opens his message board, the non-official one he uses— used— when he and Bal—
And there it is. For the first time in thirteen days, there’s a little green circle next to Bal’s name. Bal is online. Somewhere, he’s opened up his messages. Bal is— alive. He’s alive? Is it really—
And if this channel is open, it’s trackable, surely. Bal is out there, and Ambrosius could find him, and oh Gloreth, let him be alive—-
If Bal is trackable, Ambrosius isn’t the only person who could find him.
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Message from Loins_of_Gold • 3:22 AM
Bal? Are you—
[Message unsent]
[Message deleted]
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The Director calls him to her office.
Ambrosius always felt a little bit ill at ease here. He feels worse now. The city spins below him, glittering. The wall. The mountains beyond. It all feels a little too large today.
He has come here, on occasion, because the Director had some message, or commendation, or encouragement for him. More often though, it was a brisk order. Something they needed. An advertisement. A photoshoot. A reminder of how a Hero of the Realm should be behaving for the press.
He’s here to serve the Realm. It’s an honor. It’s his life. But walking through the doors still puts a knot into his stomach he doesn’t have a name for.
“Ambrosius,” the Director says. Her voice is full of the same warm authority it's always had. She sounds happy to see him. The smile doesn’t quite reach her eyes, but he’d be more surprised if it did. It’s been a barely two weeks since—
“Come sit down,” the Director says.
He sits. She stands.
“How have you been, Ambrosius?”
Ambrosius resists the urge to fidget. How is he supposed to answer that question? “I’m…fine, Director.”
She paces down the room, her long skirt rustling around her. It’s just that and the faint sound of traffic outside the wall of glass windows behind her desk. Ambrosius finds his eyes drifting out past the wall, to the ominous weight of the mountains. “Ambrosius,” she says gently. “You know you can tell me anything. I’m here to help.”
What could he even say? That the world is shattered under his feet? That he has nightmares every night? He’s a hero of the realm. He’s a knight. “Yes ma’am.” he says.
She sighs gracefully and finally returns to her chair. Sits down across from him. She’s studying his face, but his eyes are still fixed behind her. “Ambrosius,” she says. “You’ve already proven yourself as a hero of the realm.”
He’d be glowing, hearing that three weeks ago. Now he can’t summon up the pride. “Thank you, Director.”
“I don’t want to cause you more distress over these…tragic circumstances,” she says delicately, steepling her fingers together. “I know you and Ballister were…close.”
Ambrosius hears her barely restrained distaste. She’d never been hostile to Ballister the way some of their trainers had been. She always seemed pleased with the effort he’d put in, his loyalty, his dedication. Bal had to work twice as hard, and he’d earned every scrap of respect offered him, and then some. And the Director had appreciated it.
But she’d never approved of him and Ambrosius being…anything. They’d kept it quiet, of course, but you couldn't hide things from the Director. It had been the one thing Ambrosius had stubbornly refused to take the hint on.
And look how that turned out.
She’s waiting for a response. “Yes, Director,” Ambrosius says faintly.
“I know you would have come forward already if you had a lead,” she tells him. She’s looking at him so intently he feels like a bug against a hovercar windshield. “But, Ambrosius, we must put the Queen’s murderer to justice. If you can think of anything, anything at all. Anywhere he would have gone-”
“Yes ma’am.”
For a moment she’s just studying him. Ambrosius feels like he should squirm. He should open his mouth. Tell her what he knows. His guesses— the places he and Bal would sneak off to as kids. The little booth at the Antlered Serpent, where he’d kissed Bal for the first time. The tree at the edge of the forest where they’d carved their names as teenagers with a dagger from the arsenal and consequently dulled the blade so badly the Master Armorer had made them help clean and polish the whole locker for a month.
The little green light by Bal’s name.
He can’t open his mouth.
“It is a great relief to me,” the Director says, “that we can depend on your loyalty, Ambrosius.”
The words cut right through him. But he still can’t open his mouth. He’s a traitor. He’s a traitor to her, to the Kingdom, and he still can’t open his mouth.
“That is all,” the Director says. “If you think of something, you can contact me any time. We’re depending on you, in this dark time, to carry on the Light of Gloreth.”
Ambrosius stands. Every part of him feels frozen up, like ice in every joint of his armor. “Thank you, Director,” he says. “I’ll do my best.”
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Message from Loins_of_Gold • 2:28 PM
Bal? Where are you? Are you okay—
[Message unsent]
[Message deleted]
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Ambrosius is alone, up on a high, tucked away corner. It’s a slip of rooftop with a door that’s never locked, probably more from oversight than permission. This used to be one of his favorite views in the Kingdom. Here, in the glittering spire of the institute, he can feel the rush of wind, see the whole boulevard, the statue of Gloreth, the mountains far beyond the wall. The lights of the nighttime Kingdom, yellow and blue and purple.
But now he’s wondering if he only loved this place because he was here with Ballister. Alone, he’s discovered that it’s cold up here. The noise of the howling wind and the hovercars is too loud. He feels exposed, as if something might descend on him from above.
His cafeteria tray of dinner sits beside him, almost entirely untouched. He's attempted a few dutiful bites— but had the cafeteria always been this bad? He can’t recall.
When he thinks of his meals, he’s remembering Bal beside him. Laughing. Teasing. Moping. Swapping bites of favorite dishes. Nights with nachos at the Antlered Serpent. Lunch in greasy bags at the Spear and Shield down the road. Energy drinks and sweet snacks from the vending machine. With Bal.
Maybe he doesn't know how to be a person without Bal. All the things that should be simple— eating, sleeping, breathing— are suddenly complicated affairs. Ambrosius hadn’t realized that there was no one else. Or well— he’d known. But it was two of them, together, alone.
Now it’s just him. Ambrosius. Alone, hanging above the city, graceless as a gargoyle, with all the city lights blinding him.
Somewhere below him in that shining mass of life and corridors and noise is Bal. Does he know he could message Ambrosius? Why hasn’t he? Why hasn’t he tried?
….Ambrosius knows why.
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Message from Loins_of_Gold • 8:44 PM
I miss you. I hope—
[Message unsent]
[Message deleted]
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They’re gathered in one of the conference rooms. A few captains. The class. Todd, smirking in a corner. The director is there, but she’s sitting quietly in the back. When he’s turned away, he swears he feels her eyes on the back of his neck.
A tech in a high blue collar scrubs through footage. Ambrosius watches. Sees himself cheering. There’s no audio, but one of his classmates gives a mocking “whoo!” From the back of the room.
The tech speeds forward. Ambrosius feels the room grow heavy as Ballister climbs those steps. Zooming in. Watching Ballister’s face, the movement of his steps.
It’s not the first time they’ve done this. Scanning the footage. Searching for hints, clues. Anything. And like every time before, Ambrosius is transfixed. He can’t stop searching Bal’s face. He looks nervous. Happy. Wonder in his eyes. Gratitude.
He doesn’t look like a man ready to kill.
The tech moves them into slow motion. All the details Ambrosius had missed, lost in memory and chaos.
The gathering storm of green light as the hilt of the sword breaks open. The crown, falling against the blue carpet.
He sees the way the Queen’s body crumples. He’s trying to see Ballister’s face, but it’s lost in the haze of green light. There’s no way to tell what his expression is.
Ambrosius draws his sword.
Perfect. Precise. Controlled. A knight of the realm, glittering. A single smooth swing. He hadn’t even thought about it.
The queen is already dead.
Bal’s sword— his weapon— shatters.
The tech scrubs the footage backwards. They watch it again.
And again.
The hissing and muttering in the room gets louder. Ambrosius watches again, and the perfect swing eats through the joint of Ballister’s armor. In their training sim, it would be a perfect score.
He looks away.
“How did the weapon get inside his sword?” He hears someone say. Thank Gloreth they’re actually thinking, not just gawking.
“Oh, you know Ballister,” Todd says. His voice leaks undisguised contempt. “Always kept his hands dirty.”
“He was an engineer,” Ambrosius says quietly and then snaps his mouth shut. He can feel them looking.
The Director’s quiet voice sweeps in to save him. “Ballister always scored highly in technologies and engineering electives,” she says. “I would certainly believe him capable of creating such a dishonorable and underhanded weapon.”
On the screen, larger than life, Ambrosius slices off the arm of the man he loves in a single smooth motion.
It was, he is realizing, the first thing he’d ever done as a hero of the realm. A useless violence. It hadn’t saved the queen. It hadn’t stopped Ballister from running. All he’d managed to do was hurt him. And he hadn’t even thought about it.
Ballister was the one thing Ambrosius had tried to choose. He’d tried to make him more important than what everyone else wanted, than being the perfect hero of the realm he’d been born to be. And he’d still failed him. And he’d still failed to be a hero who could actually stop him.
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Message from Loins_of_Gold • 10:26 AM
im so sorry, im so sorry. Bal, please—
[Message unsent]
[Message deleted]
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Something is happening in the institute. There are no alarms, no official alerts. But something is…off. Maybe it’s because he’s been walking these halls since he was seven, but Ambrosius feels the difference. Later he’ll imagine he heard the shouting. Or perhaps the fact that guards weren’t at posts they’d been supposed to man. Or maybe—
But the fact of the matter is that he doesn’t know what exactly tips him off. Just that he’s walking down the hall, feeling an eerie sense of something’s off when he hears Bal’s voice.
Thank Gloreth. He’s alive. He’s alive. He’s alive. And he’s here?
He starts to run. Is he dreaming? What is Bal doing here?
“—murder him, murder her, murder everyone!”
Bal is shouting. He sounds— angry. Bal was angry. Ambrosius had met him, wild and ferocious, and loved him for it. His anger was like Ambrosius’. Simmering and righteous. But he’d learned quickly to keep it tightly coiled. It was saved for private moments. For bitter despair, for frustration over fast food in empty corners. It was for the empty classrooms and broom closets they snuck into for a moment of peace. It was the scar over Ballister’s eye, and the bloody knuckles on Ambrosius’s left hand. Childhood fights.
He hasn’t heard Ballister talk with a voice like that in a long, long time. And the words—
The door swings open, even as he stops dead. Ballister, twisted and metallic, startled— and with him a girl Amboroius has never seen before.
What if he’d never known Bal at all?
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Message from Loins_of_Gold • 11:39 PM
Who was that? What did she mean? Nemesis? Bal? Bal, they’ve made me a Captain. Bal. If they find you first— Bal, they think I let you in. I didn’t. Why were you there?
[Message unsent]
[Message deleted]
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The market is in utter chaos. They need— they should be evacuating.
“The Queen Killer!” someone is shouting.
“Ballister! Stop! Halt!” he shoulders his way through the crowd. How had he missed him? And what is Ballister doing? Is he— is that someone in the trunk? Is this a kidnapping?
What is happening?
He has to stop this. He might never get another chance.
“Shoot him in the face!” someone screams, the moment Ambrosius raises his crossbow.
He is acutely aware that people are watching. Someone is almost certainly filming. And there are cameras. Every moment he is hesitating is being captured in perfect detail. Ballister’s eyes catch his, wild, looking over his shoulder, halfway into the hovercar.
He can’t shoot.
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Message from Loins_of_Gold • 4:22 PM
Bal what are you doing????? People are getting hurt. People are going to die! Please turn yourself in, I can protect you. It’s the only way I can.
[Message unsent]
[Message deleted]
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“Ambrosius.” Bal says.
Ambrosius is calling for the knights before he knows what he’s even started to do. Pure, precise instinct. He’s good at that, isn’t he?
But the knights are already a pile of armor and limbs— alive, he hopes, he prays— and who is this kid, stalking forward like a predator creature—
He’s a knight. He knows his duty. His whole body is a shield between him and the director, every muscle tensed and waiting. He feels like his cells are splitting in half, because Ballister is right there, almost within arms reach, and he’s been half a person since he lost Bal. But there’s a pile of knights behind him, and the Director at his back and he is a knight—
And Ballister takes three steps forward, and he still smells like his favorite aftershave and he says “Ambrosius, the Director killed the Queen.”
The floor falls out under him. “What?”
“Another desperate lie,” the Director says into his right ear.
“He’s not a liar,” the kid says and oh she sounds like Ambrosius did, when they were that age, Ambrosius arms crossed, spitting out defense, Ballister dark-eyed, two steps behind. What happened to them?
“Says the miscreant, whispering in his ear,” the Director says.
“Aw, thank you.”
“I’m innocent, and I have proof,” Ballister says, and they’re the most beautiful words in the world, except they can’t be true. But it’s Bal, reaching forward with a hand of iron and wire, and then reaching back for something—
“He’s got a weapon!” the Director shouts, but she doesn’t need to. Whatever he was holding has already been shot out of his hand, before Ambrosius even knows what it is. Air support has arrived.
Ballister is going to die. Todd is here, and where Ambrosius had hesitated before, Todd hadn’t. The knights file in. Backup, finally here. Bal and the kid are surrounded, and there’s no way out, and everyone here is ready to shoot first and ask questions later, and what does Bal mean the Director killed the Queen?
Bal turns to Ambrosius, wide-eyed. All the desperation is pointed at him, a single dark arrow of desire. “It doesn’t matter. You shouldn’t need proof. You know I’m not a murderer.” His voice breaks on the words and Ambrosius feels like he’s going to crumble into pieces.
He can’t move. He’s two men, he thinks, and one of them already has his arms around Ballister and the other has a hand on the sword and what did Bal mean the Director killed the Queen and if that’s true—
Either Ballister is lying. Or everything else is a lie, every other piece of Ambrosius’s life and duty, from the day he was seven years old and they dyed his hair to match the armor he’d grow into one day. And he doesn’t know what’s worse.
“What are you waiting for, Captain!” the Director hisses. Ambrosius is stone.
“C’mon man.” the kid says, and he’s never heard that voice so distinctly earnest. “Do the right thing.”
That’s exactly the problem, isn’t it?
“Who is she, Bal?” Ambrosius says. And Ballister hesitates. And the spotlights sweep over them, and catch her eyes, and Ambrosius knows. Maybe it’s in his blood. Maybe it’s Gloreth, leaning over his shoulder, guiding his sword-arm. “...What is she?”
“Ambrosius, I am begging you to trust me,” Ballister says. But Ambrosius can barely hear him. There’s a ringing in his ears.
Ambrosius draws his sword, and something under his skin cracks apart.
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Message from Loins_of_Gold • 3:02 PM
What are you doing? Why are you working with a monster? What is happening? I thought I knew you, Bal, but I don’t know what to do. And proof? Do you really have proof? What were going to say?
I have to know the truth. I have to ask her. I have to confront her.
[Message unsent]
[Message deleted]
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Ambrosius is staring at the scroll in the Director’s hands. And oh thank Gloreth. It’s saved. It’s all saved. Ballister is saved. Ambrosius is saved, because he was going to tear the institute down, and it would have killed him. Just a moment ago everything he knew and loved was a lie, but now, now—
The Director is still talking, but Ambrosius is barely listening. She seems to have ignored the fact that Ambrosius came down here with his sword in hand, ready to arrest her, on the authority of…himself? The truth?
The Director isn’t a villain. Ambrosius isn’t a villain. Ballister isn’t a villain.
There’s a monster. A monster to slay, a day to save. Isn’t this what this was all about? Isn’t this what he’s been born for, built for, piece by piece?
He’s no longer torn into pieces. He’s a singular, solid purpose. A hero of the realm. He can save the Kingdom. He can save Ballister. He can bring him home.
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Message from Loins_of_Gold • 10:08 PM
Nachos?
[Message sent]