Chapter 55: Am I A Psychopath?
Eli looked at the dead man in front of him, then his eyes drifted to the one behind.
’I just killed humans...’
He had just realized that after blood started dropping from his sword.
Wasn’t it supposed to feel more daunting and traumatic? Instead, Eli felt like it was just another mob clear. The sword went in, the sword came out, and the body fell.
He stared at the blood on the blade for another second.
’Hey... not funny. A-Am I a... psychopath!?’
Eli’s hands found his cheeks like he was a Renaissance painting of a horrified maiden.
’Yeah yeah, hold on a second. This is casual murdering we’re talking about! We are NOT casual murderers! Elise "Eli" Moreau, age nineteen, does NOT have that on her and his résumé!’
He tried to search through Elise’s memories to see if she had done any dirty work like this, and he found nothing! Eli thought about blaming Elise for this disposition, but no! It was all him!
He spun in a tight little circle, pacing the corridor and trying to outrun his own thoughts.
’Like... why am I not shaking?? Don’t the main characters in these types of setting have a moral compass? Like, you know, "I killed these scumbags, but they are humans too" type of compass! Where are my tears to get the audience to relate!?’
Eli held his hands out in front of him. They were steady, disgustingly steady, in fact steadier than they had been when he carried the wine bottle for Joanne. In another fact, he felt excited and elated that he was able to kill them without breaking a sweat.
’I-I’m doomed... My innocent life as a poor hospitalized boy is doomed!’
He paused for a second, then his eyes drifted to each of the bodies, carefully examining the gory scenes before him.
’Wait... let’s take a moment! I might be able to escape this dilemma!’
Eli crouched to eye level to the one he had just killed. These were Moons. They came from the Red Moon, an organization that wanted to doom the entire world.
"These bastards are worse than monsters themselves, right, right!? At least monsters mind their own business, but these motherfuckers keep wreaking havoc and torment humans. So that means this feeling is just joy from killing—"
Just then, Juli rounded the corner at a jog, her blade still wet of blood. The chanters had already been taken care of.
She stopped.
For a full two seconds, she stood there, taking in the scene: Eli crouched on the floor, face roughly ten inches from a dead Moon’s face, having a conversation?
"...Elise."
"YES!"
Eli shot up to his feet so fast he nearly tipped backward.
"Juli. Hi. Hello. What’s good..."
He paused for an awkward second.
"Oh, you’re back!"
Juli’s head tilted ever so slightly.
"Were you... talking to him?"
"No."
"You were talking to him."
"No."
"But I just saw—"
"That strange chant must have messed with your mind."
"He is dead, Elise."
"I am very well aware of that, thank you, Juli."
She looked at the corpse, then looked at Eli, then she looked at the corpse one more time.
"...Are you alright?"
Silence fell upon them, but Juli gasped.
"Oh... Is it because you just killed a human for the first tim—"
"They are Moons, Juli. I do not consider them humans, so you should get that right. I only had a moment of post-combat reflection, and I did not crouch down to interrogate a dead man, because that would be a very weird thing to do."
Juli looked at Eli with worry.
"Elise. As your best frien—"
"Irene is."
"As your best friend," Juli continued steadily, "you should talk to me if you’re having any mental problems. It’s very important—"
"I don’t have any! Now let’s run before they catch us."
Juli sighed, sheathed her blade, and clamped a hand by the scruff of Eli’s neck.
"As you wish!"
They left the bodies behind and ran, and the corridor ahead of them was clear for the moment.
Eli kept his eyes on Juli’s back and the steady silver flicker of her aura. It calmed him down just a tiny bit.
’Yeah, it doesn’t matter whether I kill humans or not. I’m in another world now. Another me. I’m not really Eli anymore. I’m just carrying both Eli’s and Elise’s emotions, thoughts, and memories.’
He paused for a moment as a flush of revelation dawned on him.
’I need to figure out who I am before worrying about such things.’
That was when the footsteps caught his ear, and his stomach almost dropped through the floor.
It was not the scattered pattern of six or seven men hustling down a tunnel. This was a tide! Dozens of footsteps overlapped each other in a terrifying rhythm, the sound rolling up the corridor behind them like a wave breaking against rocks.
"Juli."
She turned her head.
"Yeah, I hear it. These bastards are like cockroaches."
"That’s a lot of footsteps, though. Where did they even hide this kind of magnitude in Sienne? How did I not know?"
The original Elise had failed to uncover this brazen invasion of Sienne, which ultimately killed everyone. Eli didn’t want to blame her, though. If he put himself in her shoes, not knowing the future, he might not have caught on to a plan this discreet either.
Juli patted his back as they ran.
"Elise, it’s fine! I know you pride yourself on the intelligence you bring to the fiefdom, but just look at this labyrinth. Look at Colton. Even Ma Joanne didn’t know the enemy was this close. Every. Single. Day. So don’t blame yourself!"
Eli shook her head, scattering the negative thoughts. Juli was right. There was no point in dwelling on spilt milk. What mattered now was surviving this debacle to tell the tale, to warn Joanne that the Red Moon had not only been active, but was weaving grand plans over a marquessate, threatening the Kingdom itself.
The Crown must have known about their recent reawakening, but they probably didn’t grasp its magnitude. It was one reason everything went to shit after House Lagranche’s collapse.
Eli forced his thoughts back to the present. There was no need to cross a bridge he hadn’t reached yet. The future could always be changed if he willed it. He had to focus on the tunnel as the tide of boots behind them crept closer.
He ran even harder, ignoring his poor stamina and relying solely on adrenaline.
The smooth stone underfoot began to change. The walls widened first, then peeled back from the corridor entirely, and the ceiling lifted up out of reach.
Eli stumbled to a halt at the edge of what came next. It was a hall the size of a small temple, ringed by pillars tall enough to disappear into the dark above them. At the far end of the hall stood a stone altar.
And on the altar sat... a pile of bodies.
Eli almost vomited from the scene.
"...What the fuck."
It wasn’t just one body, or two, but a heap stacked like firewood. There were so many of them that Eli could not tell where one ended and the next began. He could make out limbs, faces, and robes the same dark color as the Moons chasing them.
Juli skidded to a halt beside him, and for the first time since they had dropped into the labyrinth, her composure cracked.
"Are those..."
"Yeah. Their own people."
"...But why?"
Eli heard the footsteps echoing closer and closer.
"I’ll tell you in a minute when we’re not about to die. Move, Juli, move!"
This time, it was Eli who had to grab her sleeve and drag her forward into a sprint. He didn’t know why he had such resistance toward this gruesome scene before him, but he did not take it for granted. Composure always helped.
They cut hard along the right side of the hall past the first pillar and the second, eyes locked on the corridor mouth at the far end on the opposite side of the altar.
He feared the pile would move and turn into a humongous monstrosity made of human flesh, but it did not move. Eli was not going to look back to check whether it stayed that way.
The corridor mouth swallowed them, wide enough to run side by side, and almost immediately, it forked.
"Left!"
Eli wasted no time deciding, with absolutely no information to back the choice.
The new corridor forked again and again after that. Whoever had carved this part of the labyrinth had been a believer in options. Eli picked at every intersection by gut — ducking right, then left, then through a low arch that he had to crouch under, dragging Juli with him.
Somewhere behind them, the tide spilled into the hall they had just left. He could hear the roar of it, dozens of voices arguing over which path they should take.
"Split! Your group, that way! Karzazi, your group, that way! You ten, with me!"
The tide broke into smaller streams.
