Chapter 30: The Winner and The Loser (Part 2: Finale)

[ Communion complete ]

[ Rooted: Plague (!) ] 𓂃🖋

And Milo, not even opening his eyes, knew he was back.

His nerves went on firing, stinging his entire body, especially at the violet bloom on his cheek.

Because his skin appeared smooth aside from the dirt, it had to be an illusion, and he could put up with that.

"Ha! HA! A Turning!" Aldous yelled from the ground. "Kid, no, don’t tell me your name. Don’t. Some real moves you’ve got. Knocked me clean off my feet, and that I mean as the highest of compliments."

Milo faced the man, who rambled on.

"Your first Turning! I’ve seen twenty and never, not once, has the recede gone so deep. Wow. So intense."

"Intense, you say?"

"Fierce! And the... the coloring of it!"

Was the man acting dumb? The Host had left no Regalia. Twenty Turnings, and he hadn’t asked where they were?

Either the ending had rattled him out of trusting his own eyes, or he was frightened of what Milo could do and stalling to learn exactly how much.

"Really?"

"Cleanest one of my career. And I’ve been at this since before you grew teeth."

"Interesting. I always pictured the Host receding by walking off or blowing away as ash."

"The clean ones go deep," Aldous answered. "Ask any city cohort, any textbook. Who are the parents of this kinda prodigy? I demand to know!"

"No one."

"H-Huh?"

"Forget it. The Host vanished." Milo’s eyes went over the Warden from boots up and stopped at the right hand, where the flail’s haft trembled in its grip. "I’m Studies track, sir."

"Haha, completely no shame in that. Ask any city cohort, any textbook. Some courageous dude always sees it. You know?"

The same line twice inside a minute. The man was down to reusing his own scraps.

"What are you even saying?"

[ The Primary Branch ]

[ One grows. The rest are pruned. ] 𓂃🖋

He swatted the page aside like a wasp. Not now.

"Listen, kid..." The man clambered to his feet, bronze strands pasted to his brow, muscles forced tight to smother the shaking. In one vigorous motion, he swung the flail up, and the chain settled over his shoulder. "You will, my friend... a miracle with no records."

"Walk me through your version of what just happened here."

"You might not know this, but Turncounts are based on testimonies."

"I knew it."

"Testimonies, in turn, are based on whoever speaks first and whoever speaks the loudest, and that will be me, tomorrow, at the gate. Today. Today! I Turned it. Alone. You were a brave soul I sent home before it happened. Nothing for you to explain, nothing for anyone to ask. Got it? You were never on this field."

One Turning. Why was he shaking this badly?

Milo stepped forward, eyes locked. Under his sole, a gray-amber crystal cracked.

"So you’re a fraud?"

"No, not at all."

"You always were."

"I was never."

"Called it!"

"I’m NOT!" The man spread his hands, leaving the flail hanging off his shoulder. "Consider this a gift."

"A gift?"

"You might’ve landed the Turning blow, but I still performed most of the job."

Those hands had barely held the flail. Milo had been thinking about killing him.

"Ugh..."

Thud. Thud. Thud.

He was rapping the hook’s tip on his forehead, knock after knock, driving the pain out to make room for thinking, and still introducing only more pain.

If Aldous believed Milo had turned the Host and merely wanted to reclaim the credit for his sick savior theatre, there was no need to kill him after all.

"So your whole concern is the Turning."

"You got me." Aldous nodded. "But I can gift you gifts, too. I bake, I’ll leave a box at the waystation, no name on it."

There it was again. Name. Both mentions had scrubbed Milo off the day.

[ Only one out of three may be chosen. ] 𓂃🖋

"I’m working on it," he muttered.

"Hm?"

"Nothing. Fine. Your Turning, whatever." He let the Iron Turnhook hang at his side and gave the man his driest voice. "Breathe out, sir. You’re not singing."

"Ha! Good ears. You’ll be fine, kid, you’ll be, yeah. Eat. Sleep a week. Don’t mention this to anyone, deal is deal!"

Aldous had hauled him out of the Host’s reach.

Just as Milo extended his arm for a symbolic handshake, Aldous’ eyes spiked as though a blade had come at him instead.

"And the other thing, the after, you know, the nightmares, the dreams, that passes. It passed for me. I know how it can be, saving people—"

"What did you say?"

"Nothing."

Of every comfort in the whole world, the man had reached for that one. And there was only one place he could have learned it.

As Milo was undergoing the Communion...

...the cries had poured out of his body, out here, into the open.

What the fuck am I?

Hero. Not a hero.

Whoever spoke first, whoever spoke loudest.

Shit. Why would you say that?

His offered hand closed, and the hook came up from his left.

"How pathetic." Milo started forward. "Look at you. The grand Warden can barely hold his flail."

"Kid, I am the Parish Warden. You will lower that tone."

"No."

"You dare disobey me?"

"It’s not about obeying anyone. No... you heard it."

"Heard what?"

"Could you stop?" Milo’s knuckles whitened around the hook. "Stop pretending. Just end it. You heard what I said after and saw the Host fade away."

"I heard the wind, kid."

"Ha, I heard the wind too. More of a roar, actually." He advanced another pace, and the man gave one back. "How did you like the slide?"

The retreat swung the flail’s dead weight once at his hip. Aldous opened his mouth, but closed it again, eyes hunting the scenery for an exit.

The truth surfaced on his face piece by piece: that teenage boy was the ghost, who had humiliated him with vomit, left a die ticking away in the dark, and now killed an immortal being.

"I know the feeling. Being in an impossible situation and believing you can save it." Milo pointed the hook at him. "But do you know the difference between us?"

"Look." Softer now, hands open, the Warden waded backward through the crystals. "Whatever you think I heard—"

"Answer me."

"I don’t know."

[ The choice is permanent. ] 𓂃🖋

The sheet had a sense of timing after all.

Milo closed the space between them, the last crystals popping underfoot.

"I am the winner, and you are the loser."

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⋆˚࿔ Coming right up: "Come Back (Part 1)" ... ⤵︎ [!]