XXIX

The Aurorium has a library of texts that exist nowhere else, particularly pertaining to Yoshi history, since the pantheon has a great view of it due to their immortality. Therefore, I was going through them with great zeal, taking some home with me as I came and went, returning them the next time I came.

However, this attracted other interested people, and as I entered the library one day, my “sixth sense” of detecting presences on the Mana Field kicked in. It was a presence I had not detected for many years, not since I had been hiding under a bed in one of the rooms of the inn, soon to be shot at.

It was Multehx.

I froze, questioning why he was there. I remembered why he had been drawn to Kippo – its library – so I figured that he would be there for the same reason. Surely he would not have come all this way to kill me.

Or had he? It was a question I was not game to answer. Instead, as quietly as I could, I moved to the aisle where the books I had came from. I kept track of his presence, and winced at the fact that I would have to step across the aisle he was in. I quickly moved across it in one large step, catching a glimpse of the flare of pent-up energy surrounding him as I passed through. Luckily, he had his back turned, but seeing the spherical body and the crowning ‘M’ was all I needed to be absolutely certain.

The aisle I needed was about three back from where he was, so I replaced the books in their slots, still keeping track of him. I fretted again about what he was doing, but I calmed myself down since panicking achieves nothing but wasted energy. If I was going to fight, I was sure I would need all the energy I could get.

It was not long before I felt his presence change as the flare dissipated. I then felt him move towards the exit. With a sigh of relief, I picked up a book on the first contacts between humans and Yoshies, and began to read.

“Interesting book you’ve got there,” a familiar jovial voice spoke beside me.

Multehx had left, forgotten to get a book he was after, and had come back, right to my section. I did the first thing that came to me, after cursing silently, and hid my face in my book, turning to him so that all he could see was the cover. If I looked nervous, I would have been sure to reveal myself. “Yeah,” I answered, putting on a Yoshiville accent just to make sure, though with limited success, “I just started reading it, though.” I quickly thought on how I could explain why I had a book in front of my face. “Very engaging.”

I heard the creak of a shelf as he put his arm on it. “I’ve heard a lot, but what you’re doing is new to me,” he said, followed by a smirk. “Never said any good, but new.”

“What…reading?” I asked rather vainly, still in my fake accent.

“No, trying to play me for a sucker with that way of speaking,” he spoke matter-of-factly. As my heart sank and my adrenalin rose once again, I heard him turn and lean his back against the shelf. “Give me more credit than that. Remember, I knew you were here. You just happened to cross my path.”

How it was me who crossed his path when it seemed to be more the other way around wasn’t a question I was game to ask. My guise gone, I reverted to my normal voice, my Pandoran-accented Yoshian. As it is an unusual accent – I had been asked many times where I was from thanks to it – I trusted in its ambiguity. “I did?” I asked.

“You did. And now,” he continued as I listened to his movements, noting the clicking of too familiar metal, “you meet your end.”

With one quick movement, the book was dropped to the floor, the Boomerang was out and I was engaging its defence mechanism. My face was visible behind its cyan glow, and my eyes looked into that robotic eye and diamond. Whether or not he recognised me now was beyond my concern: his pistol was aimed at me, and I was not going to let myself be shot at again, not there, not when I had something to live for unlike before.

With a smirk he lowered it, twirled it in his fingers and returned it to his jacket pocket. “Thought so,” he said, with a self-satisfied smile. He snickered and closed his eyes. “But, damn, you’re a tense one, kid.”

With his weapon away, I disengaged the defence mechanism, but I still held the Boomerang ready to re-engage it once again if he was pulling a trick on me. My gesture was a token of goodwill: I would only harm him if he harmed me. I looked for something to regain some ground. “Kid?” I asked indignantly. “Do I look like a kid to you?”

He opened his eyes – their shapes returning to their usual colour from black – and gave me a passing glance, rubbing his lack of a chin. “Hrm,” he considered with a moment’s thought. “No, do look a bit older,” he shrugged, following it up with another smirk. “Time works in mysterious ways, the wanderer sees.” He cleared his throat. “But, I digress, back to point A. You’re too jumpy: prime target. Guess a library like this would be safest for ya,” he paused to give emphasis, “pal.”

He didn’t seem to see me as that scared little inn kid huddling beneath the wreck of a bed any more. To make sure of it, I stood up straight, the Cyan Arc and my Pokéballs in full view. “‘Safety provides no rewards,’” I quoted an Imperial saying, one of Nase’s favourites.

He quirked a lack of an eyebrow and mused, “Hrm, never heard that one. Not bad. Have to remember that,” he said with a nod of his head – it looked as if it was almost a small bow. He stretched and yawned, “So, kid’s grown a good bit, been to Kanto, and now is here for who knows why is the question of the moment.” He eyed the Boomerang with a slight nod, one of appreciation. “Got himself a fancy toy, even.”

I noticed that I seemed to have earned a bit of favour with him and I started to relax. He did not want to seem to hurt me, and so long as I kept wary but retaining that, I was sure I would be fine. I gave a friendly smirk and began to use my right arm in my gesturing. “I’m here because of good fortune,” I answered, not wanting to reveal my method of arrival. I did not want to look like that green behind the gills rookie he had called me.

“Heh, guess it has to favour some,” he spoke sardonically. “Why here, per se?”

I pointed up with the Boomerang’s tip, the main forum of the Aurorium above the ceiling. “Because they welcomed me here,” I said truthfully.

He followed the gesture, and then lowered his gaze again, seeming to sigh and said with a bitter edge in his voice, “Well, a’ course they would: you’re a lizard.” I was going to correct him but he rushed on with, “Albeit, one with a good future, with mostly clear vision I’d estimate, but why would you waste your time here?”

“Waste?” I asked with a blink. “They’re my friends, or at least a good few of them are,” I replied, confused by why he would mean such a thing.

He waved his hand then stifled a yawn with it. “I’d estimate a few were. But, ech, I’m resenting even being here right now,” he said, pulling a face. He frowned, turned away slightly, and muttered lowly, “I may be damned, but even I have standards, ya know, k– pal.”

I figure today that he would not have said something along the lines of being damned if he didn’t exude some sort of trust in me. But at the time, with my hand dropped to my side, my grip tightened on my Boomerang. “What do you mean?” I asked, frowning, my own lack of an eyebrow raised.

“Clouded by blindness, oblivious outside the narrow-knit circles, easy out, impossible odds in,” he spoke softly, half to himself, his joviality reduced to indifference. He glanced back at me and shrugged. “Let’s just say, it’s as the saying goes, pal. Power corrupts. There is no exception totally to this rule, from what I've seen in my life thus far.”

“Go on,” I requested, my lips tightening.

“Don't take it as too much of a shock if you get the cold shoulder from those who think themselves your better,” he spoke quietly, sagely, and bitterly. “Think, not are. Ya don't give in to those types, pal. Mark that. Or they'll shred ya ta pieces.”

I did not want to believe that warning. The pantheon and the other mortals seemed to be quite nice and friendly, happy with my company. It seemed ludicrous that I would find myself abandoned by them. However, Multehx’s tone of voice was one that seemed to be speaking from experience, perhaps from places elsewhere.

I wondered that perhaps this tough demon of my nightmares had a soft spot. Why was he opening to me like this? He had almost killed me by his own conscious hand in our second-last meeting.

He snorted and shook his head, speaking as the questions began to rage in my head, “Forget that, my stay here is only till I get what I want, then I'm rid of the place for good.” He shrugged, a sign that he was finished with that topic, seemingly getting it off his back. He looked back to the Boomerang in my hand. “So, you seem rather attached to that toy there.”

“Yes,” I answered, my voice somewhat showing my losing in my thoughts.

He folded his arms, and I relegated my wonder to the back of my head. “It have a name, or can you just buy them in a store?” he asked with a dash of sarcasm in his tone.

“The Cyan Arc, and it’s the only one in existence,” I answered with some pride. “I am its Guardian.”

He smiled and gave me a thumbs-up. Perhaps the last of my childhood impression had gone and a new one had taken its place. “Ah, one of those type things,” he grinned with a nod, then raised a finger. “Always remember how to control it. A good weapon can do stuff.”

I think by “stuff” he jokingly meant “wanton destruction, very fun”, provoking a smile in return. “Yes,” I answered.

He turned and walked away from me, noticing some interesting books. As he reached up and took them, he said, “I'm pretty sure they won't mind giving up a book; too few folks read nowadays, ‘cept back home.”

Multehx spoke it as if it were the next line of conversation. The fact that he turned his back to me was a sign of trust; a sign that he did not mind my company. Or was it a ploy? There was only one way to find out, and that was to follow him. Safety provides no rewards.

“Well, I don’t think anyone comes down here that much anymore,” I told him.

“Not for some time,” he smirked, looking around. I watched him grab a book, study its cover, then return it.

There was one pressing question that needed to be asked right there and then, before I felt I could trust him some more. “Um,” I started a bit nervously as he opened a book and began to skim read it, “you know what happened last time we met…well…” I chastised myself mentally for dropping my barrier, “I’m sorry if I caused any trouble, or scared you…” I apologised, finishing with mock confidence.

He raised a hand casually, his eyes still on the pages. “Think nothing of it,” he told me. “Be unnerving if the unexpected didn’t happen.”

I blinked. I had not really expected such a casual response. “You mean it?” I asked, making sure.

He nodded, still flicking through the pages. “It’s how it is for me,” he reassured me. “Only gets irritating when all goes well.”

I sighed with relief as he pocketed the book in his jacket, then reached up for another and did likewise. His business in the archives done, and with me seemingly so, he smirked, “Well, my leave comes early, thankfully for once. I’ve felt nothing for this place and a good few here.” He straightened his jacket and looked towards the exit. “Now, I think I’ll go upstairs, let loose like I want to, and perhaps jar some deep-down realisations in some,” he snickered. “Worst that could happen, some despise me to the grave, which, judging by my lack of encountering any of the familiar faces thus far, means it should have another shot quite soon.”

“Some of them can’t be that bad, surely,” I spoke in defence of my friends, a little disappointed that he was going, and alarmed that he seemed pretty determined to tell off the gods and goddesses. I mean, a good few of them were my friends, but still, they were powerful deities and my upbringing had made me put them at a good level of respect.

He straightened his bowtie and began to walk. “Some aren’t, true,” he conceded.

I stepped in front of him. My confidence had shot up. I was not going to gain the semblances of a possible friend to lose friends I used up my once-in-a-lifetime-opportunity to get. “Don’t you think it’s a bit hasty?” I asked, trying to evoke some sense.

“Think what is? Rousing the bar? Never is really; most folks can use a good wake-up call now and then.”

He tried to step around me but he found my foot waiting. “But, why are you? If you’ve felt nothing for here, then saying something shows, at least to me, that you do care about here…so why?”

My heart was in my throat. I had just stood up to someone who had tried to kill me. What he did next would be the truth in whether or not he was leading me along, or he was genuine in his actions.

In seemingly the same quickness of mind I had for my question, he supplied an answer, waggling his finger. “But, one can’t be too hasty, for ‘tis death all over, on a grander scale. People are good by nature: sometimes it just takes a shaking of their world to get it stirred to the surface. I may never like some folks, and they me, but why not give a shot to folks to think, alter how they think, and perhaps do some good in the world?” He casually stepped around me with a gentle push out of the way with his body. “That way, there won’t be any more needed, so no more made.”

I frantically searched for a way to stop him. Physically preventing him from doing so would not work again, not without him probably resorting to anger. “Come to my place,” I spoke, a bit meekly, blinking as I realised what I had said.

I had just invited him to step inside my sanctuary, to come into the place where he could find me with my guard down. My questions, put to the back of my mind, had come back with a vengeance. They were going to have me find out what Multehx was on about, the surface of an interesting character having been pulled away to reveal what was underneath: a glimpse was not enough.

“Sorry,” he said, raising a hand as he walked away from me. “I don’t rest when this close to anything. And some folks will be waiting for me, holding out till I get back, best they can.” He must have appreciated my request because he flicked a card back to me from a pocket. “Just dial that if the myriad of questions racing through your head now, as I estimate should be, do stabilise. He’s flaky, but he can get in touch with me, or assist you, if he feels like it.”

I caught it and called out my thanks, rather weakly, sensing that I had failed and that it would be futile to stop him. He gave no reply: rather, I could hear shouting and thumping upstairs a few minutes later. I was not going to throw myself into that fight – maybe another time, but not with that level of surprise I had just experienced.

When I returned home that evening after trying to patch things up, I flicked the card onto my phone table. The next few days went by without much event, but they were filled with thinking about Multehx. Why had he been so friendly towards me?

I had to ask him. I went to the telephone and picked up the card, seeing spidery undeterminable writing. I walked away again, tense, trying to work out what to say and to summon the courage to do it. I went back again and the writing seemed to clear, becoming a long string of numbers. I punched them in and before long, a male voice said, “Hello?”

“Hello,” I answered. “I’m after a Mister Multehx? He left me some sort of business ca–”

“So I gathered, Lich,” the man answered. “One moment.”

How did he know my name? I hadn’t told it to Multehx. However, when he picked up at the other end and I asked him, he chortled and said that he has his ways.

We got to talking and I asked him the questions that had been festering in my head. I don’t remember the exact responses, but what I do know is that we realised we had quite a bit in common. So, the next time I went to Markior’s and saw him lurking in the shadows, we greeted each other as equals.

Quickly, our friendship deepened and we became quite close. An observer, I forget who, said that we were almost like brothers. Soon, I was referring to him as my brother, and he the same for me, jovially at first, but then quite seriously. While I still loved my blood-brother, something quite apparent to Multehx, he had finally fitted the shoes Ark had left behind.

Of course, being someone’s surrogate brother puts you into the path of the same troubles he has. I would soon find this out.