Of the Realm #2

Part 1 

It did occur to the hero that they could simply pretend to beg and then get back to Realm and defeat Izel over again. Or try to, anyway. It might even be for the best. It surely wasn’t good to have a magical monstrosity swanning around the normal world. What if Izel decided he wanted to destroy the planet? Or take over it? He still had magic.

On the other hand, that plan required surrender, even if only in pretence, and the hero wasn’t sure they could stomach seeing the look on Izel’s face if they actually did that. They felt pathetic enough already.

Izel didn’t look at them like they were pathetic.

He still seemed to, somehow, see the hero of Realm, even as over the course of the next few ways he watched the protagonist go about the decidedly mundane tasks of studying and attending classes.

What if Izel did get bored and go home? What if waiting, not begging, meant they lost their chance to go back to Realm forever? What if that was the true torture – knowing that they could have had it all back, and refusing it out of pride?

It was clearly all some kind of bloody mind game.

By the end of the week, the hero was in some kind of agony over the whole affair, and the bastard villain hadn’t actually even done anything. They hadn’t spoken more than a few words to the hero since they’d whispered their threat, and left the hero alone in the dorm room with a reeling head and an aching heart. Izel was simply always there; a dangling reminder, a cosmic horror of potential unfulfilled.

Something had to give.

The hero ended up asking Harry to pub.

Harry – Harriet – was their closest friend at the university. It was a quickly struck bond, born because Harry was the kind of well-meaning calamity always heading for some kind of trouble, and the hero the kind once made for fixing other people’s problems. Harry had broken up with her girlfriend on their first day, because her ex apparently thought long distance was going to be too difficult, and the hero had found her in the kitchen crying into a saucepan of baked beans at two in the morning. The crisis had drawn them close, and, if the hero was being brutally honest, they had enjoyed the feeling of being useful, being needed, again.

The two of them sat down, at the least sticky table in the student’s union that they could find, and for a few minutes the hero enjoyed listening to Harry trying to decide if one of the three other women in her Computer Science and Design degree was also maybe gay. 

Then Izel waltzed in. 

He attracted everyone’s attention, like he’d been doing all week, because despite being the largest source of the protagonist’s nightmares, he had that dark and handsome and powerful vibe which worked really well before one figured out that he was genuinely evil and not just broody like a YA novel.

“Speaking of,” Harry said, her eyes lighting up. “Who’s the guy.”

The hero shrugged, a ready grimace on their lips, a tight knot in their belly.

“Because I think he likes you,” Harry said. “He’s like – always staring at you.”

“Creepy, isn’t it?”

“Maybe he’s shy.”

“He’s not.”

“So you do know him?”

The hero tightened their grip on their cider, white-knuckled, before shoving their fidgeting hands in their lap instead. There was no really good way to neatly summarise their relationship with Izel in a way that didn’t make them sound entirely insane.

Izel grabbed a red wine (how did he have money? Did he just magic everyone he met? The hero also really needed to find out how long Izel had been on Earth for…) from the bar and then, instead of doing his usual ominous lurking, approached their table and sat down.

Panic bubbled in the hero’s chest. Panic, and a breathless relief that maybe something was happening and the whole decision would be forcibly taken out of their hands and…

“Told you,” the hero said to Harry, before they could entirely stop themselves. “Not shy.”

Harry looked between them, seeming unsure if she should be intrigued or concerned.

Maybe the hero could try stalker. See what good human law enforcement did against dark magicians who were some kind of walking embodiment of magic itself.

“Hi,” the villain said, offering a hand across the table to Harry. “I’m Izel.”

“Harry.”

Harry kicked the protagonist (not all that gently, actually) in the shin beneath the table.

It was obscene. Izel, stuff of Realm, sitting larger than life in the student union. Interacting with Harry. So he definitely wasn’t a hallucination. There was proof, because other people could definitely see the bastard. Which meant Realm wasn’t a hallucination. Which meant that the protagonist really had made the questionable decision to give up power and destiny to be another Literature student in a world filled with Literature students.

God.

At that point, it would have been less terrifying if Izel actually tried to straight up murder them.

The lack of sleep was clearly getting to them. Or maybe the dissonance was too much and they had officially cracked.

“I know Izel from back home,” the hero ground out, only to realise the mistake when Izel’s eyes practically gleamed at the fact the hero called Realm home. The hero slunk, entirely unheroically, into their seat a little.

“Oh,” Harry said. Slow and long. Ooohh. Like she’d figured something out.

If Izel made a play to dominate the planet, it would have also been less unnerving.

“I’m actually trying to persuade Em to come home,” Izel said.

“Oh,” Harry said, again.

“It’s not happening,” the hero said, because it was a lot easier to be sure about anything when Izel was looking at them. They could be sure that whatever they wanted was generally the opposite of what the villain wanted, right?

“Your family needs you.” Izel’s voice was filled with a velvet urgency, such a convincing lie that for a second it occurred to the hero that maybe Izel had gone back to the hero’s parents and done something awful to them, in the hours since they’d last messaged each other.

Harry looked between them, curiosity distinctly starting to outweigh concern.

Izel placed a hand on the hero’s wrist, on their lap, and squeezed. It didn’t hurt. The thrum of magic was enough to make the hero glad they were already sitting, or they would have hit their knees right then to ask for more, to feel it again. To feel like they had that power again.

Izel pressed the advantage.
“Things have got bad back home since you left,” the villain said, as if he wasn’t everything bad in Realm, as if he cared about anyone else. “Do you really want to leave it until it’s too late?”

“Is everyone okay?” Harry swung back to concern, genuine despite everything. “Oh no . Your family isn’t sick or anything, are they?”

If they actually pleaded, if they actually went back to Realm and left it all behind, their family would simply think they’d vanished. That something terrible had happened to them. It was what had tugged them to leave Realm the first time; never mind that their parents hadn’t even noticed they’d been gone, because it had been scant few hours since the portal opened, apparently.

The hero yanked their hand free of Izel’s touch, heart hammering. They glared at the villain. “You can’t make me.” It sounded more childish than defiant the second that it left their mouth, and a mixture of embarrassment and shame burned up the hero’s face.

Izel leaned in, to their ear again, as if that was a perfectly normal thing to do in company.

“I could kill everyone in this room,” the villain said. “Unless you ask nicely, saviour.”

All thoughts of embarrassment vanished, and the hero quickly felt a stab of fear, and the even greater shame that they’d ever wished Izel would simply do something instead of leaving them to dither on the decision alone.

Izel didn’t take kind, merciful, actions.

The villain pulled back, and their eyes met, and Harry was speaking but the hero couldn’t hear it. Couldn’t pay any mind to it.

Izel raised a delicate eyebrow.

“We need to go.” The hero stood, on shaking legs, and seized Izel by the wrist to yank him up. Even that seemed impossible. Dizzying. “Now.”

Harry blinked.

“Sorry,” the hero said, already towing Izel out, nearly knocking several drinks over in their rush.

Outside, in the cool night, the villain smirked. He looked only entirely too pleased with himself even as he mocked a sigh. “I didn’t even get to finish my-“

“-I have no magic,” the hero hissed. Blood boiled in their head. “You could just – just yank me back to Realm, if it mattered to you so much.”

“That doesn’t sound like begging to me.”

The hero felt stupidly close to tears. They could feel the treacherous threat of them prickling in their eyes.

“Even if I beg, that doesn’t mean I’d join you. Or whatever you want.”

“It would still be delightful though.”

It was a bit less disconcerting seeing Izel outside, a shadow among a backdrop of shadows and clouds and stars, then it was in the cosy ambience of any populated place. People still shot them looks as they slid in and out of the union though, so the hero grabbed Izel’s wrist again to continue walking. Somewhere. Elsewhere.

To Realm?

God, all of it would be so much easier in Realm.

What if they went to Realm, and didn’t have any magic there either? What if nothing was the same?

“There’s nothing actually bad happening in Realm, right?” they asked in a small voice. “Everyone is…everyone is fine, right? I mean, you’re here.”

If they refused to go with Izel, and Izel did go back alone for whatever reason, did that mean the hero was abandoning everyone who was counting on them?

“Come with me and see for yourself,” Izel said.

It was on the tip of the hero’s tongue, then. Please. Please, please, please.

They watched each other, and the hero realised they were still holding Izel’s wrist. They dropped it.

“You don’t belong here,” Izel said, softly. “You never did. Why else would you have been sent to me?”

“I wasn’t sent to you.”

“How do you know? All the portals, all the worlds, in existence and we are in the same one twice. Is that not fate?”

The hero swallowed. They crossed their arms, mouth unbearably dry again, and waited for the vertigo of fear and need to whack them across the head again. It didn’t come. Maybe it had never really left, and they’d simply got used to it.

“Why would you want me there?” It came out raspy. “Arrogance, to prove that you can beat me this time around, is that it? Pretty sure it would be easier for you if you rose back from the dead alone. No one left to challenge you.”

“It’s a lonely world when there’s no one left.”

“Is that what you woke up to in Realm? How much time has passed since I – since we –“ The hero had so many questions, but Izel gave them nothing.

Agony.

The hero closed their eyes briefly.

Please. Please. Please.

“You’re not going to kill anyone in that pub,” the hero said. “You’re not going to hurt anyone anywhere – not here, and not in Realm.”

“Not if you’re there to stop me,” Izel said, with another terrible smirk flashing across their mouth like the sharp curve of a baited hook.

And the hero bit. Maybe they were always, inevitably, going to bite.

“I need to sort out some things here before we go. I’ll meet you tomorrow. My room.”

“That’s still not a please.”

“Please,” the hero said flatly. “Try and behave yourself for twenty-four hours.”

They turned and hurried away, back to the union, before they caved and looked at whatever expression would have been on Izel’s face. They didn’t want to know.

They sat down in front of Harry.

“So,” Harry said. “I’m guessing he’s your ex.”

And the hero…well…

The hero started to laugh.

And then they started to cry.