Archive of Our Own ^beta

A gasp erupted from Prince. No new breath entered his lips as he slid to the floor off his friend’s longsword.

Wicked grabbed the Black Dao from Prince’s own belt and twisted it into the gap in his armour, just to contour the wound’s shape in its favour.

The Dictator wouldn’t be excited about that, but Wicked wasn’t happy to be this mechanism of defilement either.

The gurgling ended fast, but Wicked wouldn’t risk it. He tapped Prince’s cheek with his boot. No response, no condensation. The eyes were murky, fogged with tears thick as slime. The light he had always admired in Feng Lan was gone, and this simulacrum was left in her stead.

He had had months to test the PCslayer code, and patched it onto his weapon long before Infinite City was finished. Ironically, Prince had helped him pick out the cute charm for his sword. He returned Prince’s sabre to his hand, gently curling Prince’s smaller fingers back around the hilt.

There was no way to revive Prince’s avatar like this. It was kinder this way. Cleaner. Prince shouldn’t have to be the one who decides.

Wicked left as he came, using the secret exit Lolidragon had arranged for Prince in case of assassination attempts. Unfortunate, that.

A distant uproar bellowed from the dining room as Wicked stole away in the dark. It was nothing to be on edge about. The feast’s noise made for great cover, and Wicked had bowed out early. It was Prince who mocked him for trying to cure his headache with more mead. He’d be out the whole night, Prince had conveniently declared to their party.

Wicked’s jian shone under the tap water. The blood swirled down the drain. Less than a minute, and the evidence was so easily removed. He wiped his sword dry and returned it to its scabbard. Nothing about any of this felt any different from a regular night, he told himself, catching his hands shaking.

He grabbed a bottle of wine from his desk and swigged it. Hiding his guilt from all their friends, he could dig deep into his complicated feelings and do that—easily. It was going to be a lot harder to lie to Feng Lan’s face. He made sure to let some wine spill over his chin, down his neck. Enough flecks on his tunic would secure his alibi.

Fully armoured for the sake of the illusion, he awkwardly lay back on the bed. When his eyes closed, he saw Feng Lan, hunting him down.

He would find her first when he returned. Cement the appearance of concern with his real need to see her. To see her real—not 99% accurate—eyes, alive and aflame with emotion. To see she was okay in spite of his violence.

Ling Bin’s guilt and aborted hesitations mattered little. Freedom was a greater cause, and he couldn’t pretend any player would take his side in this. 

This pendulum had been set in motion a long while ago, back before the tournament, around about the time Prince’s secret unravelled before him.

Between the guilt leaching from Prince’s teary eyes whenever he shuffled up ‘just to talk’, and Wicked’s own awkward avoidance, Wicked needed a way to stop them from outing Prince’s secret. (And Ling Bin needed an iota, a crumb of space from Feng Lan).

Citing Prince’s glass bones, he easily sold the Odd Squad on a secret partner swap. Prince would join Wolf and leave Wicked with Lolidragon. She was like a playful hare, winking and laughing and lounging too long to check behind her.

Wicked cleaved through the enraged wolfbeast that shoved her off a cliff, sliding down after her even though he’d burned through all his heals. Fatally injured and vision blurred, Lolidragon called him by another man’s name. She passed out before Wolf arrived with spells, remembering none of the confessions she’d whispered into his lap.

Ling Bin didn’t know what to make of it. Wolf roared, drawing their attention to mobs emerging from the green. He didn’t move. They’d prioritised running to help, said Prince, whipping his sword around and exploding in a sprint. Wicked still didn’t move.

Swimming in the undergrowth were rheumy eyes, white like sour milk. They found Wicked. In seconds, putrid claws crossed the clearing between them, reaching for his exposed head. His survival instinct reclaimed his hand and the enemy slammed onto the ground dead. The pond hag’s head bounced off the dirt, dashing it with blood. Her eyes stayed open, minus the earlier menace. He didn’t know if this one had a soul. He couldn’t move past the disquieting truth of what this world was built upon. Of the torment inflicted upon its sentient population.

If an NPC begged him to live, was he supposed to feel nothing if the cries came out of an inhuman face?

.

.

.

No.

Wicked apologised to Dark Phantom ahead of his ‘offline busyness’—he didn’t want to risk his party in his pursuits. They were his friends.

Sticking his hand in Ming Huang’s hair and ruffling it, Ling Bin promised him he’d tell all when it was done.

His adorable, grouchy brother let him mess up his in-game highlights without complaint, but the downturn of Ming Huang’s mouth confessed everything. How much of the darkness he could see bleeding into Ling Bin’s eyes, he didn’t share.

But his little brother believed that he would tell him. And Ling Bin hoped he was telling the truth. He had to.

After the tournament’s end, he ransomed his time between chasing down urban legends about buggy NPCs and marking up maps of Second Life in his office. Painstakingly, he eliminated every possibility until there was nowhere to go but the Northern Continent.

Gui Wen had theorised Ling Bin didn’t have enough ‘heart’ to reach Feng Lan. If he was right . . . maybe that’s what made this so easy. Maybe it took a ‘heartless’ human who wouldn’t avert his gaze from the horrors being exposed before him.

One who couldn’t turn his back on the solitary being in the dark. Bound in branches as the world tree at the centre of their false utopia. Stashed on a throne as much a symbol of authority as an iron maiden.

He logged out.