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“Principles are great until you hang yourself with them,” my mimic said, playing with the black scarf around his neck. “Has anyone ever told you that you tend to sabotage your own future?”
“Has anyone ever told you that you look terrible in black?” I asked.
“I look great in black.”
“Go make yourself useful,” I commanded.
“And how would I do that? You know I’m bound to you. I can’t go where you don’t go or do what you don’t do.”
“You can in there,” I said, nodding to the doorway. “Why don’t you slip into there and see if you can find us some help.”
He shrugged. “I’m surprised that you trust me with this. You know that when you die, I might be the soul that lives on. How does that make you feel?”
“About the same. I was already regretting my life.”
“Ha! Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you. After all, I might be the real Tor.”
He sauntered through the doorway as I leaned against the pole I was lashed to, letting my blood drip, drip, drip onto the ground while my mind swirled ineffectively in a circle. I needed to get free to save my friends. But I’d blown my only shot. And now I was destined to stay here and freeze until I was killed.
I was too cold to think about that. I was so cold that I needed to get free. So I could save my friends. But I’d lost that chance. I was so cold.
I looped round and round as the sun crept across the sky like a beetle across a frozen pond.
I must have lost consciousness or fallen asleep at some point because I woke to Bataar’s voice.
“Tor?”
“Bataar,” I breathed.
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?” my voice croaked like a dying toad. I shook myself, pulling my forehead from where it rested against the pole. I was so tired. I was so tired that I just wanted to go back to sleep. I couldn’t feel my feet or my fingers anymore.
“I should have left for help like you asked.”
“I shouldn’t have let you stay with me,” I replied.
“You didn’t. I kept disobeying you.”
“Ah, but I liked it. I’m not really a solo kind of guy. I like having people around,” I said. I hadn’t realized until right now how true that was. I even missed the mimic. If I was going to die, then I wanted everyone to be around when it happened. Even the worst parts of who I was. “Do you think he’s real or me?”
“Who is real?” Bataar asked, his words slurred by frozen lips.
“The shadow-self.”
“If you were ruled by your shadow-self we wouldn’t be in this mess. You’d be ruling Ko’Torenth or something. At least you’d be ruling Kav’ai. The deserts are so lovely and warm at this time of year ...”
His words faded off.
“You make it sound like he’d be way better at life than I am,” I muttered, irritated.
“Evil often thrives. Selfishness is gain for a time. Heartlessness can be profitable.”
He was still sitting, slumped against the wall, his head leaning against it, his words tired.
“You should probably stand,” I said. “The less of you to touch the ground, the less the rock can suck the warmth from you.”
“Too late,” he said with a ghost of a smile. He tapped a leg. “They don’t work anymore.”
Despair washed through me. Usually, that felt cold, but right now, everything was cold. The life was slowly being frozen out of me, as if I was being solidified in time as the Tor of this moment. And I had so many more lessons to learn. I felt like I’d barely begun to grow and learn, like there was so much more for me to do and to be. I’d hardly even started.
“I’m glad to have had the chance to fight beside you,” Bataar said, his face a picture of nobility. “Tell Zin that I love her.”
This was the part where I was supposed to say something inspiring like ‘Tell her yourself’ and then I’d shake off the chains that held me and free him, too.
Instead, I coughed.
“How do you expect me to do that? You know I’m dying right here with you, right?”
He grunted.
I would have found some way to comfort him eventually ... probably. But at that moment, the mimic burst back through the doorway, another man with him. The mimic had a grip on the bewildered man’s coat and was shoving him forward.
“I swear, I leave for a few minutes and everyone wants to give up and die,” the mimic said, rolling his eyes. He shoved the man toward me. He was about my height but thirty years older than me and his iron-gray hair was thinning.
“You’re ... you’re him,” he stammered.
“The Ko’Torenth Beauty Contest Winner? Yeah, that’s me,” I said wryly.
“The man who stopped me from killing that fellow with the spear.”
I tried to raise my eyebrows, but my face was too stiff.
“When I was a golem,” he said, as if that explained things. “Or at least, when I was in one. You froze it. And then I remember singing.”
“There may have been singing,” I agreed reluctantly. “Who are you and can you untie us?”
“He can’t untie you any more than I can,” my mimic said, rolling his eyes. “Are you losing your mind as well as your life, or are you always this idiotic? He’s a spirit. I grabbed him from that World of Legends that you built. This is Ty’nea. He used to live here in Ko’Loska – that’s the city under us right now. You really have been out of things. I could have sworn that guard who checked on you two a few hours ago mentioned it.”
“Guard?”
The mimic sighed. “Look, just stay alive for a bit longer and Ty’nea will do us a little favor and go find his friends. After that, he can go back to the World of Legends, right Ty’nea?”
“T – they won’t believe it’s me. They’ll think I’m a ghost!”
“Which you are,” the mimic said dryly. “So, hurry it up. Who knows what will happen if you try to stick around too long?” The ghostly Ty’nea ran across the parapet, disappearing from sight around the edge of the parapet. “The dead! I’m telling you, they are harder to train than cats. Don’t die on me, Tor. I can’t handle two of you right now.”
“I’ll do my best,” I replied, not knowing why I bothered. None of this could be real. I’d heard about people seeing visions of things before they died. I’d heard about them seeing the dead and talking to them. That was all this was. I was just dying and having weird visions while it happened. By the time Ambrosia returned, there would be no soul left to suck out of me.
There was a thunk as Bataar fell to the ground, unconscious again. I felt a ghost of sadness. Bataar was a good man. And he’d saved me more than once. Thank goodness I wouldn’t have to tell Zin. That was one upside to the fact that I was dying.
I yawned.
I was so sleepy.
If I just shut my eyes for a moment.
Just for a moment.