Page 15 of Pain Run Rampant

“I will destroy you,” he whispers, that smirk of his fading into an incredibly serious mask. “Everything you are, everything the people of Laconia believe you to be, I will destroy it all, Rey. It is my purpose.”

“Is it? Or are you still under whatever spell the first high empress put on you before she locked you up and threw away the key?”

Invictis’s gaze narrows at me, and the frown that fills his face tells me he did not anticipate me saying that. “I am under no one’s spell. Not anymore. My destruction is now my own.”

“Why?”

“It is what I do.”

“But why? Why is it what you do? Why can’t you do something else, anything else? If your will is your own, why can’t you just let things be and, I don’t know, not destroy all civilization in Laconia?”

Invictis cocks his head. “Does the hunter stop hunting when it catches its prey? No. It feasts and then it hunts again—”

“Uh, no. It feasts and then it probably takes a nap. Animals don’t kill just to kill—and if they do, then they’re not hunting. They’re defending their territory or trying to protect themselves from something they see as a threat. Is that how you view humans? You think we’re a threat to you? Or maybe every square fucking inch of Laconia is your territory?”

He leans over me, his tall frame enough to stifle and intimidate, but all I can see is the vibrancy of his blue eyes, theway they seem to shimmer even though they have no business doing that here, in a memory of the store I used to work at.

“You cannot define me in mortal terms. I am eternal. I have always existed and I will continue to exist long after your kind is gone,” he whispers.

I don’t know what makes me say it, and it’ll probably fall on deaf ears, but the words leave me before I can stop them: “It doesn’t have to be like that. You don’t have to wipe everything out. You can let them be, let them live.”

A minute passes before he mutters, “And why should I do that? Why should the most powerful being alive bow down to mere mortals?”

“Because if all you do is kill, if all you bring is destruction… what’s the point? Sure, you’re infinite, but isn’t the point of life to live it? Don’t you want to experience everything you can? Eat all the food you can get your hands on, go swim in the ocean, get drunk—” Okay, maybe that’s not the best suggestion. “All I’m saying is there’s so much more to life than death.”

“For a short-lived race, it is understandable why you would feel this way, but I am not like you. Not like Frederick or anyone else in Laconia. I am more.”

“Trust me, I know exactly what you are and what you can do.”

“Then why tell me I should go against my nature?”

“Because you’re not an animal!” I practically yell that at him, although given the fact that he looms over me like a fucking tower, the effect is minimal. “You have a choice! Maybe you’re not human, but you’re not a mindless animal following its instincts, either. You don’t have to be a mass-fucking-murderer!”

Invictis is quiet for a few seconds, and then he whispers, “You have such a narrow view on eternity, and you will never comprehend what I am. My purpose is—” He pauses. “—I must clean the slate. It is the only way.”

I don’t yell this next part. I say it quietly, so quiet it’s hard to hear, “The only way for what?”

“The only way to continue.”

I want to ask him what he means, but before I can, I wake up to the early light of dawn, the shared dream nothing but a memory. Slow to sit up, I bring a hand to my head as I groan, and I spare a glance at Frederick and find that he’s already up.

On the other side of camp, Invictis sits, a hard frown on his face. He stares at me hard, so intense it’s like he’s right here beside me and not twenty feet away. I wish I could peek into his head and see what he’s thinking.

Everything I said to him in the dream was true. He’s not an animal. He can make a choice, and that choice doesn’t have to be total annihilation.

But from what it sounded like, when I spoke to the first high empress, Laconia was barren when she first was exiled here, which means Invictis had already wiped everything out. Or, at the very least, all humankind—and that tells me this cycle has gone on longer than I can imagine.

The last thing he said to me in the dream echoes in the back of my mind. It’s the only way to continue.

What did he mean by that?

Chapter Eight

We reach the entrance to the labyrinth in Pylos after another week and a half. Nestled between an ugly crag of a mountain, its stone door is so far removed from the main road that no one in their right mind would ever come across it on their own.

Even before Invictis fucked everything up, Laconia was a dangerous kingdom, with giant beasts ready to take a bite off you. People who traveled between the capital city and Pylos, Acadia, and Magnysia always took the main roads and, from what I understand, always traveled in caravans.

“Amazing,” Frederick mutters as we approach the giant stone door. The labyrinth seems to have been built inside the foot of one of Pylos’s many mountains; who knows how large it’ll be inside. The mountain itself is huge. “There are no records of these labyrinths anywhere in Laconia.”

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