…or, Brace Yourself
The match ended for me then. It was really over at that point, though MU wasn’t about to cede the field. They lurched forward like a body that had been stabbed and didn’t accept it was bleeding to death. I found out later the seventh squad had even made a belated rally.
Too little, too late.
Their stand fell apart so fast it left everybody wondering if it would have mattered if they had been on task from the beginning. In any event, they didn’t stop the surge. The Hydras ran right up the middle of MU’s territory and got the banner. They took heavy casualties from concentrated magic and martial assaults, but the point of the all-out attack was that they could afford that as long as they won.
We weren’t even cleared from the field before the match ended, in the first half of the third period. Iason probably should have gone back to the locker rooms when the death spell released us. Instead he picked up the bracelet from where it had fallen just past my fingertips, grabbed my wrist, and led me off the hex, up and out of the grounds.
I let him lead. He wasn’t surprised that the bracelet had popped off. I figured he had something to say about that. If he wanted to get away from it all first, I’d let him.
We’d beat the crowds leaving the stands. He was heading back towards campus proper. He was grinning like a loon when we stopped, at the base of one of the towers.
“So,” I said. “Fake death was enough to fool the bracelet?”
“Apparently,” he said.
“You could have just told me.”
“I could not tell you what I did not know,” Iason said.
“You weren’t surprised.”
“I had a suspicion,” Iason said. “The bracelet is old magic. The elves who made it would not have conceived of such a thing as illusionary death, so they did not screen against it.”
“I don’t remember it coming loose in my WP class,” I said.
“The run-of-the-mill phantasmal death you might experience in such a class is directed solely at your beautiful self, dear Iamie,” Iason said. “The bracelet is not fooled because it is not aware. The mock weapons used out on the skirmish field broadcast their illusion to all, so that any special senses or active detection spells or similar abilities will correctly register the change in status. It is simpler than figuring out how to individually mock a beastman’s heightened smell. a subtle artist’s ability to detect life, and any other permutations that might be brought into play.”
“So, the bracelet received the impression of my death and it responded,” I said.
“So it would seem,” Iason said.
“As you suspected it would.”
“So it would seem.”
“Are you telling me you got us killed on purpose?”
“Well, that would certainly go a long way towards explaining how precisely it was that a mere half-elven female was able to slay me,” Iason said. “Would it not?”
“Yeah, hat’s a no,” I said.
“In truth, it was probably because I had more pressing matters on my mind,” Iason said. “Had I bent all my effort to defeating her from the start, she would not have stood a chance.”
“So you were trying to win,” I said.
“Of course I was,” Iason said. “I told you, we would either win or we would go out in a glorious fashion. It wouldn’t be glorious if I’d lost on purpose.”
“And if you’d been successful, I’d still have the bracelet on my wrist.”
“My goal was flexible,” Iason said. “I was successful by one way of reckoning and not by another, mutually exclusive one. I consider that a success, on the balance.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because the mutually exclusive nature of the goals means that I could not possibly have achieved a higher degree of success, and the potential for failure existed in the possibility of an undramatic, ignominious death,” Iason said. “That potential was averted. How is that not a success?”
“I meant why was removing the bracelet one of your goals?”
“You really must learn to be more clear when you speak,” Iason said. “Effective communication is key to a healthy relationship, you know.”
I glared at him.
“I erred in giving the bracelet to you without giving you a chance to knowingly accept or reject all that came with it,” he said. He held the bracelet out. “Now, I give you that chance.”
“And I’m supposed to swoon and put it back on?” I said. I reached for a cigarette from my pocket and realized I’d left my pocket in my pants. Iason had whisked me away naked. I held out my hands and he pulled the bundle of my clothes from his knapsack.
“You are supposed to decide for yourself,” Iason said.
“Yeah, but are you thinking this is like your goals on the field where you’ve got the odds stacked in your favor?” I asked. “Okay, you get credit for realizing you fucked up and deciding to do something about it, but Khersis, man, you couldn’t just say, ‘Hey, Iamie, I think maybe the mockboxes we use for skirmish are powerful enough to trick the bracelet into thinking you’re dead?’”
“But what if I’d been wrong?”
“Then you’d have gotten points for trying!” I said. I sped up pulling on my pants when I realized I’d yelled that. “Which is more than you’d get if you’d done it this way and it hadn’t worked. I’d have never known you’d even tried.”
“So maybe you should take that as a sign that I was not trying to win ‘points’,” Iason said.
“No,” I said. “Maybe you can’t imagine yourself trying something and failing so hard, but I can.”
“Well, you are wrong about one thing, Iamos Toxotes,” Iason said. “I do not expect you to put it on now.” He thrust the bracelet towards me. “It is your choice when you don it, just as it has been your choice to be my stag or not while you wore it.”
I looked at it.
“You still think I’m going to put it on,” I said.
“Eventually,” he said. “Should I throw my heart away on one I think will never return my favor?”
“You almost make being a smug bastard sound romantic,” I said. “You’re a gambler, Iason, but you only gamble when you think you’ve got it in the bag. Like out on the field, where you won whether the team won or lost.”
“I suppose you are correct,” Iason said. “For, if you are going to reject me for pursuing somebody I believe will not reject me, then I think I’m better off for it, so in that sense I do come out ahead regardless.”
“And what if I think long and hard about it and decide I don’t want you?”
“That is, I suppose, a possibility,” Iason said. “But in that case, I will have lost nothing but a portion of my lifespan.”
“I’m not going to hold onto it if I don’t intend to use it,” I said.
“But you will hold onto it until you know for certain that you don’t,” Iason said. “It’s a gift. Use it or do not, I will not accept it back from you.”
“There’s got to be a tipping point,” I said. “If I don’t wear it after a certain time, I’m not going to wear it.”
“Fine,” he said. “If you have not consented to wear it and you are past your prime, no longer young and vital, then I will take it back, if you wish to return it.”
“But you don’t think that’s going to happen,” I said.
“No.”
“And, what? Until I put it on, we can’t date?”
“I’m told there are more casual forms of relationships than a lifebonded rider and mount,” Iason said.
“So you’re not holding anything over my head?”
“Would it help if I did?”
“No,” I said, and I finished getting dressed. “Thanks. Thank you, Iason. I appreciate it.”
“The bracelet?”
“All of it,” I said. “Well, most of it. Really, more like parts of some of it, some of the time.”
“You see, Iamie, this would be an example of when you should have stopped speaking much sooner.”
“And this would be an example of when you shouldn’t start,” I said, and I pulled out cigarette as we headed back towards my dorm.
