The Foolhardies 35 What Men Talk Abou

She, Ty, Arah, and I were standing just outside the door to Azuma's room in the Psych Ward of St. Lucy's Medical Center.

The LED lights above us flickered as if responding to our inner agitations.

"Yes," Aura answered. "I'd like to speak to him."

She grabbed the handle to his door and pulled it open.

"Don't you?" Aura asked as she glanced back at me. Then she walked into the darkened room.

I sighed while wondering how I'd gotten myself into this.

The only reason I agreed to Aura's request was that I knew visitation hours were over at St. Lucy's and I counted on security keeping us out. Unfortunately, I had forgotten that Aura once posed as a doctor so she could see my mother.

The beautiful doctor quickly made an appearance as soon as we were confronted by anyone of authority, and we were let through without issue all the way up to the Psych ward's fourth floor.

Ty and Arah were surprised by Aura's sudden change, but I reminded them that fairy glamour was one of a fairy's powers. It allowed them to befuddle the minds of humans and make them see whatever the fairy wanted to see. In Aura's case, a drop-dead gorgeous blue-eyed blonde doctor who looked older than the real her.

"Um, Dean... what should we do?" Ty asked, breaking my inner monologue.

"You guys mind waiting out here?" I scratched at the bridge of my nose. "Trust me... you don't want to meet this psycho..."

The look of fear on my face was enough to convince Arah and Ty to stay behind.

"How about we head over to your mom's room and wait for you there?" Arah grabbed Ty's hand and began dragging him away. "Take as much time as you want."

"Thanks," I called after her, but in my head I was screaming for them to stay. Strength in numbers and all that. "Call the cops if we're not back in fifteen minutes."

Ty's face crunched up in worry but Arah simply waved her hand at me.

"You'll be fine," she called back. "You've got Aura with you."

"Yeah... she might not be enough..." I sighed one last time and then I followed Aura into the dark room.

I found Aura opening the curtains so that moonlight could filter in through the window. She had dropped her glamour and was her usual pretty self again.

It was a beautiful night. The sky was clear and the stars were out in full. But it was the halfmoon that shined down on us with an otherworldly brilliance that caught my attention.

I wondered why it was that the moon seemed to be brighter than normal whenever one of the fair folk was around.

In the time while I glanced up at the starry night sky, Aura had moved on to the stand beside the empty bed.

I joined her with my body tense and ready to spring into action in case something monstrous suddenly appeared and attacked us, but the bed was empty as I hoped it would be.

"Nobody's home," I said while hiding my delight at this lucky break.

Aura gave me a wan smile. "Look again."

I looked down and saw that the mattress was sagging, and in its center, there was an imprint of someone lying on it. But the bed was still empty.

Goosebumps rose over the back of my arms.

"When did this turn into a horror show..." I whispered before turning my head to Aura. "What's going on?"

"This bed is Azuma's anchor on Mudgard... and we can summon him back here to it," Aura explained.

I gulped. "You can... summon him back?"

Aura nodded. "But only temporarily. Eventually, the pull of the Fayne and Azuma's contractor will take hold of him again and he'll be sent back. Only dawn can really make the transfer permanent."

My eyes glanced over to the other side of the bed where several medical machines beeped in a steady pattern as if they could still read the life signs of a man who wasn't there.

I hesitated for another moment before finally deciding that this was no time to be a wuss. It was a time for action.

Seeing the determination in my face, Aura began to chant an incantation in Elvish that I wouldn't be able to write down because it was completely incomprehensible to me.

Eventually, though, a ghostly form slowly descended from the ceiling and crashed onto the bed in a loud groan. And suddenly, I found myself face to face with the Mudgardian version of my rival.

Azuma was the same tan-skinned middle-aged man from the Fayne. Only, his cheeks were more hollow and his eyes, although closed, seemed more sunken than before. His hair was its usual length but someone, possibly a nurse, had bothered to comb it. His arms were the emaciated limbs of a man who was wasting away.

I couldn't understand why someone who could not die looked like he was half dead already. Well, this was my chance to ask him as the slanted black eyes suddenly opened.

Both Aura and I took an involuntary step back.

Azuma took another few seconds to reorient himself to his surroundings much like I did whenever I woke up in my room after a night in the Fayne. Then he sat up and looked between me and Aura.

"I don't usually have guests," he said in his rough voice. "Have you come to kill me, Dean Dapper?"

"W-what... no, of course not," I protested. "We, um... we just..."

I glanced over at Aura. "Why are we here again?"

"We wanted to have a chat with you, Azuma," Aura answered, and her face showed no fear despite me knowing that she was, in fact, nervous.

I could tell this from how tight she coiled her fist.

This made me inwardly ashamed of how scared I looked.

"If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles," I whispered the words of Sun Tzu to calm my nerves.

"If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat," Azuma continued the next line like he'd memorized it too.

There was a smirk on his face when I looked at him.

"So... you read the Art of War, huh?" he asked.

I shrugged while hoping I exuded calm instead of what I was really feeling. "I read a lot."

"You look like you do," Azuma laughed hoarsely before giving into a fit of coughing. It was awhile before he finished, but when he was ready, he asked, "So... what did you want to talk about?"

I answered before Aura could. "Why do you look like you're dying?"

Azuma wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "How old do you think I am, Dean?"

"Somewhere in your forties... I'd guess," I said.

He laughed and then began another fit of coughing.

"I'm thirty-two," Azuma answered.

Both Aura and I glanced at each other. The man in front of us looked like he was on the latter side of forty and not just past his twenties.

"H-how is that—"

Azuma stopped me with a hand. Then he gestured to his machines. "Cancer's a bitch like that... Kills you slow and takes it all away before you're ready to go..."

My brow creased. "You're really dying... but?"

"Doctors said I had six months... but I've been terminally ill for two years," Azuma said. "They call me a medical miracle... cancer's still there but it just can't seem to press the off switch on my life..."

"The Magesong clan is keeping you alive," Aura guessed.

Azuma nodded. "They needed a warrior... and in my prime... I was one of the best there was..."

'

Azuma's eyes were half-glazed like they were seeing something far away. His face was wistful.

"I was a soldier, a martial arts champion, an Olympian..." Azuma once more gestured to the machines his body was once again hooked up to. "Now, I'm a zombie... just a puppet... a hired gun too cowardly to die..."

"Is that why you've sided with the Magesong clan?" Aura asked. "Do you know the atrocities they've committed to fay and men alike these past five-hundred-years for the sake of their desire to wield more powerful magics?"

Azuma pointed to himself. "I've heard stories."

"Then why would you—"

Azuma laughed his hoarse laughter but no coughing came after it.

"Because over there, I'm not stuck in this bed!" He yelled at her.

I moved to get between them, but Azuma's tantrum subsided as quickly as it came.

"An elf like you who has centuries to live cannot understand the struggle of a man who's at the end of his life with nothing to pass on..." Azuma answered.

Aura was taken aback by his answer. Her face turned away from him.

I didn't want to feel bad for him but I was beginning to understand. Although our problems weren't the same, I too understood what it meant to want to take back your life from the unfairness of fate.

"So... why are you in the psych ward?" I asked to diffuse the situation.

Azuma chuckled again, and this time, the coughing fit was back. But once it was gone, he answered, "Eventually... I got tired of being their butcher... So I kept telling the doctors to keep me awake so I wouldn't have to go back to that cursed place... Well, you can guess what they thought after I told them about the Fayne."

"Yup, that would certainly land you in here," I answered, smiling.

He returned my smile. But his grin was more Joker to my Superman smirk.

"So I wasn't wrong... You really don't want to work for the Magesong clan anymore," Aura piped in.

We both looked at her.

She cleared her throat before saying, "The boring look you had like you were tired of how repetitive things were... that's when I guessed."

Azuma shook his head. "It doesn't matter. I can't get away from them even if I wanted to."

"Is that what you want?" Aura asked, and her face was as serious as I'd ever seen it. "To be free?"

Honestly, this was getting a little too real for me. "Aura... what are you planning?"

"We could set you free," Aura answered.

Auma raised an eyebrow at her. Honestly, so did I.

"You don't have that power, girl," he hissed.

"Maybe I don't right now," Aura admitted as she bit her lip. "But Dean does..."

"W-what?" I looked surprised at her. "I don't have the power to do that!"

She gazed at me. "Yes, you do. You have the power to free him like you freed Alfie Monroe."

Aura was talking about the Foolhardies' very capable chef, a visere I'd freed inadvertently when I slew the she-elf who was his original contractor.

"You mean..." I gulped.

"You have the talent to make real change in the Fayne," Aura said. "It's why I chose you..."

She smiled that gorgeous smile of hers, and it nearly convinced me I could do whatever she thought I could.

"You think Dean can kill my contractor," Azuma guessed.

We both turned to him.

"Dean and I are forging the Foolhardies into a tempered blade that can do exactly those kinds of things," Aura answered in a confident tone. "As long as he leads, we can do anything."

I sighed while wondering where Aura was getting her confidence.

Azuma laughed. Then he coughed. Then he laughed some more. "I like you, girl... You realize killing my contractor will kill me too?"

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Aura bit her lip. "It's a possibility, yes..."

"It's a certainty," Azuma countered as he glanced down at his body. "Spellweaver's power is the only thing keeping my cancer at bay..."

"Spellweaver?" Aura's voice faltered. "Your contractor is Great General Ardan Spellweaver? The Magesong clan's top military officer?"

Azuma shook his head. "His son... Ardeen Spellweaver... the general's strategist..."

I wondered if this mountain Aura wanted to climb couldn't get any higher.

"And it's not just them... I rank third among the Magesong's viseres... There are two other monsters there..." Azuma explained. "Not to mention the other monsters in other clans... you two probably know one..."

"Commander Thors," I said.

Azuma nodded. "That man is a whole different breed... killed me more than once before I got away from him."

This brought a smile to Azuma's lips like it was a happy memory to die at the hands of Five-Thousand Man Commander Roger Thors.

"So... you're only third-best in your clan?" I didn't mean for it to sound like a taunt but it probably did.

Azuma scowled. "Only because I arrived after them... But I made One-Thousand Man Commander in less than a year... what are you again?"

It was my turn to scowl, but I shrugged off his jab at my rank and looked over to Aura who had gone quiet. Her head was down and she seemed at a loss.

She'd walked in here with a plan and an unwarranted belief in us to save someone who only recently had attempted to kill her because she noticed him suffering during our last battle.

This made my blood boil. I didn't want Aura to lose her optimism. I didn't want her to feel the way Luca and I felt almost nightly.

I grabbed her hand and squeezed it tight, forcing her to raise her head and look at me.

"If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle," I finished the line of Sun Tzu's famous principle before I looked over to Azuma and said, "Challenge accepted. We'll deal with your contractor."

I raised my hand forward palm up. "So you give us something in exchange... tell us where to find him."

Azuma looked incredulously between me and Aura. Seeing the determination in our faces made him laugh even harder. Once this coughing and laughter duet was over, he revealed something neither Aura or I were prepared for.

"You'll see him soon enough... Great General Spellweaver and his army of a hundred thousand strong are preparing to march across the Calmlands to take back the hilltop you stole from us," he grinned. "Obviously, I'll be there too... so you and I can have our rematch, Dean."

As head this, Azuma's body seemed to become more transparent.

"Time's up," he said. "Good luck, Dean Dapper..." he looked over to Aura. "And you too, girl... If we meet again on the battlefield, I'll make sure to kill you painlessly..."

And with that, Azuma's ghostly form was launched up into the sky, and Aura and I were alone. We were both speechless at the bomb he'd just dropped on us.

Wordlessly, we continued to stare at his vacated bed for a long while before we both took our first steps toward the door. However, once I pulled open the door, I found myself staring at Arah and Ty who had clearly listened in on the conversation.

They both looked determinedly at me when they said, "Dean, if you're going to war then we're coming too!"

Chapter end