There was a silence.
"Oh, sorry." Heze looked at the sky.
"It's okay; we all knew it could happen. I didn't really know them." Rargnes felt disgust at his first version of himself. The brand 'Heze,' meaning 'the docile,' must have greatly changed him. Rargnes wanted to ask him how he survived but thought it wasn't the moment.
"Say?" asked Heze.
"Yes?"
"Have your visions shown you a path to victory?"
The wind blew through the streets to the square.
"Not really."
"And do you know the noble's age at least?"
"They say he's been ruling for at least 21 years, and he must be in his forties."
Heze's face fell.
"So he got more time than me..."
'He's fifty, why would he care about the death of his teammates?' said the voice.
"It just… won't work like this."
"The commander just said he might support it if someone decided to leave," Rargnes said.
"Oh, this fucker said that after forcing us to fight for him? What a fucking clown. That's our own life to begin with."
Rargnes remained silent.
"One way or another, they'll pay. The soldiers' lives they've forfeited won't return even if they saved the whole world."
"I think he isn't all bad -"
"I don't care about that. Even if we don't succeed, those who pushed us this far won't either."
Rargnes suddenly remembered how Heze had ended his previous owner's life with help from the goblin.
"We'll give them an apocalypse, at least," said Heze, eyes full of rage. "They'll pay."
"There are people who did nothing!" replied Rargnes.
"Every member of this world is an accomplice to this apocalypse, to this genocide!"
"But the people here did nothing, asshole!" He gestured broadly at the houses, "The people here, seriously, what the fuck can they do when their lives are as they are?! They barely even know of our existence!"
Heze remained silent.
"What are the chances of victory, honestly? Look! A small town, and we lose so many people!"
"There are ways."
"Which ones?!"
"Thousands!" shouted Heze, running out of arguments.
Rargnes spoke more calmly: "You really think it's good? How does it benefit you even? It's just misplaced hatred."
"Look at your leg! Tell me I'm wrong! Look at what you dare do to your body, for those sons of bitches! If you had seen what I lived through, you wouldn't be saying that!"
Then, at that moment, Rargnes' eyes turned purple for a moment, and the voice in his head spoke in his place:
"And how much time do you have with you?! What amazing class do you have? What strength?! What can you fucking accomplish if not barking?!" The old man, at an age already good for no fight, froze and clenched his fists before silently leaving.
--
I only realized after the discussion ended how hot-tempered I had become. Maybe I dared to do this because I thought of him as a part of myself. I might have thought it was okay not to take precautions while talking to family, but the stats were against me, and I knew this. What I didn't know was that it wouldn't just be a small regret that disappeared. Maybe I wanted this fight as his life seemed nothing more than a nightmare. I didn't want to end up like him – I wanted to separate it completely because I had something of him in me. He was a reflection of my darkness. But there were no ifs. There was no repeating that day. As he walked away and as I felt the urge to excuse myself, my ego got the better of me. A little talk might have resolved what became one of my biggest regrets.
I lit another cigar, left the place, and joined the feast, where I drank till I became drunk. But all that drunkenness faded, sobering up all dead-drunk people, leaving the feast in deadly silence as a system's message appeared.
[The owner of the Power of the Chance of Victory has been killed, and its power stolen in a radius of a mile.]