by Charles Dean
He wasn’t sure if he stopped her suicidal impulses, but at the very least he had quieted them. She pursed her lips as she stared at him before she nodded and headed into the bar on her own, leaving Lee alone. He couldn’t help but worry as he watched her go. He sincerely hoped that she wouldn’t off herself because of her faith in his charlatan antics.
“How is it that you’ve actually met a god, yet you view this all as blasphemous, Charlatan nonsense?” Augustus’s voice pierced his mind with familiar background noise that often accompanied voice chat servers in video games. “I mean, come on! I’ve heard of people having trouble believing in a higher power because there is no proof, but you’re tangibly living in an entire world of proof after meeting the very god himself. It’s not like I’m asking you to preach about some spaghetti monster in the sky.”
“But I still have faith in someone else, you know?” Lee said. “First come, first serve. Literally.”
“Your mother would be so disappointed.” Augustus let out a hearty laugh, and Lee could swear there was the sound of a beer glass hitting a table in the background.
“Yeah, she would.” He nodded at the thought and then put Augustus out of his head completely as he went back into the battlefield of a bar, noting the potentially suicidal girl sitting next to David’s body where the injured teen had been moments ago. I guess they took her somewhere to rest, he thought, the whole scene still feeling too chaotic to grasp the full picture.
——-
While Ethan was out searching for the spot that Ramon had mentioned, the group found the map and laid it out on one of Ramon’s tables after dragging him into the bar. After they searched the bar, they found not only the map but also several other unequipped traps and gadgets, making Lee thankful that Ramon hadn’t had the time to finish setting them all up before they arrived.
“So, do we actually let him live?” someone asked.
“Who needs a beer? Come on, people! Free beerrrrr!” Miller shouted from the bar as he started pouring glasses. “We don’t even have to pay! What a loot haul! Am I right, Lee?”
Lee’s face scrunched up as he looked at his overexcited Paladin. Yes, you’re right. This has been a great loot haul, but can you maybe learn to read the mood some? Everyone other than Miller was either sober and somber or drunk and depressed. There wasn’t a cheerful face to be found anywhere in the room. It hadn’t been a clean victory, and as much as Lee hated to admit it, he missed the talkative guide already. Even though he had only known him for a day, he was already starting to miss David’s particular sense of humor.
“Here’s one for David,” he said, hoisting the glass in front of him and chugging it.
“Oh, are we drinking for the fallen?” Miller piped up, talking around a mouth full of food.
“What are you eating?” Lee asked, noticing for the first time that his friend was munching away at something.
“Fried chicken? Seems the cook finished making a few batches before he was killed,” Miller responded, not even bothering to chew his food properly as he talked.
“He killed Jeffrey?” someone asked.
“That’s horrible,” the girl on his right said as she jumped up and went to the kitchen.
“Look at the bright side: it means he wasn’t in on it.” Miller could really be an insensitive jerk when he wanted to. “Wait, I got it! Let’s have another drink for him too!” he offered, likely because he saw her horrified expression. “I mean, Lee did it for David, right? It has to be a religious thing for Augustus. He is a god of alcohol, after all.” With marked enthusiasm, Miller poured several beer glasses as quickly as possible from the tap.
“Yeah . . . to David!” the table said in unison before chugging a round of beer just like Lee had done. When they finished, they grabbed the fresh brews that Miller had poured.
“And to Jeffrey!” Miller shouted, and they downed that round before grabbing another.
Lee was caught between his fascination with how quickly a ‘religious tradition’ had started and how much he wanted to smack some sense into Miller so that he would stop acting so happy-go-lucky. He glanced over worriedly at the tables of morose people drinking quietly next to the Leprechauns’ corpses. The Firbolg really didn’t seem to have any clue as to how to act appropriately.
“So . . . what do we do now?” one of the younger girls asked. They were all on their third beer, and her eyes kept darting between the entrance, where a few of the regular townsfolk were, and back to Lee. The few individuals poking their heads in weren’t the first group of people to pass by, stare, and then leave without saying anything. It was a small town, and Lee and his followers had already caused an uproar in the middle of the day. If there was someone who hadn’t heard about what had happened already, Lee would be surprised. He was sure that at least a few of the onlookers were parents or loved ones of the kidnapped victims, but for some reason, none of them intruded on the scene.
“I don’t know,” Lee answered, looking down at his cup. They had been drinking for half an hour, and no one had really said much during that time. Miller poured drinks and handed out the chef’s last batch of fried chicken, Ling stared at the table as if there were some great secret to be had in it, and Lee just watched. He studied the face of each and every person in the room. There were quite a few women and some older men, but there weren’t any guys younger than David. It was as if they just hadn’t found the men necessary. Or maybe they were worried that the men would have been strong enough to fight back, making them harder to kidnap and then control.
The first thing I’m doing when I get back home is donate to foundations that stop human trafficking, Lee decided. He had plenty of money saved up from the fact he wasn’t a socialite but had a very well-paying job. That decision untied the knot in his gut for a minute until he realized how rarely he followed through on these types of things. He was the type of guy who constantly thought ‘let me give my first-class seat to that soldier on his way home’ or ‘I should let that old lady take my seat on the bus,’ but then he’d always waffle until someone else did it instead. Whatever temporary good he felt would be erased by the shame of not actually doing anything.
“I’m tired,” Ling sighed, the first one to put forth any semblance of a direction.
“I am too . . .” a girl in her twenties agreed. She had just come downstairs after helping move the doorway-collapse-victim to a bed, and she picked up a beer from Miller before sitting down.
“I could drink more.” Miller’s voice came in much louder than the others’ like it was an advertisement on the radio. “I could also go for more killing. Lee, if you’re not tired, we can go hunt down and butcher some wolves while the women rest. I wonder . . . How do you think they would taste if you fried them like this chicken? I bet they’d be delicious! Fried wolf, fried deer . . . I want to try fried cow!”
“You know, you can fry other foods too. Like vegetables.” Lee laughed. The absurdity of Miller’s train of thought may have been out of place, but it provided a comedic relief from the tense atmosphere.
“Really? You have to show me how to do that. Can you make some right now? Better yet, can you make that fancy fried coating around an egg?” Miller asked with wide eyes.
“We can’t take everyone with us,” Lee responded, switching topics. The diversion was nice, but he didn’t want to get carried off on Miller’s train of thought. As he glanced around the room, it finally occurred to him what had been bothering him. On some level, he had known it the entire time and had been puzzling it out, but it hadn’t been at the forefront of his mind. Compared to what was coming, the fight through this trap-laden bar was probably only a minor scuffle. In a way, it might have even been a blessing.
“I don’t care what you say, I’m coming with you. I want to make him pay, and I don’t want anything to happen . . .” Ling started off rather vehemently, then she trailed off midway through. “I’m coming with you.”
Lee tried to nix the idea again. “But, what if—”
“I’m
coming with you,” she repeated again with even stronger resolve.
“Okay, we got one person that will come with us. Miller, you’re definitely going to be coming with us to kill the other Herald, right?” Lee didn’t feel like arguing with Ling again. She had essentially saved his life by coming last time, so if she insisted, what could he say? She had bailed him out before when he was in a tight spot, and she had shown that she could hold her own.
“I’ve been thinking . . . if we need a sacrifice, I could beat someone to death with their own limb.” Miller’s gore-heavy sense of devotion was rather disturbing to watch, but Lee had no doubt that he planned on realizing his idea. He had always been faithful to his word in that regard.
“Don’t change the subject. I’m coming too,” the girl who had just walked downstairs added.
The old woman who had held David’s hand during his final moments stood up. “Like Porter said, I’m coming as well. I don’t care if I die, and I want to be of some use. I want to make sure no one goes through what we did.”
“Henslee . . .” Porter looked at the older woman pensively. It was obvious to anyone with eyes that Henslee, as she was apparently called, was now void of everything but hate—that she was ready to die.
“I . . . I want to help if you need me. But . . . but I really just want to go home. I want to see my dad. I want to . . .” another girl at a table in front of Lee started trying to speak, but she just couldn’t get the words out. She had been looking sad for hours, and opening her mouth caused the dam to break, and she burst into tears. One tear fell, slowly rolling down her cheek, and then a flood. The sobbing was soft and quiet, and whatever bravado the others had built up was washed away by that flood of tears.
“I want to go home too,” an older man in the back said. “I’ve been away for so long.”
“Wait, stop,” Lee said loudly, silencing the group. “I won’t stop you if you insist on coming, but we’re all tired. We’ve been up all night, and life hasn’t been kind to us either. So, why don’t those of you who want to go home just head on home? It won’t make you any less of a man or woman. You’ve done everything above and beyond, so just get some sleep. I’m sure most of you have lives to rebuild, so you might as well get started now.”
“But are you going to be okay?” the older man asked. “Are they going to be okay?”
“We . . . might need more people. Tomorrow, we’ll try to recruit able-bodied men and women who are used to fighting—not people who need to be with their families. If you need to go, go now. Take a beer for the road, and we’ll hopefully see you all when this whole thing is over.” No one moved at first, but eventually, they started leaving one at a time. When all was said and done, four women and two men remained.
“You know, the chances of us dying aren’t exactly low.” Lee looked at those who didn’t leave. They didn’t appear to have any muscles, and they had held their weapons like they were first-time LARPers playing around with Nerf bats. They didn’t have the smooth, skilled archery that Ling did.
“What do we do about him?” Amber asked, pointing toward Ramon. She was one of the women who had stayed behind and appeared to be around the same age as Porter. Ramon had been bound and gagged in the corner the entire time the group was lugubriously drinking, and someone would go over and kick him every now and then, but no one had killed him yet since Lee hadn’t sentenced him.
“Would you feel better if we killed him?” Lee asked.
“Yeah, absolutely. Let’s do it slowly!” Amber shouted with more enthusiasm than a girl talking about killing someone should have. “Make him suffer on the way out!”
“I say we go with your original idea: We take a digit off every day until he dies,” Henslee chimed in, giving Lee the chills.
“We could hang him or cut off his head . . . maybe be humane about it. We’re better than him, aren’t we?” one of the two men gave his own input. “I wouldn’t feel right about that other idea. It seems like it would make us worse than he is.”
Something, something . . . forgiveness. Wait, if I make them forgive him now, then that would ruin me. I can’t lose more followers! Lee had checked to affirm one of his suspicions when David died, and he had been proven correct. He had only lost one personal follower, and he hadn’t gained any zealots. In fact, he hadn’t gained any Faith since the fight started. So, they all want vengeance, but they all want it to differing degrees. I could say something about how he’ll suffer some horrible fate in the afterlife, but I don’t want them to think this religion is all fire and brimstone, even though that is clearly the direction Miller wants to take it.
“How about we think about what he did to you all,” Lee said after a moment. “I think that would be the best way to punish him.”
“What do you mean?”
Lee felt that the plan he was slowly forming would easily be accepted. He just had to lead them to it. “Well, for the past few months, he’s been sending you all to a hellish camp with little food or comfort to mine away nonstop, hasn’t he?”
“Yeah. He did, and they treated us awfully! They . . .” Amber bit her lip and swallowed whatever she was going to say further. “They just treated us like tools to be used at their discretion.”
“Then, that’s easy. Why don’t we give him back exactly the same punishment he gave you?” Lee asked.
“What do you mean?” Ling asked, lifting up her head.
“Well, between the lot of you, there couldn’t have been more than sixty. We add in the two or three months you all served at maximum, and that’s at most one hundred and eighty months or fifteen years,” Lee continued. “So, in order for him to fully suffer as much as you did, he needs to suffer for at least fifteen years—if not more. He needs to suffer in the same way you did, with no fewer arduous and painful experiences. But his punishment will be worse than yours.”
Lee smiled. He felt a joyful dichotomy as his scheme seemed both evil and vindicated of evil at the same time. He was going to make someone break, make their life awful and torture them, but he wasn’t going to use torture by the definitions that he imagined. Rather, he was going to make him go through exactly what he put others through. That was why he felt vindicated even though the whole thing reeked of wickedness.
“How will it be worse?” one asked.
“Well, we’re going to put him through worse labor. We’re going to use him until his body breaks, day after day, but he won’t have companionship. You all had each other. You had families to think about returning to. There were those that cared for you, but he will be alone. He will suffer alone, day after day, with barely enough food, no free time, no guests, and no god to watch over him after we kill the Herald and last bastion for the lord he chose.” Lee stood up and stared directly at Ramon. “Fifteen years minimum. We need to make sure he doesn’t die a day sooner.” The punishment might not exactly be the same as what the women went through, but the pain of solitude would normally break a normal person by itself. Hermits existed, but they were rare.
The others looked at Ramon, and even the man who was against torture nodded.
“It’s cruel,” the man said, “but it’s no less than he deserves.”
“Indeed. If he had made a point of understanding how his actions affected others, how they would feel if he was the one they were done against, then we wouldn’t be here today. We’d all be drinking in this bar, enjoying delicious food, and exchanging stories. Lee had to stop himself from smiling. Great ones, too. There’s about a thousand LitRPG and Fantasy books you would have loved, idiot, Lee cursed at him silently.
“That seems fair, but can I stab him once?” Miller asked. “He made fun of my spear. I really want to gore him just once.”
“No, but you can slap him a few times if it makes you feel better.” Lee had to shoot down the stabbing idea right away. He’d normally be all for it, but if each of the people who suffered because of Ramon stabbed him, he’d be dead before nightfall.
Miller seemed perfectly fine with th
e idea, so he put down his beer and walked over in front of Ramon. He reached down, picked Ramon up with one hand, and then slapped him so hard the man was sent sprawling two feet to the left. “Oh, man, that was a blast. Come on, everyone, get a slap in! It will make you feel so much better. I think I’m going to have to slap him a few times tomorrow.” He picked up Ramon again and dragged him over to the table, where the girls and the guy at the table actually did just as he suggested. In fact, Amber slapped him three times.
“Well, does anyone else have an issue with the punishment?” Lee asked. “I know it might seem light, but trust me: he’ll suffer worse than you did.”
Porter frowned at Lee then slapped Ramon so hard that even Miller wasn’t able to keep ahold of him, sending him to the floor once again. “Fine. But I want to be able to hit him whenever I feel like it.”
“Could they do that to you at the mines?” Lee asked.
“Yes, and they did,” Porter retorted, spitting on Ramon at the same time.
“That’s fine then. Whatever they did to you, feel free to do to him. But I think we have more important matters to discuss now, like the battle ahead.” Lee returned to his table but didn’t sit down.
“Are we heading over there right now?”
“No.” Lee shook his head. Since he was able to fly, Ethan had managed to reach the area relatively quickly, but Lee didn’t trust Ramon’s word about the number of traps that might be hidden along the way. He wanted to make sure the area was thoroughly searched, and even Ethan seemed eager to double and triple check the pathway. The small mouse had started working his way back on his tiny little mouse feet while looking for levers, ropes, pitfalls, or loose earth. He was even using his extremely acute mouse nose to sniff around for possible poisons or odd smells. Fool me once, Ramon, good on you. But you won’t fool me twice. “We’re not ready yet. I need you all to do me a favor, something that will help me greatly.”
“What do you need?” Porter asked, slapping Ramon again before Miller dragged him over to the other table.
