The Land: Monsters

by Aleron Kong

  So why was he willing now? There were a few reasons. One, the thunder that had made Nexus fix his attitude earlier. Richter couldn’t be sure, of course, but he was guessing, and banking on, those being the Auditor’s superiors. If they were already watching and warning him, then the giant must already be on thin ice. If the chaos seed called for a Judgement, he had to think that would play in his favor.

  The second reason was that, like it or not, Richter knew he had to reset his relationship with Nexus. The guy was a total asshole, but he was also the Auditor for his domain. They would probably never be besties, but at the very least they could treat each other with respect. That would never happen if the giant continued to think of him as a punk.

  Nexus had to understand that there would be consequences if he treated Richter badly. It was a weird truth that one of the best ways for two guys to bury the hatchet was to beat the crap out of each other and then share a beer. Richter knew he couldn’t actually beat Nexus up, but a genuine threat might serve the same purpose. He’d figure the beer part out after.

  The third reason was the most important. Simply put, he was lying his ass off. There was no way in hell he was going to call for a Judgement. Not for something like Nexus insulting Alma. He loved his dragonling to death, but he wasn’t going to risk eternal dick-cheese breath over it. He wasn’t crazy!

  Of course, Nexus did not need to know about any of those reasons, let alone the last one. So, as Richter looked up into the giant’s surprised eyes, he did his best to communicate one simple message, “That’s right, muthafucka. I’m cray-Z!”

  A quick mix of emotions washed over Nexus’s face. Richter recognized anger, that was easy enough, but he thought he might have also seen consideration and, quite possibly, fear as well. It all passed in a second and he couldn’t be sure. In the end, Nexus didn’t apologize, but he didn’t push the point either. Richter took it as a win. The giant just asked in a resigned voice, “What are your other questions?”

  Richter nodded and took a step back, removing himself from the powerful being’s space. Inwardly, he heaved a huge sigh of relief. Before posing his second question, he tried to capitalize on the emotional moment he’d just made, “Look, I know you don’t like me. I also know you’re pretty clear on how I feel about you. What you need to understand is that I have more than just myself to think about. I have over a thousand people relying on me. I can’t afford to keep this petty drama going between us. That’s why I want to tell you...” Richter gritted his teeth. What he was about to say next was going to hurt.

  “I’m sorry,” he grated out.

  If Nexus had been taken aback by the threat of a Judgement, he was absolutely floored by Richter’s apology. It had never occurred to him that this pompous lord, this never-quite-reached itch on his jock, this… dick pustule that seem to come back pop after pop, would ever actually apologize for attacking and disrespecting him. The unexpected nature of the apology moved Nexus and, in spite of himself, he began to think of the dark-skinned human in a different light. The Auditor regarded Richter for long minutes before finally responding…

  By laughing in his face.

  “You fucking pussy!” he shouted. “Ha ha ha!”

  Nexus slapped his thighs and roared with laughter. He laughed so hard that even his immortal sides hurt. Tears flowed down his face. After a minute, he stopped for a second, looking up at Richter’s face. The chaos seed’s nostrils had never before expanded to the size they now reached; the man was literally shaking with anger. That just made Nexus laugh even harder. He started howling in glee, and even his powerful body couldn’t take it. The pressure was so high that he farted, startling himself, which just made him lose it even more. After another minute he fell to one knee, panting, “I can’t. I can’t! Your fucking face! Ha ha haaaa!”

  The peals of laughter were only interrupted by strained wheezes as he tried to get his breathing under control. There would be a sharp intake of air followed by an audible exhale that sounded like a whoopie cushion. Every time Nexus almost got himself back under control, he would look back up at Richter’s enraged expression and the cycle would start all over again. Long minutes passed, and the whole time, the chaos seed got to see what it looked like when a twelve-foot-tall giant was laughing in your gods-damned face!

  Finally, after long, loooong minutes, Nexus stood up and wiped the tears from his face. Despite his words and the roughly half an hour of disrespect, he felt neither derision nor anger toward Richter. For the first time since the chaos seed had been dumb enough to attack him, weeks or months ago depending on your understanding of the space-time continuum, he wasn’t actively rooting for the man to fail. With a contented sigh, Nexus made a fake frowny face at him. “Heeeey, pucker-face. Stop being such a pucker-face. Come on, come on. Really. For real, I want to help. What questions do you have?”

  Richter kept glaring at him. The angry sweats were strong. He’d gotten so mad that his body had made a swamp-like atmosphere round his nethers, just to have another attack option. He wanted nothing more than to tackle Nexus and slap him silly… but instead he heaved a heavy sigh. This certainly hadn’t been how he’d intended to bury the hatchet with Nexus, but he’d have to take what he could get. Fact was, he had done something stupid when he’d threatened Nexus during his Trial. If this embarrassing laugh session was the tax he had to pay, he might as well man up and pay it. Of course, it was easier said than done. Thinking about burying an actual hatchet in Nexus’s face one day helped a bit. Many, many wusahs later, he had himself under control and he told Nexus the situation with Xuetrix, and what his ramshackle plan was to deal with it.

  During the past few months, Richter had had several conversations with Hisako. The information he’d gained hadn’t been limited to Auditors. Another topic he’d discussed with the Hearth Mother was how Favors and Vows worked. He knew that there were vague, but severe, consequences if you didn’t keep your word after committing to either of these geasa. Aside from that, Richter hadn’t known much.

  He’d had to be circumspect when having those conversations. Wood sprites weren’t exactly known for their tolerant nature. They were more of a slaughter-on-sight kind of people, and that was just for anyone who mistakenly wandered into their territory. Toward anything they considered “evil,” they were downright Old Testament.

  Seeing as how the Hearth Mother could crush him with a wave of her hand, he’d not explicitly told her that he owed a Favor to a demon. Instead, he’d talked about how he’d let a thief go in Yves but not before extracting a Vow. The terms of that Vow were vague, just like what he owed Xuetrix. The man just had to help Richter sometime in the future. What the chaos seed had wanted to know was just how far these geasa could be pushed.

  The answer hadn’t been simple. It was downright complicated, in fact. At least, that was the case if you didn’t want to do what the other person asked. If you did accede, the Favor or Vow simply disappeared once the objective was completed. It was a one-time deal. The process to resist was much more complicated.

  The Hearth Mother had explained that magical accords were not as simple as just keeping your word. They were heavily dependent on the strength of the two parties to the contract. The example she’d used was of someone making a deal with a demon. That had made Richter look at her side-eyed, but she hadn’t given any indication that she knew about Xuetrix. He chalked it up to the super ability every mother seemed to have of always knowing when men and boys had done something wrong, even if she didn’t know exactly what. Still, she hadn’t gone any further down that particular road and had just continued her explanation.

  If two creatures of equal power entered into a magical contract, then the person who owed the debt couldn’t be asked to do anything overly extraneous. What constituted extraneous would be up to the attitudes of both parties. Apparently, if the person who owed decided to refuse, then an actual contest of wills would take place and exert pressure on both of them. That pressure was a real thing that could affect the b
ody, mind and soul.

  If, for example, the person who owed the Favor was asked to help the other person clean their house, then that would most likely be considered an extremely reasonable request by both parties. As such, the person asking would have the weight of their “rightness” behind them. Conversely, the person who owed the Favor would also know that the request was reasonable, and so they would have no strong bulwark of faith to fall back on if they sought to deny the request. A person’s belief that they “should” agree to a reasonable request would make it likely they would lose any battle of wills over it.

  In this scenario, even if the strength of the two people was roughly the same, the person asking would have, in effect, a much stronger position. The high ground, in Jedi parlance.

  If the difference in their power was, say, considered to normally vary by a value of +1, then under these circumstances the person asking the reasonable request might be considered to have a power of +5 instead. Similarly, the person owing the Favor would know that they should agree to what was a very reasonable request, and so their personal power might be modified down to +0.2 of its normal value. Comparing the two, +5 to 0.2, well, it would be no contest. In this case, the person asking the Favor would almost certainly win.

  Hisako had gone on to explain that her scenario could be vastly different if one factor was changed, e.g. the person that owed the Favor was a killer-for-hire. In that case, asking such a person to help you clean your house might be seen as ridiculous by both parties. The positive modifier of the asker would probably be much less and the negative modifier to the killer would also be minimal. The assassin might even get a positive modifier to their strength. When the battle of wills began, the outcome could be very different. Oddly, asking an assassin to kill someone might be seen as completely reasonable by both parties, and that request might favor the person who was owed the Favor. It was all about context.

  At that point in the explanation, Richter had developed a slight headache. He was still pleased to hear it though, given his own situation. The concept was a bit tricky, but so long as Xuetrix didn’t ask anything crazy from him, then there shouldn’t be a problem. If the demon did ask him to do something abhorrent, then he should get the high ground in a battle of wills. Also a good result.

  That was, of course, when Hisako had dropped some bad news. Even if the two parties had about the same strength, and the request was neither unreasonable nor ridiculous, essentially when everything was equal, the person who owed the Favor would still be at a disadvantage. She said that the Universe took no sides, and delivered judgement fairly.

  The fact that a person had previously agreed to a geas put that individual at an immediate disadvantage. Even if that person had been pressured into the contract, they would still be handicapped, though perhaps a bit less so, depending on the situation. Again, the perception of both parties came into play. In a battle of wills, what was “true” was always less important than what someone believed. The main point, she’d said, was that Vows were not to be made lightly, and that in The Land, words had Power.

  It all reminded Richter of a lesson his mother had repeated to him over and over, usually when he was about to get spanked. He would protest his innocence with arguments that should have swayed the Supreme Court, or at the very least, convinced her that her heavy hand of justice should not fall. She would always listen, but her response never wavered: “strong never wrong.” That basically meant that even if she was actually wrong, her belief was strong enough to win the argument. Another way to look at it was that since she was stronger, it really didn’t matter what he said. As a child, it had seemed like the worst of injustices, but it was kind of hard to argue with her logic when he always ended up with a sore ass and eating snot. It wasn’t until he got older that he understood the irony of that.

  Even learning that he’d be at a disadvantage -- all things being equal -- hadn’t been horrible news. Richter had agreed to the Favor after all, and he was prepared to pony up so long as the request wasn’t too crazy. He had actually felt pretty good about everything after he had gotten more information. Tragically, what Hisako had told him next had made Richter’s blood run cold.

  If the person under magical contract refused a request, and then lost the battle of wills, one of three tragedies awaited them. The lightest and least stringent consequence was that the person who had broken their Vow or reneged on a Favor would be cursed. They might lose levels, have their sight or hearing taken away, or become paralyzed. The Universe would amplify the initial horrifying consequences of breaking a geas if the person failed the battle of wills. The long-term consequences of failure were enough to keep children up at night when they heard about them. Despite that, it was still the best-case scenario. The other two options were far, far worse.

  The first scenario would only occur if the power difference between the two beings was minor. If, however, the difference in power between the two was great enough, then the loser might be magically compelled to complete the task whether they wanted to or not. Rather than the contract ending, the geas would take control of the person’s body. If that happened, the person would do absolutely anything to accomplish the task they were given.

  Richter had asked if she personally knew of anyone that had suffered such a fate. Her answer had been a very unladylike barking laugh. Hisako had told him she did not know of anyone stupid enough to willingly break a Vow. She had added that very few people were stupid enough to engage in such magical contracts, and that only the dumbest gyotis ever born would make a Vow to a being much stronger than they were.

  Personally, Richter still felt her attitude at the end had been completely unnecessary.

  The Hearth Mother had then told him that while she herself had never met such a fool, she had heard stories and read old accounts of beings that had been trapped within their bodies for years or decades, bound by a magical contract, forced to serve the being to whom they had owed a Favor. Such stories were told to children so that they would never be foolish enough to make a Vow lightly. Richter remembered that he’d hurried her along at that point.

  The stories she’d told him had almost always ended in death. The happiest tales only involved the death of the person who had made the Vow. Most, however, involved the massacre of anyone who stood in their way. Family members, friends, children, it didn’t matter. Anyone who tried to stop them would be slain without mercy.

  Even if the person under contract was normally moral and upright, they would not hesitate to slaughter entire cities if it was the most expedient method to accomplish their goal. She told him that magical contracts had no time limit and took no pity. Through it all, the person was trapped in a living nightmare, forced to watch evil acts committed by their own hand without the power to stop themselves.

  Hisako told him that she had heard of only one case where someone fulfilling their Vow had regained control of their body, mind and soul. It was a dwarf woman who had spent years living in filth and committing acts of savagery. The moment her task was completed, the woman had reportedly looked around in confusion before falling to her knees and wailing in anguish. She had clawed out her own eyes before biting through the flesh of her wrists. She had bled to death, screaming for forgiveness the entire time. A woman who had once been a princess in a far-off kingdom had died in a gutter, her soul stained with the deaths of thousands.

  That was obviously horrible, but Richter still hadn’t been scared. He’d grown in power by that point. Even if his body was compelled to complete a task, he might be able to escape the geas if he died and respawned in the process. He couldn’t be sure, of course, if that would free him of the contract, but there was a chance.

  That was when Hisako had told him about the third and worst outcome of losing a battle of wills. “This,” she’d intoned with a serious look in her eye, “is why you never make a deal with a demon.”

  With great solemnity, she had explained that the “power” calculated for a battle of wills was determined by
many things. One’s Attributes would come into play, as well as one’s levels. Secondary Attributes, and the determination of those involved, were also important. There were many factors, but what made dealing with demons so dangerous in particular was that they were often considered to be a higher order of being, at least as compared to most denizens of The Land.

  According to Hisako, there were few things that affected “power” in a battle of wills more than that. He remembered that she had specifically said that demons could be several “tiers” higher than the fools they tricked into owing them favors. Up until this point, he’d thought “tier” was just an expression, a description of some abstract concept. Now he knew a tier was a very real thing. It meant that demons had ascended.

  Richter cursed himself for not having asked more questions back then. Even after learning the hard way that The Land had untold secrets, he’d still made an assumption. Not for the first time, he promised himself that he would do better. As disappointed as he was with his past self, Richter was also excited. Suddenly, just as Xuetrix showed up to collect his Favor, he had an opportunity to ascend to a higher tier. If he hadn’t learned about his aura, he’d suspect he was being played. The timing was too perfect. But, as insane as it sounded, it might be that just by existing he was manipulating fate.

  The point was, he could ascend. If he had to refuse Xuetrix’s request, then hopefully his “power” might be the same as the demon’s. That was very important, because the tragedy of failing a battle of wills had made his blood run cold.

  While being magically compelled to do something sounded horrible, Hisako had told him of an even worse fate. If the difference in power between the demon and the person who owed it a favor was great enough, then not only would that person lose control of their body, but they would lose their soul as well. Even if they died, their spirit would be owned by the demon for all eternity.

  As Richter heard all of this, he couldn’t help but see the parallels to old myths on Earth. Possession, losing your soul to a demon, such stories were in almost every ancient culture of his home planet. Hisako had told him that she didn’t know what happened to souls after a demon claimed them, but every folktale on Earth had said it was the worst fate a person could suffer. He had no desire to learn if the truth was even more horrifying than the myths.