“Oh, I’m sorry, you had another what? Uprising? Among the workers? That you need because why exactly? I mean, are we not eternal and all powerful? No. No I will not be silent. I told you. From. The. First. Day. that you, all of you, were playing with fire. Shut up. Yes I know we’re all managing Fire Portals. That’s not. Ugh. Why do I bother to commune with any of you. Listen. Enjoy your little rebellion. Don’t kill them all, since none of us will spare you any of our citizens, and do not let them acquire access to any of your portals, or we will make sure that information does not spread beyond the bounds of your city walls. Anyone who disagrees with that sentiment, please, by all means, feel free to test me on it.”
– Helgon the Eternal, in a routine weekly chat with his fellow Neoteric Lords.
Mumora was going to die. I hadn’t helped save her. I’d marked her for death.
That thought froze me in place in a centuries long moment where her unnaturally youthful body arched up over the balcony she’d jumped from and plummeted gracefully to the street below.
It wasn’t the fall that was going to kill her though. Kobolds are about the same size as me, and I can handle falls that would turn one of the bigger folks into a splattered mess on the street. Mumora wasn’t going to go splat either. She was just going to be hurt. Probably in her arms so she couldn’t fend anyone off all that well. Definitely in her legs too, which would mean escape via my favorite tactic of ‘running away’ would be out of the question.
That wasn’t what guaranteed her death though. The injuries I watched rushing closer to her simply guaranteed that her death wouldn’t be delayed at all. It was the Inquisitor who was going to kill her.
Or maybe one of his goons.
I felt Sola coil up in me at the thought and begin to reach out with a miracle that I had to fight back.
Miracles weren’t going to save anyone.
All a miracle would do was get us killed too. By “us”, I primarily meant me and her, but the Inquisitors weren’t known for their restraint. If they had even the slightest reason, everyone here would die, either directly at their hands or as Kindling for being under suspicion of fomenting rebellion.
Sola did not care about that.
Sola wanted to help.
Sola needed to help.
And I didn’t let her.
I wasn’t being brave. Or smart. Or wise. I was just scared. Not of the moment before us, but of all the moments like it I’d seen and all the misery that came from them. Misery that I’d avoided dying to by being scared. By running away and not looking back. By not letting myself care.
I knew there was nothing admirable in that. I knew the whole world was filled with better people than me, but better people died. A lot. All the time from what I could see. The world didn’t want better people. It wanted people who could be used. It wanted people who could hide. It wanted people who didn’t try to change it because for as awful as it was, the world was exactly how the people who were in charge wanted it.
And so Mumora fell.
And I didn’t stop her.
But Smiles did.
I’m not sure how he moved that quick. One moment he was at my side and then next he’d leapt down the street and body checked Mumora mid-fall, turning her falling momentum into lateral motion. He clung to her and they landed and rolled out of the fall, each of them absorbing parts of the fall for the other.
The patrollers were already reaching for their weapons as Smiles and Mumora began to rise painfully back their feet. Neither was broken, but both were bruised.
“Alive!” the Inquisitor commanded at the site of bare steel in the patrollers hands, which prompted them to yank the Pain Marks from their belts instead.
Pain Marks, the joke goes, is how patrollers say ‘hello and good day’ to the citizenry, since every citizen makes a patroller afraid for their lives. That’s not technically true. Usually patrollers reach for their swords because the fist sized spell disks which carry the pain spells are more costly than simply stabbing someone. That patrollers are uniformly bullies and cowards, convinced that the citizens are both pathetic and terrifyingly deadly, is however entirely true in my experience.
I flinched waiting for the electric snap of the Pain Marks discharging. The snap which was always followed by choked screams of agony.
In this particular case however, the snap was interrupted by grunts of surprised pain.
“There’s no need for that,” Oolgoo said. “You came here to ask some question. I’m sure we can facilitate the answers you need.”
He’d caught the lead patroller’s outstretched arm in one of his hands and was squeezing hard enough that the tiniest erg of extra force was going to turn the man’s arm into a bag of shattered bone splinters.
The other patrollers were being hemmed in by the people from Lucky’s who’d been dragged out into the street too.
“Get out of our way. Now. Get out now,” one of the other patroller’s screamed at Crystalline, a young dwarven woman who was standing on her toes in front of him to block his shot.
“Put it down. Don’t hurt them and put that down,” Crys screamed back, pointing at the patroller’s Pain Mark but not trying to take it from him.
I understood what she was doing. If she tried to grab the Pain Mark away from him one of two things would happen. She would fail, and he would turn it on her so long that her nerves glowed. That was the good result. The bad result would be that she would get the Pain Mark, and he would then pull out the Death Mark.
Death Mark’s are magical disks, like Pain Marks. They’re tools that all patrollers are equipped with and that a lot of citizenry has access to as well. Magic death amulets seem like the kind of things the Neoteric Lords should probably have kept out of the hands of the populace, and I’m sure Vaingloth would have eradicated them if they were anything more than pacifiers for the common people.
Oh, certainly, a Death Mark can and will kill you if the user has the focus to use them, and there were definitely a lot of people who frothed at the mouth over the necessity of bearing one at all times and practicing with them regularly. The most fervent Death Mark carriers seemed to be certain that it was only the threat of their personal pacifiers which kept a horde of ‘criminals’ from assaulting them at any and every moment.
The truth was, most Death Mark carriers only ever killed themselves with them, either accidentally or “accidentally”. The patrollers had, in theory, some reason to be afraid of them, except for the small issue that they were routinely outfitted with Death Wards. Not great Death Wards, but plenty to shrug off most of the Death Marks a civilian would have.
In the unlikely event that a civilian did manage to kill a patroller with a Death Mark, said civilian could look forward to the Special Patrol showing up. Said civilian, their family, and the block they lived on typically did not survive that encounter.
With that sort of power imbalance on their side, you might expect the patrollers to be a little more comfortable in their day to day encounters with the rest of populace, but no, any and every situation had to be met with total domination and anything which threatened that required an overwhelmingly brutal response.
So Crys was being reasonable, or as reasonable as she could be in the situation.
Which was of course why one of the other patroller’s Pain Marked her to the side of her face.
I’ve been clipped by a Pain Mark before. It sucks. It really sucks. Like lose control of bodily functions level of suck.
Crys gritted her teeth.
And stood there.
My brain kind of fritzed out at that. I was so impressed that for a brief moment, I forgot to be afraid.
And then another one Pained her.
Didn’t change anything.
Except that she smiled wider.
“Please,” Oolgoo said, speaking to the Inquisitor instead of the patrollers. “You need answers. Let us help you get them. It will be easier and faster for everyone.”
“Cease,” the Inquisitor said, and the patrollers stepped back.
With the Pain Marks removed Crys sagged a little but kept herself upright by what had to be a divine level of will.
“Come here, or everyone you see will die, you last and most painful of them all,” the Inquisitor said to Mumora and Smiles.
I watched the two of them glance at each other and I knew the silent discussion they were having.
If they ran, they might get away. Probably not. The Inquisitor would probably kill them, or bind them, or turn their bones to ice or so some other horrible thing before they could take five steps. But maybe those five steps would be enough. He might miss.
Even if did though, he wasn’t kidding. Everyone else would die.
‘Everyone else’ didn’t necessarily include anyone they cared about. We were people who’d crashed at the same nest, not blood relations, and even the thickest of blood bonds weren’t something most people were willing to sacrifice themselves over.
If I was them, I would have run. Five steps can be a lot.
They didn’t though.
The idiots gave a damn about us.
They were going to die to give the rest of us (except for Crys) a chance to live.
I hate them.
Sola didn’t understand.
Which was good.
I didn’t want her to.
“Why did you flee?” the Inquisitor asked as Mumora got into stabbing range.
“He said I was an old lady,” Mumora said, and gestured to the balcony where the patroller who’d been bringing her out was standing as slack jawed and witless as most patrollers did most of the time. “Said I was unnatural, but I ain’t old and I ain’t unnatural. He wouldn’t listen though.”
“I see. And are you not Mumora Greyfletch?” the Inquistor asked.
“Yeah I am. Named after my grandmother,” Mumora lied.
“Your grandmother? And where is she?”
“Got shipped over to East Market two days ago,” Mumora lied without batting an eye. “Probably catch up to her at Sunk Rock though next time there’s some fish work there.”
It was so terribly plausible that I was sure it wasn’t going to work. Patrollers tend to hate it when you give them a reason to bother someone else and no reason to be petty and cruel in the moment. Inquisitors though I had less experience with, so I waited to see if this one would follow suit.
“East Market and Sunk Rock. Good. We have an investigation in East Market already and Sunk Rock is no great distance,” the Inquisitor said in a tone lacking in malice or disbelief.
It was enough to make everyone, the patrollers included, relax.
But not me.
And thankfully not Smiles.
The Inquisitor drew his Death Mark with such easy grace I don’t think anyone understood what he was doing until he had it aimed directly at Mumora’s face.
Smiles wasn’t large enough to overpower the Inquisitor, but what size can’t accomplish, decisive action sometimes can.
As the Inquisitor brought the Death Mark up, Smiles launch himself up directly under the Inquisitor’s arm causing the life quenching magic to fly harmlessly into the sky.
If there’d been a moment of stunned quiet that followed, all would have been lost. The patrollers were trained, and paranoid, and would have rallied.
The people around me, and the people watching at Lucky’s did not give them that moment though. With a roar the crowd turned as one, and the deadly melee I’d been fearing commenced.