The deputy had Old Quixote sit on the floor while he made the appropriate calls. Slouching in his rotating leather chair, the lawman sneered down at the old drunk while the phone rang.

“What business?” a cold, mirthless voice seeped out of the phone.

“It’s him again, sheriff,” the deputy grunted. “He was blackout drunk and raisin’ hell by the time I got to him.”

“Cell 4-A. Overnight. Throw him out at first light.”

“Got it. By the way, do you think you could-” A click rang out as the sheriff hung up.

The deputy pursed his lips. He didn’t get paid enough to deal with being deputy of Villanausica. If someone had told him five years ago that he’d be shunted off to some backwater town surrounded with nothing but common slimes and rednecks, working with an emotionless automaton of a sheriff…

… He’d have believed them.

He glanced down at his bulging beer belly before rubbing at his unshaven chin. Who was he kidding? He was worthless. No talent for cultivation, no wealth to his name, and barely any marketable skills.

Leaning back, he propped his feet up on his desk. At least he was doing better than Quixote, who had slumped over on his side, his face scrunched up with pain thanks to the cuffs that bound his hands behind his back. Ever since the sorry clot had shown up the year before, covered in dirt and blood, the town had used him as their gertriatic whipping pole. At least the local bar gave him room and board for free, if only because he drew in steady crowds with his drunken antics.

An unfamiliar emotion stirred in the deputy’s heart as he watched Quixote struggle to move himself into a less painful position. After a moment, he recognized it as pity.

“Wait a second, Qui-ho,” he mumbled as he turned away, pawing under his desk for his keys. “I dropped my keys down here a little while ago. I’ll get you out of those cuffs, you miserable fuck.”

Quixote, who had been waiting for that exact moment, drew his knees up to his chest and slipped his cuffed hands under his feet, displaying surprising flexibility for an old man. With his hands now in front of him, he climbed slowly to his feet.

“Where the fuck is it?” the deputy growled as he felt around. He heard the jingle of keys, and looked up to see Quixote standing above him, the keys held in his hand.

“Here you go sir.” The old man smiled.

“Thank- the hell!?” the deputy startled, reaching for his gun. Quixote promptly slammed the iron paperweight that had been resting on the deputy’s desk into the lawman’s temple. As he fell, Quixote struck again, the weight hammering into the back of his skull.

Dispassionately surveying the rest of the room, Quixote disrobed, taking off his bloodied clothes. Wetting his lips, he leaned down and licked the blood oozing from the deputy’s wound. He waited for a moment. “No, of course that wouldn’t work,” he muttered.

Taking the deputy’s revolver, he swiftly exited the room. He knew the police station was empty, but he moved carefully regardless.

Stepping into the cell block, he looked into each of the mostly empty cells, stopping once he reached the one that contained Villanausica’s other resident punching bag.

“You awake in there, Orin?”

The crumpled man who had been laying on his cot sat up. A veteran of the grimy, gnarled underground campaign known as the Wyrm War, Orin had returned to his hometown as a broken man, only to find that his mother had fled from the town as soon as he had been deployed. Now he was a listless shell of a man, sallow-faced and buried under a fog of delirious ennui.

“Quixote? What are you doing here. Where are your clothes?” he asked as he stood, only to freeze when he saw the gun in the older man’s hand.

“All I need is your clothes, boy. Don’t make this any harder than this has to be,” Quixote said, his voice light and conversational.

“Why? I thought we understood each other.”

Quixote raised his gun. “Clothes. Now. Your brain might be addled, but having it get popped by a bullet still seems like a real shame, doesn’t it?”

Orin deliberated for only a moment before stripping. Slowly, he slid his clothes over to the cell door, one by one. Quixote smiled.

“Good decision.”

The sharp retort of a gun echoed inside the jail.

----------------------------------------

Seele Korper had been right in the middle of picking someone’s pocket when she wondered whether it was wrong to steal.

The sheer oddity and abruptness of the thought had almost led to her getting caught, and now it was lodged inside of her head, refusing to go away no matter how much she focused on counting the day’s spoils.

She knew what she was doing was undoubtedly criminal, but she had never implicitly associated crimes with wrongdoings.

After all, she didn’t steal because she wanted to. Hungry stomachs required food, food required money, and money required methods of acquiring it, of which she possessed only one.

Loud whoops erupted from a nearby bar as a pimple-faced boy paraded his slender escort around like a war trophy. Two methods, she amended, but one of those options wasn’t something she’d consider until she truly had no other option.

As she set off for her home, she mulled over the morality of theft for a while longer. While her thievery was a result of necessity, she doubted that her targets cared when she was taking their hard-earned wages for herself.

She bit her lip. Why was she even thinking about such things? She was a pickpocket, not a philosopher!

Unfortunately, her focus was so intense that she didn’t notice the man in front of her until she collided with him.

Stumbling backwards, she glanced up at the man she had bumped into. She hoped she hadn’t bumped into any of her town’s more volatile individuals. A slip of a girl like her could normally beg forgiveness from most, but there were some genuine sadists in the sheriff’s Core Guard.

A wrinkled, tipsy face peered down at her.

“Y’all right, missus?”

She sighed in relief. “Thank the Rivers. I’m glad it’s just you, Ol’ Q.”

Quixote belched out a snorting, crackly laugh. “Well, I’m just glad that someone finally has a reason to be happy to see me, little… uh… ”

“Seele,” she said dryly. She hadn’t been lying; she was genuinely glad it had been Quixoted of all people she’d run into. The man was impossibly thick-skinned, even after knocking back enough liquor to down a horse.

She noticed that Quixote was giving her a strange look. “Something wrong?”

Quixote started before chuckling. “Maybe. Just curious, Say-lay, did you happen to get a cut anywhere, recently?” he asked. She sighed.

“A joke about my hair? Really?” She shook her head, fighting the urge to toy with her crimson tresses.

“That ain’t it. Just wondering cos’ I heard the good Deputy mention something about tet-” he frowned. “Titty-” his eyes crossed as he concentrated. “The one that locks up your jaw if you cut yourself on any nasty, rusty stuff.”

Seele stared at the old man for a moment before laughing. It was ridiculous, really. One of the few people that actually cared enough to ask her something like that was the man at the bottom of Villanausica’s totem pole, buried deep in the shit with the worms.

“Sorry, Ol’Q. Didn’t mean anything bad by it. No, I haven’t cut myself, and thank you.” She hesitated for a moment. Her pilfered coins and bills sat heavy in her pocket. “Here,” she said, pushing a few coins toward Quixote, whose eyes widened in surprise. “Take it. Get some better food than the pig’s feed they give you at The Cold Comfort. It’s cold tonight, so I’d get something hot and filling. There’s some in there for Orin as well.” She walked off.

“Wait. Why are you mentioning Orin all of a sudden?” she turned around, confused.

“Isn’t that his coat?”

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

Quixote tilted his head. “I think you must be confused. This ain’t his. I haven’t seen him in a while.”

“I see.” Seele nodded. Odd. She had thought they had joined together, whether as allies or something more. She wondered if she should ask for some money back, but decided not to. That would be wrong, or at least irritating for Quixote. And she knew he didn’t need more of that in his life. “Take care, then,” she waved goodbye as she walked away, eager to get home.

As she walked down Main Street, moving between the islands of illumination cast by shop windows and streetlights, several members of the Core Guard burst out of the apothecary, dragging a bleeding, bruised man she vaguely recognized as the alchemist’s apprentice. Shying away, she wondered whether she ought to take the long way around.

Because the Talon River ran right through the middle of Villanausica, the only way to get to her lodgings were the Main Street Drawbridge and the older, nameless bridge a half-mile upstream. The latter would be safer in the short term, but it would deposit her in a particularly seedy part of town she desperately wanted to avoid after dark. Continuing on Main Street would be faster, but the Core Guard…

After a moment of hesitation, she moved as far to the right as she could and edged past the guardsmen as they began beating the novice alchemist within an inch of his life, averting her eyes like everyone else.

She needed to get home quickly. Nothing good came of wandering around town at night. And besides, she was one of several people on the bridge. As long as she didn’t draw attention to herself, she would be fine.

She heard bone snap as the man she had abandoned to his fate screamed in pain. The sound almost made her want to turn around, but the fear of the guardsmen kept her in check. She didn’t know what offense the man had committed to warrant such punishment, but she knew she could be implicated in something much worse at the Core Guard’s whim. They were cultivators, after all. Common folk like her had no sanctity in their eyes.

Muttering an apology under her breath, she continued trudging forward, head down.

She had almost made it around the corner when she heard one of the Core Guard shout.

“The red-haired one, eh? Yeah, bring her over.”

She froze in place. The wind, which had been lying dormant for days, roared to life around her and sent her flying up in the air. A shrill scream died in her throat when the wind wrenched her down towards the ground, only to break her fall before she could become a bloody stain against the ground.

“That's a surprise. If you cleaned her up a little, she’d be quite the looker, don’t you think boys?”

Suppressing the urge to vomit or retch, she struggled to her knees and adopted a kneeling position, her eyes cast downwards.

“What can I do to assist you, good sirs?” she croaked out in as subservient of a voice as she could. Inwardly, she wanted nothing more than to run as fast and far from the cultivators as possible, but she knew such an act could only end badly for her. So instead, she groveled at her tormentors’ feet, hoping they weren’t in a particularly vile mood.

“So polite, too!” the same man spoke again. “Good catch, Murdow!”

“Thank you, Mr. Elduin,” another voice, tempered with a lilting accent, responded. Seele stayed as she was, not daring to do so much as twitch.

She wondered whether this was some twisted karmic punishment. She could picture it perfectly. How dare you, a teenage girl with no cultivation, run away from several grown cultivators. For shame! The thought almost made her laugh, but her throat was far too dry to make any sounds besides hoarse squeaks.

“As to your question, we’d like you to help us judge this young man’s character,” Elduin said, waving his hand in the general direction of the pulped mass of broken bones that he had been whaling on just moments earlier. Oddly enough, the blood that had leaked out of the victim’s body had begun letting out an odd red fog. None of the cultivators said anything about it, so she endeavoured to ignore it.

“I-I do not think I am anywhere wise enough to assist you in a-any way, sirs,” she said, pressing her forehead into the ground. She felt the last disparate tatters of her pride shrivel and disappear, but she didn’t care. Better to live on her knees than die on her feet.

“Oh, don’t be like that. You speak eloquently enough, so you can’t be any dumber than some of my old Sect-mates, at the least.” Elduin pulled out a cigar, lighting it with fingers that flashed with flame for a split second. “Now, this boy apparently thought his pay as an alchemist’s apprentice wasn’t enough for him. So he’s been selling some nasty drugs as a side business. Z-stims, to be precise. Shit fucking kills normal humans, and it’ll dessicate cultivators if they don’t regulate it.” He took a long drag on his cigar, burning it to ash. “Sheriff sent us here to teach him a lesson, but we got a little bit overzealous. Now we’re wondering whether he’s worth using any potions on.”

Seele blinked. Why was a cultivator asking her how he should use his potions? She knew she needed to answer quickly, but the question was bothering her. It just didn’t make sense. Unless it was for amusement’s sake, there was no reason to involve her, but the Core Guard weren’t idiotic enough to fool around with potions.

Unless it wasn’t purely for amusement.

The type of men who were inducted into the Core Guard weren’t the type to listen to the opinions of commoners like her. Which meant the guardsman was setting her up to be punished.

She swallowed. The guardsman’s question was a trap then, and she needed to put her hand right in without triggering it.

“Sir, I wouldn’t dare presume to tell you what to do with your treasures.” She glanced at the painfully swollen face of the boy. Her teeth gritted as she considered her options. Z-dealers were some of the nastiest of the bunch, but did that really merit such suffering? She chewed on her lip for a moment before speaking. “However, while I lack medical knowledge, I would do whatever is within my own power to help this boy. Surely such pain would only serve to make him delirious, and would interfere with whatever lesson the good sirs have planned.”

Elduin chuckled while checking his cuticles. “Anything in your power, girl?”

Seele flinched. She’d walked right into his second trap. She couldn’t back out now. “Yes sir.”

He crouched down next to her. “I want you to look me in the eye.” She did so, too terrified to even blink. “Would you be willing to kiss my boot if that was what it took?”

Fighting to keep her face neutral, Seele peered carefully up at Elduin’s eyes, which glinted with the threat of another trap.

“I-I would be honored if you would allow me to touch you at all, sir,” she said slowly. Her mind raced. If she kept saying vague statements, Eldiun would twist her words until she either ended up in his service or in an early grave. She needed to be more specific without giving off a hint of ego. The smell of blood washed over her, and her mouth dried up again. “I-” she gulped. “I would even go as far as to lick your boots clean, unless the good sirs would find the act unsightly.”

Deafening silence blanketed the area for a moment. She tensed. Had she gone too far?

Before she could start hyperventilating, Elduin started to laugh. His subordinates joined in after a moment, howling as they jostled each other.

“Can you believe it? She really said it!”

“I’ll lick your boots clean, good sir,” Murdow cackled, the air distorting his voice into a husky facsimile of Seele’s.

“Fuck me,” Elduin snorted. “I- I’m impressed by your humility, girl,” he managed to say before bursting into laughter again.

Normally, Seele’s face would have reddened until her cheeks matched her hair, but now she could barely hold back tears of relief.

“Right. Give this kid a potion,” he nudged the alchemist with his foot. “A standard low-grade should be more than enough for a non-cultivator.” He knelt down again, facing the boy this time. “Now, thanks to this girl, you’re going to go home a bruised mess, not a crippled one. There aren’t too many people with any talent in alchemy around here, so I guess it’s better if you don’t become completely useless regardless. However, you’re getting reduced pay for a while, and you will give us the rest of your Z, unless you want a repeat of tonight’s events.”

A single tear leaked out of the boy’s one open eye as he glanced at Seele, trying to communicate his thanks with only his gaze. Seele flashed him a smile before slipping back into an emotionless mask.

She almost shrieked when a hand landed on her head.

“I’ll be keeping an eye on you, I think,” Elduin said as he looked down at her. Her heart sank. The attention of a Core Guard member was the last thing she needed, but she somehow managed to paste a grateful smile on her face.

“Thank you,” she bowed.

Elduin snorted. “Run along now, then. Don’t do drugs, kid.”

She didn’t need to be told twice.

Shuffling away from the cultivators, she broke into a dead sprint as soon as she rounded the corner. The cold air made her throat born, and she was shaking so much she almost tripped over herself, but she didn’t care. She didn’t stop running until she collapsed onto her porch.

Laying against the cold, hard wood, she squeezed her eyes closed. For a while, she simply lay there, listening to the sounds of the town at night; the distant cracks of gunfire as the town militia hunted down slimes; the muffled blare of the television next door; the sonorous cry of the D-Line train as it pulled out of the station.

She sat up. She couldn’t decide whether she wanted to cry or laugh, so she decided to go to sleep.

Fishing her keys out of her pocket, she trudged inside her tiny house. Locking the door behind her, she trudged toward her bed, shucking off her jacket and coat before collapsing face first into her pillows.

She laid in bed for an hour before realizing she wouldn’t be able to fall asleep without a little help. Grumbling, she sat up, turning on her bedside lamp and clicking on her old radio.

As she stared up at her stained, off-white ceiling, serenaded by the bland, tinny sound of the Villanausica Soft Rock Station, she felt herself drifting off until her bedroom door slammed open.

For the second time that night, she screamed in abject terror as she fell toward the ground, except this time, she hit the ground while swaddled in a cocoon of her own blankets.

“Seele?”

Seele looked up to see the startled face of her roommate.

“Oh. Hello Moss,” she said weakly. “Could you help me out a little?” Her freakishly large friend bent over, unraveling her from her sushi-roll prison. Somehow, being freed in such a manner was far more embarrassing than offering to lick someone’s shoes clean.

“Cutting purses again?” He held up her jacket, which had a few bills sticking out of pocket.

“Maybe. What’s it to you?”

“Seele, shouldn’t do that. My pay can sustain us for a little while you look for work.”

“Bullshit,” Seele spat as she clambered to her feet. “Your boss pays you so little we’d have jack shit left over for food if we relied only on you. I can live off bread and potatoes. You can’t.”

They stood glaring at each other before Moss’ face softened.

“We’ll talk about this later. What’s more important is why I just barged in.” The man shook his head and twisted his hand into a gesture meant to ward off bad luck. “Heard some bad news recently.”

“Oh, that? Don’t worry, nothing bad happened. No one died.” She scratched the back of her head. “I just kissed up some cultivators until they laughed in my face, and they let me go.”

Moss raised a bushy eyebrow. “When did you get mixed up with-” He shook his head. “Whatever. That’s not important. You must have not heard, then.”

Seele frowned. “What do you mean? What happened?”

“Murder, Seele. They found Orin and the deputy in the police station, dead.”

Her blood ran cold. “Oh.”

“Their heads were mangled, apparently. They say the deputy’s skull was cracked, and Orin got shot right in the head.”

“Did Orin have his coat on?”

Now it was Moss’ turn to frown. “Seele, don’t tell me you’ve gotten mixed up in this too.” He stepped closer to her. “If I have to turn you in-”

“It’s not that!” she yelled, smacking Moss in the chest. “Just tell me!”

“O-okay, okay! People said he was stripped naked, apparently. How the hell did you know about it?”

Isn’t that his coat?

I think you must be confused. This ain’t his. I haven’t seen him in a while.

“Moss. Call the police.” She put a finger to his lips before he could speak. “I know who it was. It’s Ol’ Q! He’s the one who-”

The lights flickered off, plunging them into darkness. The only illumination came from the streetlights outside of the window. The DJ on the radio paused the music before filling the room with his velvety voice.

“I apologize for interrupting your broadcast.” The shuffling of papers could be heard. “We’ve just gotten word straight from the Mayor and the Core Guard that John Carroway and Orin Mason have been found dead-”

Seele clicked the radio off.

“We need to go,” Seele whispered.

Moss shook his head. “No. We’re gonna stay in here for now. We don’t know who’s in the house, how many people are here, or where they are. I’ll stay by the door. If it comes down to it, you climb out of the window. I’ll… I’ll be right behind you.”

She opened her mouth to protest, only to hear a metallic coughing sound and the shattering of glass. It wasn’t until Moss cried out in pain and collapsed while clutching his shoulder that she realized what had happened.

Before she could scream for help, an impact knocked the air from her lungs and sent her to her knees. An arm wrapped around her neck before she could recover.

“You’re surprisingly perceptive, you know that?” Quixote said as he leveled his gun to her head. He kicked away the remains of the glass jar he had used as a makeshift silencer. He tapped the gun barrel against her temple. The metal was hot against her skin. “You’re just not as quick on the draw as I am. You know how this works, I’m sure. You move, you die. You scream, you die. Cooperate, and they won’t have to scrape your brains off the walls.”