The high priest Siriso silently adjusted his scales, as he prepared to weigh up the sins of the defiant dwarf who now stood before him.

The accused was an oddity, that much was certain. He hadn’t cried as the code that carried a record of his crimes was forcefully ripped from his dwarven avatar’s chest. Nor did he so much as flinch, as said code was casually tossed onto the scales, forcing the criminal to relive a lifetime of sin in a blink of his mind’s eye. In fact, the diminutive individual before him had yet to show even the smallest shred of guilt or the slightest hint of remorse. No, the dwarf just stood there, his cold stare burrowing into his AI accuser, almost daring the goblin priest to move against him.

Siriso tried not to let the insolent scrap off personaware get under his skin. But he had to admit, he was particularly horrified by the way in which the dwarf had sacrificed its only ally. The action had taken had been heartless, calculating, and shown a level of ingenuity that had surprised even the priest’s post-human intelligence.

All of this was factored in, weighed against the system, totted up with little good grace to offset it, so by the time the priest had finished his task, the scales were far from balanced. He sighed, shaking his thin goblinoid head. The capacity for evil these digitally recycled humans possessed never ceased to amaze him. And this would be one of the worst penalties he’d been required to dispense in quite some time. It would be so much more satisfying to delete the insolent scrap of code, lest it grows and corrupts the personaware around it. But the dwarf’s expensive, automated lawyers had been particularly shrewd, taking the option of deletion off the table, robbing the priest of his favored course of action for the damnedest of digital souls. Oh well, death was too good for this one, he tried to convince himself.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

Siriso lifted a digital folder from the scale, holding the dwarf’s sins in his boney green hand, and declared judgement. The dwarf stared back at him with steely determination, accepting his fate as if it were nothing. At this, the priest let out yet another depressed sigh. That damned Dungeon Warden couldn’t be trusted to rehabilitate a soul so black as this. Would he even recognize the danger it posed? More likely, the work-shy warden would be too busy cursing him for sending yet another wayward soul his way.

With a flick of the goblin’s wrist, NPC guards began to materialize. Siriso prayed that the dwarf would resist, and give the guards cause to dispense their own small measure of judgement. A smile crept to the corner of his lips, as he imagined the satisfaction that a glimpse of the dwarf’s blood might give him. But the dwarf was too smart for that, casually accepting his fate as the goblin soldiers led him to damnation.

The courtroom now empty, Siriso gritted his teeth and cursed out loud, swatting the scales from their podium. This was all he could stand. His other bodies were contacted, and they swiftly reached a conscious. A sterner rod was needed. Justice would be done. And the dwarf would be judged, just like everyone else who’d ever had the audacity to slip through the cracks in his programming, and escape into that damned dungeon.