Carl peered around the opaque image that hung between them in the air. The white of Seth'tith's eye—which was normally black—had turned to a glowing shade of red, nearly matching the iris. "Uh, you know him?"
The red eye didn't move, remaining riveted to the image that was being displayed. "Normannus," he snarled.
"Uhh…"
"I must kill him!" Seth'tith bellowed, sounding suddenly crazed. "Wield me! I must have vengeance for my daughter!"
That's a pretty quick change from the guy I was talking dad jokes with a minute ago. "So you do know him?"
The eye pulsed, seeming to grow larger. "Carl, you may hold affection for some humans, but this is a human who must die. And he must not be allowed to die quickly. He must suffer."
Carl frowned, not liking the turn of the conversation. "Why's that?"
The eye throbbed again. "You rescued my daughter. She told you of her tormenters, that pair of twisted goddesses, but there were others. This is Normannus, and he was the most vile of them."
"Worst how?" Carl asked, beginning to feel annoyed at this Normannus guy for participating in that sort of bullying.
"I know only bits of it," Seth'tith said, his voice shaking in obvious fury. "This man—this thing… He raped my daughter. Again and again, smiling happily when she begged for him to stop."
"What." Carl's jaw clenched. He was no longer annoyed. He shifted the core to his left hand.
"Should I speak of how he tortured her?" Seth'tith said, seeming barely able to utter the words in his anger. "How he forced her to beg him to rape her? How he broke her limbs to punish her when she was not eager enough? Tore her tail from her body and strangled her with it?"
"What." Carl's fists were curled tightly now, and his glare had returned to the picture where some fucking kid who had raped his friend was struggling to complete the stupidest of puzzles. "He. Did. What?" The memory came back to him of the strange way Ir'alith had looked at him when he logged into the place she'd been stuck.
Carl knew considerably more now than he had back then.
He'd thought she had been role-playing the whole time, that her expression had been edgy.
That wasn't what she had been feeling when she looked at him with that nervous gaze.
She had been afraid.
"The more she begged for him to stop, the more it excited him," Seth'tith snarled, his voice filling the room. The eye pulsed mightily, causing the axe to move a little on the wall. "Did you believe her trapped for a single day, Carl?" he shouted. "It was longer than a day! Much longer! Raise me to battle! I must bathe myself in his blood!"
Carl's breath was coming in deep draws now, and his head had sunk down slightly in an instinctive manner. He was an ordinary man. He was the Director of IT for a popular gaming company, a husband, and a father.
He was a calm man ordinarily. Few things would rouse his anger. It wasn't a good use of his time or energy, so he had little use for it.
One thing, however, would never fail to enrage him.
If a woman was abused, it made Carl furious.
This was no chivalry, no male chauvinism.
No, neither of those terms described Carl Weathers.
Carl Weathers was a father. He had two daughters, Bobby and Sammy, each of whom he cherished more than anything else in the world. When he heard of a woman suffering abuse, he considered that his own daughters would have to grow up in a world where such a thing was possible.
He considered that it might happen to one of them.
The idea of it was Unacceptable.
He would do anything to protect his daughters.
At no point, however, had he needed to take action for that reason.
In fact, his encounter with Mina the week prior was the first time he'd become aware of anyone close to him suffering in that way.
It had been the single angriest moment of his entire life.
Until now.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
"He did what?" Carl shouted, his head whipping around to look up at the door leading to the fifth room. "Core, reset this room. And the fifth room. Now." He snatched up the giant axe on the wall like a toy.
"Done," said the core. "As I said, this intruder is filthy. I'll…" the core paused. "I'll occupy myself for a time in case you happen to break any rules."
Seth'tith let out a growl, too irate to even speak.
Carl echoed him, stomping over to the door to the fifth room with his bare feet. It began to slowly open.
The abuser stood on the other side of it, seeming surprised to see Carl's hulking six-foot-five frame poised to enter. "So you're Carl?" he asked after a moment. "The guy who kidnapped Izzy and Neko?"
Carl felt the red fade from his vision.
Slightly.
"Who?" he asked, tensing his muscles.
"I'm the hero, Normannus! You kidnapped Isemeine Charus, my fiancée!" the abuser said. "And Neko-chan, my NPC!"
Carl's vision went white. "You…" he rasped. "You're her fiancé?" The axe fell from his hand and clattered to the ground behind him, but he paid it no heed.
"Yeah, she's mine!" the abuser exclaimed. He moved into the room and came to a stop, staring at Mina's corpse.
The reason she was a corpse was because she had tried to flee from people like him.
"You…" The abuser turned to Carl, who was still staring at the doorway breathing heavily, barely even aware that anything else existed at that moment. "You killed her?!"
Carl couldn't process what was happening.
His brain seemed to have shut down, leaving him able only to breathe and stare.
Carl Weathers had never been this angry before.
He hadn't imagined it was possible to be this angry.
A memory hovered before his eyes.
Mina leaned forward over the table as she pulled the ends of her scarf-thing aside for a moment.
Carl stared at what was obviously a mark from being recently strangled. Being abused. "Who did this?" he asked quietly, looking up into his almost-daughter's green eyes as a sudden, towering, incomparable rage erupted within him.
"The man I've been engaged to by my father," she replied without blinking, giving him a hard stare that measured his soul. A stare that seemed to ask, "Will you even care that I'm telling you this?"
Carl's chest heaved.
Of course he cared.
He exhaled.
He was Carl Weathers.
His daughters were his life.
Something struck him lightly in the side.
It roused him.
His vision returned, dyed in red.
"Carl!" Seth'tith shouted, the word sounding as though it was being spoken in slow motion.
A fist struck him in the stomach.
"Give me back my Ise-chan!" the abuser screamed slowly, winding up for another punch on Carl's right side.
Carl turned to face him.
He wasn't a fighter.
He'd never had any training in it.
He went to the gym but not with any intent to become bigger and more intimidating.
He was strong, but that was natural for someone who had a focus on maintaining his health in such a way.
He was not under any illusion that he was capable of defeating someone who knew how to fight.
None of that bullshit mattered to Carl at this moment, however.
Carl's teeth ground against themselves as he clenched his jaw even more tightly.
The only thing that mattered to Carl at this moment was putting this abuser into the fucking ground where he belonged.
The things that had been done to his friend…
Carl was enraged beyond measure when he heard of them.
A vivid, hand-shaped bruise on a pale white neck flashed across his vision.
His right hand, curled into a fist for some time now, constricted further.
It was no longer a fist.
It was death.
Carl was no longer playing a game.
This was real to him, and he further tensed his muscles in preparation to—
None of that fucking matters.
Carl's untrained fist shot out at an impossible speed in an underhand blow, striking the abuser in his chest.
He blinked, and his chest heaved once more.
The abuser was gone.
A massive hole had been blown into the side of the dungeon at a slight incline, and Carl could faintly see daylight at the end of it.
He felt only further rage at the sight.
The abuser was gone.
But he might not be dead.
Carl Weathers was not a man who left things to chance.
Right now, however, he had no way to triple-check that the abuser was dead.
He always triple-checked things that were important.