“You seem distant.” Mann’s wife shrugs and stares out the window into space. Mann sighed, how could she not be distant. She just came back from her Droit du seigneur. The right of the first night. The local landlord could evoke it on his serfs whenever there was a wedding. Mann sighed agian. It was a humiliation he was forced to suffer. This was the largest one yet but since birth, he had been building up humiliations. From small ones like having to bow your head when in the presence of a noble. To large ones like paying all of your income in taxes. The humiliation bothered him but there was nothing to treat it. He could however treat his wife. After going through an experience as horrible as that he could do his duty as a husband and comfort her. Make her a nice black bread and dandy lion dinner. Run her a cold barrel of well water to wash away her shame.
Mann reached his arms out to hug her. She pushed him away. Mann was taken aback but nodded knowingly. It wasn’t his fault. It wasn't her fault either anyone would react how she is reacting. She just had a bad experience with a man it makes sense that she wants to stay clear of the entire gender for awhile. It wasn’t 100% rational, but feelings don’t care for your facts. It was his job as a husband to comfort her when she needed comfort and give her space when she needed space.
Mann woke up. The local rats had worked up the courage to check if the motionless man lying in the gutter was alive or food. Mann shook himself and the rats scattered. He laid back down, trying to get back to sleep. To remember the good times before his wife ended her own life, along with the life of the duke child. Mann had given her as much space as she needed. Which was a lot. Mann tried to initiate romantic relations, but every time she just shut herself off. When the bump began to form on her stomach they knew for sure whose child it was. She killed herself soon after. The killings of a noble’s son is a serious crime. The entire family three generations prior and post are cursed to not own property and to be shunned by every community. When he couldn’t find sleep he stood himself up. He bent back down to pick up a bottle of wine. It was one of the few possessions he had stolen from his own house before the count repoed his property for his wife's crime.
He holds it upside down above his mouth. Letting the last few drops leak out from the empty bottle.
A whip cracks on his back. Cutting his thin hemp shirt. He turns to his assailant. “What was that for--” he says as he turns pausing mid-sentence when he sees who it was. A man more tin can than flesh sitting upon a horse. In one hand a spear and the other a whip. “Bow when your betters are passing by. Did your trash mother never teach you that?”
Mann bows his head “I’m so sorry sir, I didn’t see you there. I was just….” He lets the sentence trail off. He was just sleeping in the gutter drinking his worries away. A pitiful life befitting the common man of this city and here in front of him was a human in cahoots with the same society that took everything he had. He would hang for speaking ill to this noble, but he found a strange peace in it.
“Fuck off cunt.”
Those words to his throat where greater than water to a dehydrated person. The knight raised a whip. “I’ll teach you, boy.”
Mann shrunk away from the whip. The knight ordered the horse forward. Mann’s back hit the corner of the building. A grin and a shrug of the shoulders. Mann broke the wine bottle against the building behind him. Leaving him a weapon of jagged glass. The knight pulls the lash back. Mann rushes into the range of the horse. Slamming the broken wine bottle into the horse's neck. It raises its hoofs up. Knocking off the knight. The wildly swinging hooves slam into Mann’s head. The world goes black.
“Hey you, you’re finally awake. You were trying to cross the border, right? Walked right into that Imperial ambush, same as us, and that thief over there.”
Hiro nudges his chin towards an empty corner of the jail cell. He looks to Mann for a reaction. When none is given he continues on holding up his hand and working his fingers like a puppet in a high-pitched voice he adds “Damn you Stormcloaks. Skyrim was fine until you came along. Empire was nice and lazy. If they hadn't been looking for you, I could've stolen that horse and been halfway to Hammerfell. You there. You and me -- we shouldn’t be here. It's these Stormcloaks the Empire wants.”
Mann rubs his temple. Between the hangover and the head injury, his brain was on fire.
“Where am I?”
“Prison, executioner cell. You must have done something pretty bad.”
Mann rubs his temples. He’s about to be executed? That’s what happens when a commoner attacks a noble. There is no ifs, ands, or buts.
“Child murderer?” Hiro guesses what crime Mann could have possibly committed.
Mann shakes his head.
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“Rapist?”
“I would never!”
“Why are you in here?”
By now Hiro had gotten on Mann’s nerves. He snapped at him. “What are you in here for?” He deflects.
“Because I wanted to be."
Mann lays down. “I get it. You’re the torturer. Here to grind down with what you nobles consider funny while I have a massive headache.” Mann assumed Hiro was a noble. Not many prisoners got to keep their clothes and armor while awaiting execution. Even Hiro’s guesses would indicate him to be noble to the common man. Someone who is completely out of touch with just how many ways you can get yourself executed in this society. Attacking a noble. Killing an animal on noble land(All land belongs to the nobles, that’s how serfdom works.) Cutting down a tree, even not bowing as a noble passes. Granted that one is down to if your body can survive the lashings or not.
Hiro looks over his shoulder. “Heal him,” he tells the wall. Mann shrugs it off as more crazy taunts until a gust of wind and a green glow splash on his face. “L̴e̵s̸s̸e̷r̶ ̴h̸e̸a̸l̶”̶ a disembodied female voice whispers.
“What was that?” Mann scanned his small collection of memories for anything that could heal him and remain invisible. “Fairies? Are you a fairymancer?”
Hiro shrugged. “Can’t tell you. It’d ruin my first time being executed.”
“And your last.” Mann cracks a bit of gallows humor.
Hiro's voice doesn’t reflect the same grave mood, It’s analytical and calm. “You’re probably right. This has been a 1-star experience. Back on Earth prison was supposed to be an experience. This is just waiting in a cell till the gallows men come. There aren’t showers or crappy food to complain about. If I wanted to stare at the wall I could do that at the inn. The only thing I'm doing that I expected to do was foster a sense of esprit de corps with my fellow prisoners.”
“This is Earth.” Just how out of touch is this noble?
“No, it’s a fantasy world. I was reincarnated after I died while saving a dog from getting hit by a car.”
(Hiro died a year before the apocalypse. Mann was working-class businessmann before the apocalypse. The aliens wiped the brains of all living inhabitants and uploaded false lives into their heads.)
“Reincarnated?”
“Yep, three months ago.”
“What?” Mann almost shouted. The man in front of him looked sixteen at least.
“Magic. I altered my body with magic."
"Impossible!
"It was easy. The magic in this world follows basic patterns and rules. Like that of computer code. Ever since I was born. Err….” Hiro pauses. “Since before I was born?” He scratches his chin. “Since before I died?” A different disembodied female voice supplies him what he was looking for. “Just say that you’ve always been like that.” Hiro nods. “Yes since forever I have always been great at pattern recognition.”
“Not a very useful skill. You’d make good money as a bricklayer though.”
“Herringbone is my favorite, but no. I evolved past bricks in my past life. The entire world is made up of patterns. You probably don’t know this but the world is made of atoms and atoms have parameters for how they act. Granted before I died Earth hadn’t figured out a theory of everything, but quanton magic is still doable.”
Mann just nodded. It would be rude to interrupt Hiro while he was so vigorously explaining his past.
“But get this. Behavioral psychology. Humans work off of patterns. If you know how a human was raised and their current situation environmentally then you can guess their reaction to anything.”
“Cool.”
“Not really.”
“No?”
“Why do you think there are so many girls in my harem?”
“Harem?”
Hiro nods. Marri lets down her invisibility spell. Six girls stand around Hiro looking awkward.
“How did you do that?”
“Not important. I have so many members of my harem because I get bored with them quickly.”
“Rude?”
“It is, but what else am I going to do. I know how they react 9/10 times. Why would I fuck someone when I already know what it will feel like, sound like, taste like, and smell like?”
“For love?”
“Never felt it for humans.”
“For pleasure?”
“When the demon of lust causes a mutiny below I can make an Onahole that is ten times the pleasure of a human hole. I have fucked every species, done every fetish. Sex was the obsession of my teenage years and quickly consumed it until I had wrung every drop of pleasure out of it. Sex is overhyped. Everything is overhyped once you know what will happen.”
“But how can you be sure if you don’t do it?”
“Exactly. That’s why I’m here. I haven't been executed before. I want to experience new things. New experiences are my second favorite thing to consume.”
“And first?”
“Unexpected new experiences!”
Mann shrugs and lays back down on the bed. The dude was crazy, not loony bin crazy, but CEO of a corporation crazy. He wasn’t someone who Mann wanted to associate with unless it would benefit himself. The only way Hiro could benefit Mann was….
“Hey, Hiro.”
Hiro turned his head to look into Mann’s eyes.
“You ever done a prison break before?”
Hiro’s eyes lit up. “Wonderful idea. I’ll do it right after my execution.”
“That won’t work!” Mann yelled.
“Why not?”
Mann was going to tell Hiro that executions kill people, but he didn’t have to heart to say it. Hiro was obviously rooted very deeply in denial about his incoming death.