“How can this possibly be my fault?” asked Kelima with a glare. “They were clearly here before I opened the door.”

“I take it you’ve never heard of wave function collapse?”

“No! What does that even mean?”

“Basically, it means that you were Schrödinger’s Murphy’s Avatar. Until you opened the door, I didn’t know what kind of disaster you caused. I knew you caused one, but I had to observe the disaster to know what it would be,” explained Terry.

“Stop talking like a crazy person! That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Don’t blame me,” said Terry in his best soothing voice. “Blame science.”

“I think I’ll blame you because it sounds a lot like you’re looking for an excuse to put this on me.”

“Well, obviously. It’s not like any of this could be my fault. I’ve been the very soul of restraint today. Besides, don’t you think we have bigger problems right now?”

“I assume you’re just going to kill all of them. So, no, I don’t see any reason to put off this conversation.”

“You shouldn’t say those things out loud,” Terry chided. “You’ll scare them.”

“Am I wrong?” asked Kelima.

“No. But that’s no reason to scare them. I mean, look at them now. Look how uneasy they are. It’s just sad and unnecessary. Some of them could have died in blissful ignorance. It would have been over before they knew it.”

“What about the rest of them?” asked Kelima.

“It would have been all terror, pain, and futile resistance for them. But now that’s going to happen to all of them. It was very unkind of you.”

“More unkind than all of the killing?” asked Kelima in a dry tone.

“Debatable,” said Terry with a shrug.

The city guards who were so aggressive before had backed off a few steps and were, indeed, trading uncertain looks. Terry wasn’t sure if it was because of the killing talk or the quantum physics he had only pretended to understand. Physics was brutally hard, though, so he thought it could go either way. Plus, he figured that some trope had to be in play at this point. He couldn’t count how often he’d read about protagonists being surrounded by city guards who might or might not be dupes for someone nefarious.

If the tropestorm was well and truly descending, he might as well fall back on a science fiction trope to confuse the issue. Stun them into compliance, or at least hesitation, with jargon and technobabble. It would have been tremendously weak-sauce jargon and technobabble in a true science fiction setting, but it would serve the purpose just fine in Chinese Period Drama Hell. He was pretty confident that there weren’t any quantum mechanicists… Terry paused, unsure if mechanicist was actually a word. He decided it could be a word and dismissed his linguistic concerns. Even if it wasn’t a word, there probably wasn’t anyone with the right knowledge among the guards to call bullshit on his pseudoscience.

Still, while his ploy might have bought them an extra minute, there was no getting around the fact that a whole bunch of armed people had shown up to take him away. He also held no illusions that it would be somewhere he wanted to go. He accepted that it might not be a cell in the town jail. Hell, it likely wasn’t that kind of cell. If he had to put money on it, it was either some local noble looking to have him dragged to a mansion in a doomed effort to recruit him or it was the Church looking to have him dragged into a torture chamber to repay him for all his past kindnesses. Either way, he wasn’t interested in going along. He just wasn’t all that eager to drop a mountain of violence on these city guards.

Whether they were in the employ of some noble or even taking bribes from the church, he doubted that most of them were in the know. These were the kind of people taking orders from someone who was taking orders from someone who might know something. Granted, he didn’t think that much of the “blindly following orders” school of thought, but he also didn’t know what they’d been told. They might think he was a serial killer targeting little old ladies or that he was dumping toxic waste into wells or a million other terrible things likely to set medieval cops on a rampage.

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None of that changed the fact that they were in his way, but he’d feel like a dick killing them. He’d still do it if he had to, but he wasn’t eager for the bloodshed. He just wished there was a better way out of the situation than leaving a lot of metaphorical hats on the floor. He hazarded a glance at Kelima, who looked a little annoyed but mostly resigned.

“Isn’t this exactly the kind of thing you were supposed to help me avoid?” he asked.

“That might have been possible before you nearly brained a Church knight and brutalized all those squires or church soldiers, whichever they were.”

“Both, I think,” said Terry.

“Not my point, but fine. Before all of that, I might have been able to do something. This, though,” she said with a gesture at the city guards, “has gone way beyond talking. I mean, unless you’re willing to go with them without fighting.”

“You should listen to her,” said one of the guards in a shaky voice. “You should come with us without—”

“No,” said Terry in a tired voice. “I guess we’ll just have to do this the bloody way.”

“Gentleman,” said a familiar, deep voice from behind Terry, “and young miss, of course.”

The guards all looked behind Terry, while he had to glance over his shoulder to see the silver-haired and mustachioed man from inside. The man had seemed…Terry searched for the right words. Inside the guild, the man had seemed innocuous in a grandfatherly way. Standing out on the steps, though, the man’s presence caused the hairs on the back of his neck to stand up. It wasn’t that he felt more powerful than Terry. Not exactly. But he radiated a type of stern authority that felt supported by steel forged in the blood and death of a thousand battles. The man glanced at Terry for a brief moment before he focused on the city guards.

“You are all obstructing the business of the guild,” said the man.

Terry abruptly felt like he understood what it meant to have someone stand in judgment of you. Not judgment in that trivial, putting their nose in the air thing people did sometimes. That was the kiddie pool. This man, whoever the hell he really was, did not play in the kiddie pool. This was what Terry imagined it would feel like to have a genuine prophet of God look down from the mountain and find you wanting. He swiftly concluded that, as far as feelings went, it wasn’t very enjoyable. When Terry shifted his gaze back to the city guards, it seemed that they shared his sentiment only amped up to eleven. Most of them looked like they would piss themselves if there was a loud noise. So, naturally, that was when other-Terry decided to join the party.

You should scream, Boo!

The very moment other-Terry gave voice to the idea, it was all regular-Terry could do to squash the irrational idea. The problem was that he wanted to do it. Not because it was a good plan or in any way conducive to resolving the situation, but because some inner ten-year-old thought it would be hilarious.

Not helpful, complained Terry as he had to suppress the desire to shout again.

I didn’t think it was. I just thought it would be entertaining.

Fortunately, the man from inside the guild spoke before Terry could make things a million times worse with his childish impulse.

“Furthermore,” said the silver-haired man in that deep voice, “you have no chance whatsoever of obstructing this man’s path. You will die, and all your deaths will accomplish is forcing him to sharpen his swords. Worst of all, your corpses will make the street in front of my guild hall a mess.”

Terry had no idea why that last sentence came across as the most threatening thing the man had said, but it broke whatever resolve was left in the city guards. He wasn’t cruel enough to call what they did running away, but they were totally running away. Terry sheathed the blades he’d drawn.

“Thank you,” said Terry with a look back at the silver-haired man.

The man sighed and said, “I suggest you go before someone orders them back here, and you’re forced to do something drastic. I suspect that you’ll still need to fight your way out of a gate.”

“Yeah,” said Terry. “I know. Better one fight than two. Well, better two fights than three, I guess. This is turning into a long day.”

“Who are you?” a stunned Kelima asked the silver-haired man.

“I’m the guild master here. Now, you children should run along.”

Kelima opened her mouth to say something, but Terry grabbed her arm and started dragging her away.

“Let the man get back to his guild, Kelima,” ordered Terry.

“But—”

“We’re not going to keep bothering the very nice man who helped us without asking for any money. This is another one of those take the win moments.”

“Fine. Would you please stop grabbing my arm like that?” she asked, pulling it free from his hand and rubbing it. “I think it’s bruising.”

“Oh,” said Terry. “Sorry about that.”

“So, you’ll stop?”

“No. I’m just sorry about the bruise. If you want me to stop, quit doing things that make me need to drag you away from situations, you damned crisis lodestone.”

“You’re one to talk,” she snapped at him.

“That—” Terry started before he paused in a moment of clarity. “That is not untrue, but I at least know to get out while the getting is good.”