Simply by existing, Rhode changed the direction(slightly) of the breeze. Fresh air and ashy smoke whorled into his lungs in ribbons that mixed. But there were still walls around him. This wasn’t freedom, it was a luxury prison yard.

It wasn’t even all that fine. The garden was a mess, and had been even before tonight. Invasive jungle plants had seeded among the foreign, temperate grasses, and distinctive, ugly-cute flowers were sprouting from between traditionally beautiful domesticated lilies.

The sixty-yard court had only been set on fire recently. Like the other palace fires, it was already going out. The yellow-red glow that had painted the lip of the sky an hour ago was nearly extinguished. The shouts and screams of goblin bedlam no longer echoed so omni-directionally.

Calm settled in Rhode’s stomach. Regret pooled at the bottom of his brainpan, as almost a physical sensation. He visualized it as a fluid, and let the emotion wash out of him as he let it go. There had been more people who’d needed him tonight. He hadn’t made it in time to prevent everything he could have. But he was here now, and he could stop this.

Six goblins in practical civilian linens grappled with four guards. A body lay on the ground face down, with her hair spread about her like a halo. Nearly all of the standing gobs were wounded, and there was an electric, nervous sensation that tickled at Rhode’s toes and (cover your ears, kids) taint as he stepped forward and nearer to the epicenter of [Boys’ Night Out].

One of the combatants stood apart: a funny little man in a smart, cotton suit who held back on the edge of the fight. His hair was disheveled. There were little granules of brain on his face, and a sublime, transcendental smile split his lips as he turned. The merchant’s neck tilted slowly back as he regarded the [Greater Brawn Homunculus] in wonder. Then the goblin lifted up a candle-stick over his head without warning, and ran screaming directly towards Rhode. His eyes were wide open and soft. His smile was honest and vulnerable – and accepting of the end.

But he did still have that candle-stick. Rhode would just have to figure this out later.

Whump.

The merchant flew head over heels into a shrub and crumpled as the wind was knocked out of him. Rhode readjusted his grip on the swan as some of the stitching ripped. His retinue fanned out behind him as he leaned forward into a slow jog.

“Settle,” Rhode bellowed. His swan smacked directly into a face and the goblin staggered back with a bloody nose and a dazed confusion. “The FUCK.” Rhode threw his arm up and intercepted a spear with a cabinet shutter buckler. The point skittered off the wood and nearly clipped him in the shoulder. The swan whirled in an underhanded arc and thumped the guard under their armpit and they cartwheeled over to land on their back. “Down!”

Rhode dipped his knees and swept his plushie down low, knocking the legs out from under three goblins at once.

Nonetheless, we are avoiding a hard truth: there’s no such thing as a gentle violence. Whatever Rhode’s intentions, whatever his restraint, he was still leveraging force to subdue an active and desperate resistance. Ankles were twisted. Tendons were torn. Ribs cracked. It was one thing to knock sense into a reasonable soul, a mostly decent person making a passing mistake under extraordinary circumstances – but that wasn’t going to stop a determined idiot.

The civilians wouldn’t stay down. They weren’t stronger, or more cunning, or skilled than any other gob he’d faced tonight. That wasn’t what made them dangerous.

The man had dark hair, in the flush of health. He had a crooked, playful smile and a lopsided face. But there wasn’t a hint of civility in his eyes. A stolen butcher’s cleaver bounced in his hand as the rioter judged its weight, and he stuck a thumb against his nose to casually expel a wad of bloody snot. His ears didn’t quite point in symmetrical directions.

As the rioter came at Rhode, a thin, inebriating energy wafted off of him. It flowed and seeped with an insidious subtlety: a three part combination [Aura] level – a glamour of alcohol, testosterone and adrenaline. Rhode yielded ground. He overbalanced, and swung wildly.

What was the difference that made these gobs a threat? It was absolute conviction. It was an absence of doubt. There ought to be a little voice in the back of a moral person’s mind which asks: am I doing the right thing? Did I make the right choice? The [Reveler] simply didn’t have regrets. He didn’t consider alternatives. He didn’t have the imagination to believe he could fail, and it left him without fear.

Thwip. Whump.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

A lucky swipe clipped the [Reveler] in his free arm, and Rhode had followed up by driving his swan bodily into the center of mass of his opponent. The goblin rolled comically, like a pillbug. But why would softness stop him? The man was on his feet again in an instant with a snarl on his face.

The guards had been easier to deal with. They were angry, confused, and afraid. One of their own was dead. But they had recognized the doublet of the Prince’s man: the Sergeant Bned who had very intentionally committed to staying by Rhode’s side.

Two of the stable guards joined up with a pair of corn-silk mercenaries and surrounded a rioter. The mercenaries beat the man down with plush, satin end pillows until he fell. But then one of the guards vengefully raised his spear and stabbed down into the lung of the toppled gob.

“No!” Rhode howled along with the rioters. He was louder even than the man’s fellows. “Not when they’re down,” he rebuked his own people.

“Fuck that, and fuck you,” cried the spear guard. There was rage and agony twisting in his voice as the gobs of spear squad 2 wrestled the man to the ground.

The lines between sides were being confused as the Earth-man imposed rules of engagement which didn’t belong in the fight. A carpenter was shoving a pillow into the arms of a confused guards-woman in a steel cap helmet, and the two of them gripped either side of her service cudgel as they argued. A rioter turned his back on Rhode’s people, mistaking them for allies, and was tackled face-first into the gravel below.

These gobs wouldn’t give up. Their muscles strained to the point of tearing. One pulled knives from their belt when they were disarmed. Another bit viciously at the soldier and cook holding them to the ground. Rhode found himself flanked by two goblins, one on either side. There was a similarity in appearance to these people, a pale yellow tint to their complexion, a particular blue-black and wiry stiffness to their hair. They trusted one another; anticipated each other with a facility that Rhode couldn’t match with his own compatriots. As they tested him, his shield rattled, and flopped loose. His swan was (inevitably) falling apart already.

Rhode had never faced someone who used their levels without holding back. Even in their bout in Vault Chamber B, Lady Ser Jern Hakkat Yune had been restraining herself. But these gobs risked themselves to the point of self-harm. One of them twisted his body unnaturally, his center of mass swaying outside of his own body. It was a simple [Movement Art]: a little talent for a trickster or a troublemaker. Yet he wove around strikes with frustrating ease. The other, fatter gob took advantage of Rhode’s distraction. There was a prismatic, unsettling delineation in the light around him. Some fragile kind of [Daemon] of precision and measurement, an aide for a woodsman or carver, or who knows what purpose it might serve.

As an otherworldly stranger, completely lacking a lifetime of experience and context, Rhode could only guess at what levels would do. But much like Yun-Yun’s ghostly serpent, the faint, crystalline-origami folds of light that intersected his body seemed to guide the shovel of the gob towards Rhode in precise thrusts. They attacked him recklessly.

The homunculus was starting to hyperventilate. He was stronger than they were, but it didn’t matter. The advantage of the desperate is how much they are willing to lose for a chance to wound their enemy. Rhode cared if he got injured, and every movement he made was too cautious as a result. If he had been alone, he probably would have been overrun. Rhode would have lost, then and there.

But a carpenter ran forward with a hammer and broke the wrist of the shovel-rioter from behind. A mercenary swung her spear haft like a baseball bat into the back of the dodging rioter’s knees with a snap.

The spear-woman shrugged apologetically at Rhode. The chair-maker sheepishly wrung his hammer between his hands. But they were right to have done so, and Rhode nodded to them gratefully.

Idealism isn’t naivete. You do the best you can, and then when you reach the limit of your strength, you compromise. The Dreadlung threw his swan aside and stripped off the bindings which held his makeshift shield in place. Gripping the hardwood panel in both hands along one edge, he shuffled forward and his hips turned as he wound back and –

THUMP.

The ringleader of the rioters had been hacking at the spear of [Three-Eyed] Captain Fent when he took the flat of a sturdy panel in the back. Baurkin of Horse Hoof Creek wheezed as he dragged himself back to his feet. What kind of man had he been? The life of the party. A grand friend who knew how to push his fellows out of their comfort zone. A person who took risks and lived passionately, but knew no limits (even to his own peril). That is why he was beloved, and that is how he would destroy the ones who loved him most.

Rhode fought bitterly. His plank snapped in half, even as he broke the bones of the rioter’s arm. His people surrounded Baurkin from all sides. The pillows came back, but there were spears raised behind them (just in case). The cleaver dropped from his weakening grip into dusty gravel. His aura flared out and it dripped into the minds of every goblin around him like a sinus infection.

Using his own body weight, Rhode bore down on the goblin with saddened determination. His knee pressed against the goblin’s belly to pin him down.

“Stop, man. It’s over.”

Baurkin, the brother of Ux, cursed the Hero with every invective and obscenity he knew. He spat in Rhode’s face, and the bloody spackle dripped down the homunculus’ cheek.

“You’re hurting yourself, man.”

Then, in his last act on the Ring, the [Reveler] contorted his body to bring his boot-heel up into arms-reach. There was an inch-long blade hidden in the heel of that shoe. He drew it. So, Rhode’s fist came down.

THUMP.