Wind blew disrespectfully, the moon sneered her dead light from the skies. The torches bathed us in their macabre warmth as we dug the hole.
Correction: as Mariana dug the hole, the siblings mourned together, talking softly, gathered around the corpse, and I overlooked the whole somber ordeal. This was how a hated ruler died, with no one but a friend and some of his children burying him in the equivalent of a backyard. If the news had reached somewhere else, and due to the gamelike system I doubted they hadn’t, it was hard to think of any reaction but fear and joy. Fear because of the upcoming uncertainty, joy because a tyrant had fallen. I could imagine them, crying mirthful tears in their homes, embracing their neighbors as they worry if the next one is going to be worse. Mothers, fathers, children, grandparents. The death of Mateo was probably a bittersweet event for many of them. Yet, there were more pressing matters for us.
“Why did they kill all the dogs, though?” I thought out loud.
Florencia approached me, sat against the same tree I was lying onto, and spoke.
“His unique skill made him more powerful when the total added length of his pit bulls, measured head to tail, approached the diameter of the globe at the equator. Lord Planetspan, that was the name of the skill.”
I considered it for a second. Then stared at the starry sky through the tree boughs. My life bar suffered a 10% hit for apparently no reason at all. “Why?” I asked the Demiurge, who had conceived a pun so terrible it caused actual damage.
“Do you think my dad is in heaven, or in hell, Walter?” she said, paying no mind to my newfound injury, always looking at her father’s corpse.
“I don’t know; It’s not my prerogative to know. Your dad’s soul is probably where he deserves to be, that’s my hope, and it can be yours too.”
“You are right: the ways of God are inscrutable.”
The demiurge sent me a direct message. I opened it mentally. “VAMO’ MESSI, VAMOOOO’,” it said. Inscrutable her ass.
“Florencia, can you answer me a question? Out of mere anatomical curiosity.”
“It’s about Dad’s shaven head?”
“No, I wondered if you have body hair or feathers. Or a cloaca, even. You do get pregnant like a mammal, judging by Violeta, but, how to put this… I want to know how much of a bird you guys are.”
“Does it have to do with the poisoning of my father?”
She was providing a way out from my own-grave-digging addiction, how sweet on her part.
“No, I just want to know if your butt is feathery.” But, then again, it wouldn’t be a proper addiction if I accepted help from anyone.
What followed was an intimate lovemaking scene with a fade to black ending. To be more precise, my nose, and then the rest of my face, met the tree bark as Florencia cried about how could I do that to her on her father’s funeral, that she hoped beating me against the tree trunk would make me reconsider my ways and such nonsense one says when you are getting cucked by an oak. Jealous, she was. I am such a Casanova.
When the lights came back on, the world looked like I had power leveled my myopia or astigmatism. My face was still where it should be, so that was a net positive. A blur of gold loomed over me, and, it rained drool on my face.
“Feed me,” commanded the blur.
“Have you finished digging the grave?” I said as my vision struggled to reform the shapes the world was supposed to have.
“Yes. Feed me.”
The siblings were lowering the monarch’s body on to the shallow ditch Mariana had managed to carve on the hill. There was no coffin for this king, no pyramid for this pharaoh. He would be thrown to the worms, with a single, crudely carved stone marking the place of his final rest.
Given I was higher level than any of Mateo’s children, I was tempted to urinate over his corpse as a revenge for being so careless and leaving me stranded here. Bu I needed to practice self-restraint. Sabrina was a valuable asset, my little feathery makeshift raft to exit this cursed island. I thought the Escapists would be pleased for a while, thinking cutting off the head of our little band of misfits would put a stop to our plans to destroy the world. But they had forgot I am as much of a man as I am a cockroach. Forget the Hydra of Lerna, burning my neck would not stop this monster of poisonous breath and vicious blood.
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
Using Mariana as a support to stand with the least effort possible and dusting off my belts, I approached the mourning half-elves.
“You have an hour, make sure to say goodbye.”
“An hour for what?”
“With Mateo dead, you are now my party. All three of you. I’d take the priest too but he is stuck inside that castle, in his grease net.” I casted Canaver into the air and let him unfold, just to land behind me, making the land tremble slightly. “And, no, I am not asking. Come along out of your own volition, or by force.”
Sabrina stared at me with begging, teary eyes. Cornelio stared at me because nature hadn’t given him much of an option in the staring department. Florencia walked up to my side without questioning.
“Flor, what are you doing?” questioned Sabrina, her expression sour, as if her sister were betraying her.
“Sabri, just because dad is dead it doesn’t mean we can stop helping Walter. It’s what he would have wanted,” she said, pointing at the freshly removed dirt with an open hand.
“I don’t care, Flor. Dad is dead, it doesn’t matter anymore.”
“Where will we live? The castle isn’t safe anymore,” Argumented Cornelio in an unusual moment of brilliance.
“Mariana can pay for lodging for the remainder of eternity with what she earns in a few seconds, I reckon. We need to be on the move, the decisions on where to go need to not be spoken aloud nor written down. I don’t trust Phaela to leave me alone anytime soon.”
“But… I am unemployed,” complained Mariana.
“And also the owner of impossible amounts of money,” I reminded her.
“But I am unemployed, I should be poor,” she argued.
Bitch slapping protocol: engaged.
“Are we roughhousing?” she asked, absolutely missing the point of the slap.
I decided not to answer.
“I need you to come with me, Sabrina. Flor could be useful with her sewing skills, albeit still optional, no offense given.”
She crossed her arms. “Offense taken.”
“Well, first of all, go on a perilous adventure to learn a forbidden spell to clone your person, then settle down and fight for same-sex marriage for about ten years on the nearest city, wait for them to legalize it and properly celebrate when they do, marry your clone and make sure you get the wedding vows right, and last but not least, go fuck yourself, Florencia.”
“You are impossible,” She stomped on the floor and positioned her hands close to my neck, her will being the only obstacle between her and a thoroughly strangled Walter.
Sadly, I had no chance to be chocked by her, thus making an unfortunate comment that would have scarred her innocent mind for life and led to the rise of a new villainess.
“Impossible, and yet the only way for you to fulfill your father’s last will. Come, we have bent sent back to square two, not one. We have Sabrina. Somewhere in the castle, if they have not destroyed it, which I doubt, it’s the bomb prototype. No sense underestimating our enemies, though, chances are they captured or destroyed it. We need a new place, easy to defend. To cleanse from Forget-me-nots. So Sabrina, say farewell to daddy and come along, by crook…”
“…or by hook,” said Canaver, raising a paw to swank about his big skull-claws.
“We can come anytime to visit this place, right?” Sabrina asked, looking at the grey stone, maybe andesite, that marked Mateo’s grave.
“With Mariana’s mass teleport, we can go nearly anywhere. But I would not recommend bringing flowers to this grave. It’s an obvious place to set up a trap and kidnap the three of you.”
“Kidnap or…kill, right?” added Cornelio.
“I don’t believe so. We are dealing with mostly good people here. That is our main advantage. The privilege of being in the wrong side of the story and knowing so.”
“Being the baddies is delicious.” You know who said this. You don’t need me to tell you who said this. There is only one being present in the scene who would use this description unironically.
“We need to go with Walter,” said Cornelio, standing with difficulty, like he always did, in my opinion due to some weird issue with blood pressure and the eyeballs.
“But…” Sabrina protested, lowering her gaze and starting whimpering, cursing between weeps. “We will wake up tomorrow and he will still be gone.”
“And past tomorrow, and the day after that, and forevermore. See why I cannot do this to my family back on Earth, Sabrina? Come, help me spare this pain to some people important to me.”
“There will be no one left to suffer in here after we are done. Promise me there will be no one left after we are done with this.”
“You made the bomb, you made the plan. You promise me there will be no one to leave flowers on the graves.” I extended her a hand, and from it creeped down belts like snakes or tentacles.
“In theory, no graves, no flowers, nothing will remain. Reality will crumble., effortlessly, painlessly, in an instant. But what if we are wrong?”
She kept on staring at the ground, dirtying her hands on the mud and grass, so I crouched to get to her level.
“Listen, worst case scenario, if we manage to kill a god, there are few things we would not be able to do to atone for our sins. Come, let’s fulfill your father’s last will.”
“That’s easy to say for the one who will not die if all goes as intended.”
“But if we die we will see dad again, everyone will be there, together. A society of perfect, calm, souls floating adrift forever. Without a worry, without a minute to lose or to have,” chirped in Florencia.
After a few moments, Sabrina stretched my hand and looked at me with renewed fire in her eyes. “Make my father proud, you cunt.”
END OF VOLUME 1