7.15
“Whenever I have to judge a domestic dispute, I find it easiest to simply divide whatever is being disputed. This has worked for land, furniture, and even people!” - Tyrant Cornelius the Uncrowner, best known for killing every ambidextrous person, ending slavery as well as unjust social hierarchies and dying a slow death of gangrene after getting scratched by his pet kitten Zoe.
Wind howled like a great beast, still it failed to drown out a rhythmic tapping on stone.
Until the tapping stopped, surrounded by burning ruins and rubble, right in the clearing where Glascoin’s coin had fallen.
A hand picked it up.
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Tai moved as fast as she could hobble with her lame leg. Aided by the sword sheath as a walking stick, she made far faster time than she expected.
Not fast enough.
Far away, a clay tendril formed around Prea, plucked her like a flower out of a garden. The ghost’s reaction was immediate even as Johnny’s mind lagged behind, its ethereal hand grabbed onto Prea’s leg, the two forces yanked at her, held her taut in midair like a bowstring.
Prea screamed.
“Let go Johnny.” Rivulets of blood flowed out of Glascoin, left behind the same trail which Tai ran over.
The clay pulled even harder, Johnny’s ghost did not relent, their tug of war intensified with Prea’s screech.
Johnny was frozen, his eyes darted down the street, where Tai was still a ways away. The wind screamed in his ear, Prea’s screams of pain even more so, as she was stretched far further than her spine could reasonably tolerate. Yet Johnny knew, just a single moment longer, and Tai would arrive. Big sister Tai, who held a blade and was a single move from ending Glascoin.
A tear drop splashed onto the cobble road, as Prea wept tears turned crimson red under the flames of the burning Hearth Church.
Johnny was screaming before he even knew it, “GHOST! LET GO OF HER!”
The handprint on Prea’s leg disappeared, and she was ripped into Glascoin’s embrace. Tai stopped dead in her tracks, the tapping of her sheath cane on cobble ceased, as she was left a single step from unleashing the killing blow. Glascoin held the girl towards her like a shield. The clay morphed away, clamping onto her wound like a makeshift bandage. “You do not seem to understand,” Glascoin gloated, “You are a minor setback on my road to eternity. It was always destined to end this way.”
But the tapping on stone did not stop.
A lone tongue, wooden and swampy, darted in from out of sight, wrapped around Prea, and pulled her out of Glascoin’s hand.
“There is a tale from my world, of a king presiding over two women who both claim a baby to be theirs.”
Cobble exploded as Tai leapt.
“To solve the issue, the king decided that the baby would be split in half, one agreed, one objected. The mother who objected said she would rather the babe go to her rival than to see them harmed.”
The tongue had pulled Glascoin off balance, so that Tai’s lethal slash instead missed, the elf however, accounted for this, and brutally kneed the off balance Glascoin in the face.
“The king thus knew, that the mother who objected was the one who cared greatest for the baby. That is the Judgement of Solomon,” Dustin said over the roaring wind. “You made the correct choice, Jojo.”
Glascoin fell to the stone with a thud, Tai stabbed her sword through the woman’s chest, pinning her like a bug on display. Dustin was there in a single cast of Misty Step.
“You…” Glascoin gritted her teeth, “How are you here? I stabbed you in the heart!”
Dustin tapped his chest, where ichor had scabbed over a gaping hole, “You need to learn more biology. That isn’t where a myconid’s heart is.”
To the side Prea grabbed onto Johnny, hugging him like a blanket. Tai gestured to them, and he nodded, pulling Prea away, “Come on, let’s go,” until they were out of sight.
“Moleath… Where is he?” Glascoin sputtered.
“Is that the demon’s name?” Dustin took out a bandoleer of potions, Celine’s in fact. Of eight potions, he randomly selected one, and poured it over Glascoin.
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The healing was immediate.
Tai raised an eyebrow, but only twisted the blade further in, eliciting a further groan of pain.
“The demon was terribly malnourished,” Dustin said as Glascoin’s flesh re-knit. “Whatever you were feeding it, you didn’t do so with enough frequency to keep it more than barely surviving. It tore and chewed, but in the end, it starved to death soon after breaching the surface.”
Glascoin’s eyes went wide as discs, “That is… impossible! My luck! It shouldn’t have run out!”
“Oh you are most certainly still lucky,” Dustin said, stoppering the flask only after he had poured out its entire contents. “The wind prevents me from casting my most deadly spells, Tai did not end you because Jojo was watching, and my hand selected the one healing potion of a bandoleer of poisons. A Russian Roulette against your favor, yet you still won. Your karma must still be in the vast positives.”
“You know it too then?” Glascoin’s suddenly grinned, “You are like me then, that is why you decided to escort such a dangerous thing for no reward. You know the mechanics of fortune!”
Dustin roughly grabbed Glascoin by the hair, dragged her upwards, leaving a bloody trail on the bottom half of the blade pinning her. Yet her smile did not waver, “You know how luck works, so you must know that killing me will be greatly unfortunate for you.”
“And why is that?” Dustin asked in a voice still as a grave.
“Because I am a net positive on the world,” she laughed, “because so long as I do more good than harm, the world will keep finding excuses to keep me around. That is why you are the one to undo me! For we are alike! Go then, turn me in! Collect your just rewards for defeating me!”
“I cannot deny that,” Dustin admitted. “When I first learned of the Scales, I sought to exploit them in much the same way you have, through time and charity, obtain luck.”
Tai frowned.
“And I must thank you,” Dustin continued, “for showing the end result of where that leads. You have truly helped me. You showed me that after years of hard work, scheming, denial of just rewards for great deeds, you… are only lucky.”
Dustin shoved his other hand through Glascoin’s mouth, and through it cast Rot Spores. Unaffected by the wind, it flowed through the path of least resistance, past her throat, into her lungs, a black blight eating away at her from the inside.
Tai beheaded the corpse, the body fell to the ground with a thud, leaking Rot Spores. The head soon disintegrated in Dustin’s hand.
“She was too dangerous to keep alive,” Dustin said.
Tai leaned on her sheathe, barely able to stand, “I know. She would’ve wormed her way out of a cell before anyone could have a chance to execute her.”
“Her luck made it so that we, the most likely to let her live, were the ones who found her,” Dustin stated. Tai who abided by laws and rules, Dustin who knew the forces at work here. “But we chose not to. The Scales determine chance, but people determine choice. She may have mastered the Scales, but not people.”
Tai kicked the body right before it disintegrated, “You’re starting to sound like Celine with her mystic mumbo jumbo.”
“I am a wizard,” Dustin chuckled. He offered his arm to Tai, which she gratefully took, “Come on, let’s get those wounds looked at.”
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“Man, I didn’t do anything cool this adventure,” Noam complained. “Didn’t even get paid for it.”
“Just be glad we’re getting off scot-free,” Tai muttered, “a day we don’t go to jail is a good day.”
“That is agreeable,” Utoqa said as he loaded the cart. “Imprisonment is detrimental to health, though the provided accommodations are not…” the lizardfolk thought for a moment, “…terrible.”
Noam slapped his friend on the back, “Hey! You’re getting sarcasm!”
“No, Utoqa meant exactly what he said,” I chuckled, rolling a coin between my fingers, no doubt he found the concept of free food and shelter worth the lack of freedom, “and I wouldn’t say we didn’t get rewarded.”
“Where is Jojo by the way?” Noam scanned the streets, which only had a few wary guards and Scarlet Samsara members to see them off.
Celine pushed away the curtains of the cart and stepped outside, “He was holding back tears, he must be sad to see us leave.”
Noam rolled his eyes, “Well he shouldn’t be! What makes him think we won’t visit?” He tapped Utoqa’s shoulder, “Hey, don’t load so fast.”
“Why?” the lizardfolk asked.
“He wants to wait for Jojo,” I told him.
Tai grabbed Noam in a chokehold and noogied him, “Aren’t you a big softie huh?”
“Ow! Ow! Ow!” Noam tapped out, taking a deep breath as Tai released him. “That really hurt!”
“Huh,” Tai exclaimed, “Oh, I’m really sorry about that-” She couldn’t finished before Noam got her with a roadhouse kick. “Ow! That’s it!”
Noam danced away from her grab, stuck his tongue out as she tried to return the favor.
Leaving them to their fight bonding, I sat down next to Utoqa, who had stopped loading the cart. “There is a pattern with you. Your people can’t feel emotions as we do, yet you still rescued us, why?”
Celine sat down beside us as well, also curious of the answer. The image of him covering her from the Accumulation of White Lies’ digestive fluids was still fresh in both our minds, not to mention him risking his life to save Jojo.
Utoqa answered blandly, and expectedly, “Maintaining this pack is beneficial to my long term survival.”
Celine looked a bit disappointed at that, but I chuckled, “Isn’t that strange. Pure utilitarian logic, and that logic tells you to be good and kind.”
That was a perspective I never really considered before.
Tai and Noam’s fight slowed down as footsteps neared us, Governor Hye came to see us off. She nodded to us, “I’m having the children moved to various orphanages or finding households nearby who will take them.”
She didn’t thank us, since we were still responsible for the deaths of many of her men, but our help got us that much at least.
Noam nodded, “That is good to hear.”
After that, we waited until noon, still Jojo didn’t show up, and we were forced to call it. Together, we left the city.
However, floating in midair in the path ahead of us, held by a ghost none of us could see, was a letter.
From Johnny Joymoon.
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“Are you sure you don’t want to see them off?” Melinda asked Johnny for the eighth time that hour.
Johnny wiped his wet eyes, “I’m just gonna be a crybaby, I don’t want them to see me like that.”
“It’s alright to be a crybaby, in fact I know plenty of ghosts who kept their tears holed up and ended up dying with regrets,” Melinda encouraged.
He shook his head, “No, it’s not that. It’s just that…”
From the distance, Johnny could see them open the letter. “If I cried while saying goodbye, it would be very awkward when we meet again.”