“We’ll reach our goal before you do,” Judge Gazmo stated at the crossroads. “Your route goes the long way around; if you make good time you should reach the Flats tomorrow, assuming you stop for a few hours of rest. And do that,” he ordered in a more serious tone, pointing a finger up at me for emphasis. “Hoy’s route puts him behind you, and you do not wanna face him tired on top of everything else. You should still get there first in time to set up an ambush.”

“You think we’ll be back in Fallencourt by tonight?” Yoshi asked.

“We can be, if we push, but I wanna play it safer,” Gazmo replied. “We’ll reach the outskirts toward the end of today; at that point we’ll slow down and look around, try to link up with whatever local resistance exists. Rizz was heading in that direction and most of the Judges will be hanging around there, anyway. Given they won’t be able to approach Jadrak too directly I expect to find people ready to help us on the fringes of the city proper.”

The Hero nodded. “We’ll be in your care, then.”

“Um!” To everyone’s surprise, including apparently hers, Amell suddenly piped up compulsively. Her eyes were fixed on me, for once. “Lord Seiji, I didn’t… I’m sorry, I didn’t have a chance to thank you. For the healing. I will… I owe you so much.”

“Hey, you don’t owe me a thing,” I said in a gentle tone that hopefully outwardly suppressed the terrible awkwardness I suddenly felt. Man, I can handle almost anything except sincere displays of emotion. Especially in public. “We all have to have each other’s backs in a mess like this. You handed out free potions to me, remember? From each according to their means, and so on.”

She opened her mouth, seemingly failed to find a response, then just nodded deeply and folded down her hands at me. I figured the awkwardness was over, at least, but Amell was full of surprises today.

“Um…Zui.” The alchemist inhaled deeply, then folded down her hands again, this time directly to the astonished-looking goblin. “I’m…so sorry. For how rude I was back…back there, in the city. You’ve been nothing but kind to me, and even after that, you helped me out of…” Amell flinched at her own train of thought, lowering her head. “Thank you.”

“Uh…hey, don’t sweat it, kid.” Zui looked even more brutally uncomfortable at this than I had felt, which caused what might’ve been the warmest feelings toward her I’d ever experienced. Truly, we are all allies against the scourge of emotional vulnerability. “Like he said, people gotta stick together. Look, uh, when all this wraps up you should have a sit-down with me and Youda. He handles the potions in Miss Sneppit’s company, really knows his stuff. Between the three of us I bet we can figure out something to do about that hair of yours.”

“You—really? You think that’s possible?” Amell’s face lit up with so much hope it physically hurt to see.

Zui continued to feel about this roughly the same way I did, to judge by her awkward little grin and the way she began actually edging behind me. “Yeah, sure, I figure…it’s at least worth a try, right?”

Yoshi came to everyone’s rescue, because that’s what Heroes do.

“I hate to ditch you like this, Omura. Though I admit I’d be sorrier if I could be certain you were getting the worse deal. I’m honestly not sure who’s the more screwed, here.”

“Let’s not make it a pissing contest, man. We both agreed to this terrible plan.”

“Sorry for making a terrible plan, then.”

“Yeah, well, maybe I’d blame you if I’d come up with anything better. I think you came up with the least shitty of our bad options, though.”

He stepped forward, holding out his right hand, and I clasped it in my own.

“Give ‘em hell,” I urged. “But, y’know…gently. In a kind of lame, slapsticky way, so they don’t respect you.”

That won a smile from him, despite the gravity of the situation, but his expression swiftly hardened again and he squeezed down on my fingers.

“I won’t say the same. Kick that little bastard’s ass for me, Omura. And then come join us so we can finish this.”

“You have my solemn word: I will survive this, or die trying.”

He sighed, but Nazralind laughed. At least someone appreciated me around here.

“I don’t think the ‘little’ part was necessary,” Deeyo muttered.

“They can’t help it,” Ritlit said, slugging him on the shoulder. “Butts gonna butt. You gotta save up your complaints for where they’ll do the most good.”

“Hey, at least we’ll be fine,” Yoshi said, stepping back. “We’ve got Judge Gazmo to keep us out of trouble, after all.”

“Don’t expect miracles,” the Judge grunted. “It’s a slow day when I can manage to keep Fram out of trouble. You butts are on your own.”

“He adores me,” Fram assured us, smug as ever. “Dude’s basically my dad.”

Then she dodged, because Gazmo took a half-hearted swipe at her. As one does.

We were left standing in that awkward pause in which there was nothing left to be said, but none of us really wanted to move on just yet. And yet, standing around was not an option. We were on a deadline.

“Ganbatte,” Yoshi finally said, nodding at me.

“You be careful,” I replied.

We stepped back in unison and turned, heading down different branches of the tunnel path as our respective groups separated. The Dark Lord leading his lieutenants and band of goblin minions off to strike down his enemies, while the Hero and his party were led by the Judge and the Arbiter to go save who they could.

“Feels kinda like a missed opportunity, though, right?” Nazralind commented. “I was wondering if we’d mix up the teams a bit. Just for a little variety, y’know?”

“No point in messing with dynamics that work,” said Aster. “We’re used to functioning together, and I assume their group is the same.”

“Sides,” Adelly added, “nobody who doesn’t absolutely have to wants to get stuck with Flaethwyn.”

“It’s rough, though, isn’t it?” I kept my voice low, audible only to the two goblins walking on either side of me, which at the moment happened to be Zui and Deeyo. Both glanced curiously up at me. “When you start to see the other guys as people with their own viewpoints, out there doing their best. Shit’s a lot less complicated when they’re just evil assholes you don’t need to understand.”

Pause one beat for effect, and…

“Right, Zui?”

Her face melted into a deep, bitter scowl, which she directed at the distance ahead of us.

“Shut the hell up, tallboy.”

Heh. Whatever happened with Hoy, at least I won this round.

----------------------------------------

Our route took us right along the northern edge of the island—I didn’t even realize how close until the first time the tunnel turned into a ledge. There was no safety rail, of course, just an unthinkable drop into the swirling clouds below, and the deeply disorienting sight of the sky stretching off into infinity with no horizon. Ritlit’s cheerful comment that on a clearer day than this you could sometimes see the distant landmass of Savindar did not help.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

Fortunately it wasn’t all like that; even the tunnel had occasional gaps providing a view of the sky while it was a tunnel, but the sections where we had to hug the actual outer shell of the island were horrifying but few. Whether this remote stretch was just uninhabited or everybody was hunkering down due to the civil war, we had the tunnels to ourselves, not encountering another soul on the entire trip. Biribo reported a few goblins moving through tunnels in the distance now and then, but always at the outermost extent of his senses and never in any corridors that connected directly to ours.

These flashes of daylight also helped us know when the daylight had faded. Aside from the necessary few small breaks, I kept us moving until after full dark, when we found a cavern with a partially-crumbled ceiling along one corner allowing us a view of the sky, along with a floor space big enough for the group, and only two entrances to minimize the chances of us being snuck up on.

Given the hour, I decreed a halt. As urgently as we needed to keep moving, Gazmo had been right: fatigue was a killer, my experiences on Ephemera had already taught me that very well. Rushing headlong into another confrontation with Hoy was bad enough without making sure everyone had managed at least some sleep. I instructed Biribo to take the watch himself, since he was the only one who didn’t actually need rest and could wake us up if anyone approached. Also, familiars were as reliable as clocks when it came to keeping time, so I ordered him to give us six hours before waking everybody up. Then we all settled down to sleep.

Easier said than done.

I found myself somewhat separate from the group up on a small ledge, rather like the last time we’d camped in a cavern. Not that I was flexing Dark Lord privilege or anything; everybody had spread out slightly for a tiny shred of privacy, as before clustering around the fire slimes I’d set out as impromptu campfires. There was a soft murmur of voices here and there, as clearly I was not the only one finding the combination of a rough rocky floor and tension over our situation antithetical to sleep. At least they were all actually lying down, only a few here and there whispering to each other quietly enough not to disturb their neighbors.

With no idea how long I’d spent staring up at the stars glimmering in a purple sky through that crack in the ceiling, I eventually gave up and, as quietly as I could, hoisted myself up to sit upright. Biribo was buzzing slowly around the perimeter of the chamber on his rounds. Everybody else seemed to be horizontal, though Aster had wedged herself into a crevice and slumped there in a reclining position, apparently having managed to nod off. Maybe I should try that. Deeyo was alone in another corner, on his side with his back to the room in a position that looked super uncomfortable. I couldn’t tell from this angle whether Adelly and Nazralind were just stretched out side by side or actually cuddling, but I was starting to wonder if something was going on with those two. All the other goblins seemed to be laid out and either whispering together or earnestly trying to sleep, except…

Zui, seeing me sit up, ceased her own pacing and came to settle down about a meter away, saying nothing.

“You too, huh,” I finally said, just loudly enough to be audible at that distance.

She didn’t answer directly, just leaning back on her arms to stare up at that crack revealing the sky. I instantly had to look in another direction as that position strongly emphasized her bust and not much is less restful than flashbacks. If it had been Gizmit—or Sneppit—I would have assumed that was deliberate, but Zui had never seemed interested in flaunting herself. Also, she didn’t seem to like me all that much.

“So, what’s Japanese sarcasm like?” she finally asked, just as quietly.

Non sequitur, but okay. Safely irrelevant topics of conversation were probably better, anyway.

“Scathing. I reckon the most common use of it I’ve heard was to effusively compliment someone who’s just done something stupid. Teachers love to do that.”

“Sounds like you had shitty teachers, then,” she grunted. “Fastest way to make sure a person doesn’t learn anything is to make the learning a pain in the ass.”

“Well, I won’t argue with you there.”

The silence, somewhat to my surprise, wasn’t awkward. Maybe it was the fatigue, or maybe there just wasn’t any real tension between the two of us. Come to think of it, as annoying as Zui frequently chose to be, I didn’t have any problem with her as a person. She worked hard, got shit done and always tried to do the right thing; you had to respect it. And if she went about all that in the most personally obnoxious way possible much of the time, well, I’m the last guy who has any right to complain about that.

“You as usual decided to be an ass about it, but you weren’t wrong,” Zui said after a pause, unexpectedly mirroring my own thoughts. “It’s…complicated. I’ve had to clean up after a lot of human-inflicted damage over the years. Humans were just…things that caused damage. Hurt and killed people indiscriminately, stole stuff and destroyed whatever they couldn’t take. Impossible to ever truly get away from but still too dangerous to really deal with. Just malicious, cruel ogres, basically. You didn’t have to think about why they did what they did. The sun rises, the winds blow, humans wreck everything.”

I just nodded, staring up at the stars. I couldn’t even tell if she glanced over at me; for some reason I was reluctant to disturb that moment by speaking, or even moving my head.

“I guess everybody has their reasons,” Zui finally said, more softly still. She shifted, and I turned just enough to see peripherally as she folded herself up, wrapping her arms around her knees and resting her chin on them. “It really makes you wonder. If I happened to be born a human, in the circumstances they’re in… How would I have acted? You can’t not think about that, once you talk with enough of them to see a bit of their situation. And… Man. It is just…uncomfortable.”

“I have to think about this a lot,” I admitted. “I’m trying to build a coalition out there. And on paper it seems like it should be easy, right? The whole strategy of shitty, incompetent rulers like the Fflyr is to divide and conquer. Keep everybody at each other’s throats so they can stay power and there’s no solidified resistance. In theory, just making people see that should be half the battle.”

She glanced over at me. “And in practice?”

“It’s a different problem with every new group integrated. I’ve succeeded so far by starting with the easy ones. Fflyr society is extra shitty to women and especially prostitutes, so I recruited them first. With them being the original backbone of the organization, new people folded into it quickly learned not to try and act as shitty as they’d been raised to. That seems to have worked quite well, barring a few mishaps.”

“Starting your Dark Crusade with prostitutes,” she murmured. “Gotta say, that’s not an approach that would’ve occurred to me.”

“Probably because you’ve never been in a position of having to think about it. Sex workers get no respect, so nobody cares or even notices what I do with them. Anybody else would attract notice if I recruited them all for my bandit alliance. An army of whores? The idea would just make those in power laugh.”

“Clever,” she said, her tone grudgingly impressed. “Use their own preconceptions against ‘em. That’s goblin thinking.”

I nodded. “From there…it hasn’t been too hard to encourage acceptance of gay people and, uh…y’know, ones like Ydleth who were born the wrong gender, or…however you’d describe that. Those groups are small and inherently harmless, that’s exactly why they always end up being targets. Nobody has any actual beef with ‘em, beyond some vague sense of revulsion that they were taught growing up. Maybe a few pretty goofy lies about what they get up to in private. All of that starts to fall apart as soon as you start actually meeting a few of them, and realizing they’re just folks like anybody else. Just trying to live, not hurting anybody and not needing any more shit.”

“Yep.” Zui nodded, staring moodily into space. “That’s an awkward realization, all right.”

“But I think I’ve gone as far as I can go that way,” I murmured. “It’s suddenly a whole different game when you’re dealing with actual grievances. It’s no less true that groups like the lowborn and beastfolk and goblins have been pitted against each other for the benefit of those in power, but there’s been actual blood and death as a result of it. How am I gonna preach about the greater good to somebody whose parents were murdered by humans, or who ended up on the street because goblins stole their rent money? Then I’m the idiot talking in philosophical abstractions while they’ve got their boots in the mud dealing with real problems.”

“Sounds like a real bastard of a dilemma,” she agreed. Zui tilted her head to one side, resting her cheek on her folded arms so she could look at me directly. “I’d think you of all people would have some insight into this, given the backstory you told us on the tram. You’re a child of two cultures, right? Or was that all a smokescreen to distract the Hero?”

“No, all of it was the straight truth,” I said, mildly nettled by the accusation. “That experience doesn’t really apply here, though. Those two cultures border on being mutually incomprehensible, but they’ve had good relations for most of a century by now.” I hesitated, considering. “Though…they were particularly viciously at war just before that.”

“Yeah? Well, maybe there’s your answer. How’d that resolve itself?”

“Absolute conquest,” I said, wincing. “One bombed into rubble, completely occupied by the other. Which then rebuilt the whole country from the ground up. That not only earned a lot of goodwill despite all the recent atrocities on both sides, but enabled them to install a new government that… Well, these days Japan is far from being a client state of America, but the current constitution makes it basically impossible to take an aggressive stance on…anything.”

“Hm. You’re not really in a position to do any of that, huh.”

“Not yet. If I understand how this Dark Lord thing works, as long as I can keep staying alive, eventually I’ll be able to wield overwhelming force and not have to deal with problems like this.”

Her reddish-violet eyes bored into me, unblinking. “That is not gonna work out the way you’re imagining, buddy.”

“We’ll see.”

Zui rolled her eyes, shook her head, and stretched out on her back, folding her hands on her stomach and staring at the ceiling.

“Then again,” I whispered.

She turned her head to give me an inquisitive look.

“I can already cause devastation on a scale I never imagined. I didn’t even know it until the heat of the moment. With the powers closing in on me already… I wonder how long it’ll be before I have no choice but to do something like that again.”

Zui stared, unblinking, for a few long seconds, then rolled her head back to gaze upward again.

“Yeah, I noticed you changing the subject every time that priestess asked about the Inferno. Didn’t even know it, huh. So you didn’t actually do that on purpose?”

I looked away, though she wasn’t even looking at me. “No comment. Just… Who would’ve thought khora were huge enough for one organism to cover most of the island? Much less that a spell would even work on something that size.”

“Everyone. Everyone knows that.” She snorted. “I guess, unless they came from a whole other world and don’t know their ass from a crawn’s nest. You know, those roots run all through Kzidnak. Goblins interact with them closely. They’re a major source of both food and a lot of what makes our alchemy superior to what the Fflyr have. You had better believe we took note of that bullshit. Fortunately nobody sleeps in ‘em or anything so it probably didn’t cause any deaths or even serious injuries, but… I can’t say for absolutely certain, but given the timing? I’m pretty sure it was a big part of what tipped Jadrak over the edge.”

Well, wasn’t that just a motherfucker.

“So tell me, Dark Lord Tallboy,” Zui said, tilting her head backward a bit so she could stare at the stars. “Was that any different up top? Did you get what you wanted by destroying everything in your path? Or did that just cause another huge mess of fucking problems that you still don’t know how to deal with?”

“Yeah, yeah. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could all just hold hand and sing songs and agree to live together in peace?”

She sighed heavily, but didn’t answer.

“You probably think I’m just being an asshole, Zui—and fair enough—but I’m also serious. That would be better. But in the real world, all the problems bearing down on us are caused by powerful people, on purpose, for their own benefit. And nothing is going to get better until some of them fucking die.”

“I’m very much afraid that you’re not wrong,” she murmured, finally closing her eyes. “Just don’t kid yourself that getting the bastards out of the way is the solution to anything. That just clears space for the solutions to start. At that point, you’ll have to start doing the real work.”

I looked down at her, then up at the stars again.

Nothing good could possibly result from telling Zui she was right, and there really wasn’t anything else to say in response to that.

I stretched out on my back again, listening to the soft sound of her breathing and concentrating on my own.