Still carrying my stolen crossbow, I followed the little gnome out of the dark trap room and into a moderately furnished sitting room nearby.
It had two large, if a little worn, sofas and a coffee table in the middle. The gnome sat on one side and I sat directly opposite him. As my butt touched the cushions I sank deeply into the soft, well used, upholstery.
It was comfortable, but not exactly the best position to initiate combat if the worst happened. I still wasn’t willing to let my guard down, at least not yet.
Bell sat on one side of me and the giant lycanid sat on the other side. I shot him a worried glance as his huge posterior lifted my side of the sofa upwards. It protested with a threatening creak as his full weight sank into the cushions.
The catonid sat next to the gnome, looking quite dismayed at having been so easily beaten. By contrast, the lycanid didn’t seem to care at all. He stared at me with challenging eyes, but it wasn’t a look of contempt.
“You’re fast, human,” he said in a deep, gruff voice. “We should spar for real some time. I wanna see exactly how tough you are.”
“Thanks…” I replied awkwardly, “but how about we have this conversation first. I wouldn’t want to keep our host waiting.”
“Have it your way,” he replied with a disappointed sigh.
Bell looked across me at the lycanid, staring intently at his ripped, furry body. She had that fiery look in her eyes and I knew what she was thinking before she even opened her mouth.
“Not now, Bell,” I said before she had the chance to challenge him to a duel. She frowned at me before forcing herself to look away from him.
Seriously, what’s with all the battle junkies in this place.
“Shall we begin?” I asked, gesticulating towards the gnome who had watched my exchange with his friend quietly.
“Of course,” he replied cordially.
“Sweet,” I said, “before we get into the details of what exactly it is that you want us to do for you, I want to ask you a little bit more about your beliefs. From what you said before, you seem like the good guys in all of this. However, we haven’t met the capitalists yet and I’m pretty certain that even most villains believe themselves to be righteous.”
“There isn’t much more to tell,” he began, looking between his two companions. “As I said before, we strive to create a utopia where all are equal and there is peace and morality. The first step towards achieving that future is to secure fair wages for our people and to fight back against the discrimination they receive.”
“Ok,” I said thoughtfully, “but what is morality to you? Your ideas surely differ from the capitalists and their ideas differ from the Havarian socialists I met before. How can you be sure of who is right or wrong?”
He looked at me with beady, black eyes, squinting slightly as if he misunderstood the question. In all honesty, I just wanted to check that he wasn’t secretly a terrorist or something before I helped him.
Director Freja gave me free reign to solve this conflict however I wanted and I needed to make sure that I made the right choices. I doubted she’d be happy if I helped the gnome overthrow the current government and created Stalin 2.0.
“Morality is simple,” he said after a long moment, “it is a code of hard rules that must never be broken. The contents of them usually differ slightly from person to person, but in general if you use empathy as your guiding principle I don’t think you can go far wrong.”
“Ok then,” I said, taking a moment to think before continuing. It was a pretty good response in my opinion, but it seemed to lack depth. Not that my own thoughts on morality were any deeper, the most thought I’d ever put into the subject was when discussing philosophy with my mate Luke over a few pints at our local pub and that hardly made me an authority on the matter.
Still though, I’d been intrusted with this quest and I had to try and make the right choice, so I probed further, “let me ask you a question. What if you had to choose between two strangers dying or someone you loved dying. Who would you choose? This is a question often asked by ancient philosophers from my worl- country.” I hastily added, correcting myself before I let even more people in on my biggest and worst kept secret.
“Your silly mortal problems bore me,” Asmodeus announced, “I am declaring nap time, please wake me when this tedium is over.”
He jumped from my shoulder to Bell’s lap and curled up. From the gormless expression on her face, I could tell she thought that was adorable.
“The person you love,” the lycanid answered in place of the gnome, furrowing his brow. “What kind of question is that, human? I thought your kind were supposed to be smart.”
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“What about you?” I asked the gnome.
“Gnomes are a hive mind species, so this concept is a little alien to us,” he began slowly, “however, I would have to agree with comrade Rex.”
Rex? I thought, I wonder if he gets why that’s so funny.
“Wait!” Bell shouted, “your name is Rex and you’re a dog person? That’s hilarious.”
Before I could stop myself I felt my palm slap against my forehead. I removed it slowly by rubbing it downwards as if trying to rub away the headache my teammate had caused.
“Rex is an honourable name!” he declared, half standing, fury burning in his yellow eyes. “In my culture, names with too many syllables are weak names. There has never been a strong Geraldine or Joshua. Besides, I am a lycanid not a dog person.”
“Ok…” I jumped in before the big scary wolf man decided to challenge my fire mage to single combat, “back to the matter at hand. Of course you would choose your loved one, everyone would, but that in itself shows the flaw in using empathy as your guiding principle. One life isn’t worth two when you look at it objectively.”
“That is mere fallacy,” the gnome countered, “would you rather we lived with no morals? No code? Are you an anarchist human?”
“Huh,” Panda muttered, “I guess that word means the same thing no matter where you’re from.”
“Not at all,” I replied with a shrug, in fact, I knew that I would make the same choice myself. The entire reason I was levelling up and trying to gain power was for the sake of seeing my family again. “The point I’m trying to make is that I don’t think there are any hard-set rules when it comes to right or wrong. Good people don’t need rules to do the right thing and bad people will always find a way to break them.
“The hard-line view of morality as you see it can only be kept by threat of force and where I’m from, that has always created a breeding ground for dictatorship. From what you’ve said, I don’t disagree with your views, but the idea of a perfect and harmonious utopia is just that… an idea. It won’t work because people have the capacity to be different, especially here where there are so many different races with their own ideas and perception. You already said you’re a hive mind species, surely you must agree that a lycanid or catonid will view the world, and morality differently to you?
“So, if I do help you out, I need to know that you’re not going to try and turn this continent into a massive gnome hive. I can’t help a side that opposes freedom.”
I took a deep breath.
My HUD buzzed and I opened the group chat.
Panda: Since when did you care about politics, kid?
Kaleb: Freja gave me the power to choose in this quest. I just don’t want to pick the wrong side. I’m trying to be responsible for once.
Bell: FREEDOM!
Kaleb: Look, I just want to know that these guys are as good as they think they are. Whatever choices I make in the coming days could affect thousands of people.
Panda: People you don’t know. Just pick a side, complete the quest and let’s leave this town in the dust in our new mobile treehouse. We have to get to Castalor remember?
Kaleb: I need to be able to look myself in the mirror once all this is done. If a job is worth doing, it’s worth doing right. Besides, it definitely won’t be a treehouse.
Panda: Fine, but if it’s not a treehouse you owe me a lifetime supply of bamboo.
Bell: ‘MURICA! FUCK YEAH!
Perhaps I was being a little too preachy with the gnome, but something about his hard-line way of thinking just rubbed me up the wrong way. I’d seen enough shows on the history channel to know that it never worked out, and yes, I used to watch the history channel, sue me.
The gnome had already mentioned that his species was a hive mind. When segregated from the other races I was sure it was a perfect, communist utopia… if such a thing exists. However, his Under-Slums militia seemed to be an equal mix of races and I just hated the idea of them losing their agency if this guy went off the rails.
Fighting for equality and fair wages was a noble goal, but he’d already alluded to it only being the beginning of his plans.
“You think too much human,” Rex said, slapping me on the back with his uninjured hand. “The little gnome is ok in my books, don’t get your panties in a twist. Besides, all he wants you to do is help him to arrange a meeting with some prissy rich guys. He’s not asking you to lead the revolution.”
“Rex speaks true comrade,” the gnome added, “we merely wish to be able to speak with our adversaries on equal ground. There is no diplomacy without dialogue.”
I looked towards Bell and she shrugged back at me. Panda nodded at me once, I think that was his way of saying that we should take them up on their offer.
What could possibly go wrong if all they wanted was to set up peace negotiations. Surely that was better than a killing spree. Besides, Asmodeus would probably devour my soul if I didn’t accept this quest. He really wanted that power back.
“Ok,” I eventually said, “if that’s all you want then we can certainly try. Though I have to warn you, I haven’t actually met the capitalist faction yet. I can’t guarantee that they’ll speak to me at all.”
“You speak with the authority of Adventure Society, of course they’ll listen,” he replied with a smile. “We do have one more condition though…”
I narrowed my eyes at him.
Who was he to give me conditions? We’d just met and I was helping him free of charge. A meaty palm clapped my shoulder once more, pulling me from my thoughts.
I turned towards Rex; his large, yellow eyes boring into me with a passionate fire lit beneath them.
All I could think was, oh, what big eyes you have, as the massive wolf-man stared directly into my soul. I’d just have to hope I wouldn’t end up like Little Red Riding Hood’s grandma.
“Now that you’ve seen our home we can’t risk you selling us out to the capitalists,” the gnome continued in a calm and confident manner. “As such, Rex will be accompanying you on this quest.”
The wolf grinned at me and my stomach churned as his dripping canines glinted right in front of my face.
“This is gonna be fun, human!” He said in that horse, guttural voice of his.