Just tune it all out, Ace repeated.
“Riven, that’s enough!” Galina insisted, grabbing Riven’s shoulder.
“Get your fucking hands off of me.” Riven slapped Galina’s hand away. “ You’re getting mad at me?! Our lives are on the line, and she won’t tell us anything!”
“Back off Riven, some people have shit they don’t want to share,” Kai said. “I’m sure you have shit you don’t want to tell any of us.”
“Oh, my closet is full of skeletons,” Riven conceded. “The difference is that if my skeletons suddenly kicked down the closet door and started chasing after me, I’d let the people I’m with know just enough to keep themselves safe.”
Just tune it all out.
“She’s right, Kai. Cili could have actual useful information she’s withholding from us,” Draxl said.
“There is no fucking way, you of all people, are saying that!” Kai exclaimed. “You know what, fuck it, this was information for you to share when you were comfortable, but after that, I think everyone deserves to know this.
“You know the band of thieves that kidnapped Elric in the first place: The Free Few. Draxl was the SECOND IN COMMAND FOR YEARS!”
“Seriously?” Halvor asked.
“Is that true?” Galina asked.
Just tune it all out.
“I talked to them tonight. They confirmed they kidnapped Elric and handed him off all the way back in Journey. Their involvement ended there, so it wasn’t relevant to share. The only things they confirmed were that there was an auction and that they were using a [Planar Connector] to host, both things we already know. If my involvement with the group became relevant, I would’ve elaborated on it.”
“What about in Wickerbound, when we first heard about them from Cally? You had no reason to believe they weren’t involved before then,” Kai argued.
“So I waited to confirm! Gods, I know you’re a fucking idiot, but this is a whole new level,” Draxl fired back.
Just tune it all out.
Galina tried to speak, but felt too overwhelmed by all the shouting that she remained silent.
“I don’t even want to talk about this anymore,” Cili said, irritated. “Halvor you were going to say something about my brother, earlier. What was it?”
“Um, I’m not sure this is the time to—”
“Oh, for fucks sake, are you also going to withhold critical information?” Riven asked, furious and fed up.
“Osiris works for the lab!” Halvor shouted. “I was going to ask. Kai, did you show him your locket, because if you did I think he would have stolen it.”
Kai suppressed his shock. “I did but—”
“I told you to stop looking into this!” Halvor exclaimed. “Now they’re never going to let you go!”
“How was I supposed to know?! He was just a nice guy who helped me, I wasn’t even looking into it!” Kai said, bewildered by Halvor’s anger.
Just tune it all out.
“I’m sorry, did you say my brother works for the lab?!” Cili asked. “The same one that’s doing all those nasty experiments? That’s not true! He would never do that! Did you know I was his sister?”
“No, I didn’t!” Halvor insisted. “He talked about having a younger sister, but never said her name. I didn’t know his reason, or why he was doing the work, but it could've been noble.”
“It was! My brother would never do anything like that! I know him!” Cili’s eyes glistened in the moonlight as tears began to well up inside them.
“Your brother was always kind to me,” Halvor assured Cili. “Not everyone was there by choice, a lot of them were victims of circumstance.”
Just tune it all out.
“Halvor isn’t trying to insult your brother Cili,” Galina said.
“How about we go back to the fact that Draxl used to be a part of The Free Few,” Riven suggested, “because that shit is fucking crazy.”
“You know what I agree!” Kai exclaimed, turning to Draxl with a cocky grin.
“How are you not understanding this!” Draxl shouted, clenching his fists. “I would’ve said something if it mattered. I went today to check if it did. It doesn't. So I didn’t say anything.”
Just tune it all out.
“Well, you could’ve said something back in Wickerbound,” Riven argued.
“We didn’t know if it was relevant then!” Draxl rebutted.
“Yes, we did!” Kai countered. “Cally literally said they were the ones who kidnapped Elric!”
Just tune it all out.
Ace tried to focus on his book. The text blurred as the conversation continued to devolve into an unbearable cacophony, each voice overlapping and competing for dominance. The incessant noise grated away at Ace’s nerves like nails on a chalkboard. Words had lost their meaning and all swelled together into a skull-splitting headache.
Just tune it all out.
----------------------------------------
“You’re wasting his potential!”
“I am not sending our son to Journey by himself!”
“So we’ll go with him!”
“You just want to go back home!”
Just tune it all out.
“Do you know how many times I thought about going back home? I stayed for this family, and put up with all the shit you put me through! I’m not doing this for me! I’m doing this for our son!”
“What’s wrong with the life he has here?!”
“He’s a brilliant, bright young boy. He can’t grow up to be a farmer. He needs to be a scholar, artificer, doctor, lawyer, so many better things than a farmer.”
Just tune it all out.
“So we abandon everything I’ve built here. Move into the heart of Fable, and leave everyone behind.”
“That is the exact same sacrifice I made! I left my home to raise our son. Why can’t you do the same?”
“Sacrifice this. Sacrifice that. Sacrifice. Sacrifice. No one forced you to make this decision! You chose to come out here!”
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
Just tune it all out.
“Maybe I shouldn’t have!”
“You want to leave? Go! Go! Take him with you. Please. The best day of my life will be when I no longer have to take care of you two!”
Just tune it all out.
“You know my family won’t let me take Ace with me, because he’s—”
“He’s what? A farmer’s son? Run to your family. I’ll take care of him.”
“I taught him everything he knows! Gave him the best education I could! How will you take care of him?”
“The reason you could take care of him was because I was out working to support this whole family!”
Just tune it all out.
“I was working in Journey! You wanted to move here and I told you I wouldn’t be able to work. You told me that’d be okay!”
“Then go. Go home. Go to Journey. See if I care.”
“You want me to go so badly, I’ll go.”
Just tune it all out.
SLAM!
Just tune it all out.
----------------------------------------
“WILL YOU ALL JUST SHUT UP! JUST SHUT UP!”
As Ace screamed out, a loud thud cut through the chaos, as he slammed his book into the ground. Its pages splayed out as it skidded along the floor.
Ace’s voice was thick with frustration, but also shaky and laced with desperation. The words were as much a plea as they were a roar. His face—now a bright red—was rigid, with veins bursting from his neck. His hands trembled at his sides, clenched into fists so tight his hands turned white. His chest heaved with heavy breaths, as he tried to gather himself.
The outburst was met with a thick and oppressive silence. The remnants of Ace’s fury hung in the air, palpable to everyone present.
Ace wrestled the bed covers from off himself, and sprang out from the bed. His breath and body steadied as he unclenched his fists. From Ace’s hands, blood dripped onto the floor. The distress the conversation had caused Ace numbed him to the feeling of dead skin and blood underneath his fingernails as they dug into his palms.
“Yeah, I get it, it’s frustrating we don’t trust each other, but we’ve also only known each other for like a few weeks. Being hesitant to reveal personal information, even if it’s going to help, isn’t that surprising. Is it appreciated? Ab-so-fucking-lutely. Is yelling at somebody about how they’re so wrong, and you’re so right, going to make them spill their life story? NO! So shut the fuck up!
“Don’t get me wrong. I’m just as pissed off because I fucking need this to work. I need to get rid of this dumbass chain around my throat, and having people, in the same situation, refuse to give vital information that can help, is infuriating. But I understand why they’re doing that! How do you not?!
“The worst part, the worst part of it all, is that you all are the people doing this. If it was six random nobodies trying to rip each other’s throats out, I wouldn’t give a shit. But you all are some of the most capable people I know. Now, I get that isn’t saying a lot, okay, but seeing people with so much potential throw it all away, it doesn’t make me angry, it fucking terrifies me.
“If any of you walk away, you’ll probably figure a way out of this on your own. It will be harder, probably a lot harder, but you’ll make it. Me? I’m fucked. I can’t do shit. Sure I’ve got this soul stuff, but I don’t know how any of it works. Turns out, I barely know how the world works.
“What I do know, is if you all stopped acting like children, and just realized, all of us are a profoundly fucked up mess of contradictions, even without all this extra information, this shit will be easy, because you are all fucking amazing. You can do things where the only reason I can even fathom them is because I spent my entire childhood reading fantasy books.
“If I can't get rid of this chain, then life’s a real bitch, because now that I want to start living, the opportunity to do so, that’s been dangling in front of me for years, gets ripped away. That opportunity, right now, that’s all of you. Without you … I don’t know what I’m going to do. So please, just put up with each other for one more day! Please.”
The room, previously filled with a cacophony of voices, echoed with deafening silence. Everyone avoided each other’s gaze, their eyes slowly drifting to the floor or darting around the room. Some shifted uncomfortably, crossing their arms or rubbing the back of their necks; others remained still, waiting for someone to break the tension.
Halvor looked Ace in the eyes as he nodded slightly “That works for me.”
Galina followed, her gaze lifting to meet Ace’s. “Same here.”
Riven nodded her head. “I can do a day.”
Kai’s head didn’t move, but his eyes shifted to meet Ace’s. “Me too.”
Cili, her voice uncharacteristically calm, spoke next as she locked eyes with Ace. “Okay, one day.”
Draxl clenched his hands and glanced up toward Ace. “One day it is.”
Moments ago, the words that crowded the room were loud and hollow; now, their words were gentle and rich with sincerity.
Ace breathed a huge sigh of relief, the tension in his body easing as the room finally settled into a calm. "Thank you," he said, his voice steadying. “Now, this might just make things a million times worse, but it seems like with all the dissenting opinions in the room, if we are ever going to agree on anything, specifically a plan, somebody is going to need to take some kind of leadership role. Not to have complete authority, but at least to mediate the conversation, and make sure this shit never happens again.”
“A leader, huh? Not a bad idea,” Cili said. “I mean, all official adventuring parties have a designated leader, so it makes sense.”
“Cool, who's it gonna be?” Ace asked.
“What the fuck? You,” Riven replied instantly.
Ace’s eyes widened as his eyebrows shot up in shock. He opened his mouth to protest, but before he could speak, he was interrupted by Draxl.
“Yeah, that makes the most sense,” Draxl said.
“Woah, woah, woah,” Ace interjected, trying to stop everyone to no avail.
“Literally when I said having a leader wasn’t a bad idea, I was already thinking of you being the leader,” Cili admitted. “You think I would’ve said that if I thought Riven was the leader?”
“I deserve that,” Riven murmured under her breath.
“I was a little confused when you asked who the leader would be,” Galina said.
“Even I felt you were the obvious pick,” Halvor added.
“How is the guy who just ranted about how dysfunctional he is the obvious pick for leader?!” Ace asked.
“Because that rant is what actually got us all to pull our heads out our asses. The thing you said a leader needs to do. You just did,” Kai explained. “You’re the only person with empirical evidence supporting you being a good leader to this group specifically.”
“Literally anybody else would be better,” Ace said. “Why not Galina? She wasn’t arguing.”
“I didn’t say anything,” Galina reminded Ace. “I just backed off, instead of getting involved. A leader needs to be able to get involved.”
“Sorry about hitting your hand by the way,” Riven said. “But, no dude, she’s right when you’re dealing with this gaggle of idiots, you gotta be heavy-handed in your approach.”
“How about Halvor?” Ace suggested. “He’s probably got one of the better moral compasses out of all of us.”
“I would throw up with anxiety if I was given the responsibility of leading this group,” Halvor said.
“We just learned Draxl helped lead a group of thieves for years,” Ace said “Why doesn’t he do it?”
“Vetoed,” Riven said.
“Vetoed?” Ace questioned. “What do you mean vetoed?”
“The leader has to be a unanimous decision. I’m vetoing Draxl as the leader. That’s why he can’t be a leader,” Riven explained.
“Why don’t you do it?” Ace asked Riven.
“Vetoed,” Draxl said, without missing a beat.
“Kai?” Ace asked, desperately.
“Vetoed,” Draxl said.
“Double vetoed,” Riven added.
“Triple vetoed,” Kai continued. “Wait, can I veto myself? Eh, it doesn't matter.”
“What about …” Ace turned toward Cili, but after a brief moment of silence, just let out a prolonged and defeated sigh.
“Oh come on!” Cili exclaimed. “At least give me a chance to deny it!”
“I think it’s settled,” Galina said. “The leader of The Hangmen is Ace!”
Galina started an applause, which everyone else quickly joined in on—some sincerely, the rest jokingly—leaving Ace, who was already exhausted, looking as if his age had doubled.
“Okay, if we’re doing this I cannot come up with a plan now, it was too fucking late,” Ace said. “Can we just plan like tomorrow afternoon? The auction is at night, so we have time. That way we can sleep in. I was also wanting to talk to Kai and Galina beforehand if possible.”
“Sure man,” Kai said.
“I’m free whenever,” Galina said.
“Sleeping in sounds great,” Riven said. “If you don’t mind, Cili, I wanted to talk to you tomorrow. It’s not about Willow or Xavier or any of that stuff. It’s about Ambition. If that’s alright with you.”
“That’s fine.”
“I was planning on going out shopping. If you guys make a list early enough and give me the gold, I can try to grab whatever you need,” Halvor said. “Considering the amount of dangerous people attending this auction that might be in town, it might be safer to go out in pairs. Mind tagging along Draxl?”
“Not like I had other plans.”
“See, being a leader ain’t so hard. You just gave your first order,” Riven said.
“I guess so,” Ace replied. “Now for my second order. Everybody go to sleep!”