Chapter 47) Tear down the wall. Or, Prison break. Tesaro edition.

It was nice to get to do something again and get to have at least one half of a conversation with a couple of… relatively normal everyday working joes.

But as the sun started to light up the east sky, or at least I assumed the sun came up in the east here, I tapped Laundis on the shoulder and gave him and Turg, the big guy a wave goodbye.

"Is it that early? Yeah, see you around Audor."

I'm not sure who Audor was, but they said the way I was pitching in was just like Audor from the story, and it beat 'Hey you.'

The plaza in front of the temple of light was ever more crowded in the dark before the dawn, but most of the dead seemed content to settle into place, on their knees and quietly praying toward the temple of a goddess that I was guessing wasn’t listening anymore.

Pushing past them wasn’t much of an issue.

Inside the temple, it looked like that same group of skeletons, some in armor, some not, standing around waiting for Matt, or any other fresh fish considering the net, to pop out of the gate.

And still continuing a conversation which apparently was still going on since the day before.

"Alright but why insist on the words 'they' and 'them' that's always meant more than one person, why not just make up a neutral term for one person regardless of their chosen gender."

The other skeleton holding the net began shaking its head before the other one was even halfway done, but they at least waited until the other one got done speaking before they began to reply.

“Getting anyone from this city to agree on one new set of words for people will never happen, we love to debit too much, and older people will reject any new word we come up with just because it is new, we need to repurpose something already in use and familiar to everyone.”

The other one tilted his head back and sighed. “Yes, but agreeing to address someone as what they choose to be out of politeness is fair, but it just seems like it would be deliberately creating confusion… Hang on. Let’s table this for now. I see one coming.”

A moment later Matt came out of the gate with a steady two steps, like he had gotten a lot of practice at it, and then gave the two debaters a wry look as they almost gently draped their net over his head.

“Really guys. Again.”

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They apologized. "Sorry Matt, the Princess really doesn't like you, and we don't want to give her an excuse to make an example out of you again.

Matt sighed. “Alright, where are we at again?”

They then proceeded to have a conversation about morality and some dead Greek guy talking about how you have a responsibility to be decent to others, and good to your family because it's the right thing to do rather than try to mark off a checklist put out by a god of how to get into their good graces.

About twenty minutes into their talk, which had drifted into talking about the Greek gods, a group of soldiers in the fancy armor showed up to lead Matt away.

He greeted the guy in charge by name. "Morning Maxi. Back to the salt mines?”

“Yes… why must you always still wear the net each morning? The Princess is much too busy with her court just to come see you be humiliated.”

Matt shrugged. “What can I say? This is the closest I’m getting to having Internet access again.”

The dead man in charge sighed. “Another reference no one here understands. Just take it off.”

Well, I was not seeing a good way of getting into a conversation with Matt yet, so I followed along behind the six dead guys marching him back to the work sight, all the way up to where the big golden symbols on the walls began to glimmer with a low but intense light that made me feel itchy.

From the way they were throwing their hands up in front of their faces, it seemed to make the other dead men walking feel pretty uncomfortable as well.

From there the guard waved Matt to go the rest of the way on his own, then stood there watching as he walked forward, and then turned to begin running sideways.

“Hey, stop… Archers bring him down!”

I ran past them.

The symbols on the Barricade lit up with a golden gleam, which hurt a bit, and made it hard to see, but the unexpected yells behind me made it seem like it was somehow worse for them or surprised them more.

It also made it hard for them to target Matt with any arrows… which I will swear on a stack of Bibles was my plan all the time.

Stumbling along half blind I saw someone ducked down behind a pile of giant bones as they waved and whispered loudly at me. “Tex?”

I stopped, nodded, and gave a thumbs up in the general direction of the voice.

A half visible hand waved me forward. “Follow me.”

After a few minutes of darting from bone piles to low upright cut stones, we came to a gully and I slipped into it after Matt.

He patted me on the shoulder. “Good to see you, although I’m not sure why you came. Let me fill you in.”

It had been two months for Matt.

At first, he had made his way with Josh to the Barricade and climbed over to explore outside, but then Matt decided he wanted to help the dead people in the city by making it possible to escape the city and their curse.

“Help voluntarily. At least that was the plan.”

First Matt, then others as they showed up would climb the great wall every other day to hunt, fish, and gather up wild plants, things people with the Hunter class were all good at, as well as harvesting logs to build a scaffold with.

But the dead were always afraid the people they had to rely on might decide one day to just not come back, as many of them did as they wanted to go see what else was happening in this world.

Like Josh.

Matt shook his head. "I saw him up on the wall once, but the guards saw him and the Princess said she would force him to climb down by threatening to torture people if he didn’t, I’m not sure if he figured that out or not, but for whatever reason I haven’t seen him since then.

After that, it wasn't hard for the Princess to get people to put her in a position of power again by taking the volunteers captive, as well as every other new arrival through the gate and forcing them to work on a way out of the city.

Matt peeked over the top of the gully before dropping down to look at me again.

"The current situation sucks, but I still want to get this done. There are still a lot of decent people in this city who just want an ending and I'm still commuted to help them."

He grimaced, then brightened up.

"So what's new with you?"