Path of Dragons 18 - Chapter 27 - Consequences (Patreon)

The door slammed hard enough that it was a wonder the frame didn’t shatter.  Clearly, it had been built with high-grade materials by powerful crafters.  That Elijah couldn’t even feel the ethera coursing through it was a minor miracle. 

“You can’t do that!” Sadie whisper-shouted.

“He deserved it.  He’s deserved it for years.  I’m surprised nobody else did it before I got the chance,” Elijah remarked.

“No.  Not that,” she sighed before crossing her arms.  She stood with her weight on one leg, obviously upset.  It reminded Elijah of all the times she’d chastised him for one stupid act or another.  He’d improved since then, but he still sometimes neglected to consider the less obvious consequences of his actions.  “The way you looked at me.  That little comment.”

“Compliment.”

“What?”

“It wasn’t just a random comment.  It was a compliment.  You do look good,” he said.

“You can’t say things like that.”

Elijah shrugged. “I can say what I want.”

She shook her head, then turned away.  A moment later, she was pinching the bridge of her nose, just like she always did when she was annoyed.  Elijah wanted nothing else than to comfort her, but he held back.

“Aren’t you with someone?” she asked, finally turning back around.

“I am.”

“And what would she think about you…complimenting me?” Sadie asked.

Again, Elijah shrugged. “She’d probably agree with me.  You do look good.”

“Elijah…”

“I’m not trying to get back together or anything,” he insisted.  “I know that wouldn’t work.  But we’re still friends, right?  It’s no different than me…uh…complimenting Kurik’s beard or something.”

“You do realize that would be so much worse, don’t you?” she asked, a slight smile turning up the corners of her mouth.  “You know how they are with beards.”

“Right,” Elijah said, running a hand through his hair.  “That was probably a bad example.  But you understand my point.  Friends can say that friends look good without it getting weird.”

“Not when it undermines the reputation I’ve built,” she pointed out.  “They can’t see me as…”

“A beautiful woman?  I think that ship sailed.”

“They can’t see me as a person, Elijah,” she countered.  “I’m an ideal.  A figure.  I’m…I don’t know.  I’m not just a woman to them, though.  I have to be the Prime Judge.”

Elijah could see the pain behind that statement, and he wanted to hug her and tell her that everything would be okay.  However, he quickly dismissed that desire, realizing that she wouldn’t thank him for it. 

“I understand,” he said.  “I’ll keep my compliments to myself from now on.”

Her eyes twinkled. “Nobody said you can’t say it in private.”

“Good to know.”

For a second, they locked eyes, and Elijah almost believed they could turn back time.  But then, a thousand realizations came crashing into him.  Not least among them was his relationship with Imal.  He hadn’t seen her for years, but he was still just as committed as ever.  He forced himself to remember all the positive aspects of their relationship.  The feel of her in his arms, the way she looked at him, the love she felt for him.

Then there was other reason Elijah knew he and Sadie couldn’t be together.  They were too different, and their lives went in opposite directions. 

The moment passed quickly, leaving Sadie staring at him.

“I guess you want to talk about the other thing,” Elijah said.

“Is he going to die?”

“Probably not.”

“Will he recover?”

“Definitely not.”

She shook her head.  “You know that if anyone else did this, there would be consequences.”

“From you?” Elijah asked.

“No,” Sadie answered.  “We’ve been working on a case against him for years now.  You screwed that up, by the way.”

Elijah rubbed the back of his neck, saying, “I can’t let something like that stand.”

“I know.”

Then, Sadie went on to explain that she and the rest of the Adjudicators had been investigating Vinnie for more than five years – ever since they’d learned that he had begun to enslave young women.  “Before that, they were only rumors.  Every time we sent someone to investigate, they found nothing.  No concrete evidence.  Just rumors.”

“Do you really need all of that?  I heard you executed a dragon in the center of Ironshore.”

“That was different,” she pointed out before explaining that the dragon had never bothered to deny anything, making the case much easier to adjudicate.  “Vinnie isn’t as dumb as he seems.  He knew better than to flaunt slavery.”

“Until now.”

“He achieved deity,” Sadie said.  “He thought he was above the law.”

“Clearly, a mistake,” Elijah countered. 

“I don’t think he expected you to…do whatever you did.  Was that a soul attack?” she asked.

“Something like that,” Elijah answered.  He wasn’t keen to explain his methods to anyone outside of his own organization.  Not even Sadie Song.  Things would have been different if they were still together, but the reality was that they had different goals.  Sadie wouldn’t directly oppose him – not without good reason – but her priorities had shifted considerably since the last time they’d met. 

“You know people are going to expect me to do something here,” she remarked, starting to pace.  “They’ll want you punished.”

Elijah shrugged. He wanted to say that wasn’t his problem.  As much as he respected Sadie’s power, he liked his chances if it came down to a fight.  Not that he would go all-out.  He still loved her, after a fashion, and he would never choose to hurt her.  Instead, he would probably end up just running away.

“Just say that I was working on your behalf,” Elijah suggested. “Those three women out there, they were slaves.  Now that they’re free, I’m sure they’ll cooperate with your investigation.  And I bet that would be more than enough to let you raid Vinnie’s organization in Philadelphia.  That’s where he is, right?”

She nodded, still pacing. 

“Nobody sides with slavers,” she muttered.

Then, she went on to explain that taking Vinnie down wasn’t really enough to derail their organization.  He had quite a few powerful lieutenants, each of them eager to jump into Vinnie’s spot.  “They’re going to be an issue.”

“You want me to kill them all?” Elijah asked, genuinely ready to drop everything to do just that.  Over the years, he’d crossed a lot of moral lines, but he was more than willing to kill anyone who practiced slavery.  It didn’t matter if it was a Tamer who’d captured a beast or a man who’d enslaved a woman – Elijah wouldn’t stand for it. 

“No,” she sighed.  “That would just make everything worse.”

Then, she started working through the problem in her head.  Elijah could practically hear her thoughts organizing the coming offensive.  From what he understood, it would be something very close to a war.

Seeing her so focused just made her that much more attractive – a feeling that Elijah quickly squashed.  He didn’t think there was anything wrong with acknowledging his feelings in his own mind, but he also recognized just how slippery that slope could become.  The last thing he wanted was to start thinking the grass was greener on the other side of the fence – especially when he already knew better.

After a few moments, the door opened, admitting Isaiah.

“What do you want to do?” he asked Sadie as he closed the door behind him.  He still appeared unflappable, but Elijah could sense a slight increase in the pace of the ethera flowing through the man’s body.

“Here’s what I’m thinking,” Sadie said before revealing her plan.  Surprisingly, she had decided to follow Elijah’s advice and act as if he was acting in concert with the Adjudicators.  Isaiah said that he would support that idea.  He also revealed that he’d already been working closely with Sadie to solve the problem. 

That was not what Elijah had expected.

“I’m not heartless,” Isaiah said when Elijah remarked on it. “Slavery is morally abhorrent, and it is ultimately detrimental to any society’s advancement.”

“Didn’t think you’d care,” Elijah maintained. 

“You have no basis for that thought,” Isaiah pointed out.  “You do not know me.  You don’t know Earth anymore.  You’re almost as much of a stranger to this planet as the settlers we get from time to time.”

Elijah was going to object, but then he realized that Isaiah was right.  It had been a long time since he’d spent any amount of time on Earth, and he didn’t understand the political situation at all.  The only difference was that humanity hadn’t forgotten him.  Instead, they had mythologized his existence to the point of deification. 

Sara was responsible for that.

Partially, at least.  Elijah’s own actions had contributed more than a little.  After all, the things he’d done sounded a lot like myths – except that they’d actually happened.  The stories didn’t even need embellishment to feel fantastical.

“What about this little meeting you’ve planned?” Elijah asked.  “We still going ahead with it?”

“Of course,” both Isaiah and Sadie said at the same time.  Sadie took the lead, adding, “What happened out there is nothing compared to what needs to be discussed.”

“I’m going to disagree,” Elijah countered. After all, they might not have thought slavery was an urgent issue, but he certainly did.  On top of that, it sounded like the probably was more widespread than one man deciding to collar a few women.  That was deplorable enough on its own, but if that blight had infected Vinnie’s entire organization, it became a much larger problem.

“It will be addressed, Elijah,” Sadie stated.  “Be patient.”

He wanted to argue that to the enslaved people, patience wasn’t really an option.  However, he held his tongue.  It seemed that he was forced to do that a lot of late.  Self-regulation had never been his strong-suit, and that hadn’t really changed, despite his advances in cultivation and level.

For once, he decided to trust that other people could get things done.  Not on his schedule, perhaps, but if Sadie said they would fix the issue, then he had to believe her. 

“Where’s Sara?” he asked.

“She’s smoothing things over,” Isaiah answered.  “By the time we’re done here, she’ll have half the attendees believing that your actions were justified.”

“They were,” Elijah insisted.

“Action was justified,” he argued. “The timing was not.”

Elijah conceded that point.  He wanted nothing more than to judge them all based on their tolerance of slavery, but the reality was that they were working on it.  They didn’t have the leeway of turning a man into a vegetable, then heading off into an ancestral world for a couple of decades.  They had to live on Earth and deal with the consequences.

Their inaction still left a bitter taste on Elijah’s tongue.

He swallowed his misgivings.  “Fine,” he said.  “Let’s just get on with this thing.”

He’d wasted enough time on it anyway.  Now, more than ever, he wanted to get back to Orveth Kaal and work on his project.  Maybe that wouldn’t have been the case if he would have been allowed to do what he wanted in Philadelphia, but he’d accepted their resolution to handle it without him.  Now, he just wanted to wash his hands of the whole affair.

“One more thing,” Isaiah said.

“What is it?”

“We should execute Santoro.  He deserves it,” Isaiah suggested. “It would also lend credibility to the idea that you were working with us.”

“So you want me to do it?” Elijah asked.

“I will,” Sadie said. 

“When?”

“Here and now,” she answered, summoning her sword to hand.  Elijah hadn’t even known she had a spatial device.

Without further ado, she turned, squared her shoulders, and stepped toward the door.  That simple movement was enough to change Sadie’s entire demeanor.  Even in the best of times, she was a bit rigid.  But now that she had put her proverbial game face on, she was like steel.

Elijah followed her through the door.  Isaiah came last, shutting it behind them.  The trip through the hall leading back to the lobby was framed by silence.  Sadie’s back remained straight, with her shoulders back as she walked to the execution she’d chosen to perpetrate. 

Finally, they reached the lobby to find more than a hundred people staring at them.

The crowd parted for Sadie.

Vinnie remained lying on the door, entirely insensate.  His cultivation system was a ragged mess of broken pathways and ruptured parts.  Liquid ethera dripped from his eyes as he lay in a puddle of his own sweat.  Every couple of seconds, he twitched. 

Somewhere inside, his mind was probably intact.  He couldn’t force himself to move, either in the physical or metaphysical sense.  Instead, he was trapped in an uncooperative form. 

Sadie spoke.

Elijah barely heard her, though he did note the tone of her declaration that Vinnie had proven himself a danger to society and an evil, immoral man.  No one disagreed.

Then, one of the other Adjudicators in attendance – a severe looking man in full armor – grabbed Vinnie by the hair and hefted him aloft.  Sadie’s sword arced out, slicing through his neck with ease.

His body hit with a dull thud, while blood splattered against the Adjudicator’s pristine armor.

“He has been judged,” Sadie announced.  Her proclamation was met only by silence.