Tales of the Wastelander Ch. 43 - Teaser (Patreon)

Sulen Roadman and Morec Darkforest—both dead now, both Hierarchy to their rotten cores—had once sat on that council, smiling and dealing under the same table. It still twisted something ugly in Ben’s gut when he thought about it. About how easy it had been for the rot to settle in under polished words and false promises hiding vile and despicable things beneath.

Then there were the other two—councilors whose names Ben couldn’t even remember. They hadn’t waited for the gallows to come calling. They’d packed up and slipped out into the night almost the moment the ground caved in and buried Sulen’s fortress of filth. When the Regulators and the reformed city guard had pored over their abandoned offices, it hadn’t taken long to find the signs.

Letters, ledgers, quiet little trails of guilt tying them to the same sins. Maybe not as deep as Roadman or Darkforest—but deep enough. Ben frowned, a sour taste rising in his mouth. They were long gone now. They were cowards and opportunists. Rats fleeing a sinking ship, smart enough to smell the blood in the water before it reached them.

Still, he hated they had slipped through and Ben really hated loose ends. But, like Ylva and Byanka had said—it wasn’t a perfect world and… maybe it never had been. Their boots thudded up the worn stone steps of the Tower, the thick wooden doors looming ahead, thrown open to the late morning sun. Ben rolled his shoulders once, pushing the anger down deep, as there was still a lot of work to do.

As they passed through the heavy doors and into the cooler shadow of the Tower’s entry hall, Ben’s mind stayed tangled in the unfinished business. He hoped—no; he needed the Regulators to catch the bastards who had fled.

They hadn’t been slavers in the direct sense—no chains in their hands, no auction blocks under their boots—but they might as well have been. Every bribe they took, every favor they exchanged, every look they turned the other way while flesh was bought and sold made them just as guilty as the ones swinging back in the square. They had profited from the misery of others and had become fat off blood and silence.

Ben clenched his jaw, his fingers twitching at his sides again before he forced them to still. Some days it felt like no matter how much they won, there was always another layer of rot waiting underneath. But not everything had stayed rotten, thankfully as much had changed in the weeks past. His thoughts turned to the new council—small, freshly shaped, still finding its legs. But for the first time, it was led by someone who understood the weight of power beyond the glitter of coin.

Dayla Mohntari wasn’t the tallest or the loudest, but when she spoke, people listened. From the first day she stepped into the void left behind by Roadman and Darkforest, Dayla had been adamant that the old election laws needed to go. Laws that had, for generations, all but guaranteed that only the wealthy—or those with wealthy backers—sat on the council benches.

She’d called it plainly, without dancing around the truth. That a council made only of the rich would only ever serve the rich. That the people scraping by in the rubble would never have their voices heard if gold kept buying the seats of power and, for once, the city had listened.

Ben remembered the first meeting he’d witnessed after the blood had cooled—the murmured agreements, the slow, grudging nods from people who, for too long, had been afraid to speak against the old ways. Maybe Dayla’s vision wouldn’t fix everything overnight. Maybe it wouldn’t erase the scars the Hierarchy had carved into D’troi’s bones, but it was a start. If there was one thing he’d learned since waking up, it was that in this broken world, a real start was more precious than gold.

The sharp scent of old stone and oiled wood filled the air inside the Tower, a steady rhythm of footsteps echoing faintly as workers and Regulators moved through the halls. But Ben barely registered it. His mind was still turning, working through the shifting landscape that was D’troi’s new governance.

Every new council member had come from the people themselves—not the old bloodlines, not the rich merchant families who used to pass power back and forth like coin across a table. This time, it had been the common folk—bricklayers, tradeswomen, healers, teachers—who stood up and put names forward. Men and women who had bled and starved and fought for scraps right alongside everyone else when the Hierarchy tightened its grip.

Because of that, the new council felt… different… grounded even. The scales, for once, weren’t hopelessly tipped in favor of the few. It wasn’t perfect— as Ben was starting to learn better than to believe in perfect—but it was a hell of a lot closer to fair than D’troi had seen in living memory. But even though things were better overall, not everyone was pleased.

The old families, the ones who had hoarded what little wealth remained like dragons atop crumbling thrones, weren’t happy about the shift. Many of them hated it—hated seeing power wrested from their hands and handed to the masses they’d long considered beneath them.

Ben had caught the stiff postures, the too-tight smiles, the way some of the merchant lords and matriarchs pulled their children closer as they passed through the streets now. Whispering behind drawn curtains where they couldn’t be seen or heard. But in public, they were smart enough to keep their mouths shut.

The city still seethed, anger running through it like a current just under the surface. After seeing the gallows in use again, and the monsters unmasked, the people of D’troi were no longer as easy to pacify with hollow words or small bribes. The wrong comment, the wrong slight, and the crowd would turn—and this time, it wouldn’t just be the Hierarchy dangling from ropes.