A Gamer's Guide 387 (Patreon)

“You are late by…” The archjudge’s proxy—a fuckwit who didn’t know anything about what the hell was going on who had the ridiculous username ProperPrognosis—glanced meaningfully at his invisible status screen. “Eight minutes. How stunning, you’re exactly as late as you were three weeks ago. As I said then and shall repeat now, the Honorable Archjudge is not a believer in the art of being fashionably late but rather finds it extremely rude. Personally, I did not enjoy your performance the last time you attempted to beg for his forgiveness, so I shall do you the courtesy of asking for it in your stead.”

“Haah, haah, uh, um… Th—thank you,” Rafiloe replied, attempting and failing to quell the shaking in her arms, legs, and everything else attached to her. “I’m very sorry, I had to find work since we last spoke, so cutting the day off short didn’t…”

“Your excuses are of no interest to me and I would prefer you kept them to yourself for future use. Now, please remove your hat and follow me. If you’re lucky, the Honorable Archjudge will have yet to move onto greater uses of his time.”

Nodding, Rafiloe slipped off her big lovely witch hat. It disappeared into the hands of a servant with immediate effect, not even giving her time to worry about where it was being taken and if she would ever get it back. The only way she could soothe her anxiously beating heart was to recall that the Archjudge was seriously rich. The mansion’s gaudy design expressed that more than enough, but she knew that it was beyond just having a nice place to live in. Among the eight Archjudges, he was top-three in terms of sheer wealth. And this was in spite of the Bunue region only being the fourth biggest. 

As they walked through the grandiose hallways filled with paintings and sculptures and furniture that cost more than entire buildings she wondered briefly what kind of taxes he was putting on the people who lived there. 

After a minute of walking at most, they arrived at a pair of doors, guarded by a porter. He looked the two of them up and down. “The Honourable Archjudge has already begun his luncheon.”

“In that case,” Prop said, “we can only pray the Honorable Archjudge will be so compassionate as to forgive the vulgar rudeness of our late arrival.”

“Indeed,” the porter said, opening the door for them with a light bow. Once the door was open enough for them to enter, the porter announced their arrival. “ProperPrognosis, human proxy of the Honorable and most lawfearing Gun Hjurum-Jett Tythe Limum, Archjudge of the Bunue Verdite, has brought JeekomancerOfYore, human challenger of the Hard difficulty tutorial, beneficiary of the God of Comedy, to audience with Your Honor.”

Either this was a different dining room than the last one, or it had been so radically altered since her last visit that it merely seemed like a wholly separate room. Either way, the room was massive, decked out with every sort of luxury one could imagine. The centerpiece was a massive chandelier hung directly above the dining table, which—going by the ethereal glow—was dragonheart. The ceiling above it had been painted with a mural, though Rafiloe didn’t have time to try to dissect what exactly it was meant to portray. She was busy exercising the courteous bow Maggie had taught her, while also being thankful that since humans weren’t seen as goblins, human women weren’t expected to do the same bow that goblin women did, which was ten times weirder than the normal bow and twice as strenuous. 

“You are late,” came a voice from the other side of the room. “Waste no more time grovelling.”

“Yes, your Honor,” Prop said, rising.

“Thank you,” Rafiloe said, before remembering and then tacking on, “—your Honor.” She rose as well, and since they were now called to the table, this meant that she had to partake in the most uncomfortable way of consuming food she knew of: while being watched.

Lesser members of the verdite were standing around the edges of the room, watching attentively. Rafiloe counted twenty of them, but lost count when one of them pulled out a chair for her, right next to the Archjudge. “Thank you,” she said, which she realized an instant later was impolite, especially so by the way the member stared at her before silently retreating back to the wall. It was uncomfortable. It was extremely uncomfortable.

Prop did not sit down with them, but rather took his place at the Archjudge’s side, standing eternal guard over his shoulder. Looking at him in turn forced her to look at the Archjudge himself.

Since she didn’t know enough about goblin physiognomy to guess accurately, all she could say was that he was young, very much so. Somewhere around her own age at most, not that that said much. His dress was unbearably fancy, the main perpetrator being the wide chain of jewels hung from shoulder to shoulder across his slim chest. It looked entirely misplaced on the young goblin, and even more so considering that this was only a simple luncheon wherein he was meeting a humble human. There was no reason for him to be wearing such a gaudy piece, aside from as a show of power.

As she folded her hands atop the table, she felt her spellrings clink together melodically. In a sense, she was doing the exact same thing.

“Your Honor,” she began, hoping that by getting right into it she might be able to overcome her nervousness, “I would like to formally thank you on account of all humans present in this lovely city for…”

The Archjudge picked up a small whole-roasted baby drake of some sort before sticking it into his mouth head-first, biting off half of it. Crunch-crunch-crunch. Still holding the greasy little lower body in his bare hand, the Archjudge turned to her, swallowing audibly as he did. “Since your last visit, have you conjured any new arguments for why I ought to waste time, money, resources and lives into saving you? Ones that do not reduce to how you hold no use to me or how it is my responsibility to do so?”

Rafiloe, in the span of a mere moment, became awfully aware of the fact that not a single person in this room held any pity for her position. They watched her without interest or intrigue, having already decided that since she was taking precious time from the Archjudge while also begging for him to give her additional things, at no gain to either him or his people, she was an enemy. Her body slowly stiffened into a state similar to rigor mortis, and a dining plate was sat in front of her. There was a whole-baked baby drake on there, hardly bigger than her fist, its head poking out of a pie crust. 

“Ah, um,” she said, and then said nothing more, because there wasn’t anything left for her to say. “That is…” Her eyes darted up to Prop, only to find a cold glare meeting her. 

“I see,” the Archjudge said, wiping his fingers on a piece of bread before eating it. “I had expected as much. Do not fret, you have not disappointed me. This was merely a necessary step in order to proceed with our true negotiations.” His hawk-like gaze fell on her, and his thin brows pressed down over his eyes. “You appear hesitant, Jeekomancer. Pray, did you come here unprepared to barter?”

Rafiloe shook her head. “No, no, not at all, your Honor. I’m simply shocked, since, well, last time, you… disregarded my suggestion with strong finality. Being permitted one more chance to plead our case came as a great shock. However, to barter…” She clenched her fist. The spellrings on her hand, her most precious items, gleamed silver-blue in the gray light from the window. “I’m afraid, your Honor, that we have little to barter with.” 

The most valuable item she owned was her jewelry. But not even that was worth the effort of trying to smuggle out a couple humans from a city under active siege. 

“Money, I have more than enough,” the Archjudge said, saving his hand. She counted three rings on it, each one bigger and heavier than the last. 

To wear someone’s house on their finger, she thought, the pit in her stomach continuing to churn. 

“However,” he continued, “what I lack is military power. This house has no patience for quack-makers who conjure in the name of obscure gods, and since the church-burning, we have no priests left, either. The city has neither firepowder nor long-guns. Our force is a mere ten thousand men, while our attackers number more than thrice that amount. What I need,” he said, eyes gleaming with the fanaticism of young rulers, “is power.”

Unconsciously, Rafiloe began drawing herself further away from him. 

Maggie was a close-ranged fighter from the normal difficulty. Her boss, Honey, was a spearman from the easy difficulty who just wanted to settle down with his goblin love. Prop was a pussy. The only other human in the city was a guy whose name she didn’t know and hadn’t seen in days, and who might honestly have escaped by now.

And then there was Rafiloe. A hard-difficulty magician without a patron god and therefore without magic. In other words, useless.

“I’m sorry, but…”

“Do not worry. Should you agree, not only will I guarantee your safety once we have been saved from this siege, I will also grant you any provisions you may need to further your travels. You were going further south, yes? There will be no expenses spared to see this happen. Sprintdrakes, bodyguards… It can be arranged. If it is the Server Alliance you fear, then they need not know. As a human, I am sure this may come as somewhat of a shock, but there is no man that cannot be swayed with the power of money.”

Rafiloe did not like lying. It wasn’t that she had been a liar as a child or that she had been excessively punished for lying, nor did she have any particular moral hang-ups regarding deceit. Rationally, she was well-aware of the fact that all social interaction was based on deceit to some degree, and therefore necessitated lying. And still, she didn’t like it. If she hated someone, she did not see the point in pretending to like them, even if it furthered her own goals. Emotionally, this is how she had always been, and in the same way she knew she would always be herself, she knew she would always feel this way.

Still, she smiled at him, told herself over and over in her mind that maybe reinforcements and help will come before I’m needed and before I have to reveal that I’m actually useless, and prepared herself to tell the most bold-faced lie of her life.

“I—”

There was a dragon in the sky.

At first, she hadn’t thought it was a dragon. It had been so far away and the wings had been sticking out in so many directions that she had seen it as a really big snowflake. But then the wings—the four wings—gave a mighty flap and there was no pretense about it anymore. It was a dragon, it had four wings, and as she gaped wider and wider at it, her silent choir joined by all members of the verdite behind her, she realized that it was white.

Oh, fuck.