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I stare at him. Is he… using this moment to rally his troops? Is that it? Because that was clearly not meant for me. Still… 

“Uh, pardon,” I say. At my clumsy and hardly audible words, the entire crowd goes silent. Did they stop breathing? I think they might have. Even the wind seems to have gone quiet, which is eerie, to say the least. “What is, like…” I gesture towards the city. “What’s going on here?”

The main commander guy smacks his face back into the dirt. “We are unworthy of such praise, my God!”

The sinking feeling in my stomach hits rock bottom and begins digging. The all-tongue skill did something, I’m sure of it. Should I bail? Is it too late to leave? Is it too early? Will they be angry if I go?

“As is approved by Your divine will, we are attempting to take the city of Kingfist to solidify our position in the Bunue region. We have already taken the surrounding cities of Riverthrough and Largeplace, harming neither them nor their people, as they were courteous enough to pay the firetax. However, the Archjudge of Bunue is a miser and a thief, unwilling to part with either the city or his precious gold. Furthermore, he holds an army forty thousand strong. If we do not take the city now, he will surely use it to harm the members of the Hope League, decrying Your divine cause as anathema.”

What? What is…? Huh?

I look over at the city, and then I look back at him. “You’re attacking the city?”

The commander guy glances back at his fellow-kneelers, kind of like the youngest child checking that their siblings also ate legos. Then, he looks back at me, and says, plain as day, “Yes, my God.”

“Why?”

He blinks at me. “Was my explanation insufficient, my God?”

“Ah, uh, no, I just…” God, what the heck do I even say here? Turning back to look at the closed city gates, I chance a sniff. Sniff, sniff… Yeah, I’d wager there’s over seventy thousand people in there. “So, um… Assuming you got in there, what happens then?”

He smiles at me, proudly. “Bramtown quarter.”

“Bramtown quarter?” I echo. Let’s see, quarter means mercy, right? So, they’d spare people? Hm. From above, I couldn’t see any roads successfully leading into the city. This is just me assuming, but I’d wager they’ve cut off the roads so nobody can get in or out, meaning the food situation is probably not very good. 

Hm. What a pickle! Sometimes I wish I were dead, but I don’t deserve happy endings. No, sorry, now I’m being dramatic. This is simply so far away from the world I operate in that it’s kind of comical. I never did play any of the Civilization games. In a different world, perhaps… 

“And there’s, like… No way you could just get along?” Or are negotiations not a thing in this world? Ah, who knows. History is weird and diplomacy could have been invented during the cold war and I wouldn’t know. 

“We attempted discussion, yet they continued to refuse our demands.”

This is so weird. I feel like I’m talking to a nine-year-old about the problems he’s been having with his classmate and how to go about it. Did you say you were sorry? Have you tried looking for a solution together? This is so dumb. Can’t they ignore this city and move on to the next? That’s what my mom always used to tell me. If you get stuck doing a task, start doing something else. If you let yourself get stuck you’ll be stuck forever. That’s how it works. 

“However,” the commander guy says, something frantic and enraptured entering his voice, “with Your divine presence, they will no longer have any choice. Your mere arrival has surely proved to them the error in their ways!”

The error in what ways? What is this guy even talking about? 

This sucks. This sucks majorly.

<Let us leave, then. Let the city have

Bramtown quarter. Why suffer over it?>

Garath, I love you and you make a great point, but this isn’t really a dry situation, if you get what I mean. Hm. Now that I thought it out loud, that doesn’t make any sense, does it? Well, what I mean is that this is kind of like going into a bowl of spaghetti bolognese, rolling around, getting all tangled up, and then expecting to walk out of it spotless, without any noodles clinging to you. It’s simply not possible. I’m invested now, see? If I leave now, it’ll be a huge anti-climax!

<It would be a relief.>

Well, yeah, but… 

A scraping sound reaches my ears. The smells of the city get dialed up if only by a little.

Dully, I notice how the city entrance has been opened, and there’s a group of people there, both few and unarmed, waiting patiently. Hm. Hm? Sniff, sniff… Somehow, one of them smells familiar. It looks bigger than the rest, too. A human?

A friend?

Either way, it looks like negotiations are back on the menu. Hooray! Ah, wait, the main commander guy doesn’t seem too happy. Though it’s faint, I can still hear him mutter, “A trap?” 

I take another look at the group. Yeah, no. “It’s not a trap,” I say, loud enough for him to hear me. He turns to me, seemingly amazed that I could hear him, which is… He literally said it out loud, so how is that surprising in the least? “They’re opening for diplomacy,” I say, quirking an eyebrow at him meaningfully. “Shall we?”

But he’s still got his nose pressed into the dirt, and nobody else seems too intent on rising either, because I’m apparently sooooo cool and awesome that they obviously can’t stand like normal people in my presence. Gotcha. Huffing, I stride up to the commander guy, grab him by the shoulders, and pull him to his feet. When I let go of him, he proceeds to stumble and falls, forcing to me to catch him before he can have another make-out session with the ground. “Get yourself together, man,” I tell him. “Aren’t you supposed to be a fierce commander? The lion of the north?”

Loose as a lover in my arms, he gazes up at me, watching my face with as much reverence as an astronomer does the stars. “Yes,” he breathes, his chest rising shakily. “You are right, my God. How can I falter here, when You stand so tall?”

Normally, I would love to use this moment to inform him that I’m only tall by goblin standards, but my mind is a bit preoccupied by something else. This commander guy is the lion of the north. He is the high count of Motteredahl, son of Hjärv. And his name… “Leion, as you trust me with your life, you must continue to trust me now. Come, and let us take this city peacefully, without needless shedding of blood.”

“Yes, my God.” I can feel his exultant awe radiating from within his chest, his heart having turned into a furnace. It’s disgusting. It’s not that I can see his memories, and it’s nothing like what happened between me and Garath, but I can feel it. This man has become a convert by my presence. The lukewarm faith he professed for me previously, many months ago, purely in the service of politics, has now been ignited into something akin to a devastating wildfire. It burns sweeping across the forests of his heart, turning him from a mere commander into a zealot. 

Appalled, I let go of him, but he doesn’t stumble anymore. He stands tall before me, and I know that he will nevermore bow, because I have told him not to. 

I feel sick. I feel sick. I feel sick. I feel sick.

“Men!” he roars, turning to the soldiers around us. “Rise, and show the proper respect deserving of the God of Hope!!”

They do. Under thunderous, clamouring shouts, they rise. The dam has broken and now they are once again men, their rapturous joy flooding the surroundings with cries of premature victory. But it’s worse than that, because I can feel it. All of their happiness has merged into some kind of singular, thick miasma, pressing in around me, a thick, impenetrable mist of pure emotion that I can’t see through. It’s all I smell, all I taste, all I see, all I hear. Sickly sweet and sticky and prickly and bad.

I can’t leave anymore. Their hearts have all latched onto me and now I’m stuck here. 

“To the gates!” Leion cries. “Let us meet our new allies!”

A throne of some sort is carried over towards me, the kind with handles behind and in front of it, the kind that kings sit on when they’re going on parade. Soldiers with faces of absolute happiness set it down in front of me, and Leion nudges it towards me, his heart beating with selfless, jubilant compassion. I take a seat in it and do my best not to puke when they raise it up and start carrying me above the throes of ecstatic soldiers, towards the gates of the city. 

“Tear down the blockade!” someone shouts, and the soldiers get to work. Spades and axes get to work on the big dirt walls blocking the entrance, and when they aren’t enough, people start bringing out their swords, no matter how ornamental they are. With thousands of people all eager to be the one to do my divine bigging, the blockade is soon torn down. 

This is it, then. Here we go. Whoopie.

<Do you wish for me to come along?>

No. No, this is not… Stay here. Protect Lett. You can keep an eye on what’s happening through my internal monologue, so… If need be, you’ll know when I really, really, really have to go.

<Very well, then.

Good luck, Kitty.>

Thanks. If I start saying I want to die, don’t worry about it, I’m just being dramatic. I’m only…

The throne starts swaying beneath me as the whole army begins moving towards the entrance. This is horrible, so I puke a little into my hand. And now my mouth tastes like pure vanilla extract. Ugh, gross. I try to spit out what remains in my mouth into my hand, and then I wipe it on the side of the throne chair thing. Hopefully, no one will notice. And, while I’m at it, I might as well hope for world peace, because… Why not?…Is that a marching band? Oh, God. Yeah, that’s a marching band. Some of them are still putting together their instruments, all of them hurrying to take their place in front of me, at the head of what is apparently now a parade. 

Sway, sway. Sway, sway. 

We reach the gates. Leion approaches the group standing there, and I resist the urge to scramble down the side of my throne thing to go check if it really is a friend. But now that we’re close enough… Sniff sniff sniff… No. There’s only one human there, some pompous-looking guy with straight hair and an evil-advisor look to him. I don’t know him. But he smells vaguely familiar… Or, no, he smells as though he’s recently met someone I know. Which would mean that there’s a friend of mine in the city! 

That’s so fun. I wonder who it is? I can’t imagine Rice having gotten this far up, and I’d recognize Moleman’s scent in an instant. Oh, what a mystery! 

As soon as I start feeling a bit giddy about this whole thing, the human bows, and invites us inside, meaning that the throne starts swaying again. Ugh. The band rushes to go between me and the guiding party, the soldiers as a unit begin forming into orderly lines, and once the band starts tooting their tunes, everyone begins marching in unison.

When I was a kid, I really liked the hunchback of notre dame movie, to the point where I read the book, too. There was a scene in there where Quasimodo was being carted around like this, after being crowned king of fools. That’s how I feel right now, except for the fact that unlike Quasimodo, I am not happy. 

Not at all.