A Gamer's Guide 404 (Patreon)

Cheering. Wilder, even more intense than the applause, and frankly far worse, because now it’s because they see me as one of them. A party-attender. So they all hoot and holler and the band strikes up into some triumphant piece that is definitely misplaced, all the while Gecko guides me to my seat. My seat, which is a throne. 

…At least it’s next to my friends, I suppose.

Yeah, so, the table I talked about earlier—the one that’s kind of separated from the other ones, at the very front—seems to be the… how do I put this… table of honor? It’s my table. I’m at the very centre of it, my throne taking up a needless amount of space (a throne that isn’t even comfortable, mind you!) with an excellent view over the hall as a whole. Funnily enough, the table is only half-used, doing some kind of last-supper thing where only one side has any chairs and plates at it. I guess it lets us see the other people better? Maybe? No idea. 

I sit down. Everyone’s looking at me. Gecko takes the chair on my left, but she isn’t sitting. Leion, who’s on my right, is also not sitting down. Um…

I look out at the gathered people. I swipe my hand downwards, motioning for them to sit. Without a single word spoken, they all drop into their seats. Yay. 

Is this a good time to mention that I’ve never been all that good with people? Especially not big gatherings? Yeah. Maybe this party would’ve been hotter if all the attendees had been rats…?

A few seats away, Lett smiles and waves at me. I wave back at him.

…Okay, maybe it’s not all bad. At least I’m not sitting next to anyone I hate. 

…Well, I mean, Leion is kind of a weird guy, but… Nah. I don’t hate him. He’s fine. He’s been through a lot, so him taking it easy and actually eating food properly with everyone else will be good for him. He needs some damn protein in him. And though I may not know Prop or Maggie all that well, they seem nice enough—at least we have a few things in common. Specifically the being human thing, but… No, wait, that’s not technically true anymore, is it? Huh…

Yeah, no, I’m saving that mental breakdown for later. 

Aside from them, we’ve also got Garath, seated on the other side of Leion, alongside two of Leion’s most trusted officers. I wonder where…?

Oh! There’s Myrt, three seats to my right. Weird, considering that Leion doesn’t trust him even in the slightest. On the other hand, he seems totally preoccupied with scribbling in his notebook, so maybe he’s been put on secretarial duties? I don’t know. 

While I mentally tally the people at my table, Leion stands up and holds a speech of some sort, talking about the great miracle I pulled off and how this city has now been purged of all hopeless influence, just like Acheron and Oran. Yay. 

“Hooray!”

“Cheers!”

“Praise be!”

…Eugh. Of course, he can’t elevate me fully without bringing up what’s on the menu. 

“Replacing their hopeless, God-rejected bodies with divine rats,” he says. That’s how he words it. Okay. Great. I was starting to worry whether or not they’d figured out a coping mechanism for what I did, but this really soothes my mind. Yup. I feel great! 

I’ve got a feeling that if I puke people will look at me again, so I won’t. I want to pull my flesh apart and bleed everywhere but then people might look at me, and besides, I haven’t got any claws. So, instead, I look down at the plates and cutlery in front of me. Five different kinds of forks and seven different kinds of knives and four different kinds of spoons. Four plates all stacked on top of one another.

“—who in His gracious generosity decided not to sanctify these most miraculous of creatures, but rather permit us to sate our starving bellies with their sacrosanct flesh…”

Three… No, four different kinds of glasses. A goblet, a wine chalice, a small cup for water, a tiny glass for hard liquor or something, and then there’s a neatly folded piece of finely embroidered cloth. The stitches are so fine and small and the design is so intricate that it must have taken a master craftsman weeks to finish. And every single person at this table has one. It’s being used as a napkin. 

“Let us pray to this most magnanimous of beings, which in His infinite love has decided to grace this lowly hall. Dear God of Hope—”

</Dear God of Hope

I feel sick.

</Whose all-spanning faith, hope and love

I feel sick.

</Through deepest marsh and highest peak

I feel sick.

</Has guided us right and true

I feel sick.

</We thank You for thi §§//..-

{´::m::`}

<Muting all prayers…

Complete.>

…Thank you, Simon. 

Gently, I lean forward and plug my ears, closing my eyes as I do. 

After some time, I don’t know how long, Gecko pats me on the shoulder. I open my eyes to find that someone has brought out food for everyone. Fancy dishes on fancy plates that shimmer like precious metals. Well-garnished meals, stews and pies and clear soups and spits and skewers and when you look at it from afar, the fact that it’s rats isn’t clear at all. Only the whole-roasted rats are obvious, but they’ve been so well-seasoned and garnished and plated that they don’t look ratty. They look delicious. 

But I’m not hungry. Not even in the least. As a matter of fact, I feel bloated to the point of nausea. I couldn’t keep the look of abject disgust off my face even if I tried. And still… everyone’s eating. Gecko has filled her plate with meat and boiled root vegetables and a wide variety of sauces and baked goods. Leion has picked out a few skewered rats to bite into, Garath following suit. As I look at them, thinking about exactly nothing, Leion refills Garath’s mug of ale, and Garath, in return, cheers with him. Lett is eating too. Eating and gnawing and sucking on the bones of a little rat that had once been a person.

“Do you want anything?” Gecko asks me, in between big, open-mouthed chewing. 

“No, thank you,” I say. “But it’s, um…” I swallow down some sour bile. “It’s impressive that you were able to catch so many rats, considering that it’s only been a few hours.” 

“Oh, it wasn’t hard,” she says, poking at a skewered rat, nudging the meat out from inbetween its ribs. Soft, supple, sweet. She scrapes out a bit more before putting it in her mouth, unconsciously humming in delight. “It only took an hour or so for us to notice that they were all moving towards the castle. That is, towards you.” 

“Me?”

“Yeah,” she says. Fork in one hand and knife in the other, she dislodges the tail from the rest of the spine, and in one fluid motion, brings it to her face, nibbling at the tawny bits of flesh and skin. “For whatever reason, they really wanted to get to you. I tried letting a few into your room, but once they got to you, they didn’t do much. Just curled up in the nook of your arm, or between your cheek and the pillow. Stuff like that.”

“That’s strange.”

“Sure was.” Impaling the chest on her fork, she brings the head to her lips, and cleanly bites off the top of its head before slurping out the brain, chewing only a little before swallowing and then sucking the empty cavity, slurp slurp slurp slurp. She turns to me and smiles, a little bit of brain tissue—some kind of membrane, I think—stuck between her front teeth. “Made it easy to catch them, though!”

Smile. “Glad to hear I was of use, even if I was asleep.”

“You were plenty useful. I don’t know if this is something you’re aware of yourself, but, if two people stand close enough to you, then when they talk, they’ll automatically understand each other! Just like how people understand you, but with each other. Which was really useful, since the more prominent hopeful didn’t exactly speak Vinian. And, though he may have many strengths, Leijon isn’t the most proficient when it comes to Imperial. At least not with the dialect they’ve got here.”

“If You’ll pardon my interruption, oh Divine One,” Leion says, carefully dabbing his lips with his napkin, “I doubt whether or not the language spoken by the hopeful here can be considered true Imperial at all.”

“Touché,” Gecko says teasingly. 

“What, um,” I say, and even though Leion was about to say something, he instantly goes silent, back straightening, focusing all his attention on me. I try not to stutter as I ask, “What do you mean by hopeful?”

Gecko chuckles weakly, “Oh, it’s, you know—”

“Those unpurged,” Leion says.

“Exactly!” Gecko says. “People who didn’t get, um… Yeah!”

Leion nods deeply, his intense gaze never leaving mine. “Exactly that—those whom, in Your gracious wisdom, were deemed too hopeful to smite. There weren’t a lot of them—this was a hopeless city, after all—but there were enough. Of course, since they were worthy of being spared, they are in attendance at this banquet. If You would like to meet them—”

“I would.”

He quirks a smile. “...Then, once dinner has been served to all, we can take a tour.”

“That would be great,” I say, because if there’s anyone who’s going to have a sound opinion on this whole mess, unclouded by zeal and whatever you want to call this madness of theirs, then it has to be the people whose city just got ratified. I just can’t imagine that they’d be fine with what happened. Though, then again, if they are, then…

I fold my hands across the table. A nervous chuckle falls from my lips. 

What does that make me?