A Gamer's Guide 406 (Patreon)

Gecko looks up at me. Up. “Right. Um. So… This is the main banquet hall, which the archjudge would use for his big celebrations. Normally, standard foot soldiers wouldn’t exactly be welcome to sit at these tables, but since this party isn’t his, we decided to, well… And besides, I can’t imagine you’d care too much about rank and hierarchy for this, so I sort of told Leion that people could sit as they please. With friends, without much planning.”

“That’s good.”

Even though she doesn’t need to, as we slowly walk across the hall—thankfully for my sanity, nobody’s noticed our arrival yet, which suggests my stealth skills are still mostly intact—Gecko holds me by the arm chaperoning me towards the big entrance leading into the hall outside. A lot of people are coming and going, carrying trays of drinks and more food and various strange items that I can’t tell what they might be used for. A lot of the drinks are brought to the band, who seem to have gotten themselves moderately inebriated. Paradoxically enough, unless my ears have gone off too, they seem to be playing better than when they were sober. Odd…

“I don’t know how much you care about this, but, oh my God, look at this gorgeous Norman arch, it’s just huge, and these windows, do you see that chevron work? Fantastic, absolutely fantastic. Gosh. This room was wasted on that mongrel of an archjudge. Do you see that wall, with the fantastic geometrical paintwork? To cover that up with gaudy portraits of his rotten family! It’s a damn travesty is what it is. Still, to be able to experience a banquet like this… Amazing, just amazing.”

“Yeah.”

We both stand, in the middle of the room, a little off to the side, the air buzzing with music and the thick odour of meat and food and alcohol and laughter, arching our necks and looking at the details of the room. It’s a nice room. But I can tell that no one in this room is of sound mind. Not really. So, after letting her mutter about how wonderful the room is for a few minutes, I tug at her sleeve and ask, once I’ve got her attention, “Could we continue?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah, of course! Heh, sorry, I get kind of… I mean, I’m not sure if I’d be so bold as to call myself a history nerd or anything, but seeing this kind of stuff is… In real life, being used like it would have been used at the time it’s from… It takes your breath away, doesn’t it?”

“I suppose.”

Smiling, happy, with the greatest of reluctance, she leads me out of the main banquet hall, only pausing to cast a few forlorn gazes at the stonework and whatnot. Since the hallway leading into the banquet hall is pretty busy with people going in and out with food and whatnot, we have to squeeze ourselves to the sides, staying well out of harm’s way. Flat as pancakes, we move across the stone floors, neither of us saying anything. 

There’s something about the way Gecko looks at the people that pass us by, the way they’re dressed and the things they’re carrying and what they’re doing, that I find absolutely enrapturing. It’s like they’re pure magic. I can’t see the magic, but I can see it in her eyes, the way it glitters and makes her shine up, all alight. 

At the end of the hallway, breath in her throat, she says, “Alright, now, just down the stairs, and if we go to the right, and then to the left, we’ll exit into the streets.”

“Yeah,” I say, allowing her to pull me into the spiralling, dark staircase. With stairs being what they are, she takes my arm a bit tighter, and with one arm around my back, she guides me down, slowly, one step at a time. The only windows are small, palm-sized slits that come only once per floor, showing a brief glimpse of the sun setting over the city. Here in the staircase, with just me and her, in our silence, I can finally speak. “I can’t do it.”

She guides me down a step, one foot, then the other. “Can’t do what?”

“Kill the armies.”

“Oh, that?” We pass by one of the windows. Below, people cheer and sing and drums play loud enough to echo. Her weakly smiling, deeply focused face is visible only for a moment before passing into darkness. “It really won’t be that hard. I mean—compared to what you did today… Which was, of course, the right thing to do, considering that you saved my life, and Maggie, and everyone else, too… Killing civilians, I know, that’s not really good or anything, but, like, you know… War is war, right?”

I don’t say anything.

Her grip on my arm tightens slightly. “That’s what this is, after all. A war. In war, killing soldiers is fine. Heck, even civilians! You can’t have a fire tax if you don’t burn a few cities proving you mean business. In war, people die. It’s inevitable. So, to be able to defeat specifically the enemy armies… To purge only the cities belonging to the stupid idiots who started this damn war… That’d be a miracle.”

“I can’t do it.”

She stops in the middle of a step. Her grip on my arm is so tight. With the closest window several steps behind us, all I can see of her face is a gleam of light shining in her eyes, unwavering. “What do you mean by that?”

I meet her gaze evenly. “I can’t do it. I literally can’t do it.”

“What, are you…?” She chuckles. “Did you run out of divinity or something? You’re a god! You should have all the divinity you could possibly need. Turning people into rats can’t possibly require that much divinity.”

“That isn’t it,” I say. “I just can’t do it.”

She takes a step back. I can see her face now. The way her brows have creased up, a bitter wrinkle cracked between her eyes. “Why? Why can’t you do it?”

“To do my miracles, I need to hope for them to happen.”

Her head shakes, back and forth, her hair whipping with it. “So? Why wouldn’t you want it to happen? You’d have to be some kind of lunatic not to want to see the war end. And it’s not like killing cities and civilians is some new crime for you. Is this—” She swallows thickly. “Is this about the thing I said? That I was mad at you? Because I’m not mad at you anymore. It’s fine. You saved the city, you saved me, you saved Maggie…”

Gently, trying not to startle her, I take a hold of her hand. She lets me. “I don’t want to kill armies, and I don’t want to kill cities. I would love for the war to end, especially since it’s my fault it started and all, but… I just can’t. You can’t change my mind. I don’t think anyone can. So, even if I tried, I’d fail.” I squeeze her hand. “I’m sorry.”

She blinks at me. Her glossy eyes roll down to look at my hand. “Can we, um…” Her voice trembles, dips down into her throat, dragging up a near sob. I release her hand, and she wipes at her face. “Could we talk about this, uh, later? I’m just… Heh, I don’t…” Once she peeks her eyes open again, I hand her my napkin, which she accepts with a mumbled, “Thanks.” 

I sit down on the stairs. After a few seconds, she sits down too, resting her face in her palms, elbows perched on her knees. “I’m sorry,” I say, again. 

“I don’t get it. You could end the war, but you just… Don’t want to?” 

“Yeah.”

“That’s stupid.”

“I know.”

For what feels like minutes, she simply sits there, face buried in her hands, breathing deeply in the darkness. I let her take her time. If she had wanted to sit here for a few hours, I wouldn’t have said anything. I wouldn’t have left, either. A few steps up, the light finally leaves the window fully, plunging the city into dusk and the staircase into near-total blackness. “So,” she says, after what felt like hours, “what are you going to do, then?”

“After the banquet? Hmm…” I rub my chin. “Honestly, I think I’m just going to leave. We’re headed to Loathe Summit, and now that the… anti-hope guys have been proven to use dragons for their army stuff, I’m pretty sure we need to tell the guys at Loathe Summit about it. It’s illegal, after all. Garath also wants to look for clues about his old friend Ferruem, and Lett…” I chuckle. “Well, Lett’s bound to have a good time. He loves dragons! I think he and Goss would get along swimmingly.”

“Okay,” she says, and in the deep darkness, I can’t really see what she’s doing at all. Only when I feel her warm hand encapsulating mine, pressing my handkerchief into my open palm and closing my fingers over it, can I tell that she’s right in front of me. “I know it’s a bit selfish to ask, but… Could you wait until tomorrow?”

“Until tomorrow?”

“Stay the night. I just… I don’t know where I’m going. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. Normally I’d be heading towards where you’ve been, but… That’s here.”

“You could come with us,” I say, trying not to reveal how excited that actually makes me, since that might make her feel like not coming would let me down. “There’s plenty of space on Garath’s back. I don’t know how many Ps you have left, but I’ve still got like five, so…”

“No you don’t,” she says.

“Huh?”

Even in the blackness of the staircase, I can tell the confusion roiling over her. “You don’t have any Ps left. Haven’t you finished that part of the Purgatory section?”

“What? No, I still have—” I bring a hand to my forehead. The Ps are gone. A tremble takes hold of my hands. “No—no, that’s… that shouldn’t…” I clench my teeth. I’ll have all the time in the world to worry about that later. Right now, I’ve got more important things to think about. “Anyways. What I meant to say is, however many Ps you have left, we can take care of them, together! Like we planned to. Unless you’d rather go elsewhere, of course. I don’t mind that either.”

She draws her hands away from mine. “I don’t know. I genuinely don’t know. I’ll need to think about it, but… Don’t leave just yet, okay? Stay the night, and I’ll figure it out.”

“Okay. Yeah. That sounds good, Gecko. I’m not sure where I’ll sleep but… Actually, no, I’m pretty sure I’ll sleep in that room I’ve napped the whole day in.” I hum to myself. “Do you think we could get a bed in there for Garath and Lett?”

“Shouldn’t be any issue,” Gecko says, pulling herself up. After a moment or so, I hold out my hands, letting her pull me to my feet by them. “There’s already one bed in there for the… the… chambre valet, what’s the goblin term for that? Whatever. We’ll get another bed in there, don’t worry about it.”

“Thanks. You’re really dependable, Gecko.” Doubly so because she’s doing an excellent job helping me down the stairs. 

“Wish I wasn’t,” she says, but it’s lighthearted. Nothing mean. 

I smile at it. She really is a nice girl.