Kirsten
The room I woke up in was musty and damp, and by the time I woke up, I could feel it under my skin, just under the hot throb pulsing up my arm and neck. I sat up slowly, gasping a little at the sting, and looked around. It was also dark except for one oil lamp on top of a shelf. I couldn’t see much more than vague shapes in its eery light. I brushed against something warm and alive and looked over to see Sage’s sleeping face partly lit by the candle flame. I knew he must have brought me here, which meant I was safe. I stood up and felt my way towards the stairs. There was no point in waking him up now. After everything he’d done, he needed the rest. The stairs creaked gently under me as I climbed toward the door and felt around for the handle.
When it swung open I found myself behind the counter of the Silver Mare’s pub. The long wooden tables were crowded with people hunched over in quiet conversation or nursing wounds. The room’s lopsided chandelier gave off a warm, friendly light, but I’d still never seen the place so dismal. Mavis was circulating with small packages of first aid supplies, stopping to share a few hushed words with the regulars. Taro was the only person alone in the room, a few shards of his crystal bomb scattered on the table as he frantically rearranged them, trying to find the point where they interlocked. I thought about going over to him, but what could I do? The man who was hiding in the shadows now was so different from the one who had burst into this same room so confidently on the day I arrived.
I scanned the crowd. The people of New Belial held their blood between their hands, gritting their teeth as tourniquets fastened and gaping wounds were bandaged. People stumbled through the door, but there were still too few who were here. I could only hope that there were other safehouses out there.
Mavis sorted through the newcomers with a grim expression, handing them off to others who tended their wounds. I needed to help somehow; I found myself moving towards her.
Mavis spotted me, and her gaze softened. “You shouldn’t be up and walking yet. Sit, sit.” She guided me towards one of the tables.
“I’ll be ok,” I said, pulling my arm back. As I did, I noticed the bandages spiraling up my forearm and bicep, wrapping around my neck. They shifted up slightly, revealing the burned tissue near my wrist where I’d fired the gun.
Mavis had moved on to sew up some cuts and now doubled back. “Even so, you should move away from these patients. Your friends are waiting upstairs. Why don’t you sit with them awhile?” Her firm tone answered the rhetorical question. She reached into her pocket and brought out a pouch of leaf salve, spreading it over her patient’s wounds. “Go on now,” she said.
I moved through the Silver Mare towards the staircase in the back. The tavern, once lively, now had only soft, pained movements at its tables, from the people bleeding out on them. Taro was staring at them, his expression dimmed in the lamplight. I walked past him and up the stairs. I heard him plodding behind.
The upstairs held a few rooms for paying customers, but circumstances had changed as with the rest of the place. A tall woman was smoking a pipe outside one of the rooms, the door to which was slightly ajar.
She looked at us as we approached. “If it isn’t the illustrious Lord Shamble,” she sneered. She glanced at me and smiled. “How do you do?”
“Ok,” I said. I pointed past her. “Are my friends in there?”
“Your friends,” she said, “not his.”
“That isn’t important right now.” I looked behind me, and Sage was leaning on his sword in the staircase; Taro was hiding behind him. Sage gave a blunt-force glare. “We need to talk about the reason we’re all here.”
“Stopping the simulation,” Taro piped up. “You should at least help with that, Angel.”
Angel shrugged. “I’ve told you that I’m not here out of the goodness of my heart. You’ll have to do better than that, Taro.”
Taro shivered and shrunk behind Sage. “I’ll do as I please, you shark,” he said.
“And yet that still isn’t good enough,” Angel replied, then turned to me. “Kirsten, was it? Don’t associate with bad men. They smell.”
I wasn’t sure what to say. I could still remember the look in Taro’s eyes after he’d saved me. They had been bright, not regretting what he’d done. But he was afraid, and he was afraid now.
Sage stamped forward. “Look, I don’t know what business you two have. Don’t tell me; it doesn’t matter. I don’t care. If you’ve been paying attention, the Demon Lord is here. And we’ve had a long day. So you can step aside, or I’ll cut your feet off and move them myself!” He stopped for a second, surprised at himself.
“Keep it down.” Avril’s voice came flat from the doorway next to us. He was cleaned up a bit, but he held himself like he was still straining to break free. He walked out along the hall and stopped at Penny’s doorway. “Look, I’m going to guess that one of you is blocking this door. I’m blind; I can’t tell. But if you’re in my way when I walk through, I’m gonna run right through you. It’ll be weird for us both.”
Angel raised an eyebrow and stepped aside. Avril felt around until he grasped the doorknob, then turned to us. “There,” he said. “Easy on the feet-cutting, guard boy.”
Sage bit his cheek and looked down. Avril turned the knob and we entered.
I drifted over to Hachi as Sage and Angel took their place at Penny’s bedside. Hachi was asleep, chair leaned onto its back two legs, halfway falling out of it with Bakuma clutched in his arms. I reached over to push him fully back into the chair, and he blinked awake. “Sorry,” I murmured. “I was trying to keep you from falling.”
“That’s alright,” Hachi yawned. “Is it time to go yet?”
I blinked a couple times, trying to wrap my head around the fact Hachi wanted to go anywhere after the disaster we’d just been through. “Go where?”
“Death’s Grove,” Hachi said it like that should have been obvious. “Remember? We have that whole list from--” His eyes fell on Taro standing at the back of the room. “Oh, hi there! Who’re you?”
Taro drew himself up, looking a little more like the Lord Shamble we’d known. “I’m…” He seemed to deflate as he searched for the right words. “Just Shamble, I suppose.”
“Hey, I knew a guy named Shamble,” Hachi squinted at Taro and scratched his chin. “He had bigger hair though…”
I decided Taro didn’t need me to point out they were the same and turned to Penny and Sage, who were having their own quiet conversation.
“I almost had him.” Penny was giving the clock on the wall a baleful look as if she believed she could make it turn back if she glared long enough.
“Both of his ministers were there.” Sage pointed out. “You would have died.”
“If that’s what it takes for New Belial to go free.”
“So you think you can just make one big charge and everything will be fine?” Avril pushed off from where he was leaning on the doorway. “Okay, so let’s argue this whole rebellion thing is even a good idea.”
“It is a good idea,” Penny cut in. “It’s the right thing to do.”
Avril folded his arms. “Then prove it. What’s the point if your only plan is to go in swinging and hope you hit something? If you’re going to make a dumb decision, you could at least try to be a little smarter about it.”
Sage nodded. “That’s not exactly how I would have put it, but he’s right. If we’re really going to do this, we need an actual plan. No more shots in the dark.”
Penny took a breath. “I know. But where do we find the time? Every minute that goes by is one where innocent people are in danger.”
“It might not even work if we plan it.” Taro had sunk to the floor, staring at the opposite wall. “No matter how far we get, it can always go wrong.”
“Not to mention our fighting force is two stupid kids, a con man, some random lady who’s probably killed someone, a bartender, and one actual soldier.” Avril added. I couldn’t help bridling a little at the stupid part. Then again we had gone into Death’s Grove alone.
“Funny you should mention that.” I looked over at Angel, who was smiling as she drifted over to the door and opened it. Beyond was a mass of people, their bandaged wounds telling me they were most of the people from the Silver Mare’s bar. “Let me introduce you to the rest of the resistance.”
We all stood back, stunned, as people filed into the room. They were battered, regular people, a bit disorganized and uncomfortable being introduced. Some of Penny’s friends walked over to her, smiling sheepishly. Taro looked like he was having a heart attack.
Penny’s eyes went wide as the sun. “How long,” she sputtered, “who did, what?”
“They’re just volunteers,” Mavis said, shuffling through the crowd. “I was planning to tell you once you’d settled that childish streak of yours.”
“I found them pretty easily,” Angel said offhandedly, smirking at Taro. “It’s all about knowing where to look.”
Hachi jumped up and began to shake hands. “Are you all gonna help us fight?” he asked.
One of them shifted his bandages up his arm. “Hopefully,” he said. “The Demon Lord might be here, but getting to him was always the hard part.”
“You don’t say,” Taro scoffed, getting to his feet. He glared at all of them resolutely. “Well, if you’re here now, that’s good nonetheless. Listen, all of you. I don’t know whether the Demon Lord can be killed. Even if he is, I don’t know what that will mean for us. A resistance should be prepared for failure, but it should not be prepared to die. I won’t let you.
“And I promise that under my plan,” he said as two men walked forward and grabbed his arms, “we can pull through -- what are you doing?”
“Well, Lord Shamble, we did some talking,” Angel purred, “and we came up with our own plan: we’re taking you prisoner.”
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