But Death is Not Forbidden

by Kip Terrington

  Using his other slightly less agitated eye, he once again looked down at Bridcha. “My right eye is angry with you. And I'm not going to lie, I'm not too far behind it. Murdering your king well... it's kind of a big deal. Please don't make me talk to the back of your head. Sit up and look at me. I need to figure out what's going on,” Joe said. Bridcha slowly lifted his unreadable face. The large yet graceful yeti put one hand down to brace himself and then slid his legs under himself, ending in a seated position, looking at his betrayed king.

  “Where is Spooky or did you kill her also?” Joe asked.

  “We no kill dark fairy. She bind whole tribe,” Bridcha said.

  “What? How could she bind you when you were all unwilling? Maybe I don’t really understand how her binding magic works. Does that mean you guys aren't going to try to kill me again?” Joe asked raising his one uncovered eyebrow.

  “We no kill you. We serve. Forever. We bind willingly, say oath willingly. Please forgive tribe Bounder. It my betrayal. Forgive tribe, take my life. I must die,” Bridcha said, and out of the corner of Joe’s eye, he saw Lil nod her head approvingly.

  “Whoa! Slow your roll, snowman and snowwoman. I'm not just going to immediately kill you out of hand. I mean, granted you did do that to me, but there did seem to be a little bit of a miscommunication and some extenuating circumstances. And Lil, I can see why you might be mad at your dad, but execution? I mean, no one comes back from that. Although I guess I just did. Boy, that's a handy feature.” Joe noticed that Bridcha had blue letters above his head indicating that was an NPC Chief. Maybe there were some NPCs who came back to life, but he didn't know enough about this... this... he wasn’t sure what to call it. “I don't know enough about this reality to know how everyone responds to death. So, we're not going to just execute people if there's an alternative,” Joe said.

  “He broke word. He honor gone. He death pay debt,” Lil said.

  “It was not long ago that you were a few feet tall. Your logic needs a little more seasoning to really be ready to decide if your dad should die, okay?” Joe said.

  “But he…” Lil began.

  “No. Stop there. Death is almost always a big downer. His would not be an exception, especially if he were truly loyal now. Are you?” Joe asked, looking back at the yeti chief.

  “Yes, but must die. Only way,” Bridcha said.

  “Are you the king?” Joe asked.

  “No. I Betrayer. Must die,” Bridcha insisted.

  “No. You betrayed, but I still require your service, only without trying to murder me. Part of my ability to protect your tribe requires that I equip you to keep them safe. You will have to work to restore your honor and I don't know what that's going to look like yet. For now, just give me pure sweet obedience. I'll be honest with you; I don't think I've ever had that from anyone. I couldn't even get my dog properly trained. We can't all be so powerful that with the snap of our fingers everyone just obeys. It is what it is,” Joe said.

  From the stairs, Moes heard every word. Even though Joe was speaking yeti, as a champion, Joe was a player so the UI had translated Joe’s words for Moes.

  Suddenly, Joe felt a change in pressure and noticed that one of the windows had opened. With his one open eye, he saw Spooky flying at top speed with her dagger pointed like a lance. She was charging right at Bridcha’s eye. Apparently, she thought she could Ender Wiggin's him. Luckily for everyone involved, Joe had recovered from his rebirth and was ready. Joe jumped from the altar stretched out his hand and caught the unwieldy fastball of a fairy. The dagger was made of mithril, so it penetrated Joe's hand to the hilt, but he stopped Spooky from her attempted assassination. Even through the pain and the bleeding, he carefully closed his fingers around his partner. She began yelling in unintelligible Russian. Joe could only catch a few words and they were not repeatable in civilized company. He had not realized she was programmed for such an extreme reaction.

  “Stop, Spooky! What are you doing? Why are you attacking him?” Joe said through gritted teeth.

  “Joe! Let me go. He murdered you! He's not safe. What if he does it again? Release your grip and help me pull this dagger out of your hand, I have to kill him now,” Spooky screeched as she wrestled against his hold. Joe's eyebrows wrinkled and he frowned. He responded to her in his native tongue.

  “Okay, this is a bit weird. I understand that this is not a linear game, but I'm feeling like the puzzles are starting to pile on top of each other. Can't you wait to give me the next one until after I've finished the first? I'm going to ask these yetis to let us have a moment to speak in private. Is there anywhere downstairs that they could huddle for a while? You apparently don't trust them so I really don't understand why you allowed them in the castle in the first place.”

  “Joe, you need to let me go. That yeti is dangerous. He betrayed you once. He'll do it again. The only semi accurate way of predicting the future is assessing the past,” Spooky said.

  “I would prefer that they go somewhere else while we talk about this. I'm not going to allow you to attack the chief right now. If you felt that he was such a threat, why did you wait until now to try to deal with it? It's not like you didn't have contact with them after I died. Your Binding Magic is on every single member of the tribe, at least all the ones I clicked on so far,” Joe said.

  “What?” Spooky asked, taken aback. She looked around the room and began mind-clicking on the yetis.

  “Is there a room I can send them to?” Joe once again asked the confused fairy.

  “Yes, there's a whole half of a floor designated just for them, right near the Little Yeti Vault. One of my angels will lead them to it,” Spooky said. In a millisecond, Spooky’s eye for detail caught several new changes to the top floor of the castle. The tile floor had been given a nice marble veneer and recessed lighting had been installed on the edge of the doom, near the windows. This caused the windows to sparkle in a very pleasing manner. This was yet one more confusing fact discovered since her reboot.

  Joe switched back to speaking yeti, “Bridcha, please have your people follow the angel to the rooms that have been prepared for your people near the Little Yeti Vault,” Joe said. Coming to his feet, the overly large yeti pointed his paw toward an angel near the stairs.

  “Follow it,” Bridcha commanded and his tribe began to file down the stairs. As the tribe moved downward, they carried some on stretchers who had sustained injuries from the battle. Joe took particular note of those and made a mental checklist that later he would have to see about healing them. After they left, Joe noticed another message and he waved it off. He needed to focus on what he was doing.

  Lil did not go with the rest of her tribe and her father did not try to order her. In some sense, she maintained the moral high ground over her father. In cases such as these, it could become less and less likely that the child would obey the parent and even less likely that the parent would feel they had the right to act like one.

  “Moes, I may be covering one eye, but I can still see you. Don't lurk at the top of the stairs. Just get over here. Lil, for now, it's okay that you stay. Though you are going to straighten things out with your father… and not by having me kill him, just so you know,” Joe said and Lil's eyes looked downcast. “We've got some things we need to work out but before I start. Congratulations, Moes, on becoming a player. You'll have to tell me how that came about later. Spooky, I'd like to remove this dagger from my hand and let you go, but I'm only going to do so if you promise you won't immediately try to kill the chief,” Joe said.

  “I won't attack him for now. At least not until we get all of this straightened out,” Spooky said.

  “I'm not totally convinced, but I'd like to get this dagger out of my hand,” Joe said, as he opened his palm and allowed Spooky to fly free. Keeping his twenty-sided eye firmly closed, he used his uninjured hand and with two fingers pulled the mithril dagger out of his palm, and handed it to the dark fairy. With Spooky no longer in his hand, Joe cast a healing spell and the
wound began to close up.

  “Now Spooky, what happened after I died? And I'm starting to get tired of this role-playing protocol. So give it to me straight,” Joe said. Spooky got an uncomfortable look on her face. She wanted to give Joe an answer, but she didn't have one. At least not one that didn't make her feel like a coward… even though she wouldn't recognize it as a feeling. This set of circumstances almost met the necessary qualifications for her to lie to her patron, but for some reason, she didn't want to.

  “For now, I'm suspending role-playing protocol. After you died, there appeared to be something wrong with my processor. After quickly running a diagnostic, I could not find the error. I then performed a procedure that is almost always successful. I shut down so that my system could restart. For that reason, I have no memory from the time I shut off until a few moments ago,” Spooky said.

  “So, it's not just another puzzle? It's actually an error? If that's the case, how did the whole of the yeti tribe get bound?” Joe asked.

  “I can answer that,” Moes said.

  “Whoa, I was speaking yeti. How could you understand what I said?” Joe asked.

  “I'm a player now, Joe. The UI translates what other players say,” Moes explained.

  “Well, that kind of takes away my advantage. That means you understood me earlier when I was speaking Russian, that's just great. Don't hold anything I said against me. It wasn't for your ears. Lil is a Major NPC. Can you understand her?” Joe asked.

  “You mean, when she’s speaking yet? No I can't, but you know she speaks trade right?” Moes asked.

  “No, I didn't, but it doesn't really help us to have a conversation now since I don't speak trade,” Joe said.

  “Yes, you do. Otherwise you wouldn't have been able to talk to the hunters. It might help if I tell you its more formal name. The official name for the trade language is Esperanto,” Moes said.

  “No. You gotta be kidding me. That's a made-up language,” Joe said.

  “Dark stars, Joe! All languages are made up! Let me get to the point, I can tell you what happened after,” Moes said. Carefully leaving out his private conversation with Spooky, Moes described how the yetis had decided to swear a new oath.

  “I don't remember any of that,” Spooky said.

  Lil spoke up in the yeti dialect of the trade language.

  “It true. Teeny man right. I say your words, then tribe submit,” Lil said and Moes visibly bristled at being called teeny.

  “Wasn't that long ago that you weren't much bigger than me. You're pretty free with the adjectives aren't you, dark stars!” Moes exclaimed.

  “Today is today. You are you. I am me. I mean no harm,” Lil said.

  “That's not nearly as deep as you think it is. The way you yetis speak is…” Moes began, before Joe interrupted him.

  “That's enough, Moes. There are things that I need to discuss with Spooky and for once I want to have a little focus. I need to speak with her privately. Since you can apparently understand even if I'm speaking Russian, you need to go somewhere else for a while. Lil can stay because she's not a player, so if I want to speak privately with Spooky I can still do that in her presence. Go somewhere else for a while Moes. I'm sure you have things to do,” Joe said.

  “I am your only adviser from the Way. You need my input and hiding things from me is not in your best interest. The last time you didn't heed my advice, you ended up getting yourself killed by a yeti. And now you want to make a yeti one of your closest advisers. You need to see reason,” Moes said.

  “You don't like the decisions I've made and that's fine. You don't have to. You don't even have to stay quiet about it. But I want to speak with Spooky privately and this is my place of power, so you need to be the one to leave. And I will add, it bothers me that you keep pushing me to use my authority as a king to force you to do what you should have already done out of common courtesy. So, as the song says, you don't have to go home but you can't stay here,” Joe said.

  Moes’ jaw tensed. He did an about-face and started walking toward the stairs sized for halflings. On his way out, he didn't stop grumbling.

  “Sounds like a dumb song. You want me to go, fine! Flaming void! I'll go deal with your slaves,” Moes shouted the last bit. On the last word, Joe ground his teeth and then called to Moes to stop.

  “Stop where you are. Why did you say, “my slaves”? I don't have any slaves,” Joe said.

  “You do have slaves, quite a few of them,” Moes said. Joe looked at Spooky and she sheepishly nodded in the affirmative.

  “You have got to be kidding me. I'm starting to think that I'm being punished for going into a healing trance for days. Obviously, I'll have to free them, but I still need to speak with Spooky first. Depending on that conversation, then this might not matter anyway. If the errors are large enough, I might need to get out of this rodeo. So, Moes, take off.”

  “What's a rodeo and why would you need to get out of it?” Moes asked. Joe lifted his hand, and pointed toward the stairs. In a steady quiet tone, that those who knew him well would recognize as angry, he said one word, “Go.”

  Surprisingly, not saying another word, Moes turned around and went down the stairs. Joe waited and then turned to Spooky to speak. She put her little hand up, moved closer to him and whispered in his ear.

  “He's waiting at the bottom of the stairs, listening,” Spooky whispered. Joe took a deep breath attempting to calm himself before he spoke. Then as quietly as he could, he whispered a question to Spooky.

  “Are your angels still working on widening that trench?”Joe asked.

  “Yes. Always be fortifying,” Spooky said.

  GONG

  The Abiogenesis Bunny Generator has made the Noon Bunny.

  The gong sounded a little more ominous this time. The bunny appeared to scurry away in fear. Joe nodded and then cleared his throat. “The court of King Joseph Mareko Petrov is now in session. Moes, master of Mind and Spirit Magic is summoned to appear before this court,” Joe said. For some reason, when Joe was angry he tended to think of himself by his full name. Moes, compelled by the rule of law, made his way back up the stairs and stood before Joe. Joe stood tall and looked down at the halfling. The humor was gone from his eyes. This was a side of Joe that few ever saw and those who did, did not soon forget. It's easy to believe that a man who smiles most of the time is not a real man, easy but not wise.

  “You stand accused of attempting to intercept the private conversation between co-Champions. How do you plead? Guilty or not guilty?” Joe asked.

  Moes was taken aback. Joe was normally so easy-going. This felt quite different. “Not guilty. I left this area just like you asked. I'm bound to follow the laws of this land. How can I be guilty of something that I'm incapable of doing,” Moes said.

  “You have chosen to give your defense at the same time as you give your plea. The court finds this acceptable. Your time for defense is now concluded. Please take a seat on the chair behind you,” Joe said. Moes turned around and was shocked to see a chair there that had not been a moment ago. He sat in it and when he turned back to see Joe, the king was no longer standing before him. Spooky apparently felt that Joe needed to be sitting in a throne when serving out justice. Spooky had used her Energy Mass Conversion Magic and the few building points she had left to make a raised wooden throne capable of supporting Joe’s considerable weight. The throne sat in front of the altar. Sitting in the raised throne, Joe quietly assessed Moes.

  “You were not accused of intercepting a private conversation between co-Champions, you were accused of attempting to intercept a private conversation between co-Champions. Whether or not you would have been capable of committing this crime is immaterial. Your attempt shows your intent. The court finds you guilty. Is there anything you wish to say before sentencing?” Joe asked. Moes finally realized he had taken it too far. This was an unbound Champion. Moes’ attempts to control and manipulate him were apparently dangerous. In the grip of fear, Moes realized the penalty could
be anything. Joe was a king and not as predictable as Moes had believed. Falling off the chair to his knees, Moes pleaded with the king.

  “I'm sorry. Blasted void! I'm just so worried that everything will fall apart and that there will be no kingdom here when my wife arrives,” Moes said. Finally, Joe’s eyes softened.

  “The court recognizes your apology and taking into account that this is your first true offense. The court will choose to be lenient. However, given that you once attempted to steal this castle through deception, the court has decided you cannot go without punishment. I, King Joseph Mareko Petrov, sentence you to nine hours of hard labor. You must work no less than three hours a day until your nine hours are complete. Your three hours for today start immediately,” Joe said.

  Moes released the breath that he had been holding. The sentence could have been anything. Part of him had worried that he had annoyed the Champion just a little too much and that he would be sentenced to death over and over and over until he dropped below Level 1 and ceased to exist. After all, Joe didn't believe that Moes was real. Moes would have to think on a new strategy. For now, he just followed the angel leading him to carry out his sentence.

  After Moes had left, Joe immediately saw that he had received new messages. He also noticed he had just gained his first portal spell. Why now? He immediately waved the prompts away. There were things that he needed to discuss with Spooky. He felt a weight on his shoulders and on his chest. It appeared as if the UI was causing Joe to feel actual physical pressure due to the backlog of messages he had been ignoring and needed to address. On top of everything else, he could still feel his twenty-sided eye spinning. The apology that Moes had given him had softened his anger, but he was still feeling the residue of adrenaline that had coursed through his veins.