by Aleron Kong
“I, and I alone, will decide the fate of these men and women. You are here to witness my judgement. Any who wish to challenge my right to do so should speak now!” he shouted. He looked out at the crowd, daring anyone to step forward. No one did.
Turning his back on the crowd, he spoke to Sergeant Caulder, “Ungag the accused.”
“This is horseshit,” Lieb shouted as soon as his mouth was clear. Richter just looked at him, and what the man saw in his eyes quieted him though the arrogant expression did not fully leave his face.
“Speak when I ask you a question,” Richter told him coldly, “not before.” The man glared back, but was smart enough not to directly challenge the leader of the settlement he was standing in. After staring down the captive, Richter turned his attention to the victim. Analyze showed him that her name was Gila. Softening his face, he gently asked, “Would you please tell your story? I promise you that you have nothing to fear from these men ever again.”
Gila was clearly still fearful. It made rage rise in Richter’s heart to see her battered face. Though he tried to hide it, she still felt his anger. She had learned long ago that she could still be blamed for the horrible things that others did to her. Though Richter was trying to put her at ease, he just looked like one more angry man blaming her for the sins of others.
Luckily, Hisako stepped forward. Though she was a fearsome enemy, the Hearth Mother could also exude a peaceful aura just by her presence. She furthered that feeling by casting a Life spell. As the bruises slowly faded from the woman’s face, Hisako embraced the woman. No one else ever knew what she whispered to Gila, but her face firmed somewhat.
A few moments later, Gila straightened and recounted the crime that had befallen her and her brother. Richter expected her to stop in the middle of her story, racked with sobs. That did not happen. Instead, she spoke in a detached voice, relating the horrors she had survived. This was somehow worse. It was like she was describing something that had happened to someone else. Richter’s hands started shaking slightly as he considered just how much pain and degradation the woman must have suffered for her to simply accept that such atrocities could be commonplace.
Lieb, of course, started shouting slurs and protests almost immediately. With a gesture, Richter had Caulder replace the gag so that Gila could finish. Once she was done, the cloth was removed again. Lieb wasted no time, “This is troll shit! You know your mouth is good for only one thing, slat!” He barked an ugly laugh, “Besides, I didn’t do anything that she didn’t want.”
Richter didn’t even have to speak up. Caulder backhanded the man with his gauntlet. Lieb fell to his knees, dazed for a second, but after a few moments he just grinned manically up at the sergeant. Part of his cheek had been torn and blood dripped from his mouth. Paulen, the other accused, watched Lieb’s foolish bravado with a scared and sorrowful expression on his face.
“Do you have anything else to say?” Richter asked Gila. She shook her head. Richter had her led off the stage. He didn’t want her in harm’s way for what was going to come next. Then, with a cold voice, he looked back at Lieb, “Get that piece of shit on his feet. Cut him free.”
The guards pulled Lieb up from the ground and cut his bonds. Richter moved his arm slowly and everyone backed away, leaving him alone in the middle of the stage with the man. The chaos seed stalked towards him. Everyone watching could sense his violent demeanor, and knew that whatever was about to happen would happen soon. It seemed like The Land itself had caught its breath with how silent it had become.
Lieb just glared back at Richter and raised his fists. Whatever else was true about the man, he wasn’t a coward. That didn’t bother Richter. In fact, it just made what was coming more enjoyable. He stopped just outside of Lieb’s reach and asked, as lightly as he could manage, “Now you were saying something about ‘troll shit’?”
“Yeah,” Lieb answered defiantly. He spat a bloody wad onto the wooden stage. Then he pointed at Gila in the audience, “That’s my fuckhole, and her baby brother should have known better than to stand between me and my property.”
Richter didn’t understand how this man could stand there and say such things. He searched Lieb’s face, looking for obvious signs of evil: devil horns, shark teeth or glowing red eyes. As he continued to observe the man though, he saw nothing more than a violent thug too dumb to keep his mouth shut but large enough to intimidate most people and take what he wanted. Maybe the man was evil, maybe he was a monster, maybe he was just someone who had been through horrible things. Richter’s rational mind posited several ideas to try and make sense of the man in front of him. To find some reason for why this person could be so hateful and damaged.
Then the strongest part of Richter took control, and he realized that none of that mattered. It was the part of him that didn’t shy from difficult truths and didn’t complain when there was something hard to be done. The truth was that the label “monster” didn’t matter. The truth was that this man was a threat to the village. The truth was, Lieb wouldn’t live to see another sunrise.
The part of Richter that discovered these truths understood that once you committed to a course of action there was nothing left to fear. It was only the jump that was worthy of trepidation. The fall afterward was… freedom. The muscles in his neck eased and his jaw relaxed. He was going to enjoy what came next.
Richter’s pulse started to pound in his ears. The only reason he hadn’t already opened the man from neck to pucker pie was that his entire village was watching. That fact wouldn’t save Lieb, but the chaos seed was old school about discipline. If you administered a beating the right way the first time, the fear and pain could be an effective deterrent to future infractions. Lieb himself would not benefit from that knowledge, but the rest of Richter’s villagers would.
Richter could barely control himself, but still he forced out one final question, “Do you deny any of the accusations that have been leveled against you?”
Lieb spoke again, completely ignoring the pleading, mewling sound Paulen made, “You don’t listen too good, do you, little lordling. I fucked that whore and I killed her brother.” Gila gave a frightened whimper and tried to hide behind the guard standing with her. “And I’ll tell you something else. You should never have cut my hands free.” With no further warning, he attacked.
Lieb threw a quick left jab, turning his hips in a practiced move he had performed for years. He followed with another left jab, then a right hook. He stepped into it and swung his right elbow into Richter’s jaw, and then snapped a short, straight punch into Richter’s face to finish the five-move combo.
Not one of the blows landed. Richter had been waiting for this very thing to happen. He had not increased his Unarmed Combat skill at all since learning the subskill Pressure Points so many months ago, but in The Land, skills did not always translate into success. Someone with a high skill level in swordsmanship might still lose to someone with better technique, stats or foresight. Richter possessed all three. Lieb learned what a difference that could make.
His Agility and Dexterity were three times what the heavily muscled man could call upon. While Alma launched herself into the air, Richter dodged both quick jabs, then took a wide step to the right to avoid the hook. The elbow fell well short and the short punch he knocked aside almost lazily. Richter’s own Strength of thirty-three was a good deal less than Lieb’s forty-two, but deflecting a strike wasn’t a matter of brute force. It was speed and the application of energy. The rapist couldn’t keep up.
Richter stepped past Lieb as the other man blinked in surprise at striking empty air. The chaos seed started speaking again, and his tone was almost… understanding, “You know, I get you. You were just doing what you had to do. You were bigger than that other guy, so you beat him up. You are bigger than this young woman,” he said, “so you decided to rape and violate her.” Richter continued to circle the man as he spoke, and the would-be rapist’s face had finally started to show fear.
The change did
n’t placate the lord of the Mist Village in any way. The man’s own admission had sealed his fate, but Richter found that he enjoyed the man’s fear. There was no rush to end the charade. He stopped moving for a second and stared the man directly in the eyes. In that moment, nothing else existed but the two of them. Richter’s teeth bared as he spoke again, slowly and with barely restrained venom, “I understand.”
He took a deep breath and promised his inner fury that it could feed soon. The chaos seed plastered a false smile on his face. “Now, the only problem with your goals is that I have to protect my people. Namely from murderous, rapist sons of bitches like you and your friend there. You understand that, don’t you?”
Lieb’s reply was to attack again. He aimed a brutal push-kick at Richter’s chest. It had no greater chance of landing than the earlier attacks. He followed it up with another one-two combo, but to Richter, the man might as well have been punching through water. The slow attack speed just couldn’t keep up with Richter’s high attribute values. As the chaos seed dodged to the side, he noticed a faintly glowing red spot on Lieb’s thigh. He jabbed two stiff fingers into the area and the leg spasmed. It wasn’t a debilitating strike, but it numbed the man’s appendage. Lieb was able to keep his feet, but he now had a limp that would last for several seconds. Richter continued pacing around Lieb, murder in his gaze.
Despite the death in his eyes, he spoke as if the second attack had never happened, “Both of you understand that, right?” This question was directed at Paulen as well. The man was weeping at this point. Richter considered telling him to accept his fate with dignity, but then decided it wasn’t worth it. He’d be dead soon enough.
“Please, my lord,” the crier begged. “I am so sorry! If you would only allow me-”
“No,” Richter said with finality. He and Lieb were still circling one another. “I do not need your apologies. You may apologize to Gila, however, when this is done. Until then,” and the last two words were spoken with quiet menace, “stay silent.”
Richter turned his full attention back to Lieb. The man was massaging his thigh and looked to have gained back almost full mobility. The chaos seed finished his point in a conversational tone, a shark circling with a full-toothed smile, “I am relieved to tell you that despite the fact that our goals are diametrically opposed,” he paused when he saw the look of confusion on Lieb’s face. “’Diametric’ means… doesn’t matter. The point is, despite the fact that we want different things, this is not an insurmountable problem. Where I come from there is a time-honored way for two men to solve just this type of problem.” Richter smiled even wider, “I’ll roshambo you for it.”
Lieb looked confused again, “Let me explain,” Richter offered helpfully. “The way it works is that you kick me in the balls as hard as you can and I kick you in the balls as hard as I can. We keep doing that until one of us can’t stand anymore. Okay?”
Lieb looked at Richter like he was insane, but then he just vomited. He barely heard Richter say, “I go first,” because his world devolved into more pain than he could have imagined. Faster than Lieb was able to follow, Richter had kicked up into the man’s crotch with all thirty-three points of his Strength. It was easy to forget just what a stat-enhanced body could do to bare flesh, but his armored foot struck as hard as a sledgehammer. The entire time the man had been waiting for Richter to arrive, the entire time he had been arrogantly throwing insults and thinking he could control the situation, he didn’t know that the chaos seed had already decided upon the punishment he would enact if he found the man guilty. That was why he had put the boots on beforehand, the only instrument of his justice that he would require.
One of Lieb’s testicles burst instantly under the ball-crushing force, leaving a pulped mess inside of the scrotum. The other was forced deep inside the man’s body. A defensive measure to preserve a man’s reproductive ability, it didn’t help. The vessels supplying the small organ twisted into a condition called testicular torsion. It was a topic Richter and every other male med student learned to fear and watch out for. The lack of blood flow quickly starved the tissues of oxygen. The testicle would die inside of a man’s body in under five minutes. Those five minutes, however, would be the longest of a man’s life as he experienced the gradual cell death of his genitalia.
That was not the only damage Richter’s brutal kick achieved. The tip of Lieb’s penis was caught against his thigh, and the shearing force caused the head to sever from the root. The upward force cracked his pelvic bone, and the blunt trauma continued up his spine, fracturing two vertebrae. It was not enough to sever Lieb’s spinal cord, but his legs would not have been able to function properly even if he had weeks to recover.
Despite the massive trauma, Lieb actually remained on his feet for a few seconds. It wasn’t bravado. It was an involuntary reaction. Lieb’s muscles were locked into immobility as his neurons were overloaded with pain. When he finally fell, it almost looked like it was in slow motion. One leg gave out completely, but the other just shook like tapped jelly until it too failed and Lieb crumpled to the ground. He landed on his back and a quickly growing spot of red appeared on his breeches as blood spurted out of the stump of his ruined penis.
The crowd did not need to wait until Lieb fell to hear his complete and utter agony. He just began to scream. “Gwaaaaahhhh! Aaaaaaaahhhhhh! Aaaaiieeeeee!”
All levity left Richter’s face as he looked down at one more vanquished foe. His gaze was utterly without mercy or empathy. It was with a cold and calculated stare that he realized Lieb was bleeding out too quickly. Richter’s hand wove in a dual spellform, and he cast Weak Stabilize. The low ranked spell couldn’t fix all the damage, but he didn’t want it to. He just needed the man to live a few more minutes. Lieb continued his high-pitched screams on the ground and blood kept trickling from his torn member. Richter turned his back on him and walked over to Paulen. Quietly, almost softly, he asked, “Would you like to ask Gila for her forgiveness now?”
The second man looked at Richter and then at Lieb screaming on the ground. The man’s legs were kicking spasmodically and he had both hands cupped over his privates in a useless attempt to stop further attacks. As if there was any more damage that could be done. Lieb’s wretched wailing continued, and his fellow rapist looked at Richter with a vain hope on his face, “I do! I do, my lord!” He raised his bound hands to grab the chaos seed’s hand, and kissed where a lord’s signet ring would normally be, “Thank you, my lord. PLEASE let me apologize!”
Richter pulled his hand back in disgust. The man turned his attention to Gila, who was still hiding in the crowd.
“I am so sorry. It was not my idea, I swear it. I… I had to! Lieb said he would kill me if I didn’t help. I liked your brother. Truly, I did! If you would only give me another chance, I promise I will never harm you again.” He turned his face back towards Richter, “I will serve you, my lord. I am a hard worker. I will prove it! Just, just please do not do that to me!” he furtively glanced over at Lieb, who was still wailing on the ground. A red puddle several feet in diameter had formed under the man.
“Do you accept his apology, Gila?” Richter asked.
The battered woman looked first at the man begging for mercy and then at Richter. She had lost perhaps her only family and had been brutalized by the two men on the stage. Something feral made its way into her eyes when she answered, “No.”
“I wouldn’t either,” Richter said grimly. “Bring him,” the chaos seed said pointing to the pleading man.
The man started wailing, “No! Nooooo! I’m sorry! I’m so sorry. Pleeasseee. It wasn’t my idea. No!”
Caulder gagged the man and forced him to his knees near the front of the stage. It didn’t stop him from continuing to plead for his life, but in Richter’s opinion it was an improvement. The chaos seed walked to the front of the stage and addressed everyone present.
“These two creatures,” Richter spoke vehemently, “have violated the body of a woman under my protection. They
have taken the life of a man who was under my protection. I will ask once, and only once: are there any here who would speak on behalf of these men? Do so now, because you will never get another chance.”
Silence reigned in the crowd. Some of the freed prisoners looked pleased. Many of the men looked appalled. More than a few looked at him in fear, but everyone held their peace. No one spoke up for Paulen softly sobbing on the ground, wrapped in his own personal hell. The only sounds were the wailing of Lieb, the choked begging of his accomplice, and a stiff wind that had begun to blow with the promise of storms to come.
Richter walked over to Lieb. He hadn’t been sure exactly what would happen when he used all of his strength to send his armored foot hurtling towards the rapist’s unprotected genitalia, but he knew it would be bad. This was worse. The man still had a bleeding status that was quickly sapping his remaining health. Must have severed the pudendal artery, Richter thought distantly.
The chaos seed leaned over him and spoke with deadly intensity, but in a voice loud enough for all to hear, he said, “You’re not done yet, you piece of shit.” Then, to the surprise of all, Richter started casting. Gold light surrounded his hands as he cast Weak Slow Heal and Minor Slow Heal. The cooldown had not elapsed on Weak Stabilize, but a thought to Alma got her to cast the spell on the screaming man again. The heal spells worked in conjunction and Lieb’s health began rising. The spell did almost nothing to alleviate the pain the rapist was feeling though, a fact that Richter quite enjoyed.
Richter looked back out at the crowd, “Rape and murder will not be tolerated in my lands! Look at him. Look!” he commanded in a thundering voice. The people, villagers and freed captives alike, did as they were told, though many had to turn away from the horrible tableau only moments later. A few vomited and tears ran down many of their faces. “See what will happen if you think you can simply take from those who are not as strong as you. Anyone here that thinks they are a wolf among sheep, take a look at me! You may be a beast, but I am a fucking nightmare!” His voice deepened without conscious thought, and it seemed to many that something dark and horrible was speaking from inside of Richter, “I will devour you.”