Only Villains Do That

I didn’t know why the experience left me so out of sorts, which only made it worse.

The Spirit’s “revelation” about the goddesses was… Well, upon due consideration, not much of anything, really. Sure, I didn’t know the tidbit that all past Heroes and Dark Lords were Japanese, but in hindsight it felt like there were enough hints I should’ve put this together on my own. Worse than that, I cringed at the memory of how I’d reacted. I’ve always been a mouthy person with a penchant for spectacle, true, but I couldn’t recall having had a shouting meltdown like that since being potty trained. And was the cause really sufficient to justify the tantrum?

Yes and no, I eventually decided. The news was bad and I was fully justified in being enraged at it. Even so, the way I cracked in response had at least as much to do with my own mental state as learning the uncomfortable truth.

Ephemera was wearing me down.

Aster and Nazralind had been standing guard outside the Spirit’s abode and had pressing questions about the muffled yelling they’d heard, plus the blood on my knuckles. I did not have the mental energy to get into it at that moment and fended them off with a brusque reassurance that all was well.

That did not seem to satisfy, but they agreed to let it be after I overheard Aster muttering to Nazralind that I was the last person to be shy about complaining if something were really wrong. I didn’t even have the leftover brainpower to be offended. Anyway, it wasn’t like she was wrong.

Fortunately our next steps didn’t require much detailed input from me. Saying a quick farewell to the Yviredhs—who as nobles were doubtless accustomed to more ceremony but equally doubtless were glad enough to see me leave that they took no offense—and then shepherding our forces to the site of the bandit encampment next on our list didn’t take long and Aster took the lead with no trouble.

That, at least, gave me a few hours to simmer as we moved carefully but quickly through the khora. I was feeling more even-keeled by midmorning, when we had reason to stop. Doubtless the walk helped; as I’d repeatedly had cause to observe, walking through nature was therapeutic, even when the nature is weird and you’re walking because of urgent murder business.

“Anything?”

“I’m keeping an eye on ‘em, boss,” said Biribo, “so to speak. They’re moving around but not leaving the camp. I’m pretty sure right now one guy’s making lunch, so odds are if we give it a couple minutes we can take ‘em distracted while they eat.”

“Isn’t it a bit early for lunch?”

“Breakfast then? There’s four of ‘em. How much of a schedule did you keep at North Watch before you had to organize over a hundred people?”

“Point.” I nodded, then glanced aside at Nazralind, who along with Aster was standing with me a couple of meters distant from the group. She nodded back and turned to step over to the rest of our team and convey Biribo’s information.

This was much more complicated than ambushing camps in the middle of the night, when everybody was asleep. Granted, if it came to a straight figh my people could overwhelm the bandits easily due to our advantage in numbers, skill, and weaponry, but that would defeat the purpose. The camp itself was useless and would be abandoned immediately; we needed the people. That meant we needed to take them alive. That meant leveraging our goblin alchemy and the element of surprise, which meant picking the right opportunity to strike. And anyway, even if it wasn’t strictly necessary in this particular moment, I wanted my people in the habit of leaning on subtlety and stealth tactics. We were just not the kind of force that would ever beat a proper army in a straight-up fight, and I didn’t want them to get killed later on by making that mistake.

Brunch was as good a distraction as any. We could make all kinds of distractions, but that would both use stocks of our extremely valuable alchemy supplies and create a more volatile situation. I much preferred taking them while they were quiet, focused on food, and not expecting trouble.

So for a few minutes at least, there was nothing to do but wait. Aster took a step away from me, not really creating much space between us but just finding a spot where she could sit on an outcropping of khora root, propping her greatsword against the trunk beside her. I folded my arms, staring into the dimness beneath the fronds in the general direction of the bandit camp. And, finally, since I had the time, decided to do what I probably should have immediately after my visit to the Spirit. This was the first moment sense that I felt calm enough to properly focus on it.

Casting spells had become such a nearly automatic process that I had to actively concentrate to hold myself in that pre-casting state, in which it was as if my consciousness had an extra layer added. I could still perceive the world around me, but superimposed on that was the sphere of light in which I stood, covered with shimmering, inscrutable symbols arranged in patterns that reminded me at times of written language, and at times of computer code. Usually just holding the block of thought that was a spell in the front of my mind didn’t require enough focus to bring up all this.

Now, I summoned Cast Illusion into my consciousness and just studied it. Immediately the first things I discerned were the huge gaps in the spell “code,” and the fact that it…felt wrong. I couldn’t actually cast it. Normally, activating a spell felt like reaching out with my mind to push it into reality; trying to do that with Cast Illusion felt like I was shoving a concrete pillar.

“Hey, Biribo,” I said quietly, “the Spirit said to ask you about this new spell. How come it doesn’t work?”

Aster looked up at me, her eyebrows rising. “New—wait, you won the Spirit’s trial?”

“Yeah, I got a spell and a Wisdom unlock.”

The eyebrows came back down, and then together. “Then why were you so angry?”

“I got some…news. About the goddesses,” I hedged.

She straightened up expectantly.

“Look, it’s not good, and it’s not anything we can do anything about. It’s just enraging and would require me to explain a whole mess of Earth culture for you to understand, so can we not? The goddesses are assholes, let’s leave it at that. Anyway, Biribo?”

“Cast Illusion is a multiple-iteration spell,” my familiar explained now that the peanut gallery was silent enough for him to talk. “Meaning you can actually have as many copies of this spell as you can find scrolls of it.”

“Neat! But…why? And fucking how?”

“Because for each copy of the spell you can cast one illusion. Once you decide what illusion you want to use, this spell will enable you to cast that illusion and that one only, forever. You want a new illusion, you need a new Cast Illusion scroll.”

“Fuckin’ annoying,” I grumbled, my eyes going out of focus as I stared at the huge empty spots in the spell code, “but explains some things. Hm…so this won’t even be usable until I pick an illusion. Any limitations on what that can be?”

“Anything you can visualize, boss.”

I grudgingly admitted (silently, to myself) that limiting it to one illusion per copy of the spell made sense for balance reasons. This would be insanely OP, nearly on the level of Null and Heal, if you could just conjure up an image of anything you could think of from one scroll.

“I get why the Spirit advised me to sit on it for a while.”

“Yeah, there’s a running joke about this spell in particular in sorcery circles, boss. Novice Blessed who don’t know what it is will pick up the scroll, then test it out by making a pink crawn or a naked girl to get a feel for it, and then…”

“Oof,” Aster winced.

I nodded sagely, not saying aloud that if I didn’t have a familiar to explain things to me I’d probably have been stuck forever with an illusory Stratocaster. “And that other spell it told me to look for. Conjure Material?”

“That one is also multi-iteration,” Biribo said. “Does just what it sounds like: you can create a physical material, one per copy of the spell you have, amount depending on the strength of your Blessing. That one’s an alchemy spell.”

That caught my attention. “Alchemy spell? Wait, there are whole spells for that?”

“Sure,” said Aster with a shrug. “At the most basic, an alchemist is just an apothecary who works with magical ingredients, right? All the good ones are Blessed, but you don’t have to be to mix up bits of monsters and whatnot. Like our goblin buddy Youda, or that girl with the outrageous hair who hangs around the Hero.”

I nodded, pondering. I knew that “monsters” were effectively just magical animals from Biribo’s explanation of my own Spirit Bond spell; it was meant to give the caster access to whatever magical ability a given monster might have. I’d found no use for it except as a component of Enjoin. I guess actual monsters weren’t all that common.

“An alchemist can be Blessed with Might,” Biribo continued with the hint of annoyance he always showed when somebody else took over explaining anything to me, “there are artifacts for that specifically, but most of them go for a Blessing of Magic. Lots of spells are useful to alchemists, and there’s a whole category that are only useful for doing alchemy.”

“Oh, now that was a helpful Spirit,” I breathed, realization dawning. “Cast Illusion combined with Conjure Material…”

“A solid illusion!” Aster grinned in vicarious delight. “You’d basically be able to create an actual, physical copy of whatever you could imagine!”

I began pacing in the cleared area around me. It was really too small for that, but I had to do something to work off this sudden surge of nervous energy. “What would be the limitations of that, Biribo? Could I only make one at a time? Could it be banished as well as created? What about…if it was something that needed fuel or ammunition, how would that work?”

“Boss,” he said, zipping around me in a circle, “I really hate not being able to answer questions, but I gotta slow you down here. We’re talking about a theoretical combined spell that we’re assuming you could make based on something a Spirit hinted. I’d have to actually see it in action to know the details; I’ve definitely never seen a spell like this in real life before. Sorry, boss.”

I nodded distractedly, still thinking. Depending on how the spell worked… Just imagine if I could summon an AK-47 at will. Oh, the bullshit I wouldn’t have to put up with anymore. I bet even the Hero would have trouble contending with that—assuming I didn’t manage to reach an accord with him, which I reminded myself was the plan. Of course, I’d never so much as touched a gun in my life so I had no idea how to operate a Kalishnikov rifle, but based on the human detritus I’d seen brandishing them in news reports it couldn’t possibly be difficult.

But then, with the whole of modern Earth in my head to pick from, maybe a weapon wasn’t the most effective thing I could choose? A laptop would be handy for a few things, but with no Internet most of its utility wouldn’t exist… A helicopter? No, I definitely didn’t know how to operate one of those, and that seemed like the kind of thing you’d get killed for trying without expert supervision. I’d have to give it serious thought. I certainly had time to do so; all of this was theoretical until I actually acquired a Conjure Material scroll.

“Knowing a specific spell I need to look for,” I murmured, “is it going to be easier or harder to find a copy of Conjure Material than, just, spells in general?”

“Harder, I should think,” said Aster.

“Although there are opportunities to look for specific spells if you know what you’re after,” Biribo added. “We’re a long way from any city big enough to have a market for scrolls, but there are some Spirits that’ll take requests when they hand out rewards. Rare, but they exist. Also, boss, keep in mind that the Wisdom power you just unlocked will weigh Spirit rewards in favor of things that’re explicitly useful to you.”

I nodded, still pondering. Damn, sounded like Head Start found a way to set me up with a legitimate head start even though I was already Blessed and knee-deep in the shit. Of course, it wasn’t out of the goodness of whatever passed for its heart. I got the distinct impression the Spirit was unhappy about goddesses in general and eager for the opportunity I presented to throw a wrench into their works. Which, of course, only made me even more sympathetic toward it.

“We got movement,” Biribo reported suddenly. “Yeah, I was right, boss, everybody’s sittin’ down eating. They got one guy standing up on watch at the main entry to their camp, but even he’s got a bowl of stew.”

“Then this is our window, ladies,” I said, turning to nod at Nazralind, who had remained within earshot behind me, close enough to relay orders to the rest of the squad without raising her voice. “Let’s move.”

It had to happen eventually, and I guess eventually was now: the conquest of this camp proved to be the moment when my established strategy went right to shit.

Not initially; in fact the attack itself went down with delightful precision that gave me a surge of pride in how well I’d trained my girls. We had to vary the pattern of our customary nighttime strike somewhat to account for our targets being alert and only somewhat distracted.

The enemy had set up camp in what looked to be a semi-natural depression they had further cleared out, between three particularly huge khora which grew in a cluster that made a nice space between them. Of the three gaps, one had been piled with an improvised barricade of raw akorshil apparently chopped off the nearby trunks, with the other two kept open as entries.

After testing the wind, we positioned ourselves where the fumes wouldn’t blow right back into our faces, and then Ydleth and I struck first as soon as Kastrin was in her spot. Ydleth wasn’t nearly as sharp a shooter as Kastrin—none of us were—but she had decent aim and a strong arm, and succeeded in landing our improvised bomb—a sack of goblin sleeping powder and minor explosives—right in the middle of the camp. That, of course, immediately got the bandits’ attention, so I Sparked it the instant it hit the ground, sending up the plume of sleeping powder and knocking the lot of them out. In a reversal of our usual strategy, that left the lookout as the last taken down: he whirled to see what had happened, and got not only a faceful of airborne sleeping powder but a dart in the back from Kastrin’s stinger for good measure.

Clockwork.

After that, it was the usual. We bound them, I Healed them awake, and commenced showtime. By this point my speeches about this crooked-ass country and the necessity of purging its nobles had become almost rote, not that I let that diminish the quality of my showmanship. Some of us are professionals, after all. The Dark Lord reveal continued to be just as satisfying as the first time; altogether this made me regret not having had the opportunity to do the full routine on the last camp. Educating the Yviredhs about how deep they were in the shit had been necessary to keep them from turning on me, but my need to keep them in the dark about some things had diminished both the style and effectiveness of my presentation to the recruits back there. It felt good to be back on track.

Right until everything ran off the tracks entirely.

“I don’t have any fucking clue what you’re talking about!” the bound bandit snarled, every bit the picture of righteous indignation.

I kept up my public face, despite the sudden sinking feeling in my gut. Meeting the man’s protests with a raised eyebrow, I slowly turned to the woman who’d made the accusation.

“You’re absolutely sure, Menytin?”

“I wouldn’t forget something like that!” she barked, nearly as angry as the accused.

“Easy, Meny,” Adelly murmured, placing a hand on her upper back.

Menytin had to pause and inhale, but nodded. “It was just the one time, I can’t say if he made a habit of it. But it was my first week in the Cat, I didn’t know what the fuck was going on and I was paying attention to everything, trying to learn the ropes. This clown beat the shit out of Nimidie, so bad she couldn’t work after that. He got bounced out and banned, but…”

“That’s a fucking lie!” the bandit shouted, struggling against his bindings. “I never took a fist to a woman in my life!”

“Well, that isn’t true, anyway,” Jadrin drawled, folding her arms. “I know this guy, Lord Seiji. Cwydar’s got himself a temper problem—that’s exactly how he ended up out here fucking around in the mulch instead of working for one of Gray’s cozy little operations where I first met him.”

“And who the fuck are you, even?” Cwydar sneered at her. “I don’t know you and you don’t know me!”

“You’re certain, Jadrin?” I repeated, watching his face for any sign of recognition at the name. He looked too pissed off to notice.

Jadrin nodded, still studying him dispassionately. “Yep. All fists and no cunning, this one. F’rinstance, if he was a little smarter he’d’ve pretended that wasn’t his name, instead of giving away that obviously I do know him.”

At that, the accused just looked madder. Not even surprised, just pissed off.

“Well, she’s got him there,” piped up another of the imprisoned bandits. “His name is definitely Cwydar.”

“Radon, you backstabbing piece of shit!” Cwydar roared.

“Oh, fuck you,” snorted the only woman in the group. “Think about how you’ve acted around here and ask yourself whether any of us are gonna stick our necks out for you, Cwydar.”

I shook my head slightly, clearing away the uncomfortable recognition that one of these guys had the same name as the youngest of the Gutter Rats I’d taken in. Well, it stood to reason; most cultures had common names that lots of people could be given. I’d killed another guy called Donon previously. For now, I had more urgent matters to be uncomfortable about.

“Go on, Jadrin.”

“Right, so,” she said in a disinterested tone, “guys like this’re a black disc a bushel, ‘specially on the rough streets. I never ran in a crew with him, but we crossed paths a bunch of times back in the day. Dunno if he made a habit of beating up women, but I believe it. Guy definitely caused and then solved all his own problems by hitting ‘em. He punched out my friend Khannit one time. She had it coming, for the record—rude bitch never had any sense of who not to fuck with—but I do know he’s not one of those who’re shy about hitting a woman. I could totally see him beating the hell out of a whore if she said something he didn’t like.”

“Which I saw happen,” Menytin insisted.

“Really, you watched?” I asked.

She blinked, then scowled, looking away. “Well, I mean… He took Nimidie to a room, she came out bloody and the bouncer threw his ass practically into the canal.”

“See!” Cwydar shouted. “I told you she was a fucking liar!”

“You have an alternate explanation for what happened?” I inquired in my mildest tone.

“None of it happened!”

“Lord Seiji,” Menytin began, but fell silent as I held up one hand.

“Anyone else know this guy?” I asked.

There was silence from the rest of my followers. I looked directly at Adelly, who shook her head.

“Menytin’s got seniority on me, Lord Seiji. If this happened when she was new, I’d’ve still been in the King’s Guild then.”

“See!” Cwydar insisted.

“Any comments from you lot?” I inquired. “I gather our man here is not popular even among his current circle.”

“She’s got the right of it,” said the woman, jerking her head toward Jadrin. “Cwydar’s a mean asshole, is all. Dunno if he’s got any problems with women, exactly. He never tried to paw me or any of the girls who were here before the Olumnach people took ‘em into the Gutters. Least, not that I know of.”

“In a small group alone in the forest, you notice who’s like that,” added Radon. “We did have a couple of those, but they got taken to town. Cwydar’s got problems with everybody, but I dunno if I’d say he beats on women more’n the usual.”

“More than the usual,” Kastrin spat, raising her crossbow. Adelly pushed it back down and Radon cringed, trying to duck his head as best he could while tied hand and foot.

Cwydar just seethed in silence now, apparently unsure how to properly support this decidedly lukewarm defense.

Everyone was staring at me expectantly, Menytin insistently so. I made a show of calm consideration—arched eyebrow, head tilted back, lips just slightly pursed. Don’t worry, Lord Seiji is totally in control. It was, after all, still showtime, and I had more than enough stage experience to feign composure when some unexpected disaster had me inwardly shrieking obscenities.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck!

What the hell was I supposed to do about this? I had only just now realized how glassy-smooth the path had been up to this point, so much so that I suspected Virya might’ve had a hand in it, though I couldn’t see exactly how. With the first gang, there had been some among the convicted and killed who’d protested, but they were overshadowed by… What was that guy’s name, the strangler? Well, it didn’t really matter anymore. I suspected he had fallen into banditry due to being too dim to function in normal society. And then there’d been Freebie Guy just this morning, who had clearly been so accustomed to getting by on his charming smile that he had failed to realize the danger even as he condemned himself with his own mouth. Through all of them, and uncountable assholes I’d met previously in the Gutters, there ran this undercurrent of contempt for women and particularly prostitutes that seemed to make people blithely dismiss violence against the Alley Cats. Even when facing down a crowd of said Alley Cats, obviously angry and heavily-armed. It seemed like it just didn’t occur to them that beating up prostitutes was objectionable.

What was a whore worth, after all?

Those previous encounters suddenly felt like they’d been softballed to me by a benevolent (or at least maliciously playful) deity. It had always been just a matter of time until I had to deal with a guy whose accused crimes weren’t so cut and dried, and who had the basic sense to deny it and argue for himself. Man, in hindsight those other two had been really stupid. Sure, lots of people were stupid, but I had royally fucked up by assuming was always gonna be that simple.

Everyone was still staring at me, practically breathless with anticipation. I slowly tilted my head to one side, drawing out the tension, part of me relishing in the spectacle and attention even as a bigger part frantically flailed for a solution.

This was fundamentally not the same as the abusers I’d made a show of cutting down, to earn loyalty points. It was a dipshit with anger issues who had committed one accused crime of temper—accused by only one person, who had only seen the aftermath, and corroborated only by negative character witnesses. This was just straight up not enough evidence to convict him in any court worthy of the name. And even if convicted, the reasonable punishment was a lot lighter than the only thing I was in a position to inflict. He was indisputably an asshole who belonged in jail, sure, but after a proper trial.

Jails and trials were things I did not have. And as I’d told everyone often enough, I came promising vengeance, not justice.

That, I realized, was the worst part. Because I had known immediately what I was going to do, and known that it was not going to be the right thing. But I was going to do it anyway, because it was what I needed to resolve this situation, and all my mental struggling right now was just a futile effort to escape the corner I’d painted myself into without adding yet another unforgivable crime to my conscience.

And I couldn’t. I could not do what was right, what was just, because I needed the loyalty of these women above all. I needed the fear of these bandits in the short term; actual loyalty in the long would be ideal, but I could make do with fear. A sacrifice had to be made.

God damn it.

I drew my sword.

“No, fuck you,” Cwydar rasped, glaring baleful hatred up at me.

“I will not condemn a man based on nothing but one accusation,” I stated in a ringing tone. “A life is too much to squander for a matter of one person’s word against another’s. An accusation with only indirect corroboration is still…tenuous.”

Menytin opened her mouth, swelling up in outrage, and Adelly clamped a hand on her shoulder, silencing her.

“But I’ve made myself clear,” I stated, pointing the sword at Cwydar and staring down the blade at him. “Abusers of women are not suffered under my rule. Hopefully someday we’ll have a system to properly administer justice—but let’s face, Fflyr Dlemathlys has never had one of those. Here I have a credible accusation, multiple corroborating character witnesses, and not one voice raised in support of the accused.”

“You can’t do this, you asshole!” he snarled, struggling again.

“It’s a tough call,” I said, my demeanor as icy and merciless as I could make it, “but it’s my call and I’ve made it. When the victim is unwilling or unable to raise their own hand, or not present to do so, vengeance is mine to dispense.”

Cwydar tried to surge to his feet, struggling violently against the ropes binding him, and lasted barely a second. The Mastery enchantment did exactly what the name promised: with the rapier in my hand, I was a master fencer. I stepped forward in a laser-precise lunge, the tip of the blade sinking right through his left eye and deep into his skull. It was as easy as strumming a chord on my guitar.

I stepped back and flicked the blade hard, splattering the ground with gore, as Cwydar slumped back down. He twitched a few more times before falling still.

For two beats, I let the silence hang before speaking in utter nonchalance.

“Any other accusations, ladies?”

A few glances were exchanged and heads shaken. I panned a calm stare around the assembled group, then nodded when no one else stepped up.

“Good. Always a relief when most of a group is worth saving. Welcome to the Dark Crusade, my new friends.”

“Ah, fuck,” mumbled the woman in the group, then flinched in clear terror when my gaze landed on her directly. I just gave her a smile. I might’ve ordinarily gone for a more mischievous note, but I was…not in the mood.

“Nazralind, get everybody on their feet and organized; I want this place packed up and on the move in half an hour, tops. Adelly, interview our new comrades and find me a location for our next target.”

“Hai!” Adelly chimed, already stepping forward alongside Naz to carry out my orders.

Even she was doing it now. Figured the highly social noblewomen were the most attuned to cultural cues and the fastest to pick up on new customs, but once they started mimicking me, the rest immediately began joining in. It stood to reason that sex workers would also be very perceptive and good at mirroring.

While the camp shifted into a rush of activity, my followers streaming forward to sort through the bandits’ supplies, I stepped backward twice, to the edge, and then turned around to wipe my sword carefully on a low-hanging khora frond. It tried to twitch out of my grasp—whatever they were, khora were not exactly plants—but not very hard.

Putting my back to the camp gave me a moment in which I didn’t have to control my expression. Just a moment was all I needed. It couldn’t be all showtime all the time.

Aster stepped up beside me and surreptitiously touched me once on the upper arm as I re-sheathed the cleaned blade.

“It had to be done,” she murmured.

I shook my head. “It did not have to be done. I had to do it. Those might have the same end effect, but they are…very different.”

She regarded me in silence for a moment, then nodded once and watched the ongoing preparations along with me. Her own advice from what felt like years ago hung heavy in the air.

Whenever you can, be kind.

I tried, but…at what point was there just no point anymore? There was already no amount of kindness that would compensate for all the blood I’d spilled. And I was only getting started.

While everybody sorted out the bandits and packed up the camp, not one person so much as touched Cwydar’s body. Because I’d told them at the last camp what my policy was. Those who break my central rules get left for the crawns. And so he was ignored and left there to begin rotting once we were done and gone.

As I had ordered.