Chương 116: 29 - TORMENT BY PROXY

For the next few days, Graceland was home, and Uriel did his best to live up to his claim to be a gracious host. T'balt and co. were given rooms inside the library, which turned out to be way bigger than it could ever appear from the little shack it presented itself as. It served as an entire mansion underground and underwater. Uriel mentioned that there were special excavation loots, paired with steel, wood, and construction loots, that allowed him to put the place together so quickly.

With those, his followers were quickly able to produce individual rooms for each of them in the span of about an hour. And they were allowed to come and go from the library as they pleased. Once the other Gracelandians knew their association with Uriel, they would go out of their way to make sure they were all pampered and had everything they needed, including beds, clothes, etc. T'balt watched Uriel closely when he could.

The people he gathered worked tirelessly to build this place around him, yet he could hardly lift a finger to help or even direct their actions. It was like they were just told to build a city and were working off some invisible doctrine about how they were supposed to do it. But the doctrine had his name on it, so they attributed it all to him and propped him up as the central figure. T'balt often wondered why people followed him so closely when all he seemed to do was sit in his library.

For what it was worth, Uriel wasn't completely stationary. He seemed to enjoy his new company. He treated Ellie like his own dedicated pupil, teaching her his millennia of experience in philosophical and spiritual exploits. Uriel once said it was a breath of fresh air to see his discoveries through a new set of eyes. She absorbed it like a sponge, hanging on to his every word. Somehow, he even got Acelin to take up reading, not his complicated philosophy texts but literary fiction.

Acelin was always more of a video game kid than a book kid, so it was weird seeing him shelved up in the library reading Animal Farm of his own volition. But that part bothered T'balt. Not because Acelin was reading but because Uriel was so easily able to convince him when T'balt had never seen the kid even pick up a book. The Redeemers had an uncanny ability to just make people do what they wanted. He'd admittedly been sulking since the incident at the saloon.

And though it had been two days, none of the others came to talk to him, tried to comfort him, or even asked what was wrong. Not because they thought it was best, but because Monan told them to "let him figure it out himself." And that pissed him off more than he ever wanted to admit. He didn't own them. They were still their own people, but he still felt like Monan and Uriel were taking them away from him.

He walked into the library wearing a long-sleeved black shirt and cargo pants that one of the Gracelandians donated to him. Cannon was in the corner, trying to convince Uriel's servant, David, that he would've made a great wrestler considering his size. Acelin was taking a crack at Huckleberry Finn on the couch. Monan was off somewhere, taking a nap. Uriel was leading Ellie around the room, looking like he was giving a lecture.

He was better dressed now, still shirtless and shoeless, but at least he was wearing pants under his kimono-like black-and-white robes.

"In the same vein, a stress test might show you where your vulnerabilities are. It's in these moments of intense pain and stress that change can occur. Ellie, I'm sure the greatest change in your life came after a moment of intense pain."

"Umm.. I suppose," Ellie considered.

"I ran away from home when I was younger. Cuz I was deep in love. My family was against it, and he wanted to move, so I followed him across the country. Gave up everything in my life because I thought I had found my purpose in him… then he cheated. I got so upset, and we got into a bad fight... And I decided I was better off on my own. Because I was too prideful to tell anybody that I was wrong, I lived homeless for a while. No one ever called me hotheaded before that, but people who met me after did."

"Then, as you've realized, survival of a traumatic event can make or break a person. But it's based on their perception. You likely were quicker to lash out at people and became incredibly skeptical and reserved. You didn't want to give anyone else the chance to betray your trust again. But at the same time, you still have a desperate longing for attachment to another person. And that distrusting persona wasn't working for you. So you sought to craft a new persona. One that others might like better…"

Ellie shared a painful smile.

"I went to church."

"Ah, there it is." Uriel pointed at her.

"The change." If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. T'balt stopped them, looking sorrowful at Ellie.

"You never told me that story. I mean, I knew you were homeless, but you never told me why." Ellie looked at him strangely.

"It's… personal. Not something I'd share with just anybody." She shrugged it off as if it were obvious, continuing to walk and talk with Uriel. But T'balt stood there, wrestling with the knife in his heart.

"But I'm not just anybody," he thought.

"We've fought for each other. We've died for each other. Spent countless hours with nothing but each other… And now the woman I love thinks I'm just anybody."

"So how were you able to figure me out so quickly?" She asked Uriel.

"You're only human, my dear. We all follow the same set of rules, whether we like to admit it or not." Ellie considered for a moment.

"I can't imagine you follow those rules."

"Are you implying I'm not human?" he laughed.

"That's not what I meant… let's see, what about someone like Corlander? I heard you all talking about him before. What set of rules would make a man destroy a city full of people?" Uriel smiled as if she had asked the correct question.

"That is a simple one. Just like you and I, he wants what he can't have. For him, it's the infinite power that will allow him to be as important as he believes himself to be." Uriel closed his fist, squeezing tightly. When he opened it, there was a loot coin in his palm. Ellie took it in her hand.

"This is the Holy Bow. You just made it out of nothing?"

"That is the power of the Bestower. The very thing that Corlander seeks."

"How does it work?" she asked.

"Like a chef with a recipe book. The loot itself gives me a basic list of recipes to create basic loot. Though the more complicated ones I have to discover the ingredients myself. There are over 5'000 different loot recipes that I've gathered so far."

"5000?" T'balt gasped. That was more than he could ever fill his notebook with.

"Yes. But don't get too excited. Most of them are practically useless. And I can't recreate something I don't understand. Like the Redeemer loot. It's obviously not the same as the others, like it's a different creature from the rest of the coins. Not that I would subject even my worst enemy to this fate… But with that, nor can I create another Bestower loot or a Collector. Even the Second Chance has its own unique properties. They appear to be of the same breed as the Redeemer."

"Huh," T'balt wondered.

"Sounds like the Looter God has a sense of power scaling."

"Looter God?" T'balt paused, not realizing that there was only one person who had ever used that term. Ann Patrick. The name likely just sounded made up to Uriel.

"Oh… uhh never mind."

"But even still," Ellie started.

"What does Corlander do with that power?"

"I've asked him once," Uriel said.

"And as I listened to him, I came to a striking conclusion. He wouldn't do anything with it. With the Collector's loot, he's already effectively the most powerful man in the world. If he wanted to turn the country into his personal empire, he could already. But his greed is ultimately what leads to his failure."

"His failure? Are you saying you know how to beat him?" T'balt asked.

"Oh, I beat him. Every single time, including the last life."

"What are you talking about? He killed you last life."

"And yet I am still alive, and Corlander is no closer to the Bestower loot." Uriel started laughing. It was that same maniacal laughter that he had just before Corlander smashed his face in.

"Don't you see? He's trapped in the loop as we are. A man bound by his greed to seek the ultimate power, and yet he has to kill me to get it. But when he does, it all starts over. Cosmic torment by proxy."

"But he doesn't know he's trapped in the loop."

"Not until I tell him, and the best part is that he never believes me, even when I give him hints of the Redeemer beforehand." Uriel shook his head, his laughter growing hysterical.

"I could write a poem about the nature of greed, or I could just laugh at the absurdity of man."

"So that's the real reason why you let him destroy this place. It's like it's a joke to you?" Uriel's face snapped into seriousness.

"Don't misunderstand. He's only a tool for my punishment. My destroyer. But knowing he suffers with me is one of the few things in this world that gives me joy. So T'balt, do you still plan on taking that joy away from me?" T'balt raised his chin, showing some sense of confidence.

"I'm still going to save these people."

"I wonder. See, I know how to defeat Corlander. But I've had the benefit of having fought him hundreds of times. He is formidable. I've never once beaten him in open combat. So I wonder how many tries it'll take you to figure him out."

"Sounds like you're not planning on helping me." Uriel grinned.

"No. You said YOU will save them. Not me. If I raised my hand to him, that would violate my atonement."

"Atonement for what? I don't understand how you could give up on these people. This city obviously means a lot to you. So why are you so bent on torturing yourself?"

"For the things we can't undo." Just then, a ruckus came from the door to the library. It sounded like muffled yelling. David went to check the door only for it to fly off the hinges right into his face, knocking him down the stairs. Ellie went to heal him as everyone braced themselves for an ambush. Then a woman ran through it, searching the room.

"Who are you?" one of the servants yelled.

"This is—""I need to find T'balt!" She said.

"Vienna?" T'balt stared at her. She was disheveled and sweating as if she had just sprinted a hundred miles to get here. As soon as T'balt said her name, she ran to him. T'balt instinctively went to defend himself, but there was something strange about her expression. Something desperate. When she got to him, she dropped her head.

"You have to help me. Tyene's been captured. By Corlander."