Chương 139: 52- PRISONER OF A THOUSAND YEARS

It had been 8 days since Uriel Grace was mounted to the Bestower. He expected to be seen as a punishment, a message to his flock to look upon his shame and shun the beaten body that tarnished the statue they built in honor of him. But instead, it only further deified the shrine. Every day they saw him up there, and despite having no food or water and being exposed to the salty sea air, he persisted.

Not only that, but he still gave them strength, strength that they would need to survive in a world that had taken their friends and family. They gathered in mass in the square where they would take turns, laying their foreheads on the toes of the statue and praying to the man above. T'balt watched them with heavy concern. There were no outward problems with their worship. It was a moral one. The Graceland he pictured in his head was a normal place where people would raise children and grow old peacefully.

He pictured Acelin growing up here, looking up at that statue every day. He didn't like the idea of him being indoctrinated into this strange religion of theirs. How long was Uriel going to keep this up? He had to come down eventually.

"Please stop this! I am not your idol! I'm cursed, don't you see! Leave me to my punishment! Please!" The words were faint. Uriel was so high in the air that the gathering below either didn't hear him or feigned like they didn't. It wasn't until David came along that the crowd started to clear. He yelled at them to disperse under order of the Bestower.

"Get back to your lives! Your worship goes unheard! Do you hear!? THIS BE HIS PUNISHMENT!" the tall man yelled as they went.

"Punishment…" T'balt wondered if there was any truth to that. What if his ability to redeem really was some sort of cosmic punishment for some crime he didn't know he committed? What if it was a curse and not a boon as he had always thought? Sometimes it felt that way. It was the most power he ever had in his life and yet… it was meaningless if reality kept resetting. At what point would it stop? Tyene said she was about 120 years old. Uriel was 1000. Monan was, however, old; over 11, 000 lives would make a man.

T'balt wasn't even 30. What would he be like when he reached their ages? It was a question living rent-free in his head, but at the same time, it was so far away that he could barely fathom an answer. He paced back and forth inside the library, wondering why this was bothering him so much. That's when he noticed Acelin behind one of the bookshelves playing with something. It looked to be an orange jumpsuit.

"Is that… Acelin, what are you doing?" The young boy's eyes widened, and he flinched like a dog getting caught eating something they weren't supposed to.

"Uhh, nothing." He looked like he was trying to wear the jumpsuit, but it was twice his size. The legs of it dragged across the floor as he tried to look innocent.

"Is that a prison jumpsuit?"

"So what of it?" Acelin was trying to act tough.

"I was doing some vigilante work when I got caught and put in jail." Apparently he wasn't too old to play pretend.

"Get out of that. You really shouldn't play in other people's stuff. Where'd you even get that?" He started taking the thing off.

"It was in one of the closets. But I was just messing around. Don't be mad."

"I'm not…" He took the clothes from the kid, getting a look at it. It must've been Uriel's. He must've been wearing this when he first came here. He checked the front of it. The name printed on it was D. Siva. Uriel Grace was a pen name, he remembered Ellie saying. On the back, it said "Inmate at Burwood Penitentiary." He ran to knock on one of the back room doors.

"Tyene, do you still have the Wanderer Loot? I need it for something." After a few minutes, the door slowly creaked open, and Tyene answered, barely wearing anything except a t-shirt and a cheap pair of shades.

"God, T'bag, do you have to talk so bright…" she moaned.

"What? Are you alright?"

"Fine.. Perfectly fine. Uhh… the Wandereerr… It's in your bag… somewhere." He raised an eyebrow at the slurring in her speech. She had been coming home like this for the past few days. It caused some concern, but it wasn't at the top of his list at the moment. He thanked her, and she lazily shut the door as some man's voice he didn't recognize groaned from her room. He eventually found the piece and took off to do some research. It wasn't until the next day that he was able to locate the penitentiary.

It was tough to get a stable internet connection anywhere, so he had to rely on old-fashioned maps to locate it. His Wanderer took him as close as he knew, and he hoofed it with a speed loot the rest of the way. The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. It was bright in the afternoon when he got to the prison. It looked like a tornado had hit it. Fences were caved in if not completely pushed over.

The monumentally thick walls had several holes that looked like some giant had just punched through them. And the place was still infested with demons. Just a bunch of vagabonds that made their way in, but because of the layered protections of the prison, couldn't find the specific set of holes that led back out. It had been a while since T'balt had to fight some of the grunt types, but he figured he could use the exercise.

He sped around the place, driving his foot into the jaw of a mutant porcupine, taking it out in one blow. A vagrant ice monster started swinging at him with an ice sword that he'd never seen before. But it couldn't hit what it couldn't catch. He also had the Loot Thief on him, so once he got behind the creature, it was game over. It turned into a normal-looking Komodo dragon and crawled across the floor harmlessly. He stared it down as it crawled away.

"Poor guy. How many of you are just normal animals that got their wires crossed? Yet you destroyed most of the world." He couldn't think about that right now. He searched around the prison for about half an hour, clearing out demons and figuring out the labyrinth-like design. Then he came upon a filing room with a cabinet labeled inmate files. He flicked through all the papers until he found the file for D. Siva. It was mostly intact, and on the front of it, there was a picture of Uriel.

He had dark hair and glasses. Definitely not the hardened killer look. At the top, the name listed was Damian Siva. Serving life without parole for a double homicide. He continued to read on and on and on… Uriel closed his eyes, letting the autumn sea sun pelt his body and dry the whip marks festering on his body. His arms had become numb, being hung above his head for so long, and his entire body had become unbearably dry. Despite it, he tried to keep his head clear and silent for as long as possible.

But even that was contradictory to his goal. Meditation was a form of soothing the body and acceptance. He had used it to get to this point where the chaos of his world had a clear answer. But if he used it now, he couldn't live in his suffering. So he opened his eyes and let his mind race. T'balt was there beneath him, sitting at the edge of the stone book and looking down on the people below.

"T'balt?" Uriel raised his head.

"What are you doing?"

"They are good people." he was noticing how many of them still walked by under the statue just to look at him, but not hold an official gathering.

"They're devoted, unquestionably."

"I know… they were all readers of mine. I wasn't able to meet them before, but they were devoted followers of the newsletter my publisher sent out on my behalf. Since I first decided to build Graceland, I've gotten to know every single one of them, and I love them all… Who knows, maybe Corlander will be merciful this time and see me killed before annihilating them all."

"If you care about them, then help them. You know you can put a stop to Corlander. I haven't told them what's coming yet. I haven't told them that you've brought them here to abandon them. You can still come down."

"If I didn't care for them, then this wouldn't be suffering. That's the point."

"Yeah… I looked into your case. I understand why you did what you did."

"Do you? … It was a monstrous crime driven by vanity. I made myself judge. A title I didn't earn."

"But you were angry. The man killed your wife and got off because of bad police practice. You needed justice."

"No… I needed to satisfy my rage. My wife died in a common mugging. He didn't intend to kill her, but she was always headstrong. She fought him and got a knife to the throat for it. I, on the other hand, sought him with the sole purpose of taking his life. Then I took his girlfriend as well. An innocent soul. But she was connected to him."

"So you wanted to take from him what he took from you… It was your version of justice at the time. It wasn't right. Don't get me wrong. You shouldn't have killed either of them. Especially not a woman that had nothing to do with what happened to your wife. But you died a long time ago. Life sentence served. When will it be enough?"

"When I no longer wake up in this world." T'balt nodded. It was an answer he was expecting. He looked down at the people growing increasingly curious about their conversation below.

"What about them? If this is a punishment, what crime did they commit to get trapped in this cycle with you?" Uriel hesitated.

"In all honesty… I'm not even sure they're real anymore or just druids sent to facilitate my hell and break my spirit."

"They're real, Uriel. And you're the one deciding that their lives aren't worth more than your torment. If you have the power to save them and you don't, then you might as well be the one killing them. You're still playing the judge." Uriel's blue eyes widened.

"Maybe the real reason you feel like you're being punished is that you haven't learned the lesson you were supposed to. Even after all these years." That was all he came to say. T'balt teleported away, leaving him hanging up there, eyes open, mind flooding with chaos. But down in the square he could see a commotion starting. A woman seemed to be setting up a stereo system, a honey brown wearing a glittering white gown. He didn't know what was happening until she had a microphone in hand and was looking up at him.

"Is this thing on?" He recognized the voice. It was Lila Bloom's, the singer who had once been a slave in this very city. She tapped the microphone to ensure that it was indeed on.

"What are you doing?" Uriel said. She couldn't hear him. But she likely knew what he was thinking.

"That young man asked me what I wanted to do here in Graceland. I wanted to continue singing but couldn't find a real use for it here. I hadn't gotten the chance in a while, but he's allowing me to come here and sing you a song every day at noon to thank you for saving our lives. I hope you don't mind." The sounds of a beautiful light humming traveled the streets of Graceland, filling everyone with music that put their minds at ease.

No matter how much Uriel yelled at her to stop and leave him, she couldn't hear him. She just continued to hum until she found the confidence in her voice to turn the humming into a ballad. He fell silent, listening to her. Even though all he wanted was to suffer in his chaos, reluctantly he allowed the woman's voice to bring him a moment of peace.