Chương 21: [2-1] Times Being What They Are

They ran across pasture while the sky darkened around them. Signy led. Hague kept pace with Tuatoru and Adelheid, though after this piece of shit day he was utterly exhausted. Only the lingering glow of victory kept him going. He glanced back over his shoulder. They'd put distance between themselves and the Floating City, but he could still see the watchtowers and the wreckage of the wall, plus the birdlike forms of pegasi swarming the gap.

None looked like they were following, probably because Truth collapsed and they'd decided to protect her instead. In the end, Truth did everything in her power to help him out. Hague hoped she was okay. He wasn't sure what happened to Piru-Piru. Too many groves and orchards had cropped up between them, so she'd fallen out of sight. At the very least, she wasn't hot on their heels, but Hague doubted he'd seen the last of her.

Since she knew all about his shades and chat, she might be a real pain in the ass down the line. Tuatoru clapped a hand on his shoulder, bringing his attention elsewhere.

"I suppose you truly are some sort of Hero, hey? A maneuver like that, five men versus an army."

"The Five Against Five Hundred," muttered Adelheid from Hague's other side.

"So it'll be writ."

"Hell yeah," said Hague.

"I like the sound of that."

"It seems, Your Highness," Tuatoru said, "that you're already adept in the favorite device of those histories you so adore: exaggeration for dramatic effect." In Tuatoru-speak, dramatic effect was probably a euphemism for propaganda.

"Though I must admit, the bards are right on one account: seeing is believing. And what I've seen has made me a believer in our Hero Hague. I'm sure the old man agrees, yes?" Gaspar, bringing up the rear with blood caked to his face and mustache, grunted. It kinda sounded like a grunt of assent. Maybe.

"You better believe," Hague said.

"Where I'm from, they call me Best in the World. Anyone who doubts either bends the knee or gets owned."

"Gets owned, I like that," said Tuatoru.

"In the end, it always comes down to possession—""Truth exceeds mere fact," said Adelheid out of nowhere.

"Your Highness?"

"Five against fifty or five against five hundred. Exaggeration, you say. Dramatic effect, you say. No. Fact is nothing. Fact is an atom. Even Primordial Chaos is full of facts. It's common. Truth—Truth is meaning. It marshals fact to greater purpose, as a king marshals men once more unto the breach. A man dies. That is a fact. A Hero falls. That is tragedy. See the difference." Tuatoru laughed in his sultry but good-natured way.

"Your Highness, Your Highness, Your Highness! You're speaking to a merchant's son. I'm well aware an item's value is only what a man will pay for it. Yet the hard fact of gold remains the basis of all transactions." Well, the money chat donated—the money that powered Tuatoru's attack—didn't come in the form of gold. Though it turned into gold, somehow. Still no clue how that worked.

"I invent no deed from air," said Adelheid.

"Five hundred grows from fifty."

"That's four hundred and fifty from air, by my count," said Tuatoru.

"You don't understand. Nobody understands." Adelheid tugged her cape around herself.

"I never speak it right. The age is rotten! Don't you see? And rot will remain rot. Deeds must be grown to greatness. To inspire rotten men. To greater purpose!" She turned to Hague with a pleading look.

"You understand, Hero?"

"I understand," said Signy before Hague could even begin to think about a reply. She slowed, turned, and placed an elegant white hand on Adelheid's blood-smeared shoulder.

"Your thoughts are most noble, dear Heidi, and fitting for one called to the high office of kingship. Do continue to think them. My lowminded oaf of a hireling"—glaring at Tuatoru—"shall pester you no more."

"Yes... you always understand. Thank you, Signy." Adelheid returned Signy's smile warmly, while Tuatoru nudged Hague in the ribs and rolled his eyes. Not long after, they reached their destination. At the end of a leaning fence, where a ramshackle farmhouse leaned too, waited a long, tall covered cart hitched to a pair of dismal-looking horses. On the cart's side, in bombastic letters and crumbling paint, was the advertisement: COME ONE, COME ALL!

BEHOLD for yourself the STUPENDOUS, the SPECTACULAR, the ASTOUNDING WAVERLEY WINCUP PLAYERS! Masters Nonpareil of HISTORY, COMEDY, KABUKI, and TRAGEDY Featuring the beautiful & enchanting Sorceress SIGNORINA CARNADINE-SAMA! The paint for "Waverley Wincup Players" looked noticeably fresher than the rest and seemed to cover up a former name, something like Lord [Someone-or-other] Players.

Two unhinged doors on the back of the cart revealed a mass of clutter inside, clutter quickly accumulating as three men in what Hague could only describe as peasant wear stuffed it full of boxes under the barked orders of a round little man wearing a three-piece tuxedo with a bowtie. The tux had definitely seen better years.

"Put it there! There! Tim you blockhead, there! What part of 'there' don't you understand? No no no what are you doing! You can't stack it on that, it'll topple the first bump in the road! Yes there's room, it all came out of the cart so obviously it'll go back in! Jun, I said to leave that space open. Where do you expect the princess to sit? She must sit somewhere! What happened to Sorami, where'd she run off to?"

He yelled and yelled, his rubicund face puffing at the cheeks, his thin blonde combover bouncing on his head. With his back turned to them, he might've yelled forever if Adelheid, forgetting the previous debate, didn't bunch her hands into excited fists and cry out, "Actors!" He whipped around. Though still beet red, he donned an instantaneous smile and bowed like a gymnast, forehead nearly in the mud.

"Your Highness! Oh what a serendipitous day. We give ceaseless praise for your safe deliverance from the Monadic See! The illimitable honor your most gracious royal presence bestows upon our humble troupe shall be remembered until our dying days. I, the esteemed actor, director, and playwright Waverley Wincup, cordially welcome you—""Her Highness," cut in Signy, "is much too busy to contend with your breathless and ill-presented introduction.

I gave you the simple order to be ready to embark upon our return, yet you've failed even that, you bloated and pretentious villein. Go, now, without another word, and prepare the cart to ride!" She raised a hand, whether to point the way or slap him Hague couldn't tell. Waverley Wincup gave a terrified "At once, milady!" and scrambled aside too quickly to find out.

"But. But," Adelheid muttered.

"The actors..."

"Not now Heidi my dear. I know how much you love your theater, but we must put distance between us and the Floating City as swiftly as possible. Later you may have as much fun as you like with them." Signy turned her attention to the three peasants, now joined by a fourth, a woman so downtrodden you could've said she was anywhere between 16 and 60 and Hague would've believed you. One glance over these haggard faces and Signy clucked her tongue in disgust.

"Useless. Tuatoru, load the remaining baggage and do be quick about it."

"Me!" Tuatoru said in disbelief.

"You are in my employ, so do as I command."" Milady, do I look like a drudge laborer to you? You didn't hire me as a stevedore."

"I hired you to protect Her Highness, and you shall perform as I see fit to that end, mercenary."

"Soldier of fortune actually," Hague said, stepping in. After the handshake at the end of the battle, Hague's opinion of Tuatoru had risen enough he felt the urge to stand up for the guy. At least against this ice cold aristocrat who hadn't given Hague so much as a look without a hiss of disapproval. She hissed this time, too. Hague didn't like Signy. Not just for her bitchy attitude. What was a noblewoman with such nice clothes doing in the Thief class?

Why, though her family was one of the ones pissed at King Nicanor, did she act like Adelheid's "devoted friend"? (Hague could sniff a simp a mile away.) Why was her knife named after a spider? Okay maybe that last one was just to top off the Rule of Three, but you had to admit. Girl looked shifty as fuck. Chat agreed. Though by virtue of Signy being an attractive woman the blowback wasn't as strong as against Kaynes, messages scrolled in his shades predicting manipulation and betrayal. And lesbianism.

One loud contingent already shipped her hard with Adelheid, solely on the back of the Heidi nickname. You know how chat is. Whatever the case, now wasn't the time for Hague to make a stink about it, not with the pegasus girls still bugling in earshot.

"Come on Tuatoru," he said.

"Let's get these boxes loaded and get the hell out of here."

"You got it, Hague." Signy turned her head aside sharply with a hmph as Hague and Tuatoru helped the hopeless peasants with the cargo. The crates were heavier than Hague expected but he forced himself to suppress his grunting in case seeing him slave gave Signy any satisfaction. When he glanced at her while he and Tuatoru hoisted a particularly heavy load, though, she was completely engrossed with whispering into Adelheid's ear. Yeah. Hague needed to keep an eye on Signy for sure.

Gaspar approached to help too, but Hague ordered him to do something about the gash on his head instead. They didn't need him anyway. Only a few boxes remained, and the biggest issue was finding where to stack them. It took two minutes, tops, which of course made the time wasted quibbling over it seem all the stupider. But whatever. By this point, after being tossed into another world, after fighting two battles, after running all over the Floating City, after crashing out once or twice, exhaustion took its toll.

Between boxes he kept rubbing his eyes under his shades. He caught himself yawning and as soon as he stopped caught himself yawning again. You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author. The sun got darker and darker. Hague looked up in a vague effort to gauge the time to sundown, only to discover the sun still stood fixed high in the sky. It wasn't setting at all, hadn't so much as budged since he first saw it after exiting the Pecknaos.

It got darker because it was being eclipsed. By what, Hague couldn't tell. So did that mean it was still midday? How? Hours and hours had passed at this point. Maybe all the time he spent in the gameboard zone fucked his internal clock? Even accounting for that, the sun should at least be on the downswing. Maybe days lasted longer in this world. Maybe he wasn't supposed to look up. In Fire Emblem, you always looked down from above. God's eye. Nobody remarked on the eclipse.

After they loaded the last box, Hague nudged Tuatoru and cocked a thumb skyward.

"What's with the sun?"

"You mean Sol? Why, is there something you dislike about it?"

"Nobody cares about the eclipse?"

"Why would we? Don't you have those on Earth?"

"Not too often."

"Well don't you worry one little bit, Hague." Tuatoru patted his shoulder.

"The Moon of Sora passes Sol every day. It's how night comes to Perrania. Perfectly ordinary."

"The sun doesn't go down?"

"Go down? Is that how it happens on Earth? If it went down, we'd all burn up, wouldn't we now?" Then he left and reported to Signy with far less good humor that they'd finished the job.

"What a weird world," Hague told chat as a whip cracked and the cart got rolling. He wondered if Piru-Piru knew the difference between the solar cycles on Earth and Perrania. Probably. He laughed. Couldn't help it. Laughed and laughed while Waverley Wincup whipped and hyaa'd and the wheels churned the mud. Just laughed. If it went down, we'd all burn up! Thank god. If he couldn't laugh after everything that happened, he'd be truly fucked. The shitty excuse for a cart couldn't fit the whole party.

Signy (affectionately dabbing Adelheid's bloody face with a handkerchief) and Adelheid (ignoring the dabbing while she cleaned her sword) squeezed into the back amid the cargo while Tuatoru climbed the cart's side to watch for pursuers. Gaspar, wrapping his head in a rag, walked alongside. So did the four forlorn peasants, all apparently part of the acting troupe. They left just enough room in the back for Hague, but for how tired he was, he wasn't tired enough to sit next to Signy and her bitchy stinkeye.

The cart's pace stayed only a click above leisurely, so he walked with the peasants. He even tried to strike up a chat, ask them their names and all that. But their sullen eyes kept turning away while they answered and soon Hague realized they were terrified of him, like the priests in the Pecknaos or the townsfolk in the Floating City. Lame! Gave Hague a real bad vibe, crimped his usual style. He was an entertainer, after all.

"Hey." He held out his hands nonthreateningly.

"Hey, hey. I'm not gonna hurt ya. I know the last Hero did some shit but I'm different. I'm gonna do good in this world." The moral or the logical choice.

"You can talk to me."

"Right, sir," whispered a peasant who introduced himself as Donk. A ginger-haired country boy, broad and tall—taller, Hague had to admit, than Hague himself. Despite their grimy clothes, these peasants weren't starving at least.

"You're right sir indeed. All we Knackless have faith in the Heroes, yes we do, sir." Hague started to respond but got distracted by chat, who found the name Donk hilarious.

"Guys. Guys. Come on. It's not that funny. It's just Donk." IronMarcus: DONK None of the peasants asked him who he was talking to, or even looked at him.

"Apologies, sir, for our unclean state," said a peasant named Tim, a beanpole type wearing a woolen cap.

"We're a prouder group than this, sir, I promise. It's just we've fallen on hard times, sir. Our color has faded, sir. We lost our patron when the Solophones took over Makurosu County and banned the theater."

"Banned theater?"

"Right, sir. Banned it, sir. Them Solophones, sir, they say it distracts the mind, sir. Well we had no choice to ship out afore they strung us up. Decided to make for San Bartolo, sir. Ulrica's capital. Mr. Wincup says that's the place for theater." That squared with what Adelheid said.

"But now Ulrica might be taken over by the Solophones too." Doomer looks darkened their faces.

"Wasn't so when we set out, sir," Tim said.

"Good King Nicanor—Sophia bless his soul—was still hale as a horse then. But now we've come all this way and got nowhere else to go, lest we turn turk and try our luck in the Khanate."

"We'd've been in San Bartolo weeks ago, sir," Donk said, "if only we took a ship across the bay. That was the plan, sir, and Mr. Wincup had saved just enough for passage. Then in Nishigurin, with the dock in sight, our new member told Carnadine-sama's fortune, and said: Fear death by water —""Ye idjit! Don't ye bother the Hero with such foolishness," snapped the third peasant, Jun, shorter and leaner with the others and looking a bit like a scoundrel with a pair of scars on his jaw.

He turned to Hague and bowed his head.

"Beggin' yer forgiveness, sir. Donk's none the brightest, sir. He don't know when to quit jawing."

"I don't care, let him say what he wants," Hague said.

"You don't gotta hit me with the 'sir' every five seconds either. I'm the Hague, so call me Hague." The peasants shared a look among themselves. Tim spoke up: "Should I say what I want, the Hague sir, or should I call you what you said to call you?" Hague kinda felt like he was having a prank pulled on him. But Tim said it in all sincerity and Jun bopped him on the head for it.

"He means no disrespect, Hague the sir, honest."

"And I mean what I say. Titles, bowing, respect, that shit doesn't matter..." Hague trailed off. What the hell was he saying? He was the Hague, of course respect mattered. He was the Best in the World, and everyone better bend the knee or get owned. All day today, he'd been disrespected, by Sophia, by Kaynes, by Signy, and it drove him nuts. But those three were all haughty bitches, while these peasants were just peasants, so it wasn't like lording over them would give him any satisfaction.

It'd just make him feel like a douchebag. It's way more satisfying to see the high brought low than the low smushed even lower. He checked chat to see if anyone was calling him out on breaking character, but everyone just spammed DONK over and over. Only one commenter pressed against the tide. It was The_Nuremberg, who if you couldn't guess was one of Hague's most dedicated fans.

Of all the regulars, Nuremberg leaned the most into the war crime meme, was perhaps the biggest reason Hague himself leaned so much into it. What he said, unmissable among the sea of DONK, withered Hague's lingering good mood. The_Nuremberg: Who gives a fuck The_Nuremberg: These losers are just meatshields for next map anyway Oh yeah. That would be the in-character thing for Hague to say. He ignored Nuremberg and distracted himself by focusing on the fourth peasant, the female one. She never said anything.

Was she the troupe's mage? Based on the sign Hague assumed the mage was the "beautiful and enchanting sorceress Signorina Carnadine-sama"—she who feared death by water—but the troupe didn't seem to have any other girls in it. Sorami looked as destitute as the others, with long uncut hair a dirty ivy green, though something in her face struck Hague as the slightest bit knowing. Despite her reticence to talk, she was last to avert her eyes.

"Carnadine your stage name or something?" he asked her. The question prompted smiles from the male peasants, quickly suppressed into their typical dourness.

"Oh no sir," said Jun.

"Definitely not sir. Sorami here's just a poor wench, a beggar posing as fortuneteller we picked up after our last girl got, ahem, in a delicate situation. You know how it is with females, sir." rintintinabulation: how it is with females lol LungzFE: Based"Geez man," Hague said, "say shit like that and you'll get me banned." The slightest hint of reproach bled Jun white.

"Banned, sir?"

"Off the platform. Terms of service violation. Discriminatory remarks." He pointed to his shades. He modulated his tone to try and make it sound like it was all good fun, all neutral, not taking one side or another, a little ironical as though he disagreed with the implication women were whores but maybe he didn't disagree if you squinted. The kind of tightrope walk you did in such cases.

"Right, of course, sir," said Jun.

"I'll never say it again. Sorry sir." Of course the guy wouldn't catch the irony.

"Sorami's memorized her lines well enough," said Donk (prompting fresh DONK spam), "but she's no star like Miss Carnadine-sama. You'll know when you see her, sir. She's unmistakable, sir."

"Unmistakable," said Tim.

"Then where is she?" Hague asked.

"Waiting, I'd wager sir," said Donk.

"Waiting for what?"

"For the perfect time to make her grand entrance." Uh okay sure. Really Hague just wanted to know where she actually was, since nobody else walked alongside the cart and only Adelheid and Signy seemed to be inside. The cart was pretty big, so maybe she was packed in with the boxes somewhere? Hiding? For all their yes sirs, the peasants were reluctant to give up "Miss Carnadine-sama" and her secrets. Looking to keep the stream lively, Hague slowed his pace to walk alongside Gaspar.

His cueball head now wore a turban of bandages, which got some laughter from chat.

"They're making fun of you, you know," Gaspar said. Hague had been about to ask "How ya holding up," but this worked too.

"The peasants?"

"Unknacked rascals." Gaspar did not care they were still in earshot.

"Always the same. They stoop and scrape, but the moment you're out of sight they plot how best to fleece you. I hear it in their voices: despite what they say, they haven't the least respect for you." Back in the Pecknaos, Gaspar almost cut down an unarmed priest for getting too close, so Hague suspected they had reason enough for lack of respect.

"I can't blame the have-nots for wanting a little extra." Gaspar scoffed.

"Rich or poor, doesn't matter. The rich ones merely put on airs, and for that they're all the worse. That Lord MacCoor, for instance. A pompous, overreaching peahen. I disagreed with Nicanor on none but this: He was too damn soft on their kind. He paid for his kindness. I'll make sure Her Highness avoids the same fate."

"So you hate all these so-called Knackless because of what one asshole did?"

"One? Nobody knows their kind better than me. I was born among them, raised by them. That's what a bastard is: a Knack born to Knackless parents. So yes, I know them well. Wastrels, puppets to sloth and limpdicked wrath. Weaklings who prey on those even weaker than themselves. My shithead father squandered our money on booze. He'd beat my mother blue—that is, until the day I broke both his arms. That was the day I left to join Nicanor's army, and I never looked back."

"What happened to your mom?" Gaspar's attitude shifted. From righteous indignation, his face fell contemplative.

"Too long a tale for tonight. Keep your wits about you. We may be pursued yet."

"Okay sure," Hague said, but he didn't press the issue. That ended the conversation with Gaspar. He slowed his pace again, following behind the cart as it rolled down a road now too dark to see the end of. Only uncertain shadows of mountains ahead. No lights in the few farmhouses they passed, though the lake to the left reflected a flickering ribbon. All quiet besides the clop of horse hooves and the rattle of the cart's wheels. Odd terrain, actually.

Maybe in the day he'd see it better, but the impression he got was of straight flat sprawling farmland that abruptly and immediately turned to tall jagged peaks. No intermediate zone. It reminded him of... Denver. His ex-girlfriend, Tavi, lived in Denver. Once he shelled out the money for a ticket to visit her. (She never visited him, of course.) Denver looked the same way. Flat eternity violently ruptured... Denver. Lost in that endless airport.

Finally finding his way outside, where a giant blue mustang's red eyes evoked a premonition of doom. Tavi forgot to pick him up. She was high, high the entire time, a total mess, her apartment a mess, strung out, and yet she put on a performance for him, a spray of ceaseless excitement and futile energy, unmellowed by the marijuana. Her sentences breathless and jammed together and they lacked a single thing to talk about so in a ruinous room they played Three Houses on her cracked-screen Switch. She'd sold her TV.

He tried to touch her and she freaked out, babbled about trauma, mentioned a high school molestation so shiftily and uncertainly Hague knew she'd made it up on the spot, and by the end of the night she was vomiting her guts out into the toilet.

"I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm so so sorry," she said to him or God, "I can't I can't I can't it's over the world's ending they'll come to kill us all they don't need us anymore they'll put us in the showers like Jews. They don't need anyone anymore, they have AI. They'll put us in the showers Hague..." Then the next day was like nothing happened, and she was excited again and positive and performing, performing, always performing.

And she still performed to this day, now for 4, 000 average viewers as a variety vtuber, making twenty times Hague's take. He sometimes saw her anime girl avatar and thought: she looks more real than she did in Denver. He blinked. Did he only think that or say it out loud? In his exhaustion he'd gotten lost in thoughts (all alone), forgetting even basic interaction with chat. Hemorrhaging viewers, but with night truly fallen and nobody on their ass it seemed it didn't matter. He should sign off, really.

"Alright chat, looks like that's all for today. What a fucking stream. How many times did I nearly die there? Christ. Who the hell knows what's going on tomorrow, or the next day. If there's even a way for me to get home. Sophia doesn't want you guys seeing her but sooner or later I've got to show you what she's like, it's insane. That's all I can say, chat, she's fucking insane. For now—" HeyManHey: WAIT you cant go yet"Can't go yet? How long have I been streaming dude, seven, eight hours?

I didn't wake up today prepared for a marathon, I gotta sleep." HeyManHey: you owe us"Owe you what bro? I already gave you the best stream of my life, literally risking my neck out here for your entertainment. What more can I possibly owe you—" HeyManHey: the people DEMAND adelhide reads their donations Oh. Right. He did promise that, didn't he? Well, fine. A great entertainer always keeps his promises. He turned to the back of the cart, where the noble ladies rode, and clapped his hand against the wooden door.

"Hey Addy. Needja to do something real quick."