The Bargainer 19 (Patreon)

The Bargainer
Chapter 19

-VB-

Jobyo.

She sat on the ground at the center of her little home in the outskirt of the city, situated almost at the wall itself.

This place was where those untrusted by the city came to while they waited to be welcomed.

It’s been half a year since she came here.

She knew now that coming here had been folly, because she felt the arrival of her god. She was stupid to run from Saath, no matter the horrible memories that plagued her.

… Oh well. This was what fate dealt to her, so she would deal with it as best as she could.

-VB-

I arrived at Gorok two days after I left Saath.

Sitting at the bottom of a narrow and small valley, Gorok looked more like a town to me than a city. No splendor decorated its innermost manors and palace. The walls showed signs of bad maintenance. Weeds littered the roads.

This was not the kind of place I expected one of my ascended to hole themselves up in.

I stared down at it from one of the mountain peaks that formed the Gorok Valley.

… Didn’t it get confusing for them? From what I learned, this was the Gorok Valley that the city of Gorok was in while I stood up on the North Gorok Peak, which was bordered by East Gorok Peak, West Gorok Peak, and stood on the opposite side of the Gorok Valley from the South Gorok Peak.

If only for the comedic value, I’m considering how I should keep this city standing in the aftermath of the fight to come.

Because I could sense Jobyo right now. She felt me just as I felt her, and she was making her way … not from the palace but the outer walls towards me.

Hmm. I wondered why she wasn’t coming from the center of the city.

I jumped down the side of the cliff, and saw from the periphery of my vision as the guards along the walls scrambled their members while trying to get the city to evacuate. I landed with a thoom that shook the mountain a little, and then strolled towards the city.

I let them panic as I walked the four kilometers from the bottom of the cliff to…

I found Jobyo, a white-skinned and blonde haired ascended, standing up and bowing to me half-way between where I started this stroll and the city. Surrounded by meager farmlands all around us, I didn’t say anything.

She also didn’t say anything, continuing to bow.

“Why did you forsake me?”

Silence continued on for a moment longer.

“I could not help the city that so long abused me,” she replied earnestly while still bowing. “If I have betrayed you, Your Holiness, then take my life and absolve me of my sin. Please spare the city; it was merely where I hid.”

I came here expecting to burn a whole city. Instead, I found a repentant follower and a comedy.

I took a deep breath in and sighed and then transformed with a burst of mist to my usual human appearance. I walked up to her and sat down.

“Sit. Tell me why you left.”

She didn’t move.

“Why do you not kill me, Your Holiness?”

“If I decide you must die, then you will. However, it will not be before until I have heard your honest history.”

… Oi, oi, were those tears falling to the ground?

“You’re a merciful god, Beast that Rends.”

I barked out a laugh. “I am a busy god, so hurry up and do as I say.”

She sat down gracefully, transitioning from her bow to a kneeling sitting in one smooth motion. Her black eyes gazed upon me and she bowed again, briefly, before she spoke of herself.

Jobyo, born as Yull of the Left Corner Street carpenter’s second daughter, lost her freedom when she was nine. Her family lost everything they held dear when one of the elites of the city bankrupted her father’s business on a nonsense charge and took off his right hand as “compensation.” She and her sisters were enslaved and sold off.

She spent the next eight years of her life as a sex toy for one of the elites.

She miscarried thrice and gave birth to two children who died before they turned five.

She hated Saath.

She hated the city with all of her.

She only become one of the ascended because her master was one of the followers and she, his favorite slave, escorted him to the Beast’s Realm.

When she found out that she was stronger than her master…

She convinced her master to leave the city - to leave the small city that was always under the dothraki’s mercy - and search for glory of his own. He did.

And she killed him on the first night after they left the city.

She fled here and waited since then.

“... You’re a sad thing, aren’t you,” I mumbled as I took a sip of water from a small canteen I carried.

“I am,” she admitted with a relieved laugh. “... So what will you do with me, Your Holiness?”

“... You deserve peace, but I cannot allow an ascended to roam freely.”

“I cannot go back to Saath.”

“I know.”

She closed her eyes and bowed.

I swept.

And severed her connection to her shard using the canteen’s prepared anti-symbiotic property.

She paused and then looked up with wide eyes.

“I absolve you of your sin and your duty. Live in peace,” I whispered before portaling away.

I really am soft.

-VB-

When I returned to Earth Bet, I found out that two months had passed even though I had been on Planetos for only a week.

Apparently, the flow of time wasn’t as linear as I thought it was.

Oops.