Four's a Party 6: But I Didn’t Shoot the Deputy (Patreon)

So we didn’t quite make it to Motrem.

Not because we changed our minds. Honestly, you’d be hard pressed to find 3 more hardheaded, intransigent, damn the torpedoes type of girls in the entire kingdom. We were all geared up to take the teleporter to Motrem and pull off the Caravan Job.

“Gerroff me!”

Not that Amy would let me call it the caravan job. Chicken.

“Like it down there, human?”

We didn’t go because we caught wind of a slave caravan that was already making its way across Folstina, the northernmost continent, towards the capital. Naturally, we couldn’t let such injustice stand.

Taylor “corrector of injustice” Hebert, that’s my name.

It was a… surprisingly truthful epithet all told.

“Help! Help! I’m being repressed!”

Of course, that then created the question of ‘where do we put all the people we rescued.’

“Shut up already! Just acknowledge that I’m your superior and do what I say.”

Which led to all of our current troubles.

I sighed at the scene playing out in front of me. “Any chance you can just knock them out and we deal with this sometime next never?”

To my left, Amy smirked at me. “You’re the one who decided this was a good idea. You fix it.” She shrugged. “I have important things to do.”

“This is important too though…” I wasn’t whining. Whining implied a certain level of childishness. I was… bargaining.

“What?” Amy simpered. “I can’t hear you over the sound of winning. Didn’t you just tell me that you always win, Taylor?”

I frowned “That was that and this is this.”

“So, this is winning?”

I sighed, turning back to the mess my actions had—inadvertently—caused.

“Ack--! She’s killing me! She’s killing me.”

I rolled my eyes at the sound of the human’s cries. The demon was just kneeling on his back. She wasn’t even putting all her weight on him; she had her four other limbs (tail included) braced against the ground as well.

“This isn’t a lover’s spat.”

Amy shrugged again. “I wouldn’t know.”

I hissed through my teeth.

Amy just raised an eyebrow at me, daring me to comment.

Just this once, I decided that discretion was the better part of valor. I did need her to help me set up this settlement, after all. And she did need to finish fine tuning the crops we were using for food “You owe me one.”

“No.” Amy crossed her arms. “You owe me for getting me sucked into this stupid moral crusade of yours. We could have just let them go and been on our merry way by now. But nooooo someone had to play the hero.”

“Well.” I stretched my arms up over my head. “At least one of us has to.”

I walked away before she stopped sputtering.

Ahead of me, in what would—hopefully, potentially—become the village square, a small circle had formed.

You know, that was an idea, make it a village circle instead. Squares were overrated, just look at Armsmaster.

Anyway, there was a circle of humans and demons around a pair struggling in the dirt. The human was struggling at least, the demon, a red skinned woman with a long, furred tail and white hair, was pinning him to the ground.

“Just give up already!”

“Noooooooo!”

I wasn’t getting paid enough for this.

Walking forward, I brushed past the outside of the circle, causing the humans and the demons to draw back in surprise.

They really weren’t sure how to deal with me, which suited me just fine.

“What the fuck is going on here?”

Both idiots on the ground stopped, looking up at me in surprise. The human, a slight young man who looked about my age, started babbling almost immediately. “You’ve gotta help me! This monster just attacked me out of nowhere and—”

Which, of course, prompted the demon to start yelling about how he hadn’t respected her and attacked her authority and she was only yadda yadda yadda.

I pinched my nose.

“Shut up.”

They continued yelling over each other.

Brow twitching, I placed my fingers to my lips and blew. A piercing note split the air, as I felt a noticeable amount of my mana drain away.

But when I stopped, blessed silence.

I looked up, taking in the human and demon, both now looking at me with barely disguised fear.

Yep, it turned out that I could use my bard skills through anything that could be considered an instrument. It just took a lot more mana. But you know what they say.

There’s no kill like overkill.

Also, no business like show business, but that’s a different story.

“Get up, both of you.”

They did.

“Now.” I started walking around the circumference of the circle. The onlookers pulled back to give me space. “Why don’t we start from the top. You,” I pointed to the man, “tell me what happened.”

The woman went to speak, but I silenced her with a glare. “Wait your turn.”

The demon swallowed once, nodding.

Huh, looks like my fear debuff lasted a bit longer than I was used to. That was probably because of the new levels Amy and I had got after hitting the caravan, even though Malori did most of the work. We hadn’t had time to really look over them yet. You’d think it would be important, but…

“This… this brute attacked me during the morning work rotation!” the man said. He waved his hands, face going almost as red as the demon’s. “All I was doing was coming out to give everyone their assignments, and she decided that was enough reason to pin me to the ground and try to make me submit to her… horrible—”

Yeah, we had things like this constantly taking our attention.

I raised my hand. Thankfully, this time they got the message and shut up. I turned to the demon. “And you?”

“This brat thinks he can get away with giving me the worst assignments just cause I’m a demon!” She crossed her arms, doing her best to look unafraid.

It would have worked better if I hadn’t just seen her quaking in her boots.

Foot wraps.

Whatever.

“I dug the irrigation ditch all of yesterday! Got the blisters to prove it. I told prissy pants over there that maybe he could do my job this time, and I’d handle the stupid assignments. Then he insulted me. I challenged him and won. So that means he has to do what I say!”

She nodded once at the end of her statement, as did several of the other demons around the circle. The humans on the other hand, looked much less enthused.

I nodded once, humming to myself. “I see. I see.”

It looked like I’d have to nip this one in the bud.

“You decided that, because you were stronger than him, he had to do what you wanted him to, hmm?”

She looked away for a moment, before nodding. “Th-that’s how we do things! Might makes right!”

I let out a slow breath. Oh, she should have picked a better choice of words.

“Might makes right huh?” I turned towards the onlookers. “Is that what you all think? You all think she should have the right—that you all should have the right—to boss the humans around just because you were stronger than them?”

The demons shuffled, some glanced away, but not a single one spoke up to refute my statement.

I nodded again. “Well, in that case, why don’t you all go to the human capital, and bow your necks so the king can slap his collars on you.”

Dead. Silence.

I tilted my head. “Oh? I thought you said might makes right?” I spread my arms. “Didn’t you lose? Didn’t the humans beat you, and take you as slaves because they were stronger? Isn’t that what they’re supposed to do?”

This time, no one was willing to meet my eyes.

“My friends and I are pretty strong too.” Again, mostly Malori, but with Amy and I in support, there was no one in this little wooded clearing that could hold a candle to the three of us. “Should we just be able to do whatever we want with you, hmmm? Is that what you want?”

I paused, lowering my voice.

“Or…” almost instinctively, everyone leaned in to catch my words. “Do you want more? Do you want freedom? Do you want to be able to live your lives without being placed back into chains?” The demons, now to a one all downcast, nodded along.

“That’s something everyone in this village shares.” I looked around the circles. “You were all taken by outsiders, by people who decided that they had the right to sell you like property because they were stronger.” I took a breath. “Don’t be like them, be stronger even than that! So strong that mercy and kindness are no longer weaknesses!” I threw my arms wide. “The people here are not humans and demons, but all of us are slaves, we’re the beaten and downtrodden! The only help we have, is from each other.”

I met the demon in the eyes. “We’re all in this together. Understand?”

She nodded, placing a fist on her chest. “I—I understand, chieftain.”

Chieftain?

I felt a shiver of foreboding run through me, but I pushed it off with a nod. “As for you,” I turned to the man. “Is it true that you put her on the ditch shift two days in a row?”

He puffed up, or rather, started to, but my glare deflated him in a heartbeat. “She was… good at it?”

I raised an eyebrow. The man squirmed.

I’d appointed him as an organizer because he was able to read, which was more than be said for most of the people here. Unfortunately, authority had a way about bringing out the worst in all of us.

I should know.

“You gave her the shit job because she was rude to you.”

He squirmed even harder.

“Didn’t you.”

A frisson of disappointment ran through the group as he didn’t deny my words. Humans and demons both looked at him with disgust. No one in this camp was afraid of hard work, we’d all been through much worse.

But what we all hated, was someone who made things harder for others.

I sighed as the young man nodded. Nothing was ever simple.

“Well.” I said. “It’s clear to me that both of you made mistakes, and neither of you respected the spirit in which we have created this place, the trust we place in each other as we build our new homes.”

A smattering of ‘yeahs’ and ‘that’s rights’ ran through the crowd.

“I’m sure you both know what you did wrong, but knowing is only half the battle.”

Walking forward, I swiped a crude clipboard off the ground. Amy had grown a bunch, plus paper and crude pencils, from some of the trees. We were using them to set up a rudimentary bureaucracy. Clearly, it had a long way to go.

The guy must have dropped it when he was thrown to the ground.

“Now, for your sentence.” I looked back and forth between the two of them, idly toying with a few different ideas in my head. We didn’t have jail, and I wouldn’t resort to one, even if I could. No, I had a better idea.

“Here.” I shoved the clipboard into the demon’s arms. “Amelia has mostly finished with the first round of crops, but the harvest needs to be organized, you two will take care of that.”

They glanced at each other in surprise. I didn’t blame them, there wasn’t much food yet, barely a small hut full of pallets and crates. Though that did prove the convenience of having a pocket Amy, it didn’t seem like much by the way of punishment.

Then I raised a finger. “You will be in charge of keeping track of everything.” I pointed towards the demon. “And making sure everyone receives the correct rations, so that everyone can eat, and we don’t run out of food.”

I saw their eyes start to widen as my plan sank in.

I turned to the human “Since you seem to think physical labor is punishment,” I said. “You’re the one who’ll move all of the crates and distribute all of the shares.” I smiled. “Try not to take too long, or get the math wrong… after all, I hear people can be pretty upset when someone fucks up their food supply.”

The two troublemakers looked at each other, dread slowly dawning on them. I just smiled.

“Um.” The demon turned to look at me.

“Did I stutter?”

“No, ma’am!” She snapped up into a salute. Before grabbing her new partner and heading in the direction of the temporary warehouse we’d set up. I just shook my head.

The last thing I heard was “Though I was done with that shit after I left the Tower…”

Well, I didn’t see how that was my problem. Maybe if she’d stayed with the tower, she wouldn’t be my problem now either. With a sigh, I turned back to the rest of the crowd. Human or demon, there was always a little part of a person who liked to watch a good smack down.

“Anything else?” I asked. Some steel must have leaked into my voice because everyone else just moved back, shaking their heads. “Well, then last I checked we still have work to do. We have to make this place livable, preferable without letting anyone else know we’re here.”

“Yes, Chief!”

Again, with the chief nonsense. I didn’t want to be the main character in ‘Warlord 2: Electric Boogaloo,’ dammit!

But on the other hand, doing anything that undercut my own authority at this juncture just seemed like a phenomenally bad idea.

I’d put a pin in it.

As the rest of the crews got back to work, mostly harvesting wood and preparing more farmland, I made my way farther into the woods away from the coast.

We’d found this nice little nook between several low lying hills on the southeastern edge of Folstina (the continent, not the kingdom. Maybe names like “The Demon Tower” had some merit after all). With the heavy forest that was still present in this part of the kingdom, it was easy enough to hide a small village out of sight from any passing ships and far enough from all of the major trade roads that we were basically unnoticeable.

Of course, that meant we’d have to worry about water, since being too close to any major river was a non-starter. Fortunately, Amy had used her powers to locate an aquifer. Something about tree roots. I would have said that mine would have done it faster, but last I checked there weren’t very many bugs that lived in aquifers.

I digressed.

On top of necessities like food, water, and shelter, Malori had set up a little daycare for the children, while the adults did the major work of putting our budding village to rights.

She’d set up at the bottom of the dell, in a small ‘schoolhouse’ Amy had thrown up in a fit of pique.

It lasted about half a day before Malori managed to blow it up. So now we had class outdoors, and a ban on all fire and explosion magic.

I came down the slopes towards her to see a small batch of mixed human and demon kids sitting around Mal in a small circle. She was cross legged on the ground using her magic to create little illusions, like a smartboard, but much cooler.

The children looked more interested than I’d ever been in school, at least.

One of them was a little dog-eared girl; a beast-kin, and more specifically a ‘kobold.’ The little thing had taken a liking to me. I saw her perk up as she caught sight of me coming down the hill.

“Miss Mal, Miss Mal!” She tugged at Malori’s sleeve. “Miss Taylor’s here.”

“Hmmm?” Malori glanced up. She met my eyes and gave a small chuckle. “Wow, looks like she is! Why don’t you go talk to her while I finish teaching everyone else about the fundamental parts of a spell?

“Okay!”

I shot Malori a small frown as she tossed the kid off on me. She stuck out her tongue.

Ugh. This is what I got for not letting her blow stuff up.

I put on a smile as the kobold girl came running up to me. “Hi there—”

She hit me around the middle, forcing the air from my lungs. These demons… Still, I patted her on the head, right between the ears like I knew she liked it. “Hey there, Angelica.”

She hadn’t had a name when we found her. The poor kid had been sold from one owner to another, all of them suckered in with the whole ‘man’s best friend’ bullshit and then summarily dissatisfied with the costs and responsibilities of owning a kobold and seeing to their needs.

Kinda like most dog owners, now that I thought about it.

She’d latched onto me when we’d saved her from the caravan. Well, she’d latched onto all of us, but I was the one who knew a thing about dogs, which apparently ported pretty well to kobolds. I’d named her Angelica in memory of…

Well, you get it, don’t you?

“How’re your lessons going?” I asked.

She nodded happily against my chest, fluffy curled tail beating happily against the air. I wondered if she had some ‘husky’ in her because of it. “Really good!” she chirped. “Miss Malori says I’m the best one of her students.” She tilted her head up at me, chin resting right below my ribs. “I learned the wind song spell today!”

I chuckled. “At least she’s not burning anything down again.”

Angelica shook her head, grey blond hair bouncing around her pointed ears. “Nope! She taught me that one earlier this morning!”

Malori.

I told you not to teach them explosions last fucking night.

“Miss Taylor.”

“Nothing, nothing.” I scratched her ears again, and she panted happily. “I just have something to talk about with your… teacher.” I smiled again. Malori stiffened. “It will only take a minute.”

The red-haired mage in question snapped back up to her feet. “And that’sallwehavetimefortoday!” she blurted out. “See you all this evening around the fire!”

“Malori--!”

“What’s that Taylor I can’t hear you!”

With a twirl of her staff she vanished in a flash of light.

I stopped, letting my hand drop back down to my side. Angelica butted her head against it, and I returned to petting as I sighed.

At least when she ran off like this she usually came back with some food. Even with Amy’s miracle crop, feeding nearly three dozen slaves wasn’t easy. Oh sure, we could have turned a bunch of trees into food, but something like that wasn’t sustainable. And the three of us wouldn’t be here all the time to take care of things either.

We had to get to Motrem sooner or later after all.

“Miss Taylor?”

“Hmmm?” I looked down.

“Miss Mal said I’m really good at magic, so… if I learn enough useful spells, can I come with you?”

What?

“What?” I said.

She kicked her foot against the ground, ears drooping slightly. “I wanna go with Miss Taylor.”

I swallowed. Rachel would find a way to this world and kill me if I put Angelica in danger.

But then she looked up at me, eyes watering. “P-please…?”

Of course, Rachel would also kill me if I made the girl cry…

***

Imara grunted, tossing the clipboard Chief had given her onto a pile in the corner of the store house. “Well? Get everything organized.”

To her left, Darren just glanced at her in annoyance. “Organized how? We have to split it up and separate it out for tonight’s meal.”

“Yeah, do that.”

He placed a hand on his face and sighed. “It’s not that simple, dumbass. We need to make sure everyone gets the amount of food that the Paladin set, without going over so we have stuff for tomorrow. I don’t just know all of that information off the top of my head.” He crossed his arms. “That’s your job.”

Imara paused, blinking. “Where do I get the… uh, knowledge… stuff.”

“From the main hutch! Where else would we keep it?” Darren shook his head. “Whatever, forget what Lady Taylor told us, I’ll take the clipboard and you move the boxes, we’ll be done in half the time.”

Imara felt a feeling of existential dread run down her spine. “No!” She snatched the clipboard back from the pile before Darren could get it. “No, that’s—uh—that’s a really bad idea.” If the chief caught them slacking, who knew what she’d do to them.

“I’ll go to the… main thing.”

“The main hutch. The big building that we put in the ‘center’ of the village plan.”

She scratched her head. “But there’s not really a village yet.”

Darren sighed. “Just… go to the big building and get the numbers.”

“Right!” She nodded. “And as for you!” Darren gave her a wary look, but Imara wasn’t like him. She wouldn’t give him too much work just because she didn’t like his attitude. This was an order from the Chief. “Start organizing the crates we have by uh, what’s in them!”

And if demon society had taught her one thing, it was that you never, ever, question orders from the top.

It was part of the reason she ended up leaving the Demon Tower and striking out on her own, she wanted a chance to step out of the Generals’ shadows.

See how well that worked out for her.

Still, Imara thought as she marched through the camp, it hadn’t turned out all bad. The new Chief wasn’t Queen Velverosa or anything, but she clearly knew her shit.

And she had better punishments than just blasting anyone who didn’t agree with her to smithereens.

Imara could get behind that leadership style, especially if it meant she got to boss that smug Darren around a little bit, let him see how much he liked it.

She grinned. Man, the Chief was pretty great actually. “Praise the chief!” she shouted, pumping a fist up in the air. The woman might have been a human, but she’d recused all of them and Imara knew it was the Chief who decided to actually make them a village.

“The Chief!” The surrounding demons cheered. And a few of the humans joined in as well.

They were all in this together, after all.

Just like the Chief said.

***

{Demigod}

You have gained (1) devotion. Devotion is the currency of the soul, spend it well.

“Oh, what the fuck?!”