Chapter 197 - Captivity

Abby glared at her cellmate. “How are you so calm?” she demanded.

Carlos looked up from where he was sitting on the floor. As he moved, the metallic shackles around his ankles and wrists clinked. With a tired sigh, he answered, “I’m sorry. What would you like me to do? Yell? Scream? Should I bang my fists against those bars over there, screaming about injustice and false imprisonment?”

“You should do something other than just sit there,” Abby spat.

It was all his fault. He was the one who said Jariq would be safe. He was the one who had faith in his guild. And ultimately, he was the one who had given up. Granted, he had done so under the threat of the Crystal Spiders murdering the refugees, but to Abby, that didn’t matter. If it had been up to her, she would have fought. They still might have been caught, but that wouldn’t have happened without quite a few casualties. Carlos, though, had decided to go quietly, which had forced Abby’s hand. As much as she wanted to believe she could’ve done something, it was suicide to try without his help.

“I know you wanted to fight,” Carlos said. “I know you wanted to do something. But if we would have done that, they would have killed the refugees. I can’t have that on my conscience.”

It was strange. A few days before, if someone would have asked Abby if she would trade her life for the lives of a bunch of innocent people, she would have done so without question or hesitation. However, when she’d been faced with that very situation, she had answered very differently. The only reason she hadn’t fought – and subsequently sacrificed the refugees – was because it would have been pointless to do so without Carlos’s help.

It was a galling admission, and one that should not have bothered her nearly as much as it had, but she just wasn’t strong enough to defeat so many. It had been proven against the undead horde, and unequivocally so.

“What do we do?” she asked.

He shrugged, the sounds of his shackles clinking. “I don’t know,” he answered. “Wait. Zeke will come for us, sooner or later. Or Talia.”

Abby ground her teeth in frustration. She didn’t want to be a damsel in distress who constantly needed saving, but that was what she had become. After one life of weakness, she had been reborn into another. It had just taken a little while for reality to catch up to her was all.

“If they do, it’s going to be a bloodbath,” he said.

“What?”

“Do you think anybody here can stand up to Zeke, let alone if he comes with Pudge and Talia?” he asked. “No. He’ll charge in here, and nobody’s going to be left alive. Innocent or not.”

“You think there are innocents in your guild?” she asked.

“I know there are,” was his response. “You, of all people, should understand that.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she demanded, her tone aggressive and accusatory.

“It means that people will do whatever it takes to survive,” was Carlos’s calm response. “Even if it means joining a guild of assassins. Most of the guild doesn’t kill people, you know. They’re part of the bureaucracy that keeps the guild going. But if someone like Zeke attacks, the guild will throw the fodder at him. Even if all it does is slow him down by a couple of minutes, they’ll do it.”

“That’s evil.”

He raised an eyebrow. “And sacrificing a bunch of refugees isn’t?” he said.

“That was different,” Abby said. For one, she bore no responsibility for those people. She had volunteered to escort them to Jariq for no other reason than that she was bored. Sure, she wanted to help them, but she was a shallow offer. If she had known what she was getting into, she never would have done it.

And that realization was disappointing for a woman who’d always considered herself to be a good person. But it tracked, didn’t it? In the old world, she had gone into her chosen profession – counseling – with all the best intentions. However, she’d soon grown to hate it, and not just because of the monotony it entailed. While she cared about the kids at her school, it was the shallow, perfunctory sort of caring. The kind where she could send “prayers” over the internet without really doing anything. The reality was that, like most people, she was self-interested and self-involved to a fault. And she just didn’t care that much about a bunch of strangers.

Was that a failing? Did most people really care about strangers? Once, she’d thought so – hence, pretending to do so – but her time in the Radiant Isles had put the lie to that assumption. Was it really so wrong that she look out for herself? For her friends and allies?

She sighed, “Do you know how to get out of these chains?”

Carlos shook his head, “For the hundredth time, no. Like I said before, they’re reinforced. Apparently, they aren’t taking any chances.”

Abby leaned back against the wall. At first, she’d wondered why the guards had reacted the way they had, but it hadn’t taken long to get an explanation. It was Zeke. Everyone in Jariq was terrified of him. But unlike the other gangs and guilds within the city, the Spiders had a plan to deal with him. To do that, though, they needed bait.

That was what Abby had been reduced to – being bait for her more powerful boyfriend. Her hands clenched, and her fingernails dug into her palms at that realization. For a long few moments, frustration raged through her mind, but after a while, it dissipated, leaving only mental exhaustion in its wake. Her shoulders slumped, and she hung her head.

“What do you think they did with the refugees?” she asked.

“They’re probably getting them settled,” Carlos said. “They’re not evil. They’re just scared.”

She scoffed, “They were literally trafficking slaves.”

Unlike everyone else seemed to have, she hadn’t forgotten her first real encounter with the Crystal Spiders. Back then, they’d been kidnapping traveling merchants and sending them north. She and Zeke had assumed that they were taking them to Micayne, but given what they now knew, it was just as likely to have been part of the warlock’s plot to open a portal to Mal’Araxis.

Or maybe it was something entirely unrelated to any of their adventures. Either way, the fact remained that they were complicit in slavery, which, in her book, made them the bad guys. She might be selfish and self-interested, but she would never do something like that.

Did that make her hypocritical? Or did it just mean she had a line she wouldn’t cross?

“You have to understand that this organization isn’t monolithic,” he said. “Nothing is. Any group of people is going to be fractured into smaller groups, and sometimes, those smaller groups do things that everyone else finds abhorrent.”

“Sounds like a good way for the Spiders not to take accountability for the actions they empower,” she said. “What I find really curious is that you’re in here with me, for the second time betrayed by your own, and you’re still defending them. I’ve had a realization recently. One that paints me as a much worse person than I ever thought I was. Or maybe amoral. I don’t know. My point is that even I have limits. I’ll never betray my friends, and I would never repay someone’s good deed with hate.”

Abby shifted in place. “That’s what you’ve done,” she said. “You know that, right? We saved you. At your word, we stormed that keep, and we all ended up almost dying. But you? You paid Zeke back by hating him.”

“He killed thousands, Abby,” Carlos hissed, spittle flying from his mouth. “Thousands! With one swing of that club of his, he destroyed an entire section of the city. He’s like a toddler that doubles as a nuclear bomb.”

Abby was taken aback by the vehemence of his response. More, she couldn’t really deny his assertions. Zeke was the best person she’d ever known. Time and time again, he’d put himself at risk so that he could help other people. Or avenge them. But he also rarely considered the consequences of his actions.

“He’s doing his best.”

“And his best killed thousands of people,” Carlos said. “I want to be on his side. On yours. But I knew so many of those people. Friends. Children. Innocents. So, you’ll have to forgive me for being a little conflicted.”

He let out a sigh. “Not that it matters,” he went on. “I’ve already chosen my path.”

“What do you mean?” Abby asked.

“I mean that I was supposed to kill Zeke,” he said. “The first moment he was vulnerable. That was my assignment. That’s why the guild let me go with you.  I chose not to, and now that I’m back, they know what side I picked.”

He continued, “Zeke knew. He expected it.”

Even though it shouldn’t have been, that was a surprise to Abby. She said, “What are they going to do when he comes for us?”

“Throw everything they have at him,” Carlos said. “They have a couple of level twenty-fives. Real monsters who’ve been at the top for years. Decades, even. They’ll invite him in, then ambush him. I’m not sure what they’ll use to give them an edge, but I’m afraid – no, I’m terrified – that it won’t be enough.”

“You want Zeke to die?” she asked.

He shook his head. “I’d prefer it if he never came for us,” Carlos said. “Because if he does come here, it will destroy the city. You’ve seen what he can do, what he will do if he’s pushed to the limit.”

Abby remembered the devastation that had happened outside the shadowy version of Jariq in the demon realm. Even Zeke’s footsteps had carried destruction with them. He had merely walked from one place to another, and it had been as if a dozen natural disasters had hit all at once. The demons hadn’t just been killed. They had been utterly destroyed. If Zeke was pushed into that again, the consequences would be dire.

Jariq was home to more than a million people, and it wasn’t hyperbole to suggest that he would inadvertently kill most of that population.

Abby sank into deep thought. Part of her wanted to completely disregard Carlos’s prediction. She both wanted to be saved and hated that she needed saving, but would she be okay with thousands of people dying to make it happen?

She wanted to claim that she wouldn’t make that trade, but, in the back of her mind, she knew it was a lie. Did that make her a coward? Probably. But after being shackled and thrown into a dungeon, it was easy to look at the entire city as the enemy. After all, they’d let the Spiders run rampant, hadn’t they? She didn’t see anyone stepping up and arguing on her behalf. They had saved the city, and yet, they were treated like criminals.

Or as unwanted detritus.

So, what did she really owe them? If Zeke came, and if he destroyed the city in his quest to save her, weren’t they just getting what they deserved? It would be different if the other gangs and guilds within Jariq were powerless, but they clearly weren’t. They could have stood up for her and Carlos. But they hadn’t. They had made a choice.

And if that choice proved disastrous for them, so be it.

“They’ve already picked a side,” she muttered to herself.

“What?” Carlos asked.

“These people – they picked a side,” she said, her chains clinking as she gestured all around her. “We came in peace. We saved this city from a demonic invasion. The moment they let this happen, they showed what kind of people they are. If that means they have to die, then so be it.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“Don’t I?” she asked. “They chained us up, Carlos. Kidnapped us. I think they deserve what they get.”

He just shook his head. “It doesn’t matter,” was his disappointed response. “It’s not as if we have much of a choice here. Zeke will come for us. And what happens, happens. We’re not in control here.”

“So, we just wait,” she said.

“We do,” Carlos said. “Hopefully, the situation will resolve itself peacefully, but…”

“But it won’t,” Abby predicted. “They’ve forced Zeke’s hand. Now, they’re going to have to deal with the consequences of their actions.”

As far as Abby was concerned, the whole lot of them could die. In the next few years, they would advance and leave this plane behind. And good riddance. The whole of the Radiant Isles was a stagnant cesspool.

It had been intended to work differently, according to everything she had discovered over the last few years. There were never supposed to be century-old level twenty-fives running around, oppressing everyone they could find. But something had prevented people from moving on. Something had interfered with the natural order.

Now, a war raged between Micayne’s undead and Lady Constance’s living forces. On top of that, Zeke’s mere presence was enough to threaten the leaders of the Crystal Spiders and force them into a course of action that would inevitably endanger the people they were supposed to protect. If everyone had just moved on when they were supposed to, none of it would have happened.

Abby sighed again. “This whole world has suffered because a few people wanted to continue being the big fish in a little pond,” she said, tilting her head back and resting it against the uneven sandstone wall.

Carlos said, “You are definitely not wrong.”