I’d always loved city and world sims in my old life. Now, though, just considering all I had to get in place made me wince.
I needed a damn system of laws and everything, and what I’d realized about myself during the long hours since I’d adopted the former slaves into the Tower, was that despite those games, I really hated being the one that was responsible for everything.
Alternatively, though, I sure as shit wasn’t going to be letting anyone order me about again, so I had the choice of put up, or shut up. That meant it was time to grow, which I grudgingly accepted.
We trooped across the balcony and into the Tower, jogging down the stairs as I called out with my mind to the person I most expected to be there when I woke up, and the one that had been most noticeably absent.
“Oracle, you okay?”
There was a moment of silence, and then the sense of her presence appeared in my mind strongly enough it almost made me miss the next step.
“Jax!! You’re awake!! At last! Honestly, I was starting to think you were going to sleep the whole day away…”
I grinned involuntarily at Oracle’s contact. Even through this medium, I still got a feeling of the excitable wisp’s happiness that I was back in the land of the living.
“Yeah, I’m awake, and what do you mean? It’s barely past sunrise!”
“I’ve been bored for hours! Bob still won’t play with me, and you were asleep, and you snore! I didn’t know you snored!”
“I passed out drunk, Oracle. I’ve got the beginning of what’s probably gonna be a horrific hangover, I’m sure, and I was snoring because I passed out completely shitfaced. Don’t worry about it. Anyway, Cai, Oren, and I are going to talk to the villagers we freed yesterday. Where are you?”
“Bob and I are helping the completed Golems to fix the damaged one. It’s really interesting!”
“Ah, okay… I guess? Well, we’re going to be finding out what the villagers want to do, I guess. Come meet up with us when you get the chance; not sure where we’ll be.”
“Do you know where they are?”
“Ah, a couple of floors down, I think. Cai and Oren seem to know…”
“Okay, well, I’ll see you later!”
I broke the contact and focused back on the dark stairwell as we continued down. My DarkVision had activated instinctively, and I was having no problem seeing, but Oren and Cai were a bit more hesitant. Add lighting to the list! I thought to myself.
It took a few more minutes to reach the next level, then down into the next stairwell, and soon enough, Cai was leading us through the next floor towards a section set back from the rest.
The interior walls were still standing in this section, and as we turned the final corner, the sound of the voices we’d been hearing since arriving on the floor became clearer.
There were people ahead. They were arguing, and they were getting louder by the minute, their words echoing in the previously silent rooms.
We walked through the doorway, Oren shoving aside a curtain that had been hung across it for some privacy without slowing, and I got my first look at the people inside.
I followed Oren in, noticing in annoyance that the doors on the closest trio of rooms had been clearly broken into, the furniture had been removed, and what was intact had been dragged out into the common area. The other rooms showed signs that people had spent the night in them, on cold stone. I’d need to address that as soon as I could.
The rooms being broken into was an annoyance, as I’d have told them to do it if they’d asked me, most likely, but I also knew that the few rooms I’d managed to get into had contained valuables, like the Silverbright potion, and I doubted I’d be getting anything back from these rooms, judging by the man in the middle.
He was a little under average height, maybe five foot six, slim but expensively dressed, and he was flanked by two obvious henchmen. I glanced from them back to him and across at the group that faced them. He was seated behind a desk in a stone chair with a high back, which had been dragged in from another room, considering the scuff marks on the floor.
The second group stood huddled together, fear clear on their faces, as they’d been trying to convince him of something, though their combined wheedling, begging, and cajoling had clearly been falling on deaf ears. These people were dressed in far rougher clothing, their hands and faces worn and desperate. Several had elven ears poking through their hair and other non-human features, and I felt an irrational desire to snap at them to stand up straight as they hunched back, trying to vanish as they realized who’d just entered the room.
“No! That’s final!” The human snapped at the rest of the group and turned to glare at my small company as we stepped inside.
“Yes? What do you want? Have you no manners at all? The door was clearly closed!” he spat at me, and I felt my annoyance rising, even as I stood a little straighter, setting my naginata’s steel clad base down with a solid clang.
“Yeah, I saw the closed curtain, and the broken doors leading to the other rooms as well. However, given that it’s my goddamn Tower, and I could hear raised voices, I decided to see what was going on!”
I retorted. I focused on him, though it didn’t keep me from seeing the others in the room shrink back from my obvious ire.
The only one that didn’t, predictably, was the human.
“And? I met you last night and you were thanked; what more do you expect? I am Lorek, the Reeve of the village of Dannick. I was made a Reeve by Lord Asher of Himnel himself, I’ll have you know! These are my vassals, and
