Finua

Chapter 22: The Muster of Cerrex

I had no choice but to get over it, and fast. With my victory came responsibility, and with responsibility came a kind of dismissive dehumanization, as additional duties were dropped into my aching lap and I found myself in league with the biggest dogs yet who had no interest in lending me a hand.

"What do you mean he jumped out the window?" Noboru asked me, sitting across from me as I assaulted my dinner, chewing my food with one fewer tooth.

"I mean he fucking jumped out the window. You'll understand when you read the joke."

We sat at a dining bench outside his tent, the peaceful afternoon sky belying the unending chaos on the ground as teeming masses of goblin soldiers went back and forth like shoppers on Black Friday. A ring of distant mountains surrounded the massive gathering, and rows upon rows of tents and stables and vehicles lined the rolling plains in every direction. THIS was Cerrex's army.

"How far away from Tierena are we?" I asked, looking around.

"Very far, at least three additional chapters that you don't have to worry about," Noboru answered smartly. "Weeks or months of colorful progression, determined encroachment where every step forward is as fresh as the first one out the door, all bypassed by a semester at an indoctrination camp."

"Right. Well listen, I'm going to go find my son, feed him, and then take a nap."

"Haha, no you're not. We have a lot of ground to cover now that you made Lieutenant."

"Okay, how about you take what I just said, look for the part that's a question, then wake me up when you find it."

I pushed myself up slowly with the arm that had no puncture wound, took one step, and collapsed, which drew a few blasé glances, and Noboru stood over me and shook his terrifying head.

"How do you feel?"

"Awful."

"That's because you were just beaten like a quarterly earnings record that doesn't account for inflation. Now me and my guys have a lot of work to do, gang initiations and reconditioning programs and designing new club logos and we need you for all of that because you're one of us now."

"'Lieutenant' can't possibly be that high up," I said from the ground.

"Oh it's not, but you're also not just a lieutenant. You're the Bookworm, the School Bully, the Naughty Librarian, the d'Ruka Bazooka, the Get the Grimoire. She tracks blood across realms of space and yeets her mission across the finish line with a half-dead panache and an affinity for grimdark one-liners."

"Hey who are you talking to—"

"From all sides, a crisscrossed crowd of tenderfoot intellectuals spirals in on her like the fattest vultures in the world. They walk in staggered perpendicular rows, tightening as a net around her capacity for abstract thought until she rips through their ranks with a series of inspired yet old-fashioned dances from the plantation era narrated by homophobic speeches written by wealthy thrice-married child molesters—"

He went on like that for a long time, and soon I fell asleep where I laid, until I awoke propped tenderly under the canopy of a large tree with Ahka on the ground by my side like an alarm clock, looking up at me curiously, and Lugoke crouched on the other side, also looking at me with a face that made me curious.

I absently made to lift Ahka up, but everything hurt. Multiple parts of my body were paralyzed by a dull fiery ripping feeling, as if my skin had lost elasticity. I turned and looked at Lugoke, who stared at me with this satisfied smirk. He didn't say anything, but he chuckled this silent chuckle that mostly manifested itself through shaking shoulders.