Between my arrival on the scene and the time I had spent worrying myself over how to get past the guards, it seemed that life had yet another trick to play on me. Suddenly out of nowhere, a woman arrived in a flurry of limbs and hurled insults. She clutched a wicker basket with one hand and was giving the man on point an earful.
"Who do you think you are? I have every right to leave the city if I please!"
He was unprepared to deal with this kind of PR nightmare. He held up his hand ineffectually and tried to explain the reasoning, "Ma'am, there's a wanted criminal on the loose. We were given specific orders to…"
"Do I look like a criminal to you? Look – you have a picture of him right there!" She pointed to the wanted post that had been helpfully nailed onto the gate's message board. Her complaints were the lit match tossed into the powder keg, as several other residents who worked outside of the walls approached to add their own gripes to the chorus. A more specific order may have been a better option, but it seemed that the commanding officers had merely told them to stop everyone and anyone who came through.
Posing as a concerned citizen, I snuck up to the back of the crowd and peered over to see the drama up close. The woman was red in the face – hopping mad. The guard was forced to take a step back as she continued to barrage him with obscenities. He continued to try and fight them down with words, "The search will be over soon! Every soldier and bailiff in the city is looking for the man responsible!"
What a load of crap. I was standing right in front of them and they hadn't even noticed me yet. The crowd had closed in around my back. There were a lot of foragers and woodsmen who were being left out in the cold by this. I slowly navigated my way through the throng of people until I was three rows from the front. Even if they did let them through now, the wall of objectors was so large that the entire width of the gate had been blocked.
The noise was almost deafening, but things were about to take an even more chaotic turn. The guards at the back of the rabble turned on an unseen person who was trying to get in from the other side. Some of the people in the group took that as their cue to push through their wall and leave. Not wanting to have their heads rolls for murder – the guards could do little but throw up their hands in defeat and watch as their carefully constructed defence fell to pieces.
And I was right there in the middle of it. I went almost unnoticed as I followed one of the foragers out under the stone archway. I kept my head down and walked with purpose. When I finally broached through to the other side, I finally lay my eyes upon the person responsible for the fuss. It was Sakura. Somehow the girl who had been driving Danton completely mad had come back to the city none the worse for wear.
I didn't have time to stop and chat, nor was I particularly interested in telling Danton the good news. It wasn't my problem. I kept on and out of arm's reach of the guards who were desperately trying to herd the people back into place. When I had gotten out of their range, I made a break for it down the dirt road. I didn't stop and look back. I kept powering on until I could feel my legs burning. I found myself in a wooded grove, out of sight of the military camps and any of the guards.
That was my good luck used up for the year. Now all I needed to do was get back to Cali and Tahar.
"Ren?"
I jolted back to awareness as someone called out to me through the trees. A moment later Sakura emerged through the bushes - clutching her sword like a comforter. The dirt on her clothes, plus the wear and tear of the new armour she was wearing told me a few things. She'd been out on some adventures of her own while Danton wasn't looking.
"Sorry Sakura, I don't have time to talk right now."
"Why not?"
"Because I need to get out of Blackwake. Cali is waiting for me."
I was on edge from the start, and the way that Sakura tried to get an angle of approach on me wasn't helping. I kept my distance and tried to catch my breath before departing for my next destination. Sakura remained impassive.
"Why did you follow me out here? Weren't you trying to get through the gate?"
Sakura nodded, "But I was more interested in speaking with you again."
"Danton told me that you ran away from home, does this mean you're going to see him and your parents?"
Sakura didn't want to engage with the question, so she deflected it; "Any good lead character leaves their home eventually." She tilted her head at me. "How many RPGs have you played in your life?"
I shrugged, "A couple."
"Danton kept telling me that I had to stay in Blackwake, that I shouldn't use Veritas to do as I pleased. What a terrible waste that would be. Don't you think that we should use our powers for good? Or to achieve the dreams that we have?"
"I guess we can agree on that much."
Sakura smiled, "I figured it out! Danton and my 'parents,' they were barriers – a hurdle for me to overcome so that I could achieve my real destiny." She edged even closer to me. I stepped back and put an overturned log between me and her. The intonation in her voice was a red flag.
"Real destiny?"
Sakura clapped her hands together, "That's right. My real destiny! After all, I'm the one who knows the most about the way that these games work, right? I must be some kind of super powerful hero!"
I shook my head, "This isn't a game."
"But what about all of these numbers?" she asked in response, "Levelling up, slaying monsters, learning spells. This is all stuff that you'd do in a fantasy game."
"But we're real people. Just because I have a number hanging over my head doesn't mean that…"
That was not the right thing to say.
Sakura's eyes were cold, so cold that it chilled my body through to the bone; "We don't know that."
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"Like I said – this is just like an RPG. How do you know that all of the other people around us aren't just NPCs?"
This was heading into strange territory. Sakura was asking me for evidence that I couldn't provide or even rationalise. I had thought about it once, but I quickly dismissed the idea as pointless posturing. If the people around me 'weren't real,' they were extremely sophisticated. The things I felt were real too. How could I act under the presumption that this world wasn't authentic? That was a recipe for disaster.
"How do you know that they are NPCs?"
Sakura rolled her eyes, "Come on Ren, you can't be that blind to it! We're from another world! We know things that they never could! You and me, we're players. The only people here who are real are the ones from Earth!" I stared at her in silence. This was beyond me. Sakura had never given me an impression like this the first time I met her. Had this been hiding under the surface the entire time?
"What's your point? Why do you need to talk with me?"
Sakura placed her hands together and bowed her head, "I'm very sorry for keeping you! The thing is… I'm working on a super amazing build for myself! I've been collecting different items and learning new skills to try and become a real hero – but I also wanted to [inspect] your legendary sword."
I flinched as her eyes glowed in the low light of the clearing.
"Wow! That's… amazing. I never knew that such a weapon could exist!"
This was bad.
"So, Ren-san. Would you mind handing it over?"
I laughed in her face, "Seriously? You know you can't even touch her without my permission. I'm not giving it up."
Sakura frowned and took the hilt of Veritas. Before I could make a move, wicked branches burst forth from the ground and wrapped around my ankles. Then, another pair moved in from either side and dragged my arms down, immobilising me. They coiled themselves tight and pulled my arms and legs apart. Even with my enhanced strength, they weren't budging even as I tried to break free. Sakura hurried around my back and unclipped the leather sheath.
She made sure I could see every second of her getting down onto her knees and pulling my legendary sword free. She ooed and awed at it, holding it up to the light with no small amount of struggle. Sometimes I forget how heavy it was to a normal person.
Stigma appeared behind her and put her hands on her hips; "What a naughty little girl. Should I kill her?"
Sakura flinched as I spoke out of nowhere, "Just scare her a little."
"I don't scare, I maim."
"Then main her a little instead. Left hand."
Sakura looked up at me too late to stop it. The hand that held onto the hilt of the sword was skewered by a black spike. She screamed in pain and let go, dropping it to the ground. The binds around my arms and legs weakened in time with her injury. I tore them free and marched over, grabbing her by the scruff of her collar and lifting her up into the air. Her legs dangled free and tried to kick at me.
I growled angrily, "Listen here, this is the only piece of advice I'm ever going to give you – you try and take Stigma again and it's not just going to be your hand with a bleeding hole through it. You get me?"
Sakura came to a stop, tears brimming in her eyes. That misplaced confidence had been dashed so thoroughly that she had gone back to normal. She nodded hurriedly. The injury to her hand was horrible. It was bleeding profusely and her fingers were bent out of shape, broken by the force of the magical blade that had forced its way through her palm. I could see clean through to the other side.
"You still think this is a game? Because I'm pretty sure that hurt like hell." I let go of her jacket and let her tumble to the floor in a heap. Veritas had been discarded on the ground to my right. I put myself between her and it to make sure she didn't try to pull any more tricks on me. She coughed and clutched the bleeding limb.
"W-What was that?"
I picked Stigma up and put it back into its proper place. I didn't owe her any explanations about how Stigma worked. Giving her that kind of information would just embolden her to try it again. I was angry at her for a multitude of different reasons. Not just the attempted theft of my only lifeline, but the way in which she had convinced herself of a greater, grander destiny when she already lived a life of comfort. My weeping heart couldn't kill her like this. I stared at her in envy and anger.
"Is this what you want to do? Throw away your fucking life for nothing? No, not on my watch. You're going to go back to your parents and Danton, and you're going to apologise for putting them through so much shit. He can patch up that hole as well."
Sakura just nodded and shied away from me. I grunted and left to find Tahar and Cali. She could pick herself up.