Jericho

by Crushric


Chapter 37 — Thinking

Chapter 37: Thinking

Business, business, business, numbers.”

Thought.

Perhaps the single most powerful tool a sentient mind is capable of harnessing. Be it for ill or good, it can do so much if applied right. Sure, different races may fundamentally think different, from zebra to pony to the hellspawn of the Inferno that need to die die die right now.

But as I sat there on the balcony of Erysa’s manor, just outside the room I’d been given, my thoughts did me naught but harm.

Time seemed to grow still. I just sat there in the cold, half naked, sharpening my sword, praying thereat. Well, to be specific, I wasn’t praying to my sword so much as I was praying to the Machine Spirit of my sword. This blade was, however simple, a piece of technology, and the Allfather blessed each bit of earnest technology with a part of His holy Machine Spirit. I prayed that it would strike true, that it would be sharp, and that it would be as strong as I needed it to face the coming darkness.

Such thoughts theological were better alternative than thinking about today.

This day, I had let Cards die. This day, I had executed Blackout for her sins. This day, I had failed to achieve so much, not unlike how I had failed Taran, Dust’s mother, and let her kill herself right before mine own eye; and how just an hour or so before that, I had fed Frosty’s arm to the Terror Train, all for naught in the end, as the werekind Lightning Dust had still died. I had failed so much these past days, yet I had the book, Calêrhos, so I had won. My victory had technically been absolute. Yet the more I thought thereupon, the more my failures weighed me down.

The pain of the frigid chill against my scars, especially the white flesh where once a nipple and its surrounding area had been, was a good, cleansing pain, like the kind monks subjected themselves to, that they may be closer to God. Even if you weren’t one of those extreme monks, sometimes pain and sacrifice were needed for the good of all life.

But this was not such a holy pain.

A door opened. My attention languidly shifted from my sword. Whence I sat in the cold, I could see across a small, enclosed courtyard across the doors leading to another balcony. From the doors Erysa, a drowsy, sleepless look about her, which seemed oddly fitting, given her nightgown. Or was it some sort of bathrobe? Hard to tell when you didn’t really care.

“Champion? Is that you?” she asked.

“Well, that’s a better reaction than the last few folken I’ve met this night,” I replied slowly before going back to offering prayers to the Machine Spirit. May it give me strength of will and of swing, grant me protection, and bless my arms and armor. May it forgive me for using witchcraft to heal my broken flesh.

In the light from her opened door, I couldn’t see much of her face. She was a silhouette. Even then, the little cock of her head told me she was confused it intrigued or something. “Excuse me?”

“For the record, I’m going to start putting up PSA fliers.” I shrugged. “They’re going to read, ‘Jericho: I am not the Tooth Fairy’. I swear, you accidentally fall down a building and into a small child’s room, and that’s all they seem to ask. So I am forced to say, ‘Haha. Does the Tooth Fairy come to take fresh teeth with his rusty pliers? Now open your mouth and say ahh!’ And that usually petrifies them to sleep.”

I looked up at her. “I went wandering through the city. A lot of this district is in a state of urban decay. Lots of wooden houses with multiple stories. I was wandering around them on a midnight jog. Had a bad run in, see?”

“I… Why are you even out here?”

The answer was simple, and I gave it to her accordingly. I said it with such honesty, such open sincerity, and with the kind of great clarity one only gets from brooding upon a matter for a long time, that when she heard it, Erysa seemed taken aback. My humor was dead, and all that was left was an oppressive void of pure factual analysis.

“I am afraid to go to sleep.”

Erysa shivered in the cold, but just looked at me.

“Milady,” I went on in that exact same tone, “every night I do not dream is a good night for me. I have seen some shit in my day; and unfortunately, it’s hard to crack witty jokes and observations when you’re asleep. Humor can only go so far.”

A dim part of me noted that since Erysa wasn’t currently angry with me, she must not have found Solnyshko’s body. Else, that demon-worshipper did get healed by the powers of evil and was now perfectly fine.

I went on. “It’s easy to ignore the horrors of something if you don’t think thereof. Easy to laugh and smile when it’s not staring you in the face. But today, a lot did happen, and here I am, brooding thereover like some pretentious heroic twat whose life story was penned by an angsty tween.”

I shook my head. That deathly serious tone needed to be done away with. “So when you ask me why I am here, enjoying masochist the pain of the cold and cleaning and sharpening my sword for the umpteenth time, it is because it takes my mind off what I saw today, and because I know that were I allowed to sleep thereon, my dreams would be of what I witnessed this day. Do you kenn?”

She shook her head.

“I appreciate your honesty.”

Minutes flew by as I uttered prayer after prayer to the Machine Spirit, ritually cleaning and sharpening my blade again and again.

Erysa finally spoke up. “I was going to tell you in the morning, but some of my ponies found a way to bypass the upped security, since you seemed so hateful towards Solnyshko.”

I grunted.

“There’s some underground tunnels and ruins down there that lead to an exit near enough to the temple in the mountain. Royal guards stay away from that mountain, now, so if you go through the underground abandoned areas, you should be fine.”

“Oh, whoopee,” I deadpanned. “Sewer levels! Just what I always wanted—to catch all sorts of strange and exotic diseases and STDs by mucking about in strange poop-water.”

“Why would there be sexually transmitted diseases in shit?” she asked.

“Because I won’t put any act of sexual depravity past you Crystalfolken.”

“Is this news at least not comforting, Champion? And it’s not a sewers; those things are entirely unrelated to the old undercity.”

I have her a curt grunt. After one last prayer ritual, I said, “Erysa, you should leave me in peace. Assuming you’re out here because you can’t sleep, you’ll find nothing out here to help you but hypothermia.” I watched my breath in the cold air as I huffed out the carbon dioxide in my lungs.

“Trust me,” I told her: “right now, unless you want me to try to knock you unconscious, there’s no sleep aid. And I don’t wish to keep a bored mare company right now. Leave me to my prayer and ritual.”

And so she mercifully did.