[Tips] Many insect demihumans are ovoviviparous.
I’d really done it... Did it in two senses, I guessed.
God damn, that was a terrible joke. Only made me feel worse. Don’t know why I thought it would lighten the mood. It looked like I couldn’t say I didn’t have the potential to lose my marbles anymore. I shouldn’t have been making ill-conceived digs at my own miserable state, even if they did help me put some distance between myself and the disgust and shame I felt knotting up in me on Margit and Miss Firene’s behalf—which, I should be clear, they did not.
Dawn had come and I’d delivered Miss Firene safely and secretly home, but an answer still hadn’t come to mind. My trepidation over being disloyal to Margit (even if she was the one who put me up to it) led me to rather return Miss Firene home by rather uncouth means, and I started to wonder if her worries had resurfaced in my absence. Even if I’d managed to shake off the fear that had been hounding her at the moment, what would I do if some kernel of it still festered in her heart? When it turned into true despair, then it would be even more unsalvageable. If Miss Firene, beloved by all the canton, ended up falling into a terrible malaise, then everyone’s morale would drop and Mister Giesebrecht would be left too disheartened to act...
No—I needed to stop using logic to try and pretend I wasn’t at fault here. It didn’t matter what Margit had said; at the end of the day it had been my undertaking. I had taken the risk; the child, if one was to come of this, was mine. It was my fault for finding joy in the prospect of a roll in the hay with no stakes and no strings attached, just coasting on the good vibes—being able to have your cake and eat it. I needed to up my game. I hadn’t been the one to make the moves on Miss Firene, but I couldn’t let this become a gateway to a philandering lifestyle. No good came of letting your other head do all the thinking.
Now that I realized how pathetic I was being, it was time to shape up—at least so that people wouldn’t look at me and wonder why Miss Firene had chosen to sleep with me.
“Oy, what’s with you? You were lookin’ like a right idiot and now you’re all serious.”
As I was steeling my resolve, Siegfried called out to me.
“Oh, sorry. Some stuff on my mind.”
“Don’t lose concentration now. If you’re not with it, then the others will get sloppy too.”
Siegfried pulled out the shovel I’d left half buried in the dirt and set to his own work.
While I was fighting my own internal battle, the Fellowship had started doing some cleanup from the previous day. In the outskirts of the canton near the communal graveyard, some of the men with time on their hands had pitched in to help us. We hadn’t yet set to digging the trenches; we were cleaning up the zombies we defeated last night.
I got Kaya to explain to everyone how zombies worked. She explained that they themselves weren’t to blame; they were poor victims who had been forced into their bitter work. At this, the people of Mottenheim gladly agreed to help. Simply abandoning corpses would invite disease and wild animals, so I wanted to deal with them quickly. I also wanted them to be even more aware of what their victory last night meant, so I was happy for the aid.
By the morning, the burnt and charred corpses had cooled off, and everyone sent them off with prayers to the Night Goddess so that they would find rest in the afterlife. Then we buried them all in a deep pit in the corner of the graveyard where there were few tombstones already. It was highly unlikely that someone would break into this grave, but I didn’t want these poor folk to be used yet again, so last night, while no one was watching, I severed all the tendons in their arms and legs to make sure that they were well and truly neutralized. I didn’t want a little oversight to come back and bite us in the ass later.
“Wow... Even their bones are burned...”
“What do you even need to use to do something like this? Gives me shivers...”
“This one’s a woman... Poor soul. She wasn’t even that old from what I can tell.”
“And this kid’s not much older than my own boy. Breaks my heart...”
“To use someone’s body after they’ve died? That’s disgusting! Foul mage, I hope the Sun God curses you Himself!”
We carried on with our work, accompanied by these outcries of pity and righteous fury. The bodies may have been smaller after burning, but it would still take a day to bury fifty bodies. I needed the locals to stick around and stay involved so that they could know that we had bested this enemy force and they didn’t need to worry. It made me happy that they could still offer words of sympathy. If their hearts were truly broken, then it wouldn’t go quite as amicably as this. They would abuse the bodies, play with them, and derive some schadenfreude from the process.
We could still fight. We could still do this.
Adventurers weren’t suited to battles of attrition. Many people chose this line of work in the first place because they were bad at sticking to one task for very long. Defensive battles were the wheelhouse of mercenaries. It was like forcing a gaggle of light cavalry—best suited for quick skirmishes—to protect your fort. Still, if there weren’t any voices of dissatisfaction and the logical parts of their brains still worked, we could still fight.
Remaining on the defensive when you couldn’t see when the end would come was a tough endeavor. I really wished a report from the magistrate would come already. The people here have been paying their taxes, so do your damn job!