Chapter 3

“Wish you had some food?” Namey said, and Ben continued ignoring him, “Wish you were out of here? Wish you had some water?” Namey was baiting Ben, attempting him to get to say 'I wish' pretty much anything. He’d been ignoring the voided bastard by making another shitty crown out of twigs and moss. The moment he’d put it on his head, he knew he had a problem, because the shitty crown was not cutting it anymore.

“Have you even gotten a single person to fall for this scam yet?” Ben asked irritably.

“No,” Namey said, “Wish I had?”

“No,” Ben said, “not even a single person? Wait, why am I even asking you, of course you'll lie.”

“Obviously,” Namey said, nodding his head and immediately changing gears.

“Obviously,” Ben said, knowing he'd just been baited, and falling for the bait.

“Obviously! Ben, you, me, we,” he said, immediately making a gesture with his hand to encompass both of them, “are in a hostile, dangerous world filled with hostile, dangerous aliens who don't think much of humans like you and me,” Namey said, and Ben immediately bit back with;

“Please don't group us together, we aren't the same.”

“Oh, but we are, at least to them,” Namey said, standing up and pacing around the surprisingly large jail cell, “They can't tell the difference between us two; but that's besides the point. Ben, we should obviously be lying,” he said, pausing briefly, “about everything,” another pause, “all the time. We should be lying, telling them exactly what they want to hear and getting as much information and material assistance as possible out of every exchange. Solas eats newcomers like us alive, so we need to approach the city as invaders, not beggars.”

“Mmmm,” Ben said, not looking at the voided psycho in front of him.

“We don't owe this city anything, and that's a fact. We don't owe this world anything, and that's a fact too. This city? It was designed for the exclusive purpose of Sunlet dominance, and everyone in it is just a tool to that end. This entire world? It was designed for the exclusive purpose of serving the needs of The System, whatever those needs are. We're just tools, replaceable parts in a grand meatgrinder made of meat!” Namey jumped up, his empty eyes wide, his emotionless body feigning emotion with wild gestures of his arms and wild expressions on his face. “Don't you get it! This is a place designed for demons, so make a wish! You won't regret it! Fucking burn this entire city to ash and make them fucking kneel! Don't you get it? Don't you understand! We aren't at peace with this place, we are at war!”

Namey was breathing hard, and as much as Ben would never admit it, his [Prince] class was both listening and taking notes. 'We are at war with this place', it seemed to say in the quiet, wordless way that classes spoke and thought. And then, proving to Ben once and for all that the class was made from parts of himself, it started quoting the bible.

'I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.'

“Yeah,” Ben said, shaking loose from his inward focus, “see, that's fucked up. Also, you're the single worst liar I've ever come across. Like, what you're saying is good and all, but it's so obvious you're just trying to get something out of me.” Namey paused mid-breath, literally froze mid movement, and remained still for about two seconds.

“I'm a bad liar?” he said, and Ben realized he'd made a mistake, “Oh, of course!” Namey said, hitting his forehead with his palm, “Doy! I've been lying wrong! I've been coming up to people like this,” he said, making a manic, insane person smile, “when I should have been doing this,” he said, then transformed his face into a vision of sympathetic expression, so through that even Ben was sold, until he remembered who he was looking at.

“That's fucking freaky,” Ben said, and Namey went back to normal.

“Nailed it. Man, am I glad I came across you, Jameson. Listen,” he said, getting close to Ben, “most people don't know this,” he said, looking really human and honest, “but the Worm Enclosure allows me to give out. . . a few regular wishes. No cost, I promise,” he said, sounding extremely honest, “and you deserve one. I know you don't trust me, and I don't blame you, but please, accept my gratitude. You've just saved my life. Wish for anything, and it will be yours.”

“I've created a monster,” Ben said, putting his face in his hands while Namey watched Ben with his sympathetic, human expression for a bit longer. When it was clear that Ben wasn't going to fall for it, Namey transformed back to normal and started laughing.

“Man! You're too good at this! How was it though, I know it was better, I can tell from how you reacted. It's all so obvious thanks to you my good friend Jameson! I'll lie my way out of jail, and don't worry, I'll lie to get you out of jail too, and then I'll get everyone in Solas to make wishes and turn them into my slaves! The free will of others can be recontextualized as a series of lie-puzzles standing between me and what I want! Wahoo, this is going to be great!”

Ben briefly considered murdering Namey right there, but then considered that he might not win the fight, and also that committing a murder while in jail was probably the worst idea. He was saved from more Void Soul garbage by a guard, who happened to be a large lizard-person. Like, the reptilian lizard person from conspiracy theories, which once again validated Ben's early life conspiracy craze, and once again put another crack in Ben's perception of what sanity was and how he should go about doing it.

“Which one of you is Ben,” he said, and Namey's head snapped towards Ben with a shocked, hurt expression on his face. He mouthed, 'you liar!' with mock outrage, then winked at Ben.

“Are you here to shoot me,” Ben asked, mourning the loss of his flimsy alias against Namey, “Please let the answer be yes.”

“I am here to escort you to court,” he said, ignoring Ben entirely and keeping a steady, hostile eye on Namey, “where you will be tried and promptly executed, preferably today, for the crimes you committed in the Citadel of Horrors.”

“What fucking crimes!” Ben said, actually outraged, “We destroyed the Citadel, er-go, we didn’t commit any crimes.”

“I don’t care,” the lizardman said, “now come quietly or I’ll use force.”

“Officer, this man is my friend, a member of my species, he’s practically family,” Namey said, his brow furrowed in anger, his face fixed in an expression of anger, his voice full of anger. “He’s done absolutely nothing wrong, and I can vouch for his impeccable character! If you wanted me to help you drag him to court, you would have to pay a heavy price like letting me out of jail and removing all records of me from your system! Or you would have to say, ‘I wish this man was in court.’ Just like that, just repeat after me.” Nobody was buying it, so Namey switched tactics again, “Unhand my friend!”

Ben just stood up and quietly complied with the lizardman, leaving Namey behind as the void soul continued to shamelessly work through every manipulation tactic in the book for as long as they were in earshot.

“I’m surprised you didn’t wish to get out of jail,” the lizardman commented.

“Would you?” Ben asked, and the lizard shook his head.

“I’d never do it. But in your shoes, facing your charges, with your standing in the city? I might’ve made a wish.”

“If you thought I was going to make a wish, why did you put me in there?”

“Because then we could have shot you and the other human, collected the [System Bounty] for killing humans and just been done with you. If the Forge-Queen hadn’t decided she wanted to play gavel, you’d already be in an incinerator while our [Mages] tried to figure out how to crack open that Utility Pocket you’ve got.”

“Who’s the Forge Queen?” Ben asked, mentally making a note that Namey was probably completely right in his assessment of how his relationship with Solas should be. War, because these fuckers were trying to kill him.

“She’s a judge, a dwarf, but she’s been living in Solas for a very long time. Not one of these new dwarves crawling up from System knows where. I cannot understand the dwarven obsession with humans, it borders on insanity.”

“Why’s that?” Ben was just fishing for information now as they walked.

“Because the dwarven kingdom has been asleep for billions of years, and all attempts to wake them up were met with total hostility. You humans show up, and the dwarves just wake up and start reestablishing their forge routes all up and down the eight layers.” The lizard glanced back at Ben, his golden reptile eyes hard with hostility. “You have brought chaos to our way of life, and I hate you for it. Worse, my own young have caught this same obsession that is sweeping through the children of the honored Signatory Races. I wish your kind had never come here.” Ben checked that Namey wasn’t anywhere in earshot, then shook his head.

“That makes two of us.”

--

Ben wasn’t sure something was wrong when he was escorted onto a lift and taken away from the building he’d assumed was the courthouse. He suspected something when the lift flew out of the nice civic stronghold the police station was located in and towards shittier and shittier parts of Solas, going deeper and deeper down into the pit that Solas, the trees, grew out of. He knew for a fact something was wrong when they hovered over their destination.

“Welcome to the Legal District,” the lizardman said as they hovered, “where all officially recognized legal battles take place.”

The legal district looked like the frontlines of World War One, during the worst of trench warfare. There was very little light to see by this far down in Solas, so the entire thing was shrouded in darkness, but even with bad visibility, it was clear that everyone fighting were [Lawyers]. Whether they were using a briefcase like a battle-ax or carrying their clients over their shoulders as they dodged spells and bullets, they were all dressed in black suits with black pants and black sunglasses. Many of them looked like demons, which checked out. To Ben’s untrained eyes, the scene looked like total chaos.

“You’re in courthouse twelve, and your initial hearing starts in about an hour. If you miss your hearing, you will be held in contempt of court, a warrant will be issued, and you will be-”

“Executed,” Ben interrupted, “Courthouse twelve? Where the fuck is. . .” Ben was examining the battlefield, trying to get his bearings, so he didn’t expect to be kicked off the floating platform. One moment he was examining a courthouse that looked like it had been constructed out of shitty wooden pallets and bad intentions, then the next he was falling into a warzone.

“Oof!” Ben hit the mud hard, splattering it everywhere and getting completely filthy in the process. He scrambled to his feet and then immediately crouched low, his posture identical to the one he held in both the fight with the gremlin army, and the fight in the Citadel of Horrors. Gone were the days where Ben would piss his pants at the first sign of danger. A bullet whizzed past Ben’s head, clipping his ear and spilling bright red [Magical] blood all over the place. “Fuck fuck fuck,” Ben said, his body moving and hopping forward without a real plan. “Oh fuck what-do-I-do what-do-I-do,” he was running forward towards anything that looked like cover, when Frankie appeared in front of him.

He did a complicated series of movements and gestures with his round body and his stubby, blunt limbs that Ben was able to completely comprehend.

“What do you mean I’m being stupid,” Ben exclaimed, crouched over and nervous, “I need some cover, I need to run and get safe and-”

Even without a clear face, Frankie gave him such a look, pointed at himself, and then pointed at Ben.

“Oh shit you’re right,” Ben said, “I’m fucking stupid dude, thanks.” Without further prompting, Ben opened his Utility Pocket and started building himself some cover from the pilfered walls of the Citadel of Horrors. A single thick, flat sheet of chitin appeared in front of Ben like a wall. It immediately started to fall, because it wasn’t supported by anything. “No no no!” Ben yelled, and Utility Pocket’ed several looted biological spears diagonally between the wall and the ground. They held for a moment, then slid off, letting the entire shitty construction project fall apart in failure. Ben grabbed everything with a portal and looked at Frankie.

“Buddy, I need you to drill some holes in the bottom of that wall so I can hold it upright with spears,” Ben was talking fast and, without really knowing it, sending mental images to Frankie of exactly what he wanted. It was all happening very fast, it couldn’t have been more than a minute since he’d been dropped into a warzone, but it felt like it was taking forever. “Three two one,” Ben shouted, and then the wall of chitin appeared again. Frankie portaled over to the base of the wall, which Ben was holding in place, and immediately got to work. He extended a little arm and out of it came the tip of a sword, which was probably the closest thing Ben had in his Utility Pocket to a drill bit. It started spinning faster and faster, and then Frankie pressed it against the wall to start drilling.

As soon as Ben saw what was happening, he knew exactly how it was going to go. The tip of the sword bit into the wall for a moment, and then snapped right off. The wall, which Ben was holding up, suddenly pinged and bucked as someone shot at it, either on accident, or on purpose.

“FUCK!” Ben shouted, then in a fit of nervous reactiveness, pointed at the ground behind him, “Just start tearing up the dirt and sucking it up, we’ll just bury the fuckin wall!” Frankie pointed the broken sword a the ground, and it immediately started reciprocating back and forth like a sawzall. It stabbed into the ground and retracted, and as it did so, Frankie skillfully caught all the dislodged dirt with a Utility Pocket. What was shocking was how fast it was going. “Oh shit this is working,” Ben said, then “No no, dig under the wall, that’s way more efficient, then it’ll be burying itself as we’re piling up dirt.”

Unbeknownst to Ben, upon the success of their experiment, Frankie set his small army of Utility Pocket Elementals loose to start digging up the battlefield and collecting dirt.

It didn’t take long for Ben and Frankie to build themselves a sturdy, mostly underground shelter from the wartorn hellscape that Solas called the ‘Legal District’. It had been pitch black until one of them had pulled out one of the glowing lights they’d looted from the Citadel. Ben was breathing hard and trying not to think about how close he’d just come to dying. “Dude,” he said, looking at Frankie, who was pretending to breath hard out of solidarity with Ben, “Solas fucking sucks.”

Frankie nodded.

[You have gained the Utility Pocket Skill &@$!#*!)]

[Your level and class system are completely broken!]

[You are under the influence of the Capitol Crystal of Solas]

[The Capitol Crystal of Solas has prevented you from exploding.]

[A notification has been sent to the nearest [Sage]

Ben groaned. “And then there’s that bullshit. Exploding? Fuck. We’ve got to figure something out here man, we’ve got less than an hour to get to court, otherwise we’re going to be branded as fugitives and then fucking killed. God Solas sucks. I don’t even know where fucking courthouse twelve is!”

There was a sound like a huge windchime being gently struck, and on one of the dirt walls of their shelter, a small white ring, identical to the Ring of Sacrifice, appeared, just for a moment. Ben frowned and looked at Frankie, keeping his head still and only moving his eyes.

“I. . . I think it’s that way?”

Frankie shrugged.

“I think we dig that way?”

Frankie started digging. Lacking any other direction, Ben started digging as well.

Ben was experienced in the skill of moving dirt. He’d done so professionally for much of his life back on Earth. He’d moved dirt with a shovel, with a prybar, with a jackhammer; He’d hauled it in buckets and bags and wheelbarrows. It was hard and tiring work, and Ben had spent thousands of hours doing it. So he was expertly positioned to experience the total bliss that came from using the Utility Pocket to dig a hole.

“This is amazing!” Ben said to Frankie as he watched the dirt in front of him break into chunks and immediately vanish before his eyes, “It’s like I’m digging with my eyes! I just stare at it and it goes away, oh man I wish I had this thing back on Earth! Yes!” He had two Utility Pockets open, both attached to his hands with swords sticking out of them, reciprocating back and forth in an imitation of what Frankie had done. “Frankie down low saving my baaaaack,” Ben sang, giving Frankie a low-five as he took care of all the digging Ben couldn’t reach without bending over, the sword from his palm automatically retracting and then resuming operation when appropriate. “This fucking thing has a safety mechanism for giving high-fives. Righteous,” he said during a brief, pleased pause.

They dug and it was easy, and in retrospect, that should have been a massive red flag. Indeed, when Ben and Frankie accidentally broke through a dirt wall into a trench full of combatants, it suddenly became to Ben that he could be a complete fucking dumbass. In the brief moment of shock that passed between the Ben-Frankie alliance and the militarized [Lawyers] currently waging total legal warfare on other [Lawyers], Ben managed to squeeze out a prayer. ‘God, if I survive this, I promise never be so fucking stupid again,’ Ben imagined God rolling His eyes and responding, ‘You have no idea how many times I’ve heard that one before. Denied!’

“Dirt!” Ben screamed at the exact moment the [Lawyers] started firing large, pen shaped bullets at him with conventionally shaped guns. He and Frankie both vomited forth a huge deluge of dirt, which they’d been storing as they dug, and despite imaginary God denying his prayer to survive, it was enough to block the projectiles and save them from death.

‘Well, looks like I get to keep being fucking stupid,’ Ben thought.

The dirt, which wasn’t exactly compressed or solid, started to move as the [Lawyers] on the other side started digging through to give chase. “Ok Frankie, here’s how we do this,” Ben said, “You dig us a new tunnel away from these fuckers, and I’ll fill in the dirt behind us. Sound good?”

Frankie was already digging, several Utility Pockets were open and floating in the air around him, all using loot and various bits of junk to dig. Ben kept pace with Frankie by dumping dirt behind them, but it was too loose and didn’t fill the space very well. That was great news for the [Lawyers] looking to murder them, and terrible news for Ben and Frankie. Ben wracked his brain for any relevant information about underground combat in a dirt corridor, and unfortunately, the only experience he had was Minecraft.

“That’s not fucking useful!” Ben shouted at himself, smacking his skull a few times like it was a malfunctioning computer. “I don’t have fucking compressed blocks of dirt-” then without pausing, Ben mentally turned his attention to the very large mass of earth he had in his Utility Pocket. He ‘grabbed’ a portion of it and then, powered by the purest of motives: not wanting to be fucking murdered, he squeezed it down into a cube. Ben had a new god now, and he sent out a silent prayer. Thank you Notch for all your training.

Ben dislodged the cube into the tunnel behind him, and found that it fit perfectly. “I fucking love my Utility Pocket,” Ben said, knowing for a fact that it had anticipated what he was trying to do, and compensated for any errors he’d made in the attempt. “Ok, let’s do this,” he said, and then opened a Utility Pocket that clung to the walls. As Ben and Frankie moved, the Utility Pocket followed, flawlessly filling the space behind them with compressed, natural dirt. The sounds of their pursuers faded to nothing, leaving Ben and Frankie to bask in their accomplishment.

[You (&@*$__!(*$& gained the &*@^^@$(*]

[Your level and class system are completely broken!]

[You are under the influence of the Capitol Crystal of Solas]

[The Capitol Crystal of Solas has prevented you from exploding. Again.]

[The Capitol Crystal of Solas has prevented you from becoming a vessel for interdimensional horrors.]

[An urgent notification has been sent to the nearest [Sage]

“Hey Frankie, if I become a vessel for interdimensional horrors, you’ll stick with me, right?”

Frankie made an adorable gesture where he ran his blunt foreleg across his pseudo-neck.

“You’d kill me? Thanks man, I appreciate it.” Frankie nodded, then continued digging in the same general direction they’d been moving before. After a little while, Ben stopped filling in the tunnel behind them and started helping Frankie dig again. After a seemingly random amount of time, Ben said, “Frankie, could you check the surface all stealth-like and see if we’re about to stumble into another trench?”

In defiance of gravity, Frankie climbed onto the ceiling and dug straight up. Ben knew he’d breached the surface when the sound of war filled their previously peaceful underground passage. He plopped down moments later, urgent and excited. Frankie started wriggling around and pantomiming so quickly that even Ben was having trouble following it.

“Slow down man, cool it with the jiggling. Are we going the right way, and what’s going on up there?”

Frankie ignored the first question and started doing weird gestured with his arms, then extended his purple tentacles on his face, which wiggled and made spaghetti noodle style chomping gestures.

“Oh shit it’s Short Bus?” Ben asked, his expression hopeful. Frankie nodded. “Let’s get him, what’s he doing?”

Frankie paused, then shrugged. The two of them dug straight up and broke through to the surface.

“I WILL EAT YOU!” Short Bus screamed as he wrestled a [Lawyer] to the ground, snapping with his serrated teeth, “I WILL EAT EVERY SINGLE ONE OF YOU! I WON’T STOP UNTIL I FIND- Oh, hi Ben! I found you! Upsy-daisy we’ve gotta get out of here!” Short Bus had spotted Ben pretty much the moment he began his mole impersonation by pushing headfirst out of the ground. He pulled Ben out without much effort, tucked him under his arm like a football, and started running towards safety. While being jostled as such, Ben attempted to speak.

“Sho-O-O-Ort Bu-U-U-Us sto-O-O-Op!”

“I can’t stop Ben, this is a warzone! Why didn’t you piss yourself like we geniusly strategized? I could barely track you scent! Oh man I’m starving, I’m so hungry I’m about to start eating people!”

“Do-O-O-Ont do-O-O-O tha-A-A-At!”

“We’ve got to get to safety, or shelter or something! Ah if only we had a safe- AHHHH!” Short Bus yelled as Ben, tired of being shaken like a dog toy, disgorged an earthen mound in front of them, then around them, then fortified it with walls and blocks of compressed dirt.

“Short Bus,” Ben said, breathing hard, “you can put me down now.”