Juliette IV, Jamal II

PA 0

Juliette

In the end, her people won the battle.

It ended up being easier than she had expected. Once her soldiers made it into the village they distributed their extra spears to her civilians, almost doubling her numbers. What started as an even battle became a brutal beatdown as angry, sleep deprived tribesmen charged into the fray.

On the one hand, that helped her win back her village. On the other, there was now a seven-year-old with a confirmed kill. So, you know, yikes.

Shortly before the battle ended, some of her other soldiers (including Qian’s wife, which was surreal) met up with her and took the enemy King off of her hands. After the battle they shoved him and the least injured prisoners in Meiling’s old hut (it was the only non-tent building in the village, which made it much more difficult to break out of). And while there’s no way the small hut would have been able to hold that many prisoners normally, there weren’t anywhere near that many soldiers left by morning.

The ‘battle’ in reality turned out to be more of a slaughter. Her bloodthirsty soldiers carved off more than their fair share of flesh in revenge for attacking their home, with twenty-three of the original fifty-two enemy soldiers killed and another twenty in some way wounded.

Now that the battle was over, she baulked at those numbers. She was more worried about what she would have felt about those numbers before the battle, though.

The wounded were put outside, crammed like sardines into three different tents under the guard of about half of her soldiers, while the remaining nine were put in the hut along with their King. Over the next couple days she’d figure out what to do with them—she wasn’t just going to kill unarmed prisoners, but she couldn’t exactly do anything with them while their own monarch was still alive and well. So that meant she needed to find his soul-orb—easier said than done—and then figure out how to integrate these people into her new kingdom.

She’d fought a battle with these people, after all. Two dozen people had died (admittedly more on the other side than hers), and she wasn’t about to let those lives go to waste. Three villages was more than enough for right now—give her enough time to smooth things over, and she’d have triple the population of anyone who’d try to oppose her.

But for right now, she had more immediate issues to deal with.

--

The village needed time to recover from the attack. While only two of her own people died in reclaiming her home, she had also lost another one to injuries after the battle and three when she had conquered the other village. That was six people dead, and her people needed to mourn.

Unfortunately, they didn’t have time for mourning.

“You eight, over there! I want you to start cutting down trees, as many as you’re able to! And you six, grab those logs and bring them over to the village! You, you, and you, get some shovels and start digging a trench around the village! I want this place to be a fucking fortress by the end of the week!” Juliette shouted, gathering up her people. She had put half of her soldiers on guard duty, watching over the prisoners. The other half along with some civilians she was using to set up defenses.

Her first step in her plan to turn her home into a fortress was to borrow the late King Sam’s idea of moving the village tents into a much more defensible position. The second was cut down trees to make a timber wall around the village. That would solve two problems; it would give her a wall to protect the village and it would clear out a lot of the forest surrounding it, giving them a much better view of their surroundings to stop people from sneaking up on them. After that, she was hoping to divert the river and create a moat around the wall, though that was going to take significantly longer than the other two ideas.

It would take at least a week to get things barely passable, but she was hopeful she had the time. After all, one King had been defeated to the East, one from the west, and the river was to her North. Frankly, the likelihood of there being another threat in her immediate vicinity was incredibly low.

But not impossible, and she refused to be caught off guard. So, she sent a couple hunters to scout as far as possible, to hopefully figure out how safe she was right now.

Once that wall was up, she was pretty certain there wasn’t anything anyone could do right now to actually hurt her—wood walls may have held up like wet tissue paper in her own world, but in this one any defenses practically made her village Mont Saint Michel. The biggest issue would be if they got laid down for a siege, but from what she understood about sieges nobody would have the manpower for something like that for a long time.

Hopefully.

(There was a lot of hope going into this, if you couldn’t tell).

--

Jamal

Jamal had spent the night after the battle regretting being born.

Much of that was because of the spear shaft that got stuck in his gut, but the dagger to the skull added a new, exquisite type of pain that he was certain no other human had ever felt before.

Then the rest of his regret was focused on having lost the battle last night. Almost half of the people he brought with him were dead, and most of the rest were wounded. Only nine others made it out alive, and they were now stuck with him in a too small wooden hut, surrounded by enemy guards.

The physical pain of the night had faded with the dawn, and was now replaced with guilt and regret for the dead.

Jamal sat in the corner of the hut, his legs curled up to his chest. His wrists and legs had at one point been bound together—at least up until he had bit the bullet and torn his own flesh to get them off. It had hurt, but he was now free to move around.

Not that there was much to do right now. Unfortunately, they couldn’t speak, so they couldn’t even chat to pass the time. The walls were too thin, and the guards outside would hear them in a heartbeat—they’d already shouted at them to shut up when Ishi had tried to make small talk this morning. So, unless these guys knew ASL, there was no way for them to communicate without alerting the guards.

Jamal paused thinking harder on that. ASL was a language, right? And if he remembered correctly…

“The second boon shall be a boon of language. You all, and only you all, will be granted the ability to speak every language, to know every tongue. The language barrier was seen as an unnecessary distraction, and so it has been removed.”

Right, these people (obviously) weren’t speaking English. And did the other Queen even speak it either? But the God-Thing said that only they would know every language. However, he was speaking English, wasn’t he? So that meant, rather than teach them every language, it instead made it so that everything they said automatically translated into the receiver’s language.

And if that was the case…

He poked the woman sitting next to him, getting her attention. Then, pulling up his hands, he began to sign.

‘Okay, so if I remember correctly… C shape, thumb outside fist, thumb between middle and ring in fist…’

“Can you understand me?” he signed out to her.

She, looking so, so confused, nodded her head.

Jamal grinned, feeling hope rise in his chest.

With communication established, he once more began to sign.

--

Juliette

Juliette crouched down in the woods, examining a tree thoughtfully. She poked and prodded at the dirt around it, and examined the bark for any markings.

Nothing. Another dud.

She was searching for the other King’s soul-orb. Right now, he was the biggest threat—she didn’t think he was that dangerous right now—he had no weapon, and being surrounded by four armed guards meant that hopefully escape was impossible.

‘Hrm. Maybe I should add more,’ she mused to herself, searching through the branches of a bush. ‘Four sounded like a lot at the time, but now I’m not so sure. But if I add more, I’ll have to take them off of tree cutting duty, and we need those walls up asap. Hm, decisions, decisions…’

Of course, if she managed to find his soul-orb, she wouldn’t have to worry about him after that. That was plan A, but with how this search was going she wondered if she would ever find it. It turns out looking for a golf ball sized orb in the middle of the forest was difficult. Who knew?

She sighed to herself. She’d already spent a couple hours on this, and at this point she was starting to lose track of where she’d already looked. Of course, this would be easier with help, but she was leery of telling anyone about her one weakness—someone had already tried to kill her, after all.

‘Maybe I should call it quits for now, and just up the number of guards for a bit.’

She considered the thought for a bit, before shrugging. She’d spend a bit more time searching before stopping. Another hour or so of searching wouldn’t hurt, after all.

--

Jamal

Jamal slowly got up from the ground, taking care not to make any noise. The nine others in the hut followed along, moving even slower towards the door.

The only exit was left open so that the guards could look in whenever they wanted to. In theory, it meant that they couldn’t move without the guards noticing them. In reality, the guards had been sitting in one place for three hours now, and had long since stopped paying attention. Instead, they were playing some sort of primitive board game using sticks and stones. Guard 1 (who shall now be referred to as Loud Guard) seemed to be losing. Guard 2 (who was not losing) was much quieter, and so didn’t get a nickname. Guard 3 had fallen asleep at one point, snoring loud enough to wake the dead. At one point there had been a Guard 4, but he had at some point disappeared, much to the annoyance of his fellows.

The issue was, of course, that if anyone looked into the hut at any time, they’d easily see that the group of prisoners were getting closer to the exit, obviously plotting to escape.

Luckily, nobody did, and after a few nerve-wracking moments, Jamal reached the threshold.

Staying as silent as possible, he clenched and then unclenched his hands, and then charged out of the hut, right into the guards. Behind him, the nine others followed suit, jumping after him.

The first part of the plan was to attack the guards. This wasn’t going to be a stealthy escape. The hut was inside the village, surrounded by tents. There was no way for them to sneak out of here.

So, they weren’t going to. Instead, they were going to steal the guard’s weapons, free the rest of their comrades, and then run the hell away.

The guards turned around, shouting in surprise as they were suddenly dogpiled by the prisoners they were supposed to be watching.

Jamal was going first, due to his immortality, which turned out to be a good idea, as Guard 2 was competent enough to still have his spear on hand. With a smooth thrust, he shoved the tip into Jamal’s neck.

Unfortunately for Guard 2, that did sweet fuck all, and Jamal’s pain tolerance had grown tremendously over the last day. With a swift kick he shoved the man back, bringing up his hands to his neck and tearing the spear out. With a quick spin he flipped it around and shoved it into Loud Guard’s shoulder as he scrambled for his own spear. Behind him, Ishi and Fei kicked away the other guard’s spears. Turning around he used the spear to cut his allies bindings off, before whacking Guards 1 and 2 over the head. He let three of his allies have the spears, since for now his own immortality was enough for him.

Guard 3 was still asleep. Truly impressive.

With that the ten of them ran through the village, ignoring the screaming and shouting of the villagers. Now they were following Shu, who knew where the rest of their comrades were being held. He had broken his arm during the battle and had been brought to the infirmary tents to get a splint. After that he had been chucked into the hut with them, saving space for the more severely injured.

A couple people had tried to get in their way, but any attempt to stop them was uncoordinated and weak. Rather than waste time fighting them, they just ran around, avoid conflict completely.

Finally, they got to the infirmary tents. Unfortunately, there were many more guards around there—he didn’t stop to count, but it looked like more than ten—and they had gotten enough time to prepare for their assault.

Fortunately, they had planned for this.

Specifically, they didn’t stop running. Jamal bowled over the weakest looking guard, tanking their weapon with his own body. As he fell to the ground, his three armed allies rushed forward, stabbing with their spears to widen the gap, and then the rest ran in behind them.

Jumping up, Jamal body checked the man closest to him, stopping him from stabbing Ishi. With that, everyone but him was in the tent. They’d be grabbing everyone—if the person couldn’t walk, they’d get carried by someone without a spear. If they could, then they’d follow the rest as they fled into the forest.

Unfortunately, this part of the plan was the sketchiest. Honestly, the whole plan was sketchy. The fact they made it this far was nothing short of a miracle.

But at this point, the plan was basically, ‘Jamal distracts the guards by not dying while the rest free the prisoners.’

It wasn’t the best plan, as evidenced by the fact that he couldn’t distract all of the guards at once. He only managed to keep four outside—the others charged in after his allies.

Jamal grimaced, but forced himself to do his part, yanking a spear out of the hands of the man he just tackled. Picking it up, he spun it around and then shoved it into the man’s throat.

Jamal winced, feeling bile rise in his throat, but he suppressed it. ‘Ignore it, more people than this have died because of you—just make sure these are the last.’

With a shout he turned around, thrusting his spear at the next guard. She managed to dodge though, and the two others took that as an opportunity to attack, piercing him from both sides.

Unfortunately for them, he was immortal, and so he grabbed the spears in his body and yanked, causing the two to stumble. He brought up his spear and stabbed the one on his left in the shoulder, shoving him away. Jumping back, he finally managed to pull the other spear out of his body.

He heard some screams of pain coming from the infirmary, and he swore mentally. He needed to hurry this up.

He charged at one guard, who lifted her shield up in defense. But then he turned and threw his spear at the other remaining guard, the spear only partially impaling itself into the man’s side. But it was enough to take him out of the battle for a second. Spinning back around he continued charging the female guard. She stabbed him again, hitting right below his ribcage. He stopped, grabbing her spear and trying to pull it out of her hands. Unfortunately, she wasn’t letting him, tightening her grip on the weapon.

So instead of pulling away, he did the reverse, pushing him down the spear like some sort of demented shish kabab. The woman’s eyes widened, instinctively stumbling away, but she just ended up dragging him along with the spear. A moment later he had reached her, grabbing her wrist and forcing her to let go of the spear. He stumbled away from her, before yanking the spear out of his stomach with a fountain of gore. Readying his spear, he pointed it at her, about to charge her once more.

She stared at him with wide eyes, before turning and running away.

Jamal blinked. Huh, he… he’d just let her go.

He turned back to the remaining guard, only to see him crumpled on the ground, Yue standing over him with a bloody spear.

“Come on, we’ve got everyone we can take!” she shouted, waving him over. “We’re leaving!”

He stood there blankly for a moment, before remembering where he was and what they were doing.

“Right!” he called back, chasing after her.

Together they ran into the woods, and a bit ahead he could occasionally see the silhouettes of the others between the trees.

Even as he ran, he felt himself begin to calm down. They had actually managed it—they had escaped. Sure, they weren’t home free yet, but they were so close that it didn’t matter.

Of course, what they’d do when they got back home, he didn’t know. But one thing at a time—leave tomorrow’s problems to tomorrow’s him. They were in the home stretch for now, and there wasn’t anything that could be done to stop—

Wait. He felt like he was forgetting something. What was he—OH SHIT!

He swore, before spinning around.

“What are you—!?” Yue asked, stopping to call after him.

“I forgot something important!” he called back, not stopping. “You all keep going, I’ll catch up later!”

He didn’t run back towards the village (since he’d no doubt run into angry soldiers that way) but instead he ran towards the river. From there he’d follow it back to the village, reaching the place he hid his soul.

After what felt like an eternity of running later, he reached his hiding spot. A deer skull he had found, buried halfway into the muck of the riverbed, hidden by the reeds.

Kneeling down in the mud, he sighed in relief, lifting his soul-orb out of the skull and holding it to his chest gingerly.

Then, he heard something. The crunching of sticks and leaves, like someone walking through the forest.

He turned to face the noise and felt his stomach drop. There, standing at the edge of the tree line a few feet away from him, was the enemy Queen, looking shocked to see him.

‘Ah, shit.’

--

Juliette

Juliette’s eyes widened, staring at the enemy King. ‘How the—did he really—how is he here!?’

The man stared at her for a moment longer, before turning around and booking it into the forest. The sudden movement knocked her out of her astonishment, causing her to flinch.

She shook her head. ‘Figure it out later, stop him now!’

She pulled out her dagger as she chased after him. He had a head start, but she was faster than him. In an instant she was on him, tackling him and stabbing her dagger into his back.

He yelped in pain as he fell, before managing to righten himself with her still clinging to his back. She tried to reach around his body and grab his soul-orb, but he ran backwards, slamming her into a tree. Once, twice—

The third time he did so her dagger was dislodged, and she fell off of him. He stumbled forwards a bit, before spinning around to face her.

She raised her dagger to slash at him, but he was prepared. Raising his spear—which was absolutely covered in gore, much to her horror (who had he hurt!?)—he knocked away her arm leaving her wide open.

With a shout of rage, he shoved his spear deep into her chest—and then through her chest, pinning her to the tree behind her. She screamed in pain, before getting a grip and trying to pull herself off the spear. Unfortunately, that only further damaged her chest. She was well and truly stuck.

Then, without hesitation, he turned and ran, leaving her stuck to the tree.

Juliette stared after his retreating back, cursing to herself.

“Like hell,” she snarled, “LIKE HELL!”

Flipping around her blood-stained dagger, she raised her arm, and in one smooth motion threw it with all her strength.

She watched as it spun through the air, flipping end over end. And, through either sheer luck or divine intervention, it slammed blade first into the fleeing King’s arm, forcing him to drop his soul-orb with a cry of pain.

Unfortunately, he had more than one hand, and spun around, catching the orb mid-air. Making a full 360-degree spin, he kicked off and kept running. Within moments, his silhouette was lost in the wilderness.

She gnashed her teeth together, rage blocking out the pain. First, he had attacked her, stealing her village out from under her. Then, he didn’t even have the decency to stay captured (did anyone get hurt in his escape!?). And now he shoved a fucking spear into her chest, and, and…

She blinked, realizing something.

‘He stole my fucking knife!’

--

Hours later, after things had calmed down and order was returned, Juliette gathered her villagers to the center of the village, around the firepit. A village meeting was needed. Both to address the recent losses, and to consider what to do with their remaining prisoners.

Not all of them had escaped, after all. Some were too injured, or had been recaptured before they could get too far. Of the original thirty she had captured, only eight remained.

Of her soldiers turned guards, ten had died in the chaos. Nine had died trying to stop them from getting to the infirmary. The four people she had guarding the hut—Sheng, Yi, Lu, and Langzhao—were getting vastly different treatment. Yi had died, having bled out from a wound to the shoulder. Lu was currently in the infirmary, getting treated for a head injury that had left him concussed. Sheng—who had apparently slept through the whole thing—was on tree cutting duty until his hands bled. The only reason his punishment wasn’t any worse was because at least he had stayed at the damn hut, unlike Langzhao, who was currently awaiting his own punishment for what was essentially treason.

But she wasn’t dealing with her own inept guards right now. She had something much more important to deal with.

Juliette stared down her eight remaining prisoners. All of them looked either terrified or resigned, huddling beneath her gaze.

They had been stripped to their underwear, to make absolutely certain none of them were hiding weapons. They were forced to kneel down in the center of the village, all of her people standing around them and staring at them in hatred. She herself sat on a large bolder—it used to be Meiling’s ‘throne’ before Juliette arrived, and was now hers—the extra height allowing her to look down on them. Across her lap was the spear that the other King had used to pin her to a tree earlier—petty revenge, but after he had stolen her knife, she felt it was only fair to steal his spear.

She looked over the prisoners coolly. She hated them in a way she didn’t think she’d have been able to comprehend yesterday. She hated the King who attacked her, and she hated the bastards who followed him too.

“So, you’ve been abandoned,” Juliette spoke coldly, her words wafting over the prisoners, causing them to cringe. “Your king has fled, murdering my people as he went. Ten of them died in his escape. So, tell me. Why should I not respond in kind? There are eight of you here, after all—why shouldn’t I start to make things even?”

They stayed silent, likely knowing that to speak was to provoke her anger.

“Look me in the eye,” she commanded. Slowly, hesitantly, the eight before her moved their heads up, looking her in the eye. And no matter how brave they tried to appear, she saw only one emotion in their eyes.

Fear.

Fear of her.

She froze. It was like someone had dumped cold water down her back. She was suddenly very aware of where she was. Sitting on a ‘throne,’ overlooking prisoners bound and stripped naked, a moment away from ordering their execution. Eight people, cowering in fear beneath her feet.

But it was not the fear that shook her out of her anger.

No, it was the fact that she enjoyed it. She made them afraid, and that made her feel good.

She closed her eyes, leaning back.

‘I really am a bad person, huh?’

Now that she was thinking straight, she questioned whether it would be the right call to execute them. It was what she had originally planned, and whatever her feelings on the matter were, this wasn’t the same as her old world. Back home, she was pretty sure executing prisoners of war was a war crime.

Maybe she shouldn’t kill them? After all, they had killed thirteen of her own people. Maybe she should instead put them to work. She was in a major manpower shortage, now that sixteen of her original people were dead. Having them do the jobs her lost people did would be extremely useful, especially since, as it was a punishment they wouldn’t have to have as much down time. She could use the free labor—

She froze, snapping a nail on her rock throne as she clenched her fists.

‘Fuck. Did I really almost try to justify slavery to myself!?’ She took a deep breath, before remembering where she was. She needed to be calm and coordinated in front of her followers.

Sure, she had a just reason—they had attacked, killing her people. Then they had tried to escape, killing more. They deserved punishment—nobody could deny that.

But did they deserve to be slaves?

And they would be slaves. Wasn’t that something ancient tribal people did, taking prisoners of war as slaves? Isn’t this the same thing?

Where would it stop? Today she’d take only prisoners who deserved it—what about next year? Would she start going out on raids for slaves? When she ran out of neighbors to raid, would she enslave her own people? Her own children?

She opened her eyes, staring down at the prisoners. Which was worse—being a slaver or being a murderer?

She was already a murderer.

“Qian. Ushi. Yao.” She called out each name slowly, her voice sounding like that of a stranger. Feeling like she was in a trance, she raised her hand. “Execute them. Quickly and painlessly. We aren’t savages, after all.”

The three men bowed, and any remaining hope in the prisoners’ eyes died.

Juliette forced herself to watch. Forced herself to remember. Forced herself to believe she had made the right choice.

9,995 God-Kings Remain