Rain. There was no rhythm in the rain. It struck the ground aimlessly, purposelessly, capriciously, like a child stomping a line of ants. Solera hated the rain. Because of it, he could not remember the last time he had been warm, or the last time he had experienced true silence.

Like the line of ants, Solera and his line of prisoners had been crushed by the rain.

He hated the rain. It was supposed to wash away all the blood, yet Rasmurnov had still found the rock he had thrown at Jumpy. No doubt the rock had a stain of some sort that had been left untouched over the course of the night’s precipitation.

The rain made the rivers. He hated the river. It was supposed to wash away the body, yet Rasmurnov had been able to find that too. Rasmurnov talked about how the river was a sign of tribulation and bad luck for the people of the Tornado sect. Fuck that. It was him who got screwed by the river. If the body wasn’t stuck a mere five kilometers downstream for Rasmurnov to find, then would he have reached the conclusions he did? Definitely not! And now, because of that river, Solera was in the worst quandary of his life.

It had been partially his fault, he admitted. Greatly, even. But he had to do what he had to do. Jumpy was a great danger to everyone. He couldn’t have been allowed to stay alive! Yes, Rasmurnov went through the trouble to investigate the killings, conveniently found the body, decided not to believe the old man’s story, and then declared that the proper, proportionate retribution was to execute somebody every single day, but how could Solera have predicted such a chain of events??

Yes, it was Solera’s fault. But he firmly believed that his decision was the right one, and that everything that could’ve gone wrong did. He couldn’t be blamed for that. But the situation was what it was. He had to confess, or else another innocent prisoner would die tomorrow.

The problem was… Solera didn’t want to die.

Next to him, Lem sniffled. He seemed to be in poor health lately. Having poor nutrition, weather, and cultivation tended to do that.

“It’s not fair.” Lem muttered. Oh, this again.

“Rasmurnov says that someone killed those two, and the punishment is that all of us have to take turns dying until that someone confesses?” He looked angry as he sniffled again. “I didn’t do anything! Why do I have to be punished? And the guy who died was Jumpy! You know he’s crazy! Maybe he killed Helga and then himself or something. How does Rasmurnov know what happened?”

Solera glanced off to the side, a feeling akin to an angry bitterness welling up in his stomach. Looks like someone understood him. Too bad it had to be Lem.

“It’s all unfair. I wish I was born on another Land or whatever. Or just not born at all.” Lem said glumly.

Solera flicked some water out of his hair as they climbed up an unusually steep mountain path. “It’s reality. I don’t like it either.” Actually, given the context, he hated it much more than Lem did. He was sure of it. “But there’s no point whining about it. Just face it and deal with what’s in front of you, right?”

Always keep moving. Never dwell on the past. As before, it was his fault for making what he still thought was the right decision. Fine. Now, his task was to talk himself into confessing.

“Yeah, you’re right. But what can I do?” Lem sniffled again. “I’m powerless. Just waiting to die.”

Solera didn’t know what to say about that. Lem was powerless, but Solera wasn’t. All he needed to do was confess.

“I don’t want to die.” Lem sighed. “I hate life, but I don’t want to die. Do you know what I mean?”

Solera nodded. He didn’t want to die, either. But unlike Lem, he had to.

“I hope the killer confesses, if there actually is one. It wouldn’t be fair if I died because of this.” Lem kicked a pebble off the side of the trail, shaking his head in disgust.

Solera looked away frustratedly. Yeah, it wouldn’t be fair. But if they were going to talk about fair, a whole slew of things that had led up to this moment had not been fair: him getting whipped for breaking a nose, Jumpy killing a prisoner, Jumpy’s body not flowing all the way downstream, Rasmurnov executing the old man for lying, and the issuing of this ultimatum. It wasn’t fair to Lem now, but unfairness was nothing new to Solera and many others.

Fuck fairness. Actually, it was fairness which dictated that he confess. Lem didn’t want to die. Well, he didn’t want to die either. It was fairness that said Solera’s execution would be “fair” while Lem’s would not, and it was fairness which assumed Solera’s life was worth less than the combined lives of the other prisoners who would be executed. But what did fairness even mean in this shitty world? And who decided the value of a life? To him, fairness meant nothing. But his life was everything.

He was in deep turmoil for the rest of the day. He wanted to be decisive, but he simply couldn’t. Not when the decision was to willingly commit suicide.

When night fell, they were led up into another village, this one a shallow but vast cavern in the heart of the mountain. Columns of wet stone and small pools of stagnant water peppered the area, and a mess of black tubes covered the ground. The tubes dipped in and out of the pools and could be seen disappearing into the adjoining tunnels.

The captives were forced to stay there as a group of villagers ran about moving objects. Solera stared at a steaming pool of water not far away from him, paying it all scant attention. He was going to confess, but when? He obviously couldn’t do it now. Maybe he could do it quietly tonight, or the next morning. Rasmurnov would be assembling them all together at that time, waiting for confessions. Yes, the next morning would be good. As long as it wasn’t right this moment.

This night would be his last, he realized forlornly. His entire life, years of living at the Grove, all those desperate life-and-death struggles, they all led to this. His neck being sliced away like a ham, by a man who, judging from his facial expressions, thought killing was no different from cooking.

Vinoh’s face appeared in his mind. Solera thought back to all his years with him: running through the wheat fields of the Grove, sleeping in the treehouse with the steps grown from its roots, listening to the myriad things his father had to say.

Vinoh, as he recalled, had not wanted him to go to Fortress Hickory. How right he had been. Solera wondered what would’ve happened if he had stayed at the Grove that day. He would still be that shy, innocent, empty-headed child who thought war was “cool”. Only now, after everything he had been through, did he understand that Chianti’s account of her mercenary group fighting for and against every country on the eastern side of the Warring States was a sarcastic jab at the senseless realities of life.

If he had stayed, he would never have met Macaw or Verreaux or Fischer or Lem or Helga or Jumpy or Jakovich or anyone else. He would not have given much thought to Guinness’s death, and Chianti would only be an attractive face, not the one stable anchor he had in his life at the tunnels.

He would have been living an empty life, devoid of all meaning. But that was infinitely better than the empty death he would have to face the next day.

“All done, sir.” A middle-aged man jokingly saluted Rasmurnov. “Make sure to send someone to the ma’am to tell us the news, yeah?”

Rasmurnov nodded as he turned around. “Get them in.”

They were led around the pools into another large chamber. The dimly lit chargelights hung throughout the ceiling revealed it was completely barren. Patches of dry ground, however, indicated that anything that had once been in the chamber had been recently removed.

“If you need to go, knock on the walls as you walk through the tunnel.” A guard barked at them after the last prisoner entered the room. “Otherwise, you will be shot on sight. Have a nice night.”

He backed away into the tunnel, leaving the prisoners alone in the chamber. A heavy silence fell on the group, punctuated only by the periodic drops of water falling onto the floor. Though nobody said it, Solera knew that they were all thinking about the execution tomorrow. Wondering if they were going to be the one who would be chosen to die. Maybe he should tell them that he was the killer and that he would confess tomorrow.

But what exactly would he say? Hello everyone, I’m the killer? And how-

“Who’s the one?” A woman’s urgent voice shattered the silence and broke his train of thought. Solera twisted around, but could not make out the speaker in the gloom.

“What?” A sneer from a bald man not far from Solera. “Someone fart near you?”

“No!” The woman snapped. “Who’s the one who killed those two?”

Silence. Solera opened his mouth, but no sounds came out. He closed it again. He didn’t want to say it. He wanted his last night to be in peace, without the eyes of nearly two hundred prisoners on him throughout the night. That was the least they could for him, right?

“Whoever did it, you had better say it! Innocents will die because of you!” The voice snarled. “Turn yourself in to Rasmurnov! You’ll have more blood on your hands the next morning, on top of that old man!”

Solera’s eyes narrowed. This fucking bitch. Did she think he didn’t already know all this? Leave him alone!

“Hey, can you shut up? I need to sleep.” The bald man grumbled, pulling his robe up to cover his head.

“How can I shut up? You tell me, how can I shut up when there are lives on the line because some idiot thought it was a good idea to murder some guards? Tell me right now!” The woman raged. “The killer needs to confess!”

The woman’s voice had a hint of panic in it. It seemed to be a little familiar, although Solera could not place it at all.

“Look, lady. This situation is all sorts of fucked up.” The bald man rolled over onto his back so he could speak more clearly. “What if the actual killer really was that guy today? Who’s going to confess then? And if the actual killer wasn’t him, then even if he confesses, how does that dead fish tell that it really is the one, and not another, hm, liar?”

Solera blinked. He actually hadn’t thought about that. If this bald man was right, that meant if he confessed, Rasmurnov still might not believe him!

His blood ran cold. Rasmurnov’s attitude and actions over the past two days had unconsciously caused him to rule out the possibility that the man could make a mistake. But Rasmurnov was just a human like any other! If Rasmurnov didn’t believe Solera when he confessed, then he would be executed in vain, like the old man!

Yes, that was right. Rasmurnov definitely wouldn’t believe him. Solera didn’t even look like a killer! He was probably the youngest among all of these prisoners. If he was Rasmurnov, he would not believe that this young child could have killed two trained channelers, one of them knowing incredibly high-level channeling techniques.

It wasn’t as if Rasmurnov was some magical mind reader who could tell when someone was lying. Otherwise, Solera would’ve been killed a long time ago. At the very least, even if he could read lies, Rasmurnov would have interrogated the prisoners one by one to see who the actual killer was. Obviously, he didn’t do that because, well, he couldn’t.

Solera’s mind was thrown into turmoil again.

“It doesn’t matter!” The woman shrieked. “We had a good thing, and this murderer ruined it! When you’re chosen by Rasmurnov to die the next morning, we’ll see what tune you’ll be singing!”

“Oh, when ‘I’m chosen by mister Rasmurnov to die,’ hm?” The bald man laughed. “Are you fucking him or what? I know those kids asked you that very first night to do just that. Didn’t think you actually accepted.”

Solera’s eyes widened. This woman!

“Of course not! I never did any such thing!” The woman seemed beyond enraged now. Solera sat up to get a clear look at her. “I know. You’re the one, aren’t you? Changing the subject to get away with your imbecilic actions! You’re the killer! Just you wait, Rasmurnov will hear this first thing tomorrow!”

Solera saw the woman’s face. Indeed… it was the woman from that very first night, the one Helga had asked to “warm the boss’s bed”! His face contorted with rage.

This woman had been fucking that piece of shit this entire time to get special treatment! Now that she was locked up with the rest of them, she wanted out! Bedding that killer, calling him by name, Rasmurnov, and now gladly willing to root out Solera in the name of saving lives on the line? Solera knew all she wanted to do was go back to whatever arrangements she used to have!

This dirty whore! Solera had been struggling with his selfishness the entire day, yet this woman openly flaunted her own in the name of justice. At least Solera had never made that kind of excuse for his own actions. His killing of Jumpy was selfish in that he wanted to protect his own life, but the risk he took on was far greater than if he did nothing! He really did it to protect the other prisoners!

Neither did he hide his desire to live under a veneer of righteousness. No, not his desire to live! His desire to have a nice bed every night and a penis up his fucking VAGINA!

Selfish. He was selfish, no doubt about it. But this woman was something else.

At this point, the bald man started howling with laughter. The entire cavern broke into a huge commotion, with everyone trying to shout over each other. Some wanted the killer to confess, some took the bald man’s side, some screamed for silence.

“All right, all right, stop it! Stop it! STOP!” The voice of another girl from the other side of the cavern rang out, eventually bringing a silence back into the cavern. “Can’t you see they’re doing this intentionally? Putting us in this place without any guard presence. They want to split us up, set us on each other’s throats. We’re being set up!”

“True.” The bald man remarked.

“We have to stay unified. At the very least, this talking isn’t going to go anywhere. Let’s just sleep for now.” The girl advised, her voice trying to be soothing.

“It doesn’t matter!” Another man from somewhere roared. “The fact is that one of us is going to die tomorrow! We need to fix this now!”

The prisoners started shouting again. Vitriolic comments about him, the murderer. Screams for him to sacrifice himself for their benefits.

Solera turned over, an ugly glare on his face. Everyone was selfish. Every single person in this shithole.

He could be selfish too.

Special thanks to Kbnnfx for helping me edit this chapter!