“It’s not that bad, is it?”, I muttered.

It was bad. The white of my broken teeth contrasted with the white of the snow at my feet.

The street wavered, the tavern wavered - I keeled over and saw the night sky reeling above me. Something was pulling at my side; I sensed it in the vague way one does after a night at the tavern.

“Get up”.

I tried to get up, only to stumble back down like a newborn foal. I made several abortive attempts after that, thinking it was just bad luck the first time, that now I’d get it right, only to fall down in the exact same way. I reached forward with my arms, aiming to support myself on something. I gripped the air and fell back down.

“Gods, look at the state of him”.

“We won’t get a cent. Just leave him already”.

“We'll see”, he said, and produced from his bag some kind of sheathed implement.

I registered that I was in danger without really registering it. Everything was happening in slow motion, but still too fast for me to do or comprehend anything.

“W-well, hold on, there’s no need to get violent”.

“Mr. [REDACTED].”, the armed man began, “You’re in debt. You’ve been in debt for quite some time. Now, me and my associates, the last thing we want is for this to get ugly. But look, if it’s not your head it’s ours, ok? And that’s why”, he reached into the sheath, “we sometimes have to rely on what’s known as ‘Advanced Negotiation’. Are you familiar with the term?”

I was. I bristled like a cat at the mere mention. To think they’d tracked me as far as Kristiania. How much did it cost, I wonder, to schlep these thugs all the way out here? It wasn't really about the money, was it?

The man drew out the Cattle Prod. It’s come to my attention after living in Kristiania that not everyone is intimately familiar with the concept of crushing medical debt, so I have to assume they may not be familiar with the Cattle Prod either. In the interest of this text being digestible for a wider range of readers I’ll outline it just as quickly as I can in these next couple paragraphs, then I’ll get right back to the action, ok?

It’s actually sort of a hot-button issue, whether or not they exist. Parties that are critical of the Doctor-Barbers never let you forget that these things exist, while on the other side, they deny everything. It’s due to this interplay, the presence of both possibilities coalescing in the minds of the average voter, that the Cattle Prod has attained a kind of status not unlike that of an urban legend: no one can get them off their mind, but at the same time, no one wants to stick their neck out by insisting that they are indeed in use.

What is a Cattle Prod? Well, it’s a steel rod about as long as an arm, enchanted with forbidden blood magic. Following a shortish magical chant, the three rounded crystals fixed at the end of the rod light up with a bright red-pink incandescence. The rod is then applied to the skin of the victim, at which point, that ancient, forbidden blood magic flows into them. They use this one spell, I think it’s just called “Pain”. It inflicts tremendous physical and psychological pain all in one go, and here’s why it’s so useful: it does so without leaving a mark. That way the Doctor-Barber partisans can swear up and down that the Prods are a myth, all the while you have people thrown in debtor’s prison screaming at the top of their lungs with a remembered pain they can never get over. Of course, I never doubted they existed. Seeing one right in front of me like this just confirmed what I already knew.

Well, I was in a bad spot, that was true, but I’d been hit with “Pain” before at the hands of a blood cultist, and I wasn’t too keen on that happening again. Imagine, well, don’t actually imagine this, fixing a blade under the nail of your big toe, then, with a wind up, sending your foot into a wall. While that’s happening, think of all the great humiliations in your life, every quiet desperation, every passion come and gone without its appropriate expression, roll all that into a ball, let it take center stage, and you’ll have some idea of the kind of “Pain” we’re talking about here.

I raised an arm: out came a crackling stream of electricity that tore through the man with the Prod. There was nothing left of him, save for his boots, still upright, filled with faintly smoking embers.

The others looked on. To them, this couldn’t have been a favorable development. I started coughing up a side of beef partially digested. That spell took a lot out of me.

They raised a series of blunt objects and fell upon me. I felt the impact before the pain. A blow to the back, the side of the head, would it be pat if I said one of them went for my knees?

I was in no position to respond. It would’ve been difficult enough to get up as it was, or if they were offering me a hand, some water, a blanket, so you can imagine the time I was having with three men beating me with clubs.

I think part of the problem was, at that point I’d accumulated too many spells, many of them as good as useless. Whenever I was in a pinch, the paradox of choice would come into play: would spell x do here or would spell y be better? Could I get away with using spell z to save some mana, or do I just say screw it and use spell a?

After a little too much deliberation I settled on Blinking across the street. The men turned around and readied spells of their own. I closed the distance then, Blinked towards them again, and sent one of them sailing through the window of the tavern with a mean left hook. Before the others could get their spells out, I nipped that in the bud with a quick Dispel. The magic that coalesced in their hands dissipated, leaving one staring transfixed, like he’d never been Dispel’d before, while the other hefted his club again.

The glass from the shattered window shook, rose up and formed a dancing ring in front of me. At the command it descended upon the man coming towards me, going right through him. He crumpled up on the snowy ground. I snapped my fingers and the glass, covered in dark blood, stopped, reared up, and went towards the other man. He saw the way the wind was blowing: he dropped his weapon and tore down the street, all the while, the glass following close behind. I’ll admit, I had a little fun with him. I could’ve ended him in an instant - instead I let him run for a while, and whenever he slowed I had the glass jab him in the backside, keeping him at a brisk clip. He turned to make down an alley, so I finished it. The shards leapt into him.

I turned around, pleased with myself, only to find the last man face to face with me, a streak of blood running down his head.

He got me in the chest. I keeled over, and got another upside the head. I’ll be honest, that guy laid me out just then. He grabbed me by all the hair I had left and brought his fist down again and again.

“They warned me about you”, he began, still brutalizing me, “Really. They said you were some kind of anomaly. An adventurer who didn’t die. Somehow you just kept on going, leveling up, and now, they said,”, he let up. He looked at me. “Ah, hell, what’s it matter? No way you’ll remember a word of this”, and he started up again. If only he’d finished that thought - I really could’ve done with the ego boost.

He got out the Cattle Prod. I was in no condition to fight back. I figured to myself, with that morbid kind of irony that comes so effortlessly to me, why not let him, it’s not like I could be in any worse pain than I am now.

Then it just so happened that someone intervened, and made it so I’m not writing this from inside a debtor’s prison.

The man was yanked from me, and accosted in stately overtones. A man in a top hat and overcoat, brandishing a cane wildly in one hand, had set about my assailant with a series of withering reproaches.

“The nerve of some people! That’s just not sporting, hitting a man when he’s down!”

If only the man had seen the battle before I started losing. I don’t think he would’ve approved of the glass. I wasn’t about to say anything about it though.

The debt collector looked a little sheepish. He could’ve dropped that fop in an instant, but most likely he didn’t want to risk an incident. Imagine: a representative of the Doctor-Barber’s assaulting a foreign noble. That would just be too good. Of course, it was a bad position to start with, seen attacking a man in the street. I bet they thought it’d be over quickly, drunk as I was. Do you think they staked me out, waiting for a golden opportunity? Maybe if I had a reputation like they said..

I flew into action. I got the man in a chokehold. I could’ve ended his life just then, and it would’ve done some good, not leaving a witness, but I had this noble right in front of me, who had seen me as a sympathetic party. I let the man go, after walloping him in the gut, of course.

I got a good look at my savior for the first time. I suppose this is the time in the story when the author introduces a kind of winning contradiction to sum up a character. Like, for instance, he was innocent yet prurient, or jaded but with an underlying naivete, or how about this, I’ve been saving this one: there was a feverish activity to his person that affected each part of his body individually: his eyes, ears, mouth, arms and legs followed a frantic rhythm all their own - yet I couldn’t shake the thought that there was something incredibly tired about his countenance. Perhaps keeping his inner fire burning used up a great deal of his faculties, leaving the man with a subtle desperation limned only in the furrows that crisscrossed around his eyes, as if he were asking please, please someone put out this fire raging in me.

Nah, that’s a little much, actually. I’ll have to workshop this, but it’ll do for now.

“My, you’re a little out of sorts, aren’t you?”, he said, clapping my shoulder. “Why don’t you come back to my place, have a nice cup of tea? You look like you need it”.

I thought a few different things, hearing that. I looked him up and down, wondering if any ulterior motives were at play here. He was oddly friendly with a man he’d just met, at least too friendly for someone from Kristiania; he was dressed too nicely as well, even for a nobleman.

And then I realized then that the few teeth still intact in my mouth were chattering something terrible. And that if I had this nobleman’s protection I wouldn’t have to risk being woken up by a Pain spell flowing into my body. Frankly put, if I wanted to survive the night, I’d have to ignore every alarm bell going off in my head and follow this strange nobleman back to wherever he intended on leading me.

I asked, “Where exactly are we going?”

“Providence, my dear boy!”

He didn't offer to take me to a hospital. Did he realize I was in trouble then? There were just too many dimensions to this. I rolled the Cattle Prod in my hands absently as we walked, my mind racing as far as the pain and intoxication let it.