I stood from the rubble surrounding me and dealt with the Wizard next. Doofus got off me to go check on his granny Phill, so I went and pried off the Wizard’s thumbnails.

It was mildly troubling, he woke up in the middle of the first to scream really high pitched, and then passed out again part way through the second. I told my helmet to seek any further inactive magic items on the Wizard and it reported he was clean.

I staggered over to the radio Phyllis had brought with her, hoping it was still in working order. The old thing looked about as tough as a brick too, and when I depressed the ‘talk’ button, it activated with a quick crackle of static.

“Rayna?” I wheezed.

“Yeah boss?” she replied instantly. I sagged in relief and started laughing.

“I did it Rayna, I got the blocks. Arizona is ours,” I said, relief and physical strain evident in my voice.

“Moving into Prescott,” she replied.

Of course. No time to celebrate. We owned the mortblock, but Dearth still had plenty of mercs in the area.

I staggered back to the Wizard and slapped him awake. He moaned and held his bleeding thumbs aloft.

“Yeah, I know, I’m the worst,” I said. “Tell me how I can talk to all of Prescott, right now, or I’ll throw you out the window.”

He nodded, shakily, and pointed to the wall further in the room. I grabbed him by his sparkly pajama robe and dragged the Wizard to his feet. We walked down to the wooden partition, where he turned and pressed a bleeding thumb gingerly to the wall.

A light scanned his print and a chunk of the wall slid down to expose a screen in the wall. The Wizard gingerly pressed a few buttons and stepped away as the screen came to life. “It’s broadcasting to all Dearth on Nu-Earth,” he whimpered.

I told my helmet to lose the horns, and they melted back into the chrome mirrored surface. “Dearth Conglomerate armed forces. This is Tyson Dawes, of Silken Sands. I hold the mortblock for this city, this space port, this elevator. If you do exactly as I say, none of you need die. BlueCleave hobbs are coming. Let them in, lay down your arms, and you will be allowed to leave, or integrate into our affiliate, if you have no loyalty to Dearth.”

I shifted my footing. “To the non-armed Dearth employees, and regular travelers using the port.” I could hear my own voice being echoed on larger screens in the city below, broadcast from every Dearth speaker in the city simultaneously. “Please, feel free to leave. Or stay. BlueCleave will not harm anyone who does not attempt to harm them, and the change in management does not mean Prescott has closed for business. Please forgive our mess while we facilitate necessary security measures during this time.”

Finally, I lowered my head and closed my eyes. “To the Dearth Nu-Earth board. I have the elevator. You may use it as normal, for a modest percentage on each shipment, and a small fee upfront. To buy my forgiveness, and the lives of your remaining Arizona board members. Ten billion, directly to my account, in the next sixty seconds, or I sell the elevator to BuyMort.”

I pressed the button that closed the screen and turned to look at the Wizard. The man was curled up on his side, holding his thumbs in close to his chest and shivering.

“Been a while since you felt pain, I’m guessing,” I said. I willed the helmet away, and it slid back into my pores, exposing my face to the man again.

“Why?” he whined, fresh tears pouring out of his eyes. “Why my thumbs?”

I glared at him, metal encased fist clenched. As I stared at him, I realized he was genuinely confused. Maybe nobody had ever stood up to him before. I was tempted to slap him again, but there was no point. No amount of shock could awaken someone with his perspective to the horrors of what was done in his name.

“To stop you from hurting my friends,” I finally answered. “You should be asking me why Dearth hasn’t paid yet.”

The Wizard went pale again, and he looked up at me from the floor, clutching his wounded thumbs. “What are you going to do to me?” he breathily asked.

“Let you and Rova go, assuming she’s still alive. I took your mortblocks, that’s all I needed here.” I stopped and glanced at my BuyMort hud again, checking the time. “Unless Dearth doesn’t pay the bounty, of course.”

As the timer I had set clicked to fifteen seconds remaining, a sudden account transfer hit, and my available morties spun up. Massively up. Ten billion morties.

The Wizard used a BuyMort beam to leave, with Rova. She was unconscious, barely breathing, but alive. He expressed a desire to bring the bodies of Breach and Shilara, the high-end bodyguards that had failed him, but was dissuaded by a simple shake of my head.

When the pod arrived and flared its rainbow beam on the ground for him to walk into, he hesitated and looked over his shoulder at me. Rova dangled in his arms, her eyes flickering open briefly.

“Leave, before I change my mind,” I growled.

The Wizard left. He walked into the beam, carrying Rova, and the two of them vanished, before the BuyMort pod whistled its happy tune and floated out the window

Phyllis and Doofus were fine, though she scolded him for scaring us. “You should have told us you could fly, Doofy baby, we thought we lost you.” The oversized dog panted and licked her bald head.

Rayna and the army of BlueCleave hobbs entered Prescott shortly after, from multiple angles. They encountered some light resistance, but most of the Dearth mercenaries got out after my announcement. The rest surrendered and the city became truly mine within hours. Rayna proved an honest and loyal companion, giving me back my own mortblock the instant she arrived, and I happily combined it with my new plot of land.

Over the remainder of the morning, BlueCleave took Prescott entirely. Many of the ships at port left, only a few stayed. Axle assured me they would be back. It wasn’t easy, or cheap to set up a port the size of Prescott. He told me with a sigh that it wouldn’t be easy to run on either.

The news, which Axle turned on for me to see, was in a frenzy over the situation. They kept showing high altitude and low orbit screengrabs of the elevator I now controlled, with the floating chiron; “Local Warlord foists Dearth, steals integral space elevator.” They also kept showing my announcement to the city, which had been recorded and uploaded to several outlets.

I never meant to be a warlord. I just wanted to protect my life, and my friends. Becoming a warlord was what that cost, so in that moment, as the news focused intensely on my chrome helmet, and the threat to Dearth that I represented, I embraced it. I was the Warlord of Arizona, with eyes on a greater kingdom yet. All of Earth was my next mortblock ownership goal.

As dawn rose on the seventh day of BuyMort, I was in control of the entire state of Arizona, along with some minor surrounding territories. Lake mead, the Grand Canyon, part of Mexico even. Turns out, Dearth didn’t really respect our lines on the map, when divvying up our world, any more than they had respected our lives.

Rayna, Tollya, Phyllis, Doofus, and Axle all stood with me at the top of my new skyscraper and looked out the shattered window over Prescott. We had work to do.

The End (Of the First Arc).

Some notes . . . when Phelps and I originally started this project together, we had no idea how big the story would become. We'd spent 2 and a half months feverishly talking daily through what the world-setting would be, what would exist within it, what sort of satirical parallels we could create without being preachy. Etcetera. And when we started to set it all down to paper, it absolutely flowed.

All of the chapters you have read so far — that was all plotted to be the first book of seven. Something that told the whole story then wrapped it up in such a way that people could head off to other pastures if they wished, satisfied with the solid conclusion of Tyson's Arizona story.

But there are other stories on their way. Stay tuned and bring in some friends! Let us continue this journey together.

Oh - and question. If I set up a discord for our group here, how many of you would come on in to hang out and chat? I'd love to set it up if people will come!