The Only Game In Town [Adventure]

Benny had gone most of his life unmedicated. There was a sweet joy in learning that there was a solution to the everlasting dread that hung above his head at all times of the day.

He believed his parents had made him this way. His family was part of a new generation of aristocrats in Vena Cava. Instead of having generations of titles and good deeds, the new generation had coins, and enough of them to buy everyone's respect.

The problem with this new generation is that they didn't understand that the generation after them had to live up to these standards. Benny couldn't just throw coins at his fellow aristocratic youngsters until they respected him like his parents did. Even more disheartening was that his parents' behavior showed poorly on him to his generation.

It was an endless cycle. Benny would get bullied by other kids. His parents would ask 'why?' And Benny couldn't really explain. So, he just assumed that it was because he was just not good enough.

After years of speaking to mental health professionals he was finally capable of understanding where this incessant weight on his shoulders was coming from. Then he became medicated, and life became just a little nicer for him.

Unfortunately, the medications were not enough to stop him from thinking.

Benny had been an instrumental part of taking down the former king Renoir and utterly destabilizing the kingdom. Furthermore, his abilities to hop between this dimension and the land of shadow made him a glorified steed to take the king's new underlings from place to place or to take his new disciples from outlying villages to the castle.

There was nothing dignified about his role. But still he forced himself to do it out of the necessity of it. There was something heroic about a boring job well done, at least that is what he told himself.

The medication also didn't keep the nightmares away. Benny knew deep inside that the new king was doing something good for the world. He was going to liberate humanity from the tyranny of the gods, but the mouths eating people still gave him the heebie-jeebies.

David was a kind man, and he understood that what he was doing looked nefarious. But Benny knew that he had good intentions.

Every person that was consumed by the shadowy mouths was spoken to by the prince beforehand and given a complete understanding of what the prince's goal was and what exactly was going to happen to them.

Benny was still not entirely clear on what exactly was happening behind the curtain, but the people seemed reassured, happy even, to let themselves get eaten by the mouths.

Benny wasn't too sure what he would do when it finally came time for him to join in David's pseudo god. It was a decision of brave men, not of cowards. And Benny knew that he was a coward.

Today he was being a special type of coward. Sam had summoned Benny to the royal palace, or at least the ramshackle building that had been erected in the months since the disasters struck Vena Cava.

Sam kept giving Benny these little tasks and it made him feel small. They never explained why they were doing any of this, he was just told where to go and what to do. He was a cog in Sam's hidden machinations.

For all the kindness that David had in his heart, Benny wasn't too sure if Sam shared the same lofty goals as the former prince. Their eyes sparkled despite their drab brown color in a way that made Benny feel like he was looking at a predator and he was the prey.

Currently they had him ferrying men and women across the continent. There would be bands of mercenaries that Benny had instructions to leave in a breadcrumb trail through a bunch of small villages. Then he would take any worshippers back to the king on his return trip through the shadowy realm.

The therapists and the meds had made Benny finally feel confident enough to ask Sam what they were really doing with these mercenaries. But he was being a coward and hiding from them in the shadow realm.

Benny took off his ridiculous bowler hat and rolled it between his fingers. He knew it was an affectation he used to make himself more ridiculous, but it also made him feel more comfortable. Maybe if everyone was looking at the hat, they wouldn't be looking at him.

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Maybe it was the hat making him such a coward? With a breath of confidence and a few muttered words under his breath Benny stepped out of the land of shadow.

Light was harsh back in reality. The world was large and loud in a way that the land of shadows was not. He wondered if he had been given his gift because he the gods saw his need to seek refuge from this massive world, or if he had only realized how massive the world was after being given the gift of entry into the land of Shadow. It had been so long since he got the gift that he wasn't too sure himself.

Once the disorientation wore off Benny looked to his left and right. There was no one in this temporary castle that he could see. The workmen had done a rushed job, so there was none of the opulence that the royalty usually lived in. But there was an austerity to the bare stone walls.

Somehow, Benny had forgotten to check behind himself. So, he was immensely surprised at the light tap on his shoulder.

He let out a very masculine shout and ran a few steps away before turning around to look at his attacker.

Sam stood in the hallway with their arms casually behind their head, whistling a little tune as if they were doing nothing wrong.

"Jumpy much?" Sam asked with an evil grin spreading over their face.

Benny considered his options. He could run, he could hide, or he could ask his questions directly and with as much confidence as possible. With the power of medication and therapy running through his system he went for option number three.

"Um, why… Why am I running all over the continent? I have been ferrying these people all over the place, it just feels useless. I mean not useless, but…"

Before Benny could go on a tangent where he tried to make his statement sound less rude Sam nodded and said "I am a seer. I see so far into the future that you cannot fathom it! You play chess, but I am playing a version of chess where I can see your later moves. How dare you question my authority in what the best thing to do is!"

Benny was flabbergasted. He had never heard Sam speak like this. He tried to stutter out a response but all that came out was garbled nonsense.

"Just kidding." Sam winked and Benny could feel some of the tension bleed out of him. It was just Sam giving him a hard time, nothing to worry about.

"Benny, I am going to ask you a very difficult question. Are you ready for that?" Sam's brown eyes pierced Benny's and he nodded quietly.

"What does victory look like for us?"

Benny paused but replied, "isn't it just David becoming Humanity and destroying the gods which will free us humans from their eternal tyrannical reign?"

Sam nodded at that, "but what after that? What does this land where humans are free look like?"

"I had not pontificated upon the subject that much, Sam. I assume that David will create a new world for all humans to live in harmony without petty gods."

Sam snorted at this response and Benny tried to pull deeper into himself in shame. Somehow, he felt like he was being made fun of.

"I ask of you a new question, Benny. What are the gods?" Sam twirled their wooden flute between their fingers, watching Benny closely.

"I am not exactly sure. The gods are the gods, nothing more and nothing less."

Sam made a blowing noise like a fart with their lips. "Boring answer! Everything is something, Benny. The gods are manifestations of the truest form of some phenomena. Once a concept is actualized, a god comes along that is the manifestation of that concept." Benny's brow curled up at this.

He asked, "what about the first gods then? Everyone has questioned what the first god was. That first god would have existed before anything else; how could it represent a concept?"

Sam smiled at this. "Now that was a good question. Ten points. However, let's not get off track. To make this idyllic world without gods you would have to destroy the concepts that they are related to." With a sardonic smile they continued, "to have a world without Death you would have to have no death."

"Would that not be a good thing?" Benny curled into himself, the intensity of the conversation making him shiver.

"No. An ending is always needed, Benny." Sam looked off into the distance, looking at something that only they could see before continuing. "You are ferrying people all over the continent so that the ending to our story is ideal. David will beat the gods; he can do nothing else. The game we are playing is to make sure he knows what to do once he has beaten them."

Benny swallowed, fear building in his stomach again. He needed to ask his question or else it would melt through his guts.

"Why can't you just tell him? Since you can see the future and all that…"

"This would be much easier if I could. Alas, the only answers worth getting in life are those you find for yourself. So, we lay the path for David to understand."

Finally, Benny felt something snap inside of him. "Can you stop with all the cryptic nonsense. I understand you are some farseeing, all-knowing, conniving magician. But what am I really doing?"

Sam looked a little ashamed to Benny's eye. He heaved as he felt the annoyance and anger over feeling like a pawn leaving his body with this short moment of catharsis. Benny looked directly into Sam's eyes, not flinching away. He expected a straight answer, and he would be sure to get one.

"I'm placing the mercenaries in Joy's path, to fight him."

Benny clenched his fists, "Joy nearly won the knight tournament. And you're placing random mercenaries out there to fight him? They're never going to win, no matter how much you coach them on his abilities."

"They aren't supposed to win." And with that Sam's mystique returned in force. Benny just sighed and walked away. He wasn't paid enough to deal with this.

But there was nothing he could do. He would just have to listen to Sam's odd cryptic nonsense.

Or did he? It sounded like this whole operation was being done without King David's direct approval. Benny chuckled evilly to himself, let's see what our great king says about Sam's machinations.