Chapter 54: Waking up to reality

"If this doesn't work, you will be trialed for the crime of a mass sacrifice," Lester told Thomas. They were before the entrance of the Alchemist's Lair, the prisoners arrayed before them.

"If this doesn't work out, I'll be torn to pieces," Thomas told him with a smile. The fever had returned in full force now. He didn't know if his actions were not a product of his tormented brain or because there really was no way out.

"Chem, begin changing them," Thomas commanded the dungeon core. He held the book with Jeremy's changed form high, and then used the key that the dungeon core had given him to open it.

The thing that came out of the book looked like a dark-skinned human with yellow eyes. Behind the man, the prisoners were screaming as animal body parts began to grow on them. Their ribs braking, their bodies becoming longer.

"Hm, you are creating bosses?" Jeremy spoke in a raspy voice.

"Hello, my name is..." Thomas was stopped when the alchemist spoke his name before he could say it.

"Thomas. Referred to as Tommy by your friends," the alchemist looked around himself, and then approached one of the still downed newly created monsters.  

"I am hungry," what followed was a one-sided battle between a being that didn't know how to use its limbs, and Jeremy. The former prisoner ended up with a big chunk bitten off his neck, and died shortly after.

"You better be able to control him," Lester was backing away. Nothing, not even the chain around the dungeon core, could put his mind at ease.

"Can you all leave us?" Thomas didn't want for his friends and Lester to watch as Jeremy gorged on the former prisoner.

"We won't be far," Rina squeezed Thomas's shoulder once, and then placed an arm on Teri's back, and they walked away. With Lester following them.

"You have a mission, Jeremy," Thomas began. He sat down, feeling quite sick himself.

"Who told you that you can give the orders?" Jeremy said between bites. The man's jet-black shoulder-length hair swayed behind him. His yellow eyes twinkling with amusement at the visible fear that Thomas had of him.

"Chem is my dungeon core. Yours as well. I am the dungeon master, and..." Thomas was interrupted when the man was suddenly before him.

"You look sick," Jeremy pressed a hand on Thomas's forehead. "I don't eat spoiled meat. You are in luck."

Thomas's eyes were nearly bulging out of his sockets. Chem had told him he could control Jeremy. But the alchemist was not listening to him.

"If you don't help me, then I will die. Your dungeon will fall with me. Chem will be lost," Thomas had meant it that he was not going to drag the dungeon core to death's door with him. He would rather throw her inside the sea, than let her fall in anyone's hands.

"It was never meant to be a dungeon," Jeremy murmured. "I was supposed to create more cores like this core. To make sure the nooks and crannies that are filled with natural cores are filled with ones that are controlled by humanity. Then, I made a contract with, how did you call the core? Yes, Chem. Now I am this."

"Yaranhold has a population of five million souls," Thomas told the monster in a man's flesh. Looking him straight in the eyes. "You and I are its only shield."

"What of those other three? Do you doubt in their ability?" Jeremy asked him with a smirk.

"They can't be allowed to come. They haven't killed a human. I..." Thomas remembered the work of the mockingbird. The dead councilman in the market. It had been done by his orders. The blood was on his hands.

"Neither have you. The mockingbird's actions don't count in your kill count," Jeremy got up from the ground, and looked into the dungeon's entrance. "I hate to have rats in my laboratory."

"So, you will help?" Thomas asked, sounding hopeful.

"I won't guard you. You have those two for that. Either take them with you in the dungeon for the clean-up, or I am taking you with me on one of those ships that Yaranhold is so famous about, and we are both going on a journey," Jeremy told him.

"You will leave your life's work behind?" Thomas was grasping at straws at this point.

"It has already decayed," the alchemist told him with a shrug. "I won't make the offer a second time."

Thomas nodded, got up, and ran back to his party.

"He will help, but all three of us need to get in the dungeon and help him," the summoner told them.

"To kill...humans?" Rina looked green at the implications of that fact.

"The guild needs to be dealt with. After it, the king," Thomas said. There was no other way. Fren, Gwendoline, Harrington, Karabas, all those cities that had been wiped at the order of one king or the other. Using the guild as a weapon.

Back then, when the only thing that Thomas cared about had been to give the correct quests to the correct party, he had not thought much about it.

The guild were the good guys, and everyone else was either a monster or a rebel. The king was good, for that was what Thomas liked to calm himself with.

Now, the fate of five million rested on whatever or not he could trample on those beliefs. There were at least half a million children among them. If not more.

"It is a great thing you are doing for Yaranhold," Lester said. "The rest of the country will see you as villains, though."

"We have to do it, though. I mean, the guilds are supposed to deal with the mobs, not the civilians," Teri said, his fists balled by his side. "They are supposed to be protectors, not aggressors. I am a shield, and Yaranhold is in need of one, so..."

"We will do it, together. Our honor will never be as shining again, but we can't let Yaranhold fall. For Owen," Rina placed a hand on each of her party member's shoulders, and the three nodded at the same time.