[The Primeval Apocalypse] - Chapter Seventeen (collaboration with u/hydrael)

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The Primeval Apocalypse by Robert Keene and Alex Raizman

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It wasn’t hard to see how this must have looked from the outside.

People were dead and it was very easy to place the blame for that squarely on my shoulders. No matter how I tried to rationalize it, I knew that those people had paid the ultimate price for my growth. It was hard to deny that a large part of this devastation was because of me, even if I hadn’t meant for it to happen.

I couldn’t pretend that this wasn’t the direct consequence of my own actions.

“I want to say that I can explain,” I said quickly, “but I know that there’s no explanation I can make that will undo what happened.”

“Yes,” James said coldly, “I think that’s accurate.”

He was standing at the head of a group of Jamestown’s best fighters. Though as James’s charismatic nature made his opinion about what had just happened spread through them, they were looking less and less like a column of soldiers, and more and more like an angry mob.

I swallowed hard.

James approached me slowly. His greatsword was still sheathed across his back, but I knew from seeing him fight that one of his Class abilities would let him literally teleport it to his hands at will. Silly spellblade bullshit. I thought there were even odds that he might just execute me now, but honestly…his charisma was infecting me as well. If he decided that I deserved to die for this, then honestly I had to admit that submitting to his judgment peacefully was the only way left for me to make up for what I’d done here.

The mob started to move forward with him, but at his gesture, they stayed back. As cold as he’d appeared a moment ago, when he drew closer I could start to see through the façade.

It was an act, this rage. He was playing for the crowd, but his mind wasn’t clouded by anger. Instead he simply recognized that as a leader, he was playing a role, and right now, that role called for him to appear hard and merciless, even though he was too nice of a guy to really feel that way.

“Colin,” James said, his voice softening slightly. He had lowered his voice after approaching, making our conversation between the two of us, with the angry mob far enough away that they would just hear an indistinct mumble. “What did you do?”

“I fucked up,” I said, gesturing at the destruction around me. “I got too smart for my own good and this is what happened.”

“Start at the beginning,” James said, an edge of irritation returning to his voice. “And talk fast. Because I’m not sure if I’ll be able to make my own decision about it if the whole town walks up and demands to know what’s going on, too.”

I started with a rough explanation of my new Beastmaster abilities, as well as the challenge the system had issued to me. Considering he told me to go fast, I glossed over a lot of the details of my detection radius and Wild Empathy. Now wasn’t the time to try and advertise my new skills. Instead I focused on the support that I could offer requiring me to acquire a pet, and my plan to use the ability to bring back an aurochs.

After that, I gave him the gist of my sidetracking into Noaich’s rescue, making a point to mention the alpha’s concerns and the detection-blocking censer. With those details, it was easy to explain how Noaich’s mother had gone on a rampage, and why Jamestown was caught in the crossfire.

For his part, Noaich tried to cut in and help fill in details, but obviously, James couldn’t understand him and I didn’t want to slow the story down. The reptile caught on quickly that he was distracting me more than he was helping, and fell silent.

James, however, asked no questions. Even though he was listening, I could tell his thoughts were going a mile a minute. I was trying to explain myself, while he was trying to figure out how my actions were going to cause the dominos to fall.

Ultimately, I just had to hope that he understood that there was no way to predict this outcome. I hadn’t taken a risk and been punished. Instead, I had simply done what made sense at the time and there had been consequences I’d never dreamed of.

“Nothing I say can undo what’s happened here,” I said when I finished explaining why the creature had left. “But I am sorry. I should have used my head a lot more than I did, and everyone paid the price for my mistake.”

James gave a heavy sigh. Smart as he was, he still had to think to decide what to do with all this information. It was a good sign that he didn’t want to immediately pass judgment, but there was no way that he could justify forgiveness at this point. People were dead, and with how precious our lives were in the apocalypse, there was no way the survivors could stomach a slap on the wrist for that.

“I have a choice here,” James said at last, “and I want to be as fair to you as I can, Colin. I could never have fed all these people without your help, and I don’t want you to think I’ve forgotten that. But there’s not a lot of options here. What do you think I should do?”

“Well, to be perfectly honest,” I said, my mind racing in a hope that I might get out of this alive, “the monster hit the Mandrills first. The alpha is mortally wounded, if not dead. You’ve got an army raised and ready for a fight, and I think if you rush right now you could rebuild there instead of here and take their farms.”

James smiled, but despite the idea of making his long-term dreams come true, there was a sadness to it.

“That’s not what I mean,” he said, “but I appreciate the sentiment. You know what the choices here are.”

I didn’t really know, but I suspected.

“It might be a lot to ask,” I said, “but I’d like to live. I do have a promise to keep.” I gestured at Noaich, who was looking curiously between me and James. The reptile could only understand half of the conversation, but either it was too complicated to understand, or he trusted me completely.

“Obviously,” James said. He waved a hand at the crater. “I think there’s been enough death for one day. But I don’t know what’s going to happen if I say that to certain people in the aftermath.”

Despite my initial confusion, I was catching up now. One of my options was going to be submitting to some sort of trial. The people of Jamestown would decide my fate, and while James would likely be the final arbiter of my punishment, everyone would get a voice.

And if James tried to overrule a clear opinion in favor of violent retribution, he could be facing a civil war.

Jenna had warned me that Richard wanted me out of the picture. There was no way he wouldn’t take this opportunity to place himself at the head of such a revolt.

“What do we do, then?” I asked. If I could reframe it for James as a problem we faced together, maybe he would just tell me the answer he wanted me to give him. Even as my adrenaline from the fight had faded, I felt like this conversation was just as much of a battle for survival.

“I don’t like it,” James said with a scowl, “but it’s the only option.” He shook his head sadly. “I hate how fast things change. I never wanted Jamestown to lose you as a resource, especially not after investing so much in your growth. But… I can’t keep you here.”

I nodded.

It hurt a little that he was so bluntly referring to me as a resource, but James had to look at the bigger picture. Jamestown was his bid to save humanity. Every person here had to earn their keep, or else the apocalypse that the system caused would be well and truly the end of the human race.

“I’m afraid it might be just as much of a death sentence as killing you with my own hands,” James said at last, “but we’re stuck. If you stay here, I’m afraid your death is the only thing that’s going to satisfy some people here. And we can’t have that. That’s a slippery slope that I don’t want us going down for as long as I can help it.” He put a hand firmly on my shoulder and pointed east with his free hand. “Colin, I sentence you to exile. Leave now, and never return.”

He turned away from me, crossing his arms, letting that cold tone come back to his voice. “Quickly, before someone changes my mind.”