Interlude: Guiche in the Fortress City Lemea

In all his life, Guiche had never given anything too much thought. He left the impoverished, stifling village of his birth to go to the city, simply because he was talked into it on a whim by a bad friend. Once there, he was unable to find a decent job and applied to a mercenary band because he took their solicitations at face value. In the end, the mercenary band turned out to be nothing more than a group of glorified bandits, but rather than flee, he went with the flow and joined them in attacking merchants and travelers.

He found thinking to be annoying. Guiche had a vague inkling that such a notion was not a good opinion to hold, but he lacked the will to do anything about it. Naturally, his line of work didn’t last long, and the mercenary band was captured, their leader sent to the gallows. Guiche and the other underlings were sold off as slaves.

Guiche was taken to a mine alongside a great number of other slaves. The shafts were dark, narrow, and hot, and his fellow slaves died one after another from cave-ins or poisonous gas. He was convinced that he wouldn’t last long either, yet he did nothing.

Thinking was annoying. Even if there had been a way to escape, coming up with it and putting it into action would have been too much of a pain for him to bother. He only joined the revolt because it happened right before his eyes.

One night, Guiche was awoken by a commotion and found the overseers’ guardroom set ablaze. Corpses lay scattered about, and excited slaves armed with pickaxes, hammers, and stolen swords stood around them. From their conversations, he quickly learned that they had revolted. Guiche decided to go with them, and they stormed the slave owner’s manor, killing the fat, middle-aged man and his family before stealing all his wealth and setting his home on fire.

“Damn.” Guiche couldn’t help but mumble to himself as he watched the manor burn, grasping a pilfered gem tightly in his hand.

The slaves cheered, the enormity of what