Bariton wandered forth, an endless wave of tension launching itself every so often. The Bard stepped forward, dragging his legs onward despite how numb they felt. Bariton was nervous; the bard unfamiliar with these feelings. The Bard kept walking onwards however.
He was leaving the capital to make some funds as an adventurer, one of the most dangerous jobs. This job was going to be tougher than usual too, capturing an odd monster for the usage of a professor at the academy he refused to join.
He was curious as to why this monster was wanted by the professor, and the dense forest surrounding the capital was just as difficult to navigate as anything else. He approached the last sighting of the owl-bear.
The owl-bear was shockingly enough still there, and Bariton combined his Aeromancy with one of his skills, [Wonderful Serenade], which offered the bear such a nice tune that it couldn’t help but fall asleep.
Bariton sighed as the job was practically already done, the professor nearby for the dropoff of the creature. He frowned slightly at the monster. According to most books Monster Life was sentient; and to capture and force a creature like this into captivity, into experimentation felt cruel. It felt like a sin.
68 - The Sins
Bariton stepped forward first, deciding the first of the six full sized orchestras. He avoided the tall man that brought in both the Bard and the swordsman, and the slightly more elegant woman that brought in Clara and Judine on purpose.
He didn’t have to avoid Wrath however; due to the host still being missing. He finds himself face to face with someone he’d never seen before, the orchestral piece behind them being almost unreadable with how much of it was just percussion.
That’s when Bariton realized ‘orchestral’ was the wrong verbage to describe these pieces, they were just full scores with all sorts of instrumentals, and even this one held lyrics he couldn’t quite make out.
The person they stood across from was hard to tell the gender of; not helped whatsoever with the outfit they wore. It was a mixture between a suit and a dress; with nothing quite marking them as either gender.
The long hair was almost perfectly neutral and even perfectly symmetrical. The hair had two long bangs that were on either side of the head, not quite clear what hair color it was as it was constantly shifting from brown, golden, and a deep crimson.
The eyes that met the bard’s were also nice, shifting constantly from a deep purple to a light blue, never quite being anything in between but also being only in between all at the same time.
“Oh,” The person began speaking, giving a light bow, one arm towing under the torso and the other lifting the partial skirt of the suitpants on the other side. The person’s voice was completely neutral in tone as well. “You lot must be the tower heroes, yes?”
Pallad was the first to respond, not allowing Bariton to speak to the interesting person. They looked both unfortunate and fortunate as well as they shifted their attention to the Paladin. “Yeah! And what may your name be?”
“Well I’m Pride.” The person grabbed a fan from somewhere in both hands, and covered their mouth with it. It was hard to read their expressions from just the eyes. The eyes looked scornful, but the body posture was quite inviting.
The person stepped past the party, and seemed judgemental of not just the outfits but even the equipment of the group. “You seem to be quite…” Pride paused for a minute, locking eyes with Judine. The next statement lashed at Bariton’s back like a whip, leaving a light stinging sensation. “Drab. No coherence in the system’s gifts I swear.” The sin stopped for a moment realizing how Bariton winced at every gaze.
They’re eyes looked pitiful, like a person staring at him back when he was nothing. “Although,” Pride quit the lashes and now their words quite clearly covered Bariton like a comforting embrace. “Despite what I had said, you can be quite interesting to watch.”
Pride leans into Bariton’s ear, and mutters something in a voice just quiet enough for only the Bard to hear. “Especially that pairing… you should just shoot your shot Bard.” The voice sounded like a bell in Bariton’s soul, something that fired him up.
He wanted to almost thank the sin, but they rose a hand and waved them along. “You need to get to meeting my compatriots. I believe Judine may be most interested in… yes… Greed.”
With those final words Pride vanished into the crowd, and seemed to vanish from reality itself. The candles outside the building floated along and left a request to Bariton to join them. Requesting to the party itself with whispers of something to come far off in the future.
And yet; the songs were still brighter of the other five friends of Wrath, likely other sins. Bariton led the party ahead, Judine managing to keep up not just easily but with nice even strides that seemed ever so slightly longer each time.
But the song stayed graceful as Bariton took up the race; changing the tune of his own song to something more intense, more quickly paced, the measure changing from 4/4 to 17/29 and the bpm switching between measures as well, making the illusion of switching measure length, or a more interesting measure length.
This allowed Bariton to rush forward, almost colliding with the next musical score that had a life behind it. Maybe even many lives behind it. This person looked more like a typical chef, and they were even setting a table.
The food looked fantastic, and they clearly agreed with how they were chowing down themselves, taking small pieces from the plate they held as they placed it down, each dish slightly smaller than when the chef had placed it upon.
“Oh, you lot must be the guests of honor!” The person grabbed onto the two sides of their apron like a skirt and lifted it slightly in a clear bow. “Pleasure to meet you, I am Gluttony…” They barely made it through that before eating some more of their food, and Bariton almost had to slap Pallad’s hand away from the food. He didn’t as he grabbed some himself; going behind his own inhibition’s back.
The food was already in his mouth when the bard noticed what he was doing, and his party member’s seemed to find themselves in the same situation. The small chunk of meat practically melted in the Bard’s mouth, the taste melting across his tongue evenly.
Clara’s eyes closed in delight as she got her own taste of this food, her testing of a less meat-based dish and rather a fruit that the Bard had yet to see before today. His eyes told him what it was, and that it was one of high value.
Cost 5 Silver a fruit, around half a gold, and it was called something interesting too, a ‘dragonfruit’ the white of the flesh of such a fruit being hidden behind a kind of scaly, potentially prickly skin.
He was wondering the taste, and Gluttony seemed happy to see the five of them biting into his many dishes. “Careful now, don’t want to replace me now do ya?” Gluttony’s voice was quick, and it was interrupted between bites of their own food. “Well now that you met me, and clearly felt the effects of my sin; what else could ya know?”
Shammus was the one to respond, tearing the flesh of a chicken off a kebab right before he spoke. “It’s great food, but what of your curiosities?” He kept eating after the lack of questions being asked from “We have time to talk to all of you.”
The paladin was next to speak; eating a steak with a fork and knife from the table. It was perfectly cooked, with a little bit of red in the dead center. It was clearly tender; or the knife was impossibly sharp with how it floated through the meat.
Pallad didn’t yet get a bite down before the words worked their way up to the top, “Or maybe we could do a sort of meet and greet thing with these guys in a bit, but we should probably enjoy ourselves first.”
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
The paladin’s words added up, and was met with a nod from Gluttony, the person’s chef hat hardly following the nod. It went against physics, but the Bard could tell his body melting into shadow when he watched someone long enough followed such rules.
The way Gluttony vanished as they nodded was curious as well; sort of glimmering and fading into little stars that fluttered away in a breeze that was so imperceptibly small. So imperceivably miniscule, yet the stars lost their sparkle, narrowly avoiding the bard.
They weren’t even real material wise, Bariton’s eyes let him see through such a fate; and Clara seemed just as encapsulated by them as they led their vision to another score. The four remaining scores were interesting to say the least.
One seemed to have so many instruments, like it was hoarding as many as possible… Bariton had a gamble to which sin that was, presuming all of these guys were sins… But as mathematicians say, twice make it a rule with more just proving it.
At least for basic general math. And now, Bariton led his crew to this symphonic clash of instruments that did not fit in; and found themselves in a person not surrounded by people but mannequins as the crowd of people thinned and there were just empty outfits on statues leading to this person.
They sat atop the throne, and they seemed so tense as they stared down towards Bariton and the crew of tower heroes. The golden eyes looked so interesting, and the jewelry wasn’t too expensive unlike what the Bard had first thought.
The rings upon his hand did cost more than a mansion in most areas; but the entire outfit combined only cost about enough to buy out a well sought after farm, not even in the billions of gold like some of the decorations in this ballroom are.
The person slowly stepped down the steps, the rippling of the floor turning to gold towards them, ever shifting from gold and the regular wood being a cause of concern in Bariton’s mind, an alarm bell.
“Oho, you lot must be the points of contention for this party, no?” The sin walked down, the coat over their shoulders not even being worn fully but rather just being hung on his back like a cape.
The person didn’t await for a response before stopping before them, a golden chalice being filled with the nicest of wines. Bariton could tell from the fragrance of such a thing, and the sin didn’t quite look at the bard, but rather at Judine.
She had finished her plate given to her from Gluttony just as the Sin walked up to her, and stared into her more whitish gold eyes. The glare shared between the two made the sin laugh, before speaking once more.
“What a great answer you gave, I’m Greed!” The person spun around, the jacket staying perfectly pinned to their shoulders offering another question to be raised, but never to be answered. “Like what you see?”
The facial expression made with that statement left the bard confused. It wasn’t one that someone made an attempt to seduce, rather it was a taunt, something paired with wings made of gold and held together with lightning.
It was something the bard wanted, and the system recently gave him the power to take it. The system wanted him to take this, to partake in- The hand on his shoulder immediately snapped him out of it, and the smile the Sin showed wasn’t nearly as playful as it once was.
It was malicious, as though he knew precisely what Bariton was capable of. He recoiled back mentally, but he lightly pulled Shammus’s hand off his shoulder as Pallad looked at him with eyes full of pity.
Something he hated as well, being pitied. Greed clapped lightly and all of those emotions fell apart like someone kicking down a house of cards. Rage replaced quite a few of them, and Greed’s laughter, the mouth splitting open made Bariton think ever so slightly into violence.
Judine’s hand this time calmed him down; with Shammus looking at him not with pity, but the same eyes Bariton saw in the mirror. The bard recognized a look of not sorrow, not pity, not even anger but despisal. They weren’t directed at Bariton.
He told himself that, sure. Judine was first to speak. “Yes, we are the people of this ballroom that this tower keeps entrapped.” She stepped forward facing the sin much better than before, she was clearly pissed.
“But there is one thing I’ll have you know, Greed.” Judine summoned a paint brush to her hands and placed the tip of the brush to the neck of the Sin, who simply smiled more at seeing such an artifact. “You will not lay a hand on any of us, not without summoning the Wrath of all of us.”
Greed laughed at that, and simply took a step back. “Yes, yes…” Greed closed his eyes before reopening them. “What an interesting Greed you five have~ That’ll cause issues then, won’t it!” He seemed to say that not directed to any of the five in particular, and all of a sudden Judine’s weapon was back in her inventory. She was leading the way to the next symphony of sound.
The paintbrush was curious too in how the constellations ceased as soon as the weapon was placed in the inventory, and Greed vanished into a glimmer of gold; all the mannequins surrounding disappearing as well.
Bariton was mostly zoned out, but he still heard the conversation between Clara and Judine. “Are you doing alright?” Clara’s first statement seemed to hit a nerve with Judine, who simply nodded after a second of contemplation.
“Of course.” The judge’s voice was short, similar to someone giving out a sentencing, someone not quite there emotionally, someone required to be distant. “Why may you ask?” Judine’s steps didn’t slow down.
“Well…” Clara stopped speaking to find the words, and Bariton rushed to find them first. He failed, as this was certainly not his area of expertise, the way Clara opened her mouth and closed it again to think for a minute. “I felt it was quite uncharacteristic of you to attack like that.”
“Was it?” Judine’s next statement stopped Clara’s movement, alongwith Pallad’s and everyone elses who was just listening in. Bariton’s mind grinded to a stop. Most of them agreed with Clara, he was sure, but… What Judine said threw a wrench in Bariton’s method of thinking regarding their team.
The team all paused for a minute, and Judine continued on in this. “Was it out of character for me to react with rage when so clearly, Bariton, our team member we’d have been lost without; was manipulated mentally?” Judine stepped towards Clara who played such an accusation, her eyebrows furrowed.
Clara didn’t bite back, but Pallad stepped between those two. “It maybe wasn’t out of character for you to feel that way.” Pallad’s words worked off what Clara was saying and even bit against Judine’s words. “But it was out of character for such a reaction to be made, especially in such an environment.”
Judine stepped up towards the paladin that was still a head over her in height even with her wearing heels. “Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t, but we do not know each other well enough for you to make judgements like that; now do we?” That struck a chord in Bariton’s heart, and of course the Bard had the next rebuttal.
Judine looked annoyed when he spoke. “Well; I beg to differ in that regard, Judine.” Bariton began to get out a tea bag from his inventory, alongside a small mug he had taken from an inn a year or two ago. “After all, you are clearly still affected with that rage, and that is uncharacteristic; or rather a sign that you aren’t okay.”
Judine bit back almost immediately, taking a swift step forward to the bard. He could’ve sworn he was pushed to the ground immediately, but when he blinked he was just imagining it. “You dare to tell me that I’m not doing okay, and instead of giving a reasonable reason, you just say I’m acting out of character.”
Judine was properly pissed, and suddenly a sword was between Bariton and Judine, both edges facing the two causing them to back away. Bariton almost bit back a hiss before Shammus’s voice cut between them. “Take a moment to relax.”
His voice was calm, but it was clear in his facial expression he was only acting calm off a whim. He could be uncalm if need be. “Both of you.” Shammus sheathed his sword. “No wandering off though, we talk through this; or await the emotional bide.”
Shammus took them away from such a scene, and away from any of the three remaining musical scores, and onto a balcony. The candles floating by still such a serene moment. Judine and Bariton were on one balcony, and Shammus another with a close eye on the other with Clara and Pallad.
He was curious what was going on with the other group, so he almost instinctively climbed over the banister and walked on the clouds, but Judine’s catching of his arm caught him by surprise, when he whipped around to face her he found nothing but a look of guilt on her face.
“What’s wrong?” were the first words he let fall from his mouth, dripping onto the balcony, and Judine looked away towards the candles flowing down a path, similar to a painting. She grimaced as she found an answer.
“I-” She stopped for a moment, wincing one more time, as she came to terms with an answer. “I’m sorry for snapping at you, Bariton.” Judine seemed done and Bariton opened his mouth to respond before more spewed out. “And I’m sorry for snapping at all of you.”
Judine looked genuinely mournful which cut Bariton’s own quippy response short almost as swiftly as a blade. “And your apology’s accepted.” Bariton was going to make a joke, but now was clearly not the time. “And it’ll always be accepted as long as you are willing to give it to us.”
Judine’s speech slowed as she sighed, facing the candles once more. “What’s the song the candles sing out to you?” The question caught the bard off guard, but he counteracted with another question.
“What’s the fate they give you?” Bariton knew enough that they were giving Judine as much, if not more information than he was getting. At least, maybe whether they were predetermined at all would be nice to know.
“It’s complex enough to need to be read,” Judine began, reaching out over the balcony. Bariton was reminded that none of the party knew what the others were capable of once more, this felt more like a power balance shift than anything else.
