...Is the Point

Tax Day. Demerius had declared today to be a Tax Day.

The Prince’s man started to recite what he was expecting the peasants to pay. As more and more crops started being talked about, Kyle made a terrible realization.

There was no possible way to pay the tax. The amounts they were demanding were an entire year’s worth of harvest. Even if the surrounding villages pitched in to help, there would be no food left to sustain them. They’d starve if they tried to meet his demands. Everyone knew it.

And that was the point. It was a fig leaf, a legalistic means to an end that justified their removal. No, it was the peasants who had broken their side of the deal. They were the ones to be punished for not caring for the Prince’s land. If they could not properly work the land, then it was the Prince’s duty to care for it!

But with all the warning Kyle had given them, everyone knew this was the case. No one believed for a moment the words of the Prince’s man.

Kyle wasn’t sure who, but someone flung a tomato at the Prince’s man. It smashed into the man’s face, leaving a juicy mess there. “Who threw that? I want his head!”

Two of the men drew their swords and prepared to wade into the crowd. They pushed through the crowd and bowled people over, marching towards a younger man who was backpedaling. He fell over himself, looking up at the men holding a sword over him.

The younger boy closed his eyes and prayed.

But the blow never came. All that did was a warm splash across his face.

When he opened his eyes, he felt blood on his face. Someone else’s blood. And interposed between him and the swordsmen was Kyle. He was there with icicles attached to his forearms, and those icicles had been stuck through the men.

Kyle pulled them out, the men collapsing to the ground and not getting back up. Everyone, from the taxmen to the peasants, stared at him and the blood dripping off his icicle blades.

He’d just killed two men in front of everyone. There was no turning back now.

“What are you waiting for,” he cried, hefting the bloodied icicles. “They bleed just like we do!”

A full brawl erupted as the peasants mobbed most of the men, who’d no time to draw their swords and were pulled and pushed to the ground.

The lead taxman pulled out a wand and pointed it at the crowd, blowing a dozen peasants away with barely an effort. “Swine! Ungrateful swine! You dare to question the divine right of your Lord?”

Kyle stepped into the breach in the fight, holding a knife and his ring bubbling with fire as the icicle arm blades melted. “There’s nothing ‘divine’ about what you’re doing.”

A number of purple magical missiles shot from the taxman’s wand. Kyle’s ring summoned a block of earth to put itself between the missiles and him, pushing the earth and himself towards the taxman. Missiles continued to shower the earthen barrier, whittling it down every second.

He just needed it to last long enough. His body just needed to last long enough.

Missiles started flying past his head but not before he was close enough to swing what was left of the earth into the taxman’s midsection. Kyle took a missile to the shoulder, but the taxman took the full brunt of it to his ribs.

That was a trade worth taking.

Kyle ripped the wand out of the taxman’s hand and started bashing it with the last bits of his earthen barrier until nothing was left of it and only shards of the wand.

He stood over the taxman as the fracas finally started calming down.

“You dare,” the taxman spat, “defy your lord’s justice?”

“Right now, it’s just us.” Kyle spat out some blood and with his remaining strength lifted the taxman up by his robes so he could look him in the eye. “Tell your men to surrender and we’ll back off.”

“You would give me orders?”

“I would give you some common sense. Because for all your learning, you seem to have skipped that part.”

Through grit teeth, the taxmen told his men to back down. Kyle whistled right after, the peasants slowly backing way from the bloodied men the Prince had sent.

“I want you to give the Prince a message,” Kyle warned the taxman. “Tell him Kyle Wheatsman is still alive and he’s not going anywhere. Tell him that this town’s suffered enough at his hands. And tell him that if he wants us off this land, he can come here and do it himself.” He pushed the taxman away, struggling to remain standing.

He had strength enough to call out, “Get me lumber and rope!”

As some of the peasants raced off to fulfill Kyle’s request, Francis came up to Kyle’s side. “I suppose we’re all in for it, now.”

Benny put his blue hand on Francis’s shoulder. “Nothin’ new for us. But for you guys? I guess that would be unnervin’.”

Kyle had stayed on the straight and narrow his entire life. And now in the span of about a day he’d started a riot, killed two men, and openly plotted a revolt against their liege lord. Past the adrenaline, it was pure terror. Or maybe that was the trembling from pushing his body so hard. Could be that, too.

That gave him some small comfort as he fell to his knees in exhaustion. Demerius ruled the realm and could bring all of its might to bear if he wanted. He had shown a penchant for cruelty and wanton misery for no reason other than to prove a point. That point was he was in charge; his will be done.

But that wasn’t the thing that scared Kyle the most. He was going up against a guy who looked to be the isekai protagonist of his own story, and further into the story at that.

You’d have to be mad not to be scared of fighting one of those.