27

In a hurry, the girls reach the dome.

"Please tell me it's not him" Sitting on the bleachers with her face buried in her palms, Nadjela puts Erika, sitting next to her, in a dilemma.

"It's not him"

The princess spies between her fingers, and the first thing she glances at is Lancaster's smile, full of brilliance and smugness. She closes her eyes.

"By the mother of all birds!"

"You asked for lies, and I gave them to you" The huntress raises a hand to draw attention to a delivery slave, easily identified by his white beanie and tray with suspenders. The slave with the crooked, shaky smile hands Erika a bag of caramelized fried worms. The german girl puts a handful in her mouth, they are sweet and crunchy. She picks up another handful and invites the piglet, who rests on her legs, to dip her flat snout into her greasy palm.

A nervous giggle from the seat to her right catches Erika's attention.

"He did it... The lunatic challenged him. Since that two-headed calf, it's the most unheard of thing my eyes have ever witnessed!" exclaims a bald man, dressed as a doctor. In his tone there is a hint of recognition of Chester.

"Do you know the muskite?"

"Eh?" Nestor the Astronaut looks at her. He soon loses interest in her and goes back to probing the arena, where Chester and the Inquisitor face each other. Hunched over, he places his elbows on his thighs and folds his hands near his lips. "Yes, I know him, he was in my office babbling nonsense about overthrowing Deathmask and more.... I didn't think he would do it. Idealists have a hard time walking, and it's a wonder they know their mouth from their anus. Now my suspicions about this man are crystal clear.... This is a guy who loses himself in his quixotic ways, a psychopath"

Erika agrees with the bald man. Chester is a psychopath. But being heirs to a messed up world, who isn't?

The mercenary merely wishes the Lancastrian well, though if he dies it wouldn't taste like a tragedy to her either. Maybe Nadjela will lose, but Erika was ready to offer her a shoulder to cry on, comfort her, wrap her in her arms and tell her sweetly in her ear that everything will get better, maybe even give her a little rum to make her sorrows slip faster, and if it gets cold at night, as it surely will, she will accompany her in bed to warm her dreams and something else.

Yes, that's the contingency plan. Erika smiles as she imagines each step of the process, but her amusement disappears with the little pig looking at her with scolding eyes.

"What?"

The piglet snorts and switches legs to Nadjela.