"Hello, everyone!" the main rider shouted. His voice was unmistakably pleasant, and Isaac realized that this was the very man who had shot him hours before. Isaac was unsure of how long it had really been, as time had stopped being something he could track during his time struggling to stay alive. "I thank you all for the warm welcome to your humble town. It really means a lot to me to know that even with all of humanity's problems, there are still good, decent people who open their hearts to a stranger. I suppose it doesn't hurt when its one of my bullets that is doing the opening," the man said with a grin as the other riders laughed. "Now, where is your sheriff? Do we have the sheriff?" he asked one of what must have been one of his henchmen on horseback. The rider nodded before giving a whistle and a nod to another rider.
Slowly, this rider had his horse move towards the front of the town square as she held a rope. Attached to the other end of the rope was the corpse of Sheriff Rogers, dragging along the dirt road. They brought his mangled body forth to the center of the steps, next to the leader of the riders. Even though he was about one hundred feet away, Isaac could see the ruin that had been brought upon the sheriff and shuddered to think about what his last moments must have been like. The leader surveyed the corpse before shouting, "Now I hope this serves as a good lesson to all of you before me right now. Do not mess with me or any of the rest of us here, or you will end up like the good sheriff here."
"What do you want from us!" a voice from the crowd shouted.
"Who said that? Bring him up here!" the leader responded. Quickly, the supposed owner of the voice was brought before the leader. Isaac recognized the man as Mr. Davis, Nat's father. He was known through most of the town as being a kind and generous man. As the owner of the town's largest farm, he, mostly, refused much of the wealth that would come from such a position. Instead, he made sure that even the poorest of people in the town were fed. After tragedies, he was always the first to come round and offer his condolences, along with some preserves, whatever chits he could scrounge up on such short notice, and a promise to help provide even more if need be. He was as good a man as Isaac had ever known, if not for the notions he held about race. He was not a hateful racist, as some other townsfolk were, but a kind one. He never spat at, yelled at, cursed at, or struck at any of the colored people he came across during his day-to-day life. Instead, he insisted that he felt that he and his kind had their place in the town, and those who were not like him had their place in town. Isaac was not like him, nor like his daughter, and therefore Isaac had no place in his life outside of whatever work he might have for Isaac. After all, he was not a cruel man.
Isaac had never seen Mr. Davis look the way he was looking as they dragged him before the leader of the marauders, full of terror. "Sir! Were you the one who just asked me what I wanted?" Mr. Davis stammered. "Sir! I said, were you the one who asked me what I want? Answer me!" the leader growled in a voice that caused Mr. Davis to yelp.
"Yes! Yes! It was me! i-I'm so sorry! Please forgive me! Please, please, forgive me!" Mr. Davis pleaded as he fell to his knees to beg.
"Forgive you?" the man shouted before pausing. "Thank you!" the man said with a smile. Quickly, he dismounted his horse to help Mr. Davis back onto his feet before patting him on the back. "See? This is that wonderful hospitality I was talking about! Asking about what I want! So kind of you to ask! What I want from all of you... is hospitality! My friends and I need a place to stay while we search for some things. Like a base of operations! What better place for us to stay than in your wonderful town here! All you people need to do is everything we ask and to stay out of our way. Do you all think you can do that?" The leader grimaced at the silence that followed. "I said, do you all think you can do that?" This time the crowd responded in the affirmative.
"Good," the Leader grinned. "Hey there, friend," he said as he stopped Mr. Davis from making his way back to his family. "I have one last request from you, then I promise you can go back to your family or whatever. Can you do me a favor and point out your Mayor for me? Can you do that?" Shakily, Mr. Davis pointed at Mayor Reynolds, who seemed to attempt to shield himself behind the Gonzales family. "You?" The leader said as he pointed at Mayor Reynolds to confirm his identity. Slowly, the Mayor stood upon, his knees unsteady. As he finally stood up, he affirmed that he was in fact the Town's Mayor. "Excellent," the Leader grinned as he pulled out his revolver and put a bullet between the Mayor's eyes. He then turned to Mr. Davis and said, "Ok. Now you can go."
After standing before the cavern for several minutes, Isaac seemed to have worried the group of gnomes that had brought him here. In a huddle, they seemed to communicate with one another as they ran through solutions to Isaac's state. Eventually, one gnome left the huddle to lift one of Isaac's pant legs, while another bit him on the exposed area. This surge of pain snapped Isaac back to reality. Isaac cursed loudly, the words echoing through the cavern until they finally died down. Every single gnome he could see both immediately before him and inside the cavern stopped in their tracks, looking at him as if they had just witnessed him summarily execute a unicorn. All of them cried to themselves, tears running into their beards. Isaac wished he were dead. Azrael's sadistic grinning showed that he was glad that Isaac was not.
Isaac rushed out into the cavern, through the group that had brought him to this wondrous places that were now delirious in their grief because of him. He now stood before everything, the majestic buildings carved from the stone, the glorious lights, the gems sparkling so beautifully. He did not feel worthy to stand in such a mystical place, instead, feeling like an interloper who has profaned the site just by his mere presence. He began to feel the eyes of all the gnomes that had previously been bawling focus on him.
"S..sorry? I meant nothing by it. You don't have to cry anymore. I promise I'm a good person! See?" Isaac desperately picked up a nearby gnome, and holding it like an infant, he scratched him under his beard. To Isaac's surprise, the gnome closed its eyes and purred softly. The gamble paid off, as the rest of the gnomes congregated around him, each one wanting a turn. Isaac picked up gnome after gnome to make each one purr in happiness. It was all very cute, if not also very weird.
"Hello there!" a voice echoed deeply through the grand cavern. Isaac was so startled, he nearly dropped the gnome he was petting. He turned to see a somewhat larger and older looking gnome, with what looked to be a longer white beard and an even pointier red hat. Isaac surmised that he must be the leader of the group of gnomes. "Why, if it isn't a human! And... some bone creature! How marvelous! We rarely get visitors, but we would love to have you! Isn't that right, my children?" All the gnomes jumped and chirped excitedly at the prospect. "Come, tour our humble city beneath the ground!" the gnome leader urged as he ushered the visitors to his position. Thus began the grand tour of the city of the gnomes.
By the tenth minute of the tour, Isaac wished he was dead. "Here is where we take the stones and assess them based on their mineral composition. Now those that have a quartz content of twenty-four point five percent or lower are placed in this hopper here, while those that are between twenty-four point five percent and thirty-eight and eight-tenths of a percent are placed in this hopper over here," the old man blathered. "Now, I know you might wonder about where the feldspar goes. Now to answer that I question, I need to ask you a question..."
Isaac's eyes slowly slid over to Azrael, who looked to be even worse off. His skull looked to be void of all life, which Isaac realized was normal for any other skull but this one. Azrael's body seemed to sway in how a child does when they must listen to whatever important direction their parents are giving them. When it was time to move to the next stop on the tour, Azrael trudged like a man about to go before the firing squad. Isaac was trying to look at anything that might keep his attention away from the old gnome's seemingly endless lecture about rocks and minerals and how the gnomes process them for use. His eyes focused in on a brown stain was on the ground between some machinery the gnomes used to do something or other. It looked like it had come from a spill or something. Maybe it was from oil or something. All he knew was that contemplating this stain was far more exhilarating to him than anything that had been said on the tour so far. It even looked like the brown had gotten on the machinery itself, have splashed on it when whatever liquid was spilled. Unfortunately, it was time to move on to the next stop in Isaac's death march of boredom. It wouldn't be until four hours when they would finally be finished with a tour that seemed like it would only have taken ten minutes to walk normally. Isaac estimated that he had only seen one quarter of the buildings he had seen from the entrance, making the tour even more useless.
"Now, wasn't that grand?" the old gnome laughed with glee. He seemed to have enjoyed his performance as a tour guide, and Isaac knew he should at least try to fake enthusiasm out of politeness.
"Oh gee! It really was something. I don't know which I enjoyed hearing about more, the rocks or the minerals!"
"Ho ho. Yes, my boy. I think we all struggle with that question," the old gnome smiled.
"I hated it. Hated every single second of it," Azrael butted in, drawing a glare from Isaac.
"Oh, well, um, huh. I'm sorry to hear that," the old gnome deflated.
Isaac sought to recover the mood, "Forgive my companion. A geologist bullied him as a child." The old gnome nodded in understanding.
"Say no more. Say no more. That poor skeleton man. Now, how about we have some dinner?" The old man rousingly asked to all who could hear. Cheerfully, the gnomes led their guests through a passageway that opened to a large, for gnomes, dining hall. It was filled with stone tables and chairs appointed in the finest engravings and gemstones. Large chandeliers made of iron and gems hung from the ceiling, lighting the room by mushroom light. On the walls were beautiful mosaics and other wonderful adornments that made the dining hall seem almost more at home in a castle than a cavern. Isaac wondered to himself why this dining hall couldn't be a part of that accursed tour, and if the reason was because it was far too interesting. As they all took their places at the tables, they ushered Azrael and Isaac to a table up front that seemed reserved for the upper echelons of the gnomedom. It was finer than the rest of the tables, and slightly taller, though it was still too small for either Isaac or Azrael. It reminded Isaac of his time back in the orphanage, when there weren't enough of the big chairs for the bigger kids to use, and he'd end up stuck using one of the smaller ones. That happened quite a bit until he just made a chair just for himself, using some spare pieces of wood from the lumber yard. He decided to be polite and made no issue of the chair and took off his hat and jacket. Azrael declined to do the same and sat down.
There they sat, uncomfortably, as a handful of gnomes delivered food to each of them. Isaac surveyed the room and estimated there to be about a hundred of the gnomes in all. He wondered how they could feed themselves before figuring they must have to trade their rocks and minerals for whatever food they needed. Plus, because of their size, it couldn't take all that much to feed them. They delivered plate after plate until Isaac received his. On it was a single cut of meat that looked cooked just barely above raw. It was a somewhat modest piece for even a human of his small size, but looking at the pieces prepared for the gnomes near him, his looked to be about twice the size. Looking at Azrael, he saw him bitterly explaining to a confused waiter gnome about having an alcoholic beverage with dinner. Sadly, unlike the rest of the cave system, the land of the gnomes was dry and Azrael would have to wait to drink. Isaac shook his head before trying to use the small utensils to cut his piece of meat up, having little success. Finally, he just used his hands, tearing into the food with his teeth and chewing whatever piece came off in his mouth. It was okay, all things considered. It tasted like pork, though Isaac wondered if they chose his piece for its size rather than its quality, as it tasted off. "Maybe if they could mine some seasoning their cooking might be a little better," he quipped to himself.
Eventually everyone finished their meals and scattered back to whatever they were doing before dinner. Isaac and Azrael tried to make excuses to leave, but the old gnome refused to hear it, insisting that they stay the night. Eventually the two accepted their fates and the offer. Azrael made the wise stipulation that there was to be no more talk of rocks or minerals, nor was there to be any offer of tours, lest the two visitors leave immediately. The old gnome joyfully accepted the stipulation, and the gnomes surrounding them cheered in excitement. Soon, Isaac and Azrael found themselves back in the main cavern, watching as the gnomes performed some play, with the old gnome translating. It was a simple enough story. A young male gnome and a young female gnome have fallen in love when a tragedy befalls that ends up separating them before they can reunite in happiness again. At least, that's how Isaac remembered it, having drifted off into his memories again.
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