“I don’t like it.”

“Why not?”

“It’s a crime, that’s why. A travesty. How will it look to my boys, my wife? That’s a damned slow process for all of us.”

“Well, screw you then. I don’t deal with everyone, haven’t you seen my work? Some people don’t know about it at all, it’s just whim on my part. Others choose once, and then forget for years until the very day. So what do you say to your circumstance now? Shackled to a dealing table, you’re lucky. You thought you could say as what you wanted; think the deepest thoughts without the deepest results. But now it has come full circle, so what do you say?”

“Nothing” He lit his pipe, flaring a brief match light across his furrowed eyebrows and knotted beard. “Nothing at all. I had hoped, however, that I would be done with bosses. I have to apologized, I guess, for being unaccustomed to owing homage to one like you. Since you have shown yourself to be uncommonly willing to compromise, I will do the same…I would like it to be over with quickly. No shame to my family or comrades in this sentencing, only a swift end to my own action.” He pipe flared briefly as he puffed, discontented, at it.

“No.”

“No?”

“No. You have been a hell raiser, a bolshevik, for too long. I should not lower myself to admitting that light of a degree of punishment. You should be made to be pitied by the suitors at Odysseus’ house for your punishment."

“How?” He glared at the other. “How would you carry out that sentence? You carry no weight, you breeder, you gigolo. You command nobodies, zombies. You have no power over an actual mind. Your shackles have tried to hold me to an earth, dirt, when the actual fort of my friends and family is built over the void you have left. The void you, in your hubris, have tried to fill with souls and power. You hold no threat over my head!” The shackles vanished. “You hold nothing, you are nothing. A demon from inside-Phah! Indigestion. Go away! No more bargains for your heaven.” His pipe flared. The figure slouched across from him, old as Methuselah, and bearded, vanished.

The younger man, the new man, stretched his arms and legs. He breathed. He was back in his land, he was free.