Page 59 of Can you take it?

I gave him a quizzical look but continued, assuming he was already inebriated.

“This is surprisingly comfortable here,” I mumbled.

A friendly bartender came over, bringing another drink to Bexley even though the other one hadn’t even been halfway finished. “What can I get you?” said the kind, gentle-looking barkeep with coils of gray hair in a horseshoe around his head.

“I’ll have whatever he’s having.”

“Scale of the Wyvern, sure thing,” he said as he poured me a matching drink and set it in front of me.

I didn’t care about drinking. I wanted to tell Bexley to get his ass up and move back to the platform, so we could make our decision, but something about the tavern and the look on Bexley’s face kept me from grabbing him and leaving. It would give me more time to convince him to vote for me anyway.

“So you found out,” he said.

“Found out what?” I asked. An eerie feeling had begun to creep its way into the pit of my stomach.

“About the doors. They’ll only let one of us out. We all have to vote,” he said listlessly, taking another pull from his bottle.

A man wearing a leather apron came up and patted him on the shoulder. “I’ll see you again soon, right, Bexley? Take care. Thanks again for all your help.”

I could feel how deep the line was between my eyes without the aid of a looking glass. “So you know about the voting?” I asked, wondering how he could possibly know so many people here in the short amount of time since we’d arrived.

“Yeah, I know,” he said with the countenance of someone who had just lost their pet.

“Well, then finish your drink and let’s go. Your ass is going to vote for me to leave and we need to get back to the platform. Anna’s grabbing Walter and Eletha.” I let out a heavy breath with my words and realized how much everything was starting to get to me. There was a chance that the I wouldn’t get chosen to leave this realm and the thought alone of being trapped here made me feel damn near barbaric. If I didn’t leave this tier and soon, I was going to lose my fucking shit. I could think about Anna from the Elysian Fields, away from this place.

“Yeah, yeah,” he said slowly, looking off into the distance. I realized he wasn’t going to move, and there was not much I could do to make him.

My eyes kept glancing to the darkened corner, where a couple was arguing and were growing louder. The man, a large, sweaty-looking brute, kept ordering her around roughly. She was trying to get up and leave, I realized, and he wasn’t letting her. Blood pounded in my system, and I had the immediate urge to run over and help, but I stopped myself. The tavern was filled with able-bodied men and women that all could help—it didn’t have to be me. I was hoping to step away from that.

“So, hurry up,” I began. A chair crashed across the room from the darkened corner, where the man began to yell louder, swearing at the girl. I realized I’d stood up and was glaring in their direction.

“Oh, great,” grumbled Bexley. “Go on, get out of here. You’ve gone and brought your illusion into mine.” He quickly finished his drink, tipping it up until the last drop was gone.

“What illusion?” I asked, turning back around. “Look, he’s being awful to her. I can’t just sit here.”

The girl, though she looked tough herself—I would have guessed her to be able to take any man in this bar—continued to endure the onslaught of swears, curses, and name-calling from who I assumed was her date. I looked around to see if anyone else was readying to intervene, but no one was even looking.

“Leave me alone in here, for crying out loud. I can’t get one drink alone in this place,” Bexley grumbled.

I couldn’t take it anymore. I was next to the woman in a second. “Hey, man,” I shouted when the man raised his hand to smack the girl. I moved in front of her. “Go ahead, follow through with that,” I challenged, now in the man’s space.

He didn’t waste a second before backhanding me across the face.

“Are you all right?” I asked the woman as I punched her date in the face.

“Yeah, I’m okay,” she said. “Thank you for helping me. I don’t know what I would have done without you.”

“Oh brother,” I heard Bexley say from the other side of the bar.

“Why don’t you go stand over there, where it’s safe?” I told her, putting the man in a headlock and smashing his head against the bar top.

The girl walked away, surprisingly calm.

“Do you know what I hate?” I smashed his head into the bar again. “When men like you”—another hit to the bar— “can’t keep their sweaty hands to themselves.”

“Fuck off,” he said, punching me in my gut.

Several of his friends joined in, seemingly coming out of nowhere. With no powers, it seemed like it might be too much for me to take all at once.