SelkieMyth
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Chapter 621 - Overthrowing the Tyrants XIV
🕑 Added 2025-01-10 15:00:05 +0000 UTCI didn’t need to look at the absolute beauty of a map I’d made, I had it entirely memorized. It still brought me great joy to unroll it and look it over while hovering high in the sky though.
I’d made this. Myself. With painstaking effort, hours of scribbling and erasing, bottles of ink, multiple sheets of paper, and way too much squinting at the stars. I knew my map was distorted several ways. Hands were only so good for precision measurements against the stars, and my map was on a flat piece of paper, not a globe.
It was ugly, it was mine, and it was beautiful. Once life was a little more stable I was going to get a very nice leather roll and redraw it. Then hang it in my reading room in the [Manor].
I was so fucking done with this war nonsense. Why couldn’t people just leave well enough alone!? The sacred art of not bothering other people didn’t get nearly enough love and attention.
I scanned the map again, trying to work out my route for the week. I’d worked out the fastest way to heal the most people a while ago, but doing the same thing again and again had gotten boring, fast. Now I was looking for creative paths, after having just finished a round of ‘all the people I usually miss.’ I wondered… could I draw out a picture of a phoenix? If I went there first… then looped around… the whole thing kinda looked like a twisted phoenix. If I was drunk. With a head injury.
But eh, it was different! A new, different route. I got itchy when things were too samey. Day to day it was usually fine. A routine, people I knew and loved. Flying was always great, no matter where I was going. Needing to fly the exact same route? I had no good explanation for why that was boring me, and my need for something a little different.
My route set, I tamed my hair into a ponytail and went off flying again. The wind in my hair, a mission of mercy… I almost wanted to ask myself ‘what more could I want’, but that list was very, very long. Iona by my side, Auri on my shoulders. Fenrir around. No need for my travels. A safe home, a full pantry, a shelf of good books. A grove of mango trees, plans to meet my friends… there was a lot I wanted.
I ignored the blinking light the first time I saw it. The fifth time it flashed directly at me I changed course and landed. There were a number of elvenoids scurrying around from all different races. Arachne was off to the side, in a shaded tent under an umbrella, and she caught my eye. I flew over to her, ignoring and being ignored by everyone else. A snap of her fingers encased us in her threads, granting us privacy.
“Arachne!” I was delighted to see her at last. “How are you?”
She slowly smiled.
“I’m doing well. We were a little concerned after Edhallon went up in flames and you were nowhere to be found.”
I snorted.
“I’m immune to fire, ridiculously difficult to kill and you must’ve gotten the documents I teleported down to the pickup point. What was there to worry about?”
Arachne arched an eyebrow at me.
“Besides you completely vanishing after? Come on, Elaine, you’re smarter than that. You know the sort of effect simply disappearing has. You know what people will think. This is basic, first-order thinking we discussed and trained!”
I groaned. I don’t think either of us had wanted the conversation to go in this direction.
“You’re right, you’re right. Sorry, my bad. I assume you wanted to talk to me for a reason?”
Arachne nodded.
“Yes. We’re about to directly attack the New Remus Empire and finish this once and for all. I’d like to extend an invitation for you to participate, if you think you’re capable of seeing sides in this conflict. The assault is tomorrow.”
Arachne sent me a pointed look. Yeah… anyone knowing me had to see my hand in things when I interfered with fights between the New Remus Empire and the demons, let alone a [Thinker] of her caliber. If I decided ‘nobody would die’ during the battle to overthrow the New Remus Empire, it’d get ugly. I didn’t want to come out and claim nobody would die in the end, but it would suddenly get a lot more complicated.
“Yes, I can.” I said. Arachne had just berated me for not thinking ahead properly, and I wasn’t flying around without a thought anymore. “Who’s involved, and what happens next?”
Arachne sighed and looked up to the sky, wringing her hands in frustration.
“The full details of the coalition would bore you.” She said. “We reached out to a large number of people we believed would be interested in seeing the New Remus Empire fall. About half of them were willing to work together. The other half are sitting out, either because we couldn’t come to an arrangement with the rest of the coalition, because they think they can strike to gain their own advantage in the chaos, or for one of a dozen other reasons. As for what happens next… that was an area where there are too many people, egos, and agendas. We’ve agreed on only a few things. First, the New Remus Empire must fall. Second, no direct violence against people wearing red headbands during the assault. Third, we must all be eight miles away from the center of the city come the first dawn after the members of the 512 and the leadership are dead. After that, it’s going to get messy.”
Those were some slim rules of engagement. Nothing about helping each other, supporting each other. Nothing about civilians. I’d seen what happened when angry armies sacked a city all too often in the Han, and the situation Arachne was describing was going to be a bloodbath. If it was just the remnants of the Sentinels and Exterreri I could believe that maybe it’d all turn out decent - not good but not ‘oh god I have 512 years of nightmare fuel’ bad - but dozens of different groups and people? My imagination was already running wild, and I knew, just knew, that I’d encounter stuff even worse than what I thought.
“That… is unfortunate.” I said. Arachne knew I knew, and… yeah I wasn’t going to get into that with a [Thinker]. We were all on the same wavelength.
“On the unfortunate topic, some of our so-called allies have decided to thoroughly hunt everything nearby. They’ve got all sorts of spurious claims why, but it’s clear they’re hitting our blood supply, and not too many people are willing to donate a pint. Mind sharing?” Arachne asked.
I shrugged. I’d come a long way from worrying about Night draining me dry.
“Sure, got a bowl? I’m pretty sure you know where all my friends and family are. Can you send them a message from me, asking everyone to regroup and come home?”
“Naturally.” Arachne paused half a second, then continued. “The letters are on their way now.”
“Thanks Arachne! You’re the best. By the way, where’s Night?” I assumed the vampire would be here for the big event. Arachne flashed me her fangs, mischief in her eyes.
“Need-to-know.” She said.
I groaned.
====================
There was a big speech the next morning. I hadn’t quite realized just how many Classers would be here, from all over the world, from all walks of life. An ancient oak treant was strangely reassuring. They were cursed to slowly deliberate over decisions, and one being here was a mark of how serious the issue was - even elvenoids that usually didn’t engage in nation building had a bone to pick! The only person taller than the treant was a [Templar] ice giant from Modu. Elves from all three pre-war nations were assembled in ranks, and it looked like at least half the demon king’s army had defected over to our side. I’d never seen a devil armed for war outside the courtroom in the modern era, but a half-dozen made up a squad. Then there were almost fifty people like me, former mortals who’d seized Immortality with their own hands.
I wondered if any of the gems I made and sold had ended up in their hands?
Either way, the vampires who’d made it were off to the side, practically hiding. I recognized a few of my friends! Invincible had survived everything, and Skater was there. Depths was bopping her head at a curious squirrel, and Legion was a fake, but clearly around. I’d heard Calamity had died, Queen was doing her own ruling thing, and Tyrannus, Flood, and Calm were alive, but not showing up. Their skillsets weren’t the best for this type of assault… if they were even in a position to attend. A number of other Sentinels were here, but the known death toll simply among that group and their teams was going to be worth an entire obelisk on their own.
The number of Rangers I knew that were confirmed dead was going to be another five.
I shook my head, trying to get the morose thoughts out. Today was about life. About saving as many people as I reasonably could. I wandered over to my friends and sometimes co-workers, the only group I was sure wasn’t going to try and stab me in the back in all the chaos.
A dozen people got up on a makeshift stage, as low-level elvenoids started wandering through the crowd with a basket of red headbands.
There was some minor bickering up front, before one of the elves stepped forward and started his speech.
“A hundred arcs that all of them give a speech.” I muttered to Skater. She snorted.
“I’m not taking a sucker’s bet like that. Two hundred at least one of them gives two speeches.”
I weighed the chances of that when Legion smoothly came in.
“Five hundred that we don’t leave before noon.”
“What did I just say about not taking sucker’s bets?” Skater joked. One of the people handing out headbands arrived, and we all took ours, putting them over our heads. Legion simply added an illusion to his projection.
“You know, there’s plenty of people who can see through illusions, and who’ll get the wrong idea if your actual body doesn’t have a red headband on it.” I pointed out to the trickster.
Legion grumbled, but added a real headband.
“It’s going to be damn sunny out, it’s not like most of us can be directly involved.” He complained. I shrugged.
“Sure, but it’s literally your funeral.”
I was going full steam on [Luminary Mind], every thought process working as hard as it could. I went over my image, working on tweaking it as finely as I could. I couldn’t do sides, equipment, or anything like that. My image worked off of my knowledge and will, what biology I wished to fix and what I was ignoring. The low level, simplistic version wasn’t good enough. ‘Heal everyone, exclude the elves from the image’ wasn’t up to my standards. I was better than that.
The next layer included kids. No child was a member of the 512, and I wasn’t going to let them become collateral. Teenagers and puberty is where it started to get tricky.
Where was I drawing the line? How developed was a teenage elf before my healing image declared them an adult? I couldn’t exactly say ‘over 20 they’re an adult, under 20 they’re off limits’, my images didn’t work like that. I had to give it a specific stage, a particular cutoff. How old was an elf allowed to be, before I allowed them to die?
If I put the line too low, I was damning thousands, if not tens of thousands, of kids to die. If I put the line too high, if I pushed it too far, I was entirely negating the assault, turning it into a slap fight where the city burned to the ground, but everyone picked up and went home at the end of the day. Tempers were already flaring, and it was the day of the big attack. How impossible would it be to try this again?
That assumed I survived, and a thousand irate Classers didn’t focus on putting me down.
I hated war. I hated having to think of this. I wanted to just say ‘fuck this all, nobody dies’, but the New Remus Empire was forcing everyone to pay tribute on pain of executing one in eight people. One of my thought processes protested. Wasn’t this analysis a violation of my [Oath]? Hadn’t I sworn to heal everyone, regardless of religion or creed?
But I did heal everyone. It got murky and complex in a war, and while lily-white aspirations were nice, they were getting the mud of reality on them. If I didn’t go? The city was going to be viciously and violently sacked. Sure, I could try to disclaim any responsibility - I hadn’t done it in the end - but I had the power and ability to act, and I was going to.
Healing everyone blindly had the same issue. I’d just make a mess of things, and I’d get to smugly pat myself on the back as everything got worse for everyone. That was no good either.
I was going to get down in the mud, and make the hard decisions. It was where I could do the most good. The image I was constructing, after all, was simply one layer of my healing. While I was there, while I could see with my own eyes what was happening, I could and I would extend additional skills and healing to the civilians I saw, all while doing what I could to protect them.
There was the story of the starfish. One day a big storm came in, and when it receded, the beach was filled with tens of thousands of starfish, as far as the eye could see. They were going to die soon, either dried out or eaten by birds. An old man went walking by the beach, only to see a young girl throwing starfish back into the water.
“Why are you throwing the starfish back? You can’t possibly get even a small fraction of them back into the water.” the old man said.
The young girl picked up a starfish and hurled it back into the water.
“It mattered for that one!”
It wasn’t on the scale of a city, it wasn’t on the scale of a nation, but for every starfish I found and threw back into the ocean? It would matter to them.
I settled on the line being a few months before the end of puberty on four separate traits, out of several dozen identified.
The next nightmare I had to tackle - pregnant women. I was strongly considering general amnesty, even though at least four members of the 512 were known to be heavily pregnant.
Fuck.
I hated war.
Legion had been right - it was well past noon by the time we all got moving, and half the reason we finally got off our asses were the demons simply leaving to attack, letting the rest of us scramble to catch up.
================
Sara was six, and on an outing with her parents to buy new shoes! She was outgrowing her old ones, and they were starting to pinch the elf’s foot. She didn’t even get to see her life change forever. One moment she was walking with her parents, holding both their hands, and the next she was flipping high through the air, blood all over her body. Two sprays each from her parents being murdered next to her, so quickly she’d been spared the sight entirely, and a puke of blood all down the front of her shirt when she’d been cruelly punted into the sky. The blow should have killed her, but miracles abounded. No children were dying in the sudden, unprovoked assault on Ithil.
The pain hit Sara a moment later, a brief ripple of agony that had her screaming. Then she realized she was falling through the air, and her screams redoubled. Fire and smoke were already concealing the city, and she couldn’t do anything about her spinning through the air.
“Mommy!” She screamed out. “Daddyyyyy!!”
Sara fell on the high-rise wires that the most agile Classers used to zip between the skyscrapers of Ithil. It ripped through her body, healing as quickly as she was hurt, and Sara wasn’t slowed in the slightest as she fell. Behind her, a dozen wires snapped and whiplashed across the city as a building fell.
Sara continued to scream in fear, pain, and confusion, bouncing off the side of a building with a crack as bones broke and reformed. She didn’t have a thought for why, or how, just that she was scared, and wanted her parents.
Sara landed with a sickening twack of terminal meat on concrete. She curled up and cried, her entire world overturned in an instant. Her parent’s lessons came to her.
Find an adult. Tell them your name, where you live.
Sara realized nobody was coming for her. Nobody was going to help. She picked herself up off the alley floor, her dress ruined, and hesitantly started to walk to the big street.
She scurried back down the alley as three people barged in on the end. Two big scary-looking men had red headbands, and they were taunting and sneering at a woman they were pushing in.
“Oh, this one’s going to be so much fun.” The first one said as he ripped at her dress.
“Yeah, she-” The second one started to say something, but a blinding flash of light had Sara covering her eyes. A short woman with a red headband was looking down on the two bodies with a disgusted look on her face. They didn’t have heads anymore, just charred and smoking necks. The woman scuttled back, but Sara ran forward, stopping right in front of the lady. She cleared her throat, and tried to remember what she needed to say.
“Hi, I’m Sara, and I live at 15 Willow Lane, Apartment 2. Can you help me?”
The lady knelt down in front of Sara. Was… was she crying? Was she lost as well?
“Hi Sara. I’m Elaine. Let me see what I can do.”
Comments
Daniel Garza
"going to be so much fun" and "ripped dress" was implying sexual assault from by red headbands to a civilian. And Elaine wasn't gonna let that happen.
Harry Hirsch
Did she burn the heads off because they are not allowed to attack people with red headbands?
SwitchBlaze
Good Chappie. Thank you.
Marcus Cassin
Nice to see Elaine does seem to have matured a bit in her approach to the Oath. Also, burning the heads off those two, very nice.
Nate El
Do people know how to message the author? There is a video about mango planting librarians in a post apocalypse. I think he would like it! . https://www.instagram.com/reel/DE4V5QZMLqP/?igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==
Chrismatic
Holy shit that was a heart wrenching line at the end of the chapter from Sara. Fwiw I would make it clearer it was Elaine, and end the chappie right there after she said it. Hits hard.
elijah pickett
She would be a fantastic orphanage matron.
elijah pickett
Poor Sara. I need to know her entire life story after this and for her to be okay. I'm ready for the Orphanage arc😭
Aura
Is Elaine crying because she killed the two rapists though? I didn't interpret it that way. Seems more like she's crying over the general situation, and the two rapists here are simply the context in which we got an external view of her in this moment. This encounter also makes me think... somewhere in this city, there are red headband-wearing people raping someone. That person is fighting back, and losing, and that horrible act is succeeding. Elaine's healing is making that possible. Her healing is enabling a thousand other acts of murder and atrocity against civilians. For the greater good. Maybe even children -- they can't die? Yeah... that's not to say they can't suffer. I'm unable to fathom to grief, guilt, feeling of impotence, and other traumas Elaine is going through right now. It's unimaginable tragedy and suffering all around. How could she not be a crying wreck through this? What point in this entire story has given us the impression she won't be so heavily impacted by this? She's strong, she can push through and function during it all. That's almost worse, because she's also got front row seats to the event, right in the thick of it, with the-world-around-me doing no favors in this regard.
John
Thank you for the Cliff
Kaylakaze -
Still doesn't seem like a valid reason to be taking personal offense and assigning curses.
FaMa_Tarapax
im pretty sure their job isnt to gather souls but to wipe their memories and put them into the cycle of reincarnation. they probably also fix soul degradation from repeated reincarnation.
Kaylakaze -
But that's kinda my point: what is WDBC's purpose/job? They're not gathering souls; the souls either get reincarnated or join their god to become angels. Is their only purpose to rip the soul from the body? If that's the case, who gave them that job, and, if no one, then they're just an entitled Karen throwing a fit when someone says "No, I'd rather not let you rip my soul from my body."
Archer
I believe they are supposed to cause severe issues. It feels like the gods of Palos made the world into a meat grinder to produce more gods and angels. Anyone who dies before hand is just memory wiped and recycled to go again in a new life.
Trevor Mergen
Thanks!
Kaylakaze -
What I want to know is when she's going to go toe-to-claw with white dove/black crow herself. Where does WDBC get off thinking she has any right to the dead or to assigning curses in the first place? Those racial curses will continue to cause severe issues until they're done away with.
Adel Lê
Not two minutes in and Elaine already broke one of the few rules of engagement this battle has. Not that I'll cry for these two red headbands.
bcdp
Besides, while I can appreciate the naive viewpoint of commiting genocide to do away with a Big Evil for good, there are obvious problems with that. First, why stop with the children of those elves aligned with the 512? I mean, if elven arrogance is the problem, there are more of those elves among those that are aligned with the invading force. Good luck with the fallout from that. Second, the 512 are nice neighbors compared to the effects of the immortal wars. And the source of those are not the elves, but the black sheeps among those with too much power - even if the elves might source more of them. It's as if any (successful) random guy on Earth could have the button for a nuke arsenal. So, if you are going to kill children because they could become the next Big Evil, you'd have to kill literally everyone.
Nate El
Assuming classes work like a modern battlefield. Stick your head up, lose air cover, get unlucky with snipers or artillery and crow/dove aknocking. I don’t think she could get too many out or move quickly without getting tagged by people with thousands of levels on her or getting hit with Bane.
Nate El
“He who saves one life saves the world.”
Selkie
It's a new issue. She's fine only healing one side, but wants to do BETTER than that. Since there are a lot of civilians mixed into the fight, the issue is "How do I tell if someone is a hostile soldier, or an innocent civilian?". Pure biology, she can't. Should she save the babies? Obviously yes. Children? Yes. Teenagers? Yes. Okay, but how old of a teenager...?
tr13ze
Thanks for the chapter 😁
Joshua Little
Thanks for the chapter.\
Henrik T.
I might just be blind but is she actually arguing about healing empire soldiers here? That isn't currently her issue. If she could form an image for excluding all soldiers of the empire I feel like she would, her conundrum here is more about the issue of identification. Her thought about just healing everyone isn't really her slipping back into old moral dilemmas and more her expression frustration at the impossibility of healing all civilians and even after 100 years I believe struggling with inevitable collateral of war is very reasonable. (At least until you realize that accelerated thinking+parallel thoughts probably puts her mental age in the low to mid thousands)
Phsteven
The difference in this scenario vs the other battles and wars is that she is now literally powerful enough to say that "nobody dies" and they won't. She's done this several times on various battlefields in this war, but she wasn't strong enough to save every civilian in the Civil war, she could only do her best. The dilemma here wasn't 'can she kill people', or 'let them die', it was 'who is old enough to be considered a combatant' and 'who needs to be protected'. She can't save all of the civilians like Sara's parents because her skill can't differentiate between who is a combatant trying to harm her and who isn't. She must make the calls herself.
Cameron Earl
My understanding of morality is we want clear rules because they make murky things easier. But real life defies clear lines and neat categorization. No matter what moral framework you pick, there will be problems with it. So the best thing we can do is keep asking hard questions and improving our answers. As long as we keep asking the questions of what is right, we won’t fall into traps like “the ends justify the means” or “the letter of the law”. Anyway, I like that Elaine is still asking these questions, and I like how it demonstrates that sometimes there are no right answers.
Bryce
Tftc
Minato
Thanks a lot!
Roombot
Elaine better start an orphanage
Jack Dawson
I think in this chapter her main focus is trying you draw the line between innocent children and people old enough to be combatants on the enemy side
DAK
@Apollo, I guess I don't realize that. Yes, she is bound to the oath, and the oath does not change its wording. But throughout this series she's had multiple soliloquies waxing prosaic about how as she and her world view change, so too does her understanding of the oath -- and subsequently the interpretation of what it means. Once the simple act of deliberately putting herself in harm's way to force a situation where self-defense comes into play would have been a moral issue--now she does it all the time. Decapitating the two rapists just now would have been acceptable before but left her feeling like a murderer. As the world has gotten bigger for her, she's had to allow herself to do more harm while looking at the greater good. Even her Arbiter Class was an example of her changing in the context of the oath. Allowing herself to choose who lives and who dies, and then level off of it, would have been a violation of 14-year-old Elaine's oath. Same oath now, but not a violation. Yeah, she always struggles with what feels like the exact same argument at each moral dilemma, and I expect that won't change. But this particular battle just felt like the same ones she has fought before, and usually she's able to not have to rehash that old "is it a violation?" on repeat scenarios. Maybe because it's sacking a town with civilians? But that can't really be new. Her campaign in the Han empire was supposedly against armies, but they all have camp followers in the thousands, and known civilian/child deaths are happening in those battles. And they did go after some towns as well...
FeyOne
Same here. It’s a fantastic chapter, but the end of it tried to break me.
Rainer
And painful, even if only for a minute moment. Elaine doesn't have any Skills or effects for pain nullification, at least, not that I can remember. Sara would have felt everything as it happened.
Harimir Lightfeather
8 year old acualy, she tok the oath while her childhood firend was getting cremated
matthew gilley
The whole world in ruins and the first thing we do is more killing. Kings of piles of ashes
Apollo Above
You do realize she literally made a magical binding contract that locks those problems into place where she is not only incentivised to comtinue following a inflexible set of moral values, but reinforces any behavior that goes with those said values? Like. Shes stuck with her 14 yeaf old morality until she drops her vow
DAK
It feels strange to me that Elaine is over 100 and still has the exact same ethical conundrums with barely any more added nuance than she did when she was 14. She’s not an academic, where she could cling to the same arguments for decades. She has literally waded through bloody battle fields, burned and been burned alive, watched entire nations pillage, rape and enslave each other and is standing amidst groups waiting to backstab each other for reasons so petty that bald faced genocide seems like a better argument. Is there a lot to parse here? Lots. Always more orphans and widows and slavery. Does the concept of unilaterally destroying one side of a battle field for the good of all sentient life really need a rebooted argument every time, though? I think she knows the answers already.
CataFlan
TFTC
Anonymous
Presumably either guardians or a god is going to show up at first dawn when they are done killing the 512 and really start sacking the city.
bentley mcgill
By the sound of it she completely destroyed their heads I don't think the headbands survived
Kennyevilmonkey
War. War never changes...
TroubleFait
Anyway, Arachne knew the deal when she asked Elaine to attend.
NDF 07
Probably several
Tatiana Saturno
Now I am crying too.
AntiClimax she her
Totally agree, but it gives them a casus belli. I don't how much that matters in the end, they'd find another one, still could affect how many political allies Exterreri could have in the direct aftermath. Edit: it could have a positive effect, though, given she's protecting new Remus civilians -- it could make an alliance with new Remus remnants more likely, and given they were the largest faction, and some of the current alliance are very likely new Remus defectors. Guess I'll just have to wait and see how it shakes out.
CherMi
I'm pretty sure most of the assault forces will have an enormous war after they win. There's plenty of opportunities to take care of any protests. If anyone has a problem with Elaine, they're not the kind of people Exterreri can afford to have around.
Andrew
Thank you!
AntiClimax she her
Reading the chapter I realized there were going to be a lot of orphans. I was worried about young elves with vendetta's going after Elaine. Sara's POV makes me feel a bit guilty for not thinking about the orphans before Elaine. Anyway, feels like this could be the start of an orphanage arc. I very much doubt Sara would be the only one Elaine swooped in to save. There is the issue of Elaine killing people in red headbands, though. She was totally right in what she did, but I could see it having repercussions for the Extereri remnants, and Elaine herself, since the only rule of engagement that mattered was no direct violence against people with red headbands.
Bakerbob
War is hell!
Jonas Engell
War is war and hell is hell and of the two of them war is worse.
Khal Lee
Thanks for the chapter!!! Hahahaha bouncing Sara. Poor girl but sounded like a ride of Lifetime down a river rapid except through the air.
Adam
TFTC
ElPontife
Damn hard ending.
joey
Thanks for the chapter makes my day when i get to read more of Elaines journey
Dan
😢
Jason Hardman
Awww. Looks like Elaine has a new adoptee. TYFTC!
Simon Hoerder
Not fun. But necessary. Thanks for the chapter.
Hodge Wasson
Oof, that ending.
Thom Woosley
War is hell.
Jem Gryphonkin
😭 I'm glad Elaine is there to save her. Hopefully another adoptee for our heroines!
Bubbles The Amoeba
Child acquired
Tilen Praprotnik
Thanks for the chapter
