SelkieMyth
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Chapter 598 - Those Left Behind
🕑 Added 2024-10-28 02:00:04 +0000 UTCI proudly looked at the three surviving trainees, Raccoon not in their number. I didn’t bother with a fancy speech, they didn’t need one, they probably wouldn’t register it anyway.
“Congratulations. You’ve done it.” I told the three malnourished, sleep-deprived, shivering - well, I couldn’t call them trainees anymore, could I? They were Rangers now, through the same hellish initiation I’d gone through.
Two of them passed out on the spot, and I gently caught them with my [Mantle], lowering them to the ground. Sticks for a pillow? Sharp rocks in their side? Didn’t bother these two new Rangers. The third one staggered slightly, and slowly turned his head towards Auri.
“Does that mean we get food?” He blearily asked. I gave a sharp jerk of my head to Auri, who put a big flaming ! over her head before rushing over with her baked goods. He sank gratefully to the ground and started to mechanically eat her soft buns.
I discreetly put away the badges I’d prepared. They could wait until another day.
I was jumping the gun a little. ‘Properly’, there should be months of training, classes, and drills before making the final selection in a grand ceremony. It’d increase the weight of the title and the event, which would help with class quality.
At the same time, I was already down to three people. Any fewer and I’d have to axe the entire thing. I couldn’t call one person a one-man Ranger team, that wasn’t how teams worked. There was also the obvious lack of senior Rangers to show them the ropes on the job, how things actually worked, and I suspected between Iona, Nina, and myself, that we’d be helping the Rangers out for the first few years, showing them the practicalities of being in a community, helping out with various problems and disputes, and the biggest task of all: Slaying monsters, no matter what skin they were wearing.
I’d had time to work on the classes needed and the curriculum. A lot of sparring and team building at the start, the ‘fun’ stuff after the Hell Months they’d been through. A few of the easier classroom learnings to help show them what was next. Ease them back into ‘yes, it’s alright, you made it’ before getting into the more difficult topics.
They were going to have it the hardest. No matter how much I tried to hold their hands, no matter how I worked on helping them, they were still the first, and would need to blaze their own trails, defining what it meant to be a Ranger in this new era.
I couldn’t be prouder of them.
=======================
I paused halfway across my farm as I headed home, spotting a letter on my bed.
How the fuck did everyone but me have access to paper!? And enough paper to waste on an envelope!? It was such bullshit!!
As most of my mind railed against the inherent unfairness of life, part of me was curious and serious enough to actually read the letter. Every word filled me with greater and greater joy, no matter how short it was.
Elaine,
It’s Susan and Night! We’re absolutely delighted to see you thriving and doing so well! We’re obviously alive, and we simply couldn’t pass by without saying hello. It’s so exciting to see what you’re doing with the Rangers! Night blessed the whole activity, and with a little bit of luck, that should bump the survivors’ class quality up.
On to the part of the letter you’re going to enjoy less.
We can’t tell you what we’ve been up to, what we’re doing now, or what our future plans are. Need-to-know basis, and as much as we adore you and Iona, you don’t need to know. You know both of our specialities, and how a secret shared is no longer a secret.
In the short term, I don’t see us staying near Orthus or settling down anywhere. I do apologize that we couldn’t stay and meet you or chat. Events are dictating our actions.
Long term? Who knows! It’s a lovely place you’re all building here, and it’s entirely possible we’ll end up settling down here. It is close to the home we had for millennia, and more than a few of our caches have survived. If [Treasure Hunting] becomes a thing, know they are welcome to anything of ours that they find, except the purple vial. You’ll know it when you see it. The Pekari are likely to stir and become more active in the next six months. If they stick to their usual pattern, they’ll be doing their level best to help you for around a decade, before resorting back to their ‘normal’ behavior. With what you know, simply go to the second layer of chambers and tell Anurak to knock it off. He usually respects such requests.
Night was touched by your memorial, and has added a few protections of his own to it.
Once again, we are thrilled to see all of you surviving and thriving, and I simply can’t wait for the day where we can all properly sit down over a meal again and catch up!
Yours,
Susan Webweaver.
I [Teleported] over as fast as I could, grabbing the letter then zipping off to find my wife. The plants bent and waved under the sheer air pressure generated by my passing, our bees buzzing angrily at the shock.
“Love! Hey, love! Look what I found!”
=========================
I was flying back from Mare Town, where Katerina had just won her third election. The now-gone Sixth had slowly given way to a more militarized town than average, but it was still a bustling, prosperous town on the edge of the Mare sea, about twice the size of Orthus. I hated to say it, but scattering people around and only allowing the core Sixth and their followers in had worked.
I was flying upside down, hands acting as a pillow on my head and watching the clouds drift by when I spotted it.
The Island!
There was a difference between having the math equations for the Island’s travel memorized, and being able to actually calculate it. It was hellishly complex, and while I had a modest head for numbers, I was lacking a couple of math degrees and a few skills to plot out the Island’s - and by extension, the School’s - flight path.
I quickly debated if I should fly over. On one hand - Artemis and Julius. My oldest friends, my mentors, my teammates. On the other, deviating suddenly and going off course and off schedule would worry everyone back at home. They’d be expecting to see me, and I wouldn’t show up.
The scales were clearly tipped one way over the other. It was barely a decision, but I did send a quick little ‘oops sorry’ prayer to Selene and Lunaris. Hopefully they’d be able to reassure Iona I was fine.
I flew over at top speed, praying that it wasn’t in one of its super fast - hang on, I was pretty sure my top flight speed was faster than the Island’s fastest speed these days. Okay, good.
I came from below, casting several spells that let me see magic. Worryingly, there wasn’t a single ward around the School. Not a single protective barrier, no alarm systems, not even a basic wind shield to stop the Island’s flight path from scouring the surface clean with its wind! I was starting to get worried.
The main Island had eight little satellite islands floating and rotating around it. Artemis had one, the Witch in White had a second, and the dragon guardian of the School was in a third. Other ‘notable’ and ‘important’ people had the other five, but eh… I wasn’t too concerned with them one way or another.
I flipped up onto the main island, taking it in with a wince.
The Immortal War had not been kind to the place.
Instead of a bustling town attached to a university, the entire place was nearly scoured clean. A few metal beams together here and there still stood, the construction solid enough against gale force winds coming from every direction. The skeleton of the School remained, the Vault still clearly intact.
When I had attended the School, great veins of arcanite had threaded through the entire thing, magic and mana available to all. They had been covered by dirt and grass, cleverly integrated into various buildings, but the king’s ransom of arcanite was now visible and bare to the elements.
I was not going to touch that. There was no way I was the first one here, and arcanite was so practically useful there was no way it was ignored. I didn’t just find treasure like that.
There were survivors, and what’s more, they had to be high level and probably grumpy. I went onto a combat footing, ready to leave and escape in a dozen different ways. First things first: Do NOT touch the gigantic pile of money just sitting out there.
My scan extended to the sub-islands, immediately looking for Artemis’s.
It didn’t look great at first blush. Three of them were ruins, two of them had been scoured clean, one had a crackling Mirage-Lightning-Ice field around it and a number of people frozen inside with their faces twisted in pain. The mountain Long Zhi lived in was still a mountain, and the Witch in White’s fields were as green as ever, with countless flowers blooming.
I used the two recognizable islands to count where Artemis’s island was, and with some trepidation, a knot of worry building in my stomach, I flew over to where her home had been. It was one of the scoured islands, which wasn’t a promising start. I landed and took a quick look around, my heart sinking as I spotted a grave marker.
Fear rising, I walked over to it, cowardly closing my eyes until I was practically on top of it, then opening them to read the marker.
Julius.
Beloved husband and Ranger. You were the light of my world.
May you be in a better place.
===============================
I don’t know how long I knelt in front of the gravestone, struck dumb, crying freely. Day and night cycled by at least, but that meant almost nothing on the Island.
Julius.
Why did it have to be Julius? One of my oldest friends and mentors, the gruff man who’d told an idiot teenager to go home. The one who’d seen the spark in me, the potential, and whose single decision had changed the course of my entire life.
Dead. Just like that. Hopefully Artemis was still alive, it was clear she’d survived whatever had killed Julius and made the gravestone.
I drifted in my grief, allowing myself to go down memory lane. Julius, laughing around a campfire. Julius, the stern leader, shouting orders. Julius, protecting me in Perinthus. The way he smiled, the way his eyes lit up when he saw Artemis. How time had started to wear on him before I snatched him away from White Dove’s claws.
A crunch of gravel and a loud fake cough caught my attention. I belatedly realized this was the seventh or eighth cough, I just hadn’t registered the rest of them. I turned, praying to all the gods - and Ciriel extra hard - it was who I thought it was.
I turned and saw the most beautiful sight.
“Artemis!” I screamed, throwing myself at her.
“Healy-bug. You made it.” She said tiredly as I slammed into her arms.
===============================
We talked for what had to be, gods, days. Sitting in the Witch in White’s garden, eating the bounty that she was so generous to share, catching up. Mostly what I had been up to - Artemis’s story was far more boring. I sensed there was more to it than what she was saying, but we all grieved in different ways.
“... there was this big-ass fight that we were running straight into.” Artemis said. “Third one that day. Stupid fucking flying island, can’t ever stay still. We’re about to skirt through it as usual when this huge fucking Lightning bolt comes out of nowhere and smashes through every shield we have. Overloaded every array, broke every barrier. I got seven levels just seeing the thing, and I don’t fucking level just from looking at Lightning. It all went to shit then. Anyway, skip forward a few years, and my little healy-bug’s back!”
There were volumes in what she skipped over. I suspected an entire trilogy could be written in the one sentence of ‘it all went to shit then’. I wasn’t going to poke at Artemis’s grief. I couldn’t imagine losing Iona, Auri, Artemis, or anyone else so close to me. I was still trying to process the hole Julius was leaving.
We talked, we laughed, we rustled up enough alcohol to get rip-roaringly drunk. We cried, we mourned, we discussed inanities and the future.
I focused very hard on my words, pretty sure they were coming out right. I wasn’t one of those drunks slurring their words when they were sure they were correct, no that wasn’t me at all. “Come with me. We’ve got… we’ve got a whole town!”
Artemis didn’t immediately answer, taking another swig of the Witch’s brew. It was so good. It had to be magical in a way, it got better the more I drank!
“What would I even do there?” She asked. “It doesn’t sound like you need a [Teacher], and just… what would I do? At least here I feel like I’ve earned my keep over the decades teaching.”
That was a good question, and I was embarrassed at how long it took me to think of the very obvious answer. I might’ve been a little more drunk than I thought. I purged a little bit of the alcohol sloshing through my veins.
“You know…” I said slowly, like leading a cat onto a boat. “You kinda got robbed in Remus.”
Artemis finished her drink and threw it at me before I could say another word. I simply teleported it past my head, making it look like it flickered through me.
“You should’ve been a Ranger team leader.” I said. “They were assholes about women though.”
“Assholes.” Artemis agreed with feeling.
“I’ve got three brand spanking new Rangers half trained up. They need someone with experience to show them how to not die, and fight dirty.”
“No way.” Artemis said, in disbelief more than denial.
It took me two hours to convince her, but in the end, I was going to live with my mentor once again.
With enough time, everything comes around full circle.
Comments
matthew gilley
I just realized!!! Marcell!??! I'm going to assume our vampire biomancy teacher didn't make it. Which is really sad cause we didn't think of her once.
matthew gilley
Julius would have been perfect. It would have help him level too, since he had 2 ranger leader classes. He could have finally gotten a chance to improve and get the third class. Would have added a lot of weight too, with him being the older ranger commander of all time. Something night and Susan never talked about weirdly enough.
Chloe
Thats just awesomeness. Tyftc.
Sean Starling
Remember it was the whole lightning god with a grudge destroying the barrier in the middle of a dragon fight right?
Lowe K. Lyesmith
Huh, kinda expected the island to have some safeties and routines for immortal - war - Mode. Like maybe not flying aimlessly around anymore, maybe have a designated docking cavern deep underground, to emerge from when civilisation is restored. The island survived quite a few immortal wars already after all.
bcdp
"Assuming"... that's the problem here. It's an magical floating island. Yes, it could be an unstable system like you describe. And no, it could be a stable system like our solar system. It's pure speculation if it's without in-story basis, which made it a mood point. My original point ("simply learn the schedule") was based on the fact that the story had already shown that people knew the island's schedule for at least a few rounds (even if it's the work of the equivalent of an level 3000 [Weather Forecaster]). And so she should have had simply memorized what's available. Aside from that, I agree on the immortal war's being a system shock which could mess the flight path up. And I actually expected that to be the explanation why we didn't hear Elaine check on her friends earlier.
Daniel B
Assuming the island acts a bit like a hot air balloon, its effected by both wind currents and tidal forces from the 2 moons + System bullshit. I would be shocked if the immortal war didn't also knock the schools path for a loop. Predicting the path must also require a map of the world, and its winds and air currents. The map of the world is currently being rearranged. Its more like a 3 body problem in physics, where miniscule errors in the starting positions produce radically different behavior in the systems. it can be predicted to a limited degree, but not for long periods.
Selkie
Racoon is a constable, yes. She was trying out to become a Ranger, which would've been the natural extension. She's used to the deprivation, but just lacks the mental toughness to go all the way.
Selkie
Ah hmm... I hadn't thought of that. Elaine's a bit smarter than I am, and I've generally only got a few days per chapter. I do make mistakes
Chrismatic
Gods I just teared up a little at this chapter. Didn't realized I had grown so attached to Julius, way to go Selkie on the depth of characters.
Simon Hoerder
That the witch in white survives was pretty much a given, I believe. Otherwise I'm treating all characters that we haven't seen again like Schrödinger's cat. This is not the kind of story that needlessly kills important characters but with the extent of the immortal shit show some simply had to die.
Gary Manus
Honestly I figured when we heard about the school both Julius and Artemis were going to die.
emjer
That's what the fae want you to think! It's all their fault!
MoonlitShade
Unfortunately, life can sometimes be a dick, and people you don’t want dead end up dying. It’s “realistic” in that sense. Plus, we can’t have expected ALL of Elaine’s friends to have miraculously weathered the immortal war. Especially since it’s been years since it happened at this point. It does really fucking suck that it was Julius. Tbh I’m glad it wasn’t Artemis, she’s one of my favorite characters, but having lost another Remus native is a bad blow.
bcdp
Sigh. Elaine, you have perfect memory... simply let someone else do the math for the island's flight path (they were obviously out there, since she had no problem to find the island when going to the phoenixes) and memorize the schedule of the next century or millenium. Or buy a book with it.
Simon Hoerder
Aww, where's the part where Raccoon realises that she's not Ranger material? And it would be nice seeing Iona or Nina pick her up after that. Also, I'm weirdly relieved that Julius has died -- he was a great guy but, it would have been weird if no one from the core group of characters had to die in this stupid war. And if I had to pick one out of Artemis, Julius and gem girl, it would be Julius. (I forgot gem girl's name and can't even blame it on the fae as my name memory always was s***e. So sorry, gem girl!)
Tiffany Miller
No not julius... I'm not crying i swear
Shoto
He would be perfect for the current moment in history, but as you said he had no luck. First, both of his classes were broken and he couldn't level them, he spent decades like that, and then when he manages to reset his classes, the war begins. He should be around level 200, too low level to do anything to protect himself in an immortal war.
Jeppe Fiig
Not Julius too! Et tu, Brutus!
TroubleFait
At least, first time since she was adopted.
TroubleFait
It's not the whole school, just the cultivators. The school was just the school to them, same as for everyone else.
Alex E
Someone is cutting Onions again. Please stop sending the Onion mafia to my house Selkie. Amazing chapter
TjStorm
Dude, you’re a complete dick for killing Julius off. Not that it doesn’t work, or turn me off at this late stage. But…. Complete dick move.
Daniel B
Although, the Back in my day comments are going to be golden
Daniel B
Those poor helpless bastards. In the future they will look back with fond memories at how easy Elaine was on them. Artemis is going to be a bloody tyrant establishing the legacy of the Rangers of Remus. I can't wait.
Thomas Todd
Now that Artemis is taking over I don't think there's any risk of them having someone going easy on them
Axiom
Glad to see that night and Arachne are still alive shame that julius died
tr13ze
Thanks for the chapter 😁
Sean Shivers
I'm kind of worried that going soft on the recruits is gonna undermine the whole thing.
Sean Shivers
"The first rule of ranger club is that we don't talk about ranger club."
Sean Shivers
i went through this exact thought... surprised that she dropped, and then surprised that i was surprised. I think for me it was at least partially that it wasnt her first time facing the kind of deprivation.
Sean Shivers
I suppose on a long enough timeline every story is a tragedy. He worked hus whole life to support an imperfect organization. Got lost 20,000 years to the future. Finally reinvented himself... only for the time that needed him most meaningfully to find itself empty of him.
Markus
For some reason I thought that Raccoon went to become a city guard. I don't know why I thought that.
Trevor Mergen
Thank you!
Kennyevilmonkey
Julius would have been invaluable to getting Rangers back up and running again. It's a real shame that he is gone now. RIP, one of this story's oldest characters is now gone... He will be missed.
Andrew
Thank you!
SwitchBlaze
Bittersweet Chappie. Thank you.
slash34365
I imagine it just meant that Raccoon dropped out. Not that anything bad happened
Joshua Little
Thanks for the chapter.
Stephanie Washburn
Aww, Julius.
Anonymous
I’m really looking forward to the chapter Elaine tells Anurak to knock it off
PaintedMirror36
I’m kinda hoping we get an interlude that includes some PoV for Night/Susan, now that we know they survived. Curious who else of the Exterri Sentinels also survived as well
jacob
i mean they did basically taunt him continuously for century's like he didn't look at the school for no reason and just decided to be a stinker that day
Cirvante
No, he actually found some oddity that reset his classes. At Elaine's wedding he was level 32. So when the lightning god carried out his dick move, Julius was still underleveled. RIP.
Max E Malekzadeh
Honestly though, narratively it would have made more sense for Julius to come LEAD the new rangers... y'know the guy who stagnated because he became a leader of Rangers returning to do so again. I know it's basically impossible for Selkie to kill Artemis but of the two of them Julius would make more sense as the lone survivor who returned to lead the new Rangers while Artemis should be staying to refound the school she originally founded
Logan
Rip Julius. Also "Raccoon not in their number." What happened to Raccoon?
Syrahl
Tftc! Yay, Artemis survived everything going to shit!
Jason Hardman
Rather than thinking about how expendable a cast member is, it's more important that of all of them he was falling behind. Struggling to strengthen himself and keep on leveling. It kind of became inevitable once the stagnation sunk in. Still, sad to see him gone.
BudgetDragon
Glad to see Artemis rejoining the group. She’ll make sure the Rangers have a good start
BudgetDragon
Julius😭😭
Daniel Foster
😭
CringeWorthyStudios
Well, I guess we’ll get to see Elaine help Artemis install herself as the new goddess of lightning. Right on top of the corpse of the old one. But hey, onion ninjas and raising a toast to Ranger Team 4 going from 3 to 2 members remaining aside, three out of four people confirmed this chapter being alive isn’t half bad. Pity about Julius though. Thanks for the chapter!
mo zzz
😭
Eagle2018
Why did it have to be Julius?!!!
Lucy Severine
Nooo... Julius... It makes sense though. I don't think this immortal war would have had *quite* the same impact if *none* of the core cast died, and Julius has been a bit superfluous to the story for a while... At least Artemis survived. It sucks, though.
Apollo Above
Loving friend, husband and ranger. He'll be missed
Jake Conway
Aww 😭 why u do dis?
Owen Wilson
Why? That just hurt
Osloo Mortan
TFTC
