Chapter 621 - Overthrowing the Tyrants XIV (Patreon)
Content
I 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.
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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.”