Emilia had to hand it to whoever was raising the Nur’tha hys: they had managed to raise Zyrex into someone who was open, happy, willing to learn—not to mention a quick study—while also simultaneously leaving him with so little training in anything of actual use in a combat situation it was actually impressive.
What even.
“The byren are very… traditional,” Hyr explained as they made their way up several flights of stairs, intent to reach the first of this building’s city levels. “Unfortunately, there have been many changes in the ways we are trained. They have not been well to adapt.”
⸂Like with your group schooling? Is Zyrex part of that as well?⸃ Emilia asked, turning back when they reached a landing to check on the young hy, who was attempting to control the {Blood Fabric} well enough that he could wrap it around the stair railing and pull himself up. For the most part, he was actually doing quite well, although he’d fallen half down a few flights of stairs. Luckily, his level was high enough that he simply popped back up with little fanfare. Neither of the young men had been inclined to tell her how they’d raised their levels while Clarity was effectively holding them hostage, which was mildly concerning.
“Yes,” Hyr agreed, explaining that traditionally, the byren took in future hy as soon as they were designated such by the synat. They were raised with all the best tutors, learning the ins and outs of the world. “After we were born, the home synat was destroyed. Many future tellings were delayed, and many died. Those in our age group were already in our homes, but when the war came, we were moved to be together. In the cleanup, we were never returned to our homes, and now…”
⸂Now no one knows how to deal with four very different cultures and belief systems existing in a previously insular society?⸃
“Four?” Zyrex asked as he caught up with them. A sheen of sweat glistened over his thickly muscled body, his outer layer long stuffed into Emilia’s storage, along with some of the extra items the boys had been carting around with them and were unlikely to use.
They’d even asked her to move a few to the real world, meaning they’d have to contact each other one day. That… was fine. The boys were nice, and Emilia’s general mood of the moment was depressed and feeling like a shitty friend, the list of people she needed to contact growing by the minute.
Seriously though, where had her homicidal rage gone!? It had been so palpable, only to vanish the moment she exited the building. While she had assumed it was Payton doing something with her knots, now… now, she had no idea what to think. She’d have to ask her friend what he’d done to her, once she was out of this place. Hopefully, whatever he’d done had just been short-lasting, because the alternative that the system or the heartcores were still fucking with her was—
⸂Yes, four,⸃ she said, trying to fight down the panic rising within her once more. What better way to distract herself than to make guesses about the way a culture she knew only a little about and had never actually seen with her own eyes had evolved following the war! ⸂Keep in mind, this is just a guess,⸃ she added as they walked, their steps making little sound between her own bare feet and the northern boys’ fabric boots, all of the northerners having dressed themselves in what Emilia considered a slightly more modern version of the clothing members of their unit had worn during the war.
⸂From what I know of most places, though, following the war, most broke into four—or occasionally five—factions. There are the traditionalists, who want to go back to the way things were before the war, sometimes even return to a time before that. In Baalphoria, most of these guys aligned with purists, and that kinda made their beliefs even more extreme. They hate Free Coloniers and those with irregular deviations.⸃
“You have one of those? Yes?” Hyr asked. “It is strange. In Nur’tha, the tr’aina are considered blessed by the divine. They are respected. At times, they have even been coveted to an unfortunate point.”
“Every culture is different,” Zyrex said, sounding like they were reciting words from a textbook—or perhaps a teacher. “If we are to live peacefully, we must accept the beliefs of others. It is not our place to interfere with their beliefs, just as it is not theirs to interfere in ours.”
⸂There are some pretty terrible, downright intolerable customs and beliefs out there,⸃ Emilia pointed out, wondering about how much the hy even knew about the outside world. Hetexia had definitely known a lot, despite her general disinterest in cultural affairs, so surely Zyrex must have heard at least some details of the terrors of their world.
The young man shrugged, repeating the same thing: that it was no one’s place to interfere in the beliefs of others. “We should just leave people to live their lives. Who are we to judge what their history and cultures have led them to see as right?” he said, a little more bite in his voice—a demanding of a brutal rebuttal.
Emilia was perfectly happy to pop his little bubble. Either the boy didn’t realize the cruelty that people were capable of, or he was perfectly okay turning a blind eye to it. Regardless of the reason, he wasn’t going to get away with holding such a belief of tolerance around her.
⸂In Chinsata, silverstrains like me are taken as sex slaves the moment we are born. We are used as sex slaves from that moment on, each one branded, usually nulled. In some of their states, silverstrains have their eyes, tongues, teeth removed; hands and feet cut off—their removed body parts used in rituals or as food. Depends on their specific beliefs. Is that a cultural practice we should allow to exist, just because their history and cultures have led them to see it as right?⸃ Emilia stopped, turning to meet Zyrex’s eyes.
All the colour had drained from his face, and Emilia almost felt bad for him—almost. The boy was a hy, even if he was still young. Emilia was a firm believer that everyone needed to know the harsh truths of the world, and while she agreed that, for the most part, people should be left to have their beliefs, that didn’t extend to ones that were intolerable.
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To tolerate the hatred and abuses of the world was to condone it. The sooner leaders understood such things, the faster they would realize that not everything should be tolerated.
“I…” Zyrex breathed out. He looked like he might be sick.
“Chinsata is locked down,” Hyr noted, their tone carefully neutral. It wasn’t an accusation that she might not know what she was talking about, but there was an undertone of questioning, no less, although it may very well have just been curiosity.
Shrugging, Emilia told them that she’d had the misfortune of meeting a few during the war. ⸂They might not have joined the alliance—not that anyone would have let them, no matter how bad the war got—but they were still attacked like everyone else in the area.⸃ That said, the Free Colonies south of the Grey Sands had always experienced fewer attacks than even the north, save the Moonlit City itself, which was only attacked once before a powerful barrier was erected around it. Unfortunately, the sort of barrier they created hadn’t been something any other place could replicate, although that hadn’t stopped a few places from trying.
⸂They were always quite vocal about what they wanted to do with me. At first, I thought they could be lying.⸃ Her lips twitched as she remembered that naive girl she had been, near the start of the war, when she had volunteered to go south because she had experience in the Grey Sands. ⸂Then, they bought a dozen silverstrains for their division to use. They would drag them out onto the front, have them suck their cocks while they used their cores to kill. And if a monster got too close, they left them there to die. To the Chinsata, silverstrains are sex slaves and breeders for more sex slaves, material and meat and nothing more.⸃
Emilia smiled, letting a little of her hatred for that cruel Free Colony seep into it as she resisted telling the boys what had happened to those men—to the Chinsata women who had sneered at her just as much—under her anger, under the anger of the team members whose friendships with her had been solidified when they’d covered up her murder of those people, when a dozen years later, after sparking had been invented, they’d helped her remove hundreds of silverstrains from the country—helped her find safety for people who were so profoundly broken by what had happened to them that they feared practically everyone and always would.
⸂I’m not saying that most beliefs aren’t perfectly tolerable. Most are just different from our own, but as long as they cause no harm, it’s fine.⸃ She shrugged again, wondering who in the byren had designed the hy’s education—or was it all the northerners’ educations?—to be so tolerant they would potentially turn a blind eye on the horrors that occurred in other cultures.
“From what I’ve heard,” Hyr said as they began to walk again, the syn and Emilia leaving Zyrex to stare after them, possibly second guessing a lot of the knowledge he’d been fed over the years, “there are many Free Colonies who joined the war and have customs that are… in poor taste. Several others keep slaves, if I am not mistaken.”
Perhaps not all northerners’ education, then?
⸂Yes,⸃ Emilia agreed, ⸂and if it had been up to me, a number of those Free Colonies wouldn’t have joined. Actually, if it was up to me, even the Baalphorian sub-50s wouldn’t have been allowed to join unless they went through some sort of sensitivity training.⸃
Seven had been a good sub-50, most of the negative beliefs of his class having somehow slid off him. He was quiet, nervous and awkward in a way that had made getting to know him difficult, but he had never shown anything other than ignorance to anyone in their unit. In contrast, General Lygram had been a terrible human being that Emilia would gladly kill, even years on.
⸂I suppose the difference is some of those cultures had beliefs based more on ignorance than hatred. Plenty of people meet someone with an irregular deviation and realize they aren’t that different, that their views are wrong. Same goes for Baalphorians meeting Free Coloniers. Even if they don’t completely change their beliefs, those beliefs melt and mould into something softer. Hopefully, down the road, their descendants drop the beliefs entirely, and the world changes for the better. Other people, they just hate. The Chinsata I’ve met… they hated, and there was a cruelty to that hatred that was just… unfathomable. It didn’t matter if I saved their lives, their friends. If they had had the chance, they would have taken me, held me down, and raped me. To them, there was nothing I could do to make myself more human in their eyes.⸃
“That’s stupid,” Zyrex said, his voice taut and angry behind them. “You— They—” For a moment, his watery black eyes met Emilia’s before they averted, came back.
Shame—he was ashamed, the words he had said before turning over in his head, Emilia imagined. It was one thing to think of tolerating the intolerable in the abstract, without proper examples or a victim of those beliefs standing right in front of you. That was why, as hard as it was to think back on those despicable people—on the things she had done to them, with the help of Malcolm and an additive black knot—this was important.
Showing this child that the world could be a terrible place that needed to be changed was important, as was reminding him that adults were not infallible. They held terrible beliefs, and they held well-intentioned ones as well. Tolerance was admirable, but whoever had told Zyrex and stars knew how many more children that they should tolerate everything was wrong.
Some things could never be tolerated. Some things—some people—deserved to be hated for the horrific things they did to the world and its inhabitants.
⸂It is,⸃ Emilia agreed, letting her own eyes flutter closed as she just breathed, letting herself be filled with… something. The universe, she supposed, grounding her to the here and now before her mind spiralled back to a room filled with the blood of rapists and torturers, now victims of their own sick practices—not that the here and now was anything particularly solid. When she opened her eyes, she was surprised to find Hyr watching her, something between curiosity and concern in their eyes. ⸂What?⸃
It took a moment before they blinked back into their body, their mind clearly elsewhere. “Did the late syna Gru ever see for you?”
⸂Uh… no. They weren’t exactly the kind of person to volunteer that sort of thing. I heard they read someone’s fortune once, near the beginning of their service. I heard the person… laughed at them. Some Baalphorian jerk. I can’t imagine that encouraged them to see for anyone else.⸃
The syn Bur nodded, contemplating her for a second more before turning to stare down at the hy Lwyn. “Well? Are you going to apologize or not?”
⸂I don’t—⸃
“You do not expect or need an apology, I know. I have been telling this one for several years that Eruzia-lutya’s teaching as questionable. He has not listened, and this situation is well deserved.”
“Eruzia-lutya is a good person, though!” Zyrex insisted, confliction written over their features.
Clearly, Zyrex clearly thought well of Eruzia, and facing down a blatant contradiction in their teaching was hurting them.
Emilia wanted to tell him it was fine, but it wasn’t. She wanted to tell him that Eruzia perhaps didn’t know better—that her view of the world didn’t include all the horrors that existed within it—except she knew better.
Eruzia knew full well the terrible things that could exist in the world—had been the victim of them, perhaps even more than Emilia herself had been. So, why was she teaching children that they should just tolerate, tolerate, tolerate?
Better yet, why was Eruzia even in the Northern Tribes to begin with? Why wasn’t she in Norvel?