Aisha
“I’m having second thoughts about this plan. You all know I wasn’t keen in the first place but if she can gore all of her precious fucking ‘babies’ that easily I don’t want her anywhere near the capital.” I see that familiar stubborn glint in Duke’s eyes and hate him all the more for it. Why is it that I’m the only sane one in the group?
He sighed, “Look, this is the best chance we have of ending her once and for all. You saw how she outclassed all of us. We need to lure her into a trap and pray to whoever hears us.”
“And when that doesn’t work? I hit the bitch with a spell that could vaporize a building and all it did was make her look constipated. One of these times we’re gonna hit her and she’s not gonna laugh it off like a goddamn joke. She’s gonna reciprocate, and I don’t want to be on the same continent when that shit happens.”
“If it doesn’t work, we were screwed anyway. We have to at least try. Nobody else has gotten this far, if we can’t see this through then it won’t be done.”
I wish he would all do us a favor and get laid already, I don’t have the energy to deal with his pent-up-ness right now. But no, he’s gotta be hung up on his dead ex instead, as if the rest of us aren’t also missing Alicia. I look over at Relegant to maybe back me up, but he’s still too busy being a chickenshit to say anything. I seethe inside. I know he’s only acting like this because he’s used to easy living and all of a sudden things aren’t going exactly to plan. Some people never grew up that easy. Some people had to crawl and scrape and beg to get as far as they have, and if we gave up when the going got hard, we’d have fucking died already. Legios is usually the tolerable one, but he’s so used to being able to talk his way out of shit that he’s thinking he can save our skins with the right pretty words. It’s fun when he’s conning some rich fuck for a little spare change; not so much when he’s bartering with our lives against some crazy chick. It’s times like this that I miss Alicia most: Duke wouldn’t be pent-up, Relegant would still be trying to act like hot shit to impress her, and she’d know how to reign in Legios. She’s also the only one of our merry band other than me that I actually liked, and I’m not so sure I like myself lately.
I take a long deep breath and try to let some of my hate go, but it gets harder every day and I’m not feeling too charitable today. Finding out the things you’ve spent your entire life fighting was actually just a little oopsy by a deranged, overpowered, immortal bitch would do that to just about anyone.
I shuck my outer robe to start layering on my armor and weapons. I try not to think about the fact that the bitch dressed us all up so she could have a tea party, as if we were just dolls for her to play with. That’s the kind of person I hate the most, but you never can get away from them. Now I gotta play all smiles with her so we can lure her into a trap that probably won’t work. God, I need a drink.
Sophia comes bouncing back down shortly after we all don our gear, wearing a flowy, white wrap dress with floral print. I can’t help but make the comparison between four skilled, well-equipped warriors, and one bouncy bitch without proper armor and wonder how we came up short. Truly, whenever you think the world can’t get worse it finds a new way to say fuck you. I clench and unclench the hand grasping my staff and block out her inane chirping. Instead, I fall back in the group as we exit, watching for tension and shifting weight, any sign that a fight is about to break loose. I carefully ignore the flesh sculptures she turned her creations into as I survey the area for trouble. I see nothing through the dense ferns that litter the ground, but we know by now that doesn’t necessarily mean safety.
I see tension flow across my companions’ shoulders, and tune back in.
“And just why can’t I change these girls back into hooves? It would make this journey much more comfortable.”
I should have known; dumb bitch is just being a dumb bitch. Still, I feel I need to pitch my two cents, if only to maintain the pretense of sanity in this group. “You know with the shit you’ve done; I figure you probably deserve to suffer a bit. Your precious fucking ‘babies’ have slaughtered people, leaving entire cities abandoned because you couldn’t give enough of a shit to keep track of your kiddies. Your tootsies being a little chilly is really the least you should face as punishment, don’t you think?”
“That’s… significantly worse than I thought was happening when you all first explained the problem. Though, I never really subscribed to the whole punitive punishment system that you seem to be. I’m more inclined to the idea that you should try to make amends for your wrongs. I mean, it’s usually not possible to set things back to how they were but if you think that murder is wrong, then why should the solution be for the state to do more murder?”
“Look, I just feel a lot better when some douchebag gets killed. I’m not a complicated person. Besides, if you don’t actually punish people for doing bad shit, they’re just gonna keep doing it. Your whole thing falls apart if the fucknuts who did the crime doesn’t repent and make amends. What do you do then, politely ask them to reconsider while they keep doing their fucknuttery? No, kill the bitch and move on with your goddamn life. So many people think life is sacred or whatever but it’s really not. It happens all the goddamn time because some dipshit is too dumb to use contraception, and then the girl shits a weird little human with a big head out. Are we supposed to all stand and clap at the miracle of fucking life then? Fuck that. Fuck you. Fuck your face, and all your other places, too.
“So do what you want, I guess, but I’m gonna do my own thing that works and makes sense because apparently I’m the only sane person in a hundred motherfucking miles.”
Sophia, the bitch, starts laughing. She apparently doesn’t care that she’s the only one doing it, just going until she peters off. I’m almost jealous of her lack of self-consciousness, but I kill that thought fast because I want to be nothing like the fucker.
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard childbirth described in those terms. That made at least my century. You know, I’ve never had a child the traditional way and now I’m thinking I never will. I think I’m still more idealistic than you, however, I believe there is something good about trying to preserve human life. I mean, just because the weird-head baby has shitty fuck head parents” —she giggles, as though that was somehow clever— “doesn’t mean that the kid deserves to die or doesn’t deserve to live. I think we should strive for the kind of place where nobody is exploiting anyone else, where everyone works together for their common good. I’m not sure we’d ever get there but I see this form of justice as another step towards that.”
“Look, bitch. You just hid away from everyone for who knows how many years. Clearly, people isn’t really your thing, okay? Everybody working together and holding hands and feeling good and shit just doesn’t happen. You gotta have someone around to keep all the other monsters out, and they start getting ideas like ‘gee wollickers, everybody wants to steal these people’s shit, why don’t I do that?’, and then they turn on you and take you for everything you’re worth. Because people fucking suck, and they’ll always let you down. You just gotta hope the slightly less shitty fuckers are in charge and deal.”
“Has anyone ever told you that you’re too pessimistic? I mean, why even bother if the world’s always going to be terrible? What motivates you to get out of bed if that’s what you think?”
“Because I gotta eat, and because sometimes little bits of joy come by, and I may as well wait around for them. What else is there even to do with life? I sure as fuck ain’t gonna sit around and build castles in the sky with you. The one unequivocally good thing I thought I was doing was going to kill all the demons and you saw how that turned out.”
She gives a little smirk at my mention of her. Bitch.
“I think you forget that I have more experience with people than you. A few lifetime’s worth. Maybe a practical example would help? For instance, debates like this always remind me of the one time the King of Remorsia put together a task force to eliminate a mad water mage that was threatening the city.
“I was a travelling mercenary at the time, new to immortality, relatively speaking. It’s hard to stay in one place for long unless you choose to age, which, well I guess is besides the point. Anyway, I was known as a pretty powerful dark mage so hiring my services was a no-brainer. However, I didn’t like that their plan was essentially just to go up and stab the guy, so I bartered and said that my cooperation was conditional on at least asking the water mage to stop before we kill him. The water mage, Ezelfior, had apparently gone mad with grief after his wife was executed on false charges of treason. Which, I don’t know, I figured I would probably be mad about that too. Maybe not mad enough to make ominous threats and then disappear into the fog, but still, if you just roll over when something like that happens you’re supporting a tyrannical state!” She pauses, clearly trying to remember where she was even going with this. “Right. So, I wanted to at least try to reason with him.”
“It took weeks of tracing his movements, all the more difficult because he could travel through the water at incredible speeds. When we finally tracked Ezelfior down, I tried to talk to him. Initially, he wasn’t very receptive, and my companions nearly jumped him then and there. Ezelfior was looking for a fight by this point too, of course. But, I managed to beg for just a few more minutes to explain my point of view before that happened. I eventually broke through when I was explaining that all the people he would be harming were mostly farmers and butchers and seamstresses who had nothing to do with his wife’s death. I then explained that he should really be focusing his hatred on the King and his council of advisors who approved her execution on poor evidence. Instead of a tidal wave that would harm everyone, he should be focusing on a plan to remove the mechanisms of power that allowed this to happen. After all, even if his tidal wave worked, the ruling class that lives high the hill would be the least damaged by it, he would only be causing more death and hatred rather than correcting a wrong! Instead of revenge for Maridia, he would be creating a whole city of Maridias!
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“He agreed to come back peacefully so he could attempt reform to create a more equitable justice system and/or plot the King’s assassination. When we got back, the King was actually furious because he didn’t expect my plan to work. That, and Ezelfior quickly began spreading word of what actually happened and formed an anti-royal coalition that made life very difficult for him. Anyway, the moral of the story is that there are alternatives to simplistic revenge that cause less damage and instead promote healing and well-being for all, or most, involved. Later, I even had the privilege to examine the runic device he was creating to cause the tidal wave. It was based around a set of rune-engraved millstones that would store tidal energy over a long period of time, then release it all at once! I actually used principles from his research to create a device to store various kinds of mana, that way you can build a large reserve that allows you to perform much greater spells and rituals than you would otherwise be capable of! To think, if the King had his way, then all of this precious research would have been destroyed! Who knows when someone would next have invented similar technology! It seems like an obvious improvement to strive for now, but prior to then the only known way to expand your mana pool was simple physical conditioning, which has less overall gains and has wildly varying effectiveness from mage to mage.”
Well, I did not expect to hear that she’s responsible for creating external mana reserves. It’s maybe the second or third most ridiculous thing that’s happened today. It could be concerning that she seems to be arguing against her execution before she’s supposed to even know she’s being executed (ideally she finds out only after she’s dead, the bitch). Fortunately, as smart as she apparently is when it comes to magic, she’s still dumb as a pound—or maybe an ounce—of bricks when it comes to basic facts. There’s no chance she figured out our plan. Still, it’s kind of nice that Legios and Duke are probably pissing their pants at the possibility that she figured them out. Even from behind, I can tell that the tendon in Legios’s neck is standing out far too much and Duke is hunched over in that way he only does when he’s truly pissed. Or scared. Those two tend to go hand in hand for him anyway, though.
Legios asks, “Sophia? What is the point of this exactly? Are you saying that you are planning to make amends for creating the demons that plague the land?” He almost manages to keep the disdain out of his voice. I don’t really know why. She clearly doesn’t give a shit when you insult her to her face. Hell, she doesn’t care when you try to disintegrate her face. I almost say as much, but I don’t care to hear his stock response of ‘oh, Aisha you don’t get it I’m just so so so much smarter than you’, because then I’d disintegrate his face and that would cause problems I just don’t have the energy for. Deep breaths, Aisha. Deep breaths. Let him do his stupid bullshit thing, because if I interrupt now, I’ll never hear the end of it. A guy who likes the sound of his voice as much as him sure as fuck can manage that, at least.
“Oh, right! You can apply that thinking to the whole demon situation I made. Simplistic revenge would be saying, oh we should murder her and all her children. Which, come to think of it, I guess you already tried that. Huh. I guess I wasn’t really thinking about that when I told the story. Anyway, now you know I’m actually really nice, so we’re going to kill my children together, or honestly, I’ll just handle it, and then I’ll do other stuff to help out with the impact or something. I guess I don’t really know what that looks like yet, but that’s mostly because I don’t actually know the extent of the damage. When you were talking earlier, I figured it was more of a situation where my babies were getting into your crops, maybe gobbling the odd traveler or villager or something. Which, yeh, is bad. I didn’t think they’d be attacking whole cities or anything though. Actually, it’s kind of weird that that happened at all, the phenomenon requires further study to see exactly what happened. The other thing I can’t really figure out is why they would send exactly four people instead of like, an army, if this has gotten to be such a problem, but I guess that doesn’t really matter now.”
Legios, the douchebag, continues, “Don’t you think that it’s a tad convenient if you get to decide your own punishment? Wouldn’t it be better to put yourself under the judgment of someone else, someone more credible? Perhaps an organization that represents the collective will of the people like the one we’re currently heading towards?”
Sophia snorts, “If you think that whatever bunch of smelly octogenarians is currently in charge represents the people’s will, then you’re far more stupid than I thought. Putting myself at some authority’s mercy is something I’ve gotten out of the habit of doing for a reason. Those kinds of people are constantly insecure because they know they don’t deserve their power, which makes them paranoid about anything that might threaten their order. They think, rightly, that if someone were to peer behind the curtain and realize it’s all a ruse that their ill-gotten position will simply topple. When they meet someone as powerful and competent as me, they only have two modes of thought. One is to bring me under their thumb somehow. The other is to kill me so I can’t assist their enemies or become an enemy myself. I don’t say this out of conjecture. I say this because this has happened every single time I’ve encountered their ilk in the past, and with the kind of sample size I have I’d say it’s near certain to continue.
“So no. You can’t convince me to do something just because a room full of wrinkly cowards decided it. I’ll listen to the people who have been harmed by my disregard, directly and indirectly, but not them.
“Also, I somehow got distracted from the whole point of this conversation which is the fact that you won’t let me have my hooves! It’s only practical, at least until I can get some proper footwear. It’s not even that big a deal, I was putting up with these feet out of consideration for my guests but if we’re going on a journey together that doesn’t really apply anymore. So, you all can just swallow your ridiculous prejudices, since apparently, I’m not reaching you on this.”
Between steps, her feet disform back into hooves.
I’m almost impressed. Legios managed to actually get her worked up about something. Here I was swearing her out, pointing out how fucked-up her stupid justice system was and she didn’t give a damn. Then, he implies that she should listen to authorities, and she gets positively vicious. She’s still a dumb bitch, but I guess she can’t be all bad if she can piss Legios off like this and give such a good smack down to the mere idea of authority. I don’t notice the amused chuckle that escapes my lips until Legios turns to glare at me. I just smile. “What? The bitch makes some good points sometimes. You really are so much dumber than you pretend to be.”
He just turns away, used to my venom by now. Asshole.
I let them go back to their meaningless chatter. Watching our surroundings more closely, just watching for trouble.
Finally, we escape from the miasma overhead. The sky brightens and the dense ferns giving way to a grassland and distantly, a forest. These lands are still fucked with demons, but at least I can finally feel the sun again. I almost feel like asking the bitch why she hid away from the sun, but then I remember that the answer would just piss me off even more. It would be something stupid and weird like, ‘I got bored of sunsets,’ or maybe she doesn’t wanna ruin her “delicate” complexion. Because of course she’d be the kind of bitch who’s afraid of sunburn or an uneven tan, but not having her arm atomized by me. Deep breaths, Aisha. This won’t be forever. Just hold out a few more weeks and then you can put this shit behind you. One way or another.
Just as I’m clenching and relaxing my arms for the fiftieth fucking time today, I notice some motion in the brush nearby. I take a moment to praise God for giving me something to blow up. A swarm of frog-lampreys leap towards me, only to find the business end of my staff. I mentally reach to the gem storing my mana reserves, and shout an incantation that is quickly drowned out by the flash and crash of my magic. It’s an exhilarating feeling, fucking something up that deserves it. The frog-lampreys plop down around me, freshly crispified. The tall grass nearby has shriveled and bowed to my might. There’s a distant crashing from behind the tree-line, that rapidly closes in on us. I probably should have used less flashy magic to kill the fuckers, that was probably what brought whatever this is to us. I can’t exactly feel bad about it though, not when I can finally let loose. I crack my neck and grin.
Duke starts shouting to get in formation. I fan to the left, just as Relegant and Legios fan right. Our vanguard is reduced to just Duke now, but I don’t worry, we can handle this. I’m thinking of the most fun ways to kill whatever filth this is that thinks it can take a piece of us when a massive beast charges through. It has three heads: narwhal, rhinoceros, and buck, on a shaggy-furred elephant body. I nearly jump out of my skin at the delighted shriek of “Jeremy!” from behind me. I snap my gaze briefly over to the bitch who looks like Christmas came early. Going over my mental list of spells again to figure out what would cause the most agony to the thing, I realize just what I need to do. Relegant is using his tome for some needlessly flashy shit, Legios is already loosing arrows at the many eyes, and Duke is charging forward. This will take a decent chunk of my mana, but it will be worth it if I return just an ounce of the pain the bitch has caused to her.
Stepping closer, I begin my chant. Light gathers tightly along my staff and at my hands. I notice the slew of fire that coils and constricts around the beast, but I don’t let it ruin my concentration. Just as I get in range, I finish my incantation. The light gathered to me shatters, then in a radius around ‘Jeremy’ the color washes out of reality. Like a puppet with cut strings, Jeremy collapses and starts silently writhing in pain. This particular spell invades something’s nervous system to slowly overload every pain receptor and nerve in its body. Plenty of my other spells are more effective for quickly ending a life. This lasts much longer. It won’t even kill the thing. Jeremy will just be unable to move until something else kills it, or it starves. It’s also a great way to finally blow off some steam. I see Duke stop just short of the area of effect, and glare at me in disgust. Feeling’s mutual, fuckface.
What I don’t see at first is Sophia skipping over to her little baby. She sticks her hand in the radius and I watch the slight pigment of her skin wash out. She thrashes briefly, stills, then shouts “Fascinating!”
The bitch turns to look at me, with a greyscale twinkle in her eye. “How did you even manage something like this, this is so amazing!” The bit of pride that someone is finally recognizing my skill is tempered by the knowledge of just who that someone is. This mixes with the quiet seething that the bitch is shrugging this off as well, as though it were only an inconvenience.
I breathe deeply and let go of the spell. Jeremy doesn’t so much as budge, its nervous system totally fried. I try to remember all my little anger management tricks. None of them are meant for shit like this, but I try anyway. I brush her off with some meaningless phrase and disengage yet again.