A grand total of seventy-two million lives were lost to the Silly Goose’s Rampage, through plains of Gwenael. The only attack that had any real effect on the creature also wiped out all life in that region.
Scouring that portion of Gwenael’s plains bare. The sum of all damages was around three hundred fifty-six trillion gold dollars and the money the bone tree company made off the whole things was twenty-two billion.
What Edna would remember most would be standing in the mayor's office with the invoice for the money transfer in her hand. She’d remember staring at the zeroes, shaking her the mayor's hand, being lauded as young hero, and not feeling like she deserved any of it.
She wouldn’t know till later, but this would be the first time she understood what Billy meant when he said that his, hers and Elena’s current level of strength simultaneously laudable and laughable.
They were powerful but only in a very limited context. Far from unstoppable, far from unbeatable, far from omnipotent. In other words they were still just as helpless as everyone else when things that were beyond the pale showed up.
There were still things could come down and crush them like ants.
Maybe seeing was believing after all, She now got what Billy meant he said that rankings weren’t everything. That Silly Goose had nearly killed Elena and her, but aether-wise it shouldn’t have been a problem for them to handle. It should have been something either Elena or Edna, should have been able to deal with in their sleep.
This was a strength went beyond bloodline, or cultivation, and that goose had been a creature that was just innately beyond them. They’d held something infinitely close to absolute power, something hard work and effort, human effort, would be hard pressed to match.
Edna had a sense that she’d gotten a peek of very frightening world. A reality that lay above and beyond her own.
She felt fear, and because she, Edna, would always refuse to give into her fears, she felt curiosity too. She wondered how Billy learned of such of things. She wondered what else he knew and what else lay just beyond the horizon.
On the one hand she also understood that she and Elena should just be happy that they were one the few who’d have been able to handle such a threat at all. Neither losing their lives or their sanity to its oppressive euphoria.
On the other hand the fact that they’d almost not been able to and that they hadn’t been able to handle the situation on ‘their’ terms and handle it before all those towns and villages were destroyed, filled her with a deep guilt and a deeper frustration.
While it was the goose that did the damage, somehow she couldn’t help feeling that some of the blood it had spilled, was on ‘her’ hands. She was very aware that if it weren’t for a certain inexplicable competent artificer and the N-Doors, she might having even more blood on her hands, a veritable ocean of it.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
She was just a hair's breadth from being forced to kill millions to save billions. It wasn’t just frustrating in a way that she’d never felt before, it was alarming. Alarming in the extreme.
*****
The door to the hut slammed open, revealing the incongruously vast and palatial spaces within. Kicked open by a pair of hard toed boots.
Then door swung shut, locking on its own. Edna stomped through the house, stalking to the halls before throwing herself into a bed and the blissful darkness that was oblivion.
Elena trailed behind her, tutting to herself, aware that her friend was likely taking the last job hard. As mischievous as the woman was at her core, her outside and inside were mostly good,...wholesome. Enough so, that one could term her a quote unquote, ‘good girl’.
The kind of person that didn’t do harm if there was nothing to gain from it. The kind that generally didn’t say anything if she didn’t have anything nice to say. The kind that tried to help people out if she could.
People died all the time in Mond and great tragedies were common, still in this case, the girl was a nice person and she felt responsible. as such, today’s deaths would weigh on her, hopefully not for long, but it wouldn’t be the usual Mondian Shrug.
“Feel better, ‘kay?” said Elena.
Rubbing the other girl’s shoulder, as she tried to console her.
“Feel better? I’m perfectly fine. I’m just tired.” said Edna. Her tone brisk, her voice just slightly thicker than usual. Sounding congested despite the fact that she was far past the point where a thing like the common cold could ever affect her.
“Okay, okay...Just you know. Relax. Everyone has bad days. These things happen.”
“I’m fine Ell. You should go see, if Billy has anything that could fix that broken leg of yours. You think I didn’t notice you favoring your other leg?” said Edna.
“Sure...Sure. Yes, Mom.” said Elena.
Edna ignored the jibe as she headed for one of the baths seeking a nice hot soak, to get rid of the day’s aches.
Elena chuckled, as she let herself get shooed out of the room. Satisfied that Edna would likely recover at the usual Mondian pace, Elena decided to go plop herself onto the couch while she waited for her various wounds to recover.