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”I suppose we should start with Hope’s story as it dovetails into my own, and I suppose partially to Envy’s as well.” Karna started. They’d reached an initial agreement on their alliance, so it was time for sharing.
Hope nodded. “This may seem a little odd, but this is more Wrath’s story to tell than mine. I can pick up from where she leaves off if there are questions.” She’d allowed her illusions to vanish again, leaving behind a young attractive woman with clearly divine origins, holding similar charm that Karna did, only to a lesser degree.
“Why does this not surprise me?” Envy asked sarcastically. “You seem to be involved with many of the Sins and Virtues gaining their Names.”
"To be fair, usually I'm just present. And I wouldn't call you, Hope, and Lust 'many' strictly speaking.” Karna said while averting her eyes and grimacing a bit.
“So, five altogether considering you’re both Wrath and Mercy.” Valor pointed out with slight amusement. “Can’t really deny your involvement with those.”
“So less than half.” Karna brightened a bit.
“That you know of…” Envy couldn’t resist adding another jab.
“Moving right along.” Karna coughed. “This story starts quite far back in my past. I was originally born in this universe. I won’t go into details but suffice to say it didn’t end well. At first, to make a long story short, I spent a few very dark lifetimes figuring myself out, before I forged myself into a weapon to take revenge. Eventually I returned, but by the time I did, anyone I might have wanted to take revenge on was long gone. Not even their grandchildren remained, and considering we're talking about immortals here, that's saying a lot."
“Not surprising considering you did dither for several lifetimes, plus the time between reincarnations.” Envy pointed out.
“Right. I didn’t know about that time though, and I was not thinking clearly. The way my first life ended had left me…damaged. Anyway, I wandered through a countless number of lifetimes after that. I was rather directionless, doing the sort of things most reincarnators do. Conquered a few worlds or universes. Reached the pinnacle of power a few times. Made a family and friends several times. I think I lived more than a hundred lifetimes like that. Perhaps more. I certainly didn’t count. Some of those lives were very productive though. Eventually, I ended up encountering what every reincarnator dreads. I was reborn into slavery. And it didn’t happen just once. It happened five times in a row.” She gave a sad smile at her own words. Those memories didn’t bother her as much anymore, but that didn’t mean they were pleasant.
“Ouch. Had that experience. Don’t want to repeat it.” Envy gave a small shiver, mirrored by Hope. Valor had been close, but he hadn’t yet experienced direct slavery, so he couldn’t quite understand fully.
“As a result, I also discovered two things most reincarnators discover in such situations. Most of the time it's worse being an attractive slave than it is being unattractive, and that for us the better solution is to take the quick way out. Unfortunately for both me and my then masters, three of them had taken measures against suicide by making the slavery magical. On the other hand, I had spent my early lives turning myself into a weapon. Being in a situation like that forces you to come up with various rather inventive ways to circumvent the slave contracts, and I had a lot of motivation. By the time the last slaveholder fell, I was feeling proper…wrathful." Karna was giving the sanitized version of the story.
“I think I see where this is going.” Valor nodded in sympathy.
“I don’t think you do. I wasn’t a very good person back then. I hadn’t had too many happy lives back then, and I wasn't shy about taking it out on others. If you think I limited my wrath to slavers, then you’d be sadly mistaken. It may have started out that way, but pretty soon I was a lot less discriminate than that. My wrath consumed countries, worlds, galaxies, and even universes.” She listed off thoughtfully.
“Sorry, what? Universes?" Valor asked, suddenly alarmed.
Karna blithely ignored the question. “I may have not intentionally gone out to hurt innocents, but I didn’t really care about collateral damage either. This wasn’t the first rampage I went on, and it wouldn’t be the last, but it was the period where I earned most of my less flattering Names. Among them were such Names as Calamity, Demon Lord, and Wrath. And believe me when I tell you that I earned each and every one of them. Many times over.” Not the proudest lives she’d ever lived.
“I can somewhat confirm. I’ve been on the wrong end of her wrathful side a couple of times. Not even the target, mind you. It’s not a good experience. Believe me when I say that she has mellowed out a lot. The wrathful side is still there, hidden deep under the surface, but she’s like a different person nowadays. Has been for eons.” Envy explained.
“Well, you have Hope to thank for that, at least partially. While I was throwing around temper tantrums, I would eventually be brought down and killed. Not surprising considering. I would almost always start over again in the next life though. And I was about to do just that when I stumbled upon a small girl. A child really. She had been through a lot, even by my standards. I found her in a snowy forest, bleeding to death, suffering from malnutrition and all sorts of disease that plagues peasants on such backwater worlds. There were even a couple of beasts, wolves I think they were, prowling around her. I’m fairly certain they would’ve eaten her up by then if there was anything to eat really.” Karna continued her story.
Hope added her own side to the story. "The girl, me if you hadn't figured it out yet, had been abandoned in the forest by her family because winter meant too little food. One less useless mouth to feed would help others survive. Especially since the one they abandoned was already diseased, crippled, and almost blind. It was cruel, but it was not a nice world. Even now I'm not sure I can blame them for abandoning me back then. Especially considering that ended up saving my life."
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"Getting ahead in the story, are we? Anyway, I shooed off the wolves, or whatever those things were, and I seriously considered just leaving her in the snow. She was barely alive at that point anyway, and it wouldn't have taken much longer for her to die and be born somewhere else, without the baggage of that life. Still, she was clinging to life somehow, and when she looked up at me, her eyes were…filled with such hope. She wasn’t ready to give up on that life yet. It managed to move something inside me. I don’t know if she somehow reminded me of myself or something, but I ended up picking her up and bringing her home. It was supposed to be just a quick delay to make sure she’d survive. Somehow, for some reason, the delay just kept getting longer though. Something that should’ve taken a few weeks at most to heal her turned into months and years. There was just something about the girl. Despite losing a leg and being confined to a rudimentary wheelchair with most of her sight gone, she had such warmth and love for life. She was…filled with such hope, that I couldn’t just leave her behind.” She had a wistful and sentimental smile on her face as she recalled the past.
“You manage to quell her wrath with smiles and hope?" Envy gave Hope an appreciative look. "Nice.”
“Cuteness is justice.” Hope declared, fully confident in her words. "She couldn't resist my puppy dog-eyes."
“Be that as it may, I found myself enjoying the quiet and peaceful life. In fact, I enjoyed it a whole lot more than I did my previous lives, especially those that I’d spent waging a one-woman war against unfair universes. We became a family of sorts, and I effectively adopted her. It was around that time that I decided that living a quiet mortal life was something vital, at least on occasion, so that we don’t lose our touch with our…well, humanity for a lack of a better word. I can’t say it helps keep you sane, as I’ve not been sane since my first life, but it might work for others.” Karna posited. She’d lived plenty of mortal lives since then.
"Well, that life did end up becoming a lot less peaceful towards the end," Hope added with a grin. "Mother dearest here couldn't resist when her daughter had such hopes not only for herself but for a peaceful world in general. So many hopes, all of them fulfilled by a doting mother."
“Please don’t.” Karna groaned at the moniker. “You know exactly why.”
The sheer mirth in Hope's eyes was visible to everyone. "Whyever not, mo-ther dea-rest!" She chanted out with a sing-song voice.
Envy suddenly realized what was making Wrath so uncomfortable. “Oh, you two totally banged in a later life, didn’t you?” Karna’s groan was answer enough.
Hope giggled. “She didn’t realize it was me of course. You should’ve seen her face when I called her mommy afterwards.”
"Shut it," Karna said with no real heat in her voice, as she covered her eyes in despair.
“In fairness, I didn’t realize at first either. I just felt drawn to her for some reason. In retrospect, I’m not sure I would’ve gone with it either if I had realized earlier. Still, it happened so many lifetimes later that it didn’t really matter.” Hope continued.
“So wait. How long ago was this?” Valor asked. “I’ve been trying to get a handle on how many lives you three have lived, and I’m getting the sense that I might have grossly underestimated with my initial estimates.”
“It’s really impossible to estimate time on scales like this.” Envy provided. “I’m among the older reincarnators, and entire universes have born and died in the time between Wraths first life and mine. Which reminds me. When did this happen? As in, did it happen before we met, or after?” Her curiosity had been piqued.
“Before, but only barely. There’s maybe a handful of lifetimes between the time I met you two. And those were mostly shorter lifetimes, even if not entirely mortal. I wasn’t willing to let go of my hostility and power entirely after I met Hope. I didn’t want to return to slavery out of laziness. Lust came around about the same time.” Karna frowned. “As did quite a few of the Sins and Virtues now that I think about it. Might be that the previous ones all met an unfortunate end around the same time.”
“Unfortunate end?” Valor asked. “Aren’t our souls basically impossible to damage permanently? How could they meet an unfortunate end?”
"Which brings us to what I wanted to talk about. I know how to kill reincarnators permanently." Karna just decided to get it over with and took the chance to dive straight into it.
“I knew it!” Envy jumped up from her chair in obvious excitement. “I’ve never encountered that feeling when I know you’re not around, and I’ve felt it a couple of times when I know you were present! I fucking knew it! You’re the Reaper!”
Hope didn’t seem all that surprised either, but Valor looked concerned. “The Reaper? So that feeling really was the destruction of a reincarnator’s soul.” He gave a shiver before looking at Karna thoughtfully. “I’m going to make an assumption here and guess that it’s not something you can or will do very often. I haven’t encountered that feeling more than once during this life at least.”
“Correct. It’s not something I like doing, but some souls deserve eternal destruction. Especially since in our case dying only means we get to inflict our insanity on a new unsuspecting universe. I’m all for second, and maybe even third chances. Goodness knows I needed them myself, so it’s not my place to judge easily. However, there are limits. Some souls are just so depraved and far gone that they can't come back. In these cases, there are very few options.” Karna nodded. She didn’t mention that theoretically she could use the power relatively often, she simply chose not to.
“Have you ever done it to a non-reincarnator?” Valor questioned.
“Once. I admit that it was purely personal, though I can say that the person had earned it. I should also add that there is more than one way to do this. Two of the methods pretty much erase the soul, while the third one forcibly turns them into a normal soul. It’s not a pleasant experience for the soul and requires extensive preparation, but it can be done.” She didn’t go into more detail, but even this was already enough for Envy.
“That’s what you’re planning with the two you captured! And the feeling we got before was you dealing with one of their kind.” Envy exclaimed again. She felt like she was on a roll.
"Somewhat correct. The elemental spirits specifically requested I deal with the sinners like this. Like you mentioned, the feeling you got some years ago was me dealing with the Inferno permanently. For these two, I'm still considering how exactly I want to deal with them. I'm planning on using the second method, which simply resets their soul. The process burns away all their memories, karma, and abilities. There's also no risk of anyone putting their souls back together either. With Inferno, I didn't have this option, but now I do. This way I also won't alarm every reincarnator in this universe." She explained. She was more likely to grant this mercy to the centaur that had come quietly, while being less certain about the one they’d just captured. Misuse of blood magic wasn’t among the list of her favorite crimes. She would need to interrogate the woman a bit to see how far gone she was.
After considering for a moment, Valor seemed to come to a decision. “I see you’re giving this some consideration. I can also see how this requires us to be allies to reveal. If others knew about it, many panicked reincarnators would rush to kill you. I’m actually glad. I had been worried after what happened before, and knowing this power is in the hands of someone who is not too eager to fling it around gives me some peace of mind. Mind you, the fact that Wrath of all people has this power has me a little worried, but I could easily imagine it being a whole lot worse. I’d also rather be your ally and maybe even a conscience of some sort to try and prevent you from going off the deep end, as opposed to your enemy, possibly earning myself the same fate. I’ve also met some souls that have more than earned the kind of fate you can give them.”
"Ooh, Wrath, I've got a list of people for you, if you don't mind." Envy seemed all too eager to utilize the power Karna had.
“Please don’t.” Valor opposed that idea with a fair bit of alarm.
Before the two could bicker further, Hope interrupted them. “While the earlier story was riveting, I doubt it’s enough to qualify as my secret. My secret concerns the power I received from the Name Hope. Obviously, I can instill hope in others in dire times, however, my main ability is to bring someone back from the dead even after their soul has left this universe. There is a time limit, of course, as I can’t bring back someone who has already reincarnated, and the price is my own life. Obviously, I can’t be magically brought back afterwards, as my soul is immediately brought into the River of Souls for processing. The whole thing has to be voluntary as well, as I need to sincerely wish to bring someone back, but most people don’t really consider that last part. They think they can just use hostages to persuade me.”
“The ultimate last hope. I can see how that would be dangerous information for you.” Valor nodded in sympathy. Someone would obviously try to capture Hope, if for no other reason than to keep them as insurance.
“Yes. There’s also another problem, that usually isn’t much of an issue, but it might be in this case. Just in case you have plans for my ability. It also doesn’t work on someone with a soul more powerful than my own. Considering how old my soul is, the list of people it doesn’t work on is quite short. However, we have at least one such person in this room, and possibly another.” Hope looked at both Karna and Envy. “And despite my Name, I’m not the sort of person to throw my life away for someone random either. I’ve used this ability exactly twice in all my lives, so keep that in mind.”
“That leaves just the two of you.” Karna looked at Envy and Valor.