CHAPTER 104 DETERMINATION
I spent the rest of that day and most of my evening, as I tried to sleep, thinking back on what Kaylith and Fiona had said to me. Marcie wasn’t the kind of girl to give someone the harsh words of reality and Striga wasn’t the kind of person to talk to people in the first place.
Kaylith was… right.
I know I can be stubborn on things and admitting when I’m wrong doesn’t come naturally, although I think that’s probably true of everyone.
But there wasn’t much I could’ve done in that situation, knowing what to do and what not to do once Ili’kithari brought me here was impossible. I would have had to have insider knowledge that would’ve been impossible to actually get a hold of.
She had set this up to be as devastating as possible. And it worked pretty damn well.
I had achieved some semblance of happiness with the Earth Raiders, they were part of the reason I was even able to stay remotely positive about the way my life had been going. Getting powers and stuff was cool and all.
But exchanging my life on Earth for this one and losing my friends and family wasn’t exactly… nice.
Not that I had a lot going for me back on Earth in the first place, but I would’ve at least liked a chance to say goodbye.
But I think I did prefer this world compared to Earth. At least in most cases. There was something to be said about power progression. Especially when it was actually noticeable as well. On the other hand, the level of convenience of living in a first-world country couldn’t be beat. I haven’t had a single hot shower since coming to this world.
Ridiculous.
Video games, books, music, there were so many things to enjoy back on Earth that I just didn’t have access to anymore. Things I probably wouldn’t ever get the chance to finish. I hoped I would find a way back home one day. With a power system like this, I had no doubt it was possible. But was it something I was going to figure out?
Honestly, that outcome was extremely unlikely. I was smart, sure. But I was no giga-brain genius.
So I had to make do with the life I had access to here and now. I had to be comfortable with living in this world for the rest of my life, however long that might be.
Except living in this world could suck ass hard. Like, really hard. I’d lost friends and family before. I wasn’t special in that regard I don’t think, but most of those situations were outliers on Earth. It wasn’t often that people you knew just died.
I had seen more deaths in Kelthas in under a year than I had in over 20 on Earth. I had caused more deaths here than I had on Earth as well.
What was more terrifying was that those deaths didn’t weigh heavily on me. I hardly thought about it at all, the only thing that came to mind was that they were inevitable. I feel like taking a life should be more of a burden. It shouldn’t be something you fully get used to.
Except I had, in a way. I was comfortable with the idea of taking a life if I needed to. That unnerved me more than the idea of killing someone, the fact that I was unaffected by something that, realistically, should affect me mentally.
I didn’t like that. But I wasn’t sure what I was going to do about it. I wasn’t sure there was anything I could do about it.
They were dead. I was too weak and not aware enough to even be able to do anything about it.
That thought weighed heavily on me.
How many other people had she done this to? What was her goal in doing this to me, to us?
Something to figure out maybe. Her end goal was to take over the whole world, or the realms I guess? Multiverse or dimensional? Is there a difference realistically? I wasn’t sure. Not that it really matters anyway.
How many lives had she uprooted? How many had she taken? She’d already caused one extinction-level event by trying to take over, and she was planning on doing it again. To that effect she had brought me here, she’d made sure I would potentially see the Sentinels of Discord as the perpetrators of everything. She’d made sure I was situated close to a city so that I could start forging relationships.
And then she slowly started stripping everything away from me. She made sure I got captured, and I knew that she had coordinated getting me sent to the Pit. Which meant she had planned for me to end up under Lurks.
How she managed to pull that off I wasn’t sure.
But that meant she had wanted me to be tortured. For her to slowly strip my sanity and pride. To break me.
In a way, I had been broken. She took my closest friends in this world and inflicted unspeakable abuses and trauma on me. All in an effort to satisfy her desire to… what? Rule because she felt she had a divine right?
…
In a way, I suppose she did. Being one of the first divines ever created and the eldest remaining gave her some claim to the title. And while I’m sure she was an effective ruler in some ways, there was just something off about everything she had said.
She had created a utopia. Or so she claimed, but she never said how she did so. That seems like the kind of thing she would brag about, for how simple she made it out to be. It seemed strange that she hadn’t gloated about how she had pulled off something no one else had.
There were two things that came to mind while following that train of thought. The first is that she probably achieved it through undesirable means. Maybe she built her utopia on the backs of slaves? Maybe it was a utopia only because it was a xenophobic community? There were a number of contingencies it could’ve been built off of, and all of them spoke to a false sense of accomplishment.
The second would be if someone else had achieved a perfect rule as well. That seemed fairly likely. Maybe the angels? It didn’t really matter, the point is that someone else probably achieved it as well.
So in that regard, she wasn’t unique, so it’s not like she hadn’t done something nobody else could have done. Which left us in the situation we are in now. She wanted to be in charge, and the rest of the divines didn’t want anyone to be in charge.
I could somewhat see a problem with this. As loath as I was to agree with Ili’kithari on anything, she was right in that there needed to be a de facto ruling system. Not necessarily that it needed to be an absolute monarchy or a dictatorship or anything. But there needed to be a ruling system, even for the gods.
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Right now it seemed like they were just functioning off of the anarchy system, which was a bad way to do things.
There needed to be some form of order. I wasn’t expecting a miracle. I highly doubted she had created a true utopia. She might’ve created a system that could’ve prospered for a million years, but nothing lasts forever.
Think of any empire or kingdom that’s existed, real or fictional. Think of their golden ages. Maybe they lasted 10 years, or maybe they lasted 100,000 years. During those times they prospered and lived in times of peace, sciences advanced, culture was expanded, and lifestyles were enhanced.
But something they don’t mention is that there is still strife. People are still murdered, skirmishes still happen, and natural disasters still strike causing massive loss of life. Political rivals still squabble with each other, there’s still stealing, starvation, and poverty. All the bad things in the world don’t go away just because the system as a whole is on an uptick.
That’s just the way things are, I didn’t expect this world to be any different. There needed to be a system by which people were governed, even the gods needed one apparently. From what I was gathering they weren’t ‘gods’ in the aspect that we view them on Earth. A higher dimensional being with infinite wisdom whose plans cannot be comprehended with a mortal mind. Most people think of the Abrahamic definition of a god rather than a pagan one.
They imagine something of infinite goodness and kindness. Here it seemed like they fell more in line with the idea of the other pantheons that existed on Earth. They were just flawed beings with an incomprehensible level of power.
How many of them still intervene in this world's affairs? I hadn’t heard much talk about the gods in the first place, so I wasn’t sure if a lot of people even worshiped them. Was this in relation to the fact that there was a massive war that was fought that destroyed thousands of years of culture and knowledge? Maybe the people didn’t remember the gods at this point. Maybe what was common knowledge over three thousand years ago was completely destroyed in their war.
That would make sense honestly.
I sighed as I sat up in the bed I was in.
I hadn’t rested particularly well, but it was about time I should be getting up anyway.
I let one of my minds spin off and create an arm for me. It only took a few moments.
Progress was nice, I still remember it taking me hours to achieve this. Now it was a minimal-effort chore.
I slowly dressed myself, although it was more that I just pulled on my shirt and boots. My leather armor had long since been destroyed in the many fights I’d had since it was first made. I didn’t like the memories of this outfit now that I knew who, what, Ili’kithari was.
But they were still convenient. They used my mana to repair and clean themselves, which meant that they never got dirty or started to smell if I sweated on them.
I sat on my bed trying to internalize further how I felt about everything.
Something needed to be done about her. The question was what? Something needed to be done about a lot of things, was I the one responsible for making it happen?
Sure the famous saying ‘Be the change you want to see in the world,’ and all that jazz. I don’t think this was quite what they meant when they were thinking of it. I’m not sure where or who even said it initially.
Maybe this is exactly what they were referencing.
I used a tendril to open the door right as Fiona and co. approached it to knock.
“Oh, hey Alex!” She said brightly.
Fiona was usually in a good mood, and so was Marcie. It was nice honestly. Their optimism and enthusiasm rubbed off on those around them.
So it was good I think for me to be around them. It helped keep me from brooding too much about everything.
“Are you doing better this morning?” Marcie asked as she walked in behind Fiona.
I nodded, “Somewhat, “ I said nonchalantly.
They gave each other a quick glance.
“Well, let’s get something to eat and then we’ll figure out something to do,” Fiona said.
I got up and followed them out of the room.
We went to the same restaurant we had been to yesterday. They had good food, but I wasn’t entirely focused on it.
I also didn’t fully focus on the conversation happening around me. Kaylith teased Fiona, and Fiona in turn took it good-naturedly, just laughing it off. Striga did as she always did, but I was starting to find that she enjoyed being around the rest of her team.
If she didn’t she no doubt would have left a long time ago.
Marcie was happily chattering to anyone who would listen, or even those who wouldn’t in the case of myself or Striga. It was less that she liked to hear the sound of her own voice, and more that she just liked people and wanted to share.
Their friendship was a beautiful thing to see. I couldn’t help but see the overlap that existed between them and my friendship with the Earth Raiders. Garrus, Penny, Karif, and George.
They had something I had once, fairly recently.
‘Don’t let their deaths be in vain’ huh?
I leaned back in my chair and set my spoon down from the soup I was eating.
Kaylith turned to look at me and for a moment, just impassively observed my face.
Eventually, she gave me a small smile, “You look like you’ve figured something out.”
I nodded.
“I think I know what I want to do.”
Kaylith just raised an eyebrow but didn’t say anything, neither did the rest of the group. They waited patiently for me to speak when I was ready.
“This world is messed up. It’s too big as well. There’s so much I don’t understand, so much I have yet to discover about this world. There’s too much for any one person to handle, especially someone like me. I’m weak, I don’t know anything, I have only a few friends left.
“Ili’kithari took some of my closest friends from me in this world. And there’s not much I can do about that. Like you said, even if it hadn’t been them it would’ve been someone. There was no way to know what was going to happen. It sucks. I hate being weak. I hate it so much.
My eyes grew slightly misty as I struggled to express the frustration I felt. I was too weak to do anything. And the fact that I was weak meant I couldn’t protect the people around me.
“Being weak cost my friends their lives. Being weak allowed me to suffer at the hands of a psychopath for nearly an entire year. How many other people has she pulled to do this to? How many other people has she tortured and abused over the years? How many have died because of her antics? How many will die in the future?
“She destroyed countless countries in a temper tantrum, but she’s not entirely to blame.”
That got some surprise from the rest of the group.
“She wasn’t the only one fighting that war. The other gods and divinely empowered beings are just as much at fault as she is. They destroyed this world just as much as she did, even now they don’t do anything to stop her. They just watch her. They could’ve killed her back then, but instead, they just chose to punish her. And that allowed her to try again.
“I’m weak. There’s nothing I can do to stop her.
“For now.”
I looked up from where I had been staring at the table and looked at each of them.
“I’m going to become stronger. Strong enough to face her. But not just her, but the rest of the gods as well. They failed us just as much as she did. If I have anything to say about it, there will never be another story like mine. There will never be another person who’s torn from their family and friends and forced to experience the trauma that I have. I won’t allow it.
“Someone needs to step forward and do what needs to be done. I’m too weak to do it now, but I’ll grow strong enough to do so in the future. No matter what it takes. The gods refuse to govern themselves. I’m going to change that. Their inaction and inability to properly govern themselves resulted in the deaths of countless people and cultures.
“I refuse to stand by and watch the world crumble around me. If no one else will step up, then I will.
“I won’t let their deaths be in vain.”