Alin decides to test Ajax and Shaula. Their resolve. The path that he will need them to walk is one that requires sacrifice.

Can they pay the price? The price of their conscience, their ability to value life?

Alin recalls the first time he killed innocent people with his own power, by his own hands. It was his mother who had prompted him.

Prior to the current conflict between humans and demons, there was an earlier one about a hundred years ago. The Abolitionary Divine War. It was the first time Alin’s mother had placed him in a position of formal power.

He was finally ready to be introduced as emperor, at the age of fifty years old. He looked no more than a young man nonetheless.

He was crowned the ‘Immortal Emperor’ by his mother in a formal ceremony before the empire’s military at the start of the Divine War. The Immortal Emperor of the Supreme Azazelin Empire.

His mother had the belief that humanity under Sapiora is a cancer on the surface of Omicron that she should have exterminated when she had the chance to.

She wanted for Alin to carry forward her wishes and instilled within him the value that a mankind led by Sapiora is vile and will only pollute the world she had helped build.

He never fully internalized this doctrine and started ruling over the Supreme Azazelin Empire according to his own sense of justice, based on the belief that even Sapiora-led humans deserve to live.

Alin wasn’t a pacifist however.

When Alin fought in the fifteen-year Abolitionary Divine War, he had killed many Sapioran soldiers and caused significant collateral damage against civilians, human and demihuman alike.

He wasn’t aiming for them, they were simply in the way.

So long as the war was started by the humans, he could take as much life as he wanted without feeling pangs of conscience. They were fighting his mother and the empire, after all.

One day, his mother had ordered him to destroy a city within a newly conquered human territory of the empire. Enter the city as a commando and kill all of the humans, leaving the beastkin and draconids alone. Every human.

He did so because he would never disobey his mother and he had the belief that such a command was necessary; all of her commands were necessary.

The purpose of this attack was a terrorist massacre to demoralize the human armies at the war's fifteen year mark. Thirty thousand humans died.

In the end, it did prove useful in forcing the humans to abandon demihuman slavery in their territories and shortened the war by almost two decades.

It was an action that occurred in the midst of suicide attacks taken by enslaved demihumans within the human territories as well. It started to prove to be a huge image problem for the church to handle.

If the Holy Sapioran Federation stopped being safe then it would start to crumble from its other problems.

However, that’s not why his mother had ordered him to personally perform this mission. It was to test his resolve to kill even innocent life by his own hand for a grander purpose.

He killed men, women, mothers, fathers, children, toddlers, infants, grandmothers and grandfathers. Humans who resisted and humans who didn’t, who couldn’t.

He had seen the growth of many demihuman children within his empire during his long life and at a basic level, there was no difference between them and human children.

He faced great amounts of post-traumatic stress for this one heinous action, even with the knowledge that it proved necessary to their grand plans in the end. It took him decades to get over this pain.

He never fully bought into the idea that a significant portion of humanity needed to be annihilated either, entire bloodlines wiped out, even after killing so many innocents himself.

This was how he was for a while after the war had ended.

Then, his mother died. His mother, the mother of the empire, her divine majesty, Azazelin, had died. The mother of the so-called ‘demon’ race, had died, killed by Sapiora.

Along with many of Alin’s siblings. The majority of dragons within the empire also vanished, now thought to be completely extinct by the citizens of humanity.

Alin began to consider that their war, their race war, their holy war, was a matter of kill or be killed. His soft heart turned to iron. His heart yearning for vengeance made every action he’s taken since then much easier.

His citizenry had lost their mother as well. Their creator had died. Their object of worship, their icon, their symbol of hope against Sapiora had died.

He became able to do what needed to be done. He could kill any number of people now without hesitation.

But could they?

Could Ajax and Shaula? Certainly not.

Alin doesn’t believe they, particularly Ajax, can pay the price yet. After all, he falls apart after killing just one guilty man. If Alin were to kill the woman and child in the carriage, Ajax would hate him.

It’s not like those bandits were blameless, even if they were beastkin. They would have attacked the carriage regardless of whether the merchant was a reprehensible individual or not.

He looks over at the bandits, the one who is dead with his neck broken and the other five who fainted from Ajax and Shaula’s attacks. He can sense injuries in them, sloppy methods to try and immobilize the bandits.

They truly are children...

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His medical prowess allows him to sense, with magic, the multiple fractures in the beastkin.

He can heal those who still remain alive, quite easily in fact. Not that he would do that. But he wants to ask...

“Child… Ajax, was it? What are you going to do now?”

“Huh?”

“Am I correct in assuming that these beastkin are criminals who were attempting to rob this carriage?”

“Yes...”

“So, are you going to turn them in to face the human authorities? I assume that’s why you incapacitated them without killing them, right?”

“Yeah, I guess we probably have to at this point... At the very least, it’s better than them being killed by these shitheads or that fucking dead asshole.”

“Oh. I would argue against that.”

“Huh? Why?”

Ajax wishes for these people to face justice. He wishes for them to be locked away for good. To never try to hurt anyone ever again. Alin offers his rebuttal to Ajax’s naive proposition.

“Well, obviously, it’s not your fault for not knowing this as an alien to Omicron... but, beastkin who have committed crimes like these men have will be publicly executed in human cities, perhaps by hanging or burning at the stake. The execution would take place in front of a crowd of frothing human supremacists who would use this as an excuse to perpetuate the myth that beastkin are an inferior race of criminals. Hate crimes immediately following the execution would rise slightly depending on the city.”

“So… so what are you saying? Just leave them here?”

“Well… You’ve basically crippled them. How are they going to catch food? Some of them would need help to even defecate. Are you willing to take care of them?”

Ajax and Shaula look at each other. Are they willing to go that far to take care of bandits? On the one hand, they have plenty of time to do so, they have only time until Ahura Mazda returns.

It’s not like Ajax and Shaula themselves need to eat or sleep or expel waste… Of course, Alin could simply heal the bandits but that’s not the point of his inquiry.

But, surely taking care of these bandits would be too much to expect from them, right?

“You. You’re powerful, right? Can’t you help them?”

Shaula pierces through Alin’s question with one of her own.

“Help them how? Medical treatment? What do you assume I could--”

“Why didn’t you help them earlier? Why didn’t you stop any of these people from being killed? You could have easily done so, right?”

Alin had arrived early enough to hear what the merchant had been saying, right? From how his sleeping spell worked, it seems like it could instantly knock everyone out without the bandit commander dying. Ajax starts to realize it as well.

“Yeah… why didn’t you?”

“That’s not my prerogative. I don’t have any interest in the fate of criminals or random people, I’m on a mission myself. But, what if I wasn’t here? What would you do then?”

“Why are you asking us that?”

Shaula’s impatience swells.

Who does this prick think he is? He steps in and asks us what we would do when he’s done nothing himself?

“I wish to know more about you. A question like this can reveal the heart of a person. I want to know if there is any hope for you two to join my side. If you can join me right now even. So far I’ve seen indecisiveness, the kind that will prove fatal for what I’m trying to achieve. Let me break down your options: You can send these men to face human law which will result in their racialized, public execution. Or, you can take care of these men yourself until their conditions improve, wasting your own time in the process, with no guarantee that they will be rehabilitated or stop their violent actions. More people could die in the end. An option that will force you to be more altruistic people than I think you actually are and with no hope of ‘success’. Perhaps you could treat them like animals in a cage while you hand them their living necessities. You could hand them their own prison sentence according to your own sense of morality. But would you do such a thing? I don’t have faith, I’m afraid.”

Alin has seen goodness in Ajax. Altruism and mercy. But also mental weakness and lack of fortitude. Quite different from the normal warrior heroes who have landed in the past.

Those men might have been able to help him if they weren’t such fanatical individuals.

Furthermore, Alin has seen nurses in hospitals within his empire care for elderly, terminally ill demihumans, some working free of charge, just so they can have good quality of life even near their end.

He has seen all manner of altruistic acts greater than anything these two have performed or are capable of performing. He finds their selflessness lacking and hypocritical. Perhaps it comes from a place of good within their hearts but...

“Or... you could kill them right here. Right here, right now. Take their lives and move on with your own.”

“N-No… I can’t… I can’t because...”

“Because they’re unconscious? Defenceless? Would they hesitate if it was you defenceless? Would they care for you? Well, I suppose the duty of the good person is to do what the evil person wouldn’t, correct? But… you’re simply not that good. You’re simply not that moral an individual. Would you resign yourself to care for them then? Those who you crippled? Wouldn’t they hate you even if you did care for them, if they eventually did recover? Or, are you the kind of person who would simply leave them to be executed in front of a frothing crowd of human supremacists--”

“No! No… I wouldn’t do that… I would never do that.”

Ajax looks down, unsure of himself. First, he’s been given the choice to perform actions he finds too evil. And now, ironically, he’s finding himself being asked to take responsibility that is too much for him to bear.

Shaula takes Ajax’s trembling hand. She holds it reassuringly. She wants to not let his sense of morality die. Alin notices.

“That’s what’s interesting. I know what the woman would do. Shaula, right? You’d give them merciful deaths. I can already see it. That’s why if you weren’t someone who loves this Ajax so dearly, I would ask you to come to my side.”

“Shut the fuck up, you pissant. You think I’d join your side after you disrespected Ajax like that? Moron… H-He’s trying to be a good person. He’s not trying to be someone like me or someone like you. I can trust the decision he’ll make. I know there’s a middle ground here--”

“Well, that’s where you’re wrong. You’ve taken too long to decide. Now the decision will be made for you. By me.”

Alin has seen enough. He knows what these two are now. Defective heroes. Not yet ready for what needs to be done.

They need to see that if they don’t act, actions will be taken for them.

Furthermore...

He knows. He knows deep down that it isn’t certain… whether Ajax would actually take care of them. Would he go so far to help these people? Would he waste so much time to do so?

Grow a spine, son.

Alin raises his right palm into the air. He whispers something too silently for Shaula and Ajax to hear. Shaula feels fear with an educated guess at what he’s about to do, unsure about how he’s about to do it.

Slowly, a sphere of light forms in his palm.

“Sigh. Let this be a lesson. This is what life is here on this world, on my world. Do you really want people like me to do things like this?”

In the blink of an eye, streaks of lightning fly from Alin’s right palm, striking the beastkin bandits, the bolts aimed directly for their hearts.

The bolts take crooked paths in their aim to kill these men. Paths avoiding Ajax and Shaula’s bodies, Ajax and Shaula unable to act even if they knew what he was going to do. There is a burnt patch on the chest plates of these bandits, black and smoking.

Cardiac arrest sets in. The nerves controlling the beating rhythm of their hearts are fried beyond simple repair. Their hearts will never beat again.