Threshold City
6:25 P.M.
The Goblins surrounding us cowered in fear while Dendrite continued to look at the pile of fused corpses in shock. Some of the Goblins had partially shouldered their rifles as if they were considering aiming them at me. I didn’t care. If any of them attacked me, it would just give me an excuse to take their heads off.
“Why? Who gave you the order!?” I screamed as I pointed my Beretta at the head of a third Goblin. The first two Goblins had just started turning into ash.
“GM told us to kill the Revenants. The Cervids thought we should kill the Imperials around the major towns to…” The Goblin spoke frantically as I approached. It was not able to complete its sentence as I grabbed it by the neck and lifted it into the air.
“Disgusting FUCKING monsters!” I shouted into its face as loud as I could. “GM should never have lifted you out of the dirt. You are a blight upon this world, and I should KILL every last ONE OF YOU!”
The Goblin’s rifle fell to the ground as I lifted it up. I looked into its eyes as I prepared to shatter its vertebrae between my fingers. I wondered what the vermin would do in order to save its own life. Though, there was nothing it could do. No matter how it struggled, no matter how it thrashed, I would squeeze its life out in an iron vice.
My face contorted into a lunatic’s snarl filled with malicious and righteous anger, I saw the Goblin’s face. I expected it to thrash and bite; I expected it to try to poke out my eyes.
The Goblin was crying. Tears streamed down green cheeks. There was no thrashing; there was no biting. My grasp was not resisted.
“Please, I don’t want to die.”
I loosened my grip on the Goblin, and he fell to the ground. The Goblin scurried backward away from me. If not for that one moment, I probably would have executed every Deluvian in the 13th Legion.
As I held that Goblin’s throat in my hand, I realized something. I wasn’t strong enough to do it. I should have killed them all, but I was too weak. GM had given these creatures true sapience. I had to accept that they had “souls.” If I were to reject their personhood, I would have to reject my own.
I returned my pistol to its holster and said, “Come on, we still haven’t made it to the center of the city yet.”
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The Goblins flinched away from me as I walked past. Their fear quickly turned to shock as they realized I no longer had any intention of hurting anyone. Dendrite ripped his gaze off of the pile of corpses before jogging to catch up with me.
“Hey, man,” Dendrite said to me. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, yeah,” I lied. “I just needed a few seconds to calm down.”
The image of the corpses was still burned into my brain. A mother held her infant child in her hands. Decay had fused their pallid flesh together. The mother would never release the child again.
My eyes were locked on an empty point in space ahead of me. A voice in my head told me that I would be fine as long as I just put one foot in front of the other. As long as I didn’t think about what had just transpired, I would be okay.
“I get where you’re coming from,” Dendrite said. Based on his casual tone of voice, I could tell that the image had already left his mind. “That was a pretty gnarly sight, but - you know - those weren’t actually people. They were just NPCs.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked. “Every type of NPC we’ve spoken to so far has had human-like intelligence. At a certain point, we have to accept that the NPCs are just as human as you, me, or any Revenant.”
“Look,” Dendrite started to say. “Death is always messy. I don’t want to be the one who has to tell you this, but you need to prepare yourself for what is to come. When a person is killed violently, it’s never pretty. You need to get used to that. We’re Dark Apostles; we’re entities of extreme violence. Until the day you die, scenes like that,” Dendrite pointed back at the pickup truck, “will be commonplace. You can’t afford to freak out every time you see some corpses.”
I was shocked. How could anyone be so callous? Was I supposed to just ignore every tragedy that unfolded before me?
“And the solution is just to ignore it?” I asked. “Don’t we have a moral obligation to reduce suffering?”
“You know, you’re right,” Dendrite said aggressively. He spread his arms out wide and tightened his expression as he spoke. “A good person is supposed to care. A good person would be kept up all night by the terrible tragedies that they weren’t strong enough to prevent. I’m telling you right now that you don’t have the privilege of being a good person, not anymore. We need to fight to survive. We don’t have time to try to ‘prevent’ any suffering. If we’re really lucky, we might manage to not cause any more unnecessary suffering. But… I doubt it.”
I opened my mouth to make a rebuttal, but no sound would come out. I wanted to say something, but I knew Dendrite was right. There was no reality where I didn’t see a significant amount of carnage over the coming months and years.
“I understand what you’re saying,” I sighed, “but I’m going to keep trying to reduce pain and suffering wherever I see it.”
“That’s your prerogative,” Dendrite said. “Just, if you don’t mind, please don’t execute any more Deluvians once we meet up with the 11th Legion.”
“I promise,” I said solemnly.
We walked a few hundred more feet before we reached the town square of Threshold. Hundreds of Deluvians had accumulated in the large 500-foot-diameter space, and several dozen higher-order Deluvians were grouped up in the center of the square.
“Might as well get this over with,” I said while stretching my shoulders. Some part of my brain told me that I would have to kill a few more Deluvians before the day was done.