Chương 408: Day Four Hundred And Six

Dear Diary,"Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one." - Stella Adler I feel that. Oh, my god do I feel that. You are welcome to visit at any time, Daughter. Thanks Dad. I know. Love you. But not right now. So yeah, the past two days have given me plenty of time to think about how hard I've fought to make the world I've found myself in a better place.

How I realized pretty fuckin' early on that, like a lot of places where there ought to be enough for everybody to get by, to survive and maybe even thrive, and yet the world has turned into an absolute shitpile, that there's some asshole sitting on a pile of bodies so he can get himself a slightly less shitty place to sit. Fuck, like a lot of those places, the fucker standing on the bottom layer isn't even anywhere near the top of the shitpile, not responsible for anything like most of the death and misery.

To be honest, in that first week, sitting alone in my room polishing the pearl to the thought of being rich and famous, I don't think I even thought about trying to topple that pyramid of shit. Not one fuck given about even going after the fucker on top and using the remains of his skull as a shovel to destroy that pyramid, to shovel the crap down onto the fields like fertilizer. I didn't even think about the fact that those dudes on top could be toppled, that the pyramid could be dismantled.

At best maybe I thought about snagging a spot a little higher up on the pyramid for me and mine. Yeah, I wanted the title 'Hero', and I was absolutely down to do the work and help people to make it happen, but I don't think I really understood, deep inside, that even here in Phileo and the Yards, 'Hero' might not be a knight in shining armor out to help everybody. I sure as fuck didn't think about what it meant that it should be. Then... the Equinox.

I didn't stand up to Artemis to prove myself or topple a tyrant or any happy bullshit like that. I did it to save my kid. I mean, fuck, I did it in a way that is absolutely me, although when I look back to then and there, I realize that the me I was back at Eastside may never have had the guts to throw down with, I dunno, Vladimir Putin or some other 'World Leader'.

Before you @ me about him being old and shit, I read somewhere he was a fuckin' assassin in his youth, and the fact that he lived out of 'youth' to 'old fuck' means he was good at it. Pleasantly plump me from back at Eastside would have been lucky to get out of that as a fucked up cripple. More likely I'd have wound up a defiled corpse. But by the Equinox? I'd had duBois teaching me about how to fuck shit up, not to mention Saffron, Isnomi, and Marie giving me a reason why.

But me fucking up Artemis' shit wasn't some kind of big political statement. Just me protecting my family, and scaring the shit out of anybody who might think about extending the cycle of violence. Fuck, if I've done anything right here and now it's generally that. Find the local cycle of violence, ride that shit to the top, then pull the wheels off and rip them to pieces. Just like I ripped the Army of New Amsterdam and Newark to pieces.

Y'know, it's kinda odd, but I think right then and there is when I realized I might actually be able to make a fuckin' difference. Not, like, lifting a brick into place and shouting, 'I'm doing my part' like some self-centered self-important little shit, but actually setting my feet, lifting with my knees and my back, and maybe actually doing some damage not just to the unlucky fucker on the tier above me, but the pyramid itself. By the Spring Equinox I tried that.

I'd spent an entire Season mostly saving people instead of killing the shit out of them. I mean, yeah, Dragon. Yeah, assholes from Calverton, led by the High Priest of King Arse himself. But for the most part, for once I got to be the savior rather than the shit wrecker, and that shit felt good.

Hell, I think that may have been the first time short of my found family and Sister Siobhan, and don't start with her joining up because I'm not putting any fucking expectations on that relationship whatsoever thank you very much. Except, y'know, maybe some fucking. Okay, fuck, back at the plot, on the Spring Equinox I caught two of the fuckers sitting on the top tier of Shit Pyramid as I stood up and flipped that shit. Yeah, I killed them. Yeah, I'd fuckin' do it again. But mostly, on that day, I saved people.

Then... Norfolk. Maybe I'd gotten so fucked up on the Equinox that I forgot. Shit, from what Loki tells me, maybe I really did get some brain damage that didn't go away because it never really got healed. But... Norfolk. I read once about how the bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki 'saved lives'.

Made no fuckin' sense until the History teacher explained that the Japanese people were absolutely prepared to defend their country to the last, which would have led to millions of casualties, most of them Japanese, since just to get to the islands the US would have had to cut through most of the military, so it would have been combat hardened soldiers with military gear against farmers and housewives and factory workers with whatever they could scrounge. I mean, shit, they might have pulled it off.

I remember news about some hardcore fuckers over in Ukraine doing shit like that right before I got Isekaied. But whoever was in charge went with shock and awe. Dropped two bombs which just scared the Japanese so bad it broke them. Yeah, kinda my modus operandi, I'm aware. I killed a lot fewer people in Norfolk than I did in New Amsterdam. Hell, I'm pretty sure I might have killed fewer people in Norfolk than I did fighting against Calverton.

Not only that, but every fucker I killed was a Jarl or one of their designated Champions. People sitting at least two tiers up on the shit pyramid. I straight up stomped the local pyramid down a tier, and did my best to let everybody know that the pyramid itself needed to get a lot fuckin' flatter.

A little elevation so the woman organizing things can see everybody they're responsible for, so they can see her, so nobody gets lost or pulls any shady shit like trying to build a new pyramid while nobody's looking is fine, I guess. But the moment you can't smell the shit everybody else is standing in, you're too fuckin' high. Shit, I wanna go on about fighting Hole Spawn and the fuckin' Undead Dragon, but that was basically just pest control. That didn't budge the pyramid at all.

Hell, while I was doing that Jarl killing and organizing our Calverton Expedition, I straight up did War Crimes to people in Norfolk. Some of them because they maybe deserved it for trying to use a crisis to elevate themselves, sure, but it's not like I've lowered my fuckin' own self during this ongoing fuckin' crisis for the past year. Shit, some of them were literally just following completely legal and even maybe justified orders, and I cut their fuckin' toes off.

I cut their toes off because I was flirting with some of them, for fuck's sake. Toe cutting is not a love language! For the past couple months, I've just been overseeing the Undead extermination in Calverton. I mean, yeah, I've been fucking around with the kids, planning Saffron's birthday party, doing some long term planning for the seduction of my platinum blonde beauties, and now literally laying the groundwork for our house, but in terms of 'shit wrecking' and 'pyramid stomping', nada. Until this past week.

First, the store brand sorcerer tried to kill Marie and I burned him out of existence. I don't really feel super guilty about that. Maybe a little irresponsible, like I could have gotten more intel or some shit, but not guilty.

Tiny bit of guilt about vandalizing Olympus, but again, that's more about doing it as part of a bitch fit tantrum than some kind of actual statement about how the shit pyramid is gonna be leveled, and anybody currently occupying a high place on the pyramid might want to look for new accommodations. Saving those babies... shit, saving those babies is the one thing I've done lately that I'm proud of, sort of. I mean, I'm proud I got to be the one to do it.

I'm sorta proud that I had the strength to do it; if this is what I've been training for all this time, yeah, I'm proud of that. I'm not really 'oh, look at all the Good I've Done' proud, because at the end of the day I didn't make a moral decision there. I just did what anybody worthy of drawing breath would do if they had the strength. I did the bare. Fucking. Minimum. Shit, I even handed off the most important parts to the Maenads, and in doing so fucked up some other shit. Glad I could airlift the refugees out.

Not even proud a little bit about not, y'know, replacing their Spartan abusers with me, because again, that's not a moral decision. That's just doing the bare fucking minimum. Yeah, lately I've had one fuckin' moral decision to make, and I fucked it up. I violated six people in every way possible because they pissed me off. Okay, yeah, one of them cut a woman's arm off and threatened to rape her. He still had her in hand, and I don't know if I could have rescued her without killing him.

But then, I didn't torture him to death. I just executed him, fast and relatively clean. I mean, okay, I didn't look. He might have been aware and awake as his brain lost oxygen, but without a spine he wasn't hurting and, again, violent criminal with a wounded hostage. Fuck that guy in particular. This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. Athena's High Priest I'm gonna call a wash.

Bitch straight up admitted that he planned on watching the rape, murder, and abduction of all those refugees and not raise a fuckin' hand to stop it. I'm not super proud about how I did it, but at that point I wanted to send Athena a very clear message.

If you've got the power to say 'no' to the rapist at any point between 'I'm gonna rape her' and 'toss her body behind a dumpster', and instead you cheer him on, or even just sit there passively watching, filing that shit away in your fuckin' spank bank, I'm gonna judge you as an accomplice. Because even if you never lay a hand on her, you failed the minimum possible standard of saying 'no'.

In fact, I'm pretty sure somebody like that would be sitting in the jury box wondering she 'didn't say no', 'didn't fight back', and 'what about his promising swimming career'. Fuck that guy too. There were five other guys there. Yeah, they had Spartan uniforms. Yeah, they were clearly with the rapey fucker I executed. The evidence is absolutely circumstantial, but I'm prepared to declare them guilty of 'intent to enslave', maybe even 'intent to murder'.

Yes, those are crimes on in Phileo, and while I wasn't in Phileo, that's what it says on my badge, so I'm gonna go with that for now. But I can't even be certain on 'intent to rape', what with so many Greek fuckers historically being boy kissers. I mean, shit, 'I'm Gay as fuck and can't get it up while someone with a vag is in the room' is a powerful counter-argument to a dude raping a room full of women.

Not enough to prove innocence, but I talked about that the other day, and it's sure as fuck enough to introduce 'reasonable doubt'. So yeah, they didn't have hostages. They hadn't done anything that I'd seen or even heard of. They were just five dudes in enemy uniforms, and after I killed their boss they weren't looking to do any more raping or pillaging. Fuck, at one point one of them tried to run away.

Everything after that was just proof they had less chance than the poor fuckin' Levies at the Battle of the Walls. Shit, I killed a fuckton of Levies, and I wrecked Oliver's shit more thoroughly than most people are capable of surviving, but he'd just betrayed and murdered my wife, and I was pissed about that. What I did to those five poor fucks...

Shit, I shoved one asshole's still-conscious head up another motherfucker's ass, and I forgot about him and left him there, because I was enjoying killing the rest of them too much. I thought about that shit all day long while Saffron held me. When night rolled around, I did my toilet monitor thing, giving each kid a quick hug to let them know I wasn't mad at them, wasn't sad about anything they'd done. Then, when we had all and sundry settled, I thought, Marie?

She joined us a moment later, then slid alongside me, holding me, a warm blanket to my Saffron pillow.

"I murdered them." Saffron ran her hand over my hair.

"Who would 'they' be exactly?" I took a deep breath and blew the air out of my nose.

"The five Spartans at the hideout." Marie tensed a little, then started purring. Saffron calmly asked, "are we talking about the murderous slaver rapists?"

"You don't know that." She blinked.

"Marie, have Spartans coming to a Dionysian shelter done aught but murder, rape, and enslave the women there?"

"No."

"There you have it. They were there to murder, rape, and enslave those women." I shrugged. Didn't fucking matter.

"So I could have taken their left feet off or some shit. I didn't have to kill them."

"Why would you do that? So they could return to Sparta, tell them of your existence? Give them yet another reason to send their filth at Phileo, and while we're still recovering from Apollo's Plague, still dealing with the Undead results of his Divine tantrum?"

"Fine." I barked.

"I could have killed them clean. Just ash their fuckin' heads. All six of them, Athena's bitch included."

"So you fought them instead..."

"NO!" I deflated a second later.

"No. No, I didn't fight them." I barked out something not entirely unlike a laugh.

"Fight them. They couldn't even fucking see me. Fight me? They fucking ran away." I swear Marie drenched my goddamned leg right then and there.

"Vlickies..."

"The actual fuck?"

"Spartans broke and ran?" For the first time in a long time, Saffron sounded completely gobsmacked.

"Are... are you sure?"

"They were in a kind of circle formation. None of them could see. I disarmed them, tore their armor to shreds, and one of them tried to run."

"Tried?"

"I tossed him back at the pile. Then I murdered them one by one."

"Executed. Killed in combat. Not murdered."

"I. Murdered. Them. This wasn't a fight. Even if it had been, they'd lost. I sliced the first dude in half from crotch to crown, then got so turned on I did it again, then got pissed when that dude didn't scream right, did it again, got so pissed at that dude that before his brain died I rammed his head up another dude's ass, burned that dudes brain to ash and called it mercy, then killed the other one so I could use him as a puppet to fuck with the Athenian bitch."

Marie whined, and I couldn't accurately describe what she was doing as 'dry humping' my leg.

"Fuck, Marie! I'm here fucked up about the fact that I damn near got off on murdering the shit out of those guys." Saffron opened her mouth, and I snapped, "fine! I nearly got off on executing the fuck out of those guys. Fuck, I might have and missed it, I was fuckin' drunk off my ass, even a little high I think. Shit, fuck, dammit!" Marie clutched at my leg so hard it creaked, and I screamed in frustration. Saffron lay one cool, gentle hand on each of our foreheads.

"Stop." We both froze, even if Marie was still panting and twitching.

"Marie? How many do they have?" Marie almost whimpered out, "Four."

"The fuck?"

"You are aware of Sparta's pogrom?" I shook my head.

"Uh. Kinda? Something about them killing off Maenads back in the day? And other worshippers of Dionysus?" She shook her head.

"No, love. Not 'back in the day'. They have been killing Maenads and followers of Dionysus whenever and wherever they could catch them for over three hundred years."

"Holy fuck."

"Yes, that is exactly what our dear Marie was doing to your leg, but focus. How many have they killed?"

"Eight." I blinked.

"Killed? I thought you were immortal?"

"Fire."

"Oh. Oh, holy shit. Didn't you tell me that a Maenad doesn't die until she's torn to bits?" She nodded.

"Oh." My gorge rose at the thought.

"Oh, fuck."

"Another thing the Spartans routinely do before they murder a Maenad or a follower of Dionysus." My anger tried to spark, ran into my guilt at what I'd done.

"Sick. Fucks." She nodded again.

"Yes."

"Wait, I can't see them being able to hold a Maenad. They'd just step to M-Space and leave." Saffron sighed.

"Much as you once were, love, they are bound by Cold Iron. Spiked to torture devices. Used by Spartans to 'train' their new 'Heroes'."

"The fuck? Not really combat training if somebody's pinned down."

"I didn't say combat training." That was fuckin' it. Fuck that noise. Greece needed another new volcano.

"STOP." I froze and ground out.

"Why?"

"First, there are women and children and slaves in Sparta. Maybe as many as there are non-Heroes in Phileo. Most of them, even the 'wives' of the Heroes, are slaves in all but name. I know you, my love. Were your wrath unleashed on Sparta, they would suffer, and you would torture yourself evermore over it."

"I'll. Be. Fuckin'. Careful."

"No, love. Not careful enough. Not thorough enough, either. We are not ready."

"We?" She pulled herself upright, pulling Marie and my heads into her lap, where we looked up at her, the Imperator commanding.

"Do you think I would allow that situation to stand?"

"No." Marie and I echoed.

"But I cannot sacrifice the innocents of the Alliance to rescue four Maenads. So before we do? We. Must. Be. Ready." The fire within me banked by Saffron's steel Soul, I whispered, "for what?"

"For their inevitable counterattack. Sparta's. Their 'allies'. Olympus." She took a deep breath, and Marie and I held ours.

"We will free Calverton. We will deal with our other neighbors in whatever fashion they deserve, so long as they know that their choices are to back us, remain neutral, or die with Sparta's 'heroes'. We will build our Cities and Armies and Navy up until no conceivable Europan forces could breach them. Then, and only then..." She waited. Not like it's hard to outwait me at the best of times.

"And then?"

"Then the Imperator's Attack Dog will rescue our long lost Maenads."

"When do we kill the fucking piece of shit Spartans?" She smiled down at me, and I suddenly understood once more that 'smile' did not always mean nice, or kind, or any kind of thing you'd want children near.

"When they and any allies foolish enough to march with them leave their Cities. Then, and only then, on the field of battle, far from any innocents they might hide behind, we will slaughter each and every one who will not submit."

"Why the fuck would you leave any of them alive?" I growled. Her next words convinced me right then and there that anyone most afraid of me or Marie was focused on the wrong fucking danger.

"Because the final generation of Spartan Heroes will learn what it means to be slaves, as they spend the rest of their emasculated lives tearing Sparta brick from brick, then using the remainder repairing every iota of damage Sparta has ever caused, until each and every one of them dies, exhausted, in chains."