A Jaded Life

With the defeat of the hunter that was rushing in, I had a little extra time to make sure that Rai would not die in the next minutes. It would be a shame to lose out on the quest he was involved with. And there was a small, nagging voice in my head, reminding me that at least some of his wounds were because of his association with Sigmir and me.

“Are you severely wounded anywhere, or just the superficial cuts and probably bruises?” I asked, bending down to pull him into a halfway comfortable position and cutting his bindings.

“No... I’m alright.” He answered, while avoiding my gaze.

“Good. Stay here.” With those words, I left the cave, the Weaver’s Fury floating behind my shoulders.

Outside, I saw that Sigmir and Adra had been busy. I only saw the three guys that had been at the campfire, engaged with the two of them, as they used the gorge to prevent encirclement. Sigmir had her axe and shield in hand, taking the brunt of their attack and allowing Adra to strike from behind her, using the longer reach of her spear. Classic formation-tactics but the reason that it had become a classic, prevalent tactic in both worlds was simple. It worked. The three Jonari were showing multiple wounds each, while Sigmir and Adra looked completely fine. Simple passage of time would assure their victory. Not that it would be needed.

Trying something new, I tried to split up my six shuttles in three groups of two to attack independently from each other and found it extremely hard. Moving them in three formations instead of two would give me a headache, trying to balance a formation that was comprised of shuttles from two different mental processes. With a quick thought, I split the mixed formation, assigning the two shuttles to the other two formations and felt my burden lift. Using the shuttles in two formations was almost no burden at all, just an expenditure of Astral Power.

My first strike was also my last. The two Jonari I had targeted were unaware of the incoming shuttles, until they were hit, straight into their backs, causing massive damage. Both Sigmir and Adra used the disturbance to make their demise a certainty. The last Jonari saw the writing on the wall and tried a risky move of dodging around Sigmir to escape. Of course, opening his back to Sigmir and his side to Adra was a bad idea, allowing them to attack with impunity.

Seeing that the fight was over, I moved my shuttles back to me, rotating them for a moment to get the blood off, before sheathing them once more. The image of a shuttle rotating around its shortest axis was giving me ideas, if I could get it fast enough, it would almost be a saw blade. Visions of flying razor sharp saw blades promised a quick demise to any enemy I would be facing.

But for now, Rai needed checking up. Sigmir and Adra had made their way over and joined me, so I gave them an update. “Jongarn was in there. He won’t act against us, ever again. Rai is in there as well. If I interpret the words I heard right, Rai had heard Jongarn use your name, Sigmir, and reacted to the name. Jongarn wanted to know what he knew about you and, when Rai did not tell him, Jongarn tortured him for information. Unless there is some sort of conspiracy active, Rai kept quiet and did not tell him anything.”

“But Jongarn is dead?” Sigmir asked, just as Adra asked about Rai’s condition.

“Rai is a little beaten up but seemed to be fine. Jongarn is dead, sadly I was lacking the time to make it as painful as he deserved. But he is gone for good.” I answered them in turn.

Sigmir seemed pleased with the fact that Jongarn was gone, Adra looked more pensive.

“Maybe that’s for the best. He is gone and the two of you can put your hatred to rest. I think that torturing him simply for the sake of causing him pain, to make him suffer would be harmful to you.” Adra said.

When she voiced that thought, I felt that there might be some truth to that. Just thinking about the look, that slightly manic grin on my face as I cut his throat sent a shiver down my spine. Not because I had never seen in before, I was aware that I had a similar smile on my face, back when I had used the full extent of my magic and used it to exterminate the Snowbolds. I could easily imagine myself having just that expression as I slowly and carefully tortured him to death, making his demise last days just to satisfy an inner voice to make him suffer for what he did to Sigmir.

It was a startling realisation that, if judged by my actions, I was only slightly better than Jongarn. He had used underhanded means and magic, trying to bend Sigmir to his will, so she could be a broodmare. I had used torture and magic trying to bend the nymphs to my will, in order to use them as sacrificial objects. The only saving grace was that the nymphs were enemies to me and Sigmir was an ally to him. But that did not make my actions less reprehensible. And the worst part about it was that I didn’t really feel bad about it.

Part of me wanted to feel bad, wanted to feel assured that after this revelation, I would never act like that again. But the realistic part of me looked at the strange, new sensations within me, those feelings that I only had when I was in Mundus, within my avatar, and that realistic side told me that, unless I made a conscious effort to avoid such behaviour, it was likely to happen again. There was something within me that did not want to be a being similar to Jongarn. The simple thought to be like him in that way was repulsive to me. For now, that meant that I should try to be conscious of my actions and examine them closely.

Sadly, there was no objective truth to what was good and what was bad, something I had always known but right now, I was realising that my subjective view was skewed. Now, that I was examining my actions, I realised that my normal guidelines were the laws of the state I was living in. While I was aware that laws were not automatically moral, it was the best I could do. But once I had arrived in Mundus, obviously I had discarded them; it was a game-world after all, a world largely without rules, something the developers had made quite clear: there was only the local law that protected you, and a few safeguards to keep the human from essential harm, in mind and in body. With me starting in the wilderness, I had subconsciously chucked all rules and morality out of the window, never even thinking about them, making me in essence just as much of a monster as I considered Jongarn to be.

Some said that the first step of alleviating a problem was to accept that there was one. Intellectually, I did know that I did not want to be like Jongarn. The problem was that I was lacking the moral compass to fix that. For now, I would use Sigmir and Adra as moral guidelines, two natives of this world, to shape my decisions and actions - like that, I should be able to steer clear of such behaviour.

For now, I wanted to help Rai, he had protected Sigmir in his own way, by keeping silent despite the torture. Even if an inner voice told me that it would be best if he tragically died, making sure that he could not tell anyone who killed Jongarn, allowing others to make the intuitive leap that we might be responsible for the death of his father and the Jonari shaman, I would not give in. I would not be the monster that killed someone who protected my Sigmir, just because of something he might do in the future. It would be the first test for my newfound conviction to act morally, not just going the path of efficiency.

In the cave, Rai was still where I had left him, not that he could have gone far with his hands and feet bound. When I moved closer to cut his bindings, his eyes suddenly got huge and I realised that, while I had made sure to get rid of the blood on my shuttles, the blade in my hand was still stained with Jongarn’s blood, giving it a menacing quality. I had a feeling that if I started to smile, he might just faint dead away, after all he had seen me cut Jongarn’s throat with a smile on my face.

“Just cutting the ropes, don’t worry.” I told him, as I moved behind him so I could cut his arms free. When his arms were free, I moved to his legs, cutting them free as well, but stopping him from getting up before I could take care of his wounds.

“Wh… Thank you.” He started to say something else, but suddenly caught himself and looked me straight in the eyes, while thanking me. While it had not been the first time he had talked directly to me, it was the first time that he thanked me.

You could have knocked me over with a feather. Maybe, just maybe, something truly good would come from having saved him.