Throughout the flight, Ehtra was too distant to spark up another conversation. He tried once to force the issue, but a wall of grey feathers between them made it clear that she preferred to dwell on her thoughts for a little bit. It wasn’t until after they had landed and driven to the edge of the area that she spoke up again.
“Technology has advanced to a marvellous degree,” she stated. “I am beginning to understand why people can be so lenient these days. The world got a lot smaller.”
“There is an argunt to be made that technology advanced rapidly because people beca more lenient and cooperative,” the Gar told her. “I’m not sure if that’s entirely true. I’m sure it’s not entirely false either, though. Morality is its own technology.”
Ehtra just nodded and watched the car disappear over the curve of the hilly landscape. Then, they both turned to the path ahead.
On the mundane side, they were looking at a sheer mountainside, separated from the road by about a hundred tres of sunburned grass and gravel. The air was different to what John was used to. Altitude, humidity, and other factors made it taste crisper, despite the temperature difference being relatively low. They were just past the border to the Swiss side of the Alps.
“That’s what we’re looking for,” John said and pointed at a singular boulder, jutting upright out of a field of smaller rocks. It was doubly notable for its beige colours, when the stone around it was of a greyish white. That was the marking spot he had been told to enter the Illusion Barrier at. “Huh, it’s been placed by mundane Romans…”
Ehtra glanced his way and rolled her shoulders. She seed weirded out at the loss of the wings she had only had for three days. Then again, after three days she would have gotten properly used to them. “How do you know?” the grey angel asked, the maid outfit fluttering in the wind. If soone saw her in the outfit, that raised eyebrows. Raised eyebrows did not incur the wrath of Gaia. “Did they tell you?”
“No, they just told I would find it there. I learned that via Observe,” he explained to her.
Ehtra accepted that explanation with a sharp nod. The two of them marched at a quick pace. John could not help but be enticed by the way she marched. The width of her hips put a natural swing to the efficient motions. It was a wonderful sh of Lydia’s habits and Aclysia’s downstairs roundness. The interplay did have its effects on John.
The First of Hatred clicked her tongue. “Always staring.”
“I am a man,” John stated plainly. “And I don’t think you dislike it as much as you make it sound.”
Ehtra neither confird nor denied. “At least broad hips are useful,” she stated. “Lower centre of gravity. Makes it easier to keep my balance.” She glared at the brown cleavage. “These things just keep sloshing around.”
John’s own eyes had wandered to another part of her. The two short braids dangled besides the parts of her wild mane that were not contained in a braid. Ehtra’s hair was very particular, the main expanse only braided from the upper back downwards. Visually, it conveyed both the practicality of a warrior and the femininity of a long-haired woman. Realistically, if she had needed to prepare those braids herself by hand every morning, John wouldn’t have believed that it was practical in any way.
It fit her, though.
“Can I ask a personal question?” John cautiously ventured.
Ehtra gave that an amused, annoyed grunt. “That’s a change. You asking whether I am comfortable with things first.” The boulder was less than twenty tres away now. “Ask.”
“Do you feel inferior to tra?”
“I am inferior to tra.” The answer was instantaneous. “She is First and only of Wrath, Breaker of Armies, lover of Sargon. She is… was High Priestess of Tiamat. I’m First of Hatred, one of three. I’m Lady Vengeance. Nothing more, nothing less.” Rocks ground under her feet when she stopped and directed her gaze at his eyes. “tra must have told you what those that ca after her, us siblings, are like.”
“I’ve heard her perspective. I’d like yours.”
“I don’t like my thoughts on this matter.” Ehtra paused, then added, “And I don’t understand your motives for asking either. Is this your attempt to rope into your harem? You can just say if that is what you desire. I am your servant, for the duration of the contract.”
“Do you think that tra stays with because we have a contract?”
“…No.”
“Then understand that I don’t want you to be part of my harem because I desire you. I would want you to join my harem because we desire it.” Ehtra tilted her head at those words, mouthed them back to herself. “You’re finding a lie in my words?”
“Yes, but it is too small to be about the heart of it… explain.”
“I promised Momo I wouldn’t make a move on you for at least five days, three days ago… so that’s probably what’s setting that off.” ‘Really interesting, the way her powers work… I guess the definition of ‘traitor’ is a lot broader than I thought. Or did it get expanded because I dragged her Stats so far up?’
Ehtra kept on staring down the slope of the Alps. John was starting to get a feeling that she liked high places. A thing to make note of. “But you would add to your harem, if we desired it?”
John let out a long sigh. “Yes, that is sort of a given. The question of whether I would desire it, whether you would desire it, whether my current harem would desire it, all of those are too complicated to answer right now. I’m not in a place where I should add more won to my life, not intimately anyway. You’re not in a place where you should consider what to do with the desires you’ve been hauling around for thousands of years.”
The First of Hatred pulled her shoulders back slightly. That was the entirety of her reaction. She knew how his powers worked, in the broad strokes, which included his ability to see Stats and summaries of emotions. The revelation that he was aware that she wasn’t as asexual as tra had believed did not co as a surprise to Ehtra, it seed.
Scowling, she said, “We will not continue that topic today.”
“That’s your right. Would you be willing to keep talking about your siblings?”
“As long as we keep moving,” she demanded.
A raised hand later, the two of them entered a changed landscape. Much of the sloped mountain remained the sa, but where the sheer rock had been, a large arc gave way into the stone. Further away, atop the raised plateau, but tall enough to be seen anyway, stood a magnificent tower of greyish white.
Ehtra’s wings manifested with the sound of flapping doves. An innocent sound, considering what those feathers were capable of. “Should I just carry you up there?”
John humd, then shook his head. “Let’s do it the normal way.” They resud their walk and Ehtra the conversation.
“Being a tracana is to be in tra’s shadow,” Ehtra stated, her tone not any more aggressive than usual. “This is fact. Among us, only the First of Patience can claim to be remotely equal. To be even tra was always to be in the shadow of the gods as well. We acted as the ambassadors and extensions of the Akkadian pantheon, of Tiamat, Abzu, and their children. We were unified in service to the realms of sopotamia, as they transford and then… Babel happened.”
They stepped into the mountain and darkness enveloped them. Candles flickered in deliberately carved depressions, limiting the reach of their light to small cones that hinted at the shape of a corridor. The effect was sowhat lost on John, who could see even in absolute darkness.
“Chaos is the order of the world,” Ehtra stated, words bouncing off the walls. “This is fact. All exists in entropy. To maximize entropy, systems of order are created. Each system of order within entropy is proof of the chaos. If all was in a constant state of flux, then all would be the sa, thus diminishing the disorder.”
“In a large enough system, pockets of order add to the overall chaos,” John summarized, to let her know he understood.
“And all such pockets eventually collapse back into the surrounding chaos. I thought Mother Chaos was like that. I thought her embodint dissolved back into Faith, one will broken to re-erge one day as a new order. I thought Akkad was like that. I thought that…!” Her rising voice collapsed to words angrily pressed past clenched teeth. “I thought that we were spared for a reason.”
Click-clack, their steps echoed on the naked stone as they walked. The burden of Ehtra’s past weighed heavily on his mind. He could only begin to understand what that day must have been like for the First of Hatred. tra had described it in detail. She had seen it as a sowhat hopeful day, ultimately. Ehtra did not share that.
“The civilization I served, that I helped build, that I helped pull back from the brink of decadence several tis, that I saw fall over it, and then rise again – eliminated in one day. That too is chaos. I understand that. I can live with that. I thought I could live with that. There was always hope, in the king candidate – in tra.”
Ehtra suddenly grabbed John by the collar.
“That’s what it ant to to be tracana,” she hissed, her green eyes glowing with such intensity they bordered on white. “I was proof of past greatness. I was a survivor of a civilization ready to be revived by ambition. I served in the shadow of kings, for the purpose of finding soone that the First of Wrath would lead to Sargon’s grave. I believed in chaos.” Air howled between her teeth as she inhaled. “I want her dead, John,” the deepest hatred anyone could feel filled the woman’s voice to the brink. “I want Mother Chaos dead. I want her Faith scattered in the Sands of Ti, to have each shard of her soul endlessly relive the mont I plunge my blade into her rotten heart. I want her to collapse in on herself like a dying sun. She is alive! She is alive and has no interest in Akkad! She betrayed the realm, her children, and her purpose! She betrayed !”
Suddenly, Ehtra shoved John back and began walking again. The Gar hastily caught up to her. He wasn’t a fan of being handled like this, but he would take it to let the First of Hatred vent. She needed it more than he needed to be respected right now.
“I’m Lady Vengeance. The tracana don’t matter anymore. We all failed our purpose anyway. The mont we began squabbling, the last of Akkad returned to entropy. Everything since has been theatre. To make matters worse, tra has chosen you. A choosing you refuse.” She gave him a derisive glare. “President.” Every syllable of the word dripped with contempt. Her white-green eyes snapped away from him and back to the path ahead. “I respect tra for her adherence to Sargon’s last wish,” she muttered, “but I cannot do it. I barely knew the man. He was a hand in my creation to , nothing more. I did it all for Mother Chaos… she forsook Akkad… I’ll guide her to the afterlife… if it is the last thing I do. I…”
Ehtra forcefully closed her eyes and turned her head to the side. For a few seconds, the only sound was the echo of her agitated breathing. Slowly, the sound settled. When she opened her eyes again, they were back to their regular green.
“…I’m sorry for that,” she said. Her voice was on the deeper side, and yet, when she used a soft tone, John was struck by how beautiful it was.
“Don’t apologize. Not for that,” John said.
Ehtra’s eyes flared up again in colour for a second. “I hate your patience, contradictory creature.” She did not let him get in a response for that. “I respect my siblings. They are all I have left of a ti when things made sense. I hate my siblings. They bickered amongst themselves rather than rebuild with what we had left. We scattered, united in purpose, and t again as enemies. Those are my thoughts on the matter.”
John took the clunky list of statents for what it was: a swift and controlled answer to the initial question. It matched much of what the ranting confession had revealed, but it was more of a calm paint job on top of her actual, much more complicated feelings on the matter.
The sum and substance of it all was that the reading of his harem seed to have been correct. Ehtra was confused about what to do with herself. Kill Tiamat, that was her goal, but it was one so lofty and so difficult to work towards, that it left her with nothing to focus her mind on otherwise. What purpose did she have, when the goddess of her worldview had betrayed her and the last tradition of her exterminated civilization was in deadlock?
John did not have an answer for her. If there was a weakness in the modern, individualistic worldview that John subscribed to, then it was certainly that it did not provide an easy answer to the yearning for purpose. The Gar had his goals, of course, but those were his personal goals. They couldn’t just be mapped onto her.
The primary worldview John believed in may not have been able to provide easy answers, but he was neither an embodint of that worldview alone nor had he ever been a fan of easy answers.
“I think the tracana still matter,” he said, ignoring the contempt he received when he started talking. “tra still cares for you. Your other siblings I t still care for each other, despite your differences.”
“Why does that matter?” Ehtra waved off.
“It matters because it ans you still have a family, if nothing else,” John told her. The First of Hatred rolled her eyes. “Just one more thing, before I let you think on this topic: Tiamat has betrayed you and Akkad may be gone, but I could use your help to make Fusion the best it can be.”
“Is that an order?” The First of Hatred sounded almost hopeful.
John had to hesitate for a mont, pulled between giving her the easy way out and insisting on his principles. Finally, he sighed. “You know the answer to that, Ehtra.”
“…I’ll think on it.”
That was the best he could have asked for.
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