17 The world around us - mercy

After we left behind the despondent elves in their crude camp, I breathed a sigh of relief. The streets we walked through were devoid of graphic representations of different stages of frostbite and unattended corpses. However, thin black columns of smoke visible in nearly every direction suggested that I owed Crea for picking a route that was easy on my mind.

Two attendants of Crea were maintaining a single step of distance behind the goddess. Inside their emerald eyes, I saw something akin to a reverence towards her. They also gave us simple fur cloaks, similar to the one the goddess wore herself, though ours were white while hers was dyed black.

That pair of common elves was clearly in much better shape than the horde from before. Each wore studded leather armor, had a composite bow together with a quiver full of arrows on the back, and a sheathed rapier attached to a belt. Their dark green hair was well cared for, plaited in a long simple braid. Their healthy, light brown skin tone made me a little jealous. I had nothing against our ghastly pale one as it made Eri look almost ethereal, but I was worried that a little sun would be enough to give us severe sunburns.

When they noticed that I was staring at them, they responded to my open curiosity with their own, no longer trying to hide their confused glances in our direction. They seemed to be no less unsure of my gender as I was of theirs, though due to entirely different reasons. From my perspective, only after taking a double look at their short ears and confirming the lack of fairy scales, I deduced that those two could be referred to as pretty young men. I also saw them trying to take a peek at Eri's twin tails, but those were currently hidden beneath her white cloak.

The problem with elven gender recognition was no joke. Wouldn't be strange if a lot of the depressed elves I took for women and girls were, in fact, men and boys. At that time, confirming their gender wasn't something I actively thought about. On top of that they all looked young... actually, I had yet to find an elf who looked older than thirty. Crea was close, but that was it. The rest was somewhere between sixteen and twenty-five. My sister was the exception that looked to be thirteen at most.

Of course, that was only in terms of the appearance alone. I had to remind myself of Crea's words about the time it took for an elf to grow up. If a common one took three times longer than a human to reach maturity, and if I accepted the age of sixteen to be that point, then all of the ones I saw were at least above forty-eight years old. Taking this into consideration, I made a theory that the aging process of an elven body considerably slowed down after reaching the optimal youthful look.

Who knew how old was the girl whose dead green eyes were burned into my mind?

... It wasn't the best consolation.

Sticking close to shadows, we traversed the ruined city. Only one in ten buildings had managed to avoid collapsing under its own weight. Out of curiosity, and to chase away the pair of dead green eyes, I picked up a piece of rubble that probably used to be a part of a wall.

Polished petrified wood. That was the best term I found to describe it. But since half of it was no different from charcoal, and the wood petrification process I knew was entirely unlikely to be the cause here, I gave up on trying to understand the way those house-trees worked in.

My logic needed an upgrade to a locally supported version - which was something I was working on in the background from the time we left the crude camp. It might have seemed that the sound of snow crunching under our shoes was the only noise we made, but in reality, Crea's private telepathic network was full of inner voices.

'Why not kill them all now? Ain't worth to waste food on those broken things for weeks only so they could gather enough courage to kill themselves. Burning the wound with fire hurts, but it's better than leaving it to fester. And no sane elf would ever willingly go back to a slave's life.' Sent my sister coldly, refusing to accept Crea's explanation concerning the reason behind the mass suicides. I had to hold Eri's hand in an iron grip. Otherwise, she could do something really stupid.

Like going back to start a killing spree among the half-dead elves kind of stupid. She already demanded a bunch of life stones from Crea to capture the life energy of her victims, while in exchange giving them swift death she deemed as mercy.

'Then tell me this, are you willing to do such menial tasks as empty latrines? Plow the fields? Wash someone's dirty underwear? Cook for someone? Clear someone's house? And not once or twice, but day after day for many years to come. Even if they're broken, we need them, there are no slaves from other races left at our disposal. And most of us still can't understand that it's high time to do some heavy lifting with own two hands.' Responded Crea and began to calmly explain this matter once more, this time with even more details. It sounded almost as if she was reading from a script. She prepared herself well and had taken our lack of knowledge into consideration.

Just like before, her opening sentence was: 'Don't worry, this place is safe, you can take your time and learn everything slowly.' Which was a good thing since I still had a mountain of things to catch up, starting from learning the language and discovering how the heck everyone knew what time it was.

The Shelter - that was the new name given to this ruin of a city. Apparently, most of its population could be found underground, and every single one of the huge boulders scattered around the city marked an entrance to a district beneath. Each of those districts had a separate role to fulfill, like food production, military training, living quarters and so on. Albeit the one we came from was different. It was the smallest one and played the role of Crea's personal space closed to the public.

As for the elves camping on the city's surface, they were split into three groups. New refugees that only recently came to this place and were waiting for further instructions. Old refugees that for one reason or another couldn't come to terms with reality and refused to help with the rebuilding process. And the ones we saw, former slaves that were freed during one of the raids. The choice Crea gave to that last group was 'kill yourselves or be my slaves'.

'If killing a master grants freedom to all slaves that were bound to him, then why do you refuse to accept those guys unless they become your own slaves? Aren't they no different from normal elves now?' I sent, and in return both the goddess and my sister sighed heavily as if they were dealing with a small kid that didn't know anything about the world.

Of course, I had some speculations but decided against relying on my incompatible common sense.

'Not even close.' Started Crea. 'The invisible stigma remains, and most elves would never treat them as equals. Take a look at your sister, she already decided that killing is justified.'

'Because it is. And killing someone out of mercy is a good chance for my brother to break through the barrier preventing from taking lives.'

Eri's interjection brought to the table the subject I was trying to avoid. I knew that my little sister was no stranger to killing, it was one of the reasons why she yearned for someone to hold her hand while falling asleep. Not to mention that being able to take someone's life was a good thing in a brutal world where strong prayed on weak. But the possibility of having to watch her murder defenseless civilians twisted my stomach. Especially since she wanted me to participate in this.

'E-, Sister, spare your brother. Let's hunt monsters or something first, alright?'

The silver girl clicked her tongue in response, while Crea simply ignored this exchange and continued:

'Even if I wanted to accept them, that would only lead to a wave of unrest and complains, probably quickly escalating into violence. A poor choice when it's hard for me to keep everything from falling apart. But the main reason is different. I only said that they were to choose between those two options, but that was it. Not even one guard is watching them, they are free to do whatever they want. And did they start to think for themselves and look for other solution? Did they show even a glimpse of willpower? You saw it yourself. They're trapped in slave's mentality, unable to do anything without clear instructions, yet the free will they were finally given back is preventing them from choosing one of the two presented options. Add to it some stupid remains of elvish pride, and you've got a bunch of elves that don't listen to anything you say. But not all of them are like that. There are some that with time can finally decide on one or the other, like the ones who talked to me today about becoming my slaves, or the girl who took her life. But I have yet to see even one who would realize that there are other options to choose from.' Crea's inner voice lost the superficial feeling, and some of her real emotions got mixed within. Especially the part about not willing to listen, which made me swallow my idea about talking to them.

'Sure they may need some time to adjust, but the way it's now you're wasting valuable human resources. Without any help, and unable to decide on their fate, those guys are dying in vain. And you've mentioned something about the demographic crisis. At this point, even my sister's proposal to gather their life energy and spare them the suffering is better than leaving them to slowly freeze.' I didn't believe my own message, but the sound of the snapping spine would be louder if I remained silent.

Crea chuckled loudly, startling her two attendants. 'You mean 'elven resources'. And I'm giving them time to adjust. That's the whole point of visiting every day to check if they're willing to listen. I'm not going to use force to enslave the members of our own race, neither can I accept them without agreeing to my conditions.'

'At least get rid of the hopeless cases.' Eri pushed with her idea. Even if she couldn't have seen their severe injuries and limbs blackened from cold, it wasn't hard to figure out the state they were in from the stench and groans alone.

Upon receiving this message Crea's brisk pace slowed down for a second, but she only shook her head slightly and continued to lead us through a narrow empty street.

'Try to imagine this.' Crea sent to us. 'A girl that was enslaved at the age of... let's say sixty years. A very young beautiful common elven girl. Then such girl was bought by a wealthy human nobleman, who for the next forty years was using her as an outlet for all his sexual deviancies. Then the wealthy human passed the girl like a luxurious sex doll to his son, who in turn kept using her for the next sixty years. Then the son passed 'it' to his son, and the situation repeated. At the time of regaining freedom, this poor broken thing is close to two hundred and fifty years old. In theory, there's still about one hundred and fifty years of life in front of 'it'. How many of them are you willing to spent on 'helping her to adjust'? Think you can manage to achieve that before 'it' runs out of lifespan?'

Crea didn't include any explicit details or graphic descriptions, she also tried to maintain a neutral tone, but the sheer amount of time… almost two centuries of being someone's plaything. The elven mind was by no means indestructible. Maybe if the situation was better, and there were resources to spare, then at least making sure that such a girl could live the rest of her time in peace would be viable. But from what I saw, it was hopeless. The people here had no means of caring for such a burden.

'Every elf except for me refused to even come close to her after learning that she was committing the 'taboo' for such a long period of time. No one cared that she was forced to it, in their eyes she was tainted beyond all means. I've killed that girl myself.' Sent Crea, and after a moment of walking in silence added. 'The ones for whom there was no hope left, I've granted mercy to them all.'

For a split second, there was an immeasurable amount of sorrow inside Crea's golden eyes. I felt a fraction of the weight she carried upon her shoulders and would stop walking if not for my sister who unsteadily pulled me forward. Neither of us wanted to continue this topic, and Crea closed it with her next statement.

'And that's exactly why the ones you saw are disgusting failures. After all, they still can tell what's going on around, can understand my words, and others won't vomit just from being in the same room as them. Right now I can't do much, but if they agree to be my slaves and work for the good of society, then I can provide them with a chance and some degree of protection. The elven life is a long one, who knows what's going to happen in the future. If they won't agree, then I refuse to stain my hands with coward's blood, and won't let anyone else do that. Let them rot in their own hesitation.'

Somewhere along the line, I stopped searching for lies in Crea's words. However, I wanted to believe that as long as she didn't start to obsess about one thing, trying to bring it to perfection, then she wouldn't be a bad employer.

Mostly because we had little to say in this matter.

After several more minutes of walking, we reached our destination.

I was expecting that Crea would take us to some other underground district, but our goal turned out to be a sizeable mansion placed next to one of the huge boulders. It seemed to be recently built from planks and blocks made out of petrified wood. The craftsmanship was crude and lacked any decorative elements, making it look entirely focused on usability. But the polished petrified wood gave that three-story building a certain charm to it. It also made me realize that instead of burning the rubble that was lying everywhere, recycling it into proper construction materials was a way better idea.

An idea that someone had already used.

Numerous groups of lively green-haired elves and even a few silver ones were busily moving between the door leading underground, the mansion, and the rest of the city.

'We almost arrived, I can answer one more of your questions, and then you will act accordingly to my schedule. No objections.' Sent Crea and gestured her attendants to go forward without us.

Since Eri was busy with testing if she could open her eyes even a little, I picked the question.

'Be honest, please. A leader of change, what does it exactly mean? Or simply say what are your main goals in doing all this?' I found the deepest shadow around and took Eri to it. Then cheered on her silently, watching as she struggled to open one eyelid, probably wanting a look at the lively commotion ahead.

The blonde beauty used that time to gather her thoughts, after which she smiled ominously.

'Three things. One, I want to use you. Use your knowledge. Use your ideas. Use your appearance. Use every fiber of your being in order to change the elven society. This place, The Shelter, it won't work. I can already see that. Everyone tries to live as they used to, completely ignoring the reality. Every day I have to stop myself from decapitating a group of pompous nobles that come to me to complain about the lack of hot water, about the lack of clean clothes, about the lack of slaves to clean their rooms, and tens of other pointless things. But The Shelter can still be used as a base to gather elves from all around, then you will be able to pick the ones that are capable of change and use them as seeds of a new order. The society based on slavery was our downfall once, I can't allow it to happen again... and I can't be a flagbearer of change myself, not when there are so many slaves under my command.'

It was funny how Eri pretended not to be affected by Crea's words while, this very morning, she had been complaining about the same things as those nobles.

'Two, I'm doing it due to personal reasons. Including me, there are only three golden elves alive I know about. Well, I'm certain that if you searched various kings and emperors' bedrooms, then more of us would be found. Some are probably kept in treasure rooms as we're worth more than our weight in gold, or were brainwashed to use as tactical weapons. I want to rebuild, gather power, and save my subrace from extinction. Oh, and take silly sweet revenge while at it. Especially on that fucking emperor who poured molten gold over my only friend and placed like a statue in front of his palace. I swore to blow up his entire capital city!'

The goddess's own words flipped some kind of a switch inside her. A whirl of red particles rapidly emerged from her fingertips, and the snow around began to melt. We took a few steps back and waited for her to calm down.

"Only three?" I whispered to Eri.

"There never were too many of them, but no less than several thousand. I never liked those yellow showoffs but seeing as a part of our race is about to disappear forever... I agree with some of her goals." Eri's tone was a conflicted one, she probably had troubles with imagining life without slaves to serve, yet using elven ones instead was hard to swallow for her as well.

As for me, those two reasons were interesting and acceptable. They didn't seem to be sugarcoated or false. And the most of all, our own long terms goals could be realized alongside them. The difficulty level was a bit high, but not unrealistic. A lot depended on the situation outside the city, but Crea did not give the impression of a type that would fail to take this into consideration. I only hoped that the term 'leader' didn't equal to 'a killing machine we unleash upon our enemies' because I was probably close to the bottom of the local power ranking.

When there was no more snow in a twenty-meter radius around the goddess, she cleared her throat and adjusted the black fur cloak. After making sure that the white smoke wasn't a sign of it catching fire, she started sending about her last objective.

'Three… hmm… no. You will need to prove that you're useful if you want to learn this one. And if you're not, then prepare yourself to be my puppets. Now, let's go inside, and we will begin your training. I also have some questions to ask. Would be great if you enlightened me as to why your eyes are perfectly fine while your sister's pleasantly suffering.' Sent Crea and took a longer look at each of us, after which she started to move toward the mansion's entrance.

"Tell her the truth?" I asked.

"No other way. She wasn't joking about making us her puppets, you better hope those red doors can be removed."

"Or maybe they're useful."

"More useful than using life energy? You like shaking that toy so much?"

"Well... everyone's staring at us." I changed the topic as the crowd around began to grow.

"Staring at your sexy ears and seductive fairy scales."

The smartass silver loli unbuttoned her cloak and coiled her tails around the waist. After which she shrugged her arms and pulled me to follow after Crea.

The entire surroundings' attention was on me, only a portion of it fell on Eri. It seemed that her scaly silver tails were mistaken for a fancy belt that had a beautiful black metallic luster to it. Moreover, some elves were even trying to start a conversation with us. In short, I finally got the reaction I wanted... and had mixed feelings about it.

Were they making fun of me? Praising me? How should I respond?

Both Eri and Crea refused to provide a translation. The former watched with satisfaction as her predictions about my uniqueness were right, and was probably enjoying the show. While the later was busy talking with fellow silver elves. However, I could feel as the hand of the foolish girl was trembling in mine, she forced herself to keep her eyes as open as possible.

I sent a small smile to everyone around and hurried up to take shelter inside the mansion.

Anyway, one thing at a time.

First, I had to ask Crea if she knew anything about red metallic doors appearing out of nowhere.