War Aeternus 3: The Culling

by Charles Dean

  Are you doing this specifically to torture me with your poor choices? I’ve heard that humans are illogical, and they allow some mystical set of feelings they call their ‘gut’ to make most of their decisions, but could you please try to be above such basic and mundane biological programming and listen to your betters?

  I’m really sorry, Lee apologized. You just have to bear with me and just do this one last defense project. After this one, I promise I won’t do another one . . . for a bit.

  Is this bit a period shorter than a week? If I complete this project, are you going to begin a moat next?

  Lee hadn’t even considered a moat before, but the moment the system mentioned it, he couldn’t help but think about it. Yeah, a fortified wall, some fancy ballistae and a moat . . . That would be perfect, he thought as he imagined everything. Satterfield would be my own little defensible paradise.

  One week. Go at least one week before you consider that. You’re causing my programming to try and make itself redundant.

  “Fine. A week will make you happy?” Lee scrolled through the menu one more time, seeing all the upgrades he could potentially do for the town’s defenses after a week, upgrades he fully intended to suggest just to tease the system even if he didn’t think the town needed any further protection for a while.

  I wouldn’t say ‘happy.’ The project has been started. 330 gold has been subtracted from your inventory, and your leading delegate in Satterfield, Henslee, has been notified about the impending construction to prevent confusion. 60% of your mana and mana regeneration have also been sequestered. The project will be completed within 24 hours. At that point in time, you may then choose to upgrade the polybolos to polybolos with extended magazines.

  Once he was done with that, Lee noticed that there was an old-looking Dwarven man watching him work from outside of his room. “You can come in. I’m not making any state secrets here,” Lee said, using the golem he had posted by the door to make sure that no more guests would pop up without him finding out.

  “That’s good craftsmanship there for a Human,” the Dwarf said as he watched Lee whittle away at a piece of wood. “Almost impressive by Dwarf standards even.”

  Lee, who was still working on the gears and other pieces for the magical jukebox, didn’t know what to say to that. “Can you even tell what I’m making?” he asked, not sure if the Dwarf was giving him an honest opinion or just coming in to brag about how much better Dwarves were at crafting.

  The Dwarf looked over at the page Lee was on in the Book of Augustus and then nodded. “Giant music box, right?” the Dwarf said. “You’re making a device to feed sheets in and have it play a tune for you. The lazy musician’s best friend?”

  “Yeah . . .” Lee looked at the page, trying to figure out how the man was able to both recognize it and describe it so well from the very limited information that this particular page of Augustus’s book gave away. “That’s right. Have you made one before?”

  “One of those?” The Dwarf shrugged and stroked his beard. “No, not one of those. But I designed most of the stuff around this town, so I’ve made plenty of things before that were similar enough. If it wasn’t for the . . . the incident, I’d still be working on my latest invention as we speak.”

  “What was it supposed to do?”

  “Harvest! We’ve been adding grain fields near the base of our settlement, but the old men are complaining that the scythes are a pain to use,” the Dwarf grumbled. “I’ve been working on an automated fix, something that would let them get around having to bend over all the time when harvesting, the lazy bastards. But it also means we’ll be able to expand our harvest by the wagonload. The machine works a lot better than any of those leeches and only takes me a horse.”

  “You mean you have a mechanical reaper?” Lee asked with wide-eyed excitement, hoping the system would translate the words over so that it made sense to the Dwarf.

  The Dwarf tilted his head to the side and then nodded. “I suppose you could call it that. Yeah, I got one of those.” The Dwarf grinned broadly as he pulled on his beard with one hand. “You wanna check it out? The others don’t understand it. They think I’m just wasting time.”

  “Wasting time? If it is what I think it is, you’ll be giving the farmers freer time than they’d know what to do with!” Lee exclaimed, jumping up from his seat and storing his stuff back into his inventory. He was nearly done with the box, so he figured that he could get away with taking a day off and working on it again later.

  “That’s what I said! Like every good Dwarf knows, enough is never enough! Be it how much we drink, how much we eat or how many women we try to bed”--he paused, his eyes immediately moving to the door across the hall from Lee’s where Brigid was before giving Lee a wink--“or the state of our lives. We have to do better every day; we have to invent more every day. How can they be happy with that dumb cradle scythe they came up with a few years back?”

  “Cradle scythe? You’re going from a cradle scythe to an automated reaper? That’s astounding!” Lee couldn’t help but be impressed as he thought about what a large leap in technology that was and exactly how important it would be. Most people never thought about it, but the only reason most countries could thrive technologically, artistically and otherwise was because agricultural innovations had allowed society to go from farming a few acres per person to hundreds--even thousands. This meant that no one needed to stay on the farm just to keep the nation’s food supply steady, and they could instead pursue their dreams in the city. Indirectly, people like Cyrus McCormick, who revolutionized the farming industry on Earth, could be said to also be responsible for a myriad of other inventions that might not have happened if people hadn’t had the free time mechanized farming had afforded them.

  “If you’re going to sit there slack-jawed and doubt me until you see it, then let’s get moving already,” the Dwarf said, happily grabbing Lee’s hand and pulling him.

  Not usually one to shy away from someone just because of handholding, Lee was still too uncomfortable to go with the flow, and he pulled his hand free quickly. “What are you--?” The Dwarf turned to Lee, then he seemed to understand. “Oh, yeah, I forget you surface dwellers are touchy about your personal space and that males don’t hold hands. Well, no time for that now.” The dwarf shook it off, as if insulted, and marched forward. “I got tons of inventions to show you!”

  Why does it feel like I’ve been invited to the biggest dork’s sleepover? Lee laughed to himself but followed after the Dwarf, catching up and walking side by side with him a moment later. The Dwarf rambled away about the things he wanted to make, and Lee just mentally took notes, thinking about how he could potentially use this type of man in Satterfield later. He saw this type of innovative geek as the perfect addition to a town he inevitably wanted to modernize.

  Rather than going straight to a workshop inside one of the dwellings as Lee had expected, they instead exited the settlement altogether. They were just starting to travel downhill when Ethan’s ears perked up, and the little rodent focused in on an interesting noise. Lee immediately grabbed the Dwarf and yanked the short man behind him, throwing his shield up and then pulling out his sword.

  What is it? Lee asked, but by the time Ethan had moved to investigate the sound, whatever had made it was already gone.

  “Is something wrong? Is something out there?” the man asked, suddenly looking and sounding nervous. “Oh, god, it’s them again, isn’t it?”

  “Go back now, shut your door, and don’t open it again until morning,” Lee warned. “Don’t let anyone open it.”

  The man didn’t need to be told twice. He darted back to the town, yelling a ‘thank you’ as he faded into the distance.

  “It’s just us now,” Lee called out into the dark, not sure who or what was out there. The fact that they hadn’t attacked yet was a good sign, but it didn’t mean that he was safe yet. “You don’t have to hide.”

  “It always has been,” a deep, dulcet voice echoed from th
e woods off to Lee’s right. “It always will be.”

  “Meadhbh.” Lee had to stop himself showing fear when he realized who it was. Her purring feminine voice sent chills down his spine as he turned to behold her figure when she finally showed herself. “I thought you were waiting for me to come to you.” He wasn’t sure how much better at anything he could have been given another day or two, but he had still wanted that chance. He always felt unprepared when a serious fight started.

  “I was,” she began as she stepped out of the woods. I was waiting.” Finally seeing her actual form, Lee began to understand exactly how full of himself he was to think that he could defeat this woman on his own. A massive, black tiger with white stripes stalked out of the woods and stopped in front of him. He wasn’t sure how big tigers normally were--he hadn’t ever even seen one in a zoo, mostly due to being too busy with video games actually go to a zoo--but this one looked enormous, nearly fifty-percent larger than the biggest one he had seen on TV. And, even despite its great size, its didn’t make a single sound as it sauntered from the tree line. “But I grew lonely, waiting for my prince atop the mountain all by myself.”

  “They say good things are worth waiting for,” Lee answered back, taking a deep breath to steady himself and help keep his emotions in check. He had charged headlong into battle with giant bear-like creatures, but this Phouka felt so much more vicious, powerful and frightening.

  “Are you a good thing?” she asked, her head moving as she examined him. “Given what we must do, can either of us be good?”

  “We can,” he answered. “We can do the necessary thing and be good at the same time.” He chose his words carefully and hoped that they reached her. It wasn’t that he was scared of a fight. This confrontation was likely inevitable, and he suspected that it had been from the moment he read her first letter, but he still wanted to at least try to save her from the destructive path she had chosen as a result of her anguish. Even if he lost this fight, he still wanted to save her soul. Even if the attempt was in vain, he still had to do it for himself, so that he could rest easy, knowing he had tried.

  Lee knew Meadhbh loathed and tortured herself because of the role she played day after day. Yet he knew that she hurt those she wanted to help. Even if Lee didn’t want to admit it, it was like a dim reflection of his own venture into this world. More and more, his own actions brought death and tragedy into the lives of the people he tried to care for. He had chosen to make sacrifices for his cause as well--he had looked into the eyes of men and women he had led to their deaths--and he knew just how deeply Meadhbh was wounded. They both bore the same grave injury, a wound that cut through them in a way that ached every minute of every day.

  “The necessary thing? Mmm. It’s so hard. You know, everyone thinks that this shape is my power,” she said, her giant feline maw pulling into a fierce, sharp-toothed smile. “But it is just another blessing of the Phouka. It’s nothing more or less than what any Phouka is granted.”

  “Yours . . . does seem to be greater than theirs,” Lee interrupted, noting her striking physical advantage over the other Phoukas.

  “Ah.” She nodded once and then jumped across the field and back to the woods, where she sat beside a tree for a moment. She then shifted, showing Lee her true form. “I seem to have the most because I have the least,” she said. This time, her voice was so frail that Lee couldn’t have heard it if not for the help of his golems. “See now the curse that we must stop? The future suffering that awaits so many if we do nothing?” she repeated, her fragile throat barely producing sound.

  “Your condition may be a curse”--Lee’s face sunk with pity at the sight of the helpless Herald before him--“but you’re not. Your will, your strength and your determination--those are things that no one else I’ve met has.” Lee slowly took a step toward her, and he was able to see her better through the darkness. She was indeed cursed by genetics. She was small, barely the size of a twelve-year-old. Her limp arms and legs were atrophied as if they had never been used, the bones in her ribcage stood out, and her cheeks were gaunt and sunken. Her condition was horrible, and it was painful to watch as she struggled to simply breathe. So, that’s how the system works. The reason the others could only shift into wolves while the blind children could shift into ursine monstrosities was because the kids had more physically wrong with them, and the adults who shifted into wolves were, for the most part, in decent shape and able-bodied, even if a bit emaciated and frail.

  “Ha.” She shook her head. “That’s what my mother said too. Maybe she was right. Without me, without this blessing, how many more like me would be sent into a world cursed, and how much worse would our suffering be tomorrow? I can already see the workings of my changes. I can see through fate and know that I have done well.” Meadhbh gasped out the words between long sessions of struggling for air.

  “Your Heraldic power, it’s to see the future? You can see what is to come?” Lee had heard her goddess’s title only once, the Goddess of Changing Fates, but it started to make sense. If she saw a future where thousands, if not millions, were born in a worse condition than she was, he could see exactly how it would inspire her.

  “Yes, that and binding. I can bind men to fate and to each other. I’ve been trying to find you so that we may bind. So that we may share, and together, fix this broken world.” Then, suddenly, she changed back into her massive feline form. While Lee was uncomfortable around the hulking beast, and the thing could easily kill him at any moment, it was still easier to look at than the girl, limply propped up against a tree in pain.

  “Binding? What do you mean?” Lee asked, taking another step forward even as the hairs on the back of his neck stood up.

  “We can bind our fates together and share each other’s powers,” she explained. “The strength of my form, the power of your healing--we will be unstoppable.”

  Holy crap, if I could turn into that giant thing and still heal myself . . . we really would be unstoppable. Lee actually considered it for a moment, before discarding the idea. Nope, nope, nope, nope. She might be someone I’m trying to help, but she’s still crazy, and that road is still not worth it yet.

  “I can help you. I will help you,” Lee said, “but you can’t go about changing the world this way. You don’t have to kill people to stop this from happening. There are other ways to do it.”

  “They won’t work. I’ve tried. I’ve tried a hundred different ways to improve the inevitable fate of the creatures on this wretched world, but it all ends the same. It always does.” The tiger sighed as she prowled closer to Lee. “There is only one solution, so why are you faltering now?”

  “I’m not faltering,” Lee asserted. “I can clearly see what this path has done to you, and I want to help you too. You can’t do this anymore. You need to take a step back and let me pick up your mantle. I’ll fix this problem. I’ll fix this world,” Lee promised, and his words sounded just like a politician on the stump. He didn’t know how or what he would do to stop the forthcoming doom that she predicted, to stop people from being born into such horrible conditions, but he did know that he couldn’t just stand by while men and women were led to their deaths by Meadhbh’s twisted solution. And he knew that he couldn’t stand by and let her be the one to lead them.

  “Talking is your solution? No, no more talking. I’ve seen how that turns out. You’re growing weak. You’re faltering!” She jumped over to Lee, her large tiger face studying him from such a close distance that Lee could feel her breath. “I see indeed. It’s because of them, isn’t it? Those people back at that town you love, those broken drunks you’ve picked up. You’ve grown a soft spot for them. I see. That’s good to know. That’s a fixable problem. Unlike many problems, it can be taken care of quickly. They are your sickness, your disease, and their rot can easily be purged. She backed away a few steps toward the wood. “I will do this for you since you cannot. This will be yet another gift I give you.”

  What? “No! You can’t do that!” Lee shoute
d at her. “You must not do that!”

  “You don’t understand how weak they’ve made you, how they attenuate your resolve,” she said. “Just let me take care of this. I will be back soon.”

  “Stop! My decisions are not their fault! You can’t kill them!” Lee again pleaded as he readied his blade. He knew this was going to end exactly how he had thought it would in the beginning, just with a bigger prize at stake: the safety of Satterfield and the lives of every single person there.

  “I can’t? You’re mistaken. The weak can always be killed by the strong. It’s exactly what I will do when I reach that town, and you will be able to do nothing to stop me.” She stalked back toward Lee as if she were making an obvious point even more glaring. “You have let the sickness of mercy, of wretched pity, sink into you for too long, and so I must purge it.”

  Lee resolved himself to the fight and gripped his shield tightly. “You’re right. We’ve talked enough. If you think might makes right, and that is the only argument you’ll listen to, then I have a sword and a shield right here to debate you with.”

  Meadhbh smiled at his words. “Though we are joined in cause, this was indeed bound to happen eventually, wasn’t it? There can only be one queen in the jungle, one ruler on the throne. Fine, if you wish to establish who is the better here, then I will debate you before I go kill those parasites leeching off your kindness before I slaughter the weaklings who should have died to the first Herald long ago anyway.”