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AR Chapter 309
🕑 Added 2025-01-25 04:00:07 +0000 UTCAs it turned out, Joral merely wanted some measure of assistance with adjusting the resting places for the herds, and to ensure that they weren’t anywhere that I didn’t want them to be. Before long, I’d conferred with Sybil and determined that, in truth, I didn’t care about the urban planning of a city. I wanted to be involved with and remain the final voice for all broad decisionmaking regarding politics, foreign policy, warfare, and, to a lesser extent, hunting, social structuring, and lower level leadership. The minutiae of the details remained generally uninteresting to me, but I refused to have general decisions that impacted my people be made without my knowledge, if not input.
My conversation complete, I refocused on the Fourth of the Phrases. I’d thought I understood that so well when I’d spoken the words all those months ago, the desperation and selflessness that allowed and forced dozens and hundreds of my followers to offer their lives and their bodies for me and my survival. Was that not the epitome of sacrificing your life? Was there greater love than that of a brother sacrificing themself for those they loved?
That wasn’t the point of the Phrase, though. I realized before long that the Phrase wasn’t “through the tempering of the sacrifice of our lives are others complete” but “through the tempering of the sacrifice of our lives are we complete”. Sacrificing our own lives, my life, for completion. Others sacrificed themselves and I benefitted, but they weren’t complete anything except for completely dead, so far as I could tell. Whatever else the Phrase could mean bounced around my head and I walked through the city’s ruins, thinking as I watched my people and my new home.
Joral, as I’d recently spoken with him, was nearby and fussing over an oxfiend cow. So far as I could tell, the only real difference between the genders, other than genitals, was that the males’ heads were a bit larger. Joral had assured me that there was much more than that, but I found myself struggling to tell many mammals of the same species apart and not caring. The female was lowing, irritated and unhappy, but Joral ministered to her, showing special care to make a somewhat similar sound to hers while scratching tenderly at various parts of her face. Before long, she moaned loud and long, and a calf fell to the ground behind her.
I’d never paid much attention to the birth of other creatures, and the beginning of this oxfiend’s life took me by surprise. Joral patted the mother a couple more times, caring for her for another moment before turning to the calf. It lay there, mostly insensate and confused. With Joral’s help, the the calf stood on shaky legs and began to nurse on its mother. She turned her head and licked the child with obvious love as it desperately suckled.
That is sacrifice of life.
Nievtala’s voice filled my head, though I knew that her words were far from the entire implication of her Words. I walked forward without paying the newborn or Joral and his previously hidden Kha’Tal attendant any more attention. The other female cut the placenta free from the baby’s umbilical cord and quietly listened to the several other commands that Joral made. This time without Nievtala’s guidance, I supposed that would be an example of the sacrifice of one’s life making them complete as well. Basit’s words to me spoke of her willingness to sacrifice herself for the swarm. She didn’t want recognition, nor did the vast majority of her caste of the Kha’Tal.
My journey continued, walking to wherever struck my fancy, though I supposed that Nievtala guided my steps, whether subconsciously or otherwise. Keelish filled the city, though not nearly to capacity, and each stepped back away from my path as I stepped forward. Respect and near worship filled each of their eyes as they looked on their Swarm Alpha. I’d led them across hostile lands and found a place for us to claim as our own. So far as we knew, these were abandoned lands that we could mold however we wished, and even the simplest, most bone achingly stupid of my people understood that we’d come to be here solely because of me.
Whispers of “Nievtala’s Chosen” and “True Alpha” erupted wherever I passed and I welcomed them. More and more was my legacy cemented in their minds, and I welcomed it. I was, myself, sacrificing a portion of my life to be who I was, to guide who I did, to stand in my position of leadership and power. Yes, it was something that I enjoyed and desired to do, but it remained a sacrifice of time and self to do so.
Never before had I wanted or been forced to think so deeply about Nievtala’s Words of Power, and I feld my vision of the concept expand, though I realized only now how elementary my thought process was. If I wanted, I could say that anything was a sacrifice of life, but that obviously wasn’t what Nievtala or the System needed. Instead, it was something different, something more. My steps carried me throughout the city as I made mental progress towards enlightenment before then tearing it back down.
I visited each of my elites, speaking briefly with each as I considered how each sacrificed their lives and found some measure of wholeness or completion. Foire and his time with his daughter for the good of the swarm, Brutus and focusing entirely on me, Percral stepping out of leadership entirely to fight for our good, Sakkit showing humility and changing who he was, Yamal being willing to lead a new generation, and so many more. Though each made themselves complete through the sacrifice of some aspect of their lives, they remained an individual and hadn’t been made wholly complete.
With so much time contemplating the specifics of the Phrase, the word “complete” seemed to lose all meaning, becoming nothing more than an amalgamation of sounds that meant everything and nothing. Eventually, I found myself standing before the pit where the Shandise had previously lived. The stones had been pounded to dust and the dust made to mud under our counterattack on the ants. Some measure of movement could be seen in the abandoned hole, but whenever the tunnels showed any signs of reappearing, a Wave Wolfstag sent a stream of water in and as the tunnel collapsed under the weight and spray of water, the ants retreated.
Their selflessness and focus was simultaneously impressive and humorous. Didn’t they know that they were killing themselves effectively for nothing? They’d die, only to serve as our food or as a stumbling block for their fellows. Wouldn’t it serve them better to think of themselves?
The realization struck me as soon as I thought about the ants, and I laughed to myself. Surely my enlightenment about the Words of Power of my goddess would come from considering my own people, not my enemies? In this case, no, it wasn’t to be. Instead, I smiled, and knew what I needed to do.
