Chapter 483: The Han Civil War IX

There were little small moments of glory and beauty on the campaign trail, like the stolen picnic with Auri. There were grand indignities and terrible crimes, but perversely, it was the little stuff that really got to me.

Like my birthday.

It had poured recently, and the entire day was spent in the drizzly aftermath, slogging through the mud, getting our line’s nodosaurus unstuck an unknown number of times as flies buzzed around us, and filth settled into every crack and crevice. Hostile sabotage on our grain wagons - or maybe just pure incompetence - meant dinner was slightly moldy. I was completely immune to something as simple as mundane food poisoning, but it was unpleasant. Rumors had risen that we were getting into a fight soon, the Big One, but they were nothing new. Half the time we were getting into a fight ‘any day now’, and I’d learned to ignore the rumors. Obnoxiously, they dominated the conversation, killing any attempts at talking about something else. Anything else. I’d spent half the day craning my neck skywards, hoping to see Iona fly by on Fenrir, but even that small pleasure had been denied to me. Auri had spent most of the day huddled away with Command, and there just hadn’t been a good moment where I could slip away and say hi to her.

Happy birthday to me.

There was nothing I could do for the small pair of broken bodies tossed casually to the side of the road, crows feasting on their innards. Deep hoofprints and the assorted other injuries suggested that their only crime had been getting in the way of a column of cavalry, perhaps a wagon. The freshness of the bodies suggested that it might’ve been the very army I was part of that did it.

More and more I was questioning what First, do no harm meant. I, personally, wasn’t causing a single shred of harm to anyone. I felt like my disguise, my act of soldiering, was violating the spirit of my [Oath], if not the letter.

It’s why I wouldn’t harm anyone, even in a spar. It felt too close to a violation. Too close to turning my back on my sacred [Oath].

It was weird. I thought I’d made my peace with sparring years ago, but suddenly it was rearing its head in an ugly way.

Part of it might be that I didn’t feel like I could hit people and instantly snap them back to full health without blowing my cover, meaning my blows would cause actual harm.

Soldiering was different than being a Ranger or a Sentinel. I didn’t have the words for why or how, what exactly made one acceptable and the other a near-violation, but I felt deep in my heart and soul that it was different. It was frustrating - if I could pinpoint the why, it might help. Perhaps it was the lack of agency? Or knowing that soldiers often punched down on the weak and helpless, while Rangers and Sentinels often were brought in to punch up?

None of those quite resonated with me as the reason why it was different.

The worst part was, I knew I had options. I could go to Katerina and tell her the deception wasn’t working for me, and to just let me ‘openly’ be with the Ironside Brigade. I could wander Han alone with Iona, free from any obligation. Hells, I could just go home.

The thoughts were almost intrusive. I was bonding with my fellows. Grizzly was like a warm fire. Blockhead had a heart of gold. Boot’s fashion sense was impeccable. I was coming to love them like my own brothers and sisters. I would never abandon them, and that was before all of the social and personal ramifications of desertion.

There was something freeing about knowing I could just up and leave if I had to though.

Left, right, left, right.

Another day, another march, and the clear blue sky rumbled with thunder.

Discipline held, we didn’t stop, but basically everyone looked up in the sky nervously.

“What do you think?” I asked Specs.

He frowned, sighed, and shook his head.

“Always fucked, never surprised.” He repeated the Legion’s unofficial motto for the rank and file.

My lips went into a flat line.

“Yuuup. We’re going to get fucked somehow.”

The words had barely left my lips when the Centurion called for a halt.

“Century, halt!” He barked out, and our line grouped up like everyone else, hands instinctively drifting towards weapons.

All hell broke loose.

Rumbling thunderheads rolled across the horizon, faster than any natural cloud could move, and the sky darkened as thunderbolts occasionally crashed down around us.

“Fucking Immortals!” Drippy cursed as rain exploded all around us.

I was quite thoroughly cursing every Immortal and Storm Classer by the time I got into our tent. Someone was fighting, possibly very far away, but the impact of what they were doing was reaching around the world to touch us here in the Han.

We probably weren’t the target, and not the only ones getting screwed. Reminded me a bit of when the goddesses of the moons had shifted the moons in their orbit, casually fucking tens of thousands of people if not more with their action. Karma had come round, and now it was my turn to be on the wrong end of someone, somewhere, doing something big.

Every inch of me was soaked, and the vicious rain had even worked its way into my pack. My makeup had run like crazy, and I hoped the foundation layer was intact enough to keep the face-changing putty disguised.

The floor was wet. My bag was wet. The bedroll was wet. The food was wet. I threw myself down with a squish, debating if I should say ‘fuck it’ and break my cover to be dry again.

Instead I sighed as I looked up at the ceiling, feeling the water penetrate my hair and starting the indignities all over again.

====================================================

Darts slung an arm in mine, and started to steer us away from where our line had pitched our tent for the evening. She waved to everyone else.n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

“I’m just stealing Bunny for a minute!” She yelled over her shoulder at Grizzly. He waved in lazy understanding.

I walked with Darts, raising an eyebrow. She was very subtly trembling, belying a nervousness behind her confident face.

Bunny was friendly. Bunny was outgoing. Bunny was totally cool with this.

Even if Bunny wasn’t cool with this, I was. I knew Darts in a way I’d known very few people. Spending every waking moment, and most of the sleeping ones tended to do that. I knew how she had a favorite side to sleep on. How her pillow had to be oriented exactly the right way. How she brashly jumped in on situations, even when she didn’t have all the information.

The bond wasn’t quite like the one the Rangers had, but there was a certain sense of solidarity between us all.

We chatted idly as Darts steered us out of the camp, my eyebrows wanting to climb higher and higher on my face.

“What’s going on?” I finally asked when we had some distance, mentally cursing as I’d briefly dropped the Bunny persona. “How can I help you?” I quickly recovered, getting a bit of the pep and spark Bunny had back.

[Sunrise] to the rescue! Energy! Pep! Bubbles!

Darts looked around nervously and lowered her voice.

“How good of a healer are you…?” She asked.

I eyed her warily, unsure why she was asking. I’d made what I could and couldn’t do clear, so why the sudden question?

What would Bunny say?

“I’m alright! The Optio’s line is much, much better than I am, but if you have a problem, let me know and I’ll see what I can do!”

Enthusiastic, peppy, helpful. Bunny nailed.

“Shhhh!” Darts hushed me. She looked around paranoid, like a bunch of commandos were about to jump out from behind a tree and whispered to me.

“I had a little… malfunction… with the potion the ‘Brigade’ issued.” She confessed. “I now have a very little problem that needs some… medical help.”

Her problem instantly crystallized for me. An ancient [Alchemist], one probably even more famous than me, had worked out THE POTION. An incredibly cheap concoction made out of herbs that grew practically everywhere, with wide tolerances in the brewing process, it worked on all elvenoids, men and women, and acted as a one-dose, month-long contraceptive. An ancient miracle that was still wildly popular to this day, and drew a steady supply of customers to [Alchemists] everywhere.

If Darts had a problem relating to it…

I lowered my voice as well.

“You want an abortion?” I asked carefully, wanting to explicitly make sure we were both on the same page.

Darts bit her lower lip and nodded.

“I don’t want to go to the healer’s line if I don’t have to.” She confessed. “I just want it to be…”

“Discreet.” I nodded. “Just confirming. You’re absolutely sure. You know this is permanent. You know this isn’t reversible.”

Darts gave me the most confident affirmation I’d heard.

“Yes. Knew since the moment I found out.”

Abortion was a little trickier for me than most people. I knew that the System only recognized me as a person the moment I was born, but I’d been ensouled and aware as a fetus. Without that added layer of personal complication, I’d have a completely clean conscience on the procedure.

Darts had a right to her body and her own self determination. Ochi had given me a crisis of conscience in that respect - when does the rights of a person to self-determination outweigh another’s ability to live? - but that was when dealing with fully formed and sapient individuals with their own full lives. A clump of cells with potential was wildly different.

First, do no harm.

The words were haunting me these days, and it was easy to put all of the different harms on a scale and balance them. Dart’s wants and needs, the harm I’d cause her not performing the procedure - admittedly, she’d just go to one of the Brigade’s healers and fix her problem there - far outweighed the cells growing in her body.

A not-insignificant part of that depended on how far along Darts was. There was a stage in pregnancy - varying depending on the elvenoid race in question, with the variable gestational periods - where I just said no. Where the scales tipped in the other direction.

I knew that some people then took their newborn for a long walk in the forest, with various degrees of ‘compassion’ involved, and like.

I wish I had enough power, influence, and resources to make sure that never happened.

But there was always a new tragedy. Always an injustice. Always a problem to fix.

I was one woman, faced with an entire world of problems. All I could do was pick my causes and fight to clean my little corner of the world the best I could.

Healing images were incredibly important when it came to pregnant women, and there was a reason pregnant women, or women who hoped to become pregnant, tended to go to healers specialized in the subject. An image without a baby told the magic that the baby was undesired, and since the System considered the fetus as part of the mother, it was handled in the same way cancer was handled. Conversely, even the suggestion that a fetus might be involved told the magic to preserve and protect it.

The middle ground was the worst. A poor image of a fetus in the various stages of development could, under certain very rare conditions, cause crippling deformities. Generally, if an image included some things that were properly updated and knowledge on some organs and stages of development, but not others, those parts could be fixed of problems while other parts weren’t, which could create an imbalance that led to deformities.

Extremely rare - that sort of fiddling was usually the domain of [Biomancers] - but fetuses were so small, fragile, and delicate that it was possible.

My default images always included protecting the baby, and included image snapshots of every half-week of development, along with reasonable assumptions how fetuses got from stage to stage.

All that compassion assumed the mother wanted the pregnancy.

An unwanted pregnancy?

Much easier.

“When do you want it done?” I asked.

“Can you do it now?” She asked.

It wasn’t a small decision, and I’d checked but I wanted to triple and quadruple check before doing anything so permanent.

I held out my hand.

“Yes, just tell me when.” I said.

Darts took my hand without hesitation, and it was done.

===========================

Left, right, left, right. The endless cadence of marching was enough to put a damper even on Bunny’s endless enthusiasm. The sky was overcast, and even the most enthusiastic of soldiers were sick of jodies.

A heavy pack on my back - damn my dexterity for cannibalizing my strength - a shield on my arm and a spear slung over my shoulder. That was the daily cadence of my march, plus or minus the songs.

[The World Around Me] was a curse at times. There was a mass grave off the side of the road, completely invisible to the naked eye. But below a few feet of soil, there were endless bodies tangled up with each other. Male and female, young and old, silver and brass, there were no distinctions made. No group spared. The… village? had been massacred from the oldest [Wisewoman] to the smallest baby.

I repressed a shudder of revulsion as the details made themselves clear to me.

Fingers scraped against bodies on top of them. Soil in the lungs.

I’d seen quite a few horrible things going from battlefield to battlefield, but I’d never seen the aftermath of people buried alive.

My next step brought a small tunnel in range, giving me hope that at least one person had escaped and survived the senseless massacre.

The old Elaine, the old me, the me who’d come to the Han, would’ve naively told someone. Whispered the words up the chain of command in the hopes that we’d stop and give the unknown peasants a proper burial.

Bunny knew the reality.

Yes, we’d stop.

Yes, we’d dig them up.

Only to strip the precious metals off their body, then throw the bodies back in a ditch. If the [Great General] was feeling particularly vindictive or there were soldiers in his army to punish, they’d be placed on ‘burial’ duty.

Then we’d all need to march triple time to make up for the time we’d spend gathering the metals.

No, their current burial was probably the most respectful rest they’d have. Let the lovers embrace each other into eternity.

====================

“Attack! Ambush!” The cry went up and down the line, orders being shouted quickly after. I took up the cry myself.

“Attack! Ambush!” I yelled, passing along the warning. I dropped my pack where I stood, hefting my shield and preparing my spear.

“Small circle!” Grizzly yelled, and our line jumped to formation. Lucius grabbed the reins of the nodosaurus and cowered under its questionable protection while the rest of the line circled around them, doing our best to create a perfect shield wall.

Drippy to my right. Darts to my left. I was in good hands.

“Tighten up!” Grizzly roared, and we all shuffled back, properly overlapping our shields in an awkward circle. Around us, most of the lines were mimicking our moves - there just wasn’t enough time in an ambush when we were marching to form up into centuries, forget cohorts.

A Misty fogbank roiled up and over us, our visibility dropping to nothing. Whispers came out of the Mist, interspersed with the sound of steel on steel and blood-curdling screams. Illusions flickered in and out of reality, and I stood stony-faced as a sword came whistling to my head.

Then it passed through, being fake.

Drippy flinched next to me and stabbed out at nothing.

A snarling armored wolf with a rider materialized out of the Mists, two curved blades held in his hands, red paint in war-lines on his body. He charged right at us, right at me.

First, do no harm.

My issues with soldiering and my [Oath] came into crystal clear focus in that moment.

Bunny was under a number of restrictions, but they almost directly clashed with my [Oath]. I could take down the rider non-lethally in a number of ways, but not as Bunny. I either had to blow my cover, or half-’lose’ this fight.

I pointed my spear at him as a bluff, staring the rider in the eyes. He smirked at me as he charged, and with a chill I remembered that my Deception Ring was still on.

Still displaying a low level.

Still displaying me as an easy target.

I couldn’t cause significant harm to the rider, not when I had a dozen ways to taking him down non-lethally, without harming a single hair on his head. Putting artificial restrictions on myself was not a way to violate my [Oath].

The wolf was fair game though.

His wolf pounced on me and my shield. I stabbed back at the wolf, careful to avoid the rider’s leg. I was able to exactly navigate my spear to slip the tip into a joint, but my strength against the wolf’s fur and vitality, combined with the angle, meant I didn’t get a good stab in.

That was as Bunny.

As Dawn I could’ve unbuckled every bit of armor, tied him up, and done his taxes before he finished blinking. But I was shackled, constrained by the rules Bunny needed to operate under. A block and a stab was most of what I could do.

Restricted. I spun off a [Parallel Thought] to eagerly examine that thought while the rest of me focused on the fight.

Dodging out of the way would expose Lucius and the line’s nodosaurus, along with the backs of all my companions. I couldn’t do that. The idea was unthinkable.

I braced myself as the wolf and rider crashed into me, knowing I was heavier than expected but not so heavy they couldn’t bowl me over. My spine cracked on the nodosaurus as I was forced back from their weight, the spear breaking in half as it was ripped out of my hands.

Stupid low strength.

My vision turned to yellowed teeth and lolling tongue along with the depths of the wolf’s esophagus, the rancid smell of a carnivore washing over me. The wolf tried to bite my face off. His teeth skidded off my subdermal scales, but it wasn’t quite enough to turn the blade that sunk into my shoulder from the rider.

They weren’t entirely unmolested. Drippy shot a caustic Ooze string at them, a hiss emerging as it hit metal, and Darts, with a flick of her wrist, had three of her namesake weapons sink into vulnerable joints on their armor.

I let go of my spear, trusting in the Mist to hide me as much as it hid everyone else. While the spear was just starting to fall, I jammed a finger into the chest of the wolf, unleashed a short-range but fully powered [Nova Lance] right at its heart, then grabbed my spear again before it had fallen more than an inch.

The heart was good. None of the nerves or brain for instant takedown, but removing the heart would only give it seconds more of consciousness, before Black Crow came to collect his due.

Then the wolf and rider jumped off me, heading back into the thick Mist, the beast not realizing it was dead yet. Momentum, stats, and skills would keep it up for - well, not for another heartbeat or two more. The heat and power had cauterized the nerves entirely, although I fully expected to find it dead just a pace or two from us after the fight was over.

No way to tell it was Bunny who’d done the damage though. Just another dead wolf revealed after the fight. My obligation to stay in the shield wall and protecting my comrades preventing me from doing anything more. From hunting down more wolves as Dawn, from flashing up and down the lines and single-handedly turning the raid back.

That was more Wren’s job, and a moment later he flashed by, looking like the god of war.

The rider was engaging in hit and run tactics, utterly unsuited to a sustained engagement of anysort. If he’d successfully killed me, it would’ve been a good trade in his favor, but he hadn’t. Instead, I’d downed his wolf, and he was probably scampering off back to his camp, utterly removed from the fight.

I turned back, grabbing a fresh spear from the nodosaurus and hefting it high, crouching down behind my shield in the classic braced position.

I put a fierce scowl on my face, hoping to dissuade anyone else from attacking.

Bunny might look weak, but she had teeth. Hopefully after the first raider had utterly failed against our line, we wouldn’t see anyone else.

All up and down the column troops were harassed by the riders, screams and yells emerging from the Mists. What was real? What was fake? I could answer that within [The World Around Me], but not from sounds made outside the skill.

I almost jumped out of my skin as our indistinct shadows flickered, briefly disobeying natural laws by some skill before returning to normal.

“Bunny. Bunny! You with us?” Grizzly’s shouts were controlled, pitched to be loud to us and quiet outside our little circle. Not a Skill, just skill.

I shuddered at the memory of teeth and hefted my new spear again.

“Wolf missed.” I half-lied as I took position again. “I’m fine.”

My shoulder healing was a little more potent than I’d claimed, not that anyone got to see how bad the injury actually was. I just wasn’t suited to contests of strength, and unfortunately Bunny was laboring under far too many restrictions to use all my ways of circumventing that unfortunate drop in my stats.

The attack had brought my issues with soldiering into crystal clarity, showing me exactly where and what my problem was. Why Legionnaire Bunny was a poor disguise.

My hands were tied twice over, and if I didn’t get rid of my shackles, somebody would die.

I had held the line though. I had kept my shield up, and protected my fellows.

==========

Grizzly pulled me aside for a private conversation. And by that, I mean he kicked everyone else out of the tent.

He crossed his arms and stared at me. I knew what he wanted. I sighed.

He continued to stare at me, tapping his fingers on his arm.

“Bunny, I want the truth.” He said. “Are you…”

I tensed up, expecting him to ask if I was Dawn, and the whole mess that would come with that.

Still, lying to everyone - or at least not telling them the truth - felt really bad, and Katerina had clearly been alright with a line knowing my identity back when I was with Nike and the rest.

All these thoughts flashed through my head from one word to the next.

“... part of the black ops division?” He asked.

“Uh.” I said a little stupidly, not sure how to respond. Grizzly narrowed his eyes and ticked points off his fingers.

“You’ve gone missing three times, but nobody in the chain of command seems to care. You’ve got a background as a ‘failed Ranger candidate’ but seem to have all the skills and then some. You move like you’ve got experience. You’re way

faster than your level, nevermind that you’re supposed to be a ‘speedster’ as your second. And the final point is I have friends in the Second. Specifically, Aemilius.” He stared at me in a pointed way.

That wasn’t ringing any bells for me.

“Should I know who that is?” I asked.

Grizzly threw his hands up in the air.

“Yes! You should! He was the [Centurion] in charge of your line for years! If you’d actually been a member.”

Shit! Katerina had prepped a solid background for me, and I’d reviewed it, but I’d gotten the name of the current[Centurion], the one who’d been ‘in command’ when I left the unit, not the old one.

“But nobody - nobody - seems to care that your background is fake. I just get told to drop it.”

I sighed, deciding to salvage what I could out of the situation.

“Hi, I’m Bunny, and yes, I’m involved in a few… extracurricular… activities for the Legata now and then.” I confessed. “For reference, two of my excursions were Vorler hunts, and my scouting abilities make me extra good at making sure they’re exterminated. Can we please keep a lid on it?”

Grizzly gave me the evil eye and nodded slowly.

“I’m a career soldier. I know about keeping my mouth shut. I just…” His shoulders slumped. “I just wish you’d trusted me enough to tell me, that’s all. It hurts when you kids keep secrets from me.”

I kept my wince purely internal.

“If it helps, I’ve got a bunch more secrets I’m not telling you and can’t.” I said.

He slowly nodded.

“That does help. Will they harm me or the line?”

I shook my head furiously.

“Not at all, nope. No.” I said.

“Then keep your secrets.”

===========================

I left the tent that evening, noting that the walls were exactly as high as always, but that there was a double patrol of soldiers. Howls and trumpets echoed from the woods around us and the army we were attached to, but the sounds were muted. Muffled.

Skill against Skill, the rumors were that Yang Duan He, the Lady of Death was responsible for the raid. One of the Yan generals, she didn’t fight on open fields. She engaged in hit and run tactics, harrying armies as they traveled. She was a poor commander in a pitched battle, but I had to imagine there was a reason she alone had the title Lady of Death in a deadly civil war.

Rumors were naturally going triple-time that this time we were about to get into a fight. The Big One. Like we hadn’t heard it a thousand and one times already.

I didn’t wander, I didn’t travel. I just stared at the fire, wishing it would blink back at me or trill a brrrpt my way, meditating hard on why being a soldier felt so radically different than being a Ranger. Why I could put myself in the middle of a goblin warren as a Ranger and ‘self defense’ everyone attacking me, while a wolf leaping unprovoked for my throat as a soldier threw up a mental wall.

Being on my own was fine.

Being a Ranger was fine.

Being a Sentinel was fine.

Hell, being a War Sentinel was fine.

Being a soldier? Not fine.

What was the difference? What did soldiers do that Rangers didn’t? Why the huge internal reaction?

I felt like Ranger was the best comparison. It was my first, and in many ways, the role of a Ranger in a team was the closest I had to being a soldier. Both were teams of 8. Both were military units.

Where did they differ?

What was a Ranger’s job?

Rangers were designed to handle large threats. Problems. They were designed to help people.

My eyes widened at the realization.

There was the difference.

Sentinels and Rangers, fundamentally, at their core, existed to help people. Sure, it was generally through excessive violence on problems, but their existence was a helping hand. Removing threats. Anything I was doing as a Ranger or Sentinel was helping my fellow citizens and countrymen.

Soldiers weren’t.

Soldiers were tools. A weapon in someone else’s hand, and very little otherwise.

Another problem was the severe limitations I was operating under.

On my own, I could’ve taken the wolf and his rider no problem. I could easily disarm them, tie them up, and present them on a platter. I’d always had issues punching down. If I didn’t need to dramatically harm a person, I didn’t.

Take the [Thug] from the Three Dragon Triad. I was well within my rights at the time to send a [Nova Lance] through his head, but I’d held back. Restrained myself to ‘simply’ temporarily crippling him, deescalated the situation, and patched him back up.

Bunny couldn’t do such a thing. My attempts at keeping the Bunny persona up, seamlessly integrating with the Legion, clashed too hard with who I was at my heart.

I had the ability to take someone down with minimal harm, and so I felt like I couldn’t use an excessive amount of it instead. If I’d stabbed the rider, I couldn’t have helped him, and the harm I did to him would’ve been magnified many times over as the rest of the line merrily stabbed him to death. Then I would’ve been caught between a rock and a hard place. Aid and comfort to the enemy, treason, blah blah blah all that good stuff.

My problem and the solution was clear.

I didn’t work as a rank and file member of the Legion. I wasn’t Legionnaire Bunny, and I didn’t even need a classup offering it as an option to know that. It just wasn’t who I was at heart, and it clashed too hard with my own principles for me to effectively work as her. Instead, if I continued on, I’d just let my line down at a critical moment, damning them.

No, as strange as it sounded, if I was Dawn, War Sentinel of the Sixth, I had far fewer problems and compunctions. I had agency as Dawn. I had all the tools needed to do the job without clashing too hard with who I was at heart.

Plus, I’d get to see Auri more.

Fuck, I could go and fly regularly. When was the last time I’d flown, properly flown? It’d been ages.

I loved my freedom, I loved being able to move around at will, to go where the wind blew me.

Bunny couldn’t. I acknowledged the petty stuff as petty, but when push came to shove, when the steel came out and the blood flowed, I had my hands tied too hard as Bunny to be effective. Even as a mask for Dawn, I couldn’t let someone else get hurt because of the deception.

With a heavy sigh I got up, and went to see Legata Katerina.