CHAPTER 401: CHAPTER 401 - KILLER MEMORY, WITHIN & WITHOUT CIRCLES THAT MAY COME FULL

"To start with, I shouldn’t question you yet... but I should tell you something. Something about my family."

"You mean your brother?"

"Well, no. Yes, but no. We don’t actually have a family name to the public. Originally, we were assassins. Trained from childhood to eliminate particular targets. While remaining undetected before the opportunity presented itself."

As if she’d said nothing more unusual than that the sky above them was violet, which it was, Elua turned back to her sigilry. Such a revelation might amaze or dismay someone that grew up in the modern times... but the illusionist had seen and dealt with such people more times in her past than all the conversation time she’d ever had with this woman.

"I’m not surprised the practice kept its roots dug in somewhere. There are still records and artifacts related to your line of work in the world. That means it is likely someone preserved them."

"Most of our bloodline abandoned that path many, many generations ago. But the training remained. The techniques. The... psychological conditioning to act."

Sevra’s hands clenched in her lap while the brunette sighed and stopped what she was doing. It was only polite to show more respect when someone’s spirit was trembling.

"I was twelve when I completed my first contract. A corrupt Youth Guild administrator who was selling supply locations to bandits during a famine caused by prior Descent."

"I understand the profession and could argue for its necessity, but it’s not the way I’d love for people to need be protected. However, I’m sure your people found that to be a justified target."

"That’s what I told myself. And the next one. And the ones after that as I was used to cut away societal corruption. That there was justification for what I was told to do."

The scout’s voice carried years of carefully buried emotion. Raw with ’guilt’ and ’disgust’, which were definitely not the coldhearted traits of a ’good’ assassin. They were the kind that lead to one getting killed by hesitating.

"But there was one... a woman, barely older than I am now. Someone had paid a member of my family to have her eliminated because she’d discovered their fraud. She wasn’t evil at all, just... inconvenient."

"But you completed the contract before you knew that."

Hearing the Acid Tongued Villainess, who she had accused by leftover tales and listened to as she corrected them, essentially take her side immediately was a strange feeling. One that made words pour out like a confession.

"I completed the contract. Despite discovering evidence of potential innocence in the final moments. Because it could have been planted to make me hesitate. But it wasn’t. And afterward, I couldn’t... I couldn’t live with what I’d done."

Considering she was alive and well, the brunette assumed something had changed her mind. She considered that it was perhaps seeking atonement rather than far easier self-retributions.

’If so, I approve. I was always a fan of making those who had done wrong to me struggle, rather than get off with an easy death. The same should be no different when a serious personal mistake has been made.’

Mint eyes turned their weight on the woman who she’d been trying to connect with all this time. It felt like finally they were starting to get somewhere. Her badly kept secret - for of course small details about the way the woman acted and moved had built possibilities in her scheming brain - was now out in the open.

"Removing the potential for something in the world is surprisingly easy. Using the potential for what is objectively a net positive is a lot harder. But it can be done as long as you stay even a little on the side of good intentions."

"I’m sure that’s what you believe and you may even be right. But I’m not that strong. I shouldn’t have needed to be. My family has a tradition - we always maintain an elder with Memory Astralism, even if we have to hire outside of the family. One who can bury traumatic experiences and help us function despite what we’ve seen and done."

Disgust showed in Elua’s expression - and there wasn’t a lot that needed to be ’right’ about that look that her usual problem with facial muscles had to correct. She had mastered it very quickly as well.

"Really. I cannot say anything about stealing the memories of others, for I have done so to those too weak to stop me and in situations where letting them keep them would cause me problems. But going through it willingly?"

"Like I said, I’m not strong. I’d rather forget. My great uncle, Thelasi... he helped me bury the worst of it back then. Ended the guilt, the nightmares, the woman’s face when she realized what I was doing there when I wasn’t supposed to be in her study."

"But the technique they used wasn’t a permanent one, because they are only a late stage Primalist at best."

"...Yes. Over the years, the memories have been surfacing. I couldn’t stop seeing her eyes lose their light."

Elua stood up and approached the emergency containment boundary line. There was no real reason to use it as a wall between them, but since the woman had decided it was a sort of line in the sand, she would make use of it.

"And you want me to help you find this elder? To complete the memory suppression again?"

"I... I thought I did. But watching you work and listening to you talk about the weight of your past actions... maybe forgetting isn’t the answer."

"No. It isn’t."

The certainty in her voice made Sevra look up sharply. It wasn’t the first time she’d said something like this to the scout, but this time the woman could connect it directly with knowing El knew what she’d done.

"Forgetting our failures and mistakes means learning nothing from them. Even if you retain the corrective knowledge, it means pretending that the sacrifice made was nonexistent. That you are a miracle with perfect answers and not a person on an imperfect journey."

Her voice was still fairly dull, but she was starting to learn to let her body vibrate her vocal cords with more oomph and less conservational minimalism. The small cracks, rises, and falls helped accentuate her speech. But the ancient cultivator wasn’t done talking even as she stepped across the line of sigils.

"I remember every face of every person I’ve killed knowingly and every choice that led to those moments. It’s not comfortable, but it’s necessary to me. As proof that I have done none of them with *only* malice in my actions."

"How do you live with it, though? It must-"

"It does. Whatever you think or imagine, you’re right. Because all damage you let it cause you is self-inflicted."

Glowing, weighty eyes that had seen five millennia pressured the scout as the ’young girl’ crouched down near where Sevra sat. But even though she wasn’t entirely comfortable, the woman didn’t feel the same kind of terror as she knew she would have before the Exclave.

"Which is not to say you should let yourself feel nothing, but that you should own whatever it is you feel completely. Cling to it - and hope that you never stop caring about it."

The Goltbred heiress had stopped caring about so many things in her last life, but the self admonishment for being unable to scheme in such a way that did not cost the lives of people who did not deserve it (by her metrics)... was one of the only things she held strongly to.

It could be said that it both originated from and was a contributing factor to her love of people who sought to protect others. By ensuring her power was used to not destroy when possible - and seeing it as the best challenge. To remember that every action echoed forward into the future she was trying to help the type of people she was enamored with create.

"Okay. I’ll remember what you’re trying to say. But I still need to find my elder, even if part of the reason why has changed. However, this brings me to my next question... or set of questions."

Elua nodded, but the woman clearly hesitated before asking her.

"The old stories... they almost always mentioned female partners. Doomed lovers who were... women."

’Doomed... well, going by the result, I can’t say she’s wrong. But I don’t like the implication she is making for my Qat!’

"Stories often get details wrong. However, in most cases, yes. I preferred female companions in my previous life."

Once again, the Goltbred heiress was witness to the burst of someone else’s moment of ’epiphany’. The small but chunky leap forward in the Walk Astralism possessing spirit beside her made her grumble with how easy it seemed for some people if they just tried!

"The assassin traditions mention a certain cultivator tool. To hide lots of things from others. Is your spouse-"

Elua’s spiritual pressure spiked in warning - and Sevra felt the familiar quality of her recent thoughts beginning to blur at the edges as only someone who had gone through regular Memory manipulation could. But before the bludgeoning ’technique’ could strike down, she held up her hands in surrender.

For a second and a half, the reborn cultivator thought of purging it anyway. But ultimately she felt that someone coming to their own conclusion didn’t qualify as her ever revealing the secret herself. It was simply not fervently defending the secret... which was a whole different matter than her promise.

"Some secrets have reason they cannot be spoken of. I expect you to not pry into whether such tools still exist, Sevra. And if you do not listen to me once you are away from this place, then I at least hope you’ll not cause trouble for anyone I care about."

"Believe me, I have no intention of doing anything like that. However... this relates to part of a trail that went cold. I think... assuming the Yecine have ever gotten their hands on such an implement, that it belonged to my Elder Thelasi."

"Oh? I see. Well, if you have not found them by the time I return, then perhaps I will seek them out myself. To show them my thanks for losing such an item and letting it end up in unknown places, or ’unknown’ hands, for *unknown* things."

"Okay, I get it."

Sevra rubbed her temples at the varied emphasis. There were times where the girl beside her was so frightening she was like one of the eldritch creatures everyone else should be fighting right now, if given colorful form.

’Then there are others where she seems like the teenager she is. It’s so confusing.’