Book 5, Chapter 27: A Raven
The first night, we just ate and went to sleep. The soldiers stayed up longer, but everyone who worked on the weapons was dead tired. All my companions, too, for their efforts.
I found myself alone and staring into the fire as ever, cursed by my own thoughts. It really would be simplest for me to torch the Laemacian army. Safest for the people I’d come to lead, safest for the kingdom. By now the Ketzillian armies would be crushed, their threat eliminated.
If I – and the kingdom – survived all this, I’d be traveling to Ketzle with an army to force them into peace treaties. Although my generals would likely pressure me to simply conquer their lands. Given the endless wars, peace treaties wouldn’t mean anything, so that might even be the better plan.
If we somehow bested Otholos, the same would hold true for Laemacia. Except that I could declare my hereditary right and claim it for myself. Expand this little kingdom into an empire. Perhaps that would make taking Ketzle more palatable. I could end the slave trade, force peace on the lands through military might, then follow my ideas of forming universities, pushing technological progress. Finally get flush toilets.
Perhaps forced peace was worth the price in blood. After all, we called Alexander ‘the great’ and not ‘the murderous, awful person who crushed countless families and created atrocities wherever he went.’ Like him, I’d be unifying a continent, building cities and institutions in the aftermath of all that destruction.
If anything, it’d be easier for me. With knowledge of future weapons and unlimited power at my command, defeating armies would be quite a bit less time consuming than what Alex faced.
A raven landed on the ground in front of me. Tilted its head to stare at me with one eye, then the other, the way birds do.
“Yeah. I don’t think I can. I don’t think I can kill hundreds of thousands, even if to forge a better future.”
The black bird hopped a little closer, opening its mouth but not cawing, head bobbing up and down.
“I guess with my power, I’m facing an issue more like what Stalin and Mao faced. Killing multitudes for a perceived greater good.” In both cases, the re-engineering of their economies accomplished little more than the deaths of millions of people. Neither worked, except to prove how arrogance and psychopathy make for bad qualities in dictators.
“Yeah, bird, I don’t think I can.”
It stared at me more intensely, eyes almost shining, gave a little shake of its head, flew off into the sky.
The birds nearly overwhelmed me with power at the Battle for the Barclay Duchy. They reveled in it during the next battle where I let loose. The raven, it now seemed, was warning that my choices didn’t matter.
The fired burned down to coals before I finally slept.
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