Walking elegy (tensura/marvel self insert): chapter 6: the elf who hated nature

Humanity is but nature wrongs, shaped and yearning for the love of a mother through violence and cruelty

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“I never loved nature.”

Normally, such words would have barely brought my attention to the person who had uttered them, especially with the low dose of Stillness I was still running on.

Normally, it would have been the case, but it was not so here. I mean, an elf saying that she didn't love nature while laying on the grass and sunflowers brought by said elven magic was something worthy of attention.

Even more so when taking into account the fact that the relationship in this world between Elves and nature, like you would expect from any fantasy world, was something very close to sacred, divine some of them would even say.

In other words, it was as if a Catholic archbishop out of nowhere had revealed to me without seemingly any reason that he was willingly in communion with the devil.

“You don’t seem like it, especially with the way you are laying in it right now,” I pointed out to her.

“Never said I hated nature. Just that I didn’t love it,” she answered.

“Doesn't that mean the same at best and at worst that you’re apathetic to it?” I asked, genuinely curious.

“Apathetic at worst? Shouldn’t hate be the one at worst?”

“Maybe it should, maybe it shouldn’t, but I think that when you hate something, it also means that a part of you cares in some form or way for that thing, cares for it, cares about it. It’s not love, but in a way, I think it is very close to it. To be apathetic to one thing, not caring at all about what happens to it, isn't that worse than hatred? The fact of feeling a void for something that could have been cared about in some form or way,” I spoke.

This was the kind of conversation that felt pointless already, sophistry and all, philosophising about the abstract and the would-be and the could-be and the maybe, when such things had or at least should not have a place in war, even while the great beast that was war rested but a moment. Still, I didn’t leave.

Maybe it was because I cared about sophistry and the like more than I thought.

“I don’t think so,” the elf told me. “To do such a thing as hating something means giving too much of yourself, and when you give so much of yourself, when you hate and care for or about something, I don’t know but it feels too exhausting and . . . sad. I don’t want to be more exhausted or sad. I am tired, too tired for that.”

“This is why I think I can lay in that grass and in those sunflowers without wanting to burn them all down,” she explained, her gaze turned toward the moon, her eyes reflecting and shining the same shade it exalted and bathed the world in, “without wanting to throw up again and again until I puke myself whole, organs and all. My people say nature is beautiful, that it is the mother of us all, that it is nurturing, kind and thus should be respected.”

“You don’t think the same, do you?” I asked, already knowing the answer to my question.

“Nature, I won’t say it can’t be beautiful, that it can’t be kind, that it can’t be nurturing, but saying that it is only that is but a lie. Floods, landslides, plagues, storms, droughts and the like. Nature isn’t only a beautiful, kind, nurturing thing. It is also cruel, petty, monstrous or maybe,” and at that she smiled, “the more accurate thing to say would be human? I don’t think they were wrong when they said that it was mother to us all, because this war, these last months, had only shown how we are only inheritors of its madness, carrion children of a hungry devourer never satiated that seemed to give and give but in the end can only take.”

There was hatred underneath her voice, underneath the false cheer, the projected bubbliness. Lyra, I wondered, were you trying to convince me or convince yourself?

I had suspected, but this had never truly been about that, had it?

“Sorry, Viceroy,” she said to me with closed eyes and a guileless smile, the expressions of a kind liar. “I was the one talking about hating taking too much energy and here I am.”

“Things are like that sometimes. We, living beings are like that. There is nothing to apologise for,” I told her.

Living beings were illogical things to their core. No matter how rational, logical we may want to appear or seem, we were all animals not willing to recognise that at our core, whether it was monsters or humanity, we were but fueled and devoured and devourers of emotions.

“You’re so kind and incredible and strong, Viceroy. I wish I could be more like you, Lady Nanana,” she finished softly.

Me, kind?

Me, incredible?

Me, strong?

Even with Stillness, I couldn’t stop a snort of disbelief from escaping from the coffin it made of what I was supposed to feel.

“I am everything but that, Lyra.” Everything but that. Had I been what she saw me as, what they all saw me as, Klik would not be dead, a doll would not have been discarded, never to be brought back by a father and a husband.

Had I been strong, truly strong, I would have been able to do more than killing, than murdering almost 300,000 souls, souls I had called collateral because it made it more clinical, less human, easier.

Had I been incredible, so many things would have been different.

Had I been kind, I would have been a better general. Had I been kind enough, I wouldn’t have had to create a magical drug just to not deal with more guilt, with more pain.

“It’s just that you don’t see it, that none of you see it,” I avowed to her. “I am the last person you want to be, because people like me only end a certain way,” that end is always quick, and always death.

The war was the only reason why I wasn’t, because Tempest, my nation, the home of those who believed in me, would have suffered even more, been even more destroyed without me fighting.

I had agreed when Rimuru, when the one I considered a sibling, had told me the first time we met, that day in that blue-tainted new beginning, in what had been but a blue-tainted crèche, how they wanted to show me the world, to give me the will to live.

I think that after that, the moment when it’ll be the end, I’ll take this death of mine I had been yearning for.

“I don’t love nature and I am trying to not hate it, and indeed, it would not be wrong to say that I am failing, but I am still trying, right? I wouldn’t be doing so had it not been for you, Lady Nanana.”

How? How could I have done so when this was our first true conversation not related to the battlefield?

How, I wondered, thus I asked this time out loud, “How?”

“Even before the war, there were already many rumours about you, my lady. You’re a True Dragon after all, and True Dragons are nothing but living representations of the world. They are the world itself. They are nature personified. This is why when my nation learned of your existence, learned that you had, at the side of a then powerful slime, made, built a nation of monsters, we couldn’t help but be interested. An aspect of what my race seems divine had decided to make a place where monsters, where others could be safe, could be something other than feral, pathetic, hunted things. A place that could be another home for Elvenkind,” Lyra spoke. The way she spoke, you would have thought that she was speaking of an impossible thing, a beautiful but unattainable dream.

The sorcerous dynasty of Sarion was one with whom the contact had gone much better, much more easily than it canonically did. I had thought it for another reason, like maybe us showing ourselves capable of being more brutal and violent unlike the canonical counterpart of our nation, but it seemed that the reason was much more simple and complicated.

Honestly, I should have guessed. I mean, weren’t one of the titles of the True Dragon race the World’s Root?

“It may not seem like it, but Elvenkind had been in decline for a long time,” she continued. “We had been in decline since our ancestral kingdom fell, leaving only behind wandering tribes and remnants trying to emulate something great we all know we will never reach by ourselves again. This is not our era anymore. This is the era of humanity, of mankind, and we all know this. This war is but a manifestation of whether it will last longer or if it’ll be supplanted by a new age.”

She spoke as if it were fact. “It’s like you think that none of those eras could be ones where Elvenkind could fit.”

“I indeed believe that,” she replied.

“Then, why are you fighting with me? Why are so many of you fighting for Tempest? Why are so many of you dying, bloodying yourselves in this senseless carnage?”

I wanted, no, needed to know the answer. I could remember the exact names and numbers of the 280,420 elves who had died in this war in the name of Tempest.

My memories made sure of it, and had they not done so, I would have found a way to do so. Hundreds of thousands had died, and here she was telling me that they had died for something they didn’t truly believe in.

I needed to know why, why, because if such was the truth, then why did none of them ever desert.

“Do you know what we are called, my lady? We are called, deemed demi-human by humanity, and because this is humanity's age, nothing else but what they categorise us as matters. It’s insulting, don’t you think? Being deemed half a thing you are not by something much younger than you are, that knew nothing about the world while we at our apex knew everything about it. Of course, it made sure that we weren’t othered as much as other races like goblins and lizardmen, but still, when a supposed whole thing deems you half, doesn’t that mean that you are lesser? Elves in the eyes of mankind are monstrous; we’re just the pretty kind in their eyes, and in monsters’ eyes, we are too human even as we hold nothing but contempt for them. Too monstrous and too human when we are neither; what a fucking joke. This is our twilight, and no matter who wins between the Eastern Empire and the Jura-Tempest Federation, that will not change. The only difference, I think, would be that the twilight in the era ushered by your nation of monsters will be a sweeter and longer one.”

“Is that all? Is that the reason why you all fight? What about me being a True Dragon?” I asked her, feeling incredulous.

“The Eastern Empire also has a True Dragon. Sure, the fact that the Jura-Tempest Federation has two and a half with Lord Veldora, Lady Milim, and you, Lady Nanana, helps, but in the end, it’s more about how Elvenkind ends—glorious, on our feet, fighting for something that matters, or on our back in a humiliating and short way,” she said with a smile that could only be deemed sardonic.

It was a lopsided thing.

“I am sorry,” I told her, because I was. Had I not left this cave with Rimuru, had I not been reincarnated, things would have gone the way they had in the novel.

Things would have been much better, better for everyone. I had tried to make things better, and like in all the most important moments of my life, I fucked up. I was the butterfly, and this was the result of the beat of wings.

I felt something fall on my eyebrow. “A crown of flowers?”

“I am not a good elf, and I am not like Kael, but I think they are fitting on your brows more than anywhere else, my lady. I had told you the reason why a lot of Elvenkind is fighting for Tempest, but did I tell you why I do so?” She asked with a smile.

Standing above me the way she did, blonde hair bleached into a platinum halo by moonlight, the elven girl looked like an angel.

“No, you didn’t,” I replied.

“One of my personal skills, the one that is probably the only reason why I was chosen to be a part of your direct cohort, my lady, is the ability to sense what others feel.”

Of course, an empath. Telekinesis, mind control, the ability to bring back the dead, and so many mind-boggling abilities existed in this world.

Of course, empathy should be expected. Rimuru, you can be so devious, especially when it comes to those you care about.

“What did Rimuru ask of you?” I asked the elven girl.

“To support you,” she revealed guiltlessly. “I honestly didn’t understand why at the beginning. You’re a True Dragon, a primordial existence, one of the roots of this world, and I am but an elven girl not strong enough to be a saint no matter how old I am, but I think I understand now.”

Pink and green coloured nails touched with their tips magically-made blue Stillness.

The logical part of me whispered that I shouldn’t allow this, that I had been too permissive, that Lyra was but a subordinate, someone I could crush with less than a blink, and that I needed to remind her of that.

I would have, I think, if not for her following words: “It always hurts, doesn’t it? Even with this blue, accursed stone — caring so much, being so tired that you just want to die, just so it could stop.”

I felt…speechless. There were so many different things I wanted to say, to do at this moment, but I didn’t. It was like being so overwhelmed that in the end, everything felt underwhelming, felt like nothing and brought nothing out in you.

“I am fighting this war where I’ll probably die because my general, the lady I looked up to is the way she is. It’s not because she is a True Dragon, but because she’s kind, because I remember how even in Tempest before the beginning of this god-forsaken war, I saw her smile and play with monster children in a public park, laugh with them, make them happy while she only wished to die; because when she thinks no one is looking, she chooses to stay at the side of the wounded and heal them; because each time she hears about the death of a soldier, no matter if they are human or monster, she hurts even more; because before each battle, she uses her magic to strengthen the soldiers; because even while using an emotion-dampening magical stone of her making, she still stealthily visits, sings lullabies and holds soldiers crying in their sleep.”

“I don’t hate nature,” she said to me with a bright smile, “because it would mean in some way hating a particular kind, blue dragon. I don’t hate nature because in a way, some part of it,” and at that I knew she spoke of me, “is worthy of fighting for, dying for.”

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, / And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.

I think in that moment, I finally understood what it meant. I wish I hadn't. Given what would happen in the future, it would have probably hurt much less.