Beneath the Dragoneye Moons

Chapter 251: Ethical Examinations

Chapter 251: Ethical Examinations

I stripped, my clothes remaining annoyingly clean and pristine, and gratefully sank down into the hot pool. I tried to do it smoothly, but my legs betrayed me, and I plonked into the bath instead. I idly pulled on my fingers one at a time, double-checking that, yes, they were still there.

Still intact.

It hadn’t been real. Well, not real real. Felt real enough.

Fuck [Pristine Memories] so hard right now. I needed to evolve the skill, and get some “selective deletion” going on.

I was Filthy with a capital F, bloody mud mixing in with fleshy scraps all over my body. I was still trembling somewhat, which didn’t go unnoticed by the elves.

Awarthril joined me a moment later, armed with a brush and a bar of primitive soap.

Seriously, was there anything the elves didn’t travel with?

“Serondes, shoo, get. I’m sure Elaine loves spending time with you, but not right this second.” A naked Awarthril menaced Serondes with a brush. He held his hands up in surrender.

“Alright, alright. I’ll be in earshot if you want me.” He raised some privacy walls for us as he left.

Awarthril started to attack me with the brush.

“Um. Awarthril.” I said, half-drowning under her ‘tender ministrations’.

“Yes?”

“Can I do this myself?”

Awarthril looked at the brush like it’d personally offended her.

“Of course.” She said after a moment’s hesitation. She thrust the implements of dirt destruction into my hands, and gracefully, without even making a splash, barely a ripple, left the pool.

I slowly started to scrub, not really focusing or paying attention to what I was doing. I was grime incarnate, it didn’t matter where I was cleaning, I was getting gob after gob of crud off of me.

My mind wandered back to my [Oath], and what I’d done wrong.

The obvious violation was “First, do no harm.” The penalty had come right as I’d killed the gnoll, although the timing of everything had resulted in me managing to kill the shimagu right as the punishment had started.

Lucky me. If things had gone just a hair differently, I would’ve died, crippled by pain and easy pickings for the shimagu.

Speaking of - what the fuck had been the shimagu’s plan?? It wasn’t like I was about to force a heal, nor did it seem like he’d been at any risk of discovery. The attack was out of the blue, and I couldn’t figure out why. It didn’t seem that important. Best thing I could think of was [Cosmic Presence] had been strong enough to cause some serious issues to the shimagu, and I didn’t look like I was leaving quickly enough.

Right.

Shimagu were a new twist on [Oath], and something I needed to figure out. I’d worked with Night a bunch, figuring out the ins and outs of my [Oath] and restriction skills, but this was a new twist.

Well, I should start with the basics. What was Night’s wording again? The basic fundamentals on Restriction skills?

[Pristine Memories] to the rescue!

Some significant editing of the memory was needed though, to remove all of Night’s thoughtful pauses and steps we took in between, the ancient vampire giving me time to process and comprehend what he was saying.

“Restriction skills are a strange beast. They are among the most powerful, complex, and convoluted aspect to the System that I know of. You must believe, in a powerful way, the words you speak and, in your case, the Oath you have chosen to bind yourself with. The words form the basics, the Restriction skill creating an absolute baseline from which you can not violate. However, if that was all there was to the skill, it would not be nearly so complex. No, your beliefs form another large portion of the skill, what you are and are not capable of doing. One who attempts a Restriction skill, intending to only fit with the bare minimum of the requirements, does not posses the correct mindset to gain such a skill. Your beliefs and values will change and evolve over time, and even another, having spoken the same words and taken the same skill, may not be operating under the same principles that you are. An action you believe to be permissible could be anathema to them, and the opposite holds true. A good example of your beliefs changing, if I recall correctly, would be how your mind changed on sparring. Additionally…”

Gods, I missed the long-winded bastard. Home. Soon.

I should emulate his example, and take on apprentices now and then, or at least train people. Keep me grounded and young. Thoughts for another day… but I could see the value in it.

The baseline he was talking about was the same for everyone with the same Restriction skill. To put it another way - there was the spirit of my [Oath], and the letter of my [Oath]. I needed to follow both.

I had some flexibility on what I believed the spirit of [Oath] was, but practically none on the letter. The closest I came to bending the letter of [Oath] was in defining what “Harm” was.

Accidentally bumping into someone in a crowd wasn’t harm.

Accidentally stepping on someone’s foot wasn’t harm.

The only harm in punching Artemis’s arm was when she punched me back twice as hard.

Speaking of harm, there was my current fighting style. I had no illusions that my current style would remain my style forever. As my skills evolved, as I got a new class, as my stats grew, I’d find new optimal methods of combat, and would need to constantly readjust my thinking with [Oath] to accommodate it.

Radiance magic was great for a lot of things, and terrible for others. I loved it to death, but being blind to its flaws was a great way to end up dead, and I’d worked too hard, struggled too much, to make a dumb mistake that’d get me killed. One of the great advantages of Radiance was my ability to hit exactly what I wanted. My narrow, burning beams of destruction could snipe insects out of the sky if I wanted to.

I should totally practice that, thinking about it.

Focus.

Right now, my combat focus was on narrow Radiance beams. Good for a lot of stuff, but I had to be careful with it. Specifically, I needed to worry about what happened once I burned through someone. If there was a second person behind them, lower level?

Oops, I wasn’t careful enough wasn’t an excuse for [Oath]. I could maybe, if I squinted really hard and tilted my head, see someone else with the same Restriction skill not be penalized for that sort of mistake, have their spirit of the rules permit that type of careless collateral damage.

I knew I was better than that, so it wasn’t an excuse.

“Yes, I burned down an entire town, but I was defending my patient! Sure, 20,000 people died, but my patient’s ok!”

That would never fly with me. At all. I just didn’t believe it.

Apart from potential “burn-throughs”, between my own ethics, and Radiance’s ability to hit exactly what I wanted and nothing more, I was pretty darn good at only hitting - and killing - people who were attacking me.It wasn’t Lightning, which could branch and arc to new targets. It wasn’t like Earth, where people could move out of the way before an attack landed. It was narrow, focused, targeted, and instant.

I’d been attacked by the gnoll, or at least, it had looked like I was being attacked by the gnoll. However, the poor dude had been body-jacked. It wasn’t him attacking me, it was the shimagu in the driver’s seat. The body was just a puppet, the poor gnoll trapped inside his own mind, screaming as someone else piloted him to infiltrate his group, then commit murder. In all this, the gnoll himself never tried to attack me. Never tried to hurt me.

Never lifted a paw against me.

That was how I saw it. I recognized that I was being a hair militant here, and was stretching the spirit of [Oath] in the most generous direction. Most people probably would be fine with the actions I’d taken. I believed I was better though. I had to be better.

It’s just who I was.

What was interesting was the difference between self-perception, and reality. It mattered if the gnoll was a willing participant or not, regardless of my knowledge of it. If the gnoll had been a willing collaborator, I wouldn’t have been punished, even if I thought he was unwilling. There was both my perception of the events, and the reality of the events. If the reality overrode my perception, I was off scott-free.

For example, if I was walking down the street, and I randomly killed someone, just because. If the person was an illusion, a mirage?

I hadn’t violated [Oath]. Because nobody had been harmed.

My beliefs and perceptions influenced the rules of [Oath], not the determination if I’d violated it or not.

There were some aspects of the [Oath]-rules that asked “What did I see/know around me?” - but the rule asked about what I saw and knew. I couldn’t, like, pretend I hadn’t seen a sick patient.

For the sin of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, I’d killed him, and that was unforgivable to [Oath]. To be precise - I saw it as an unforgivable crime, one of the worst things I could do to someone. There was no unwinding murder.

It was probably stricter than needed, but perhaps that unwavering belief was part of why my [Oath] was so powerful. That… didn’t quite make sense, thinking about it. How would the [Oath] back then know what I’d be like today?

Kiyaya chose the moment to lie down next to me, and gave me a few concerned licks.

“I’m ok girl.” I twisted, scrubbing the top of her head lightly with my brush. She just gave me a concerned whine, and her tail betrayed that, yes, she was feeling somewhat worried.

I had strongly suspected - no, known - during the fight that he was being controlled, and upon reflection, I had other options. I could’ve poked holes in him until I killed off the shimagu while keeping the gnoll alive, I could’ve tried to heal the shimagu dead. I wasn’t in the habit of trying to heal people attacking me though, while I did have years of reflexes shooting Radiance at people.

I’d been trained on how to kill people attacking me, in a hundred different ways. I had some experience and training on non-lethal takedowns, and when I had the extraordinary luxury of time, space, and power, I could be merciful. Jaclyn was the best example of that.

I didn’t believe I had any of those luxuries, let alone all of them, so I’d fallen back into the well-worn grooves in my training. Kill the threat.

Interestingly, I hadn’t been penalized for drilling holes in the gnoll. Clearly, there was some leeway in my [Oath], some sense of proportionality in my beliefs. In my interpretation of [Oath]. I wasn’t penalized for every little jostle in life, I didn’t scream in agony every time I stepped on someone’s toe. There was nuance to my [Oath], recognition - from myself - that it wasn’t possible to be perfect, simply that I had to strive for it.

By the same token, being body-jacked and attacking me let me perform considerable harm on the gnoll without any penalty. However, murder was a step too far.

Interesting that I thought that way. Why did I think that way?

I’d always tried to avoid collateral damage, and today’s events reinforced that - I could only lethally attack people who were attacking me. I only wanted to attack, and hurt people who were attacking me. Bystanders were off-limits.

Which had some interesting implications, that I had always subconsciously thought, but never vocalized.

[Oath] was like my own personal safety. Nobody was allowed to be attacked, nobody could be harmed. Unless they were attacking me, or a patient of mine. Then, it wasn’t that I was allowed to do anything needed to protect myself or my patient, no. I was simply allowed to fight the attacker back, with lethal force if needed. However, I couldn’t, for example, blow up a barrel that would kill someone else and the attacker. I couldn’t burn a building filled with people down just to get a half-dozen people who wanted my life.

[Oath] had always only ever allowed me to attack people who it was reasonable to assume were currently, actively trying to cause great immediate physical harm to me.

Back to the gnoll. If he had, say, been trapped in some magical contraption that was moving his limbs, and said movements were trying to hurt me, killing the gnoll wasn’t the answer. He didn’t want to be there anymore than I did. The answer was destroying the magical contraption that was forcing him to move, and it was good to know that I believed that could cause me issues.

I couldn’t just get up and change my beliefs, not without serious discussion and thought as to the why. There needed to be a good reason, a belief that I was serving people better as a result. The sparring was an excellent example of that - I went from “no, hurting people a bit during a spar is harm, and therefore bad” to “This helps them down the line, makes them grow and improve. A few minor bumps, bruises, and cuts now could save their life tomorrow.”

An evolution in my beliefs, changing how I perceived the world, and the rules [Oath] operated under.

I should stick with someone who could protect me from silly situations like that. I glanced at the egg.

Maybe one day. I had the time, after all, I just needed to get to a place safe enough, for long enough. I was totally going to ask Night for a long break once I got back to Remus.

Which came to another aspect of how I saw [Oath]. I couldn’t be the one giving orders, but if someone else was doing the killing? I had few issues standing by. Like the Rangers executing Hesoid. Zero problems there. I didn’t feel the need to step into fights, not unless someone asked me for help or the “fight” was just a slow torture.

The last part wasn’t [Oath] enforced, just how I saw things.

The pirates hadn’t been the same as the gnoll. I had every reason to believe that all of the pirates actively meant me harm. The pirate captain had ordered his troops to murder me, I’d told them how to surrender, or indicate they were out of the fight, and from there, it was reasonable to assume that I was being attacked, and I responded in force.

Even the poor pirate I’d used as a meat shield - he was an attacker at first, and when he became a thick, renewable fleshy shield, he was still an attacker. I was throwing him in front of blades, but that style of attack was legitimate. The only grey area that I wasn’t entirely sure about, was if it was ethical to keep healing him, and keep him alive.

There was something to be said about “Not using my healing to effectively torture someone”, but in the end, he’d been one of the survivors. The fact that I hadn’t been penalized for my actions told me that I believed in life, above all.

Now, helping a torturer? Fuck no. That’d never be me.

That being said, I couldn’t grab random passersby to use as meat shields. There wasn’t too much difference between stabbing someone with a spear, and throwing someone else in the way of a spear. Not when the person in question wasn’t trying to hurt me.

I’d be shocked if anyone with the same baseline [Oath] that I had would think differently.

Which brought up some thought-provoking situations. Some impossible situations as well, ones where I’d get backed into a corner because of [Oath] and had no way to escape.

Invisible bystander in the way of my beams? Even if I had no knowledge of them, accidentally murdering someone was still killing them, the ultimate harm. It sucked, but I doubted I’d find anyone willing to stand in front of me, completely invisible, and let themselves get murdered just so someone else would have a chance at killing me.

Much likelier was someone using an invisible hostage, but then again, an invisible hostage was generally worthless. The point of hostages was deterrence after all. If someone knew exactly what my [Oath] was, but somehow didn’t know about my Radiance magic, maybe they’d try it. Seemed unlikely. My Radiance magic was a lot more public than my [Oath].

Good to know that my protections extended to bystanders I didn’t know about. On one hand, it would be a pain to deal with. On the other, it gave me a certain peace of mind. I knew myself. I knew where I stood, what my values were. I had utter confidence in them, in the rock-solid knowledge that I was right.

The whole scenario seemed ridiculously far-fetched though.

Speaking of hostages. I couldn’t laser through them, but if someone else killed the hostages, that wasn’t on me. Like with the pirates. A solid wall of meat shields could cause me grief, but Radiance had strong pinpoint precision. Any spare leg, any trailing arm, any eyes poking over the side were fair game, and I could confidently blast those.

I shot at a pirate, and they slit the throat of a hostage?

Not my fault.

This was probably an area where I was close to the baseline of [Oath], where other people wouldn’t have the same flexibility and leeway. I only took responsibility for my direct actions. I took no responsibility at all for the actions other people took, or the knock-off effects of my actions.

Healed a serial killer? They strike again the next night?

Not my fault. People were responsible for their own actions.

It was unlikely, but given my lifespan, inevitable that one day I’d have a patient, that over the course of me treating them I’d discover they were committing terrible crimes. That would be a tricky day, with my vow to keep patient information confidential clashing with the need and duty to stop them.

I’d figure that one when I came to it. I had some vague ideas, that if I started exploring now I’d never leave this bath.

One situation I’d covered before - someone who wasn’t currently attacking me, but was about to. [Oath] didn’t demand I be stupid. Someone who was clearly about to attack me was fair game.

How did all this jive with “I will only take up my knife to defend my patient or myself”? My current interpretation seemed to be more of a “Punish people attacking me” or “Stop people attacking me” rather than “Do anything needed to protect myself and my patients.”

At the same time, I could already take extraordinary measures to protect myself and my patients. The way the current fight had shaken out had demonstrated the edges of those measures. The only thing my ethics and morales barred me from doing, related to life and death fights, was seriously harming other people.

Broken bones and below? Yeah, sorry, girl’s gotta live. I could patch them up after.

Oh sure, there were the parts about not charging people to learn medicine, and keeping a patient’s health information confidential. I seriously doubted that those would ever be important in a fight, and for practical purposes, I was thinking about the harm clause, and the edges of it.

Time for some trickier problems.

What could I do about someone who’d been taken over by a shimagu, but was currently restrained and unable to harm me? Could I heal them to death?

Assuming, of course, that I couldn’t talk the shimagu out of the body, or bluff a threat or something.

My instincts sharply veered towards “no”, although I was deeply conflicted on the matter. Like, yes, it could easily be argued that the person who’d been taken prisoner by the shimagu was my patient. The line ‘I will apply all measures that are required to my patients’ demanded that I heal them, that I fix and restore them to full health, necessitating the removal of the shimagu. There was also the line “I will defend the patients under my care from harm and injustice”, and yikes, being held in perpetual slavery was one hell of an injustice.

Flipping it on its head for a moment though.

‘I will not discriminate who I heal based on class, sex, race, what gods they pray to, nor by any other means’ strongly pointed towards treating the shimagu as a patient. They were an intelligent race of creatures, and it was a cruel twist of fate that forced them to be a parasite. I didn’t have all the details, but if I was told that shimagu required a host to live, like most parasites? I’d totally believe it. I should follow up on that thought.

Two patients, strongly linked, and healing one would harm the other.

Well, minor correction.

Healing the shimagu would do almost nothing.

Healing the host would kill the shimagu in cold blood.

‘Healing is my art.‘

When I was making my class, I’d firmly rejected the notion of reverse healing, of getting skills that perverted my healing into a force of destruction. Healing an intelligent creature to death screamed like a violation of that ideal. Mostly. I was still fully comfortable healing a shimagu to death when attacked.

Where did I come down on healing shimagu who were just going about their business?

I was no great arbiter of justice, in spite of my job. I was no great heroine, in spite of nearly taking [The Rising Dawn] as a class. I was, fundamentally, a healer. What was the healer’s answer to this problem?

When in doubt, medical ethics had strong guidelines.

Beneficence. I should act in the best interest of the patient. This one was generally easy, extra-so since my skills leaned heavily towards helping, with limited ability to harm. The two patients had conflicting best interests though, and I was trying to properly thread the needle here.

Autonomy. A patient had the right to choose their treatment. This was the principle that I, quite frankly, had the least attachment to, and was the weakest of the lot. My healing aura automatically helped heal people, and I’d often blasted my heal with [Wheel of Sun and Moon] with no regard to who was inside of it, their injuries, or if they wanted healing or not. I’d also heal people if I believed it was for the greater good, like in Perinthus, that old man who didn’t want to be healed. I’d healed him anyways, because the greater good of the community outweighed his wishes.

I paid some lip service to the principle. When the one-eyed gnoll hadn’t wanted healing initially, I hadn’t forced the issue. I’d let him go.

Not exactly a great guideline to what the right decision was.

Justice. Allocating scarce resources to where they would do the most good. Important in Perinthus, important in mass casualty events, but the only real impact it had on my life at this point was deciding where I should go on Sentinel missions. I had enough stats and skills to be able to blow through nearly any healing problem, barring being caught in a war or something. This principle didn’t help decide what the right decision was.

Nonmaleficence. I shouldn’t be the cause of harm. Well, this one was pretty clear. Option one was murder. Option two was having someone continue to be imprisoned.

As much as I’d like to say death before slavery, as much as I fought being tied down and bound myself, I wasn’t going to pretend that being a slave was worse than death. Not in my books. There was a reason I didn’t try to murder every slave owner in Remus. There was a reason I healed slaves, then didn’t try to break them out of slavery. From some angles, I should. From others?

I was a healer. My fight against slavery was slower, gentler. Less likely to succeed. I pressured people not to have slaves, I refused to use them myself. But if I wanted to fight every slave owner in Remus?

I’d have to start with Kallisto, and probably Julius, Night, and the rest of the Sentinels to start off with. The institution was deeply ingrained in society, and uprooting it was the work of a lifetime.

Many, many, many lifetimes. Good thing I had those, and the ability to slowly make changes that would persist. Unlike so many rebellions that were brutally put down, or even if they had succeeded, there would just be more of the same. No, I’d need wealth and power to influence changes

Focus.

When push came to shove, [Oath] would probably let me heal a random passerby of a shimagu without penalty. It was a sufficiently grey area, but not a super dark one. However, my own ethics pointed strongly that such an action, even if permitted by my [Oath], wasn’t correct. [Oath] and my ethics weren’t totally intertwined. They weren’t always going to align exactly.

Shimagu were people, and I wasn’t in the business of dishing out as much death as I could. I chose life.

It was the harder path.

It galled me to end up at that conclusion. Let me flip it on its head, see if I came to a different conclusion.

What if a shimagu was trying to take me over? Was that enough harm to myself to become self-defense?

Maybe… not…

No wait, yes it was, I was a dumbass. I’d utterly steamrolled the pirates for trying something similar, although the first ones had held a knife at my throat, and then the captain had ordered them to kill me.

Then again, it was a blessedly moot point. No shimagu would ever try to take over a healer that could delete them with a flicker of a thought, and the moment they tried to cause harm to anyone else, I could use that as justification to burn them out of my body.

Right. All in all, I felt safe from my body being invaded, my own will being violated.

With all that being said, as much as I was pontificating about shimagu being allowed to live, I hated their model. Total bodyjacking? Slavery of the worst sort?

No, fuck them with all the rusty knives I could find.

Now, when the host body of a shimagu was badly hurt, and I needed to choose which one would live? Or heck, maybe it was a case of “both could die”?

It wasn’t quite the case of “save the mother or save the baby” - thank goodness modern Earth medicine made that a practically moot question - but there were parallels.

When given a choice who to heal, and I could only pick one, save one? I could use my own judgement, and “terrible body-jacking slaver” ended up near the bottom of my priority list.

With that being said, they were still on my list of “people to heal”, because I swore not to discriminate. “I dislike how you’re forced to live” wasn’t on my list of “reasons not to heal someone.”

Now, shimagu infesting a monster or beast of some sort? Yeah, go nuts. I wasn’t exactly big on cow’s rights, except perhaps the cow’s right to end up in my stomach. A shimagu wanted to take over a cow, t-rex, bear, shark, or something else?

Please, be my guest. I’d even happily heal them up if they were living like that, with a smile on my face. Unless they tried to eat me.

It was a dragon-eat-dinosaur-eat-human-eat-cow-eat-grass world out there.

There was the added case of “Ok, you’re a shimagu. I’ve got a perfectly good tiger body right here. Leave the person and go to the tiger, or else.”

Hopefully the threat would be enough.

I almost wanted to deliberately go around, trying to provoke as many shimagu as I could. “Oooh, look at me! Big scary healer! I’ma get you!”

Now, if they ran away? Not much I could do.

If they took a swing at me?

A flicker of thought, and there’d be one less shimagu in the world.

I recognized that there was some level of cognitive dissonance going on. On one hand, I considered myself a healer, a lifesaver. On the other, I was planning out the best ways to provoke people I disliked into attacking me, so I’d feel justified in killing them. The cognitive dissonance had always been there, but it was getting stronger. Bigger. More obvious.

Ever since I’d been asked to kill that goblin encampment. Ever since I took a job as a Ranger, as a Sentinel, with a healing mindset.

There might be - scratch that, there will be - problems for me down the line because of all this. I… probably wasn’t the most stable and well-adjusted individual. Being away from home and stability for so long hadn’t helped.

With my body count, it’d be frankly alarming if I was.

I was clearly in shimagu territory at this point, and could assume that the bodyjackers lurked around every corner. This made it relatively easy here and now. Flicker a heal at attackers, then if that didn’t work, murder them dead.

What about when I returned home?

I had more than a little Artemis inside of me. I would still probably blast first, and ask questions later. If anyone was stupid enough to attack a level 400+ Sentinel. If I, in full control of my mental facilities, got attacked by a random mugger in Arminium, and killed them. Then it turned out they were controlled by a shimagu the entire time? I would probably eat one of the milder [Oath] penalties - but it was still a violation. If I had to guess, I’d just lost an [Oath] level and feel sick. No pain, no mass loss of levels, nothing. Still, accidental murder - even legally defensible in most situations - was still the death of a person, and I’d beat myself up viciously over it.

More situations!

What about Hunting? I now knew about Void mages, and the potential danger they represented. Was Hunting an active threat? Was the unknowing, unintentional, random nature of his danger enough to rise to the level where I could do something about it? Or was he, in a nutshell, innocent, and not worthy of being taken down?

That was a little easier - he’d done nothing wrong. Existence wasn’t a crime, but I’d be having a long talk with Night and the rest of the Sentinels about him. Heck, Hunting could join in - knowing what sort of threat he posed, he might be able to find a solution himself! Or just, like, retire to somewhere far away or something.

What about, oh, evil Destruction? Had a ton of power, was overlooking a city, was going to unleash a gigantic skill? By some fluke, I was there, and out of range of the skill entirely. I could kill evil Destruction, and stop the skill, but in no way was I at risk of being harmed by it. There was no self-defense.

Someone else with the same [Oath] might be ok doing it. I’d never considered theoretical or future patients to be patients though. I was extremely close to obeying only the letter of the [Oath] in this case, with no added spirit, so to speak. Otherwise, I’d be stuck in a never-ending loop, running around from place to place in a single city, constantly trying to heal people. Constantly working my magic, just in case. Looking for those new, future patients.

Let’s see, just how badly that logic would’ve screwed me up in the past. I wouldn’t have been able to escape the dwarves, I would’ve died in the guardian fight, I would’ve been trapped on the frontlines the first time I showed up, I would’ve been trapped in Arminium with its huge population, I would’ve never been able to leave Aquiliea the first time, I would’ve…

Yeah. I would be so fucked if I didn’t have the rule of “People I can see, right here, right now.”

Future patients weren’t patients.

Back to the evil Destruction question.

Without him attacking me, without a patient to directly defend, I believed “First, do no harm” would apply.

Now, that might not stop me from trying to kill him. But I’d do so with the full knowledge that the action would cause the worst [Oath] violation possible, one that would make the most recent break seem like child’s play.

After all, the gnoll’s body was trying to murder me. It was still an [Oath] violation, but it was one hell of a mitigation.

Which brought me to another idea - I had “layers” of violations so to speak, from “This is such a tiny, technical violation as to not be worth it” all the way to “This is the worst possible.” There was granularity and nuance. Not all violations were the same. Killing a dozen orphans in cold blood wasn’t on the same level as accidentally cutting someone with a knife, and the penalities I faced reflected that.

Another interesting aspect to [Oath] - I had to make the attempt. I had to try to heal people.

I didn’t need to fight particularly hard against being restrained. Something as simple as a hand on my shoulder, stopping me from going? Being picked up and carried away?

I was right on the letter of things, the baseline. “Oh no, I’m trying to heal this person, but I’ve been grabbed and am getting carried away. Oh well.”

It’d helped me numerous times with the Rangers in Perinthus, and generally on the road.

At the same time, I’d observed that I’d been half-trapped by the dwarves, and the patient that I knew was there. I’d believed that I needed to try and save the giant during the battle of the guardians.

What were the differences? Where was my line drawn?

Well. The dwarf - and whoever I’d turned my back on in Perinthus were easy. I went for immediate, real patients in front of me, and that extended to “There is someone I know is hurt right past this unlocked door.”

That was a fascinating thought. I decided to explore it more. Solid wall? Nope. Locked door? Same problem as a solid wall.

Like, obviously if I could go over the wall, it wasn’t a solid wall. But that’s where my line was drawn. “Accessible” patients, I suppose was the criteria I was using.

What made a patient accessible? Well, I suppose I needed to be able to get to them. In the fight with the guardians, fallen trees and rocks hadn’t stopped me. I’d just gone around or over them. I’d been stopped by Galeru, the Rainbow. At that point, I wasn’t able to go further - and the giant had died shortly after.

Quick side-note - trying, and failing wasn’t penalized. I had to put forth my best foot. Success wasn’t mandatory. I could believe a naive, new healer might believe otherwise, but they’d quickly change their mind, or be penalized into oblivion by [Oath].

I had a bit of ego regarding my healing prowess. I kept myself humble by reminding myself that I couldn’t heal everyone or fix everything. Lule and the dragonfire was a good example of that.

What did all of the cases of people restraining me, and I thought it was ok, have in common?

Well. It was almost purely Rangers. I couldn’t think of another person who’d successfully stopped me.

Or rather, I could - the dwarf guard. Crucially, I didn’t consider that a “valid” stop though, and I’d hung around until I knew the patient was better.

Which had a nice side-note. I could delay on healing, as long as I wasn’t abandoning the patient. “Oi, wait a minute” was valid.

Otherwise, like, I would need to stop spars the moment the first cut occurred.

Focus.

Meditating on the people “allowed” to hold me back, that I’d accept? Yeah, it had to be someone I knew and trusted. Random strangers weren’t enough.

Would I accept the elves holding me back?

Awarthril and Kiyaya, yes. Aegion and Cordamo? Not at all.

Serondes? Probably yes.

I allowed small, physical acts of restraint. Being told “No don’t do that.” wasn’t enough. It had to be physical.

At the same time, a hand on my shoulder was enough. I didn’t need to struggle and fight against other people to get to my patients. Be a little counter-productive.

At the same time, I couldn’t really ask to be restrained. It had to be organic.

Everything was crystalizing towards a single idea. I’d been feeling around at the edges, and I softly verbalized it, an ideal I was living by.

“I will not harm those who are innocent.”

I waited a moment, believing that I’d get some notifications, an update and upgrade to [Oath].

Nothing.

Damn.

I suppose “I will not harm those who are innocent” was simply a subsection of “First, do no harm”, which led me down another train of thought.

Although, was that correct? Was that the proper interpretation of how I saw the world?

Yes, but no. A hardened criminal, worst of the worst? I’d leave them be. No, my “innocence” examination had more to do with people who were trying to harm me.

“I will not harm those who are not trying to harm me.” Was a better interpretation of how I saw the interplay of those two lines of my Oath. I’d been unconsciously following that principle my entire life. I just had words for it.

In my heart of hearts I knew that someone being body-controlled wasn’t the one trying to kill me. Or, most of the time wasn’t.

What if I was in a war, and one side was objectively the Bad Guys? Ignoring for a moment that war was never that simple, that one side was rarely objectively wrong, and that winners wrote the history, just a fantastical black and white “bad guys VS good guys” fight. Could I heal the bad guys?

That was an easy yes. I healed everyone. Heck, the dwarves had possibly been the bad guys in their war, and I had no compunction about healing them. A person in pain was a person in pain, and everyone deserved health, as a fundamental right.

All of this redoubled my resolve to not let people know that I had the [Oath], although I did still think it was useful, and should be spread. A double-edged sword. The greater good would be served by it spreading, even though it would make my life harder.

Such was the fate of being a healer.

However, thinking about wars made me think of large battles. Upon some self-reflection, my rules did morph and change when it came to large-scale mass battles. If 80,000 people were clashing on a battlefield, with spears stabbing, arrows flying, and uncountable skills being used, I recognized that wading right into the middle of it to try and heal everyone was pointless. I’d just get myself killed, and not be able to heal a fraction of the people I could otherwise.

No, first off, I was most likely neutral in the fight. Off to the side, there, present, trying to get as many people saved with [Cosmic Presence] as I could. Anyone who made it to me? Healed. Anyone who tried to interfere with the healing station I’d set up? Well, that was a clear and obvious violation of my patients. Same with trying to restrict access.

There were probably more nuances and rules to large scale battles and wars. I hadn’t been in enough of them to properly figure them all out.

The cat was entirely out of the bag at this point, regarding [Oath]. I’d written down my [Oath] several times, I’d shared it with multiple healers across cultures, and my books were being copied and spread. Only thing I could do was adopt the Sentinel Dawn persona hard, and hope not too many people remembered that I was Elaine.

Should only take, what, 200 years?

I was almost entirely clean at this point, and I figured I should check on my levels.

[*Ding!* Congratulations! [The Dawn Sentinel] has leveled up to level 419->420! +3 Dexterity, +24 Speed, +24 Vitality, +170 Mana, +170 Mana Regen, +48 Magic power, +48 Magic Control from your Class per level! +1 Free Stat for being Human per level! +1 Mana, +1 Mana Regen from your Element per level!]

Well, ok then. I guess the healing I did while cursed and being murdered was good for something, namely, getting my level back. Yay?

Wait shit. What happened to [The Stars Never Fade]?

Oh good. Looked like the minimum level was 1, and losing a level didn’t lose the skill. Still, I wanted to level it up… just in case.

I wonder if any gnolls were willing to have me experiment on them? “Sorry for killing your partner, here’s an extra 15-30 years of life” was one hell of an apology. Plus, it let me see how the skill worked in a way that, well, putting it bluntly, if it went horribly wrong I wouldn’t lose someone close to me. They were somewhat canine-like, and working on them could help bridge the gap between how [The Stars Never Fade] currently worked, and getting it to work on Kiyaya.

Speaking of, what did I think with [The Stars Never Fade], old age, and [Oath]?

That one was easy. Getting old was a natural process, the road nature and the gods had fated we all take. I’d happily heal an old man of every disease and injury they had, but age itself? The inexorable march of time?

Time came for almost all of us. I didn’t feel obligated to stop it. It was a skill for me to dispense how I saw fit, a gift. Not an obligation.

People didn’t need a second life. People didn’t need youth, not in the same way the needed and deserved life and health.

And when Father Time came knocking? I’d done my job perfectly.

Healers didn’t stop death. We simply delayed it.

Death came for us all.

I was lucky in that I knew the manner of my death, just not the time. Screaming, [Oath] having driven me into an impossible situation.

I’d happen one day.

I shook my head, refocusing on my skills.

My capped skills recapped, which was a relief.

[*ding!* [Cosmic Presence] leveled up! 285->287]

Well, I did complain that [Cosmic Presence] was hard to level up. Mortal injuries not healing in a fight was great for it though.

[Sunrise] sadly suffered the loss of level penalty.

[*ding!* Congratulations! [Butterfly Mystic] has leveled up to level 344->345! +8 Strength, +8 Dexterity, +70 Speed, +70 Vitality, +70 Mana, +70 Mana Regen, +70 Magic power, +70 Magic Control from your Class per level! +1 Free Stat for being Human per level! +1 Strength, +1 Mana Regen from your Element per level!]

Once again my levels yo-yoed on me. I wasn’t going to complain.

[*ding!* [Solar Flare] leveled up! 26->44]

Still not complaining. I needed to figure out how to merge [Solar Flare] with [Sun’s Heart]. Probably just… leveling it a bunch, and it’d naturally merge together. Not much I could do there, besides maybe asking Serondes to make Lava pillars for me to burn while we snogged.

Heh.

It’d be hot.

[Scintillating Ascent] was again a victim of the [Oath] penalty, but that brought in an interesting question.

What had happened to the minor metamorphosis that I went through each time I leveled up?

[Pristine Memory]’s to the rescue! I reviewed what had happened grimacing as I replayed the exquisit torture I’d gone through, each agony I’d suffered perfectly preserved and catalogued. That would absolutely be visiting me in my dreams, and I idly plucked at my fingers again. I slapped my hand.

No.

Bad Elaine.

No starting bad habits.

I went back to checking if I’d felt any metamorphosis during the [Oath] penalty, annnndd… nothing. No change. I looked down at my hand, using my memories to compare before and after.

No change.

I’d need to double-check the next time I leveled up, but - silver lining? Did I just get a free level of becoming prettier?

[*ding!* [Pristine Memories] leveled up! 217->218]

If reviewing the horrific torture I went through was the requirement for leveling up [Pristine Memories], it was going to stay at a low level.

[*ding!* [Egg Incubation] leveled up! 46->50]

Extra credit for protecting the egg!

[*ding!* [Oath of Elaine to Lyra] leveled up! 374->376]

Ok, what?! The only thing I could think of was healing all the gnolls, combined with my thoughts and meditations on the subject had paid off.

[*ding!* [Sentinel’s Superiority] leveled up! 394->396]

Yup, Sentinels were the best.

[*ding!* You’ve unlocked the General skill [Unbearably Smug]. Would you like to replace a skill with it? Y/N]

Look. System. I’ve had a long day. Enough with the sass, please.

[*ding!* [Persistent Casting] leveled up! 290->293]

I hated to say it, but I was getting significantly more experience than usual from this fight. I might’ve been the two against one nature of it, but I had this feeling, born from long experience, that it was whatever curse that had slowed down my healing that was responsible for the experience. Not only was it a harder fight, but it was more drawn out.

With a sigh, finished the last idle scrub, standing up from the now-brown waters, a wrinkled raisin emerging from the depths of the sea. Kiyaya perked up, the loyal wolf having been with me every moment.

“Good girl.” I whispered at her, then started to get dressed.

Time for food.

I was starving.