Chapter 4-103: Rage Inside the Machine (1/2)

“Her name is Edwina Clark. She’s a witch with ties to both the temple of Eryl and the Imprusar. Tragic backstory of sister raped by an orc, hated non-humans ever since, takes mercenary work related to killing and humiliating them. Probably been dumped by halvyr and elves in the past too, no doubt,” Shiv informed Sama later that night over the phone in her normal flat, cutting voice, perhaps with just a tiny hint of sarcasm there.

“Eryllians?” Sama repeated. “Wonderful. First the racist men, now the racist women.” Eryllians considered themselves the ‘true’ Amazons, and were ultra-feminists with delusions of leadership, and aggressive mindsets. There were only five hundred of them worldwide, of course, but there was literally no end to the number of oppressed, beaten, abused, and humiliated women happy to make a pact with the Storm Queen and get the strength, power, and beauty to taken on all their oppressors.

As Amazons couldn’t be spellcasters, they depended on the Storm Queen’s faithful and associated Casters to fill that role... but they never accepted the domination of the clergy over those who swore the Pacts, and as a result, a ‘secular’ force, such as it was, actually dominated the Eryllian faith.

While Eryllians weren’t as rabid about being humanocentric as the Imprusar were, only humans could become Amazons, which meant they were unquestionably superior to non-humans, who could thus only serve Eryl’s true faithful.

The fact that an experienced, well-trained Amazon was one of the strongest and most dangerous personal combatants on the planet made sure their voices were heard, and the fact that the number of Amazons would literally never run out as long as there were weak women looking for strength meant you didn’t cross Amazons lightly. They took their sisterhood bonds very seriously, and pissing off one of them often involved pissing off all of them, and so earning a whole bunch of very dangerous opponents.

On the other hand, the Amazons of the Good Goddesses considered the Eryllians arrogant bitches with sticks up their arses, and rather embarrassing to boot. This was a sore point with the Eryllians, as Amana, Flora, Sylune, Nuava, and Aethra all got five hundred Amazons, too, which meant the former were vastly outnumbered, and the latter typically had a lot of enthusiastic friends to call on, while the Eryllians really rubbed just about everybody the wrong way.

There was an Amazon temple in town, which recruited any and all women enthusiastically, as long as Pacts were open to be sworn. On the other hand, there weren’t that many Amazons actually in the city, as Amazons were meant to fight, and so got their initial training and were sent out to beat on things.

Eryllians, on the other hand, were more about dominating active governments (that didn’t throw them right out) then going and picking fights and attempting to liberate oppressed women. The Storm Queen wanted women to rule, and the best way to do that was to dominate existing governments, not just empower rabble-rousers in revolutions and chaotic situations.

It was not a stretch to say that Eryllians getting killed under the ‘Warlock conflict’ laws was a pretty common thing, and their attempts to get into positions of power in a modern society were pretty much ignored. Trying to do so by force ended up getting them dead from all directions, and their outspoken sexism and racism meant getting into power on a populist basis didn’t happen, either.

All of that terribly frustrated the Church, of course, and naturally enough everyone was responsible for the situation but them. The situation being what it was, a lot of Eryllians undertook mercenary work to pay the bills, having remarkably few qualms about beating up just about anyone, since few people had qualms about seeing them get beat up in return.

Sama was one of those people. She’d been beating up Amazons in general, and Eryllians in particular, on Fight Night for nearly two years now. Amazons and Hags got along like fire and water at first sight, and the Amazons always sent out someone ready and eager to try and get revenge on her for womanhandling them every Tuesday. They were supposed to be the ultimate women warriors, not some disfigured Hag with no chest and a laugh like screaming demons dragging shrieking nails down sinslate.

Sama didn’t mind teaching them repeated lessons about underestimating opponents and controlling their emotions. It also earned her a good amount of money from the bets, and she drew a lot of crowds always impressed to see a woman beating up Amazons...

“Why was Mohono a target, and was it because of me?” Sama asked calmly, rapidly thinking through all of this, and how a Witch was involved.

“He seems to have been randomly chosen by her, as she just thought he looked revolting,” Shiv answered.

Mohono? Mohono had a wonderful singing voice, had an endless tolerance for tall jokes, and really was a rather mild-mannered, long, tall drink of purple puissance.

“And then she looked into his parentage, and it seems his father’s deeds really set her off.”

“Ah.” Well, given the tragic nature of his birth, and the fact his father was a shape-changing ogre mage (Note: In this instance, this is pronounced oh-gur mah-gee, not mayge), he was being held responsible for his father’s conduct as a living example of the unclean origins of non-humans.

Sure, that was a more than sufficient excuse to kill him in a lot of people’s eyes... or at the very least, they wouldn’t care at all if he died fighting in a bloodsport game under mysterious circumstances.

“She was tasked by her employer to kill a non-human, and make it public and messy and a show of their decadence and corruption.”

“Ignoring that ninety percent of the crowd is human, got it.” Hey, double standards for everyone were the norm, Sama mused grimly. “You got a name?”

“I got a name.”

“Does it point to a certain arsehole sequestered up in a slum lord’s house down on the river?”

“In an amazing coincidence, said person does seem to domicile there. Indeed, they may have had certain romantic entanglements in the past.”

“Some people really do have no taste. Well, that’s fine, I suppose.”

“Would you like to arrange to do something about it?” Shiv asked, only a little hesitantly.

“I might be a little ahead of you in that department,” Sama said conversationally.