NOVEL NEXT Chapter 85: Do We Need A Mech-Size Library Card?
The library had rapidly become Mikayla's favourite place in Cloudscraper Academy. Nya had introduced her to it while showing her around the campus, but had treated it rather perfunctorily. Mikayla suspected that her roommate was too accustomed to just snapping her fingers and having a servant fetch her any book she might need.
Naturally, once she had some free time, the first thing she'd done was rush back to the library and sunk her metaphorical teeth into the history section.
Over the past two weeks, Mikayla had been quite enjoying a compilation of accounts from sixteen hundred years ago, detailing how a massive population of yaoguai had come north, fleeing their homeland - a place originally named Keodudai, but which now bore the worrying epithet of 'Monster Nation'. The refugees had settled along the eastern coast of Guili, but the rapid reestablishment of the yaoguai nation brought them into contact with the beastfolk country of Kuna to the west. Unsurprisingly, war had followed, and she was quite eager to find out how it ended.
But now it was time to adjust her reading list. The new top priority was
The Life And Legacy Of Rosebush Huntress Yevgenia.
Mikayla slipped into a private room, so that no one would ask awkward questions about why she was reading history books in her Armour.
It might have been a humorous sight, a bulky and spiky death knight poring over a thick tome bound in leather. But it definitely wasn't normal, even for this place.
Once Nocturnus was set up and watching through her eyes, they cracked it open.
A Foreword, by Matvey Sokoloff
"You know who that is?" Mikayla asked, pointing at the name.
"Haven't the foggiest, lass,"
This is a chronicle of the legacy that Yevgenia, the Rosebush Huntress, patron and founder of the City of Roses, left behind so that our glorious city may ever prosper.
Yevgenia's philosophy was that power is, always has been, and always will be the only thing that truly matters, and we as her followers must take this to heart. Her following began during the Kaiju Collapse, when our fearful ancestors swore fealty to her in exchange for her protecting them against the rampaging Kaijus. However, we must not forget that Yevgenia never asked for this loyalty to be paid to her. She did not demand obsequience, she never indulged in the frivolities of the supposed nobility that reside in our new home of Guili. She was the sheepdog who protected her flock, and our worship is her rightful reward for her service.
Likewise, those of us who follow in her footsteps, who become Yevgenias, must remember that she, as the perfect being, has granted us a great honour by permitting us to follow The Template. Those of us who would be her successors must adhere to it rigorously so that we might honour her with our devotion to her example.
To be a Yevgenia is to be a superior being, the alpha among the wolves, the cock among the hens. It is to take upon yourself the duty of safeguarding the lesser people from the threats of the Kaiju Coast. You must at all times strive to live up to her example, to carry on her legacy in every way. This is not merely an act of worship, it is the inherently righteous way to live your life.
Chronicled within this book are accounts of the greatest feats of the Rosebush Huntress, from her days as a mercenary, to becoming an assassin, to her exploits during the Kaiju Collapse, and the pivotal role she played in establishing the City of Roses. At no point did she made a mistake or miscalculation, and this is the example that we must strive to live up to when we declare ourselves to be following in her footsteps.
"This is absurd. Never made a mistake? Oh, the stories I could tell to disprove that one!" Nocturnus' baffled voice interrupted Mikayla's reading after only a few paragraphs. "How did Yevgenia ever permit someone to write this drivel about her?! I don't believe it. I refuse to believe it,"
"Nocty, relax," Mikayla tried to interrupt, but the old ghost was working himself into a fury.
"Not the Yevgenia I knew! She would never! How am I suppose to relax when this is what she became after I -"
"Because this is all propaganda!" Mikayla shouted.
Nocturnus audibly blinked. ". . It is?"
"Have you ever heard it said, that history is written by the winners?"
"I have not. But I do not find it to be inaccurate,"
"Well, it's more complicated than that. There's an established narrative here. One that lauds Yevgenia as a goddess among men, one that weaponises her legacy and leverages it into a means of superiority. Truth is a fickle thing in history. Sometimes, the truth is whatever the person writing the history books wants it to be. I think that's what we're dealing with here,"
"But why? It's asinine," Nocturnus growled.
"Is it? Think about what we heard from Nya, about the modifications that turn a baby into 'a Yevgenia'. Those wouldn't be free. And Moonlight Rose is prestigious enough to sell for a premium. Which means only the rich families can afford to have their heirs become Yevgenias, who are culturally held up as being inherently
better
than everyone else. That's not a coincidence either, in fact, I bet a lot of money and effort has been put into propagating that narrative,"
"You didn't figure this out just now. You've thought it through too well," he accused her.
Mikayla nodded. "The clues have been all over the place. I couldn't miss them. By deifying Yevgenia and turning The Template into holy scripture, the wealthy and noble elite of Guili have created a ruling class out of her bones. A eugenic oligarchy,"
"I just don't understand how Yevgenia could have let all this happen," Nocturnus lamented.
Mikayla hummed. "When I first met her, Nya told me that Yevgenia didn't leave anything behind. No students, no children. No legacy. You knew her well. Does that sound like her?"
"Aye, it certainly does. She never cared to teach, or to lead. She was a thrill-seeker. A battle maniac. I asked her once, why she wouldn't take a student. She said that it sounded like a pain in the ass," Nocturnus chuckled.
"Now that, that's what we as historians call a primary source. You knew Yevgenia directly, so your word on what she's like is worth more than this book is,"
"How do you mean?"
"This book was written by people stitching together second-hand accounts of what they wanted her to be like. Editing her words to create a false legacy that they can claim is hers. In the historical tradition, we call that a secondary source. Because it's not what Yevgenia herself thought, it's what other people thought about her. Or, more specifically, what they
wanted
to think about her,"
"Huh. I see," Nocturnus rumbled.
"So, if we want the truth, we need a primary source. Someone who knew Yevgenia personally at the end of her life,"
"Impossible. Such a person would have to be at least two hundred years old. Only elves and faeries live that long," Nocturnus shook his head.
"Well, it's a good thing we know a faerie. Give me a sec," Mikayla turned off her Armour so that she could get her phone out of her pocket and open up the DM app that Asika had installed on it for her.
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.
[HEY ASIKA, WASSUP?]
The reply only took a few seconds. Which was just to be expected when you were testing someone whose brain functioned as a phone.
[NOT MUCH. GOT BACK FROM INVESTIGATING ANOTHER SPATIAL ANOMALY YESTERDAY. YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT THIS IS?]
The message was accompanied by a picture of a somewhat dirtied life-size statue of Twilight Sparkle.
Mikayla blinked at it for a moment.
[NOT A CLUE.]
she lied, swallowing the shame of her childhood.
[HEY, WEIRD QUESTION, BUT DO THE FAERIES HAVE ANY RECORDS OF YEVGENIA AT THE END OF HER LIFE? IS THERE ANYONE WHO KNEW HER THEN STILL AROUND?]
[THE ROSEBUSH HUNTRESS? PROBABLY. BUT I CAN'T JUST GIVE OUT STUFF LIKE THAT BECAUSE A FRIEND ASKED. WHY DO YOU NEED THEM?]
[GRANDPA IS WORRIED THAT HIS EX-GIRLFRIEND TOOK THEIR BREAKUP SO BADLY THAT SHE STARTED A CULT OF PERSONALITY AND MESSED UP EIGHT GENERATIONS OF KIDS.]
Mikayla couldn't help but chuckle as she offered Asika her best misinterpretation of events.
[NOCTURNUS ADOPTED YOU?]
. . Well, turnabout was fair play.
[YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN.]
[UNFORTUNATELY, YES I DO. I'LL ASK AROUND, SEE IF I CAN TURN UP ANYTHING?]
[THAT WOULD BE GREAT, THANKS.]
Mikayla paused.
[HEY, ISN'T THE COSMIC SCALES SUPPOSED TO DEAL WITH STUFF LIKE THE YEVGENIA SUCCESSOR CULT?]
[THE COSMIC ISLES' OFFICIAL POLICY ON THE CITY OF ROSES IS THAT WE DON'T APPROVE, BUT IT'S OUTSIDE OUR JURISDICTION SO WE CAN'T INTERFERE.]
She could just see Asika's wan smile.
[THERE ARE OTHER GODS IN GUILI WHO ARE INVESTED IN MAINTAINING THE STATUS QUO. WE CAN'T GET INVOLVED WITHOUT BREAKING THE TREATIES BETWEEN GODS, AND DOING THAT WOULD PUT THE WHOLE ATARAXIAN SYSTEM IN JEOPARDY. THE HIGHER-UPS ALL AGREE THAT IT'S NOT WORTH IT.]
Mikayla frowned.
[AND YOU?]
[HAVEN'T DONE ENOUGH COST-BENEFIT ANALYSIS TO SAY EITHER WAY. I'M A MODERATOR, NOT AN ADMINISTRATOR; IT'S NOT MY PROBLEM. MIGHT AS WELL ASK WHAT YOU THINK ABOUT THE BORDER DISPUTES IN THE SCORCHED COPPER DESERT.]
That was evasive. Then again, sometimes Asika was just like that. It was so easy to accept the facade of a peppy teenager that the faerie put up and forget about the calculating digital mind behind it.
[I SEE. WELL, TELL ME WHAT YOU FIND OUT? LATER!]
She signed off, only to hear Nocturnus cough.
"Who are you calling 'grandpa'?"
"Friends get nicknames!" She deactivated the Black Knight before Nocturnus could object, leaving the private room and returning the book to the library's front desk.
"Thank you for actually bringing this back, and not just leaving it lying around," the librarian muttered.
"I've spent enough time in libraries to know to be polite. I would have just put it back on the shelf, but I haven't figured out the filing system yet," Mikayla apologised.
"Well, feel free to come back and learn all about it at any time. Can I help you with anything else?" The librarian was warming up to her! It was always good to have friends at the library!
". . Actually, yeah. There's another thing I need to do some research on. What can you recommend to me about harpies?"
This was how Mikayla found a book titled
The Savage Bird-Women of Lantian: A Compilation Of Accounts
.
Just looking at the table of contents gave Mikayla her first clue; the accounts were divided into Pre-Kaiju and Post-Kaiju. A quick cross-reference with a map told her that Lantian was a region to the northeast of the Cloudfingers, at the southern end of the Kaiju Coast but not within the 'civilised lands' that were protected by Cloudscraper Academy. If Guili was like a funhouse mirror version of China back on Earth, Lantian was the Raibalie counterpart of Mongolia.
The oldest accounts of harpies told an unflattering story; tribes that would accost and pillage travelling caravans. Some of the accounts were the memoirs of military generals, mostly beastkin, who had employed harpies as scouts and messengers, but there was a prevailing sentiment that, unlike the 'good and civilised' beastkin, harpies were essentially jumped-up monsters that had figured out how to parrot words but lacked true civility.
She had to skip over a particularly unflattering Yaoguai taxidermist who had concluded that harpies were in fact a breed of beastfolk, despite all arguments to the contrary, and this proved that beastfolk as a whole were 'lesser beings' compared to yaoguai or humans.
Overall, though, there seemed to have been a prevailing sentiment that harpies were monsters, not people. Tools to be exploited at best, feral beasts to be put down on sight at worst.
But then Mikayla got to the delineation around the Kaiju Collapse. The first account told of how a party of harpies had come to plead for help in holding off an assault of Kaijus on the harpy enclaves in Lantian.
Apparently, they had first been laughed at, then taken prisoner. The author of this section was of the opinion that monsters asking for help from people was a joke at best and most likely a poorly baited trap.
The subsequent account, though, detailed an experiment where the harpy ambassadors were held in proximity to deceased Kaijus, fed only meat from their corpses. No matter what they tried, unlike every other species of monster they performed similar tests on, the harpies did not turn into Kaijus. This entry ended with the author questioning if it was possible that a hundred generations of his predecessors had been wrong, and harpies were, in fact, not monsters at all.
This conclusion seemed to set the tone for the following years, up until the book's publication twenty years ago; the harpy nation - a phrase that was itself contested, whether or not the loose alliance between at least thirty different tribes of harpies constituted a 'nation' - had realised that, in the face of Kaijus, they were no longer able to ensure their independence and were now lobbying for their race to be recognised as part of the civilised lands.
"Damnit, where are my memes when I need them," Mikayla closed the book and rested her head in her hands. It wasn't exactly propaganda, but she could identify racist perspectives when she saw them. Nowhere in the book had there been an account from an actual harpy; it was all secondary sources, other people's perspectives. And she wasn't naive enough to take all that at face value - especially not after meeting Lydia. Even if they'd only known each other for five days, Mikayla felt confident in saying that the 'man-eating, stupid, savages' perception was inaccurate.
She needed something to clear her head. She'd gotten the information, but having to filter it through such obviously flawed perspectives was exhausting.
". . wonder if anyone's up for a game of Cuju? I wouldn't mind an excuse to kick something at Geum's head,"