in which the saintess discovers moral relativism, then discards it because it hurts her feelings

She had once asked Stormy how he was able to kill. She’d been twenty then, and he would never have a birthday again.

“Someone has to,” was his response.

None of that made sense to her. ‘Someone’ ‘had’ to? Why? According to whom? To what end? But by then, she knew that questioning him on that front would lead to empty response after empty response—which was to say ‘for the greater good’.

WHOSE good? Did that imply a good that was lesser? If so, was it that of the opposing side?

But now that she watched Topaz slip and fail to catch on to anything, Pebble got it.

Dying would stop him from committing crimes again. It was likely that, by letting him fall, she’d save more lives than the alternative.

Someone had to cull evil because that would make the world better. The greater good was that of everyone who wasn’t… bad. In that case, didn’t that imply that goodness necessitated evil acts to exist? Wasn’t evil the act of harming others for self-gain? In that case, weren’t they two sides of the same coin rather than opposites?

By the time she remembered the way physics worked, Pebble had lunged to catch Topaz. Due to the mud, she slipped as she tried to pull him back, thus plunging into the abyss. Then Alpherson caught her wrist at the last second. Then her sleeve tore. Then she plunged into the abyss again.

Had she been alone, her umbrella might’ve stuck to the cliff as she jabbed it in, but… well, she was holding onto an evil criminal of evil who did evil, and evil was heavy. The umbrella snapped in half.

This wasn’t good.

Talismans didn’t fare any better, being made of paper and all; they either dissolved or flew away the instant she took them out of her pockets.

This wasn’t good at all.

She might’ve been able to slide down the cliff’s surface, but that would mean letting go of Topaz.

If she held onto him and used her body to shield the fall, it’d probably put her out of commission for a month or two even with the emergency talismans, but at least…

…what?

What good would it do?

Pebble did so anyway.

She landed on a cloud.

It was cold.

It hurt.

Topaz seemed to concur, because he groaned, and not only because he’d tried (keyword tried) to switch them around at the last second. “Shit,” he said. “They told me snow would cushion it…”

Pebble sat up, then winced; she’d twisted her wrist. Around them was a cold, white, fluffy carpet. It was thick enough that they’d left Pebble-and-Topaz prints on their landing spots. “Snow?” Pebble echoed. Best not to mention the ‘they’ in case it was a slip of the tongue.

“Yeah… never seen it, huh?”

She shook her head. She’d never traveled enough to.

“Did you know about the cushion trick, at least?”

“The what?”

Topaz’s expression oozed contempt. “Are you a dumbass?”

“Yeah,” she said.

“No, seriously.”

“I’m being serious.” There was no way to use a healing talisman with this rain; it would’ve gotten soaked immediately. Besides, with how expensive they were, she’d only been able to afford two anti-death ones—emergencies only. She would’ve had to use all the healing ones at once to fix her broken bones while hoping she wouldn’t exceed the three-minute window the anti-death ones lasted for.

Topaz sat up, flinched, then lay back down. If he was trying to mask his pain, then he was doing a terrible job of it. If he was faking it to set up another trap, then Pebble would make it real soon. “This sucks,” he whispered. “Ahh, this sucks. I think I broke something. Hurts. Dying.”

Pebble rolled her eyes. “Oh, no. Want me to place a spell on the affected area while conveniently lowering my guard?”

“Please!”

But then she slapped a healing talisman on his stomach and he screamed something that was banned in many city-states, so she figured that it had to be real to some extent. “Can you climb?” She asked. “Alpherson is probably waiting for—”

“No, you—! I just told you I broke something!”

“So?”

“What the FUCK do you mean, so?”

“So you can’t go on quests without sleeping… can’t walk with broken bones… can’t prevent major injuries from a three-story fall. THREE, not ten. Then what on earth were you doing before banditry? Knitting?”

Topaz covered his face with his forearm. On a scale of Frell to Alpherson, he was somewhere in the middle when it came to muscle size, which was to say average for a warrior, which was to say that Pebble would lose if they arm-wrestled. “What is wrong with you? Why… help me? Are you stupid? Are you insane?”

“Was it a trap?” Pebble asked.

“Of course it was a trap!”

It took some time for her to get it—he was probably meant to “fall”, and then… give intel to his group? Wait for Alpherson and Pebble to go down and rescue him, only to be ambushed? Both of those plans sounded dumb. At least that confirmed that the snow cushion trick had been premeditated, as had the fall. “Sucks to be you, then. Why aren’t your friends ambushing me?”

“There is no ambush, goddammit. I’m supposed to take you down. I’m the strongest one in—did you just laugh?”

Pebble thought she’d done a good job of stifling it with her good sleeve, but apparently she’d thought wrong.

Rather than get mad at her mockery, Topaz raised his arm a bit, just enough to see her. “Oh, nice. I thought you were one of those ice queen types.”

Great—another guy calling her that because she wasn’t giggling and blushing all the time. “I hate ice magic.”

“No, I meant—” He snorted. “Whatever. Just heal me. I’ll pay you.”

“I’m doing that right now.”

“Not with that piece of paper. I mean actual magic, not stuff you buy at the market.”

More flashbacks. More red marks on a test. ‘Stay in your lane’. ‘Some people are not meant to be fighters’. ‘What’s wrong with mining, anyway?’

“A god made them, though.”

“Really now…”

“Really. Same guy who got possessed by the Demon King. You might not recognize divine magic, but you’ll feel it soon. It’ll keep you healthy until we can get to an actual doctor.”

Topaz glanced to the side. “No, I can. I’ve been on the receiving end plenty of times.”

“Ah…” Pebble had a hand over the healing talisman so it wouldn’t get (as) wet. This meant pressing her palm against Topaz’s deceptively toned stomach. Now no one could tell her that she’d never initiated contact with a man. “A veteran?”

“All of us, yeah.”

Meaning the bandit group. With how young he looked, he was probably one of those—a boy that believed in the greater good, killed for it, then returned to a world that had moved past him. The loved ones he’d fought for had ambitions now; all he could dream about was death. The boy they knew had perished on the battlefield. They’d probably grown distant, wary, It wouldn’t surprise her if someone had told him ‘I miss the old you’.

Broken and embittered, he’d probably sought solace among those like him. It was as common a tale as they went.

One healing talisman wasn’t enough. She had to use a second one.

“No sarcasm,” Topaz noted. “Wow. Did you really believe that?”

“Yeah.”

“But not the story of my poor sister?”

“I can tell when someone has killed. Something inside them breaks. It’s hard to explain.”

“Yeah,” he mumbled. No sarcasm on his end, either. “Everyone kills, though.”

“Uh…”

“Those who say that they don’t have others who do it for them. You can’t get to where you are without killing. Without destroying.”

“Is that your justification?”

He shrugged. “Call it whatever you want. You Saints are usually to blame, anyway.”

“That’s not—”

“It’s true.”

To argue with him would be a lost cause. So that was how he was able to kill. It was always someone else's fault. Pebble had asked Frell about his justification: his response had been to inquire if she felt bad after she stepped on an ant by accident. (She did.)

Pebble used a third talisman. She hunched her left shoulder to stifle her sneeze. “It’s the snow,” Topaz said. “It lowered the surrounding temperature. It’ll get warm and disgusting again soon, don’t worry.”

“Did you know the god of rain died?”

He snorted. “Really? Good.”

“They haven’t chosen a new one or something. Also, no, not good. Crops are dying because of it.”

“Why don’t you volunteer to ascend, then?”

“I don’t use… water magic…”

“Right…” Topaz sat up, batting her hand away. Rude. “I’m fine now. Thanks. Since my cover was blown, we can just part ways and pretend we never met?”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“I’m taking you hostage,” Pebble said. “Your shitty bandit friend group will show up sooner or later.”

“...huh?”

“The third talisman was poison. If I don’t give you an antidote every three hours, you’ll—”

“HUH!?”

“—turn into a rat.”

Predictably, he swung, turning nearby rain into an ice sword. Pebble caught it with her bare hand. Typically, that would’ve been a surefire way to lose her fingers, but she hadn’t fully healed him for a reason—and not only because talisman efficiency plummeted when she was the one using them.

Could venom even turn people into rats? Probably? Anyway, he seemed to at least believe that he’d been poisoned. The look on his face was toxic, for one. “You Saints are all scumbags.”

“Yeah. So?”

“They won’t come back for me. You’re wasting your time.”

“Then I have a meat shield in case of emergency.” Pebble stood up. The snow had already melted. She would’ve crushed the sword with her bare hands, but alas, she was only a frail mortal.

There was a non-zero chance that the bandits… ex-veterans could be wandering around, waiting for a chance to strike. After Topaz’s humiliation ritual, they’d probably decided against it—for now.

Despite his weakened state, Topaz’s strike had worsened the injury on her wrist. She could use her right hand to some extent, but she’d have to use a talisman or two without him noticing. At this rate, she’d run out of them…

He wobbled a bit as he stood up, using the sword as a makeshift cane. She offered her good hand. He took it. “I’ll get us back up,” he said. “One moment.”

Nearby rain began to crystalllize; as mist wafted around, an ice staircase began to form. “Trap,” Pebble said immediately.

“No, you dumb fuck. I know better by this point. Just like… don’t slip.”

Pebble tore a branch of a tree anyway. She might need a weapon soon.

She was neither disappointed nor surprised when, halfway up the staircase, an arrow whizzed by. The problem was that there wasn’t a lot of space to dodge. When she tried to grab the next one before it hit her, she slipped again—both the branch-as-a-cane and a stray arm saved her.

In fact, Topaz looked more surprised than her. “Oh. Never mind. They did come back.”

She was about to use him as a shield when an ice barrier materialized between them and the attackers. Pebble blinked.

“I’m protecting them from you. Now hurry.”

As they neared the top of the cliff, a rope hit Pebble square in the face. This made her cry out an obscenity, which caused Alpherson to say, “Saint Pebble! Thank the gods! The fall must’ve been shorter than I thought…”

His head and shoulders peeked from the edge.

“...never mind. Villain!”

Topaz held out a hand. “Wait, I’m not—holy shit.”

But Alpherson was already ripping a boulder off the side of the mountain with his bare hands. Before he caused an avalanche, Pebble clarified, “He’s fine! If he disobeys, he’ll turn into a rat.”

“Oh. Very well.” He tossed the boulder down the cliff. Topaz and Pebble whirled around, alarmed, but no one was squished in the process.

Pebble took the rope, then climbed. Topaz was next.

‘Thank the gods’, he said.

‘Holy shit’, he said.

One would’ve thought these types of phrases would go away after their fall from grace…

Alpherson offered her an umbrella, but Pebble shook her head. At this point, it wouldn’t make much of a difference anyway.

Whether Topaz protected her from the bandits or the bandits from her didn’t change the action itself. It hadn’t been for the greater good, but the good of a few. Perhaps to quantify this was irrelevant.

Then again, if she couldn’t save one bandit, could she pretend to save the world?

How about a group of them?

What if they got the first stone instead?