The Morality System

After Nico seemed to disappear, my Evil Eye kicked in and revealed she was still in front of me. She was just invisible or obscured through a crystal effect.

Then she dashed towards me brandishing two knives and stabbed them into the legs of my bone armor.

"Ow!" I said. "You stabbed me!" Her knives had pierced a little through the bone armor. It wasn't much. Just enough to hurt.

"I'm trying to kill you." She said, trying to pull her knives out of my bone armor. They were stuck in there pretty good.

"Me too. I'm just surprised your knives made it through my armor." I summoned bone spikes above her and brought them down.

She flitted back 10 feet, dodging the spikes. I summoned 20 more spikes and launched them at her. She dodged to the side at lightning speed.

Those blue crystals must have been speed or agility boosting because she was moving incredibly fast.

I summoned a bone platform underneath her and raised it to the ceiling, attempting to crush her. She dodged off the platform when she realized what was happening.

She pulled throwing knives out of her belt and threw them at me. I summoned a bone shield and blocked all the ones aimed at my chest and head, but several hit my legs and stabbed me through the armor.

She pulled out a green vial and threw it at me. I put my shield up. It shattered and against the shield and caustic liquid ate through the shield and the armor on my right arm.

The liquid burned and ate away at my flesh. It caused pretty severe damage to my forearm. When it finally stopped burning, I couldn't close my hand anymore. The muscles were too damaged.

Great I had a broken left arm and a burned right arm. The only saving grace was that the caustic liquid cauterized the wound, so I wasn't bleeding.

I had to finish this soon or I was going to lose. I checked the room for exits. There were no windows or other doors. And I was standing in the doorway.

The answer was easy enough. I summoned a bone platform and raised it up in front of the door. Then I raised two more platforms to cover the openings around the side of the first platform and the room was sealed. She couldn't get out.

"No no no no no no! Don't leave me in here!" She said. Her voice was muffled by the barrier.

"You stabbed me several times and burned the hell out of my arm. You attacked first. What am I supposed to do?" I said.

"I thought you were going to kill me! I figured if I killed you first, you couldn't kill me," Nico said.

"I mean, I was, but I'm reconsidering. How old are you?" I said.

"17. Why?" She said.

"Yeah, that's what I thought. There's something about killing a minor I really don't like. But you have killed a lot of people who didn't deserve it," I said.

"I'm at a crossroads, Nicolette. I don't want to kill you but I can't let you go free and kill again. Unless you can convince me you're reformed and will never kill another innocent again, there's nothing I can do for you."

"Nicolette? I haven't used that name in years. How do you know all this stuff about me?" She said.

"I'm an evil wizard, but not in the way that you'd think. I'm a wizard whose powers have to do with tracking down and destroying evil. And my powers show me all the wrongs you've committed, but it also shows me why," I said.

"I know your parents were terrible and I don't blame you for killing them. Killing families because you're jealous of their happiness though is too far. It's not acceptable behavior and it rings evil to me."

"Why do they get to be happy when I never got that chance? I wanted to be a happy kid! No one cared about my wishes. None of those families gave two shits about a kid living on the streets," I said.

"Actually, it was worse than that. They hated me! They despised me. They lectured me and hit me for begging for change. Like it was somehow my fault for being in that position."

"So I killed them. No one gets to attack me and treat me like shit without retaliation. I didn't necessarily plan to kill them. At least, not all of them. They just couldn't defend themselves against me. They were weak. So death was the result of standing up for myself."

"Dorian was the first person to ever beat me in a fight. He looked down on me too. He lectured me for begging. Said something bullshit about getting a job and earning money to feed myself."

"That fucker. If I could've gotten a job, I wouldn't have been begging! I tried to fight him too, but he smacked me down. Showed me my place in the world. But he appreciated my skills and gave me a job. Was I going to turn it down? What choice did I have?"

"I was living on the streets and barely surviving. I got less and less from begging the older I got. I didn't love that he wanted to hire me to kill and rob and steal, but as I said, what choice did I have? It was either doing that or starving and getting the shit kicked out of me on a daily basis."

I sat in that moment, thinking. Would I have done any different? I mean, was I any better than her? I've killed several people under the pretense I was making the world a better place, but I was just a victim taking my anger out over being killed out on other people.

I wasn't even defending myself. I was committing premeditated murder. That didn't mean what I was doing was wrong, but it didn't mean what she did was wrong either.

[Justice parameters realigned. Recalculating… Nico no longer reads as evil]

'Wait, what?'

[Your view of what constitutes evil has changed. So Evil Eye no longer reads her actions as evil]

'Wait. The system judges evil based on my perception? Not on an absolute scale of evil and good?'

[There is no such thing as an absolute scale of evil and good. Evil and good are just categories determined by the person judging]

'Wait, so does that mean I haven't been making the world a better place?'

[Define 'better']

'Will there be less harm happening in the world because I killed those people?'

[Are you counting the harm you caused those people in the equation?]

'… No.'

[Then yes]

'What if I did include the people I harmed in the equation?'

[Then the total harm done roughly equals out]

'Ok, but are less innocent people being harmed?'

[Define 'innocent']

'People who have caused the least harm to others compared to everyone else.'

[Then yes. Less innocents are being harmed as a result of your actions]

'Ok good. I was worried for a second there that I was doing something wrong.'

[I am happy to alleviate your worries]

"Hey, guy. You still there?" Nico said.