The Greatest Sin [Progression Fantasy][Kingdom Building]
Chapter 396 – A City Stood Still

Arascus has a bluntness about him that is utterly magnetic. I have always respected it and now that I am able to see it firsthand, I have only grown to be even more impressed by how the man is able to hide subterfuge whilst saying it out loud. The God of Pride does not pretend to be for some grand ideal but in their lies his novelty. We are not Maisara, who promise systems so efficient that they turn themselves. We are not Fortia, who promise an end to all conflict. We are not Allasaria, who promise the grandiosity of light and all it can be used as a metaphor for.

Instead, Arascus comes and says skips the issue of righteousness of for his rulership in the first place. This is where the subterfuge is hidden. I am baffled that I have fought a century-long conflict against him and did not realise the style of play.

Even to discuss Arascus’ rule seems somewhat redundant. It is never debated or questioned. Instead the man proposes ideas or plans. I have been given plenty of choices on what I can do in the Empire. Yet the choice of letting me tell another Divine what to do? It has never happened. When Allia joined, an entire legion of bureaucrats was sent to the island, four out of five ideas were rejected, yet that does not matter in the least.

The Allians are debating on how to work within the Empire and what they can ask for from the Imperial Bureaucracy and no one has time to talk of whether Arascus’ rule is just or not. I struggle to even explain this scenario devoid of morality where the choice is only about material goods, so I will give an example. When the various Bureaus were deciding on cities to turn into megaports, they gave the Allians a list of investments to pick from and a list of spots which would serve. The debate was not whether Allia needs megaports, the debate on which part of Allia should be sacrificed into order to create megaports. The option of shrinking the ports down was given, although that would mean the inefficient expansion of all coastal cities.

This is where the White Pantheon administration differs most from Arascus’ Empire. The God of Pride bluntly does not even present the option of denial. When in the White Pantheon, if we wanted to do anything, first we would have to convince ourselves, then convince the local population of our grand plan, and finally start debating the material consequences on an issue once everyone was agreed that a plan should be done. By the time we got to the final stage, whatever the problem had usually resolved itself or the situation changed so greatly we were back at square one.

The greatest difference between Arascus’ Empire and the White Pantheon is that in the Empire, action is mandatory and justification optional, whereas in the Pantheon, justification is mandatory and action optional.

- Excerpt from “The New Garden in Arda”, an autobiography by Goddess Helenna, of Love.

Lyca looked around the little him and his friends had holed up in for their stay in Ordeaux. It was a pretty city, he had to admit that. The buildings were tall, the roads for cars were wide, the lanes in between the massive blocks were narrow. There were plenty of restaurants at the lower levels, there were a port in the distance, that led out onto the massive estuary which fed into the ocean. And like any Rancais city, even the signposts were works of art. They were huge stone sculptures. Some were lions, that held lamps in their mouths, others were men and women that lit the way at night. But most were destroyed, because they were creations of decadent nobility.

Lyca looked out the window at a crowd of people walking by. That, he realised, was how people moved now. In groups of a dozen strong that looked rabid and jumpy and standoffish, as if they were ready and wanting to initiate a street brawl at any moment. Lyca hadn’t seen any fighting happen yet, but they had only arrived in the morning and if people walked around like this in the day, then at night the city must be dangerous. Every sense in Lyca’s body said it would be.

He could imagine bringing Eliza to Ordeaux frankly. This city with its magnificent bridges would make for a nice romantic outing. He could imagine holding hands with her as they would walk the streets and head into one of the many cafes or restaurants at the ground level of these massive city blocks. But not now though. And not only because the city was obviously dangerous. Most of the eateries were shut down, so were the shops, so were the jobs, so was everything. The few things that still ran were those systems that relied on inertia.

There was a functioning post-office, although the workers would traverse the city by foot or bicycle. There were street markets, although those were today’s fish, produce from the nearby countryside, moonshine and narcotics. The schools still operated and people apparently rallied around them, even if they starved then at least the children wouldn’t. Anarchia’s takeover of Rancais had instituted a dour mood, that was how Lyca would describe it. There was no reason to lie about the state of this city, she had not imposed tyranny, there was no grand purge as Lyca had thought there would be. Having a scrap of wealth wasn’t even so uncommon. Lyca had seen plenty of people with expensive watches and every other car on the street was some expensive model. People even shared them out, with no one in particular wanting to deal with such a fuel-hungry vehicle.

But rather, Anarchia’s takeover had removed the organs of the state and given nothing to replace them with. The chaos was not immediate or overbearing, nor maddening. No one was suddenly crazed but also, not one was particularly ecstatic with the change of leadership. That lack of ecstasy was only exacerbated by the fact lack of government. Rancais had no currency, it had no imports, it had no exports. The only thing that entered the country was charity. Anarchia’s clique of super-powered heroes luckily was well-behaved, although that, Lyca believed was only because of the fact Anarchia herself wasn’t particularly fanatical against the populace.

So the city stood still. Without power, with only intermittent running water, with food only coming in through charity from the UNN via the ships. With people clamouring to enter those ships. Whereas the countryside was suddenly idyllic with the lack of modernity, the city carried itself with all the joy and feel of a crumbling gravestone. Lyca stared out the window as the hours passed. They couldn’t leave and had only gone to a single shop when they entered. There, the place had been cleaned out save for donated goods. Lyca took water. Eliza took pot noodles. Edmonton put a few tins of beans into his bag. Fleur merely stared at what remained of a city she was once proud of.

Lyca stared out the window and sighed. He would be taking Eliza to no restaurant because they were all shut now. Shut without even bothering to lock their doors, but there was no point even going in to look for food to steal. Yet the hotels remained open. Lyca thought on it and decided they would though, the building couldn’t suddenly relocate and save for the novelty of staying in a place that wasn’t your own, why would anyone want to sleep here? Then again, the place was packed. A fire had broken out two days ago and people had nowhere to stay.

At first, no one was willing to give up their room to the four youths. That changed when Lyca waved about Imperial Marks. The equivalent of one round of grocery shopping had secured them a room on the top floor, although it wasn’t anything impressive. The place was humid and dark, there was no running water, the air stunk, people’s footsteps could be heard from the corridor, but it was a roof over the head and frankly, all of them had slept in worse before. “I’m going to sleep.” Lyca said. “Take over on watch.” He said it to no one particular, but to someone.

Edmonton replied after a few moments as he stood up with a Rancais book he was struggling to read. “I’ll watch then.” Lyca stood up from the window and gave the city one final sweep. A crowd was passing by. A ship was dropping anchor in the distance. Lyca had seen it happen twice already, as benevolent as the UNN was, it did not want to risk Anarchia’s followers getting on their ships either. Drones would be used to drop food in small packages. On the other side was what should be the city square. A few meandering groups, going nowhere in particular and in no hurry at all, loitered about as they did precisely nothing.

Edmonton patted Lyca on the shoulder and nodded to the best. “I don’t know how much sleep you’ll get though in this temperature.”

“I can see you never were assigned to artillery.” Lyca said jokingly. He knew Edmonton was and anyway, it wasn’t the noise. It was the dampness of the room and the heat. Even with the window open, without any wind it was terrible.

“Yeah I was assigned to proper companies and not the backline princesses.” Edmonton replied quickly and Lyca smiled to himself as he lay down on the single bed. Fleur and Eliza had gone off to explore this building since the former girl knew how to speak Rancais. Should Lyca be worried? Frankly, a small part of him wanted for them to get caught so that the adrenaline would start pumping and they could get out of here. It wasn’t like they would be hurt anyway.

Lyca lay down, scratched his beard, and closed his eyes. Did he sleep? He didn’t know. He definitely heard the girls come back and go off again. And eventually, Edmonton woke him. “Lyca.”

“What?” Lyca sat up on his bed. Edmonton was sitting by the window, peering out in a lazy manner. He didn’t bother to hide, but he wasn’t making a show of watching either. Eliza came back into the room with a plastic cup of steaming soup.

“Look here, and act normal.” Edmonton said. And Lyca knew what it would be. He knew what it would be the moment Edmonton suggested Lyca to look out the window. But he had to look, because even though he knew already, there was some childish, hopeful part of him that begged to be wrong.

So Lyca stood up, smelling the soup from Eliza’s plastic cup and looked out the window. And there she was, the Goddess they were running from. Lyca had thought that the woman would give them four days, or two at least. Instead they had arrived in Ordeaux in the morning and she was already here in the evening. Why Lyca had thought that there was she would go around inspecting the city, house-by-house, room-by-room, he didn’t know. It was such a stupid idea that Lyca wanted to laugh.

Instead, the Goddess of Anarchy was stood in the city square. She was dressed in simple clothes, apart from her size, there was nothing extraordinary about her. But men and women dressed in spandex of different colours hovered in the air by her side and the woman held up a picture in her hands. Even from here, Lyca could see it, it was almost impossible not to make it out. It was images taken from a CCTV camera.

Images of Eliza pulling up the ground. Images of Lyca snarling as his body did not burn yet was covered in flames. Images of Fleur in the air and of Edmonton standing proud like a fencer as water hovered around him. Maybe someone who didn’t know what they were looking at would struggle to put two and two together but Lyca had been there. This was from the slaughter at the house. “Fleur had CCTV?” Lyca asked.

Edmonton did not even sound surprised or depressed, he answered as flatly as General Sokolowski would answer back in Kirinyaa. “Why wouldn’t she?” Lyca wanted to laugh. Why wouldn’t she? Of course. Why wouldn’t she? It made perfect sense, didn’t it? Could the girl not tell them? Did she not think? Couldn’t they have burned the house down? Couldn’t they have gotten Eliza to destroy the servers at least?

But Lyca said nothing of the sort. Edmonton was here and, more importantly, Eliza had come close and was stirring the noodles with a fork. So Lyca couldn’t panic. Even if he wanted to, he couldn’t panic for her. He said the only thing that made sense. “We should ring Iliyal again.”

Eliza agreed. “We should.”