Truly, a problem is rarely a problem but rather amplified by the conception one has of it. As I read the writings of my enemies, I understand why people fall the terrible and the convenient.

– Excerpt from “Roses, Blades & Blood”, an autobiography written by Goddess Helenna, of Love

Helenna leaned back, took a heavy sigh and slightly tilted her head back so that she would be looking at Paida down her nose rather than straight. They were roughly the same height, which annoyed Helenna greatly that a measly national Divine was the equivalent of the Goddess of Love, and in terms of looks, they were also roughly the same. All that Helenna had over the Goddess of Rancais was the fact that she was the Goddess of a grandiosity like Love rather than some vain abstract idea of a nation. She wasn’t stupid enough to think that Paida would not share the same resolve but reversed, but she was honest enough with herself to admit her conceit in that thinking something such as Love was grander than something such as Rancais.

They had been at this for three hours now, and it was three hours of endless issues that Helenna was getting tired of. If Arascus had not formally given her the position as the Imperial Divine Minister of Internal Affairs, she would have already chased Paida out of her office by now. But, unfortunately, she had a job to do, and that job had to be done, there was no two ways about it. Helenna saw watched Paida look up with those pretty purple eyes of hers, the exact same shade as the famed Rancais Purple style of wine. What came first? The Goddess or the drink? Helenna kept the question to herself, she was polite enough not to ask such things.

Paida sat in her black and white uniform, a little tricolour pin of red, white and blue was attached to her suit, but Helenna had made sure not to mention it. She was just here to give answers. Paida brought another picture from the case she had brought. It was of a man, completely normal, with several bullet holes in his chest. “This is in Ordeaux.” Paida began. “Ordeaux was destroyed, just wiped off the map, during the battle with Anarchia. And this is from Ordeaux, another fatality, just a man killed during Ratsweeper, what exactly am I supposed to do with this?”

Helenna took the picture from Paida’s pale fingers and set it down upon the brown wooden table. They were in her office, in one of her offices at least. It was a large room, built at twice the scale for humans since the occupants were Divines, but since there were no humans about, there was nothing to indicate that the table, the couch, the kitchen, the fireplace or the shelves were all half again the size they should be. Helenna had journeyed to Aris, the capital of Rancais, to assist Paida with maintaining order in the country. Now, as Helenna looked over all the details, she should have left Paida alone. The answer was largely for all of these things. “What am I supposed to say Paida?” Helenna asked.

“You can’t think of anything?”

“I can think of plenty.” Helenna quickly replied. “But all the things I think of come with there own problems. Honestly, just ignore this.”

“It’s a man shot dead. I’ll need to give some answer.” Paida replied. Helenna supposed she was from a different age. An age where a village was wiped off the map and the local baron would just treat it as bad month. What was one man dead after all? But then these things did add up. Ratsweeper had killed almost forty thousand people in a night. How Malam had organised it, Helenna did not know. She always assumed that these large-scale operations were fruitless but maybe Hatred was more skilled at rallying than Love.

“I’ll just throw the question right back at you.” Helenna replied as she looked at the picture. The man in the image was late twenties or early thirties, he was muscled yet thin, although he came from Ordeaux where the city had been levelled so naturally he would be skinny. And he lay with nine holes in his chest. Helenna did not bother asking for what killed him, the standard issue SIS Akrak pistol had a nine-round magazine. “What am I supposed to say Paida? Why even show me this?”

“What? Are you ashamed? I thought you would have an answer.” Paida replied quickly.

“I do.” Helenna replied. “And it’s the same answer I gave to you a dozen times already, and it’s the same answer I will give to you if you show me anymore of these dead. Just ignore it, it will blow away.”

Paida crossed her arms and leaned back in her chair. “It will blow away? I’m just supposed to say that’s fine? You know there’s more than a dozen petitions to investigate these deaths? Have you ever come across something like that? Where it’s multiple petitions to investigate the same thing? Do you even know what sort of outrage we are talking about here?”

“And?” Helenna asked.

“What do you mean And?”

Helenna took a deep breath. There were plenty of ways to rule a country, there were plenty of ways to solve different problems, there were plenty of ways to sidestep issues. Maybe it was because she was the Goddess of Love, and maybe it was because Love was blind, but Helenna could not help but admit that ignorance got an unfairly maligned reputation. A man ignorant of a crisis on the other side of the world lived no worse materially than a man who knew all the details, yet the man ignorant lived a far more unburdened life. “I mean and?” Helenna began. “What is there to say? Do you really need to admit something? Then say he was some man blessed by Anarchia or some criminal or just paint him as some moral failure.”

“And if people ask?” Paida asked. Helenna stared into the Goddess of Rancais’ eyes. Helenna couldn’t see her own her which revealed her emotions, but she assumed it went black for that was how she felt at such a stupid question.

“Who are you dealing with?” Helenna asked. “Are they Gods? I mean no offense of course, but last I heard, Rancais is not a nation where every single man is a political genius.”

Paida replied immediately. “I got these images all of YapYap. I’m sure there’s more on other sites. I don’t have the time to find them. These aren’t hidden Helenna, I can’t pretend these don’t exist, that’s why I came to you.”

“You say that as if I did it.”

“It was an Imperial operation.” Paida said. “Should the Empire not clean up its own mess?”

Helenna sighed. On one hand, she struggled to believe that this puny national Goddess had verbally outmanoeuvred her so. On the other, it wasn’t a particularly hard line of logic to try and understand. Paida did not know what to do, so she came to the Goddess which had held the White Pantheon’s home front during the Great War.

Helenna looked over the image of the man who had been shot in Ordeaux, and over the other images Paida had presented. She sighed heavily, one isolated death could be ignored. After all, the Goddess of Rancais could pretend to be busy and if she was not busy, then she could be given work to be busy. Yet forty thousand? A hundred people dying in the span of a night would be a national tragedy. Forty thousand? It was almost unreal. “Paida, you don’t hold public conferences, you don’t talk to people, you just deal with politicians, like I said, you just ignore this. There are more important issues to deal with.”

“Like what?”

Helenna thought for a moment. In grand scheme of things, there were plenty. From the perspective of the average citizen of Rancais though? “There will be.” Helenna answered and Paida made a tsskk noise with her mouth as she crossed her arms.

“I don’t like that, you know.”

Helenna sighed. “You don’t have to like it, you just have to outlast it.” It was a basic principle of Divinity that all Divines knew. Everything could be outlasted at the end of the day, it was not that mortal’s lives did not matter, they did of course, but any crime would eventually be forgotten. How many people remembered their grandfather’s grandfather after all?

Paida leaned back with a heavy sigh. “You say that as if it’s magic bullet to societal issues.”

“Is it not?” Helenna asked. “You’ve been the figurehead of Rancais for what? Seven hundred years? Do you think one purge will make you irredeemable? You led your nation’s independence war from the White Pantheon Paida.” Helenna realised she had to make the Goddess of Rancais more confident in herself. That was the big issue, Paida legitimately thought that a series of corpses could topple a regime that spanned two continents.

“I mean…” Paida began, trailed off, and then restarted. “I mean, it’s not a case of being irredeemable, it’s a case of national integrity. We’ve just hard the single largest loss of life in Rancais since…. Well, since the Great War when cities were being wiped off the map. You don’t just ignore forty thousand souls dead.”

Helenna answered back quickly, was the answer not obvious? “it’s forty thousand souls dead Paida. Do you even understand the scale we are working at?”

“Do you?” The source of this content ɪs NoveI[F]ire.net

Paida simply did not realise what sort of Goddess she was dealing. “Paida, I was the White Pantheon’s spymaster during the Great War. I handled every single piece of offensive and defensive intelligence there was. And I tell you to ignore the fallout of Operation Ratsweeper because that is what you should do. We’re dealing with forty-thousand dead here. Do you even understand what that means? Can you imagine forty thousand people? I mean seriously, how many fields would that be Paida? How many football pitches? How many swimming pools stuffed with bodies? Do you actually understand what you are talking about?”

Paida remained silent for a few moments. She took a deep breath. She held onto the lifeline of silence for a few moments more. Those purple eyes stared into Helenna’s as the two Goddesses talked. “Do I need to even? So what if I can’t? It’s still this many dead.”

“This is why I am telling you to ignore this, let it blow over, and ignore the naysayers who will always be naysaying about you. Your job, Paida, is to make sure that Rancais is a functional state, not to offer individualized apologies which is what I think you were asking me for.”

“And if the people rebel? What then?” Paida asked quickly. “That is my fear. How can I maintain legitimacy in Rancais if I just lost forty thousand people in a single night?”

“You do understand that this is matter is so serious you can’t just give half-measures?” Helenna replied, falling back on her own experience. “There are things you can only do half-way but forty thousand dead is not something you can handwave away. Either you deal with it, or you don’t. That’s it.”

“And what will the history books say about me?” Paida asked and Helenna smiled back.

“Who do you think reviews the history books when they are done?” Helenna asked.

Paida was not sold on the idea. “I do mean what happens if we have a civil war?  This is the sort of thing that pushes people over the edge. This is the final straw on the camel’s back where people just realise they can either take action or they can die. What then Helenna?”

“Like I said at the start, simply say they are the blessed of Anarchia and leave them at that. And the people won’t rebel.”

“Forty thousand died.” Paida repeated the number as if it was some holy mantra. Helenna threw it right back.

“Forty thousand were killed by the titan that is Imperial bureaucracy Paida. Forty thousand in one night. I asked before for you to imagine what forty thousand looks like, you couldn’t answer. Now I’ll ask a harder question, imagine a system that can kill forty thousand in a night. Just like that.” Helenna snapped her fingers loudly to drive the point home. “Just imagine it Paida. Can you? Explain to me how you would kill forty thousand in a single night, please.” Helenna knew Paida would be unable to answer from the first instant she had posed the question.

When the Goddess of Rancais sighed deeply and began to speak in a forced tone she was obviously trying to make sound polite, Helenna started to run tests in her mind, and then think about opening the doors. “So what I say?” Paida asked. “Just tell me because I’m too stupid to think of an answer.”

“I’ll present the news then. I’ll talk of how dangerous they were and you can just rely on my speech.

“It’s forty thousand men dead.”

“Exactly Paida, it’s forty thousand men dead. That’s what the Empire can treat as another Tuesday. Forty thousand dead men. Would you go demonstrate against that?”

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep