A Moral Cunundrum

John took a piece of chalk and opened an Illusion Barrier. Time to get that Fire Elemental. He would have happily did it at Rave’s place, but his girlfriend had insisted on watching Anime while he wanted to watch a 40k Podcast. They had therefore decided to quickly part ways and met up again tomorrow. “Not like I haven’t seen Elementals before.” She had waved off the idea to quickly fulfil the ritual in her cellar as she had shoved him out the door with a playful smile and a quick kiss on the lips.

Therefore, he was now crouching on the streets in his Illusion Barrier and drawing a circle. He had learnt the book on the way down. So far, the requirements and the ritual were the same for Earth. Okay, the circle was slightly different. A bit more fire-like than root-like knots in the design. Nothing a perfect recollection of the book wouldn’t be able to handle though.

Well, at least the enemies were nice enough to attack before he used his mana on the circle. He sighed and looked around. ‘Aclysia, can you come here?’ ‘Shall I use that new skill that we acquired?’ He got a mental question back. ‘Nah, I am right outside the door.’

“Come on out people.” John sighed. Around the turned came a level 25 knight and a level 27 warlock. He didn’t bother to look at their names. “You must be the Gamer. We will….” “…take you captive and sell you to a mana factory.” John ended the attckers sentence for him and rolled his eyes. A bald guy with a bad eye (Ugly Motherfucker) and a blonde warlock with rat teeth and a staff with a skull at the end (Really Ugly Motherfucker). “Look. I hate to break it to you, but you are about three weeks too late to be a threat to me.”

The two looked at each other and then laughed, “Like you could become stronger than us in three weeks. We bought the information package from two weeks ago! We are up to snuff.” “Really?” John wondered, “Did you buy the premium daily-updates version or the two-week old one-time package?” John asked out of interest, “Because kinda lot happened since then.”

A vein popped on the knight’s forehead. “Enough of this fucking talk, let’s smash him and…” Aclysia appeared next to him as she entered the Illusion Barrier. The knight didn’t immediately noticed and rambled on, “take his stuff before we rip out his arms, he won’t need those anymore, and then we take his cock and shove it…” The warlock had spotted Aclysia and hit the big knight with his staff to get his attention. “WHAT?!...Oh.” The knight's booming voice became very small all of a sudden.

Aclysia tilted her head. “Please continue. Stopping in the middle of a sentence is rude.” She blinked, “I am interested in what you would want to do with my master's cock.” “M-master?” their heads slowly turned back to John. “You must have been really thrifty if you don’t know about Aclysia.” He reckoned with a grin. “Now shoo-shoo.” He waved them off. He had no idea why they were that afraid of the Artifical Guardian, but he didn’t care either. He wasn’t looking for a fight.

Then again….” Wait just a moment.” The duo was about to leave the barrier when he denied them the exit. He had never done that before. Interesting. As long as he was the strongest being here, which he was, he had control over who got out. He probably should learn how to get control over who got in as well soon.

“Yes?” The warlock asked in a nervous tone. Now that he had affirmation that John’s mana was above his own he knew that they were completely outclassed. In other words: If John decided to kill them, he could. “Do I understand it correctly that you two make your living through selling people as slaves to Mana Factories and the like?”

“…” That was a confirming silence. The knight gripped his Warhammer stronger. John scratched his head, “You are putting me in a real moral conundrum here.” He lamented, “See, if I kill you I am a murderer, and that is bad from my viewpoint. If it let you go though you are free to do what you failed to do to me. Which is also pretty bad.” He sighed and realised how earnestly he was thinking about killing those two.

‘Wisdom is to know what must be done to preserve what is important.’ Victoria’s words echoed in his mind. Well, she had certainly been sure of what she did. Personally, he thought Wisdom was also a pretty big load of scepticism. When you were always sure of what you did you would inevitably slide into behaviour that justified itself.

“Mhm, so here is the deal.” John finally decided. “I will let you two go but If I ever see you doing anything slightly shady again.” He made a cutthroat motion, “We clear?” The two nodded eagerly, and John let them leave the Instant Dungeon. The second they were out his other self flapped its wings. He had left the Verdin on the roof of his house, doing some little flight exercises but not he decided to follow the duo for a bit, gliding from roof to roof. It was a way better exercise.

He returned to his circle. “Did you know these two?” “They were a contributing factor to me running later, Master.” Aclysia said with an apologising bow. John grunted in response. Better keep an eye on those two for a while. He wasn’t about to save the world and neither did he want to have somebody start a **** plot on him but he wasn’t a big fan of the whole slavery thing.

He activated the circle and was met with a voice of crackling fire. ‘You wish to form a contract with me?’ The voice of unknown origin or gender spoke. John left his body behind and became one with the heat. ‘Yes.’ He answered with his mind. The second time around this whole deal was a less mystic. He waited for the fire to do what the earth had done, and send him through the lifetime of a flame or something like that. Instead, he felt a curious touch. ‘We feel an echo on you, the echo of one the fire fears and worships all the same.’ The spirit of flame spoke, ‘She who carries the Gem of the End with her.’

‘Nathalia?’ Johns guess was pretty easy. ‘Yes…your knowledge of her, her encounter, we think we know exactly which of us shall accompany you.’ The voice of a thousand crackles was replaced by a single new one, a mean voice with a feisty tone. ‘Face what you seek to control.’

He was the tip of a match that got lit. The man that held him lowered him to a short wire. He danced over, igniting the gun, exploding from black powder, ripping through the air and another man’s heart. He was the heat of the bullet. He was the fire of a mortar shell. The fire of a house burning down. The fire of a village being set to the torch and of endless acres of wood burned down in the name of war. He was the fire of oil in the tanks of a hit warship. He was the fire that allowed a tank to run over the defences. He was the fire of war. Not a single image of a fire spending life on a winter night, not a single image of a fire cooking a warm meal, not a single second of niceness. He was the fire of war. Of destruction. Of absolute merciless slaughter. He was the fire in the fields; he was the fire in the motors, he was the fire that spews poisonous gas into the air.

He was the fire in the chambers. He was the fire of incineration that brought millions of lives to an end, all of him fuelled by hatred and ignorance but creating something more, something with pale skin, purple eyes, fires in chambers, **** so much ****. He was the fire of ignited blood.

He saw one last thing. He was far above a giant island. It was loud; he moved quickly. Then he fell. He fell and fell and fell towards a city. A city that wouldn’t exist in a second as the little boy exploded and consumed everything in a nuclear fire. He felt how he incinerated tens of thousands of souls.

The vision was over, and John almost fell backwards. ‘Do you still wish to join us?’ The mean voice asked. Holy shit, did he? He had thought earth was unpleasant, but at least earth had nice sides. He just lived through all of the second world war as the main contributor: Fire. It didn’t matter who wielded it; fire was the main source of ****. Yet, if he didn’t wield it somebody else would and that somebody would unlikely be as nice as him.

“I do.” A fire elemental appeared in front of him in the circle. Unlike Gnome she was already fully grown. A naked girl with big tits, burning red hair that wildly hung grew down to chin length and red tinted skin. She had elvish ears and eyes that were coal blacks as she grinned. Even though she looked more like 19 than 4, she was pretty small. Candle-Flame small to be exact.

“Yo, I am Salamander.” The fire elemental said and extended her little hand, “I am John Newman, you gave your name, and I gave you mine, we are now one.” He concluded the ritual and stood up. “Well, that was an unpleasant experience.” He mumbled and turned to get inside his house and outside the Instant Dungeon.

He also checked up on the Verdin. The bird had been flying around ecstatically as John was locked up in the vision but he was still in flight. Time to find those two guys again. He turned in the air and fluttered with his wings as he flew over the rooftops of the city.

The movement suddenly stopped as someone plugged him out of the air. There was a rattling sound followed by a green cloud enveloping the Verdin for a moment, robbing him of sight. John was slightly panicked about the development when he got a text.

SecretBlonde: It seems I caught your new toy~