Finding Contentus

Chapter 148: Doing

Kakara The Vanquisher did what she did best like a veteran.

Crack.

She cracked large chunks of ice at the crack of dawn, working her limbs mechanically, unfastening the bottle of her Amandla like an uncoiled spring. Urielle placed her on ice harvesting duty all by herself, relieving all the other workers for the day. The ice blocks would then be carried back on carts to every home in Winturn, ensuring that everyone had water available to perform basic day to day functions.

Kakara slammed her G sword against a block of ice the size of a house. A strong crack resounded across the frozen river. She alternated to her N sword and sliced the ice like a chef, breaking large sections into small cheese blocks.

The workers watched their Queen silently, not daring to interfere, not willing to watch anything else. Urielle monitored her cousin. She was eating pancakes. Of course she was eating pancakes. Kakara's stomach growled. She was only allowed to eat once she was done with her load.

Not that she cared. Kakara had... not necessarily numbed herself to her human needs such as sustenance, more like she detached herself from them, as if her hunger was something for her to overlook rather than attend to, since she could keep functioning.

In a way, it reminded her of being an automaton on Mad Scar. She looked at Urielle who motioned for Kakara to alternate again.

Kakara nodded, putting her swords down. She brought her fists up to guard her face, crystallizing them to be harder than diamonds, and started pummeling the ever living... cold out of the ice? Kakara was making the ice shed tears after each penetrating strike of her fists. She diverted her icy fists to the frozen river, shattering it into divided sectors. The rectangular grids of ice split off from the cracked water. She retrieved the cubes and threw them into the carts.

There was something calming about doing such a seemingly mundane task. I move like water, I go with the flow. She recited the first line of her Racaan family's chant. She was wrong before, about being incompatible with water, about needing to be cold all the time, about being unable to gain from Ishthrylla's firestorm.

Everything in Kakara's life had been carefully designed to get her to this current point, and none of the philosophies were a waste. What she had to do was simply configure all the pieces like a mechanic and force them to work properly. Hence the work. It was working. Kakara felt like she was actually doing something useful.

If a Queen cannot provide for her women and her men, then how can she ever expect them to provide for her when she requires them to do their duty? A Queen shouldn't be some fat fuck that sits on her ass all day, barking orders, handing out work and not doing any work herself. Her job is the toughest, the hardest, because everything, small and big, is on her head and shoulders.

Kakara was destroying the ice and creating water. Upon her rebirth, she started seeing... strings, exactly like her mother's crafted strings. The strings of life. She paused for a moment to glance at the watching workers. She narrowed her eyes. She saw the manner in which she could kill them all in a multitude of ways. Not strictly by bringing an end to the mortal lives, but in other things.

I could kill their confidence in themselves. I could bring death to their aspirations. All I'd have to do is move in the direction of the string that connects me to their weak spots and crack them.

It sounded cruel to ever conceptualize such a thing. But these are my people. They can easily not give a damn and carry on even if I did kill those parts. It all depends on how a person desires to live. If the will is strong enough, they'll continue to push and pull on their strings like lifeless marionettes.