DreadWolf Ch. 130

"It tells me that levelers can fall far."

"Or that there is nothing special about levelers, nothing unique, nothing civilised, it's all a lie, there is no real difference."

Rain leaned over the table at the leveler.

"You are talking to a monster, one sitting and eating with you, and you think I'm still less than Bean, a wordless mindless thing that crawls through windows at night to drink people's blood. Don't you see how hypocritical you are?"

He gestured at Opal as an example who was happily eating her fourth serving, far from appearing anything like Bean.

"What if it has nothing to do with how a monster or a leveler is born, what if it's their life experience. A monster born in a dungeon is born into a pressure cooker of violence, a living hell, but if they lived in safety, generations only knowing peace, maybe they wouldn't be like you think they are?"

Warwick sneered, his lip curling in disgust. "You are going to sit there and tell me that a fucking Panthara, one of the most abhorrent evil creatures to ever grace this world could be turned into a peace loving little flower sniffer if only they were raised right?"

"...Well... no, maybe not a Panth-"

Warwick shoved his plate aside and stood up.

"I've heard enough of this. Pickle. Come."

Rain watched quietly as the man scooped up Pickle and stormed away. The goat child wasn't particularly happy about this, but Warwick seemed angered enough that she went quietly.

Rain let out a breath.

"You're fighting an uphill battle Rain." said Lyra, "I know, I was like him not long ago. To him monsters do not have the capacity for kindness or civilisation or mercy, they aren't capable of higher thought. And why would he want to think otherwise? To admit different means he has been doing terrible things for his entire life. That's never going to be easy to overcome on an instinctive level."

"But I'm sitting here telling him it is different! He can see and hear the truth with his own two eyes and ears..."

Lyra hesitated. "Maybe you got to him a little bit, he did seem unsettled."

Rain hummed in thought as Opal took her fifth helping, unconcerned, as though she had expected the conversation to go exactly the way it did.