“Mercy is a luxury for the strong, or the foolish.” - Old soldier’s saying.

“Pwease… *huff* Hab sum… mercy… *puff*”

The once-fierce bandit looked far more pitiful as he was then, where he laid on the ground on his back, bleeding profusely from his mouth. One of his legs was clearly broken at the shin, the broken part of the bone jutting out from the skin, while one of his elbows bent the wrong way as well, rendering the limb practically unusable. That was not counting the many rapidly purpling bruises all over his face.

“And why should we listen to you?” asked Aideen pointedly as she walked past that bandit on her way back to see if Calais was doing all right.

Said young elf seemed to be in fine enough shape. A few bloodstains on his clothing indicated that he either took a blow that made him bleed near there, or, more likely, was his opponent’s splattered blood. If he took any damage from the fight, he definitely had enough control over his Life affinity magic to heal it back to the point that it was no longer noticeable at all.

The bandit he fought against had no such luck.

“I… hab family… children… back home… Just… following orders…” replied the bandit between pained gasps.

When Aideen considered the damage done to the bandit, she couldn’t help but smile a bit. Calais had clearly incorporated some of the things she taught him in the past couple of weeks. The way the bandit’s elbow had been twisted and cleverly dislocated was something she taught him rather more recently, in particular.

“Did that ever stop you from robbing or killing whoever you ran into under those orders when they plead with you?” came another pointed reply from Aideen. “Or, considering the way you looked at us, from taking their women and having your way with them? Probably in front of their eyes before you killed them? Or were you also ordered to enjoy that? Because you clearly looked like you were having the time of your life here, playing bandits.”

“I…”

“Funny how when you kill and rob and rape all those people with family and children of their own, you don’t give a care, huh?” Aideen added coldly even as she slammed then ground the tip of her staff against the top of the foot on the bandit’s healthy leg, causing him to yelp in pain as her blow broke the small bones there before grinding them against each other painfully.

“Pwease!”

“Oh, what now? Are you going to start preaching that if we kill you we’d be no better than you are?” chided Aideen sarcastically. Perhaps due to her annoyance, she also moved her staff and slammed it down on the bandit’s little finger as she spoke, hard enough to pulverize the flesh and bone underneath. “Probably news to you, or maybe your addled little brain just refused to catch up with reality, but we already kinda killed all the rest of your bandit-y partners there, you know?”

“There, take a look,” she added as she nudged the man’s head so that his eyes were pointed towards where the bodies of the other bandits lay, where Celia was making rounds to make sure that none of them were still breathing. Those that still draw breath, she corrected promptly with a swing of her sword-staff. “Those got off lucky, to be honest. I don’t think most of them felt too much pain before they croaked. Celia’s taking care of the unlucky ones, now.”

“I- I don’t wunna die!” screamed the bandit beneath their feet somewhat incoherently. By that point tears were streaming unabated from his eyes, along with snot that was mixed with blood from his nostrils.

“Most nobody does,” quipped Aideen in reply. “None of those people who you’ve robbed and laid hands on so far wanted to die either, or to be robbed, or raped for that matter. When has that ever stopped you, huh?” she added viciously, her staff crushing another of the man’s fingers. “And spare me the charade of swearing off evil and promising you’d never do it again and all that cow dung. It’s way too late for that, if you didn’t reckon yet.”

“Finished over here, Miss Aideen,” said Celia as she returned towards where Aideen and Calais stood. Her eyebrows quirked up questioningly at the sight of the still-struggling crippled bandit laying on the ground, and she tilted her head quizzically. “Do you want me to finish this one off as well? Or did you have something else in mind for him?”

“Five minutes ago I would have said yes, but in the meantime this bag of shit and piss just had to remind me of some of the worst excuses I’ve ever listened to in my life,” replied Aideen rather tersely as she turned to face Celia. Her staff moved and ground the bandit’s wrist bones to shards the next moment, soliciting another pained yelp from the man. “Now I’ve decided that killing him quickly might be too good for him. No, we’re leaving. Let nature sort this one out herself.”

The three of them walked away, the pleas of the crippled bandit they left behind completely ignored, at least by Aideen and Celia. Calais did turn to Aideen with a rather pale face after a while and asked a question that had clearly bugged him for a while by then. “Was that not… a bit too much, Aunt Aideen? That just felt like… unnecessary to me.”

“Maybe,” Aideen admitted nonchalantly. “But it’s also nothing less than what scum like those deserve. I know you’re young and haven’t seen much of the world yet, lil’ Cal, but your sympathy is better saved for people that deserve it, not pieces of trash like those.”

“Why did you leave that one alive, then?” he asked with some confusion. “Some travelers might well run into him and save him after we left.”

“Nah, he’s definitely a goner by now,” replied Aideen with a slight smile. “You’ve seen the bloody mess we made out of the others. The bloody smell would attract every predator within a kilometer radius from there within minutes. By now that shitbag is likely on his way to becoming literal shit in some beast’s gut.”