If you read nothing else of this, scroll down to AN 3, but I believe it is worth your time to read the entirety.
AN 1: Thank you to those of you who read this far, this was truly a remarkable experience for me, and it has been a roller coaster of ups and downs as I dealt with a difficult subject matter as best I could. I threw hints in along the way about what this arc truly was, but one hint nobody seems to have gotten was with Aorli. Her name is an anagram of 'Liora' which in ancient Hebrew means 'God's gift of light to me' which is what she served as to Zesshi, illuminating starkly the darkness in which Zesshi herself had been not only lost, but blind to by her isolation and the calculated upbringing that made her a weapon against her own siblings. By connecting to her, she guided Zesshi away from the inner turmoil and self hatred, and into the beginnings of acceptance and…of course…to the service of the god rising over the new world in the form of Ainz Ooal Gown. It wasn't an obvious clue, but it was there, and I do that a lot with character names, places, and so on, little hints of mythology, history, word or name meanings, a few people pick up on some of these, and you don't need to get them to appreciate the story…but they're neat little Easter eggs for those who do.
AN 2: This story held considerable effort behind it, and I hope it shows, you see to write Zesshi properly I delved into the subject of the psychology of children born of sexual violence, how societies treated the victims, both mothers and the children themselves. The term 'elf brat' used as a slur on Zesshi was actually taken from the post WWII German culture's contempt that was heaped on the children born from sexual violence from the Soviet soldiers against German women, they called the children born from this 'Russian Brats'.
Such social responses are not unique to that country, a nation in the far east referred to such children as 'The dust of life' to name one of many other such examples.
Children born from these acts often feel a high degree of self hatred and self doubt, the part of the story where Zesshi talks about wondering what parts of her thinking came from her father, and the difficulty she faced with her mother always being reminded of her father, whenever she looked at her daughter is taken from something expressed by a real child of such an act.
Her isolation from her society, the contempt it heaped on her, the disregard for half of who she was, everything about this was written in such a way as to strive to create a realistic picture of a complex and often ignored character, and how they can come to terms with their own inner turmoil through acceptance and support.
AN 3: I realize that this was an emotional topic for some of my readers, and I hope I did it the justice that it truly deserved. Any failure or defect found therein is entirely my responsibility, and it could not even be this well done, however well done that may be…without the steadfast support of my beta readers in my discord server.
If you found this subject to be well handled and this story to be worth your time, I would ask that you please express this by donating to bdgiving dot org, as we strive to raise money for our annual Lucy Morgan Memorial Drive, this year in honor of a fallen friend, we will be using 100% of these funds to pay for the meals, materials, books, uniforms, and tuition for an entire class of secondary year school students at the Kasese Humanist school in Uganda.
Thank you to those of you who read this from beginning to end, and I hope to provide you with much more worth reading in the future.