Explorer of Edregon

"Vin? What's wrong?"

Vin glanced up at Shia's concerned face, realizing he'd walked all the way back to their temporary campsite without even noticing. She and Alka must have realized by now that there weren't any monsters out and about, as they'd were both standing around the fire, giving him concerned looks.

Shaking his head, Vin sighed, wondering where to even begin.

"What was the scream for?" Alka asked, her sword still unsheathed and at the ready despite the lack of monsters.

"I think it was from a nightmare," Vin said, summoning a stone stool and sitting heavily on it.

"…You're serious? A nightmare?" Alka asked, her glowing green eyes locked on him. "I would have thought he'd been stabbed. Or witnessed a stabbing at the very least."

"He called it something else. A recalling, if I remember correctly. Maybe dreams work differently for these people," Vin wondered, taking his head in his hands as he tried to forget the memories of what had happened to the blue fur clan.

"So you spoke with one?" Shia asked, her voice gentle as she walked up to him and laid a hand on his shoulder. "Are you okay? You look pale."

"Yeah… Yeah, I'm fine," he said, nodding slowly. "Though you guys aren't going to believe this."

Vin preemptively summoned two more stone stools for his companions before launching into an explanation about what he'd learned. The discovery of the neilan's utopia shocked the two of them just as much as it had him. But as he'd expected, that was nothing compared to their reactions when they learned about the cause of the blue fur clan's death.

"They did what?!" Shia gasped, her hand going to her mouth as Vin finally got to the big reveal. "But that means Neurol's people… All those deaths…"

As Shia struggled to even finish her sentence, Alka silently stood up, beginning to make her way over to the hamlet without a second glance back at them.

"Alka, what are you doing?" Vin called out, more than a little concerned.

"What do you think I'm doing? I'm destroying their God's damned ritual!" she shouted, not hesitating in the slightest as she continued forward.

"Alka, hold on!"

Vin jumped up and ran after her, running in front of her and forcing her to stop. To his surprise, Alka's entire body was visibly shaking, and he got the feeling it was taking every ounce of her willpower not to bowl him over and slaughter the entire hamlet. He hadn't even been aware she was capable of reacting like this in her new golem form.

"I can't believe I'm saying this after what they did, but we can't just destroy their ritual like that! We'd be killing them!" he said, hating himself for even saying the words.

"What, just like how they killed the blue fur clan?" Alka shot back, her glowing green eyes staring straight into his own. "If there's one thing I hate in this world, Vin, it's monsters. I didn't even know what these people had done was possible, but now that I do, there's a second thing I hate in this world. People that take their own monsters, and make them someone else's problem to deal with!"

"I know, I'm just as angry as you are," Vin sighed, turning to look over his shoulder at the ring of houses behind him. "But what's done is done. The blue fur clan is already gone, which means that fragment is now as good as any to use as their monster dumping ground. The crystal monsters didn't strike me as the type to roam between fragments."

"It was pure chance they ended up picking the crystalline desert," Alka argued, refusing to stand down. "We don't even know what half the fragments bordering this one are, but we know two of them. What if they'd chosen the Sacred Forest, and the elves were overwhelmed with Trunkbacks? Or if they'd chosen Lumel's fragment, and your new girlfriend had been eaten alive by some form of aquatic terror? Think you'd still be so calm then?"

"Do I look like I'm calm?!" Vin shouted, causing the Slayer to actually flinch back slightly as she seemed to finally realize that she wasn't the only one visibly trembling. "I was right there beside you, Alka, we dug that mass grave, together. We collected hundreds of skeletons worth of bones, together. Hell, Shia and I were the ones who broke the news to Neurol about the death of his entire clan, you weren't even there for that, so where do you get off trying to act like you're more upset about all this than I am?!"

Panting, Vin stood there, staring down his oldest friend in the world as she digested his words. Slowly, she lowered her dwarven warpick, letting it dangle down by her side. After a few more tense seconds of silence, her shining, angry eyes dimmed slightly.

"You're right… I'm sorry, Vin, nothing gets me going like a monster attack. And learning that these people caused the death of an entire clan, and didn't even feel a thing about doing so…"

"We get it," Shia said, finally walking up and wrapping Alka up in a big hug. After a moment, she reached out and grabbed Vin as well, pulling them all in together. "Sorry it took me a minute to catch up. I had to take a moment and focus on my own rage before I ended up siccing Blossom on these people."

"Damn, maybe we need to take some anger management classes," Vin chuckled weakly.

"I'd say the fact that we're not currently destroying their ritual and beating the hell out of these people shows that we're managing our anger just fine," Shia shot back with a forced grin.

The three of them laughed together, and despite the fact that it sounded strained, Vin almost felt the tension physically relax around them. After a few more seconds, they finally broke away, and Vin rolled his shoulders as he wondered what they should do moving forward.

"I guess the first order of business might be interrogating some of the other people hiding away within this fragment. For all we know Naib is an outlier, and the rest of these people aren't all uncaring monsters."

"I doubt it," Alka snorted. "Even if that was the case, they'd still be monsters in my eyes for letting Naib do this in the first place. Regardless, assuming they are all equally guilty, what do we do?"

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"As much as it pains me to let them get away with what they've done, I think Vin might be right," Shia sighed. "While their actions absolutely resulted in the death of the blue fur clan, it's not like they set out to kill them. We could, what, kill them all in retaliation? Or destroy their ritual? It would functionally be doing the same thing, seeing as I bet a single monster could wipe them all out."

"I understand where you're coming from. But are you really willing to take that risk? What if they decide to shift their fancy ritual to start pouring monsters into the Sacred Forest?"

"Then we'll make it very clear that if they try something like that, I'll come back and personally rip out their throats," Shia grinned, laying a comforting hand on Alka's shoulder. "I don't see why they would adjust their ritual at this point, and we're always only a single dungeon stop away."

"Good point, we absolutely need to find the dungeon in here to make sure we can quickly come back and deal with them if they try anything," Vin nodded.

"So we're really just letting them get away with killing the blue fur clan?" Alka asked, looking back and forth between the two of them. "Even if it wasn't done directly?"

"Do you have any suggestions other than killing them in retaliation?" Vin asked, frowning. After realizing the end result of redirecting where the monsters spawned, he'd pretty much lost all the excitement he'd had over learning such a feat was possible. He'd still grill Naib on the specifics because it was too useful of a tool to leave by the wayside, but he figured there wasn't much point thinking about all that before he talked to the man again. For all he knew it wasn't something they'd be able to do outside of their strange fragment anyway.

"I still think we should destroy their ritual and let them fend for themselves," Alka growled. "Even if they all ended up dead, we'd only be indirectly killing them, after all."

Vin winced at the parallel, but still, he shook his head. "I don't want to become some sort of global arbiter, Alka. The thought of roaming the land and deciding who gets to live and die terrifies me. It's one thing to protect a life, but killing an entire fragment in retaliation just seems…"

"I get it," Shia said, offering him a gentle smile. "Like you said, we're all getting ahead of ourselves a bit here. Before we decide to do anything drastic, let's take a step back and take care of a few things first. We need to find the dungeon entrance, talk to the other people living on the fragment, and maybe take a few deep breaths. Then, we can decide if we need to kill everyone or not. Though I'll repeat, I'm with Vin on this one. So long as they promise not to redirect their ritual, I think we should let it stay up."

"Fine," Alka sighed, finally sheathing her sword as well and crossing her arms. "I guess we can start with all that. Though one of you better handle the talking. Based on how Vin described the one he spoke with, I have a feeling I'd end up running them through with my sword if I heard them going on about 'primitive' this and 'primitive' that."

"I'll do the talking," Vin nodded, giving her a weary grin. "You might not have heard, but I am the head of the Foreign Branch after all."

"Right," Alka laughed, shaking her head and heading back to the campsite. "I keep forgetting Spur put you in charge of people. Crazy if you ask me."

Once Alka had moved away, Shia let out a heavy sigh, frowning at the back of the Slayer as she watched her walk away.

"You okay?" Vin asked, raising an eyebrow as he took in her pained face.

"I don't know. To be entirely honest, Vin… I agree with Alka. I want to destroy the ritual and kill them as well," Shia admitted.

Vin stared at her in shock, but before he could ask her to elaborate, she continued on her own. "I've been a bit worried for Alka ever since Madam Trebella's ritual. Since we got her that new body. I spoke with my master about the whole situation, and he told me I should keep a careful eye on her."

"What do you mean?" Vin asked, his eyes going wide as he turned his attention to Alka, half expecting to see cracks running down her armor or some other indication that her body was deteriorating. "Is something wrong?"

"Not necessarily… My master warned me that linking souls to inanimate objects might come with a few unexpected dangers. The main one being emotional regulation, or lack thereof. You or I or any living creature have all sorts of hormones and various chemicals shooting throughout our bodies that influence our every decision, but Alka doesn't have that anymore. This was all theoretical, but essentially, my master believes that there's a decent chance if we're not careful, she might lose her empathy all together and truly become some sort of unfeeling machine."

"That's why you didn't want to let her kill those people…" Vin surmised, getting a nod from Shia.

"I'm afraid of what might come next if we did. You've seen what she's capable of. If Alka ever truly lost her human empathy, who knows what she'd end up doing." Shia shivered, as if the mere thought was enough to give her nightmares. "So yes, I do think we should destroy the ritual and leave these people to their fates. But I don't want to push Alka down that slippery slope."

"So ignoring the neilans for the moment, how do we help her? Did your master have any tips or anything?"

"His suggestion was simple," Shia shrugged. "Honestly, it boiled down to keep treating her like a person, and keep her interacting with others. I think it really helps that she hangs out with Alice so much while the rest of us are doing our own thing, and the fact that she's got her group of Slayer trainees is huge as well. They both keep her grounded and connected, just as much as we do."

"At least that's easy enough," Vin said, watching Alka as she sat down and reached into the fire, manually turning the flaming logs without a care in the world. She didn't even flinch when grabbing the flaming logs, as though no part of her remembered the sensation of being burned. "No matter what form Alka takes, I'll always see her as a friend."

"And I'm sure she knows that," Shia smiled, squeezing his shoulder before stretching and letting out another deep sigh. "Anyway, we might as well try to grab at least a few more hours of sleep. Finding the dungeon and interrogating the neilans can wait until morning."

"Yeah. That's probably for the best."

Following behind Shia, Vin made his way back to his temporary shelter and collapsed onto his shimmerwing mattress. Despite how exhausted he felt from the events of the past hour, he feared he wouldn't actually be able to fall back asleep after everything that had happened. As he laid there, staring up at the stone ceiling, he had a sudden realization.

This is what Alka goes through every night, isn't it? After all, she can't even sleep with her new body. How many hours each night is she alone with her thoughts?

Rolling out of bed, Vin walked over to the fire and sat down beside the Slayer, watching her as she poked the flames with her warpick.

"Can't sleep?" she asked, not bothering to look at him.

"Eh. Sleep is overrated." He grinned, leaning over and nudging her with his shoulder. "Want to hear about the time I tried to jump off a moving train and nearly broke my leg? It was one of the dumber things I ever did back on my own world."

"I bet it's not nearly as dumb as the time I decided to try and practice throwing my sword and nearly lost it in the green sea," she shot back, finally turning to look at him.

Vin couldn't help but chuckle at the mental image of Alka freaking out, sifting through the tall grass on her hands and knees as she searched for her weapon, and she laughed right alongside him. The two of them watched the cracking of the fire for a moment before Vin spoke up.

"So, who goes first?"

"You can start I guess," Alka shrugged. "Though first… What's a train?"