I find myself standing once more in the familiar alley, which offers a somewhat familiar view: That of the small, decrepit home and the heavy metal door which guarded it. The difference is that the door now stands wide open against the outer wall, and within, a filthy, limp human hand is visible through the open gateway. I don't even remember leaving the scene. I must have been corralled outside by one of my allies, even if I couldn't even guess which one specifically. It would seem that the clamor of the battle did not attract the immediate attention of any of the other humans. I suppose that this is the sort of place where people are prone to minding their own business.

My eyes lock on the pale, heavy hand for a few seconds before I'm abruptly brought back to reality. "How could you?" I growled at the less than guilty looking crow, "You killed him!"

"Well, yeah." she says with a winged shrug, "He tried to kill us first, so it was only fair."

"That-that wasn't necessary!" I say, "We could have..."

"What? What exactly could we have done?" the bird asks, a hint of annoyance creeping into her normally calm and measured voice.

A simply glare at her.

"No, seriously, tell me. I honestly want to know! Should we have gone for non-lethal damage and then ran away when the opportunity presented itself? You're the one who took this quest, and you wanted to help save the missing children." Claire narrows her eyes, "Are you saying you would feel better if we just ran off, and left him to keep killing who knows how many more kids?"

I wince a little at the idea. "We don't know... maybe we could have..." I say, but I honestly don't know how to finish that sentence. Unfortunately, it seems that our new hired help does.

"What exactly? Find some sort of authority figure and carefully explain to them in words that they can't possibly understand what he was doing? Oh, but hey, we don't need to do that, we could just offer some of the evidence that we don't have, which would surely lead to him being brought to justice!"

"I could have found a way if you gave me a chance..." I grumble, but I'm doing a rather poor job of even convincing myself let alone her. Vile and Slave and both here as well, of course, and while they do look somewhat sympathetic, I can't help but notice that they fail to speak up in my defense. I doubt that's out of any particular loyalty to our winged companion, either. It's more likely because they have nothing to say.

"Okay, fine!" the crow closes her eyes and nods. "Let's just say that, hypothetically, we could have come up with a way to alert the locals, and he ended up arrested. What exactly do you think happens then? Do you have any idea how long it took for my owner to die? Do you think that the people would show more sympathy for a repeated child murderer? Or perhaps you'd rather he have been slowly and publicly tortured, rather than swiftly put out of his misery?"

My mind flashed to what little remained of the woman who Carrie-Anne had chosen to follow and shuddered. I just don't see how that can be considered justice. For anyone. It just seems designed to draw out the misery and anger for as long as possible. To feed into the worst parts of ourselves.

"It just... it just wasn't our call to make. It wasn't right." I say, moping.

"Oh, of course! It's not 'right'! Well, why didn't I think of that?" The crow mocks, it now her turn to glare angrily at me, "Obviously, the 'right' thing to do is the option that makes things worse for all of the involved parties! It's such a good thing that we have this precious morality to keep us all in line! Otherwise, we'd had to be hateful and miserable on our own!"

I reflexively want to strike back, but that urge is short lived and even if I truly wished to, I wouldn't have known how. "I just... don't know." I say, head lowered.

"That's right. You don't know." the crow says to me, less anger in both her voice and glare, but still staring into me with cold eyes. "Maybe you think that being a paladin gives you some sort of moral superiority, but that doesn't mean anything to me. You can lay out all the principles and ethics in your mind, but here in the real world? Things are ugly and messy and often bloody, and there is no simple 'right' answer to make everything work."

"Okay, okay, that's enough." Vile sighs, finally speaking up.

"No. It's okay. She's right." I sigh, but can't help frown a little, "Well, no, I don't think she's right, but I can't say that she's quite wrong, either. I just... I just wanted to be able to help."

"You did. You helped a lot." Carrie replies, and I furrow my brow at her, assuming that she's being sarcastic, but detect no signs of it in her expression. "Sooner or later, sooner than later, I would guess, someone's going to investigate the house and find both the corpse and the still open trap-door. I'm sure there will be more than a few questions about what happened to him, and conveniently we're highly unlikely to be suspects, but as for everything else? They'll put the pieces together. The parents of the dead kids will have closure, that lunatic is put out of his misery, and the murders will stop."

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

"That doesn't sound like a very good outcome to me." I grumble. It all just felt so pointless, especially the fact that I was actually rewarded for finding the children, despite the fact that it was far too late to save any of them.

"And yet it's still the best possible one." the crow nods. I can't really disagree with that, either. I don't understand his motives, perhaps he didn't even have any, and was simply damaged as Carrie implied, but if the human killed that many children, it's unlikely that he would have stopped there. Maybe someone else would have caught him soon, but who can say for sure?

"I'm sorry." I say in a soft voice, "I can't say that I'm happy with how things turned out, or that I necessarily agree with it... but you did what you think you had to, and I can't fault you for that."

"Heh, is that it? Seeing as how you're a paladin, I was expecting some long, self-righteous diatribe about the important of law and order." The crow smiles, but in a surprisingly warm manner, "But that would have been okay, too. Life isn't a popularity contest, and I don't expect everyone to agree with me. If you want to be stupid and wrong, that's your business."

I frown in response, but only for a moment. Her expression is teasing but not in any way malicious. I can't help but smile just a little in response. Sure, things didn't turn out great, and certainly not the way that I had expected, but the black feathered bird wasn't wrong. The alternatives, all of them, were far worse, and we never would have stopped that man and the awful things he was doing without her help.

"Heh. Fair enough." I say, looking to her, "So what happens now? I can't say that I approve of the methods you used, but you've certainly earned your pay. I guess you'll be heading off now?"

Carrie blinked and tilted her head to one side, "Are you serious? That was, maybe, 100 gold pieces worth of work, at most! Don't you have any idea of the value of money?"

"Squire is pretty sheltered, and terrible at math. She's completely clueless." Vile says, to which Slave nods in agreement.

I can't help feeling a little embarrassed by the words. I also can't exactly deny the truth of them. I don't have even the faintest clue of how much things cost or how much a single gold coin, much less over a thousand, is actually worth. "Oh..." I say, fumbling for the right words, "So, what does that mean?"

"Well, I could just rip you off, but I'm a professional! I guess I'll have to help you out on this mission of yours until I've properly earned my pay." Carrie nods.

"You could always just give Squire back most of the money she paid, instead." Slave says, looking to the bird with an annoyed expression. I guess that she doesn't like the crow very much, but then as kind and loyal as she can be, she doesn't come off as the sort who likes anyone very much on first meeting.

"Sorry. No refunds." the crow shakes her head.

I simply smile. An avian assassin isn't exactly at the top of my list for potential allies, but honestly, who am I to judge? Both Vile and Slave were similarly more morally ambiguous than I would have liked, and I would have never made it this far without them. The world is clearly a very large place, with a whole lot of different types of people in it. I'm hardly in a position to argue that only those who think and behave exactly like me are worthy of my company, after all. I'm nowhere near impressive enough for that. Still, as tolerant as I try to be, something still weighs on me.

"Okay." I say to the crow, "But, if you're going to travel with us, we need to come to an agreement first."

The bird sighs, "Is this the part where you tell me that I'm not allowed to kill anyone? I thought we already agreed that it was the right thin to do. Plus, I am an assassin, after all..."

"No, it's not about that!" I say before thinking, "Well, okay, sort of about that. It's true, I don't want you to kill any humans, but I also can't claim that my judgement on the matter os more important than yours..." I continue. Carrie looks to me with a skeptical expression, clearly wondering where I'm going with this, "I just want you to promise that you won't do it unless it's absolutely necessary."

"Hmm... and who, exactly, defines what is or is not necessary?"

"You do." I nod.

The crow smiles wide. "Deal." as she offers a wing. Fortunately, I've seen humans make similar gestures, and offer my paw in exchange and we sort of clumsily shake. Humans always like it when I do that with them, and I must admit, it does feel rather satisfying. I cast one more sorrowful look towards the open structure, and wish things could have somehow turned out differently before walking away. While it's true that me and the others aren't likely to be seen as suspects, we still probably shouldn't hang around here too long, either.

Carrie-Anne begins to hop behind when she stops at the dour expressions on the faces of both the rat and the black cat. "What?" she asks.

"That was a mistake." Slave says. Now it's Vile's turn to nod in agreement.

"What, you mean that deal?" The crow smirks, "How is it a mistake? I can basically do whatever I want, based on whatever standards I feel like! It blatantly favors me." she nods, before her expression turns to one of mild concern. "Doesn't it?"

"Yeah, you seriously miscalculated." Vile says as she walks past the bird, casting a sympathetic eye in her direction. "You underestimated just how much of a terrible influence that Squire could be."

Slave follows the rat as well, clearly agreeing. As for our new ally, she simply stands, worried, mentally recalculating things. As for me, I say nothing, but still can't help but huff in annoyance at the pair. I don't know what they're talking about... I think that I'm a great influence!

---

Slave: "I noticed that we didn't get any villain chatter in this arc."

Carrie-Anne: "Well, he wasn't around all that long. Plus, even in this section, I doubt he would understand us."

Slave: "Plus, it would just be kind of gross, I now that I think about it. Wolves and spiders are one thing, but I don't really want to banter with a child murderer."

Vile: "What about the AbyssalWood Alpha? I can't say for sure, but wolves eating children is a tale as old as time."

Slave: "That's different! Plus, we didn't have much of a choice back then. There weren't many characters available to talk, and Squire is kind of boring on our own. We had to settle for him and the other wolves."

Squire: ...

AbyssalWood Alpha: ...