“Put the knife down,” said Penelope.

“You first,” said the Boss. “I don’t want any more bloodshed. I surrender, but I want a guarantee that you’re not gonna kill me.”

“Let her go and I’ll spare your life,” said Penelope.

“Swear an oath.”

“I swear that I will spare your life if you surrender and let that woman go.”

“Alright.”

The Boss raised his hands, dropping the knife, and stepped back. The winged woman scrambled away, holding the cut on her neck as a thin trail of blood dripped from her hand. Penelope, however, did not drop her sword. She merely lowered it as she turned to face him.

“Come here,” she said.

“Can you put the sword away first?” asked the Boss.

“No. Come here. Unlike that man, I am a knight of honor. Your life will be spared.”

The man took a few tentative steps forward, and when Penelope did not make any moves, he continued until he was just five feet away.

“Are you right or left handed?” asked Penelope.

“Right.”

“Hold out your right arm.”

“Why?”

“I’m going to cut it off.”

“What!” he said, taking a step back. “No! I already surrendered!”

“And I am going to spare your life, as I swore to,” she said. “But I am not going to spare your arm.”

“Why are you doing this?” he demanded. “I already surrendered!”

“To teach you that your actions have consequences. I know your type. You won’t learn without consequences.”

“This is illegal!” he said. “You can’t do this!”

“So is beating children and forcing them to steal for you.”

“Is that what this is about?” he asked. “Just take me in to the coppers. I’ll confess everything.”

“You and I both know they won’t do shit,” said Penelope. “Hold out your arm.”

The Boss glanced frantically between Penelope, Elise, and his men. Whenever he made eye contact with one of his men, they turned to look away, as if pretending not to see.

Is this right? Elise wondered.

As he said, he had already surrendered. Was the law enforcement really so bad that Penelope thought that turning him over to them would be pointless? Even so, could she take the law into her own hands like this? Killing Yuri was one thing, since they had fought to the death, but this was cold-blooded dismemberment.

“Just the arm?” asked the Boss, gritting his teeth.

“I’ll let you keep the other,” said Penelope.

“And my legs?”

“I’ll let you pick which one to keep.”

“What?!” he said. “You can’t! I’ll be as good as dead!”

“You should have thought about that before you got into this line of work.”

“You think I want to live like this?” he shouted. “You think I had a choice? I was born to a whore and a beggar! I was stealing as soon as I could walk! You think I didn’t want to go to a fancy knight academy and learn swordplay and etiquette? Of course I did! But instead, I got stuck here in this shithole with jack shit to-”

He was cut off when Penelope stepped forward and slapped her gauntleted hand across his face. A broken tooth flew across the room, and the Boss stumbled to the ground, bleeding from his mouth.

“You grew up like that, and now that you’re grown and you see kids growing up just like you did, you decide to make their lives worse?” she said.

“They need to learn how to survive in this world!”

“Bullshit!” she said. “You’re just a sadistic bastard. You wanna know something? My mother was a whore too, and I never knew my father. My childhood was just as awful as yours, if not worse. You know what I did when I got old enough to unlock a class? I worked my ass off to become a knight so I could protect other kids like me from scumbags like you. You weren’t forced into this! You had every opportunity to do something else! To change things for the better! And instead, here you are, perpetuating the same, shitty system that you claim created you! Now choose! Your limbs, or your life!”

The Boss looked around for help once more, and once more found nothing. He looked up at Penelope, his eyes full of terror, then started scrambling away toward the stairs. Penelope surged with mana, and a moment later, the man’s head was rolling on the floor. Penelope stood up, breathing heavily– from anger more than exertion– and slowly turned to look at each of the thugs. None could meet her gaze.

“If I hear about any of you going after children or other innocents again, you’ll get the same,” she announced. “Understand?”

Some of the thugs nodded, and a few murmured in affirmation.

“I can’t hear you,” said Penelope. “Do you understand?”

“Yes!” they all said in unison.

“Good. And don’t you dare forget it. Now get out of here. All of you.” she kicked the Boss’s body. “And take these with you.”

Half the thugs immediately started pushing each other to get out the door, while the others glanced uncertainly at the two bodies. Penelope stabbed her sword into the wooden floorboard and leaned on it.

“I’ve shed enough blood today, I won’t attack you. Just take them and leave.”

Penelope watched like a hawk as they gathered the two bodies and only when the last of them left and the door closed did she turn to look at Sharon, the winged woman. Sharon was still bleeding from her neck, and she looked pale and shaky, but otherwise unharmed.

“Are you alright?” asked Penelope, her tone suddenly soft.

Sharon nodded nervously.

“I’m sorry about all the trouble I’ve caused. I’ll pay for all the damages and cleaning fees.” She drew a pouch from her belt, looked inside and frowned. “I don’t have much right now, but I’ll give you more soon.”

“You think money is enough?”

Penelope and Elise turned to see that the black haired woman who had been on the Boss’s other side was frowning at them. Seeing her up close, Elise could see that she was much older than she initially appeared. Beneath a thick layer of powder and paint was the worn face of a woman who couldn’t have been much younger than 50.

“You just killed my best client, and scared off all his friends. I doubt many, if any of them, will be coming back. It will take months to recover from this, and during that time, none of my girls are gonna be getting paid.”

“I’m sorry about the trouble,” said Penelope. “I’ll pay enough to make it through the rough times.”

“And where are you going to find that money?” asked the woman. “You might be a knight, but I heard that jingle. There’s no gold in that bag. Barely even any silver.”

“I’ll borrow some.”

“It’ll be at least ten gold,” said the woman. “You won’t find many places in the city willing to lend you that much.”

“I’m a knight. I’ll find a way.”

“You’d better.”

“I’ll pay,” said Elise.

Penelope looked over in surprise. “You don’t have to-”

“I’ll pay,” Elise repeated.

She reached into the pocket of her pants, pretending to fish for coins when she was really summoning them from Astrid’s Star. It hurt to part with so much of the gold the dwarves had given her, but it was better than wasting precious time that they could have been using to search for the Grays. They had already spent enough time there dealing with the Boss.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

The black-haired woman’s eyes widened when she saw the gold, then narrowed when she got a better look. She picked one of the coins out of Elise’s hand and inspected it for a moment before turning back and frowning.

“What is this?”

“You’ll have to get it exchanged to be able to use it anywhere,” said Elise. “But it’s real gold. I’m sure you can feel the weight.”

The other woman pulled another gold coin from… somewhere. She was wearing so little clothing that there didn’t seem to be any place to store coins, so Elise wasn’t sure she wanted to know where it came from. Regardless, she watched the other woman weigh the two coins in her hand, as the gears in her mind became almost visible.

“12 of these,” she said. “I don’t know how much they’ll be worth.”

“No,” said Elise. “Those are rare. If you find the right buyer, they’ll be worth much more than 10 gold.”

“And I’m supposed to just trust that?”

“Have you heard of Dokkalfheimr?”

“The fuck is that?”

“An ancient dwarven city that was destroyed more than 400 years ago. These coins are relics. A single one of them might be worth 10 gold or more.”

She seems honorable, sent Elise with {Suggest}. Why would she lie?

“Fine,” said the black-haired woman. “Now get out of my establishment.”

“One more thing,” said Elise, turning to Sharon. “Can I heal her?”

“...Fine. Hurry up.”

“Do you have a private room we can use? I’d like to keep my methods secret.”

“You’re not just going to use a skill?”

“I am, but I don’t want word getting out about what skill it is.”

“Fine. I don’t care. Sharon, take her to your room. And hurry up. I want them gone.”

The winged woman nodded, then beckoned Elise toward her with her free hand. Elise followed her through a door next to the bar into a hallway, then down a staircase into a dimly lit room. As she followed, Elise found herself staring at the woman’s wings. The feathers were long and golden, with a faint sheen that Elise was sure would look lovely in sunlight. However, the wings were folded tight against her back, and looked oddly stiff, barely moving when the rest of her body shook with a footstep.

Sharon’s room was small, and the only light was a crude lantern made with red stained glass and with some kind of poor light source inside. On the surface, the place looked clean, with neat white sheets and swept floors, but closer inspection proved that impression superficial. The floorboards were cracked, scratched, and splintering, the bed frame was crooked and sagging in the middle, underneath the thick scent of perfume was something else that was musty and foul. The whole room couldn’t have been more than 10 feet in either direction, and the vast majority of the area was taken up by the massive bed.

“Is Annie alright?” asked Sharon as soon as the door was closed.

“She’s fine,” said Elise. “She and Marco are with the guards right now. We’ll be going to get them after we leave.”

“Thank you,” said Sharon.

“Can you please close your eyes,” asked Elise. “I’ll heal you, but I can’t have you see me doing it.”

Sharon nodded, closing her eyes. Elise stepped over, used her wings to drop some dust on the other woman’s neck, then stepped back.

“Done,” said Elise. “Is- is there anything else I can help you with?”

Sharon opened her mouth to say something, but then stopped herself.

“What is it?” asked Elise.

“It’s…” she trailed off. “Please don’t tell anyone here that I told you this.”

“I won’t.”

“Margaret- She’s the owner. The one you just paid. She’s lying. We- we have other regulars. Now that the gang is gone, they’ll come back. And that money you gave to Margaret? She’s going to keep it all to herself. She always does. But you can’t tell anyone I told you this! If she finds out I said anything…”

“I won’t,” Elise promised again. “Do you want us to help?”

“I-if you can,” Sharon replied. “But you’ve already done a lot for us, so I understand if you can’t.”

Elise looked at the woman as she thought about her request. She wanted to find the Grays, and anything else was a waste of time. Besides, this one wasn’t even that big of a deal. Elise was getting scammed, but if it helped them sweep the incident under the rug and move past it, she was fine with paying it. On the other hand, it infuriated her to think about what Margaret was doing. She was exploiting her workers, and even after witnessing two men die in her establishment, her first thought was to use the situation to extort the people who were trying to help her. That wasn’t right.

I need to say no, she thought.

“We’ll think about it,” she said.

“Thank you,” replied Sharon.

When they returned to the main area, some of the other women were already starting to clean the place up. The blood-soaked floorboards were left untouched, but the tables were being cleared, and everything that had been knocked to the ground in the thugs’ haste to leave was being picked up. Even Penelope was cleaner, somehow. All the blood that had stained her armor was gone, and her sword was sheathed again. Elise was a little confused, since there was no way she had time to do that, but pushed the thought aside, assuming it must have been a skill.

When they left, they started walking back toward the guard house, and neither spoke. Elise wasn’t sure what was going on in Penelope’s head, but the reason she hadn’t spoken was that she was struggling to formulate her thoughts. She needed to bring up what Sharon had told her, but there were so many other things she wanted to ask too. In the end, she settled on the most pressing question.

“Did you have to kill him?” she asked.

“Hmm?” said Penelope, who had been lost in thought.

“The Boss. Did you have to kill him? Couldn’t you have… I dunno. He wasn’t really a threat anymore, was he?”

“Not to us, maybe,” said Penelope. “But what about everyone else who lives here? If he got away, he would have caused a lot of suffering.”

“But you said you were only going to take an arm and a leg.”

“If he surrendered.”

“He did surrender.”

“And then he tried to flee. If he had truly surrendered, I would have let him live.”

“But couldn’t you have just cut off his leg as he was trying to run?”

“Why are you so concerned about someone like him?” said Penelope, stopping. “He deserved to die, so I killed him.”

“But you didn’t have to!”

“I didn’t have to barge in there in the first place either, but I did, and you came with me. We both knew this was going to happen.”

“You said you were just going to beat him up!” said Elise.

“That was because of the children,” said Penelope. “I didn’t realize you were that naive. Trust me, there are people in this world that don’t deserve to live, and he was one of them. Both of them were.”

“But you didn’t need to kill him! If you just took an arm and a leg, he wouldn’t have been able to do what he was doing anymore, and you wouldn’t have had to kill him.”

“You think that would be better?” asked Penelope. “You know what happens to someone like him when they become crippled? All the people that they were abusing are suddenly stronger than them. They get beaten and tortured and worse. You think that’s better? Killing him was a mercy, both for him and for everyone around him.”

“But-”

“Why do you care so much?!” demanded Penelope. “You’re not even human.”

Elise bit back her response as she glanced around. There weren’t many people out, and none of them seemed to be paying too much attention to their conversation.

She wanted to tell Penelope that she was human, but explaining that would take a long time, she still didn’t know it was safe, and it wasn’t actually relevant to the conversation. Penelope was heated, and Elise recognized that. She was speaking out of anger, not reason. That didn’t mean it didn’t hurt, but it did mean that Elise knew better than to keep trying to argue, which could possibly escalate it to the point where she’d lose her only connection to the Grays.

Besides, Penelope had raised a good point. Why did Elise care so much? The Boss was a scumbag, a child abuser, a statutory rapist, and she wouldn’t be surprised if he was a murderer as well. Having one less person like him in the world was a good thing. If she hadn’t been there to watch it happen, she probably would have even been happy about it. So why was she so upset? Was what Penelope did so wrong? Was it any different than what Elise and Naomi had done to Emilia?

Of course, she thought. Emilia was worse, and we didn’t have a choice.

That doesn’t mean the Boss didn’t deserve it too, she replied to herself.

“I don’t know,” Elise admitted. “But it doesn’t feel right.”

“You’re just young,” said Penelope, her expression softening. “Trust me. I grew up around lots of men like him. They never change. When they get punished, they take it out on everyone around them. It’s better for the world that he’s gone.”

Elise still wasn’t fully convinced, but she didn’t want to argue about it any more.

“Maybe,” she said.

They continued their walk in silence for a bit longer before Elise spoke again.

“Sharon– the winged woman– said that the owner of the brothel was scamming us when she asked for money.”

“I know,” said Penelope. “But what can we do? We did barge in and wreck her place. We could try to fight her on how much it would actually cost, but it would just be a waste of time. We already lost a day dealing with the Boss. We need to get your coins exchanged and leave tomorrow.”

“I guess…”

That didn’t quite sit right with Elise either, but she didn’t want to start another argument, so she left it at that.

Soon, they arrived at the guardhouse, where Annie and Marco were being taught how to play a card game that Elise didn’t recognize. They stuck around long enough to finish the game, then started heading back. Marco apparently lived in a small shack in the worst part of town with his older brother who was never home, and Annie slept over there with him, since she couldn’t stay with her mom. Penelope took one look at the place, and decided that they would be staying at the inn for the night instead.

When they got to the inn, Penelope went to the counter and paid for a second room, right next door to their current room. Elise was a bit concerned about the sleeping arrangements, since leaving the kids on their own didn’t seem wise, but letting them be in the same room as her when she transformed would be worse. Penelope, thankfully, had already thought ahead for that.

The new room was bigger than the old one, with two beds instead of one. Penelope moved all her things into it, and brought the children with her, leaving the original room for Elise to sleep in alone. After making sure that the children were comfortable, and saying good night, Elise returned to the room that was now hers, and lay down in the bed, still in her human form as she tried to fall asleep. However, she found that her mind kept going back to Sharon and the brothel.

It’s none of my business, she tried to tell herself.

She still couldn’t get it out of her mind, and even after turning back into her base form and curling up, she wasn’t able to sleep. She could probably do something about that problem. She wasn’t Penelope, and she couldn’t barge in and force change, but that wasn’t what her skills were suited for anyways. Her abilities were geared toward trickery and subtlety. And assuming the big room on the second floor was the owner’s room, she actually had an easy way to get in and start making subtle changes…

After a few more minutes, she decided that she wouldn’t be able to sleep until she had done something, so she stood up on the bed, then flew over to the window. They already were staying for that extra night anyway. She wasn’t wasting any more time.

I’ll only do something tonight, she promised herself. I won’t stay and spend forever trying to fix things this time.

She opened the window with {Telekinesis} and leapt out into the cool night air.