The warm glow was gone; in its stead, an ominous grey light emanated from nowhere in particular. Birdekk sat glumly in his chair, his chin resting on his hands folded on his chest. Opposite to him sat Tow, sunken into his chair and hands gripping the hand rests. Both appeared twins, as they both wore drab overalls and the same glum expression.
Greoo was racing back and forth, her leather, steel-tipped shoes echoing on the cold polished granite floor. She wore a long, tightly fitting, buttoned top to bottom, crimson dress and white cap of a very pious, angry, and serious maargardian noblewoman. She would go to one end of the room, turn around, march toward the other end, and then repeat. She has done so for at least a quanter already. Every once in a while she would stop, inhale, as if she wanted to say something, then change her mind and continue marching aimlessly. Anh was nowhere to be found, although his and Greoo’s chairs were prepared between Tow’s and Birdekk’s.
The eldest called this meeting after the shock of what Thernohh had done subsided, at least a little. After the eldest kin said a few vacuous niceties… they found themselves at a loss of words. On top, Anh seemed unresponsive, and Thernohh … just didn’t appear to care one iota.
On the fringes of their awareness, they noted that Brandt came and said things. Upon noticing it Greoo paused for a bit, grumbled, and continued to race angrily back and forth without saying anything. Whatever the Nord said did knock Anh out of his state though, as the dominant was now following their hoomin employer.
Suddenly, Greoo stopped.
-” HOW COULD YOU DO THIS!?” - she shouted into the air. Birdekk and Tow exchanged troubled glances but didn’t say a word.
-” Thernohh! I know you hear this! Explain yourself!”
Greoo’s frustrations were met with silence for a few drips.
-” I’m not going to.” - finally came a response -” You are not dumb, you know why.” - the youngest said calmly, but somewhat sadly.
-” You murdered one of us!”
- ”I killed one of our kind. Yes.”
The young woman opened her mouth but no words came out of it. After a brief moment, she exhaled heavily -”Why?”- she finally said quietly.
-” We are a soldier, Greoo, or a vagabond, outlaw. Name it how you want. We didn’t sign up for this out of our own volition, but here we are.” - Thernohh’s voice was cold and monotone – “Brandt’s, and wildmen’s lives were relying on us doing that one thing, probably even more people’s as well. ”
-” So did Brandt say, yes.” – murmured Tow
-” We gave the seer all the opportunity to surrender. They refused and thus forced our … my grip. I am not proud of what I needed to do. But we have an obligation to all those who trusted us.”
-” You killed them…”
- ”Greoo” – it was Birdekk’s turn to speak -” I imagine. No. I know that you are suffering. But Thernohh…”- he hung his voice for an uncomfortably long time to continue - ”...she is right.” - he silently, finished the sentence.
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-” We implicitly agreed to do anything necessary when we agreed to take part in this Divinul forsaken expedition.”- added Tow -” Vhirs all doing, this is such a mess, and we’re right in the middle of it.”
-” We didn’t agree to anything!” - weakly protested Greoo -” We didn’t agree to steal, to murder Ksintsax, to this…”
Birdekk sighed, wiggled his eyebrows a little, pondering what to say next, then spoke.
-” Can you point to where we were dragged against our will, where we didn’t turn a blind eye to shady things Brandt was doing?”
The room was filled with tense, uncomfortable silence, but at the same time, the glow became a little warmer. Greoo slowly returned to her chair, and, once close enough, fell into it heavily.
-” I can’t” – she said weakly – “It’s all his fault...”
- ”Don’t” – sternly said Birdekk -” Face the responsibility, learn from it. As we all need to. For now…” - the eldest half shut his eyes - “... I think we are nearing the compound. We better prepare ourselves for fulfilling the role of a vitahexer. Another obligation we took.”
As they approached the compound, a lone figure approached them, which they quickly recognized as Strettar, the elder of the wildmen. None of them paid much attention to what the hoomin was saying, only that three of their people were grievously wounded, and they needed help.
When they entered the compound, they noticed Hanne’s had already cleaned the battlefield off fallen ordos. On the edges of their sight, they saw one corpse being unceremoniously dragged away. Someone was carrying fresh logs to throw into the dimming bonfire. Nearer to it laid three men, one next to another, covered by blankets and being sought after by two others. The rest of the war party was scouring the compound for whatever reason. They counted three doing this. Where were the rest, it was anyone’s guess.
Strettar was saying something to them, but they were not listening, instead allowing the dominant to deal with it, which he did, and apparently to the satisfaction of the hoomin, They began working a few drips later, which all of them found quite soothing, despite the sour smell of vitahexergy, gore and slash and gunshot wounds. Whatever they asked for it found itself in their hand within a triskol. Be it a bandage, a wet towel, or a knife. Forst of the wounded had a musket ball stuck into his thigh bone. He howled, squirmed, and tossed as the messy extraction progressed. Three of his companions held him during this time, but in the end, the ball was removed, and the wound sewn and dressed.
The second patient was delirious, sweaty, and barely cognizant. Anh attributed it to blood loss caused by a slash wound on the neck. Immediately he began to apply the little vitahexergy he knew and began to sew the wound. Unlike the previous, this man did not object, or even move, which made Anh’s task that much easier. Not a quarter later, this task was completed and initial worries about the patient’s survival subsided when they noticed his shallow breath.
The last of them suffered a gunshot to the gut and only had a weak pulse to him. The ball went through, likely leaving a mess. They didn’t consider whether an attempt to help was justifiable, just spent over a halfer using all the scant knowledge of medicinal hexergy and anatomy they knew. It seemed to have worked, although at the cost of inhaling noxious fumes of the craft, which gave them a little dizzy feeling and a mild headache.
About a candle later, all three wildmen were sleeping beside the fire, under blankets, next to a mess of bloody bandages, rags, knives, and jugs. The variunity of Anh was floating beside them, staring absentmindedly into the fire. Their hands were covered with splotches of blood and sweat. Their clothes were immersed in the stench of vitahexergy. None of them said a word to each other since they returned from the forest. They were tired, exhausted, emotionally drained, disgusted, and burdened by guilt.
The wildmen around them were doing things, carrying items, doing tasks, they didn’t pay much attention to it, just allowed the time to pass. After a while, they noticed that Strettar and some of the wildmen sat around the bonfire with them. None were saying anything but on their faces, they read gratitude mixed