Chapter 55

"I feel like a deformed porcupine," The goo had dried in her fur, leaving spikes she could easily see in her wide field of vision.

"Uh, huh," Tobias grunted as he trudged by dragging two bodies towards a burn pit.

"What about resting?" Riley asked again as Cid dropped two more within, looking around the now emptier streets.

"Hush beast, there'll be time enough when the work is done," he snapped, his tone cold and sharp.

It hit Riley like a north wind, silencing her protests...for the moment.

Weren't they supposed to go to the cathedral? Get clean? Get some rest? Decompress?

With Cid, nothing was ever that easy; there were no straight lines with her instructor.

"I should have known that well enough by now," she said to herself glumly, settling down as best she could with her mud caked sticky paws and spiked fur.

"A bath, a real bath with nice bubbles and hot water would be so nice right now." luxuriating in the memory, she stretched out, forepaw over forepaw, only for the burning stitch in her side to return, reorienting her brutally to the here and now.

It was then she realized she had never had a bath, not on this side of things.

"Well, it's certainly time," Riley fidgeted, replying to her own thoughts.

Was that talking to herself? In a way, the projection of her voice had become an exercise in talking to herself, of holding the words in her mind and pushing them to others instead of down to some physical voice box.

Her brain was her voice box, and she knew a thing or two about speaking her mind.

Riley giggled within as an idea struck.

Sensing no danger, scenting nothing on the air save for the toxic bouquet of bug guts sticking to her fur, Riley pulled at her power, reveling in the contentment of a full mana bar.

Hopping to an intersecting lane, she found a few corpses and, using her power, willed one strong root to grow and carry the remains of the poor soul along before dropping it in the pit.

"So, you finally decided to work along with us?" Cid accused.

"I'm still getting accustomed to the idea I can," Riley replied, refraining from showing off her lack of thumbs.

"Keep adapting, keep it up. Your mind is your only limit. Get past can't, and you can think your way out of anything," the old man lectured as Riley went to retrieve another body.

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"He's like a marine drill sergeant that ate a fitness instructor," Riley grumbled to herself as the day wore on, the hot sun beating down, causing the mess covering her hide to grow in stiffness and stink.

"That's never going to come out," She complained, having long exceeded her tolerance for the abject misery she was experiencing.

Landon looked a lot cleaner, at least, and there were new prompts to address, but first, a bath, a real bath.

"I never thought I'd miss bubbles, of all things," She glowered, but Tobias was looking better.

"You've hardly said a word since Cid ordered us to work," she said, trying to spark some fire of dialogue within him.

Tobias pulled at her power as much as his own, adding heat to the burn pit.

The putrefying remains flashed to ash in the holy light while he watched.

Tobias took a deep breath and sighed.

"Hard to know how to feel. There's a lot on my mind," he temporalized.

"That's understandable. I don't know how I feel about it either, but I think I've got it easier than you," she replied, which drew a stare as Tobias turned his head from the pit.

"What about this is easy? We saw the orphans. By the dead gods we're burning the remains of their parents after killing the thing that used them as food," Tobias trailed off, his eyes widening with the horrors of the last few days.

"I remember dying, it really sucked. Nothing about death is easy or clean, or even right. Death is a byproduct of life that hits like a bomb. I'll never forget the looks in those refugee's eyes, but I also won't forget that I could do something about it," Riley insisted.

"I just... I had it easy, came up in the city, and have always had my magic. These people out here in the frontier towns, it's life and death for them every day. I've always been so consumed with my own problems, with finding my power, proving myself, and living up to all the pride that was given to me like it was a noble birthright; all the while, people were living, bleeding, and dying out here. I feel... selfish," Tobias winced as if the words themselves were razors cutting into his soul.

"I don't feel selfish; I feel empowered. I hate this ugliness. I hate the bug guts in my fur and the burning bodies in this pit. I hate every bit of the death, but for the first time in any memory I have on any side of any life I could make it stop, and I did. It wasn't perfect, it wasn't easy, and people still died, but a lot more are going to live. Landon has a chance, and those refugees have closure. That means something, and that is shining brighter than the bad all around me," Riley rose up on her hind paws in emphasis of her words before leaning against Tobias's leg.

"We made a difference. I used my magic for something good..." His words trailed off again as he absently grasped until he found the top of her head and scritched through her sticky fur.

"We did, and the better we get as rangers, the more people we can help. That means something to me. It keeps the horror from being all that I see," Riley replied, thumping her hindpaw in an involuntary reaction.

"When I saw you go down," Tobias winced, "it's been a little more than a month, but it feels like years. You came along, and everything in my life started to slide to here, but I don't see how I could have gotten here without you. I..."

"It's a day for incomplete sentences. There's no bracketing this stuff. You've come to mean a lot to me too. Life has always had a kind of momentum, but this feels like a roller coaster compared to what it was before. You've made a scary world better, and I don't want to lose you to this muck, be it to a monster or what the monsters do. Stay you, Tobias, I need you," Riley insisted.

"Oh, I've changed, and I don't think I'm done. It's real out here. It's not about class, abstract concepts, or clean numbers. It's crying children, broken bodies, and decimated towns, but you're right; we have the power to do something about it," Tobias' tone sounded firm.

Cid approached with Zorna padding behind him, tossing one last body into the pyre.

"You two quit standing around. Let's find the tavern for this place," he smiled wryly, as inwardly something with Riley relaxed.

"Oh thank the thirteen gods," Riley said, hoping to finally get that bath.