The captain had been right in saying that bluffing wouldn’t work again, as his men weren’t easily disturbed. They were focused entirely on us, and four of them immediately attacked at once, each one targeting one member of our group.

Glancing behind me, I could see that Riala was handling herself, while walking closer toward us again, but I would have to keep an eye on her mana usage. I took out the soldier closest to me with another script and then turned towards Reurig and Berla. While he was engaging with one soldier, Berla was struggling to defend herself against another. Raising my arm once more, I shot at him, but he evaded and ducked behind a tree. I did my best to keep an eye on our surroundings, and I saw four more soldiers getting ready to attack.

We had never really talked about how our group would handle such a situation, but we somehow got into a groove very quickly. While Reurig, Berla, and Riala did their best to distract the soldiers, I mostly waited for good chances to deal decisive blows, downing one soldier after the other. With the limited space between the trees, they had a hard time surrounding us properly, while I usually had a clear line of fire as soon as they tried to approach us.

The battle took several minutes, but little by little, their numbers dwindled. Once they were down to two soldiers, they finally did look at the scene with disturbed expressions. After a quick glance at each other, they tried to retreat, but as they were running away in straight lines, like idiots, I shot both of them in the back, one after the other.

The forest was finally quiet, but I kept looking around, waiting for any more of them to appear. I kept aiming at trees, when I thought I had seen some movement, and I kept checking on Riala, who had retreated to stand between me and the others.

A few seconds passed, until I suddenly felt Berla’s hand on my shoulder. “It’s over, Tomar,” she said. “They’re all gone.”

I turned to look her in the eyes and she seemed shocked for a moment. What’s wrong? I thought. They’re gone...? That’s... good, right?

Even as I slowly lowered my arms, I kept checking our surroundings, just to be sure. “Is everybody okay?” I asked as I looked back and forth between the others. It seemed like none of them had been hurt badly, though Berla and Reurig had a few shallow wounds. Miraculously, Riala and I didn’t seem to have even a scratch on us. We were lucky.

After a moment, I took a few deep breaths and finally realized that I had apparently been breathing very hard. My heart was still beating fast in my chest, but when no more soldiers were appearing from behind trees, I was slowly starting to relax a little. I then took another, closer look around, at the former soldiers.

Counting the bodies, there had been thirteen of them. Except for two that Reurig and Berla had taken care of, all others had holes in either their heads or their torsos. I had reached my pain threshold shortly before the last couple of shots, but it had been enough. We had neutralized the threat. We have... neutralized...

“Tomar...?” Riala said. I looked down at her and saw a worried and sad expression on her face.

“What’s wrong...?” I said. As I looked around a final time, I felt a smile fade from my face. Was I smiling just now...? That can’t be, right? Or... are they looking at me like that because I did...?

As if my mind had filtered it out until that moment, I finally realized that the ground and the trees around us were dyed red by the blood of the soldiers. We were surrounded by corpses, lying on the ground. The eyes of a few of them were still open, staring into nothingness.

“Did... Did I...?” I started, but I realized it was a stupid question. I knew what I had done. It had been a calculated decision after initially killing the agent. We had been surrounded, they wouldn’t take no for an answer, they wouldn’t hold back, and then they threatened Riala. We didn’t have a choice, and we did what had to be done. And yet, I felt as if my body had acted on its own, as if I hadn’t truly been the one who did this. As if I’m not the one who just... personally killed eleven people in cold blood...

I was in a daze, going over the pictures in my mind over and over. Was it really a decision? I thought. Wasn’t I getting ready to surrender right before the fight broke out? I snapped when they laid their hands on Riala, and from there, some kind of instinct took over. At that point, we didn’t have any other choice but to fight anymore, but them taking Riala shouldn’t have made a difference if we were going to surrender. They would’ve taken all of us, that was the whole point. But seeing that dagger at Riala’s throat broke something inside me...

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While I was just standing there, hanging my head, thinking, I suddenly felt a wet cloth on my cheek. Looking up, I realized that Berla seemed to be wiping my face. “Don’t worry, it’s just some... dirt,” she said.

Dirt? Why would there be... Oh... It’s... not dirt.

Some of the soldiers had gotten quite close to us, and some took my shots from a very close distance. Looking at Berla and Reurig, they had some blood spatters on their clothes, and I must’ve gotten some on my face. What have I done...? Was this right? How could I just kill them? “Shouldn’t I have done something else...?” I mumbled. “And what are we going to do now...?”

“Tomar, look at me,” Berla said, and I raised my head once again to look her in the eyes. “We did what was necessary. Say it.”

I just looked at her blankly. But I...

“Say it!” she said again.

“We... did what was necessary.”

“That’s right, keep repeating it. Unfortunately we can’t stay here though, we have to go,” she said.

I could feel Riala take my hand. I looked down at her, and it seemed like her gaze was entirely focused on me, as if she didn’t want to look at our surroundings. Berla started walking away on her crutches, leading the way, while Reurig led me and Riala after her.

We did what was necessary. We did what was necessary. We did what was necessary. We did what was necessary. We did what was necessary. We did what was necessary. We d—... We killed thirteen people.

***

When I woke up in the morning, I was lying right next to a burned out campfire. Riala was sleeping at my side, while Berla and Reurig were sitting around the fireplace. Initially I was confused how we had gotten here, until the memory of the previous day came back. We had gone through the tunnel, exited it in the forest, and were then attacked by soldiers. I was hazy on the details of what had happened afterwards, but the dead soldiers I remembered vividly.

I got up quietly, so as not to wake Riala, and sat down next to Berla. She handed me a cup with some water that she had presumably gotten from a tree. While she had trouble remembering scripts, she had at least reached a point where she could do this much, over the one week we had spent in the Wildlands before.

“How are you?” she asked in a quiet voice.

“I honestly don’t know...” I said. “On the one hand, I feel like shit... What I did... Thirteen people... It’s horrible. I know that, and I feel it. But another part of me wants to just wave it away and act like it wasn’t a big deal... That part doesn’t care about what happened.”

I was staring at the cup in my hand, but when I briefly glanced at Berla, she looked surprised.

“I have to admit, that’s not what I expected,” Reurig said.

“No, it’s not...” Berla said.

“It feels so wrong...” I said.

“Listen, no matter what you’re feeling right now, the fact of the matter is that we didn’t have a choice. We’re at war, and the soldiers would’ve rather killed us than not bring us back.”

But there had to be another—

“You might be thinking there had to have been another way,” she said, “but there really wasn’t. Even if they had let all of us live, and that’s a big if, they would’ve guarded us every second of every day, until we got back to Alarna. And they would’ve bound us as well. Escaping them would’ve been borderline impossible, and we don’t know what they might’ve done before reaching the town. This was the only way to truly ensure our safety. We did what was necessary.”

It sounded like she truly believed this. At least up until that last sentence. The same one she had told me to repeat yesterday, presumably until I would convince myself. It felt a little as if she was trying to convince herself just as much as me. Although, thinking about it rationally, she wasn’t wrong. When I had thought about surrender, I hadn’t considered all the different ways how that could’ve gone sideways. What bothered me most, was that I hadn’t considered whether they would even bring Berla and Reurig with them, or if they might kill them then and there. They only needed Riala and me, and maybe not even that. One of us would’ve probably been enough, and since I was the more knowledgeable one, maybe they would’ve killed Riala as well. One prisoner instead of four meant much less hassle after all. Maybe I had subconsciously understood that back there, when I had killed the agent. Maybe I had sensed the danger when Riala was threatened and acted accordingly.

However, even if I were to accept that it had been necessary, I was scared of what I had done, how easily I had done it, and how a part of me didn’t care. Even more horrifying was the thought that I might’ve liked it.

Why did I smile...?