The Great Core's Paradox

Valera tried her best not to slump, the day’s challenges conspiring to hit her all at once. Only the knowledge that there were others watching - that there were others who’d gone through worse, who were depending on her to put on a brave face - kept her posture ramrod straight. Still, one of her hands unerringly found its way upwards in search of comfort, to the tiny snake on her shoulder.

I still can’t get it out of my head.

Every time Valera blinked, she saw fire.

Smoke.

Destruction.

It was like witnessing the destruction of Verdant Grove all over again - and, though it was so much smaller in scale, she was finding that the sight had hit her just as hard. Probably because, this time, Valera had been there to witness the worst of it rather than arriving weeks afterwards.

Though that wasn’t the only thing that was bothering her.

She’d killed her first human today.

Sure, just maybe, the Little Guardian had been the one to actually finish him off. Valera couldn’t be sure, with the way that she’d been forced to immediately turn and take down the second man after the first. But what she was sure of was that, the moment her blade plunged into his neck, that man had been doomed to die.

And it had been so easy.

It felt good.

But it didn’t remove the fire from her eyes - nor the smoke, or the destruction. Those were still there. Waiting for her to blink.

She scratched at the Little Guardian’s scales, digging her fingers underneath the leather straps attached to his tiny armor plates, and received a gentle hiss in return.

Still too slow, she thought, blinking and seeing the flames again. Should have been faster. Need to be better.

It was a stupid thought. Valera knew that. Being faster wouldn’t have done much to save anyone, not when she needed to notice the problem to do anything about it in the first place. She had the thought, anyway.

It made her feel better, like it gave her direction.

I need to be better.

Valera tapped her feet impatiently, unable to keep still. Even now, she felt like she was supposed to be moving. But, really, there was nothing that she could do but wait. She had already done her part in capturing someone to question - something that she had been forced to excuse herself from.

She wasn’t in the right headspace for something like that, after the things she’d seen. Valera had already killed a man today - and if she let her eyes close for too long, if she saw too much, she might just kill another.

And that would be a waste; he had information that they needed.

“Skies, I’m feeling fucked up,” Valera admitted to her noodley companion, rubbing at his scales again. He hissed, seeming to enjoy it, and she lost herself in the motion until the sound of heavy footsteps closed in.

Valera blinked in surprise and, forcing away the images that filled the momentary darkness, turned towards the noise. Lightning tingled under her skin, telling her that it was time to move, move, move.

But, of course, it wasn’t. Not yet. She tried to make herself settle back down, muscles falling into an embattled compromise between tension and careful rest.

Clearly, it didn’t quite work

“Valera,” Doran greeted her, his heavy footfalls stopping directly in front of her. “Are you doing alright?”

She hesitated, still grappling with the weight of her emotions and the turmoil that threatened to consume her. But she nodded, forcing a semblance of assurance into her voice. “I’m…managing,” she replied, the words feeling inadequate even as she spoke them.

Doran’s gaze softened, his expression reflecting understanding and empathy. “It’s been a rough day for all of us,” he said, his tone gentle yet resolute.

“What did we find out?” Valera asked, abruptly turning the conversation towards more productive ends. “Did Elara finish questioning the prisoner?”

Doran nodded, his eyes briefly reflecting the weariness that mirrored Valera’s own. “Yes, she did,” he replied. “It’s a good thing we have her around, you know? The girl’s mana enhancement really came in handy for this one.”

Valera imagined so. While she wasn’t exactly sure how it worked, Elara had claimed to have recently gained the ability to - to a certain extent, at least - detect lies by…listening really hard. It supposedly wasn’t foolproof, but she claimed that it helped; that there were subtle cues in someone’s heartbeat, in the almost imperceptible variations in their voice, and in an amalgamation of other factors that all gave her a relatively good idea of when someone was telling the truth or not.

Ewan, the boy that she had brought with her, had vouched for the ability, claiming that it had worked on him in the past.

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It was a good thing.

It meant that they didn’t have to resort to something terrible like torture to get the information they needed from the man she’d captured.

…a piece of Valera, the part that kept seeing smoke and fire and little bodies every time she blinked, couldn’t help but think that he was getting off too easy.

She shook her head, brushing off the thought. “What did he tell us?” she pressed, her voice firm despite the lingering turmoil in her mind.

“Quite a bit. It’s a mixed bag; some good, some bad. Which do you want first?”

“I’ll go with the good,” she decided, hoping that it would at least alleviate some of her tension.

Doran nodded. “The good news is that the captives shouldn’t be in any immediate danger of death. They’ve been abducted to work the mines and gather xenlite, not to needlessly die. Some might be hurt by null-water, yes, but the chance of death is ridiculously slim.”

Valera felt some relief at that, grateful that the captives weren’t dying while they gathered information from their prisoner. However, that relief was rather short-lived when Doran’s expression grew graver and he moved on to the bad news.

“Their children, those that were found and taken from the tower with their parents, are being used as hostages to ensure their compliance. A ruthless tactic, but effective in keeping them in line and working diligently. In some ways, that’s a good thing; if nobody acts up and resists, there really shouldn’t be any deaths before we get everyone out. But…”

“But it means that they’d be at risk in a frontal assault,” Valera finished for him, anger burning in her chest. “They’re already being used as hostages to keep the captives under control. It wouldn’t be a leap for them to turn it against us, too.”

Doran winced. “Yes,” he said quietly.

Valera looked down. Her fingers found their way to the hilts of her blades, crushing them in a white-knuckled grip. “Skies,” she swore, unable to find the words to say anything else for a moment. A few seconds of furious thinking later, she looked up again.

“We’re still getting them out,” she stated, refusing to entertain any other possibility.

“Yes,” Doran replied, beginning to turn back around. “We are. It will just be a little more complicated than we thought. Walk with me. The others are already waiting so that we can talk things over.”

Sighing, she pushed herself into motion again, following in Doran’s wake.

To Valera’s horror, the hostages weren’t the only issue their burgeoning rescue attempt faced, even if it was the most concerning in her mind. For example, the armaments of their enemy.

As Elara’s friend demonstrated their effectiveness, thrusting his hands forward to deliver a perfect strike into empty air, she watched a hole bore itself into a tree more than thirty meters away. It was perfectly aligned with where the spear in his hands would have landed, had its tip stretched ludicrously far.

“Windspears are the biggest advantage that they’ll have in a fight,” he said, pulling the weapon back. “In a narrow tunnel and with multiple spears striking at once, there’s almost no surviving without some kind of defense in front of you.”

And, Valera knew, that wasn’t even accounting for the fact that the ones with such a devastating weapon would have defenses of their own. She looked down at her own blades, possessed of far more boring enhancements, and felt a hint of envy.

Unfortunately, while they had four Windspears of their own - two held by the Little Guardian’s disconcerting undead and the other two recently acquired by Valera herself - she’d never trained to use a spear. Valera would be sticking with her boring old weapons.

“I think that you have more advantages, though,” the boy continued, letting go of the spear with one hand to grab at the [Little Guardian’s Totem] around his neck. “This kind of healing is…unheard of. And there’s more than enough volunteers if it comes to a fight,” he said, motioning towards a few groups that Doran was in the midst of coaching through some basic exercises.

Volunteers were aplenty; after the first had come forward, it had been like a flood. Normally, they would have been dismissed. There was very little that anyone could feasibly learn within the timeframe that they were working under. It would be like throwing a newborn into a nest of monsters. Futile.

Normally.

As Ewan said, the kind of healing that they had on hand was unheard of. It was easier to train when your health and stamina were constantly being replenished. It was easier to practice live combat when anything short of ruptured arteries or lost limbs would eventually be shrugged off. And it was easier to fight when that same healing would exist on the battlefield itself.

Valera had concerns. Training under that sort of protection, with those sorts of assumptions, would create bad habits. Habits that would be hard to break.

But they might need the manpower - both for the problem at the mines and beyond. She hadn’t forgotten about the problem of Virtun, and watching the recent volunteers had opened her eyes to some frightening possibilities for the future.

Still, that was something for the future. As eager as the new volunteers were to help, it wouldn’t be right to simply throw them in front of an entrenched line of Windspears and hope that the healing of their [Little Guardian’s Totem]s kept them alive. And without any real armor to keep them safe, it wouldn’t.

The Little Guardian’s healing was unheard of, true, but it wasn’t perfect.

“I’ll be heading out soon, I think,” the boy beside her said, breaking Valera away from her thoughts. He held out the glowing spear, and she took it from his hands. “I’ve already told Elara. I’ve seen enough here; more than I hoped, but also more than I wanted to. I’ll do what I can to keep my promises to her, and see about putting some pressure on politically. If enough people at home find out about what’s happened, maybe that will lead to the captives’ release without the need for a fight.”

Valera nodded. It wouldn’t hurt. After what they’d found out from their prisoner, she was willing to take every advantage she could. Already, the others were beginning to work on some of those advantages, some of which were aligned with Ewan’s own thoughts; Erik, Elara, and Kala had left to visit some of the nearby towers with a few survivors of the recent raid, looking to recruit others to their side - both because it was their original reason for visiting Erandur in the first place, and because those new allies could be used to increase any political or social pressure that Ewan was trying to stir up to free the captives more peacefully. Doran, decidedly non peacefully, was training volunteers for a potential fight. The Little Guardian was, after some frustrating attempts at communication, creating more seeds to be used in creating new Guardian Groves.

And, finally, Valera herself was…

She blinked.

A flash of fire, smoke, and destruction lit the darkness.

Valera was preparing herself to do whatever was necessary.