A smile briefly turned to an amused grin when she saw the snow-white face turning a shade of pink as Zefaris threaded the flower’s stem into her ponytail.

“Y’done over there?” chimed in the swordsman in his rugged manner of speech. “The town’s s’posed to be just over this hill.”

As they crested the hill they saw that he was right, at least partially.

Over the hill, there stretched yet more fields, mountains reaching high into the sky over the horizon, and a line of trees dividing the fields to suggest the presence of a river. But down that hill, there stood a town… Or at least, what was left of it. To Zelsys, it looked to have at some point been a well-to-do farming town, perhaps a few thousand people strong, but now, it looked like some sort of perverted rorschach. They stopped at the top of that hill, observing what awaited below.

What Makhus had described as a town was just a vaguely circular layout of half-collapsed buildings, with perhaps a little more than a third of the town’s houses still in outwardly good condition. There stood the remnants of a wall around the town, huge holes blasted into it at multiple points, those visible barely covered over by planks or piles of rubble. Even so, a brick gateway still awaited them at the end of the road, a pair of people stood outside leaned against the wall.

Makhus’s face twisted into a grimace, his veneer of stoicism utterly melting away in a deluge of grief and rage. She heard his joints pop, his fists clenched tightly as he broke into an aggressive stride down the hill. “Fuckin’ animals,” he growled. Howling to the heavens, his voice became hoarse as the swordsman vented his fury. “Willowdale was meant to be untouched!”

The sense of optimistic levity that Zelsys had managed to cultivate evaporated in a manner of seconds, and as they ran after him to catch up, she could do nothing but allow herself to be dragged into the murk of melancholy. He didn’t look like he was going to calm down, and so she did the first thing that came to mind.

She took a breath and tackled him, using the exhalation of Fog to instantly get on top of him before he could regain his bearings. The swordsman struggled, but surprisingly, he failed to get out from under her, doubly so after she pinned his wrists to the ground. She was relieved that none of the seal-bottles broke.

His murderous glare pierced through her, his teeth flashing in a snarl like a mad dog. “You’re in no place to call anyone an animal, you rabid dog of war,” she admonished with no undertone of humor or nonchalance.

For a moment it sounded like he was growling at her, but a second later, Makhus turned his head and coughed up a glob of bloody spit. When his eyes met hers again, he was calmer, but barely-restrained fury still burned behind his glare.