How could I confront something horrific? How was I meant to move on with the knowledge that someone so vile could walk the earth just the same as me?

  Intellectually, I knew people like Seph existed, it’d be foolish to claim otherwise. I could even make a few educated guesses as to why the witch would consign her son to such a fate. But I wasn’t forced to confront that reality until it became my reality, and wasn’t that just a pathetic string of syllables to say that I kept myself willfully ignorant?

  I knew now, and I couldn’t not know.

  So I chose the simple option, I chose to ignore it.

  Instead I’d been thinking of my training, and how I could prepare my magic pathways for another droplet of power. I could go to each, one by one, and train them to a point where I’d be capable of moving despite the pain. That would take too long, and the cerebral task of figuring out a solution was infinitely better than confronting the horror that is life.

  I tried to condense two points at once, and while it was possible, it also took too much focus in the midst of pain.

  Something I couldn’t push past no matter how hard I tried, but it was something to do. That interspersed with forming a mana ball provided enough training for my mind to settle. For it to calm, and I opened my eyes to find sunlight streaming into my room.

  Morning gave a reminder that time moved, no matter the circumstance.

  I got up from my meditative position on the floor and stretched out a few kinks. I flooded my brain with some mana to deal with the fatigue, but only some. It woke me up a bit thankfully, just enough for me to go about my day.

  I opened the door to my inn and walked down the steps, giving my morning greeting to the innkeeper with altogether too much cheer. The man seemed delighted by my chipper attitude, how ironic. Nice fellow, not an idiot but he felt like it sometimes with how much he pretended to enjoy our conversations.

  I was paying an exorbitant amount to be here, so it made some degree of sense.

  I walked past the crowds without hurry, even stopping for conversation with a few strangers at some points in the day. Some of them ask me if I was okay, the news from yesterday’s stabbing moved fast when you were an elf it seemed. I nodded and told them that Healer Ken was a miracle worker. Which wasn’t a lie, just a subtle implication that I went to see him for the wound.

  I made it to the hunters guild whistling a tune from my old world, it was freeing in a way, how none here could tell that I shouldn’t know such things. Most just assumed it was some exotic elven tune.

  I found Argyle already going through the process of butchering a deer and joined in the open spot next to the boy, grabbing my own piece of wildlife to skin and dissect. We stayed in companionable silence for a while, as was the norm, with Argyle’s guard watching on exasperated. Poor fellow, watching his lord do menial labour, I was surprised that whoever led the Rhombal house still permitted the boy to come here.

  Eventually, after just an hour or so, we were called over by the head butcher.

  “You two’ve never dealt with a monster's corpse before, have ya?” the muscular woman said, big ass knife resting over her shoulder.

  “No ma’am,” I said for the both of us, and Argyle nodded along.

  She nodded back. “Alright then, this’ll be a first then. The two’ve you have done good enough work where I can trust ya with a basic monster. I need yous to bleed a few scale wolves for me, ya? Nothing complex, someone else will de-scale the bastards, I just want yous to collect the blood.”

  “Why?” Argyle’s eyes seemed to shine with the question, and the butcher lady let out a merry chuckle.

  “Simple, noble boy. Monsters aren’t like all the rest of the wildlife you’ve been gorin’, they’re special. Each drop of blood can be used for some elixir or other by the alchemists. Something to do with mana, it always is with those fools. Go on to Irin, she’ll show yous the basics, ain’t nothing too hard.”

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  Argyle practically skipped at where the butcher was pointing, leaving me bemused as I followed. The boy was a little obsessed with butchering. To the point where I couldn’t tell if he let people address him so familiarly because he didn’t care for it, or because he was too distracted by the next carcass.

  Irin was waiting for us next to half a dozen scale wolf carcasses, a raised brow of amusement at the excitement Argyle practically exuded. He despaired quickly enough once Irin determined we wouldn't make a mess of the place and left, realizing that bleeding a monster involves a lot of standing around.

  Awkwardly.

  I decided to save the boy from his fate, if only out of sympathy. “So, what’s a noble find themselves doing with most of their day? Watch the masses starve or some shit?” Oop, that might’ve been too harsh.

  He blinked and looked at me with a bit of confusion. “What do you mean? Everyone’s fed in Anik.”

  I couldn’t help it, that was so out of left field I actually barked out a laugh, then had to reign it into a series of barely controllable chuckles once I saw the guard’s face darken and Argyle’s confusion grow.

  “You’re serious?” I said. “You really think people don’t starve in this city? Have you been to the south?”

  The boy blushed out of embarrassment and looked down. “No…father says a noble shouldn’t be seen in that part of the city.”

  “Ah yes, too good for the filthy masses?” I said with a little too much bite.

  “Watch your tone girl,” the guard growled. “Lest you be flogged for your insolence.”

  Argyle paniced and stuttered out some words at the guard, something along the lines of there being ‘no need’, but I didn’t pay attention to that. Instead I smiled something sharp and sardonic. Spreading my arms wide like an invitation.

  “Come and try me, shrimpdick. I’ve met plenty of things scarier than the prospect of being flogged,” I said.

  He stepped forward, storm brewing on his face with a hand on the pommel of his blade, and I recognised that maybe I’d taking this a bit too far. That was the sensible part of me, the chaotic part wanted a bit of violence right now. If only as a pleasant distraction.

  Unfortunately, it wasn’t meant to be.

  Argyle stepped in the way of the guard, and I couldn’t see his face but it was something that stopped the guard in their tracks. “That’s enough,” he said with a tone of finality and authority I never expected out of the boy. “When I tell you to stop, you listen. You do not continue to threaten my friend.”

  “But my lord-”

  “Leave,” Argyle growled. “Wait by the guild's entrance for when I am to return, I forbid you from this place so long as I am here.”

  The guard's mouth clacked shut, and he looked at the boy with a hint of…betrayal? I almost felt bad for the sycophant if he wasn’t about to try and cut me down. Plenty of people turned away, pretending to have been minding their business as the guard marched away downcaste, and I found the whole ordeal a tad too dramatic.

  Then I realized I’d been silent for too long, and Argyle had been waiting for me to say something.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  He gave me a calculating gaze I was only used to seeing when the boy was focused on butchering corpses. “What’s wrong? You’re brash, but never so brash that you’d willingly risk your life over something petty.”

  “People starving under the care of the magistrate is something petty?” I snorted.

  “That’s not what I mean, and you know it.”

  I was struck by how blunt the boy decided to be, the blushing and embarrassment from his usual interactions with me seemingly gone in their entirety. I looked at him and saw real worry on his face. Not offence for being disrespected, not hurt for being insulted, but worry.

  Worry for a friend who was lashing out like a child.

  Unfortunate that I couldn’t tell him a witch tried to have me killed with her thrall son because I was the apprentice of a greater witch. That likely wouldn’t end well.

  “It’s nothing,” I said.

  I regretted it almost as fast as I said it, some hurt flashed in the boy's eyes, but he masked it well enough with a smile. “Very well,” he said.

  There was a return to the awkwardness from before I made my stupid little comment, but it didn't last long as this time Argyle was the one to break the silence.

  “Perhaps…you could show me the citizens starving under my watch?” he said. “Take a visit to the south sometime? I’m sure I’ll be plenty safe with you and Rom.”

  I raised a brow at him. “Yeah, no. Not unless you’re willing to dress like a peasant.”

  “I can do that,” he chirpped.