Her throat burned, ripping and shredding with each additional retch and spew. There was nothing left, but Valera’s body seemed to have forgotten that - or maybe it just didn’t care.

Her blood pounded, beating against her ears like a drum, drowning out the world.

Her cheeks tickled, the tears that slipped between her tight-shut lids halted in little flicks and dabs of a forked tongue.

Any other time, that might have been enough to pull Valera away from her misery; the sheer absurdity of the situation was bizarre enough to be funny. She had laughed when witnessing it before, had seen the way that crying children had begun to giggle in turn, broken from their melancholy by their Little Guardian’s fumbling attempts to cheer them.

Valera wasn’t laughing now. She couldn’t, even if she tried. Not with the way that her throat burned, her stomach heaved, and her mind kept flashing back to a child’s dying moments.

She had accepted Doran’s words earlier. At least, she thought that she had. It really was the Core’s fault, what had happened to that little girl. It had been the one to twist her and control her, forcing an innocent child into something feral, not Valera.

But Valera had been the one to finally kill her, not the Core or its infestation. She could have tried to tell herself otherwise, to convince herself that the little girl had just been a corpse piloted by something else, but she knew that wasn’t true.

Maybe if Valera hadn’t experienced the beginning stages of the process herself, though she only noticed the signs afterwards. Maybe if she hadn’t felt the way that thing had started to grow and attach itself to her muscles and nerves, trying to turn her into a living, unwilling puppet. Maybe if she hadn’t seen the way that the life had left a little girl’s eyes, severed by the blade that thrust through her throat.

A wound like that wouldn’t have stopped a puppeted corpse. Corpses can’t bleed out. Corpses don't need to breathe. Corpses don't have eyes like those.

That emaciated little girl had still been alive when Valera killed her.

She had accepted that, however reluctantly, when it had been a mercy. It had been enough to build a wall between herself and the act, one sturdy enough to hold back most of the guilt of what she had done. Knowing that there might have been a chance, no matter how small, that girl could have been saved? That she didn’t have to die?

The wall had been torn down, and the guilt that spilled through the breach had only become stronger for its struggles. Still, Valera was a Seeker. She had a job to do. She would endure, at least for the moment.

She had to; if not for herself, then for the helpless puppets, both child and adult, that still roamed the ruined city. She had a duty to save them.

She would endure.

Her throat still burned, ripped and shredded by retches and spews, but her body began to still.

Her blood still pounded, beating against her ears like a drum, but it became a little quieter.

Her cheeks still tickled, flicked and dabbed at by a tiny tongue, but the tears started to slow.

She still didn’t laugh, but she finally listened.

“...Core, not you. Don’t blame yourself, Valera.”

Fingers dug gently into her back, rubbing in soothing little circles. Valera let herself lean backwards, pushing against them as the words - Doran’s words, she realized - repeated themselves again. She sighed, the sound a hitching, ragged thing that only served to highlight the pain in her throat and the bile on her tongue.

A swig of water. A rinse of the mouth. A moment of silence.

Valera opened her eyes again, the moment over and done with. Dead. When she turned around to look at the others, it was with newfound determination.

“We’re going to save the rest of them,” she rasped. “They’re still in there, I know it.” Valera tried to give her friends a smile, willing them to believe her.

“Valera…they might not be. We caught it early, with you,” Doran said softly, as if hesitant to disagree. “There might not be anything left of them by now.”

He was wrong. They were still in there somewhere, their bodies stolen and their minds trapped. She had seen it, had seen the little girl that still lived within the monster. He was wrong.

Valera glanced around. Kala looked away, refusing to meet her eyes. Erik didn’t, but he seemed skeptical. Doubtful. Rowan was inscrutable; for once, his seemingly ever-present demeanor of mischief had been entirely wiped away. It made him hard to read, turned him into someone that she didn’t know.

“He could be right,” Erik pointed out. Valera tried to keep smiling, but it was hard. Painful. “There’s no way to know for sure without testing it, and that presents its own difficulties. We don’t know what happens to someone as the infestation progresses, or - even if they are still in there somewhere - what it would take to heal them. As helpful as our little friend’s healing can be, it comes in limited amounts. If he runs dry, and then one of us gets injured…”

He paused, his voice softening. “I’m not saying that it’s not worth trying at all; just...we need to be careful about this.”

Valera’s smile faded, her cheeks twinging uncomfortably where she had forced the expression to remain beyond its natural lifespan.

Her vision blurred. Her hands clenched. Her cheek tickled - and she jerked back, startled, as a forked tongue pulled itself back into a tiny maw. Valera blinked, surprised that the little seer had come so close without her noticing.

She gave his scales a scratch, causing the cutest of noodles to lean in closer. He, at least, didn’t seem to doubt her claim. It was nice, even if it was only because he had no idea what she was saying.

Valera sighed, turning towards the ruined city. Even broken as it had become, there was still beauty underneath the rubble and dust. Roots and vines could only devour so much; the bones of the city still remained. It was calming, the way that her eyes could still see the soul hidden underneath the destruction, the way that they could still trace the plentiful carvings that ran across the buildings’ facades, product of the city’s many artisans - as well as the leisure that came with a near-infinite source of food.

Supposedly, there were enough of them that they had even formed their own Guild somewhere within the city, its halls filled with inordinate amounts of stone and darkwood upon which to practice their art.

More than one refugee had boasted that the Little Guardian Statue gracing Orken’s marketplace would have been far more beautiful in Verdant Grove. Seeing the city’s elegance, Valera couldn’t help but agree. She closed her eyes, trying to imagine it. A marketplace, ringed by walls adorned in sculptings of leaves and forests, with a resting place at its center. A statue, expertly sculpted, shining with light. People, recovered from the Nature Core’s infestation, resting nearby - basking in the warmth and healing that it…

Her eyes shot open, and her blood thundered in her ears once more. She smiled. It was such a simple solution. Elegant, almost. Multifaceted. Something that could accomplish multiple goals at once, providing the healing that the infested sorely needed while still helping to advance their original goal within the city.

It was perfect.

It wouldn’t be as beautiful as what she imagined; neither she nor her fellow Seekers had the skill required.

They would have to make do.

“Rowan,” she said, smiling gleefully. “Tell me, do you know the way to the Artisan’s Guild?”

The man was slow to respond, taken aback by her sudden change in demeanor. “I do - well, I mean, I did.” He paused. “It’d be a little harder to get to than I’d like, but I suppose it’s on the way to the Nature Core’s sanctuary anyway, as long as we don’t get completely turned around again. Why?”

“They likely have some things that we’ll need.” Valera’s smile grew a little brighter at his confused expression.

“There are things that we need at the Artisan’s Guild?” he asked.

“Of course! We’ll need materials if Verdant Grove is going to have its very own Little Guardian Statue,” Valera replied. She took a moment to drink in the looks of slowly dawning realization, feeling hopeful again.

Doran was the first to speak. “That’s gonna be an ugly statue.”

Valera shrugged. She wasn’t too worried about it. They had a lot of experience cutting things, even if none of them were Artisans.

“It can’t be that hard, right?”