“I think that you have the wrong idea,” Elara said, keeping a wary eye on the men that held - or attempted to, anyway - her in place. They seemed nervous, faced with the knowledge that they were trying to keep a well-equipped Seeker in place. Resolute, too.

Another emotion that was out of place. What had them so determined? The who of it was easier to see; the man who had turned them against her hadn’t exactly been subtle. Elara just hadn’t paid him much mind.

It hadn’t seemed very important, compared to those that she needed to find.

Apparently it was.

“Oh, please,” the man sneered, stepping around so that his face was visible. As she had thought, it was the same man from before, with only a few changes. Whereas before his face had expressed a more quiet, sullen anger, it now wore his emotions more openly. He was red, near the color of blood, the vibrant hue easy to see on his otherwise sunken and sallow skin.

“What’s this about?” the recently-healed Guardswomen demanded, clearly confused by the direction of recent events. Elara had a feeling that only the implicit approval of the others stopped her from interfering, with a number of other members of the Guard siding against her.

One of those same guards slipped a free hand down to her side, loosening the sword sheathed at her waist. Elara let it go, knowing that she could easily get another if necessary. Unlike her armor, there was nothing special about the blades.

“This is about a murderer in our midst, masquerading as a hero,” the man answered, immediately turning his attention to Elara. He pointed, pressing a finger against Elara’s metal-clad face. The metal rang lightly. “I saw, you know. I heard. We both did. I know what you did.”

“Again, I think that you have the wrong idea,” Elara repeated, speaking louder this time so that everyone would be sure to hear. Despite her efforts, the helmet covering her head muffled the noise, hollowing it out and giving her voice a timbre that was ever so slightly off. Lightly pulling at her own strings, Elara forced herself to remain calm and think. “I’ve never met you before today, nor have I ever murdered anyone. So no, I don’t know what it is that you think I did.”

If anything, her words seemed to anger the man further, as if they were a personal affront. He breathed in deep, a vein visibly bulging on his temple, and gestured widely around them. “This,” he said. “I don’t know how you caused it, but you did this, you and your friends. And you,” he started to stammer, choking off a sudden sob, “you were excited about it!” he continued. “As if our city didn’t matter. As if we didn’t matter. As if my son -”

Again, he started to choke out his words, overcome by another emotion. Grief, instead of rage, though Elara was beginning to realize that one might have spawned the other. The many hands around her tightened into white-knuckled grips.

“Look,” one of the Guards interjected. Peter, Elara thought it was, the market patroller. He had a nice voice. “I know Maran, and I knew his boy. He wouldn’t just make something up like this, and the timing of the Collapse was -”

Suddenly, Maran reached for the remaining blade at her side in a quick motion. Pulling it free with another aborted sob, he lunged forward - and as the blade’s tip scratched against Elara’s chestplate, she let the armor’s power activate.

She shifted into shadow. Her body became almost weightless, and all but intangible. The blade passed through with hardly any resistance. Elara lunged forward, stepping through the man in a burst of speed. Then, taking advantage of the near-weightlessness that the shadow-state provided, Elara flung herself up high. Shouts of surprise and alarm were left in her wake; Elara had restricted herself to the smallest shifts into shadow when fighting before, as she didn’t know whether the armor-gem combination’s effect would eventually run dry. Between her pinpoint proprioception and the puppets’ general clumsiness, she had barely been forced to use it all. If she had, they might have realized how little their hold on her mattered.

Just as the gem embedded in her armor began to strain and flicker back into existence, her feet found a nearby rooftop; not high, but high enough to be safe for a few moments.

Elara reached up, fingers digging for the hidden clasps in her armor.

Her helmet pulled free. She breathed in fresh air.

“Again, I think that you have the wrong idea,” Elara said once more, her voice loud and finally unaltered. “This armor isn’t even mine. I took it from a corpse.”

Ignoring the gasps as a few of the bystanders recognized her face, Elara leaned forward. She pushed down any anger towards the man, Maran. If his grief-filled rant had any bearing, then her anger would be best served elsewhere.

“Now, why don’t you tell me what it is that you were accusing the Virtun Seekers of?” she asked. “I would really like to know.”

Maran’s story was an illuminating one. The man, like so many others, had been caught within Verdant Grove after the Collapse. His son, a born cripple with a lame leg, was unable to join the droves of refugees escaping the city. Instead, they hunkered in their home and waited for the problem to be solved.

That had been a mistake.

It wasn’t long before the spore-mist began to spread and the nearby plants to become far more…dangerous. Food became scarce, and Maran was forced to begin foraging within the abandoned homes of the city in order to keep himself and his son alive. It was during one of these searches that the man stumbled upon a trio of Virtun Seekers in their distinctive armor, talking outside as he rummaged through an abandoned house. Thinking that they were alone, they spoke freely.

He learned the truth - the Collapse had been no mistake.

It had been sabotage.

Maran didn’t get all of the details; he couldn’t approach or confront them. They were three and he was one, and that wasn’t even mentioning their strength relative to his, nor the little boy that he needed to come home too. Still, a few off-the-cuff comments and jokes, made at the expense of Verdant Grove, mocking their plight, had been enough for him to understand all that he needed to.

He slinked back home, the Seekers none the wiser, and returned with the food that he gathered. Eventually, though, the spore-mist arrived. Both he and his son fell under its sway, becoming puppets pulled by uncaring strings - and his son, lame as he was, wasted away under its influence. Dying before Maran’s very eyes, while the man was helpless to save him all the while.

Caught within uncaring strings, and only freed once there was little left to live for any longer.

It was no wonder that he was filled with such hate. No wonder that the Guards had listened to his story, and turned against Elara despite her efforts to free them.

She would have done the same.

“Did they suffer?” Maran asked, a vindictive light in his eyes. The man’s demeanor had changed entirely upon finding out that Elara was a citizen of Verdant Grove, and more importantly not a Seeker of Virtun. He had been very apologetic afterwards.

That sense of apology paled before his vindication at their deaths.

“Of the two that I saw personally, one was crushed to death and the other impaled on a spike. So yes, I suppose they suffered,” Elara answered, the majority of her attention focused on the path before her. Dozens of survivors were relying on her and the now much friendlier members of the Guard to escort them back to the Guildhall safely, and she took to that role with the gravity that it required.

It was a welcome distraction from the simmering ball of rage that she was forced to continually banish. She had met the members of the Virtun delegation. Spoken to them, in her curiosity. Their words had been the driving factor in her own attempt to infuse herself with mana - one that worked, but suddenly felt tainted by association.

The anger rose again, and Elara pulled at the strings needed to cast it aside. There would be time for that later.

Just as Maran began to speak again, a veritable forest entered Elara’s field of view, its constituent plants each grown to immense proportions. Greens and browns and more as far as the eye could see, and every bit of it lined with veins of gold and blue.

“This…was not here when I left,” Elara said, befuddled. Reaching the outskirts, she held out a hand, running fingers down a series of hanging vines, their fibers etched in blue and gold. They responded, wrapping around her lightly as if in an embrace, before letting go again. The Little Guardian’s work.

At least there’s some good news, I suppose. And a likely answer as to why the tremors stopped. With something like this around as protection, the Guildhall should be relatively safe, she thought.

Elara turned towards the crowd of refugees, smirking at the sight of dropped jaws and wide eyes.

“You’ll have to get used to this sort of thing,” she said, beckoning towards them. “Let’s go. It’s not far now.”

Her steps ever-so-slightly buoyed by a carpet of blue-gold moss, Elara continued towards the Guildhall.