Behind the mask, Dalric met a dark-skinned, wrinkled, and wizened old woman. Her skin was so thoroughly ravished by time she appeared more like a burnt carcass than a living person. The only give away that life still burned in the haggard husk of a human was the spark in her eyes. They were dark blue, verging on purple, and they shone with the same vibrance you’d expect a child’s eyes to have.

Death’s door still loomed though. Very close by at that. Dalric estimated she had less than ten years to live. To a non-ahjersist, or even just an average one, a decade could be considered a very long time. To those that peered deeper into ahjer’s possibilities, those that broke free of the natural lifespan they were given, a decade could feel like mere months. Especially when it came at the end of your life.

If you can move like this so close to death, I wonder what your prime looked like.

“You know who this old woman is?”

“Know who she is?.” Ryku stared at her in shock, “She’s a hero in Taiyo! She’s the very reason I became a Paragon.”

“Kii..il—”

Dalric flicked her forehead, “Shh. Go on.”

Ryku could only shake his head in pure disbelief, “She’s former General Sara Hangaku. Like I said earlier, before Taiyo was unified it was just a bunch of squabbling tribal lords who fought with each other at any given opportunity. Akira Taiyo was the one who unified them, but it was General Hangaku, her, that actually led the armies.”

Ugh.

“This woman.” He pointed at the now unconscious ‘Sara Hangaku’, “Looks like a corpse. How do you know she’s the same one you’re talking about?”

“It's impossible not to. Once the Dynasty was founded, she resigned and invested her time in education. Every kid that grows up in Taiyo sees her face plastered all over their school. They talked about her battles almost every month. I’d recognize her before I recognized my own sister.”

Well then.

Now Dalric wished she’d just died quietly. Doing anything to her now, with that knowledge and in front of all the people peeking from their cells, may very well be seen as an offence against their entire nation. Slavery was legal in Taiyo, no one would even bat an eye at her actions talkless of accept them as a good justification for offing her. Dalric wanted, may even needed, access to Taiyo if he planned to further his understanding of modern Jester Shards. Their ability to influence the mind in such specific ways potentially opened the door to a means of ridding himself of the Gods' presence. At least temporarily. Without a way to break the contract permanently, he could never be truly free, but he’d settle for functional freedom. If he could say no every time they called on him, that would be good enough. Giving that opportunity up just to kill the woman didn’t make any sense as a trade. His anger towards slavery was great, but he was still a sensible man. One life wouldn’t affect anything anyway, it’d just satiate ego and bloodlust.

The rest of the camp would still go, ego feeding or not. This was no man’s land, Dalric could conquer the whole place and claim it as his own and no one would be able to tell him anything. Doubly so for those in Taiyo as it was currently owned by a nobleman from Whitesails.

He knelt down next to Sara and scanned her body. It was a bit troublesome having to fight through her ahjer, but she was too weak to slow him down for long. "Huh. I don’t have to heal her at least, the armor has a healing property itself. She has a mild concussion and a few muscle tears, but they’ll be gone within a few days. It seems she should have been dead a fair while ago, but the armor is keeping her going.”

She’s almost three hundred years old. She managed to break through the second bottleneck, but couldn’t progress any further. That must have been infuriating.

While Dalric internally remarked on her progress as an ahjerist, Ryku was still dealing with waves of shock, “She was presumed dead twenty years ago. We have a five-day national holiday in her honor.”

“I get it, I get it. She’s a hero."

"You clearly don’t get it.” He continued to shake his head in disbelief.

“Trust me, I’ve experienced much greater shocks in the past day than finding out a once powerful and beloved political figure faked their death for two decades and spent that time masquerading as a mere guard for a slave camp. Get yourself together. What’s important now is figuring out what the most apt thing to do with her is.”

Ryku refused to stop shaking his head, but Dalric’s words connected, “Well. Sunset White is—wasn't just a mere guard. She practically ruled this entire region. But. If she’s working with Baron Mori, her actions are still highly illegal. They’d want her head in Whitesails. Though if she’s working with him, that means she’s working with the Taiyo government."

Dalric stood up, “Baron Mori?”

“The Baron that currently runs all of this. Didn’t I mention him?”

“You might have. I was going through something of a moment at the time. I recall you mentioning the Baron was from Whitesails though, where is the Taiyo connection?”

“He’s the first and only Taiyo-born Surunese nobleman in Whitesails. He was originally a major businessman in Madakawa, the capital of Taiyo, but he defected when a Duke named Basilio Leos offered him a spot in the nobility. Basilio claimed the Baron saved his daughter’s life during a vacation and that’s what called him to grant the man nobility. No one believed that of course, but no one objected either. My whole mission here was determining if the terms of that offer included things like.” He gestured towards the cells, “This. And to report back with what I find. I poked around a bit too much and that’s how I ended up here.”

Dalric tapped his jaw, “Let me fully understand this. You’re saying Baron Mori, the first Taiyo-born Surunese noble in Whitesails, is the man who also happens to be secretly trafficking slaves for other Whitesails nobles while receiving backing from the Taiyo government and its former, supposedly dead, national hero? Did I get all of that?”

“That’s a..that’s a pretty good way to sum that up.”

So she wanted me to kill her here to avoid being interrogated in Whitesails and giving up sensitive information, but if I kill her I ruin my relations with Taiyo. If I don’t kill her and Whitesails get their hands on her, they get the info and a powerful tool against Taiyo. If they publicly shame or kill her, that’s war. Politics and diplomacy, oh how I have not missed you.

“Uh huh. More importantly though, you’re saying it's your job to report on all this?”

Ryku looked confused, “Yes…? Why is that more important?”

“It means.” Dalric began walking away, “She’s your responsibility. And all this.” He gestured to the entire hall of cells, “Is also your responsibility.”

“Whoa! Wait a—”

Dalric covered his mouth as he hurriedly caught up to him, “Shh. I’ll help you organize these people and get everyone out of here, but after that. I’ll go off to handle my situation and you’ll handle this...mess. It’s your job after all, I’m just a passerby.”