"So, how the hell did you end up like this again?" I asked the large red-haired man who winced in pain effeminately as I plucked the last of the thorns nestled in his arm, placing them carefully into a cylindric jar filled with countless others before shuffling it into the back of a shelf beside me.

"Haha, well, y'know." The man held his neck in embarrassment with his free hand as I widened my still tired eyes, dying the world green, and slid my hand across his arm, releasing the mana inside to patch up the multitude of tiny indents in his skin. As I pulled away my now stiff and cool arm he continued. "The boys an' I were just having a bit of fun. I got a lil' careless is all."

"Well try to keep in mind what you're busy being careless around, ay? The next time you fall over into some random bush in these woods there might not be anything left of you for your 'boys' to pull back out." The man nodded but I could tell that my advice hadn't quite gotten through to his head.

- Crrrk- The familiar creak of the back garden door sounded from beside me as a white-haired girl made her way into the cabin. On my other side, the man's body visibly stiffened, and he froze in place, his eyes still staring directly at the girl with apparent fear.

"Llana... the whisper mints are still as yellow as they were last week. I already covered them in enough ciriquine for a week yesterday. So... if I don't get uproot them now, I can't be sure the whole patch won't go up in flames like it did last time. I need the spade..." Elvi spoke in the same lifeless voice as she'd had since a week from yesterday.

"Of course, go ahead and grab it from the closet dear." I spoke in the kindest tone I could summon as the girl walked directly up to the antsy lumberjack who's face contorted even more drastically in fear as she drew closer.

"Excuse me..." She stared up at the man with hollow eyes.

"Y-yes!?" he struggled to speak clearly as she stood in front of him.

"Could you...uh... move...?" She asked in the same careless tone. The man looked behind himself, discovering the closet door and immediately moving aside as he did, leaving me laughing inwardly in amusement as I saw him struggle to retain his bearings. Elvi entered and left the closet within a few moments, shovel in hand as she walked directly back towards the garden door before stopping halfway through.

"Did you... need something?" She asked, tilting her head at the red-faced man who had continued to look at her intently since she entered the cabin.

"N-no! I j-just want you to know that I we are working very hard to finish your c-cabin as fast as possible! We are sure it'll be the m-most grandest cabin in the entire woods!" The man sprayed out his desperate promises in quick succession. "A-and I am so very sorry for injuring myself so idiotically instead of focusing on work. I will be sure to make up for it as soon as possible!" The man quickly added on before turning around and crashing through the newly hinged front cabin door that tilted slightly as it swayed from his quick escape. 'If I have to get this damn door fixed one more time I swear..." I mumbled.

"Ah... uh, yeah..." Elvi nodded blankly as she watched the fleeting back of the terrified villager before, she too, made her exit to the garden.

'God knows what happened at that trial' I thought as I cursed the village chief for having placed my cabin so far removed from the village center. I'd heard of the rough details from the boys, but to think that pig got off with something as easy as a beheading. What Arton and the boys had told me from Elvi's story at the trial was enough to get dye my green sight white just thinking about. I would have tortured him enough to restore the memories of his past ten lives if he hadn't already been dead by the time I first heard.

The worst part, however, was having those two kids see what they did. No child should have to see something like that so early on in their lives, if I hadn't already been fully aware of the village chief's absolute deficiency of moral values, I would have begun to question them right there and then. And Tetsu, that poor boy... Having someone you'd assaulted regardless of the reason, killed in front of your eyes right afterward with no consequences... I couldn't imagine the effect it'd have on him.

'But to think that he would go as far as to set up an instantaneous trial before executing him on the spot...' The village chief I knew of was no man of such impassioned judicial values. When even I had come to him with the news of Usra's constant beatings that left her visiting me no less than thrice a week, he would not take any action beyond a simple lecture to the man. So, what makes the girl so important in his eyes that he's willing to put on such a show for her? I returned to look through the windowsill as I contemplated in silence.

________________________________________________________________________________

I swung my pole in perfect rhythm, not losing my grip nor my balance as I surveyed the white-haired girl that kneeled over a square of bright yellow plants in soil which she recurringly dug up, pulling on the heads of the yellow vegetation as she did so. She worked incessantly, not taking a break even to pat off her soil-sodden clothes as she continued to dig. "Still the same, huh?" Arton spoke from beside me taking the words straight out of my head as he, too, stared at the lone girl in the garden.

"Unn." I nodded before turning and watching Arton swing his pole, more fluid and focused than I'd ever seen him practice before. "You're really looking forward to that tournament, huh?" I joked as I adjusted my pace in an attempt to match his speed.

"Nah, huu. Just trying not to piss off Mr. Executioner over there." Arton responded in a breathy voice as he continued to swing his pole, in sync with his breathing.

"Really? You saw what that rapist was saying to her man, cut him some slack. I'm sure there were dozens of other people there who wanted to do the same thing, but just didn't have the guts to walk forward." I said, clicking my tongue at my lack of courage in the memory of the situation.

"Speak for yourself. That kind of beating isn't something you just do in the spur of the moment." Arton responded, turning his neck to watch the person in question as he leaned over my brother who looked a lot sloppier than usual today.

"No, right hand below, left on top Rafal. You understand? On top." Tetsu spoke in the same gentle voice that still seemed a bit off as he tried to help correct the form of my incompetent little brother.

"Y-y-yes, s-sorry about that T-tetsu." The numbskull stumbled through his words, clearly still teething with fear at the slight frustration in Tetsu's voice. 'We should at least be trying to treat him normally like we usually do...' The words stayed inside of me as I watched the usually unstoppable Tetsu hold his head in surrender for the first time in my entire life.

"You know what? It's fine, really... You might just not be cut out for this, Rafal." The giant spoke words of resignation I never would have thought I'd hear from him ever. My shock wasn't unique, it seemed, as I almost immediately also felt the gusts of air coming from Arton's swings from beside me come to a halt. "We've tried this, for what, almost four years now? And you've barely even progress from the first form, we're 6 months into our training for the tournament and you still can't even get your grip right. I think you should just quit, I'm sure there're a hundred things else you'd be better at than this." Tetsu was relentless in his words, not stopping even to look at the tears that quietly welled up in my little brother's eyes as he gave him his unmasked 'advice'.

"Y-yeah... you're probably right..." Rafal choked out as he held his head down, reigning in tears. It wasn't long after that he dropped his training pole on the ground before running away despondently back towards the path that lead to the village, passing by the brickmen working on Elvi's cabin as they stared at Tetsu with observing eyes. "What are you looking at?" Tetsu growled at the gawking workers who quickly turned away to return to their tasks. I watched in shock as the inspirational Tetsu I once knew who would always preach the value of a strong mindset over all obstacles lash out in such bitterness.

"Hey-" I started to walk towards him before an arm reached out over my chest, stopping me. Arton stared directly into my eyes as he shook his head in protest of what I was about to do. I grabbed his hand and pushed it away before continuing on to talk to Tetsu myself.

"Hey, listen, I don't know what's been going on in with you since what happened last week, but you can't take it out on Rafal like that." I spoke with more conviction than I knew I had as he turned over to look at me. "Last week?" He responded in a tone that told me he had every intention of playing dumb regardless of what I said.

I started to get a little bit angry. "Whatever, point is you can't just be shouting at Rafal like that. He looks up to you, you know? You better go apologize to him or else-"

"Or else what? What are you going to do about it?" The usually calm Tetsu brough his face down to mine as he glared fiercely into my eyes. I recoiled at his aggression as I felt my previous rage wither away instead replaced my fear of the giant in front of me.

"You can't make me do anything. Nobody can make me do anything, you get that?" Tetsu let out a few last words before grabbing Rafal's pole from the snow beside us. "You two get back to training, we're going to need a lot more practice to make up for one missing member." He spoke as he walked past us back towards Llana's cabin.

"And what about you? Where are you going!?" I shouted across the field, my confidence returning now that the asshole was a couple dozen feet away from me.

"I'm taking the day off. I train enough for all three of us anyways so you shouldn't have anything to complain about!" He shouted back poisonously across the field, and I winced at the truth behind his statement. I had no business discussing his commitment to the sword. Arton and I watched in silence as he walked into the cabin, slamming the door shut behind himself.

________________________________________________________________________

"Ready?" I asked simply to the white-haired girl who sat tying together her bootstraps on the cabin stairs.

"Yeah... just give me a second..." She said, before standing up and running back into the cabin where I saw her exchange a few words with the still seated Llana, her tiny head buried in a notebook as usual, before walking back outside.

"Let's go..." She answered in the same fragile voice she'd been using since last week. We both walked through the muddy forest path before veering off to the left onto the beaten trail that led toward the village. It had been almost 4 days since Elvi began to stay with me and my mother. And although we'd been closer to each other in these last few days than ever, there was barely a word spoken between us since. The walks home were filled with silence and the morning's over were hardly any different.

The silence left a good deal of room for my thoughts to surface as I spotted the small sized footprints of Rafal's boots on the muddy path ahead of us. I remembered the terrible words that I had shouted at him earlier and cursed myself for being so obtuse. The memory of Rafal's and Reltin's fearful and mournful faces haunted my mind as we continued to walk in silence through the damp, wooden village gate.

"Tetsu..."

The very similar image of my mother's shocked face during the trial popped up in my mind and I was dragged back into the memory of that day. The hot blood dripping down my fists, and the sight of the curled-up Galvin that whimpered in pain as he lay down in the mud, his hands bruised by the chain that kept him anchored there.

"Tetsu."

The final image of his lifeless eyes as his head rolled forward onto the same muddy ground, I had beaten him into. His blood spilling over it, gushing out like boiled fruit into the surrounding grass. And, for what? All for some girl that I'd only just met? Some outside that couldn't even tell us her own mother's first name? It was all her fault, if only she hadn't come there would be no reason for any of it to have happened. She'd caused it all.

"Tetsu."

"What!?" I shouted in response to Elvi's calls before seeing her timid face.

"T-thanks... I never got to thank you for what happened..." She said, her blue eyes looking up at me as she attempted to force a smile. "So... thank you, for everything."

At her words the previous rage and regret inside me all faded away, her tiny smile tugged at my mind as I remembered all the cruel and appalling things actions that the man- the man that I helped kill had done to deserve it. The last remnants of guilt in my heart faded away as Elvi's final words that night rang in my mind. I was put to ease as I promised myself to apologize to Rafal and Reltin as soon as I finished taking her home.