Regardless of how urgent it seemed, Thom had decided to take the matters rather easy. With a low mien and a disheartened look, the black-haired girl sat on a nearby stone and observed her leader wash his hair by the river.

He hummed a tune as he did, a horrendous rendition to whatever song he was butchering, as if he was constantly stabbing on a music sheet. With every off-key and every break on the man's voice, Erina could feel her soul slowly escaping her body.

Memories of her younger self playing silk-like sets of strings came to mind. Her fingers caressed the chilly air for the length of a breath, giving her the illusion of avidly strumming the chords of a gold-plated harp, the one that her parents had gifted her shy of three years of age. The fact that her hands still remembered those soft and gentle strokes, sharply contrasted with the brutality of her swordsmanship, was proof that those years would not ever go by. Six years was not short for a person, much less to the ephemeral humans that counted their days in just dozens.

She knew it, but wondered still, if the appearance of the skill [Musician] had a thing to do with her distant past. It seemed too vague to make sense, and at the same time, it would have been strange for it not to appear. Although the image of her father breaking her harp into splinters was still engraved with fire on her head, although it made it hard for her to grab one, she still felt some love for the delight of a well-struck chord.

A light sigh escaped the imitation of a smile on her face.

"I thought you would tell me how terrible I am." Thom interrupted her reminiscence with a chuckle.

"Tell you... Why would I?" She bitterly smiled, raising her eyes to meet his.

"I usually take the night to work and when I come home you two are already out. I haven't heard it myself, but you know... Suu has told me you have a beautiful voice, Erina." The man said as he ruffled his hair with a piece of rough cloth. The girl let go of a dry, low screech, her face getting red by the second.

"That woman... She, she really can't keep her mouth shut..." Erina took her hand to her face and slowly massaged her nose bridge with an irritated expression.

"Well, it's not like it is something to be ashamed of. You could give me a lesson or two sometime."

"You don't need that!" Erina stood up with a jump. "Focus on your swordsmanship and your farming! That should be plenty for you. Who the hell would like to learn about music at your age? Are you a toddler? Music is for rich kids and people who sit on a busy plaza in summer mid-day to talk about heroes and erotic poetry without making any sense! And... there's usually lutes involved too!"

"Heeh... Is that what you've been trying to convince yourself of?" Thom shrugged and dried his neck.

"Hah..." The girl sighed. "Your tongue is as sharp as Suu's... I guess you two really do fill the role as professional talkers."

"What an annoying name for a profession." Thom let go of a hearty smile.

They advanced upstream through the woods of balding trees, following the instructions in the direction of the highest slopes of the forest, where the crystal being supposedly stood. With small talk in the middle—mainly about how much Erina was tired—, they marked a clear path between the village and somewhere deep into the forest.

"Hey, let's play a game while we're on our way." Thom suddenly suggested, although his face was not especially enthusiastic. His hand was holding onto a tree's trunk, waiting for Erina to catch her breath a few feet down the slope.

"Ha... Ha... What kind of game?" She arched her eyebrows as she looked up to meet the man's face. "If it's you, it'll probably be a word game. Then you'll use it to somehow get information about me, no?"

"I'm not that smart..." Thom bitterly smiled. "But that doesn't sound too bad. Let's play a game of questions then. I'll make questions, you answer them."

"That's an interrogation! You're way more direct than what I thought!"

Although it had been the girl who had asked Thom to be her friend in the first place, the two of them had never really established a decent conversation. Most of their exchanges were superficial on the level of "what are we eating tonight?", and it became uncomfortable rather quickly between the two of them.

Since the other girl in the group had absorbed most of their attention with that radiant presence of hers, their communication was usually via Suu. Especially since the two girls were dating, Thom found it uncomfortable to talk to Erina in some other way besides casual interchanges of words.

Maybe it was his brain searching for the most cowardly escape route, but taking her into casual expeditions like this was his master plan to get closer to the girl. After all, it was more probable that the girl interpreted his invitation as "I need a strong companion." than "I'm ashamed of wanting to be your friend, and, sincerely, ever since we stopped talking at the barracks things have become rather awkward between us and I'd like to fix that."

Whichever way she wanted to interpret his invitation, Thom was glad as long as they could form a bond somewhere beyond a brother-in-law, and a wife that didn't want said in-law to be there the day of her wedding. He wanted to show his imaginary sister that he was actually not as bad socializing as she thought.

What kind of stupid shit am I thinking about...?

Thom pushed the rigid smile on his face out of the way, turning away from the tree he had marked with his scimitar.

"Can I ask you questions too when you're done?" Erina asked, picking her pace with the man's.

"Sure."

"Hum, hum. Now we're equal."

With this remark, their trip continued. Jumping over small rocks, crossing small streams that painted the forest, going up cliffs with their hands. Thom's questions started simple, nothing that could potentially reveal his true intentions escaped his mouth.

"What's your favorite color?"

"Red."

"Heh... Had a feeling. Then, what about your favorite food? Favorite season? Animal? Favorite favorite question?"

"Golherb seasoned clawed fowl, I like winter, my favorite animal is the twin-headed giant ferret, and my favorite favorite question is: what is your favorite type of monster to kill?"

"Right. You've been raised as a soldier after all. So, what's the answer?"

"Goblins."

The girl clicked her tongue. Thom could only smile and slow his pace to stay by the girl's side. He had never truly asked her how she felt in their current situation, even though she had been dragged together with Suu and him with a very small chance of survival. It was also true that she had nowhere left to go, but it didn't make it any less capable of annoying the girl.

"I'm sorry for dragging you with me into all this. Suu is doing it for me, so I can't help but feel sorry that you're forced to stay because of her."

"Ughu..." She looked at Thom with a certain expression of disbelief. "You... Don't go around speaking like you're the most important person in the world for her, alright? We're alone in the forest, I may kill you. And it's not like I'm being forced to stay, either..."

Thom nodded slowly to that answer, but he had felt the chill run down his spine when that terrifying girl had mentioned something about killing him. If she wanted to, there was no doubt that she could.

"Then, tell me about something a little more interesting."

Thom stopped and marked yet another tree. The girl patiently waited for his question.

"Why did you join Miel's army?" He threw a sharp glance towards Erina's way. Accompanied by a small jump, her eyes blinked quickly and a reflexive whimper came out of her small mouth. It seemed like the girl had never had the chance to think properly about it.

"Oh well..." She sighed. "Because that man took me in, I guess?" For a short second, a genuine smile appeared on her face.

"That man? Miel? He took you in?"

"Yeah. I think it was close to six years ago, near the interior border with the Clawgold's territory. I was wandering about at that moment, and I survived mainly of hunting down monsters. My titite greatsword was the only companion I had for those rough few years... I had to earn my life with it."

"I see... I never thought he would be the type to give shelter to a poor girl. He was the same man who threw you out of his army in a tantrum."

Thom squinted his eyes and his heart ached slightly for a moment. Was it guilt that grew bigger for an instant in his heart, or was it sympathy for this girl's situation? Whatever it was, he wasn't sure of what to do with it.

"He didn't take me out of goodwill. He saw my sword and my strength, so he put me in the frontlines of his defense efforts at some city with a name I don't even remember anymore. I was a scared girl and I didn't know what else to do, so I ended up willingly fighting by his side."

She stopped for a moment, leaves and dry branches breaking under her feet. Her furry cloak didn't seem to help much with the coldness in her mouth.

"I found out that killing humans is way more than killing monsters. Not... not because they're different. Not because they do anything different. I couldn't really see the difference back then between a rational being or not, I just knew that weapons could hurt me, and I needed to cause damage first or I'd die. In a general sense... Humans were not really different from orcs or goblins."

Thom looked at her weary smile. It seemed like he had gotten into a place of her mind much different to where he wanted to arrive, a spot in Erina's heart that he was not willingly searching for, but had stumbled upon. A traumatic scene painted on the clarity of her eye, a sense of remorse in her voice. Those things carried a weight that Thom knew he could not share, but somehow understood when they came so softly out of the girl's throat.

"Then what made it so different...? Humans and monsters, I mean."

"Hmm..." The girl pushed her lips outwards and closed her eyes for a moment, as if making up an answer that she had not previously come up with. In the end, she simply shrugged and kept walking. "I guess it's just easier for us to understand when a human's in pain. That's just the way it is."

With an answer so simple and shallow as that, Erina kept moving up the steep slope. Leaving the pensive young man with a new inquiry in his head, and the broken feeling of not having fully acquired the information he was trying to search for. Still, pushing with his questions would not get him much at the moment. Thom knew that their game had reached a culmination.

"So it's easier to tell when they're in pain... Hmph." He let go of a hearty sigh. "I wonder if that could help me somehow."

He kept walking and pressing on the pommel of his crudely-built scimitar, missing the weight of titite and the intricate design of the snake hilt. His eyes were set on Erina's wide back, her bulky arms and her stout legs. Certainly there was a percentage of her mass that was simply fat, and her muscles weren't as defined as Thom's. But something still made him uneasy about how her girly face fit on that muscular body. Was it because of her small waist that he could come to terms with her shape? As soon as he returned, he would have a new set of things to ask Suu.

An hour later, with a new heavy exhalation of exhaustion, Erina collapsed on the leaf-carpeted ground. Her crying moans could be lowly heard as Thom crouched beside her and poked her head with his hand.

"Hey, stand up from there. There's insects all around, you know?"

"Insects, you say... Hnghh, it doesn't matter anymore, let the cycle continue...! I will become one with the earth, so come, come insects... I'm ready to leave this mortal realm..."

"You're not dying because of some insects." Thom warmly smiled at her. "But getting sick during winter is not a thing to yearn for. A cold could kill you any other time of the year, so don't be catching infections right now."

"Ughuuu..." She whined. "But it's cold, and my legs hurt, my heart is feeling like it's about to blow up and my knees hurt moooore... I haven't even had the opportunity to slice anything down yet..." She sobbed and grabbed a stick from the ground, swinging it around as if it was a small knife.

"Come on. I'll carry you." Thom said, lifting the girl by her arms and pulling her off the ground.

"Again...? I cannot bare with this humiliation..." She fake-cried something and closed her eyes, perfectly ready to be carried along the rest of the way.

"Alright, hold tight." Thom smiled, wrapping Erina's arms around his neck. He lifted her legs, mustered his strength, and continued on his track towards the marked spot in his mental map.

In reality, the place wasn't far enough to take the two hours Thom had been walking around with Erina. Leaving aside the constant pauses to rest and the times they had to walk uphill, downhill, and around dangerous terrain, they shouldn't have taken more than one hour to arrive at their destiny. After all, it was only a shy five kilometers away from the village, based on Clung's calculations.

It had been the constant pauses and the lack of energy that had made them double their travel time, but it didn't bother him either. Since it made space for talk and bonding, it was time well-spent.

Fifteen minutes later, Thom saw the sun at its brightest when he stepped on the last stone of a steep hill, pushing his body upwards and landing on safe ground. Erina gripped her hands tightly with surprise, same expression that Thom showed on his light gasp.

The top of the hill had been somehow flattened, completely devoid of trees and plantlife, being replaced by splinters and broken stone. All form of green had been turned into charcoal, white ashes covering the ground where fallen leaves and sticks should have been.

Thom's eyes followed the path towards the center of the ruin, where he found a mountain of small glass shards and colored glittering, the reflex of the sun hitting a thousand pieces of broken crystal sprawled across the earth. Atop the hill of broken glass a pair of eyes met back with Thom's, and paralyzed his body in the spot.

A girl— he thought. What stood firmly above the hill was the embodiment of innocent beauty, shining in the heat of the glaring sun. It's hairs floated in the middle of the air as if weightless, although constructed out of cylinders from jewels of the purest sky-blue color. It's small stature and it's tender, thin limbs reminded of a child, although transparent like glass and thick like flesh. Its eyes shone brightly like the moon at night would do, but they caved into her face like the chiseled decoration of a master sculptor, devoid of any life or any expression.

A myriad of distorted colors shifted in its crystal skin and mouthless face, a rainbow in its body that curved slightly to resemble that of a human's.

What kind of beauty would leave a man so mesmerized, besides a woman's? Probably, a structure so pure and so unnatural that it seemed to break the fabric of reality, a moving statue that could very well adorn the castle of the king, as if crafted by a master in the arts. A single gentle movement of its arm was all the man could see, peaceful and gentle as it arched its way from the being's hips towards its chest. Thom's thoughts were driven out of his own head to admire the glistening eyes that posed on his own, and a smile began to form.

A blinding light shone.

Thom felt his body move at the same time that his senses caught a glance of a sudden release of energy. Erina's voice, a simple growl, reached his ears, which had already touched the ground by that moment.

A cloud of dust exploded in front of them, the feet of the crystal being landing a feet away from Thom's head.

In the next moment a breaking sound echoed in the hills, and the arm of the crystal being flew far away from its body. Erina held on her hand the chipped scimitar that had intercepted a vicious attack, the one that had aimed to decapitate Thom.

"Back off!"

The girl yelled, and landed a kick directly on the crystal being's center. A loud crackle sounded and the crystal was sent several meters back, now rolling in ashes and pieces of glass.

Thom blinked once and stood up, readying his own scimitar.

"I'm glad you're fine." Erina whispered. The being made of crystal was already building itself back as they spoke.

"What the hell..."

Thom bit his lip. He was sure it had been less than a tenth of a second— that was the time it took Erina to stop Thom from dying a miserable death. And as easy as she had saved him, as easy he would have lost his life if it hadn't been for her.

"We're both alive. Thom, help me with this thing." Erina said, shifting her weapon to her right hand.

"Yeah..." Thom gritted his teeth. "I'll help."

Erina Clawgold, strong girl

by me