We were jumpy in the days after we trapped Iola in the Plane of Elemental Calm. Even with Sansen sacrificing his hope and mental health to scan futures—coming up clean every time—and Meloai staying up all night on watch, I still had nightmares of the bubble-skinned thing Iola had become melting a hole in the fabric of space and doing... well, the nightmares were never clear on what, exactly, but it probably wasn't pleasant, judging by the way I shot awake in a cold sweat.

Tension in the party was at an all-time high, especially since none of us had, er, talked about what we'd glimpsed in the Plane of Elemental Possibility. Lucet had deliberately made a note of making her sleeping bag as far away from mine as humanly possible, and I took the hint that she didn't want to chat about it now. Or maybe ever.

So we needed a bit of old-fashioned banter to unwind every now and then, and old-fashioned banter was exactly what we got.

"I say the elves should be the most peaceful species, at least on paper," Meloai grated out as she clambered down the mountain. Our ragtag little adventuring party wasn't at its best right now, but we still had the energy to talk while we climbed. Meloai in particular seemed to have been hurt in the Plane of Elemental Cold, although I... wasn't really sure how mimic biology worked, and neither was she. Still, she managed to keep up a lighthearted expression as we inched down the Silent Peaks.

Lucet scoffed, hammering a rope into a cliff face and casting it down with ease of long practice. A native-born Peaks child probably forgot more than I'd ever know about rock climbing. "An elf? Are you crazy? Right after Iola just tried to light-magic us out of existence, too?"

"I don't think that was traditional light magic," Meloai said. "The last person he used that spell on started bleeding and vomiting, and that was before he became an eldritch abomination."

"See? Does that sound peaceful to you?"

"All I'm saying is that elves are supposed to feel joy. I don't think Iola's a very good example of what elves are normally like. They sound like they'd be... I dunno, better people, on average. Better than Iola, at least."

"Well, that one elf in particular is pretty peaceful now," I said, piping up, "because we violence'd his ass into a place where he won't be hurting anyone."

Meloai and Lucet chuckled, while Sansen merely grunted. The wrinkled old man was the most experienced of the four of us when it came to adventures like this, and I had a feeling he was about to put our banter to shame. "If you want a real answer? I think the Fey are the most peaceful of all the human-derived species. They just live in their forests and grow their crops and bugger off whenever someone threatens them."

"No, see, that's not peaceful." I tested the rope Lucet had nailed down, then started absailing down the sheer cliff face. I had to speak up to be heard over the wind. "That's just passive. I'm pretty sure the fey are, like, mentally incapable of not immediately forgiving anyone they meet. It's part of their biology. Magicology?"

"You're looking for 'mythology'," Meloai absently said.

"Yeah, that." Ugh, I'd even taken a class called Mythology of Magical Beings, way back in what seemed to be an age and a half ago. "Forgiveness is Regrowth and all that. The fey physically cannot do anything but forgive tresspassers in their forests. I don't think that's peaceful so much as helpless."

"So... what, in order to be peaceful, you have to be capable of immense violence, just... choosing to hold back for the time being?" Meloai mused, rubbing her chin. The shapeshifter currently in the form of a young girl grinned. "Because I can do that." Quick as a flash, her left arm morphed into an axe taller than she was—partly because she grew shorter to compensate for the lost mass.

"Well, rifts, by that measure, we're probably the most peaceful adventuring party in the whole of the Silent Peaks!" Lucet chimed in.

I couldn't see Sansen from my position climbing down the cliff face, but I could imagine the gruff grimace in the old man's face. "I don't think that's what peaceful means," he mused, and I could almost imagine him back at home with a cup of brandy, eyes twinkling as he philosophized, instead of running around with three violent teenagers who called themselves an adventuring party. "I think that being peaceful is... something for people who've managed to forget violence. For children whose greatest concern is how they will go to school, or what their friends will think of their new clothes. I think that being peaceful is something that we fight for, not for ourselves, but for the next generation. We die in violence so they can live in peace."

The only sound to follow that was the whistling of the desolate winter winds around the empty Silent Peaks.

Then Meloai hefted her axe. "So, uh, no incredible violence for me, then?"

And just like that, we were back to laughing and chuckling and climbing down the next section of rope. "I just said we'd die in violence," Sansen said, expertly navigating the rocky cliff with the help of the rope.

"Rifts, that is not what you want to hear from the party oracle," I muttered.

"But we die for a purpose." I could hear the smile in Lucet's voice. "I like that. So the most peaceful people in the world... is not the people of today."

"It's the children of tomorrow," Sansen agreed. "That's what we fight for."

Burning with determination, our ragtag adventuring party continued crawling down the side of the Silent Peaks, to whatever death awaited us and whatever peace we would find after.