The rush back to the city was mostly uneventful, but when the group was getting close they were surprised to see Professor Whitmoore walking back on foot. The group decided to ‘give her a ride’, and after catching the woman’s attention with a shout, Nalia pulled her onto the earth platform (which Yura made a little bit bigger) without them even slowing down.

“What happened?” The professor asked, looking at Elise with obvious concern.

“We managed to deal with the enemies, but Elise had to do something that caused a lot of damage to her body.” Nalia replied, since the girl herself was currently unconscious from a sleep spell “I did what I could, but now we’re heading back to look for specialized medical care.”

“I understand. I’ll pay for any extra medical expenses, so tell the doctors to use whatever methods are available to help.” Whitmoore said.

She explained that while most medical care was free in the city, there were always some expensive treatments that made use of the cutting edge technology constantly being developed. The others thanked her for the offer and then she explained what had happened after they parted ways:

“I waited for one and a half hours back at the temple and then began to walk back, but while I was doing that, I thought about things and I have a theory on how the Inishie found out about our destination.” She said.

“And how would that be?” Yura asked, her voice cold.

“It’s only a theory, but Professor Birman, who’s one of my colleagues, is the only person I told about what I was planning on doing, so he’s the biggest suspect.” Whitmoore explained “I was planning on searching his office to try and find some evidence that he is connected to the Inishie and going to the police with it.”

“That’s a good idea, since the officers would definitely be pretty angry at whoever’s connected to the ones that caused the problem.” Nalia said “But just in case, I want Nina to go with you and make sure everything goes well.”

The professor agreed to that suggestion and Nalia informed the rabbit girl through the mental connection (as she was inside Elise’s mindscape). Then Yura spoke up:

“And I want to send a message to someone I know. A detective called Erina Ramos. She’s been investigating the Inishie for a long time and has some sources of information from them, so I want to tell her what happened and ask for her to keep her ears open for their reaction to all this.” She explained.

“Okay, that’s fine.” Nalia replied “I’ll stay with Elise to give the doctors every detail I can about her condition, so please come to the hospital to give me updates.”

The others agreed and the conversation stopped there because they had arrived.

+0+

Nina jumped out of Elise’s mindscape and began to carry her as the group rushed through the entrance procedures and then to the hospital. Professor Whitmoore showed her credentials to the staff as the girl was taken to the emergency room, telling them she would pay for any costs. Then the group split up as planned.

From Nalia’s perspective, the three following days felt like a dream, which was ironic because she didn’t sleep at all during them. Everything started with a grueling, eighteen hour long operation during which she used her magic in whatever support way the doctors asked for and which finally ended without them having to amputate Elise’s right arm.

Then there was the period after that, which switched between relatively peaceful observation periods and follow-up operations with the goal of trying to save as much of her mobility on that arm as they could.

Nina and the professor returned after… Two days or something? Nalia really wasn’t sure. But they had been successful, as Professor Birman turned out to have indeed been the informant, and he ended up panicking and incriminating himself by trying to communicate with his contact upon seeing the duo alive.

And the police has already established surveillance on him at that point, so they had no issue in capturing him at that point. There were no surprises with other Inishie appearing, but that wasn’t solely good news. As it turned out, Birman was only a low-level informant with very little knowledge about the organization. Even the communicator he used was only one-way.

Yura also came by once in a while to report, but her contact hadn’t managed to get anything other than simply noting that the local managers were in chaos due to the sudden loss of an entire strike team by the time Elise’s state finally stabilized and she regained consciousness for long enough to notice the fairy’s state and push her into finally going to sleep.

+0+

After pulling Nalia into the mindscape in order to give her some rest, Elise noticed that Yura was looking at her and looking a bit awkward. Nina wasn’t around (she was apparently spending time training and keeping watch for possible dangers), so the girl decided to ask:

“Is there something you want to tell me?”

Yura looked shocked for a moment, then took on a strange expression which seemed like a mix between fear and hope before speaking:

“I… I asked detective Erina what she knew about you girls and why you were against the Inishie… And she told me you were part of the conflict in the forest of Theremis, and you had killed Loran, one of the branch managers.” She paused for a moment struggling with what to say next “D-do you know what happened to a girl called Aura?”

Elise immediately knew who she was talking about, but she still had to make sure:

“Do you mean a young elf skilled in fire magic?”

“Y-yeah. That’s right.” Yura replied.

The hope Elise could see in her expression felt almost painful to the contractor, because she couldn’t give good news to the other party.

“She’s dead.” Elise said, deciding to rip off the band-aid “She used forbidden magic while fighting us and died from losing control of it after we beat her.”

Yura covered her face with her hands and her body shook, clearly overcome by powerful emotion, she tried her best to choke out any noise that threatened to come out, but still could not help but let out a small sob.

The small elf stayed like that for several seconds, until she finally managed to stop shaking and brought down her hands, revealing a wet face.

“I-I knew, even if she was alive, I couldn’t… But still, that… I…” Yura tried to put her thoughts into words, but they just weren’t coming out right.

“I understand.” Elise said. She could already tell a lot from Yura’s behavior “How about you start from the beginning?”

The other girl nodded and took a deep breath before starting her story.

+0+

Yura was born in the subterranean elf community of Nara. Her parents were a duo of professional earth-molders, a profession composed of earth magic specialists that acted as both builders and gatherers. Their names were Dono and Yara, and they preferred the latter part of the job, exploring the depths of the underground world in search of valuables.

Sadly, the two of them ended up passing away while Yura was still very young, having run afoul of a deep beast that happened to have moved outside of its usual habitat (that being one of the greatest dangers earth-molders would occasionally face on the job), so she had next to no memories about them, and was raised in the communal orphanage.

Her experiences growing up couldn’t be said to be bad, but they also couldn’t be said to be good either. The people of the orphanage were professionals who always made it clear that their job was solely to make sure that the orphans would be able to become contributing members to society, rather than a burden, so they began studying and training very early.

Yura chose to learn earth magic, as that was a way she could at least feel some connection to her parents, and she showed great talent in the art, soon reaching a point where she could start working and be able to rent a place for herself, thus leaving the orphanage.

At first, Yura worked as a builder, mostly doing small jobs to support more experienced earth-molders, but she found herself unable to turn that into a regular career due to the overwhelming amount of competition not leaving any opportunities for a young mage without any connections to get any bigger work.

Because of that, despite her misgivings, Yura decided to switch into working as a gatherer instead, but she tried to avoid risks as much as she could, taking her time on explorations and working hard on various aspects of her earth magic to make herself safer.

She trained her magical perception so she could more easily detect danger. She trained her movement magic so she could more easily escape from danger. And she trained her defense magic so she wouldn’t die even if everything else failed. Her motivation was high, so her skills improved quickly.

And despite everything, Yura soon found herself growing to enjoy the gathering work. Spending time away from everyone else meant not having to deal with the judgmental stares or the pitying ones, which felt like a weight being lifted from her heart, a weight that she hadn’t even noticed before.

And when she got lucky and managed to find something rare, valuable or important and bring it back, the praises she received from the gathering managers brought her joy far greater than the simple monetary reward she got from those. It felt like she had finally found her place in the world.

But just as her life seemed to be getting on track, the worst happened.

+0+

“It was the Inishie, wasn’t it?” Elise asked once Yura got to that point in the story.

“Yes, but I didn’t know about it at first.” Yura replied.

Elise saw her clenching her fists hard for a moment before resuming her story.

+0+

One day, Yura returned to the town after a three day gathering expedition.

‘I can’t believe I actually got three Eliros crystals.’ She thought about the rare, prized minerals with medicinal properties that were stored inside her bag ‘Guino brought a single one of those two weeks ago and Sr. Nuno was so impressed that he gave him a special commendation and a bonus, so I wonder how he will react when I bring out three of them.’

She had also collected some more general resources that were being carried along as part of her movement platform, but the crystals were definitely the highlight of that particular expedition.

Yura opened up the last wall to go inside the town with a smile on her face, only to come across a living nightmare. The whole area had turned into a bloody warzone. Some buildings were filled with holes while others had completely collapsed. Small fires were dotted around.

Worst of all were the dead. Lying on the ground were several figures she instantly recognized: Nuno, the manager. Guino, Lyra and Moira, who were fellow gatherers. Lano and Nora, the traders… All people who spent most of their time on that edge of the town.

And the attackers were still there. There were both humans and elves, and their appearance wasn’t in the least bit consistent, but they could be easily recognized as the enemy force from the way they moved and looked around, obviously searching for survivors.

Yura was seen by one of them, who let out a cry of “There!” to alert the others, but she had been lucky enough for none of the enemies to be that close to her position. So the shock that paralyzed her upon seeing that hellish sight did not result in the young girl joining the ranks of the dead. The alert that pointed to her as a target jarred Yura out of her shock and into a rising panic. Almost instinctively she closed off the wall in front before turning away and escaping as fast as her platform could carry her.

Yura heard sounds of fire and explosions behind as she went, so she pushed herself to go even faster and began tunneling down deeper into the earth, trying to put as much distance between herself and the enemies as she could and deliberately forcing the tunnels to crumble as she went past.

Yura ran and ran without stopping for as long as she could, until even her fear was not enough to ignore her physical and magical exhaustion, forcing the elf to stop and hide. She spent several minutes anxiously listening to the vibrations of the earth and trying to feel any unknown magical waves that could appear, until finally the girl realized that she had escaped.

And at that point, the weight of what had happened hit Yura, causing her to finally begin crying, mourning the people she lost. She wasn’t particularly close to any of them, but they were a part of her life that now no longer existed. She had nothing.

+0+

Yura went silent after telling that part of the story, but Elise didn’t push her and simply waited patiently for the girl to get a handle on her emotions and begin speaking again.

+0+

It took weeks for her to muster up enough courage to try going back to the town, and when she arrived everything was already gone. The entire place had been quite literally burned to the ground. Yura found numerous freshly dug graves containing the remains of the dead.

She didn’t know who made those graves, because she very much doubted it had been done by the killers. Was it other survivors like her, who simply came back earlier? Was it some good samaritans who found out about the atrocity and decided to help? Yura never found out, but she was grateful to whoever it was.

After that, she tried to find out who was responsible for the attack. Yura wasn’t even thinking about revenge at that point, she was too scared, but she still wanted to know. Partially to be able to stay away from whoever it was, partially because she simply wanted to understand why such a thing happened.

Thankfully, the trio of Eliros crystals she had was quite valuable, so she managed to sell them for a tidy sum, enough to buy the information she wanted. Yura discovered that the culprit was a secretive organization known as the Inishie. The reason behind the attack was unknown, but based on prior experience, the informants thought that it had something to do with the town having something they wanted.

Yura wasn’t exactly happy about that idea, but at least she could understand it. She now knew why everything had happened, but that left her without direction. The girl simply had no idea what to do with herself once that driving question had been resolved.

Yura spent the following months simply drifting around, unable to bring herself to settle anywhere. Her skills as a gatherer meant she could easily support herself anywhere by simply selling relatively valuable minerals or gems. She preferred the former, and often asked around various merchants to figure out which types of mineral were high in demand in the area before going out to search for them. It was better than selling things that were more generally considered valuable because it didn’t draw nearly as much attention as someone constantly pulling out precious gemstones would.

She didn’t want trouble.

Yura could have simply chosen a town or village in a good location and built a new life for herself there, but she could never bring herself to do it. It wasn’t like she had become attached to the drifter lifestyle, but simply because it never felt right. No matter where she went, Yura always ended up feeling like an outsider. Like she didn’t belong.

She was well aware that those feelings were irrational. Or rather, they were rational, and what was irrational was expecting to simply feel an instant sense of belonging after moving to a different place. But somehow it never felt right. Yura would always end up moving away again after two or three weeks.

The fact that she wasn’t sure what she wanted to do with her life didn’t help, of course.

That went on for a few months with no change until finally something happened. After getting to a new place, she had settled down on a small cave a short distance away from the village and begun doing the usual: Researching what things would be good to sell and going on expeditions to gather them.

Yura rarely slept in inns or the like. She had a sleeping bag which she had been using ever since her days as a gatherer, because that work often meant spending several days away from home, and if there wasn’t a convenient natural cave nearby she could simply create one herself. Sleeping in such places was a small way she could feel connected to her original home.