Eldora swallowed. She watched the heron remove a small vial from her pack. It was full of white liquid. Eldora unstoppered the vial and put the specified amount of the substance on the man’s wound. Afterward, she followed Pilinka’s directions in stitching the man up with a needle which nearly made her faint, and finally, putting gauze on the wound. 

The king, meanwhile, was yelling at the remaining Gruhath member. Eldora caught most of what he was saying. “If you don’t tell me where the other hideouts are, I will kill you here and now rather than letting you rot in a cell.”

“W-wait! I have a family. I’ll tell you everything I know. There are some Gruhath living in your graveyard. They have made a home for themselves underground. They, too, have families! Are you really going to kill them?”

“They made their choice. They know what happens when they commit to Gruhath.” Dagonet said as he gazed at his sword. 

Eldora had a hideous feeling in the pit of her stomach. She knew that Dagonet was going to kill this man despite the fact that he had told him what he had wanted to know. 

She had a chance to stop being a coward–to stop running away–and try to save this man. 

Her mind returned her to her husband in their bedroom, crying over something she would never know because she was too frightened to ask. She felt like the words to stop Dagonet were on the tip of her tongue, but would not roll off it for fear of her own life. 

The king lunged forward with his sword, cutting his enemy’s head off. His expression did not show any remorse. 

Eldora shivered in terror. Can this really be Adrian? Has he become such a monster from living in this world? Eldora remembered what Fraunt had said about humans losing their memories when they stayed too long in Lalookin. He must have forgotten everything. 

She turned about, disgusted at herself. If I hadn’t been silent… perhaps I could have saved that man. 

***

Eldora and Celina were shaken up by the time they returned to the castle. Their hands were covered in blood from stitching up wounds and wrapping them in gauze. Eldora and Celina washed their hands off in the laundry room bucket and breathed harshly as they did so. 

She couldn’t get the bloody images out of her mind of what she had just seen. Nor could she erase the screams ripping through her mind. 

Celina said with a shaky voice, “I… I… that was horrible. Seeing the king do that. I saw some things when I was living on the streets, but nothing like that. I think I would rather cross the path of dozens of bums with needles before I would see that again.”

Eldora looked at Celina compassionately. Eldora had seen some ugly things in her time on earth, but she had to agree that none of them compared to what they had just witnessed. Are the Gruhath really that irredeemable? I’ll have to ask Fraunt about it.

Eldora and Celina went about their daily chores from there. First, Eldora had to help Dagonet change the king out of bloodied clothes and into something fresh. She refused to look at his body as she did so. Dagonet laughed. “You must find me very attractive if you continue to refuse to look.”