37 – Introspection

Melina, Lisette and Ishrin all sat around the fire. They couldn’t sleep that night, and all of them found out that the others couldn’t sleep either, and thus they gathered around the small dancing flames to keep each other company. Tomorrow was going to be the last day of travel before reaching the city, and from then on it was going to be some very busy days, gathering intel and going on a quest to search for the bracers. Plus, Ishrin knew, there were other forces in motion around them, and he felt like the noose was tightening around them, all the other actors were getting closer and closer together in a collision course. What was supposed to be a mundane quest, looking for the bracers, was all but mundane because in it seemed to crystallize all of Ishrin’s uneasiness at his condition in the world, and all of his worries about control. His mind raced.

The bracers. Syrma. Lucius, and the fate of Obscuria. The Dynasty. The lone star that he – and only he – could see every time he looked up at the night sky. Willow.

This was going to be the last night of rest for a while, he felt.

“I owe you all an apology.” Ishrin said after a long period of tense silence, during which nobody was able to relax.

“It’s just been eating at me from the inside for a while now, you know?” he continued. “I need to get this out of my system. It’s about what happened to us when we jumped out of the mountain pocket realm, and our subsequent near-deaths and the death of Liù.”

“She isn’t—” Melina tried to say.

“She is dead.” Lisette cut her off. “And you are at fault.”

“Knock it off,” Ishrin glared at her with sharp, dark eyes. “Enough of this. This is precisely why I wanted to speak about it now. She is not to blame, and you need to understand it and come to terms with it.”

Lisette shook her head and began to get up.

“Sit.” Ishrin commanded.

She stopped mid-motion and looked at him.

“I said: sit.”

She sat down.

“Good.”

She glared.

“As I was saying, this situation here is precisely why we need to have this conversation. We can’t, as a team, have these gaping holes in our mutual trust. Look at me in the eye, Lisette, and tell me: why do you think that Melina is the only one who should be blamed for what happened?”

Lisette growled. “She did not heed your warning, and her moral choices forced us into a corner. If she had listened to you, Liù would be alive now.”

Ishrin nodded. “It’s very easy to blame others, when we don’t want to see the errors in our own ways. Or, like in this case, in my ways. To shift the blame because that you refuse to see the truth. You refuse to see the whole picture. Do you remember how it actually went down?”

“You warned her and—”

“Did I actually warn her, or did I simply make a passing joke about it being dangerous before conceding to her plans all too quickly and without proper thought and consideration? Maybe because I was too cocky, and I overestimated my ability to solve any issue that might arise in real time? Think about it.” Ishrin said, and here his voice carried with it all the weight of his newfound uncertainty about the world, about the powers that be, about his ability to handle them. The whole team, Lisette included, could feel that he wasn’t all that confident anymore in his personal power as he seemed to be until now, and they took a moment to reflect.

Lisette said nothing. Beside her, Melina was shifting in her seat. Her ears were bent low against her hair, and she was cradling her tail in her arms.

“Do you really think that if I had said no, firmly and explaining the dangers, Melina would have still gone with it?”

“I would—” Melina said.

Ishrin held up his pointer finger. “Silence. Let Lisette speak.”

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“Yes.” Lisette said. “I think she would have gone through with it.”

“Why?” Ishrin asked.

“Because her moral—”

“You keep mentioning it. Her moral compass. Don’t you think her moral compass would have pointed her towards finding a better solution, or at least that she would have done everything in her power to keep her party alive?”

Every question made Lisette flinch. She thought and thought and tried to speak but the words didn’t come out right.

“Maybe you have a distorted image of her in your mind, an image you constructed in order not to see that the object of your admiration, me, was in the wrong.”

“But you… you weren’t.” she said with ever fainter voice.

“I came into this world acting like a teenager, drunk on power.” He said.

Lisette stared.

“I did.” He said. “It took near-death to make me realize that I was still seeing the world like I used to back in Eternia. Back then, these dangers were trivial. A wave of my hand and they were gone. Here, now, not so much. You need to understand this, to see that this is a flaw of mine, something I need to work on. You know, you can admire someone while also seeing their flaws. Even better, you can help them work on those flaws, make them grow as a person. If you really admire someone that much, wouldn’t you want to help them?” Ishrin asked. “Tell them when they are wrong, point out their mistakes so that they can be better?”

Slowly, Lisette started to nod. She was in deep thought for a long time afterwards, sometimes subvocalizing something that nobody could really understand. Eventually, she smiled.

“Thank you.” She said.

“For what?” Ishrin asked.

“You pointed out my mistake.”

“I, uh.” Ishrin said. “I guess I did, yeah.”

Lisette got up. “I have a lot to think about now. If you excuse me, I will be in the tent.”

Ishrin nodded at her as she left, and Melina too smiled warmly at her. On the way to the tent Lisette looked back twice, and the second time Melina saw that she smiled at her, and although the smile felt eerie and strange, she could see that Lisette was already changing the way she looked at her.

“Wow.” Melina said. “I never thought you had it in you.”

“I hate these things.” Ishrin said. “They make me feel... They make me think about stuff I don’t want to think. I’m very well aware that my usual idiot persona is a way to cope, you know? And back in that fucking mountain… my coping mechanism almost got us all killed. It took Liù’s death for me to see it. Well, it wasn’t in vain, at least.”

Melina hugged him. “You are a better person than you give yourself credit. And… I am very grateful for what you did tonight.”

She got up and he nodded pensively.

“Before you go,” Ishrin stopped her, “there’s another thing.”

From his inventory he took out a large, complex device. It was a beautiful thing, made of discs of translucent material floating along a central axis made of ethereal light, and they all looked lighter than air, as if made of condensed magic itself. There was a periscope, a small octagonal opening of blackness surrounded by bolted bright brass. Ishrin invited Melina to peer through it and look, and she did so, and what she saw made her gasp in awe.