Elaina ducked, following Carline and the others. Carline was looking off in the direction they were heading, presumably wherever the people she’d heard were. No, not heard. She can sense them with [Health].

Elaina wasn’t quite sure the range Carline could sense them at, but it was only a few seconds later that she stood up and motioned for the other three to follow.

“They’re far enough away that they shouldn’t hear or see us through the thicket,” the girl whispered as she crept forward. “Voices down though, just in case.”

“Roger,” Tira added, sneaking off behind as Elaina did her best to keep up. “How many though?”

“Three.”

They walked in silence for the better part of an hour, right up until Carline put her hand up and stopped. They waited for a few minutes before Carline finally waved them to go back, leading them away for another few minutes before stopping behind a large oak tree, one large enough to cover all four of them from anyone who might walk up from the direction they were just heading. 

“Should be far enough away now,” Carline said as she took out the map and started looking it over. “Temmie, we’re close to the cave, right?”

“Correct. We are but a short distance from the crystal deposit.”

“Thought so. It was a little tough keeping track without the map, but I thought they stopped near it.”

“Perfect,” Tira said. “We can have Elaina capture them with [Restraint], have them verify they were poaching from the cave, and be back on our way.”

“Maybe we should wait till the morning,” Flora said. “Or just before sunrise. We’ll be rested enough to make it back to town even if we sleep in shifts, and they won’t be able to fight back easily if they’re caught off guard.”

“Well, there’s a problem with that…” Carline said. “We were following three before, but they just met up with others. Now it’s more like forty.”

“Forty?” Elaina asked. Three would’ve been easy for her to take care of for sure, but forty was another matter entirely. She had never been able to make that many restraints at once, even with all of her skills active. 

“Fuck, that does change things.” Tira crossed her arms and started pacing around in front of the tree they had stopped at. “We can still complete the mission, but…” She looked over to Flora, frowning. “I haven’t yet. Have you?”

Flora frowned back, but she nodded her head. “Yeah, once.”

“Done what?” Elaina asked.

“Killed someone,” Tira said.

The trees were as still as Elaina and Carline, immovable lengths of wood and leaf in the vast expanse of the forest.

“Oh.” Elaina hadn’t really considered the possibility. She’d known that was sort of the end goal of attending Endrin, that she would be expected to be a soldier on the king’s behalf. The idea of actually killing someone wasn’t one she’d spent much time thinking about though, always having been this thing that she could put off considering, something that was years away, and only if she were to actually be on the front lines. There hadn’t been a proper war for near two centuries at this point, so she thought most Aspected didn’t even end up fighting.

“Do we have to?” Carline said. Her eyes were glazed over, almost like she wasn’t even paying attention to her own words, much less the rest of the conversation. “I mean, we’re just scouting, right? We don’t have to— we don’t have to kill them, right?”

“Plausible deniability,” Tira muttered. “We could almost certainly take them, the four of us. We wouldn’t be risking much either if we kept Carline in the back to heal any wounds we get, but the school doesn’t know our full capabilities.”

“No other group of four students would be expected to fight them,” Flora said, almost with glee in her voice. “Especially not with two first-years, two first-months at that!”

Elaina sighed, feeling lighter in an instant. “So do we just head back?”

“If you do not mind my speaking, there is a matter I think may be worth investigating,” Temmie said from Elaina’s hand. “Carline, is it safe to presume that the large group of people you referred to were in the direction we were headed before?”

“Uhm, yeah. Just ahead or so from where we turned back, through the trees. I stopped us once I could sense them again.”

“Wait,” Tira said, “I thought that’s how we were following them the whole time.”

Carline shook her head. “No, I was just tracking them the normal way.”

“Hmmm, interesting,” Temmie said. “The crystal is indeed close by, but not in the same direction as the group you speak of. It is a short distance north of where we are currently, if my understanding of our current location relative to where my subcore was stored is correct.”

“That’s…” Carline furrowed her brow as she looked at the map. “That’s the opposite direction that the group we were following went.”

“Then there could be more by the cave.” Tira stepped away from the tree and looked off in the direction the deposit would be. “If there’s more than forty we definitely won’t be expected to fight them all, but we should get accurate numbers. Carline, lead us there, and stop us when you sense anyone.”

“Yes ma’am!” Carline folded the map and put it in her bag before heading off again. Tira followed right after, but Elaina noticed Flora staying still. 

“Flora, you coming?”

“Hmm? Oh, right.” She tried to hide the look that had been on her face, bringing back that cheery Flora-smile, but it wasn’t fast enough that Elaina didn’t notice the sorrow that was in her eyes. 

“Flora, are you—”

Flora turned and shushed Elaina, winking as she skipped ahead. “Don’t know where more of them might be, so best to keep quiet.”

Elaina obeyed, mostly because she didn’t know what to say. Flora had killed a person before, apparently. Likely on a mission just like this, and it was commonplace enough that her and Tira hadn’t even needed to say what they meant to talk about it. 

Suddenly, her body didn’t feel as light as it did before.