“You think Gwen and Arte are dead?” Olpi gasped.

Owen nodded. For someone who had lost two people, nearly lost his job, and had no one left, the pain in his voice was too distant. He was a good actor, but Olpi had seen her fair share of despair within the academy.

Owen continued to lie to her face. “I’m afraid so. I tried to explain this Frey but you know how he gets when it’s someone he cares about; like a raging bull. I tried to calm him down. I even fed him a few bowls of, what should have been, the young master’s oatmeal.”

“You thought oatmeal would stop him?” Olpi chuckled. “Why would food stop him?”

“Y-yeah, I don’t know what I was thinking,” Owen shared in her joyless laughter. “Here we are anyway. On his behalf, I apologize for getting you involved. I don’t blame you if you hate him for his selfishness.”

“I’m glad that he got me involved with finding the others,” Olpi reassured him. “The monsters in this forest are slippery and scheming. If I didn’t follow along, something terrible would have happened to him. “

Owen raised an eyebrow. “Something terrible? He did look a bit pale when we last talked…”

“Really?” she asked. “He looked fine before he talked to you.”

Owen shrugged. “Finding out your sister and nephew are missing would make anyone pale. I know I took my time recovering, but I’ve moved on. Maybe the grief and denial led to his bad calls, or do you think it was my oatmeal?”

Olpi’s jaw tensed and untensed. She could blast him with magic right there, but a chill racing down her spine warned her that if she lashed out, it wouldn’t end well. “Frey could have spotted the trap earlier,” she said. “Luckily, he has people watching his back.”

Owen’s lips curled into a smile. His gaze went to the cape behind Olpi. “When one doesn’t use their strength appropriately, there is always a cost.” His eyes shot back to Olpi. “Wouldn’t you agree?”

Olpi wondered if he had been following them the entire way, watching in the shadows. Owen knew. He allowed the stillness drag out between their back and forth as if taking pleasure in watching her mind catch up to his. “You have no idea.”

“It must have been one heck of a trap if there was an injury that bad,” Owen continued. “Do you still trust his judgement? It must have hurt to see one of your own fall to the ground.”

Olpi was silent. The unspoken threat hung above Elero’s unconscious body. She could fire icicles at Owen, but Elero lay within reach of his rough hands.

Owen pulled a log and sawdust from his bag, then set it between them. “Allow me to start a fire.” With one smooth motion, a shower of sparks rained down upon the carefully laid out pieces of tinder.

“Frey has been gone for longer than you expected, hasn’t he?” Owen asked as the flames danced up the log. “What if he has already fallen for another trap? One thing can be a mistake, but screwing up twice? Maybe he’s not as reliable as you think he is.”

Olpi swallowed her saliva as she watched the flames blackened the wood. “It doesn’t make sense to trust someone who screwed up twice.”

Owen nodded. “Maybe the mercenaries have caught him.”

Olpi looked up from the fire and cocked her head to the side. “What? Frey showed what little mercenaries could do to him before he stepped foot into town. What do they have in this?”

Owen shook his head. “The lord’s poisoning coincided with the arrival of mercenaries. They’ll take the blame if anything goes wrong, but no one knows their motivation. No one knows why they would go after a lone group who foolishly ventured into these dangerous woods. The only thing people back at Petal Town know is that they’re the only ones strong enough to take down Frey.” He laughed. “Or do you think anyone would believe that a couple of servings of oatmeal could stop Frey?”

A bead of sweat rolled down Olpi’s chin, sizzling upon contact with the growing fire under her head. “Frey wouldn’t be taken down by some random group of mercenaries, even if they somehow managed to know that he’d be in these woods.”

“Of course, I mean unless he was inhibited in some way. Poison, in high enough doses, can put even the mightiest giants down to their knees.” The flames reflected in his eyes, which widened with zeal.

“But why go after Frey and his family? That’s what I want to know.” Olpi slowly moved her hands behind her back, so Owen couldn’t see the mana floating up from them. A mana circle slowly began to form.

Owen leaned in closer. “The hero’s power, do you know of it?”

Olpi shook her head.

“The hero’s power conquers all, even the demon king,” Owen explained. “It is a hunger of the soul, manifested in reality. It is said that those with it, can change fate itself.”

“You genuinely believe in this?” Olpi gasped. Her instinct was to blast the man with ice, but the keen fascination in Owen’s voice piqued her curiosity. She found herself imagining what she would do with a power like that; how she could help actualize demi-human rights within the capital, and finally cut them loose from the manipulative instructors.

“That gift must be used properly,” Owen continued. “For in the wrong hands, there’s no telling what could happen. How well do you know Frey? Would you say he’s worthy to use that power however he pleases? Or would you like to help me? Redeem yourself.”

Owen paused and waited for his answer.

A tear streaked down Olpi’s cheek. She wiped it on the sleeve of her robe, the cloth itself given to her by her friends. Friends, which had suffered from words like Owen’s. The talk of greater good, she had heard it all before. “You talk as if this is some duty you must fulfill.”

Owen nodded. “That was the task which the monastery assigned to me. It is ok to cry. Frey does not deserve this, but it must be-“

“I pity you.”

“…what?”

Olpi took a labored breath. “I never thought I’d meet someone so deluded, who wasn’t an instructor. I thought that kind of people wouldn’t exist outside the academy. It’s just too sad. I’m sorry, Owen, for whatever turned you into this.”

Owen laughed and slowly shook his head. “You don’t even know me, yet you cry over me? You don’t know this world, do you? For the greater good, there is always a cost. I expected either rejection or acceptance, but you dare pity me? This is my sacrifice! My righteous duty!”

“What about Arte and Gwen?” Olpi insisted.

Owen breathed short, spontaneous breaths. He had completely lost sight of Elero. His dogmatic gaze was fixated upon the anomaly sitting before him. “The Botomans were the cost of the greater good. I hand them over as payment for doing good.”

Olpi leapt to her feet. Mana surged around her body as if reacting to the boiling sensation in her stomach. It snapped around her clenched fists. Alive. “I know your type. You people talk, but you’re never the ones to pay the price. There is no greater good! You cannot weigh one good against another because it’s the same thing. You’ve poisoned my friend and sold out his family for your own self gain!”

Magic circles sprang into existence around Owen. Olpi could skewer him with a thought. In the face of a room polluted with Olpi’s mana, Owen slowly stood up. He stretched his arms outwards, displaying he had no weapons. “I have sent them away, but I still love them. I hoped that you have understood, Olpi. I really did. But, now you’re a part of the cost I must pay.”

All Olpi saw was a flash of copper, and then she was on the ground. A boney knee jammed into the center of her back. Blood dripped from her ringing ear. She didn’t remember what happened. It was too fast.

Jagged ice erupted from her magic circles, and blood splattered across the ground. The weight lessened, and she drew in breath.

“Enough,” Owen’s voice bellowed from above her. An iron grip twisted Olpi’s leg until the bone broke.

She yelped from the pain. The magic circles shivered from the lapse in concentration. Olpi scrunched her face to keep them in existence. One more surge of mana forced more ice into Owen’s body.

Although blood was spilt, he did not cry out. A palm struck Olpi’s back, and a foreign mana wrapped around Olpi’s core, the source of her mana. Then, silence.

The magic circles dispersed. She gritted her teeth and called upon her mana once more. Nothing. The connection was sealed.

“It’s over.”