"Geez, do you have to be such a crybaby?" Sighed Arafunn. "She cried before, right? I remember one of you told me about it…"
"W-Who told you?!" Asked Ninhursag, quickly cleaning her snoot and tears and angrily barking back at Arafunn.
"Hahaha! C-Calm down, don't jump on me, alright? I am just saying!" Said Arafunn, as he was trying to calm down the furious Ninhursag. In terms of sheer physical strength, she was vastly superior.
"Sigh… W-Well, anyways, fine! Let's go meet these children…" Sighed Ninhursag.
"Nice that you've changed your mind even if a little bit." Said Allan with a smile.
"In a way, aren't these children like you, Ninhursag?" Asked Faylen. "I am rather surprised you've not made that connection."
"Eh? Like… me?" Wondered Ninhursag.
Ninhursag felt suddenly taken aback. Faylen was always the smart of the group, the brains, as she often thought. She never spoke about things that didn't really made sense, and it was often rare to see her driven by sheer emotions like now. Nonetheless, she never expected her to suddenly say something so… off-putting.
Ninhursag had never compared herself with the demon children because she simply didn't see anything similar to them with her… But was her way of thinking right? Or was she simply not realizing the obvious?
"What do you mean like me?" Asked Ninhursag.
"You're really so slow…" Sighed Nepheline. "Even I made the connection and I am supposed to be the brawns, not the brains here!"
"Huh?" Muttered Ninhursag while tilting her head.
Faylen sighed while sipping a bit of aromatic herbal teas made out of dried herbs brought from her own Kingdom by her big sister through the Teleportation device. These herbs were brought some long time ago and she had been saving them rather well.
"You see, the children are like you, they lost their parents to war. They died by the hands of humans, most likely. While yours lost their lives by the hands of demons. Both of you are the same, orphans left by the war, you're essentially very similar…" Said Faylen. "These children… they're like you, they feel alone, they feel discriminated, and they feel like they simply don't belong anywhere… They gathered together in an orphanage, and are most likely being taken care of by benevolent and nice people… Don't you feel any sort… of connection with their lives and yours in such a regard? What would had happened to you if you didn't lived in the forest? Wouldn't you be the same as them?"
Faylen's words once more enlightened the confused Ninhursag's mind, as she raised her eyebrows in realization… She wasn't dumb, so she quickly learned and realized things without Faylen needing to explain for hours.
Within her mind and her heart, the connection between her past and the past of these children was quickly formed, she suddenly began to feel a strong… sense of empathy. Inside of her, she couldn't help but think…
"It's true… Why did I never… realized something so obvious? I… I am really stupid." She sighed. "These children are just like me in a lot of things… Ah, ugh, okay… I get it! No need to tell me more…"
Ninhursag still felt confused and her mind was processing things for a while, so she sat down and shared some tea with Faylen, as she slowly sorted out her mind. She had been concentrated too much in her own fears to see through the most obvious of things. It often happens quite commonly to people that is driven by emotions too much, incapable of being able to see things through a pragmatic level of analysis.
"Hehe, I knew that Ninhursag wasn't that dumb." Said Arafunn. "Congrats, Faylen, you've made her snap out of it."
"W-Who are you calling stupid, you old man?!" Roared Ninhursag, as she angrily barked back at Arafunn once more…
"Please don't fight…" Sighed Faylen.
"Well, now that we are done with this, I need to talk to you about what I saw and sensed yesterday…" Said Shade. "And also about what Arafunn helped me see."
"Huh? Me? …Oh! Right, I almost forgot… That! Yeah…" Said Arafunn.
Shade ended explaining to his friends what he saw last night as he explored the city, about Celeste and what she did to those assaulting her… about her true strength, and also about the darkness coming from within the residential area where the nobles were located.
"You said you felt a lot of Malice coming out of that area?" Wondered Allan.
"Malice… it is a black energy that is generated not by the element of darkness, but by negative emotions accumulated within a person's heart and soul. Our powers are truly yet to be fully discovered, we are even capable of creating magic, and all other sorts of spectacles, but things such as Malice, the "pollution" we create… It still quite a mystery, but I can say that it is generated by both the soul and the heart… Usually, in battlefields is where most Malice is accumulated, amidst the bloodshed and despair of the souls of the fallen and that of those that are struggling to survive and fight…" Sighed Faylen.
"If there is a place that is emanating such a large level of Malice… there's no way it is something normal, right?" Wondered Nepheline. "For that to happen, what sort of horrors might they be doing in such a small area? I don't see any war, so its probably everything underground, right?"
"Hm… We should investigate further over the week…" Said Shade. "We have to do this carefully, we don't know if we might even threaten the lives of those that could be held captive if we do things too roughly."
"Right… We have to be careful I suppose, and not do things without proper preparation." Sighed Faylen. "But for now, let's go to the orphanage, we'll do things after that. The kids want to go to the dungeon, and we got some job to do with that as well, this week is going to be very busy."