Wrighty crumpled the wrapper from his last Winged Boar dog and tossed it into a nearby bin without looking. It went in clean. Because of course it did.
"So yeah," he said, brushing crumbs from his bandaged chest. "That's the gist of why I'm here. I'm going to journey with you, find out who I am, and fix Snow." His dark eyes met Grub's with a sincerity that left no room for negotiation. "Whether you like it or not."
Grub stayed silent.
A breeze carrying ash and the faint copper tang of blood drifted through the village streets. Somewhere in the distance, the rhythmic thud of hammers from the outer repairs. The world around them was moving forward, but Grub's thoughts had turned inward, circling a question he had been avoiding since Wrighty first grinned at him from the battlefield.
Do I want this?
Months ago, Wrighty had made the same offer. Standing at the edge of the Ridge, eager and earnest, asking to come along. Grub had turned him down without hesitation. The reasoning had been logical, and utterly self-serving: he didn't want to be responsible for someone else's survival. Traveling alone meant moving fast, thinking clearly, and accepting that the only life at stake was his own.
That calculus hadn't changed. Wrighty was stron in physical might, absurdly so, but strength didn't eliminate risk. Having a companion meant worrying about two bodies instead of one. It meant compromising on routes, on timing, on decisions that might need to be cold, ruthless and impossible to justify to someone whose moral compass pointed in a much brighter direction than his own.
And yet.
Grub's gaze drifted across the damaged village around them. Volunteers limping between buildings with fresh bandages and haunted expressions. A community he had fortified and was going to fight for.
None of that was logical either.
Weeks ago, the analytical part of his brain would have calculated the odds, weighed the risks, and walked away from this village without a backward glance. Defending a settlement against a military force wasn't his problem. These people weren't his people. Their survival didn't advance his goal of finding answers about who he was or how to get home.
But he hadn't walked away. He had stayed, built traps, trained with Morrigan, interrogated prisoners, and stood on that third wall watching the battle unfold with his heart hammering against his ribs. Somewhere along the way, responsibility had sunk its hooks into him, and he hadn't even noticed until it was too late to pull them out.
I hate that about myself right now.
The feeling was irrational and he recognized the irrationality clearly. If he hadn't grown attached to this village, he could have left weeks ago. He could've have been miles away, pursuing his actual goal, instead of sitting on a curb eating overpriced meat while a Lacert army likely prepared another attack.
Grub had a firm belief that attachment cost time and time costs progress, but progress was the only thing that mattered if he ever wanted to learn his own name.
On the other had, attachment had also given him allies, training, a weapon, and a foundation of strength he wouldn't have built alone. Morrigan's brutal lessons had pushed him from Dormant Tier 3 to Tier 1 in days. Luthiel's companionship had kept him grounded during the worst stretches. Even Pazuzu's hatred had sharpened him.
Would any of that have happened if he'd kept walking?
His mind circled back to the original question. Wrighty wants to travel together. The same offer Grub had refused at the Ridge, delivered by the same grinning idiot, under completely different circumstances.
Back then, Grub had justified the refusal with cold pragmatism. He told himself the Ridge survivors would inevitably die, that concentrating in one place painted a target, that Wrighty would slow him down. He had been so certain.
And he had been wrong.
Eden was thriving. Five had turned a cluster of frightened survivors into a functioning kingdom. The people Grub had mentally written off were building walls, growing crops, and establishing trade routes. They hadn't died like he predicted or worried. Instead, they had flourished.
Anwansi was standing too. Another concentration of people in one place that Grub's logic said should have been destroyed. Another community that survival instinct said to abandon.
Two separate instances where his cold calculations had failed to account for the variable he kept underestimating.
Other people.
Maybe I was wrong to leave Wrighty behind.
The thought sat uncomfortably in his chest, pressing against the Nihil lodged there. His analytical mind wanted to dissect it, to find the logical framework that made the admission acceptable. But there wasn't one. He had simply been wrong.
Maybe reaching his goal would be easier with someone beside him. Maybe Wrighty wouldn't slow him down but push him forward. Maybe the things Grub was terrible at, the connecting and the trusting and the allowing himself to care, were things that Wrighty handled as naturally as breathing.
The internal debate churned on without resolution. His analytical mind fought against a warmer, kinder, force, something the Nihil was actively trying to muffle. Head versus heart, with a thumb on the scale pressing heart downward.
Wrighty watched him through all of it with that patient, blank-smiled expression. The one-armed boy didn't rush him, or demand an answer. He just sat there, radiating a quiet confidence that everything would work itself out.
Grub simply shrugged in response.
Wrighty burst out laughing, the sound ringing off the stone buildings around them. He clapped Grub on the back hard enough to nearly send him off the curb.
"I knew you'd come around, Doc."
Grub hadn't agreed to anything. The shrug could have meant a dozen things. But Wrighty interpreted it the way Wrighty interpreted everything: optimistically.
The laughter faded into a comfortable quiet before Wrighty leaned back and stretched his legs across the cobblestones.
"Alright, your turn. What have you been up to this whole time?"
Grub went into detail. He laid out his journey from the Ridge through the wilderness, the solo survival weeks, tracking and observing the Lacert camp, the bracelet, being sent as a spy to Anwansi. He described the village, the Guardians, Morrigan, the training, the match, the deception operation, and the battle preparations. He covered the Anima system, Fortes, Maladroits, and the ranking structure he had learned.
However, he left out certain things about Luthiel. Her nature, her aspects, her relationship with Morrigan. Those were her stories to share, not his.
Wrighty absorbed it all with wide eyes and intermittent exclamations of disbelief.
"Wow." He scratched his head when Grub finished. "That's a LOT. I'm genuinely glad you didn't die, dude."
He rubbed the back of his head.
"It's funny though. I followed your trail for weeks, but I never ran into those Lacerts. Must've gotten off track at some point." His grin resurfaced. "Good thing I found you anyway."
Grub gave another small shrug.
Recounting his own story had triggered another realization, one that settled heavier than the first. Despite everything he had experienced since leaving Eden, despite the months of travel and survival and growth, he wasn't much closer to his actual goal.
He had left the Ridge primarily to find answers. Who was he? Where did he come from? How could he recover what was lost? Those questions had driven every step since the fall.
And he had answered precisely none of them.
The Lacert camp had been a detour forced by circumstance. Anwansi had become a home he never intended to build. The training, the friendships, the battle, all of it was valuable in ways he couldn't deny. But none of it pointed him toward the truth about his identity or a path back to wherever he came from.
Months of wandering and fighting and surviving, and his original purpose remained untouched.
Walking aimlessly clearly wasn't working. When this battle was finished and his responsibilities here were fulfilled, he needed direction or a solid lead. Something concrete to pursue rather than stumbling from one crisis to the next and hoping answers fell out of the sky.
Though technically, I fell out of the sky. So maybe that strategy has merit.
The joke didn't land even inside his own head.
He wondered, briefly, how much farther along he might have been if he'd never allowed himself to care. If he hadn't grown attached to Anwansi, he could have bypassed the village as soon as Morrigan took off the mgbaaka maara. He could have kept moving and searching. Maybe he would be further along by now. Maybe he would have found a clue, a scholar, a library with answers. The possibilities were endless. But he would never know the answer to those questions. Because he did care and he wasn't sure it was a good thing.
If Wrighty hadn't cared about to Snow, he wouldn't have left Eden, a good home, on a journey to save her. If he hadn't cared for Grub, he wouldn't have risked his life to save Morrigan. One could argue, Wrighty caring, made his life more dangerous, and if Grub cared as well, his life would continue to be dangerous.
There was a price you pay for caring. Every connection was an anchor, and anchors hold you back and keep you in place when the current demands that you move. But anchors also keep you from capsizing during a storm.
It was a dilemma Grub had no answer to.
The two of them chatted for a while longer as evening settled fully over the village. Wrighty told smaller stories from the Ridge between questions about Anwansi, while Grub filled in gaps about the village's culture, its people, and the political situation with Varanus. Their conversation had the easy rhythm as the two of them tried picking up a thread they had dropped months ago.
Then footsteps approached from down the street.
Luthiel emerged from the direction of the medical building, her gait measured and precise. Blue streaks ran through her hair and her bangs hung low over concealed eyes. Faint tear tracks remained on her cheeks beneath the mantle of her bangs.
El stopped in front of them, her posture perfectly straight, her voice carrying its usual flat monotone.
"Shall we discuss what comes next? A Guardian meeting is being called shortly."
Wrighty stared at her with undisguised confusion. His dark eyes bounced between her blue-streaked hair and the golden-eyed girl he had met earlier, trying and failing to reconcile the two.
"Wait." He pointed at Luthiel, then lowered his finger. Then pointed again. "Are you the same girl as before?"
El regarded him through her bangs with characteristic stillness. "I am Luthiel. The same Luthiel you met earlier. I am also different from the Luthiel you met earlier." A pause settled before she continued. "It is complicated, Hero."
Wrighty opened his mouth and scratched his head with his one hand.
"Huh."