[Ah— She isn’t able to open that flask after all. Liem watches it slip from her fumbling fingers and bounce away, and perhaps he feels just a little vindication about that when she turns to him with that scathing look burning in her single eye. Whatever aid he might usually offer her, he cannot imagine lending it in the face of that look, which he is more familiar with than he ever cared to be. He had offered his aid for years to the people wearing such a look, even so — but of late, he has not found within himself the charity necessary to overlook such slights.

Yet, he still says,]

You will need to kneel if I am to aid you.

[Because they must still take the faerie wing back to camp, and because there will be other trials even once they reach it. Hayame will be a poorer ally, to him and to every other Meri, without the use of her dominant arm. And she is much too tall for him to manipulate that joint properly from where he stands.

It is probably best to keep talking, he thinks. Hayame still looks unwell, regardless of that harrowed stare she aims his way. And he does not want to talk about himself.]

I did not know he had such magic. Are you surprised that he would wield it against you? I would not have assumed anything was beneath him on the battlefield.

[He knows little enough about Amos, but he still recalls snatches of their conversation on the beach, so long ago, another world away: Someone better than any of us... that's who you follow, right? ... I'm not exactly a good person, so most people are better than me.

A man like that doesn’t care about his own honour, when he’s fighting for a cause. That kind of mindset belongs to someone who would do whatever dirty work was necessary to secure victory.

He knows that intimately enough, himself.]