"Well? How are you feeling now?"

It hadn't taken long after turning in Vanessa for Alfyn to settle down in the home shared by Marlene and her two daughters, and as soon as he was there, he got to work. It only took a few minutes for him to whip up a remedy for the cough that was plaguing Flynn so, and her coughs echoed in his mind as he finished off the concoction. Alfyn had held it up to eye level with a smile once he was done, knowing that this was the way things should have been done in the first place. Vanessa had made a mistake by lying about everything, but he was going to make it right. Her supposedly expensive foreign tincture was simple enough that Alfyn could have made it in his sleep. It showed just how much she was worth when it came to her lie of a creed as an apothecary.

After Alfyn dripped the concoction down Flynn's throat, the girl's coughs immediately started to slow, becoming much more spaced out as her body got used to the foreign ingredients. Flynn waited for a few breathless seconds after the concoction was gone, almost like she expected herself to start coughing again. When she realized that she was in the clear, she nodded up at Alfyn gently. "Better," Flynn murmured simply.

"Her cough... It's gone!" Marlene exclaimed in shock. Her hands were pressed over her mouth as she tried to hide her surprise, though she was admittedly doing a poor job of it.

Flynn let her fingers come up to rub at her neck, and she looked up at her mother with more energy than Alfyn had seen her with all day. "And my throat... It doesn't hurt anymore," Flynn told her mother softly.

Alfyn laughed from pure relief at those words as he rose to his feet. He had known that it was going to work, but it was still nice to know that Flynn truly was feeling better given the absolute wreck that the earlier stages of the day had been. The other travelers in the group were standing near the far wall, and Alfyn saw the way all of their shoulders went slack from gratitude that Alfyn had managed to cure Flynn despite everything they had been through.

Alfyn didn't let himself say anything about how concerned he had been for a while though, instead simply putting the empty phial of the tincture back in his bag. "Good to hear it!" he announced, beaming all the way.

"You saved my daughter's life... How can I even begin to repay you?" Marlene asked, tears starting to well up in her eyes as she looked up to Alfyn. She didn't seem to want to let herself cry as long as her daughters were watching her so intently, but she was on the verge of completely falling apart. Alfyn could see it clear as could be in her eyes.

"It's on the house. The moss didn't cost me anything, after all," Alfyn told her with a loose shrug. Even if it had taken a bit of gold to get his hands on the ingredients, he knew that he wouldn't have had the heart to charge them either. Alfyn had been saved at one point long ago by an apothecary who didn't ask for payment for all that he had done. Even if Vanessa didn't mean it when she said that she wanted to ease the suffering of others, Alfyn most certainly did, and he wasn't going to let anybody forget it.

Marlene didn't seem to know what to say, and Alfyn figured that she was looking for a bit of alone time with her daughters. He picked up the last of his ingredients from off the counter where he had been working before starting to clean everything off with a rag from his satchel. Marlene came up behind him and placed her fingers on his shoulder. The action was light as a feather, but Alfyn still felt all of the weight of relief that had found itself a home inside of her body over the last few moments. "How could I have been so wrong?" Marlene whispered, her voice barely audible despite the silence. "You were the true apothecary... Pray forgive my rudeness earlier, good sir."

Alfyn paused for a long moment before shaking his head and dropping the rest of his things away into his bag. He turned to face Marlene with a small smile on his face. "No skin off my nose. Your girl's healthy again-that's all that matters to me," he assured her.

"Thank you, Alfyn."

The apothecary almost jumped from surprise when he heard Flynn's voice from nearby. She sounded stronger than she had all day, and she was sitting up in bed as she looked over to him with bright eyes and a gentle smile. She looked on top of the world, and given how sickly she had been just a few short minutes ago, Alfyn couldn't help but smile at that. This was why he followed his dream of becoming an apothecary. Moments like these meant everything to him.

Flynn started to swing her feet over the side of the bed, and Ellen was quick to help her onto the ground. Flynn was practically bouncing on the spot from excitement as she looked between her sister and Alfyn. "Finally, I can go gather seashells with Ellen again!" Flynn exclaimed happily.

"Go have all the fun you want," Alfyn told her with a smile so gentle that he could barely even believe it. Despite all of the rage that was burning inside of him because of Vanessa's actions, he was going to be okay. All of them were going to be alright regardless of everything that Vanessa had done to try and rip this apart.

But he couldn't stay here forever. After all, they weren't the only ones Vanessa hurt.

Alfyn sighed as he glanced towards the door, wishing that he could have relished in this moment forever. However, the other consequences of Vanessa's actions were waiting for him, and he wouldn't be able to escape them forever. "And with that, I'd best be off. There are other people out there who need this medicine." He looked to Ellen and Flynn before closing his eyes thoughtfully. "And once I've done my job, and everyone in Goldshore is hale and hearty..." He looked to the door with a bittersweet smile on his face. "It'll be time to hit the road again."

On one side of Alfyn, the other members of his group stood, and Alfyn noticed the way that H'aanit went tense in particular. The next town on their list was Stonegard, and they would be leaving the following morning if everything went according to plan. In other words, they were getting closer to finding out the truth behind Z'aanta's disappearance, and judging by the way that the huntress was refusing to meet anyone else's gaze, Alfyn could tell that it had snuck up on her the same way it had caught him off guard. As much as Alfyn would have liked to stay there and collect seashells with Ellen and Flynn forever, there was other work he had to do elsewhere in the world, and helping H'aanit was just the tip of the iceberg.

On Alfyn's other side, Ellen's eyes went wide with shock and betrayal. In all of her childhood whimsy and innocence, she had never realized that there was the possibility Alfyn wouldn't be in Goldshore forever. She looked over to the other travelers before her gaze fell on Alfyn, and she seemed to be silently pleading with him to stay. Both Ellen and H'aanit watched Alfyn's every action carefully, trying to gauge what it was that he was going to be doing next amidst the silence.

Alfyn gave the family a wave over one shoulder before walking out of the building simply. "Till we meet again."

The rest of the travelers were quick to follow him, leaving the small home holding only the people who lived there. Marlene pressed her hands together as she looked down at the ground in such overwhelming relief that it seemed as if she was almost ready to collapse onto the floor then and there. "Oh, thank you... Thank you ever so, so much..."

The travelers ultimately opted to split up for a short while after their time in Marlene's home had drawn to a close. The day was starting to slip away, albeit much faster than they would have liked. What they had been hoping would be a relaxing day in a seaside town had turned into a disaster that dampened all of their spirits in a matter of hours, and it was high time that they took this as a chance to decompress and eat something.

Alfyn decided to wander off to the back part of town, and he looked up at the cathedral that towered so effortlessly over the rest of Goldshore. His expression was solemn and unreadable, and truth be told, he had no idea what he was supposed to think of all this. Now that he was away from the rest of the group, he could finally let his true emotions show, and the fact of the matter was that he didn't know what to do. He didn't know why it was that Vanessa had shaken him so much, but he couldn't seem to get her out of his head no matter how hard he tried. She didn't deserve the time of day, but at the same time, she couldn't get away from his thoughts for long.

Vanessa was right in saying that most apothecaries were poor, and Alfyn wasn't going to deny that. Still, that didn't mean it was at all okay to hurt others in the name of a profit. Vanessa had allowed her selfish ambitions to get the better of her, forgetting what it truly meant to be a healer in the first place. Alfyn had to wonder if she even knew at all what it was supposed to feel like to help people. She hadn't hesitated to cast aside her humanity for the sake of her own greed after all, and that made it seem like she truly didn't know what it meant to ease the pain of others. Everyone was simply a pawn for the sake of her own selfishness, and she didn't care who lived, died, or suffered as long as she was able to fill her coin purse with all the leaves she could have ever asked for.

Alfyn knew that he was never going to be like her. Well... He hoped not, at the very least. He knew that he wasn't ever going to give himself up without a fight when it came to such cruelty, but at the same time, brushing so close with someone so awful left him wondering if perhaps it was easier than he had thought originally to lose control of one's heart. Vanessa had let her ambitions control her, and Alfyn never wanted to find himself in a similar position. He was exhausted just thinking about her, and he wanted nothing more than for her to be out of his life once and for all.

Even if she had been arrested, he was still thinking about her though. Vanessa remained an issue to him, and Alfyn somehow doubted that he was going to be able to get away from her easily. How could he? She would always find a way to slip in just under his skin. She was so cruel and despicable, and Alfyn knew that there were others out there who were like her. This potentially wouldn't be the first time that he had to fight against someone who thought so little of human life, and that was enough to make Alfyn sick to his stomach.

Alfyn was a healer. He had known that he was going to become an apothecary for much of his young life, and yet, he had been thrown into turmoil and disarray so quickly after meeting someone who challenged every ideal he had ever stood for. Vanessa was a disgusting woman, and if the situation had gotten any worse, he could have had to kill her. In the end, Alfyn was able to remain pacifistic, but he didn't know if he was going to be that lucky again. Primrose hadn't been able to get away from the truth of her situation, and she had taken Rufus' life when they were in Stillsnow. Before that, she had killed Helgenish as well. Both of them had been truly twisted and despicable men who used their power to harm those beneath them for the sake of fueling their own egos, and anyone who dared to step out of line was met with their gnarled sense of vengeance in the name of personal satisfaction.

Alfyn didn't think he would ever have the strength to take the life of another. How could he? His job was to save those who were sick and hurting, and he knew that he had a duty to the people around him to make sure that they were safe. That was his job. It always had been.

But what if he had to raise a weapon against someone one day? What would he do then?

Alfyn's hands were shaking as he looked down to his satchel. What would Zeph do if he was in this situation? What would the man who had inspired him so many years ago do? What would the gods do? Where was the line between life and death when it came to the despicable acts of others? Should he have killed Vanessa and made sure that she never had the chance to hurt anyone ever again? Was he right to let her live because murder was against everything that he had ever stood for?

Alfyn couldn't bring himself to smile as he shifted his attention back to the spires of the Goldshore cathedral. There was nothing to smile about. There was so much wrong, and he felt sick about all of it. He couldn't let anybody else see it though; the rest of the group was counting on him to be dependable when they were struggling. Therion and Primrose were having hard enough times as it was, and Alfyn couldn't just leave them to their own devices while focusing on his problems that seemed insignificant by comparison. Everyone else was having a hard time too, and he had still let Vanessa get under his skin. Absolutely pathetic.

Alfyn knew that the second he went back to them, he was going to have to start acting again. That was the choice he had made a long time ago. He wasn't going to let anybody know it when he was suffering. His mother had deserved better than to shoulder his burdens as well as her own back when she was still alive, and he wasn't going to put the weight of his problems on anybody else either. That just wouldn't be right. He was simply going to have to stay strong.

He was being ridiculous anyways. He wasn't like Vanessa... Right? Alfyn would never be like her. He was too firm in his belief in the good of the world to let himself slip away the way that she had. Vanessa had lost control, but he wasn't going to do that. Realistically, Alfyn knew that he was fine. He was going to make sure that he was fine, and he had good people to make sure he didn't lose himself either.

But that didn't stop the fear from rearing its ugly head deep in the pit of his stomach.

When Alfyn closed his eyes, he was met with the sight of Marlene, Ellen, and Flynn looking at him with such joy and relief on their faces. He had been the one to cure Flynn where Vanessa would have left her to die in the name of her own profits. Alfyn had saved multiple lives that day by distributing the medication among the townspeople who Vanessa had poisoned without a second thought. That was why he was doing this. He may not have ever been able to enjoy the luxuries that Vanessa was dreaming of, but was any expensive gift truly worth it if it had been purchased on the blood of the vulnerable and innocent?

"I hope I know what I'm doing," Alfyn muttered as he looked up to the spires of the cathedral one last time. The question had a second meaning; he hoped that the gods were sending him down the right path as well. This was clearly where the group was meant to be as per their unknown mission, but Alfyn had no idea where he was supposed to fit in with all of this yet. Hell, he didn't think he would be ready to find an answer for quite some time. His stomach was still twisted in fear, and he had no idea how he was supposed to handle it.

Alfyn sighed and turned around, walking back in the direction of the inn. He still felt sick to his stomach because of how the day had been going, and even if he had managed to save many lives from Vanessa's horrifying actions, he was still afraid. He couldn't even say what he was scared of, but he knew that it was something terrible.

He was nothing like her... Or so he was choosing to believe. After all, who knew what would happen if that lie fell apart?

Therion was sitting in the room that he and Alfyn were sharing for the night when the apothecary got back. He was sharpening his knife using a stone that he had picked up while they were in town, and Alfyn didn't even need to ask to know that Therion had likely stolen it. The apothecary shut the door behind him before watching Therion's knife scrape across the stone. The small noise was the only thing to pierce the silence, and all that did was make Alfyn even more afraid of speaking than he would have been otherwise.

Therion could feel Alfyn's eyes on him, but he didn't look up to meet the other man's gaze, instead simply continuing with his work. He knew that Alfyn would say something when the time was right; he just needed a moment to think everything through. That was the type of person Alfyn was. He thought a bit too much, especially when it came to darker subjects like this.

"How did you know about Vanessa?"

Therion's sharpening immediately stopped, and he looked up to see Alfyn watching him with a strangely sober and nervous expression. "You seemed to know that she was up to something before the rest of us figured it out. When we met up with one another, you knew what was happening even though we hadn't told you anything yet. How did you figure it out?"

Therion sighed before setting the stone off to the side. "I watched her," he replied bluntly. "Something deep down told me that she was up to something, but I didn't want to say anything until I had evidence. I didn't figure it out until around the time that you did. I didn't know that you had found the truth too. I..." He didn't let the next sentence come out, instead biting the words back before they could thrive in the silence. I wanted to be the one to tell you. Maybe it would have hurt a bit less if I was the one to explain it. After all, you trust me for some reason I still don't understand.

"I see," Alfyn said simply. He sat down on the bed, and all of the gusto melted out of his body in the blink of an eye as he stared down at his hands. He didn't say anything as he looked down at his palms like he was waiting for them to reveal some unknown truth to him after all that had happened that day.

Therion stared at him for a long moment before looking off to the side. "You trusted her," he commented. It wasn't about judgement or anything; it was simply a statement of fact, and unfortunately, it was one that struck much deeper than either one of them could have ever expected.

Alfyn nodded. "I did," he admitted. "I like to think that humans are good. I don't want to think that there are people out there who hurt others for the sake of their own greed. Then again... I guess I should have known by now. I heard about what Helgenish did before we met up with everyone else. I know what Rufus did. Both of them were nothing short of disgusting, and now... I guess I thought Vanessa was going to be different. I didn't think that monsters walked around with such convincing disguises. I thought that she would be nicer than they were. I got sucked into her trap the same way everyone else did."

"But you coughed the bait back up," Therion pointed out. "She would still be out hurting the people of Goldshore if you hadn't started realizing there was something wrong. I can say that she's done this in other towns too; she would have moved on and done this to somebody else if you hadn't fought her off."

"I could see the leaves in her bag. She's been at this for months, hasn't she?" Alfyn muttered with a shake of his head. "The guards said that they would hand out refunds to the people she scammed, and the rest of it... Everything else that she managed to gather is coming with us as thanks for catching her."

Therion hummed at that, glad that they were getting the money legally this time instead of forcing him to smuggle thousands of leaves through the bitter cold like he had back in Stillsnow. He reached for the sharpening stone again, pretending that he wasn't being more aggressive this time around since Rufus' name had come up. "She would have kept doing it if you hadn't done something about it," Therion reiterated. "You did the best thing you could."

"But I believed her. So many people did," Alfyn sighed, his face falling into his hands. It was like the first few chips of his mask were starting to come away. After all of the smiles that he had given the world, he was beginning to fall apart, and Therion couldn't believe that the apothecary was trusting him with such a moment of sensitivity. Alfyn pulled his hands away from his face after a few beats of silence, and he looked up to Therion with dark eyes. "How did you figure out that there was something else going on? You said that you thought she was up to something, but... How did you know?"

Therion didn't know how to respond to that, so he just kept sharpening with hopes that it would help him to either escape the conversation or come up with a better answer than the ridiculously pathetic one swirling at the back of his mind. "It was the look in her eyes when she talked to you," Therion murmured. "She was never genuine about what she said. I could see it in the way she carried herself. She was always going to do something like this, and I know what cruelty like that looks like. It was easy enough to figure it out given the fact that I know what to look for."

"I'm just glad that there are a few people around here who I can still trust after all of that," Alfyn smiled loosely, though Therion could tell that he didn't really mean the joy that he was attempting to shove on his face. "Like you and everyone else in our group."

"Like me?" Therion echoed, looking up with doubt on his expression. Given what had happened in Bolderfall with his brazen acts of self-sabotage, he would have thought that Alfyn would want nothing to do with him, and yet, there the apothecary was, trying to reach out to him the same as always. It wasn't exactly unwelcome, but it most certainly was confusing.

Alfyn nodded. "Yeah," he said simply like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "I know that you've got your troubles just like the rest of us, but I know that I can trust you with anything when push comes to shove. It's a tough situation, but you're a good person, Therion. I think you should have a bit more faith in yourself when it comes to things like these."

Therion didn't know how to respond to that, so he went back to sharpening in the silence, knowing that no words would ever be sufficient when it came to explaining his feelings on the matter to Alfyn. "I guess so," he muttered plainly, not sure about what else he was even meant to say.

Alfyn perked up a bit at those words, and he leaned forward onto his knees as he continued to study Therion inquisitively. "I don't think you believe me," he commented. Therion paused for a beat before he continued his work. "I know that it's kind of hard to look at yourself sometimes because we know everything that's wrong with ourselves. It's easy to only see the flaws when that's all that you've been trained to see. I get that you're scared of trusting people, but... I'm not scared of trusting you at all. Even if you're a thief, I would trust you a thousand times over before I would even come close to putting my faith in someone like Vanessa."

Therion couldn't help the words that came out of his mouth next. "Why?" he asked. "What makes me so different from her in your eyes? We're both criminals, and you saw what she was able to do in a matter of days when she was here. What makes you so confident that I'm nothing like her?"

"I don't know," Alfyn admitted after a moment of stark silence. "But I can say that there's a difference somewhere. It's hard for me to face the fact that not everybody is completely trustworthy, but you... I can tell that there's something going on with you that makes you worthy of my confidence. I would put my life in your hands if I had to, Ther. I know that you're not used to something like this after flying solo for so long, but... You don't need to be scared of the rest of us. That's probably not going to stop you, but... I want you to know that you're not the person you think you are."

"You just said that people can't look at themselves well because they know all of their own flaws," Therion pointed out dryly, refusing to look anywhere near Alfyn as he spoke.

"It's complicated," Alfyn finally settled on saying. "I don't really know how to articulate it, but... I know that I'm going to be able to trust you no matter what."

"You trusted Vanessa too," Therion murmured. "How are you so sure that you can trust the rest of us after what she did to you? For all you know, we could stab you in the back at any moment. That's what people tend to do; they hurt each other."

Alfyn took a long time to respond to that, and he opened and shut his mouth a few times before he finally settled on letting out a heavy sigh. "I don't want to deprive myself of ever having the chance to trust people just because I'm afraid," he finally pushed out. "It would be impossible to completely push away the rest of the world. People can't survive alone. I don't want to take away my chances of finding people I care about and who care about me because I'm scared of being hurt. People do hurt each other... But there will always be other relationships that make it worth it."

Therion nodded vacantly, though he could already tell that Alfyn's faith had been shaken and then some after what had happened that day. How could it not be? A lot had happened, and Vanessa could have done that to countless other people had Alfyn not figured everything out. She had been fully ready to kill all of them in the name of keeping her secret, opening the terrifying inquiry of just how many people she had already sacrificed for the sake of her own ego. What had been intended as a relaxing day in a beachside town before they set out for Stonegard had quickly turned into a nightmare, and there was no way that any of them would be able to escape it easily, not as long as they were still forced to confront the remnants of the lies they had been sucked into so easily.

Alfyn sat on the bed in silence for a long while before he got to his feet and started to walk out. "I'm goin' to the tavern," he said simply, leaving the room a few beats later. Therion looked up at him with a small frown as the door tapped shut behind the apothecary. He stared for a long time, wondering what it was that he was supposed to do next, but in the end, he settled on continuing to sharpen at his knife.

Therion hated Vanessa, if he was being honest. He wished that he could trust people as easily as Alfyn or Tressa, and Vanessa was going to make that much harder for everyone solely because of the evil she had put on full display so effortlessly. Alfyn's world was falling apart whether he wanted to admit it or not, and he was still lying to seem fine for the sake of people who weren't going to believe him forever. Vanessa was going to spend at least a few months locked up in a gaol somewhere to atone for her crimes, but to Therion, that still wasn't going to be enough for everything that she had done not just to the people of Goldshore, but to his friends as well.

Friends.

The sound of sharpening grew louder until it drowned out everything completely, and Therion ignored the tear of rage that slid off his cheek onto the blade pressed between his fingertips.

Oh boy! Transition time!

There's probably going to be two more chapters before we're ready to leave behind Goldshore and get ready for H'aanit's chapter two, and until that time arrives, we've got a lot of angst and character development to cover. Everybody has their own responses to the things Vanessa did, after all, and this is going to shape the way everyone looks at the world from here on out. I'm not trying to say that I'm setting things up for Alfyn's chapter three already, but I definitely am. I'm fleshing out a lot of characters through extra interactions in this story, and that includes the villains, and this is just the beginning of the bad guys having lasting effects on the party.

I really liked writing this entire chapter because of how well it captures both Alfyn and Therion's internal struggles. Their morality debates aren't clean cut or simple; they're messy, and these two are just as messy to accommodate. There wasn't going to be anything easy about their journeys from the outset, and they're coming to terms with it now. Alfyn's mask is starting to drop, and Therion's habits of self-sabotage are only teasing out Alfyn's worst fears because of what Vanessa did. I love complex character interactions, and Vanessa really is the perfect fodder for lots of great conversations.

Next time around, we're going to keep this train going with more character development as we get ready to leave Goldshore. Until then, I hope you all enjoyed this chapter. Feedback is appreciated as always. Have a nice day, everyone!

-Digital