Yes, I had to remember that. While we’d established that yes, his kind could definitely feel emotions long ago, there was still a difference in the way we processed our emotions. Either entwined with them or detached from them depending on who we cared about and why we were feeling the way we were. I knew if Soren saw me being hurt like this, he would tear the world apart to free me, but strangers? They meant nothing to him. He tore into other goblins during fights with brutal efficiency, not holding back, no room for mercy. If I looked inside of myself, there were reasons I didn’t care either, buried under a hundred years of human emotion.

They should’ve meant nothing to me. This was their punishment, as said so by the cosmos, but I still couldn’t shake the humanity that remained inside me and told me that any type of suffering was wrong.

It was in this time that I wished I had more control over the impartial calmness of the stag’s powers. When it came over me, everything felt all right, everything felt like it was the way it was supposed to be. It was an alien feeling but a good one all the same.

A piercing whistle broke me out of my thoughts, and I brought my hands to my ears, wincing as blood dribbled out of them. Some of the older, rusted chains cracked and rattled, stones broke apart with their prisoners still on them. Soren, too, winced from beside me and brought a hand up to wipe away the blood. There was only one goblin we knew of who could whistle sharply enough to make stones break and ears bleed. Seppo was calling us.

We spotted him and Rose standing next to a dead driftwood log where a limp body was tied and chained. Even from far away, there was no mistaking the agony. They had found him. Picking our way over to where they stood, a hand grasped my ankle as a condemned man looked me in the eyes, pleading for me to kill him in hopes death by my hands would stop his regeneration. I shook myself and tore my foot away; there was no way I was going to be able to help him, and my ankle was now marked from the blood and dirt of his touch.

“Are you ready?” Soren asked me, a strong presence by my side.

“As ready as I’ll ever be,” I said quietly, taking a moment to close my eyes and breathe in through my nose and out through my mouth until I calmed my rapidly beating heart. I’d faced Lydian before and come out victorious. He couldn’t hurt me anymore. All that could hurt me was the memory that he left behind, and I had other, better memories to think of now. He would not see me stumble or shake. I could do this.