Chapter 100: Murderous Intent
They rode for nearly three hours.
Yorel squeezed between Nathan and Liaraen. The horse carried the weight of the three with the strength elven animals allowed, but with heavy breathing from having been at a gallop for too long. The nighttime forest passed on both sides. No signs of pursuit. No creatures appearing on the path. Just the darkness of the north trail and the sound of horse hooves striking the earth.
Yorel spoke for the first time about an hour into the journey.
His voice still trembling.
"There’s a shelter."
Nathan looked at him.
"A shelter?"
"Yes. Mine. Approximately two hours from here. I built it years ago when I started to suspect something was wrong in the settlement. I never used it until now."
"You suspected?"
"Yes. The others’ behaviors. The looks. The synchronizations you also saw. I thought it was my own paranoia. That I was imagining things because I didn’t eat like them and felt separated from the community. But just in case, I built the shelter. In case I ever had to run."
Liaraen spoke then, with a calm voice.
"Yorel. Besides not eating the meat, what else separated you from them over time?"
Yorel thought for a moment.
"Nothing specific. Small things. Different routines. Different meals. More superficial friendships because I always felt different without knowing why. But looking back now, I understand. The parasite probably united them in a way I couldn’t feel."
Nathan nodded.
"Lead us to the shelter."
Yorel indicated the directions.
And approximately two hours later, in the last hours of the night, they arrived.
---
The shelter was small.
A log cabin, hidden among the dense vegetation of a small side valley opening off the main path. Approximately four by five meters. With a single interior room. With a stone fireplace in one corner. A narrow bed. A table with two chairs. A small chest with provisions. And a sloped roof that kept water out during rains.
Yorel opened the door with a key he’d kept hanging around his neck since before the feast.
The three entered.
Nathan tied the horse to a tree near the shelter. He left it water from a small stream Yorel had diverted toward the property. He returned to the cabin.
Yorel lit the fireplace with the efficiency of someone who had mentally planned this many times but never executed it. The fire rose quickly. The room began to warm.
The three sat at the table.
In silence for a few minutes.
Nathan and Liaraen breathing the calm after the escape. Yorel breathing the weight of what he’d just discovered about his own people.
Then Yorel spoke.
With a voice that had regained some firmness but still trembled at the edges.
"Hunter Voss."
"Yes."
"I have a question."
"Go ahead."
"Why didn’t you stay?"
Nathan looked at him.
"What?"
"You didn’t stay. You escaped. And I understand—I understand why. You were at a numerical disadvantage. There were large creatures in the forest. And the alpha creature was approaching. Rationally, escaping was the right decision."
"Yes."
"But you’re a Hunter. You took the mission. The settlement people are my people. The children. The ones I grew up with. The ones I see every day for thirty years. And now they’re controlled by something, and they’re probably going to die if no one does anything, and you could have tried."
Nathan looked at him for a moment.
With a serious face.
With his cynical smile absent for the first time since Yorel had met him.
And with the calm voice he used only when he’d decided the moment required complete sincerity without filter.
"Yorel."
"Yes."
"The best option was to withdraw."
"Why?"
Yorel asked it with an expression suggesting he could at any moment slip into something like a trance. A mix of delayed shock and urgent need to understand.
Nathan looked at him.
Liaraen turned to Yorel.
"Yorel. It’s because of Nathan’s Class."
Yorel looked at her.
"His Class?"
"Yes."
Nathan interjected.
"Yorel. My Class is called Grim Reaper. All my skills are related to life and death. That’s the basics. The important part is what follows."
"Go ahead."
Nathan turned to Liaraen.
"Sprout. When we were in the settlement. When the residents synchronized for the first time and all turned toward me. And then when the forest guardians arrived. Did you feel something?"
Liaraen nodded.
"Yes."
"What?"
"The intention. The killing intent."
Yorel turned to them.
"The what?"
Nathan looked at him.
"The killing intent, Yorel. From the parasite, through your neighbors and through the creatures. All directed at me. All at the same time. Coordinated like one thing that wanted to kill me."
"And what does that have to do with the decision to escape?"
Nathan took a breath.
"Yorel. My skills have two modes. The first is suppression. Almost all of my active and passive techniques are designed to neutralize enemies without killing them. Paralyze. Weaken. Immobilize. Absorb energy without ending life. And that’s what I used in the dungeon at first. And in the river. And in the forest against the Drakain this afternoon."
"Yes."
"The second mode activates when someone has killing intent toward me. Not when I have it toward them. When they have it toward me. When the enemy specifically wants me dead. When that happens, my Class becomes lethal by default. All my techniques become mortal. Suppression becomes annihilation. It’s not a conscious decision. It’s an automatic response from the Class to the intent."
Yorel stood still.
"Wait."
"Yes."
"So when you were in the settlement, if you had stayed to fight, your techniques...?"
"They would have killed. Everything. Every controlled resident that had killing intent toward me. Every guardian. Anyone within range. And the killing intent, Yorel, isn’t controlled by your neighbors. It’s controlled by the parasite. The parasite wanted to kill me. And that intent was being transmitted through every controlled body."
"Meaning."
"Meaning that if I fought, I would have killed your neighbors. The adults. The children. Everyone. Without being able to control it. Because the parasite had given them killing intent, and my Class was going to respond with automatic lethality."
Yorel sat down.
Very slowly.
In the chair he’d been occupying.
With his hands trembling again.
"The children."
"The children, Yorel."
"The children had killing intent toward you."
"Not the children. The parasite through the children’s bodies. But my Class doesn’t distinguish. It only responds to the intent it detects. And if I responded, the children would die along with the adults."
Yorel was silent.
For nearly a minute.
Nathan and Liaraen waited.
Without rushing him.
Then Yorel spoke, with a very low voice.
"So it wasn’t that you couldn’t do anything. It was that if you did anything, everyone would die."
"Correct."
"And you didn’t want the children to die."
"No. I didn’t come to this settlement to kill children, Yorel. Or any innocent person. The mission was to eliminate Nightbrid. It became something different during the afternoon. And when I understood that the easy solution would cost twenty lives—including children who didn’t choose to be controlled by a parasite—I didn’t take it."
"Even though escaping meant leaving them like that."
"Leaving them like that for now. To come back with the right solution later. Instead of solving it quickly with twenty dead and carrying the weight for the rest of my life."
Yorel covered his face with his hands.
For another full minute.
When he lowered his hands, his eyes were red but dry. With the expression of someone who had processed something important and had reached a decision.
"Hunter Voss."
"Yes."
"Thank you."
"It’s nothing."
"Yes, it is. Another Hunter probably wouldn’t have thought about the children. They would have eliminated the threat as a completed mission and collected payment."
"Probably yes."
"So what do we do now?"
Nathan looked at him.
Then at Liaraen.