Calmly take the eye from Lia

“…Lia,” you say, as calmly as you can manage. She doesn’t respond to you at all, continuing to stare at the glass eye with an ever-increasing panicked expression filling her features. Her hand has started visibly shaking, and you expect the eye to slip out of her grasp any second now.

Slowly, but purposefully, you reach across the small gap between the beds and close your hand over the eyeball. Lia flinches at your touch, her eyes darting to your face as her breathing refuses to slow down. She hardens her grip on the ball under your hand, so you bring your free hand over to gently assist in removing the item from her tense fingers. You maintain eye contact with her the whole time, trying and failing to plaster a calm poker face over your concern for her. Blythe also reacts to Lia’s sudden panic, hopping over to sit next to her and rub her shoulders. You never told Blythe the specifics of what happened to Lia in the labyrinth, but between this and the ruined clothes she probably has a pretty good idea. Once you’ve taken the eye from her, Lia is staring straight through you, her whole body shaking as her mind is somewhere else.

After you pocket the eye, it still takes over a minute of light massages and calm, comforting words for the two of you to successfully pull Lia back from whatever nightmare was induced by seeing the item. A single tear rolls down her cheek as her eyes refocus onto you, and then she crumples into Blythe’s side, the elf welcoming her with a concerned and comforting embrace. A moment later, you hear sobs start escaping from the traumatized woman. I should have seen this coming, you think. She was hurting bad back in the maze, but I just blamed it on the torn clothes.

“I’m a huge idiot,” you mutter, staring at the hands that just had to pry Lia’s fingers away one by one.

Blythe looks over to you, Lia’s face held buried in her bosom by a hand gently petting the back of her head. A few moments pass, the only sounds those of Lia crying into Blythe’s chest. As those sounds too begin to fade, Blythe looks down to the crying catkin and speaks. “The monster is dead now. It cannot hurt you anymore. That glass eye is proof that Evan was able to slay it. I know from his wounds that it must have been a terrible battle.”

Another few head pats, and Lia pulls herself away from Blythe to sit up straight again. There’s a moment, as she looks towards you, when you can see something change within her. In that moment, you think she must be locking away her trauma and putting her shields back up, because a second later she flips from sad to embarrassed. Looking down into her lap and rubbing the tears from her eyes, her cheeks glow bright red. “I can’t believe I cried again. All I’ve done since we got into this mess is fuck up and cry about it.” You reach over to grab one of Lia’s fidgeting hands.

“What happened isn’t your fault,” you say, “and you should never be afraid to cry when you need to. Blythe and I will always offer you our shoulders.” Lia looks to Blythe, who smiles and nods. “Plus, you’ve been a huge help to us so far. You found the last key in the maze, and you got us all of this money today.” You gesture towards the pile of gold drachmas behind Blythe on the bed, which Lia glances at briefly. “Not to mention, your quick thinking helped me get us these rooms tonight.”

“Her lack of a shirt did most of the talking,” says Lia. That she’s able to joke around is a good thing, but you’re still worried about how quickly her mood shifted.

“And you draping the cloak over her gave us leverage,” you say. “We wouldn’t be here without your help, Lia. I’m really happy to have you in our little party.” Your words don’t help the red in her cheeks go down at all. In fact, they make it worse, and Lia pulls her hand out of your grip as she throws herself backwards. She plops down on the bed, hands hiding her face as she rolls side to side and groans in frustration. Blythe watches her for a moment with a grin on her face, then shoves the pile of coins out of the way to lay beside the cat-eared woman. Lia stops her admittedly comical display of embarrassment and lays on her back with her head turned so that she can see both Blythe laying beside her and you sitting across from her on the other bed.

“Goddess, you guys are too much,” she says with a smile. Then, her expression sobering a little, “Thanks… for saying all that. I know you both really mean it. And I’m sorry for freaking out… I’m… I’m really glad to be with you guys, too.”

The more I see of Lia, the more I realize I don’t know, you think. What kind of terrible things has she had to live through to be here today? How many times has she held in her tears until she got back to the safety of her tent in the alley?

If I can do one thing for her, I can make sure she never has to cry alone ever again.

…

When all is said and done, Lia’s drachma horde is split evenly between the three of you and Lia keeps the knife for herself. This means that you each are now eighty-two drachmas richer going into tomorrow. You announce your progress with the Guild, briefly walking through your interaction with the elf woman and the cleaning task she sent you on. Blythe then goes into detail as to the things she learned from her rune investigation.

According to the gate guards, the rock formation outside of town with the magic circle on it is part of an old ruin that’s mostly gone now. By the guards’ recommendation, Blythe spoke to several mages in town concerning the runes themselves, but none of them had any knowledge of the symbols. They’ve seen them before, but apparently nobody has ever bothered to try and decipher their meaning. With that lead going nowhere, she tried asking around town for any information about “The Elemental.” A mage specializing in summoning magic told her that there are spirits called elementals that are pure embodiments of an element of nature. With this knowledge, Blythe hypothesizes that if “The Elemental” you’re supposed to defeat is indeed one of these spirits, then you will most likely be fighting some kind of rock golem; this is the Earth trial, after all.

The question still remains how you would summon such a thing. According to the summoner Blythe spoke to, elementals typically require some kind of unique ritual to summon. You can assume that’s connected to the magic circle, which means you’re still stuck trying to figure out what goes in those three holes.

It’s late by the time the girls leave you to go sleep in their own suites. You close the window curtain before heading into the bathroom. You stop in the doorway, suddenly remembering that this is the first time you’ve seen a toilet since leaving your Earth life behind. Step by step, you make your way over. Thoroughly appreciating the ease and comfort of a functional toilet is something you never expected to do, but here you are practically giddy to finally get to use one again after so long. It feels and works exactly as you’d expect, an honest and true flush toilet. You take a moment to thank Hesperos for designing his test world with these in it.

After your time on the toilet, you consider a bath, but you’re still dead tired. And it’s late already. And…