Rafael enjoyed few things as much as he did solving problems of a logistical or political nature, but even he had his limits. Finally dragging his attention away from the paper on his desk, he glanced up at the timekeeper and winced at what he saw. He'd known it was getting late, but not that late.
With great effort, he forced himself to set his pen down and lean back in his chair to rub at his temples. An ache had taken root in his skull, one that he was only recognizing the extent of now.
I have been asking for this for nigh on a century, haven't I? he thought to himself, eyes closed as he continued rubbing. Vanguard has returned, and with that comes a mountain of paperwork worthy of the event.
He really should find a proper assistant sooner rather than later. Once more, he mourned the loss of Allegra. He would consider it a great victory if he could find someone a quarter as competent as that woman.
Hands dropping to the armrests of his chair, he considered the half-finished contract on his desk. "Tomorrow," he mumbled to himself. "I'll deal with it tomorrow."
A tired mind was prone to mistakes, and he'd already made a large enough one with Duke Caldimore to fulfill that unsavory quota for a decade. Not that a construction contract could ever explode in such a catastrophic fashion that it would rival that mess, but he would need to sleep regardless, so he might as well do so now and come back refreshed.
He spent a minute tidying up his office before he left the guildhall for the night. Not because he was a person who grew agitated existing in a messy environment, but because he enjoyed making order from chaos. As a matter of fact, that was what he considered his core purpose in life, so it was natural that the desire extended to small details as well.
When he was done, he strode out and passed through Vanguard's common room—only to slow and come to a stop when an unexpected sight caught his eye.
Vivisari was there, seated on the sofa.
The woman was so lost in her thoughts she didn't so much as glance at him. Maybe his presence hadn't registered at all. Losing track of her surroundings—or reality entirely—when something ensnared her attention was far from out of character for the Sorceress, but there were hardly any world-ending magical phenomena floating in front of the mantel to have piqued her interest.
Rafael's thoughts began churning. Why was she here so late at night? Why did a shadow cover her normally inexpressive face? What did this arrangement of clues imply? He found an answer within seconds, and his lips tightened.
Ah. It seemed that unfortunate inevitability had come to pass, then.
That Vivisari had headed for the guild's common room after learning the news came as no surprise. Though her party members were gone, Vanguard's hall was likely one of the few places she found instinctual comfort. Even if many years had passed, the four other Heroes had been the only people in the world this woman could call true peers, and this had been one of their gathering spots.
He and Vivisari hadn't spoken about those four's passing, and her general avoidance of them as a topic was conspicuous… if understandable. Grief could be blunted over a hundred years, but never erased entirely.
Rafael wondered what to do. He and Vivisari were not friends. At least, they hadn't been before her disappearance. So far as he knew, the only people Vivisari would have considered 'friends' back then would have been the other Heroes. Since her reemergence, she had admittedly been much more genial toward him. Of course, it was still Vivisari, so she remained cold and aloof by normal standards—yet he knew some of that coldness was simply born from her being an asocial person by nature.
Point being: closer than before or not, he wasn't certain if he had the necessary rapport with the woman to sit down and try to comfort her. Many worked things out better alone than they did with others, and Vivisari was almost certainly one such personality. That said, the topic at hand probably wasn't something he should leave to fester, even for a solitary creature like the Sorceress.
He mulled over his options, all of this mental rumination occurring in a few short seconds. Coming to a decision, he adjusted course and walked to the armchair perpendicular to the sofa. He took a seat himself. She glanced over, blinking once and confirming his suspicion that she really had been so lost in thought that she hadn't noticed him.
"Back from the Institute, I take it," he opened.
She stirred slightly in surprise, then nodded.
"And the fate of a certain assassin has been confirmed," he stated more than asked.
"How could you possibly know that?" she asked. "I just got back."
He shrugged. Normally he would play coy; he enjoyed cultivating an aura of mystical competence. Yet not only was it not a difficult deduction, but now wasn't the time. "You said it was a high priority, something you would attend to as soon as you could. What else, for you to show up at this time of night in Vanguard's common room to stare darkly at the mantel in dead silence?"
Vivisari considered that response with her usual blank face. "I see," she finally said, looking away. "Keen as always, Rafael."
"If you'd like me to leave, I will, of course, oblige," he replied. "It would be understandable if you wanted to be alone with your thoughts."
Vivisari didn't respond, which was more than enough of an answer, and a somewhat surprising one. She did want to talk.
Rafael mulled over how to go about his reassurances. He could be a deft speaker, but the more emotional a topic became, the more his skill in the matter undoubtedly waned. In most subjects, he approached things as logically as he could, and that could be oil and water in matters of the heart. "It goes without saying that few deserved a summary execution so much as the Red Tithe, but perhaps hearing it stated aloud will help regardless."
Vivisari didn't seem reassured, but then again, even he could only glean so much from that stony face. "It helps… some. But… I don't want to be the person who decides whether someone deserves to die."
"And that is beyond understandable," he said. "But from what I gather, you made no such judgment. Circumstances forced your hand. A snap reflex is very different from a measured decision. It is entirely acceptable to kill in self-defense, in the heat of the moment, and while defending a child under your protection. Not a person on the planet would condemn you for your actions. Many would say you had been obligated to act as you did."
"I know," Vivisari said, and nothing more.
Rafael wasn't quite sure how to continue. To be fair to himself, there likely wasn't anything to say. This was one of those problems that had no solution. A man could be worth killing in every conceivable way, but some people would still regret doing so, and that was reasonable, even expected for most. Killing shouldn't be easy, regardless of the circumstances. Especially for the first time.
And that Vivisari would react this way was no surprise. The Party of Heroes had spent their lives saving as many people as they could, and had made extensive efforts to spare even the lowest bandit. Capture, not kill, even when no one would have blamed them for the more expedient option. They hadn't been called Heroes without cause.
Only the Cataclysms hadn't felt that unwavering mercy of theirs, and that was for obvious reasons.
When it came to Vivisari's remorse, Rafael would have been far more concerned if she hadn't shown any. He, too, didn't want the Sorceress taking it upon herself to decide who 'deserved' to live or die.
"The part that bothers me most," Vivisari said, "is that it was avoidable. I should've sent Saffra away before the fight began. I thought keeping her close to me was safest… and it was safest for her, but…" She was quiet for a moment. "I had time to cast, clearly. I could've warped her away rather than attacking. Then dealt with him alone. He was no threat to me, even with that dagger."
A short silence.
"The old Vivisari would've handled it better," she muttered.
It was the first thing she'd said that caught him off guard. Rafael wouldn't have taken Vivisari for a person to lament the glory days of their 'old self.' A hundred years might have blunted her instincts compared to the ten-year blitz in which the Party of Heroes had slain seven Cataclysms, but at the same time, she'd made a lot of progress while gone, and he would have expected those misadventures to have come with plenty of opportunities to keep her blade sharp. Yet Vivisari perceived herself as having grown 'rusty'?
Also, on a less appropriate note, the words inspired vague amusement—which he of course kept hidden. Not the time or place.
"Pardon the impertinence, my lady," he said. "But I disagree wholeheartedly with that appraisal."
It seemed he had offered a surprising response to match hers, because she looked at him, brow furrowing a fraction. "You do?"
"In the years that I served Vanguard back then, I witnessed an astonishing lack of critical thinking from all five members of your team. And not merely during social and political scenarios, but active crises too. I need not even leave this to personal opinion and old memories. Such events are codified in the history books; your fights were often public." He fought to keep his lips from twitching, because, again, it was a serious atmosphere, no matter the current topic. "For that matter, I believe there is a firsthand account from the current Headmaster of the Institute where you paused fighting a Cataclysm for nigh on an entire minute when a novel spell design captured your attention."
Vivisari gawked at him, though for her, that just meant her lips cracked open the slightest amount, face displaying the mildest surprise. "Sh—I did?"
A small jolt went through Rafael. He most definitely caught the slip. The formation then abortion of the word 'she'—or so he assumed. That Vivisari would frame her response like that catapulted some idle musings of his from 'thought experiments' to 'actual possibilities,' and that was… not concerning, exactly, but very, very intriguing.
Vivisari had, after all, admitted to not having been present in 'this reality' while missing for a hundred years, and the phrase of the month, echoed in every meeting he went to, was 'dimensional magic.'
However, he could make no concrete deductions. 'Sh' could form any number of words, and Rafael had learned by now that his deep joy in delving down the twisting threads of potentiality could often harm more than help. He filed the thoughts away for later, should a time come when they mattered. He doubted they would; while intriguing, his theories would have little functional impact even if they somehow ended up true.
"Yes, my lady. Perhaps you faced few consequences for those lapses in…" He cleared his throat and rephrased. "Those instances of imperfect decision making, but that can be ascribed partially to luck, and partially to the fact that even 'the old Vivisari' never had to deal with a threat quite like this one. Total magic nullification capable of thwarting even you does not, to my knowledge, exist in this world." The pedant in him mulled over that statement, but he shook away his need to clarify. She would know better than him in that regard, anyway. "Nor did you make it a habit of closely associating with anyone besides four individuals who could walk away unbruised from having a mountain dropped on them," he pointed out. "Much easier to make levelheaded decisions without the pressure of defending a silver-rank child against a threat of unprecedented proportions."
He remained unsure of whether his words were reassuring Vivisari, but she was quiet for much longer than any of the previous instances, and at the end, something seemed to ease in her posture, if just the smallest amount. A shadow definitely still hung over her.
And again, he wasn't sure he wanted her to brush this off too easily. It came as a great relief that Vivisari had the compassion within her to regret her actions, even grieve, when the victim in question had been a monster as horrible as the Red Tithe. That moral fiber was one of the reasons Rafael was unwaveringly loyal to Vanguard. The world had plenty of people—both righteous and not—willing to separate a man's head from his shoulders if they believed the situation called for it. That was not the Vivisari he respected, nor indeed the one that the world worshipped.
"What spell was it?" she asked, in perhaps the most Vivisari response yet. He couldn't fight the lip twitch this time, try as he might.
"That distracted you during an ongoing Cataclysm assault?" Rafael asked as he quirked an eyebrow. He pretended to think for a moment; sometimes his quick recall for details as minor as this could unnerve people, he had noticed. He falsely phrased it like a question. "[Absorption Barrier], I believe?"
"Really? That was one of Lysander's?"
"That is how the account goes. I cannot verify its accuracy, of course, though I doubt Archmage Lysander is in the habit of lying on the public record."
"I see. That's… interesting."
The conversation lapsed. They sat in silence for a minute.
"Thanks," Vivisari said at last. "I feel a bit better." She breathed in. "I almost wish he didn't so obviously deserve it, so that I would have a good reason to feel like I do. Though that doesn't make sense, of course. It's for the best it was him of all people." A quiet sigh. "You can go home and sleep, Rafael. Sorry for keeping you up. I'll be fine."
"It was my privilege." He stood; he'd said what he could. "Good night, Lady Vivisari."
"You as well."
Rafael bowed, then took his leave.