_ _ _ _Suu Pov_ _ _ _
Dark... everything was so very dark. My body ached all over, and it felt as if multiple heavy weights were pressing down on my skull. The fact that something was clinging to my body, something sticky and wet, only added to my discomfort. I tried shifting my position, but it only made the feeling worse and worse until I couldn't stand it anymore.
My eyes opened then, slowly at first, as the light flooded in, and I closed them to flinch slightly at the brightness of it. Oddly, the light wasn't coming from the sun; no, it was coming from various fires lit upon wooden poles that were placed all around me in a ring. The confusion as to who put them around me quickly vanished when the memories of fighting poured back to the forefront of my mind as I realised two very different things.
First, I couldn't remember what had happened after that orc used his skill on me; everything past that point was just blank. And the second thing I noticed was the sound: where there had been sounds of battle and orc chanting, there was now silence, with the quiet murmuring of voices some distance away.
Before I could turn my head to see what was going on, a sudden voice came from next to me. "You're awake, Lady Suu! Yay!"
"Yin?" I muttered in confusion as I looked down at the very tiny figure hugging my side. "Why are you so small? Did you shrink?"
"I didn't shrink, silly. You just got really big." She responded, stepping back as she spread her hands and gestured to the rest of me.
"Huh?" I mused in confusion until I gazed over myself, only to realize I was now an absolutely massive black and golden bird, mud clinging to my body and feathers.
(Well, that's definitely new.) I blinked, staring at my body in astonishment before suddenly snapping out of my daze.
"Wait... no, that is not important right now." I hissed, shaking my head as I quickly asked the most important question at hand. "What happened while I was out? Is everyone okay?"
"Everyone's fine, Lady Suu." Yin hummed with a smile.
Before I could ask anything else, she quickly added, "Mister Rimuru defeated the orc lord!"
(Oh, thank God.) I thought internally the moment I fully processed those words, letting out a long breath of relief. (Nobody died, everyone's okay.)
"I'll go get him; you wait here." Yin's sudden words pulled me back to the present, however.
"Wait a secon-"
Unfortunately, she was skipping away before the words could even leave my mouth... beak? Beak would probably be more accurate considering my current form. Either way though, I was left sitting there, drenched partially in mud, all while a confused expression played across my face.
"There she goes, I guess." I huffed with no small amount of amusement as my eyes finally turned to take in what was truly going on around me.
To say the surrounding marshlands had seen better days was most definitely a massive understatement. The entire landscape looked as if it had been struck by multiple natural disasters; massive segments of the waterlogged earth had either been cracked open or ripped from the ground entirely. The most shocking things were the craters, dozens of gargantuan charred holes in the ground. The smallest were hundreds of meters across from what I could tell, and I couldn't even begin to estimate how big the larger ones were.
(Did the orc lord do this… no, that doesn't feel right…)
On that topic, anyway, I could see them from here, the orcs, I mean. They were very far away, but it was hard not to see them from here considering how many of them there were. At first it was a little alarming, but looking closely I could tell they were no longer the near-mindless horde they had been before; they even seemed to be cooperating with the lizardmen that were standing guard around them.
(That's good… they should be cordoned off for what they did; they deserve a lot mor-) I suddenly cut that thought off, surprised by my own coldness.
(Where did that come from?) I blinked, genuinely startled. (I can't just blame them like that; it's not entirely their fault after all.) Despite knowing that was true, I couldn't help but feel an odd pang of… dissatisfaction?
Just then another familiar voice sounded as I noticed someone approaching. "Taking in your handiwork, huh?"
"Oh, hey Rimuru. Yin found you really quickly, huh." I muttered, turning to look at the individual in question, only to pause when his words finally processed. "Wait, what do you mean by that?"
"You don't remember? The one that created all those holes over there was you." He said, his amber eyes narrowing slightly, and for a second I just froze.
"W-what?!" I stammered out in alarm, quickly racking my brain for information, and honestly? I didn't like what I ended up finding.
The memories themselves were covered by a veil of static, so to speak; it was hard to make them out, but as I looked deeper a few things stood out. I remember waking back up in… in that house; I remember the memories of Rimuru and everyone else slipping away like water slipping through the gaps in my fingers. After that, though? I don't know. I vaguely recall the anger and pain I felt, but after that things became more muddied. Despite that, however, I could vaguely put together the pieces. I had attacked everything around me with a blind fury and then I had fallen, plummeting from the sky when the rage had pushed me past my limits.
For a long moment I just lay there in silence, before a single thought bubbled up from the back of my mind. (I lost... I lost control...?)
"Did... did I hurt anyone?" I asked, a growing dread slowly beginning to well up in my chest.
"Other than killing thousands of orcs single-handedly? No, you didn't hurt anyone." Rimuru shook his head slowly, much to my relief.
"That's good..." I breathed, but the fact that I had apparently gone completely berserk still caused that sinking feeling to linger in my chest.
For a second I didn't know what else to say. What was I supposed to say in that situation? I still couldn't remember it fully; the events were a blur, to say the least, but taking in the destruction that I had apparently caused didn't change the facts. So in the end, I just asked the first question that popped into my head.
"By the way, why has all the fighting stopped? Yin said you defeated the orc lord, but I didn't expect things to end just like that."
"Great Sage." Rimuru muttered, gesturing for his partner to explain.
[Answer. The moment the orc lord known as "Geld" was defeated, the effects of the unique skill "Starved" were abruptly ended. This caused a catastrophic backlash that momentarily crippled the roughly one hundred twenty thousand remaining orcs as their reasoning and emotional capacity returned all at once, allowing for a ceasefire to be called.]
"How many… how many was I responsible for?" I asked far more calmly than I was expecting.
[Answer. The entity "Suu" is recorded to have personally reduced the orc numbers by around twenty percent, approximately forty thousand to be more precise.] The number should have shocked me, horrified me even, but all I felt was a strange numbness.
"I killed that many…" The words came out as hollow as they probably could have.
[Correct.]
(It should have been higher; I should have killed more.) The thought flashed through my head in a voice that didn't feel entirely my own. (No… no, I can't think like that… I'm not a monster… I'm not…)
"I see…." I mumbled, my eyes turning back to the surroundings.
More particularly, my gaze swept over the orcs who were being monitored quite some distance away. A quick internal question to Great Sage and I learnt that despite their senses returning to them, there were still lingering effects from the Starved skill that would need to be dealt with and removed. The fact that we hadn't properly figured out what to do with them also probably played a part in their current situation. The thing that somewhat startled me, however, was the fact that they seemed to refuse to look in my direction, and from the emotions I was feeling coming from them it was rather obvious why that was. They were afraid of me… and honestly… honestly I found myself feeling a kind of dark amusement in knowing that. Not that I could blame them, nor could I really blame myself for what had happened either. After all, even now the anger of being forced to forget everyone I had grown to care for was still very much simmering just below the surface.
I don't know for how long I was quiet, but Rimuru was the one to eventually break the silence. "Anyway, we have a meeting planned for later, to discuss what we're going to do moving forward."
"Before we call for said meeting, though, I believe we have another matter to discuss." He seemed to hesitate for a second before continuing.
"And what would that be exactly?" I asked, but by his tone I could already somewhat guess.
"Suu…" He sighed, looking up at me with a steady gaze. "We need to talk."
(It doesn't take a genius to figure out what we need to talk about.) I thought, suppressing the spike of panic that I felt in response to that realisation.
"And it is probably for the best if we do it in private." He muttered, and I could only nod slowly.
"So you're gonna have to turn back into your humanoid form so we can move somewhere else."
"Okay..." Was my rather simple response before a realisation hit me. "There is just one problem."
"What?" He muttered, tilting his head to the side in confusion.
"I don't know how to turn back." I admitted awkwardly.
"Ah…"
(((A/N. To those who are confused why she is suddenly acting a little darker than you may expect, well, all the info you need to figure it out is in Chapter 30, also the title has a bit of a double meaning. Anyway, reviews and comments are appreciated as usual, thanks for reading and all that.)))