He walked away from the hustle and bustle, taking with him the goblins who were escorting him. With a heavy heart, he set out to find Alyn. He searched the entire village, occasionally asking a shocked villager. Nothing helped him to find her. Then he remembered the girl's character and headed for the forest.
After several minutes of looking through the forest, he found her perched on a tree guided by her sobs. He climbed as best he could to reach her place. Caught up in her grief, she didn't notice him at first. When he approached to take her in his arms, this time she did not reject him.
They stood in silence for a long time, waiting for Alyn to calm down. When finally, her tears stopped, she asked him in a weak voice:
"What are you still doing here?"
"I wasn't going to let you down in your condition..." he whispered. "To tell you the truth, I was worried when I saw you running away... If you prefer, I can leave you and go."
She straightened her head slightly, letting him admire her smeared face:
"No, stay. I thought I had betrayed the village and that you had used me..."
"No, I promised you to break the authority of the Cult and I did it... Even if it is true that nothing happened as I imagined. I am sorry for those who died but... It is the proof that the Cult must be stopped..."
"You're right... Even if it was our actions that caused them to take the vial, in the end, it was the Cult that wanted them dead..."
Tolir sighed with relief, fearing that she would blame him again for their deaths. It seemed that the time alone had given her some perspective on the situation. He took a deep breath before asking her:
"I found something about you in Father Maurias' office. He had left it there in plain sight as if he wanted it to be read... I don't really know what his objective was, but I must warn you, it's rather bad news..."
Alyn tilted his head to the side, intrigued by Tolir's words:
"So, you won't give it to me?"
"I admit that I don't know what to do... I'm afraid that if I hide it from you, you'll be angry with me, and rightly so... But the content will only bring you sadness..."
She chuckled at that last sentence:
"As if it would change anything... Give it to me, I don't know what's worrying you so much, but it's just a bad moment to spend, afterwards everything will be better."
Tolir grinned. Surely, everything could only get better after this correspondence and that was exactly what was worrying him... He sighed before handing her the documents that Alyn seized with a trembling hand. In spite of her smooth talking, she was dreading their content. She went through them as her reading progressed, her face becoming more and more livid. In the end when she handed them back to Tolir, all her blood had left her face. She whispered:
"I should have listened to your warning... At least that bastard Maurias paid! But..."
She held back the rest of her words, staring at the horizon, an infinite sadness in her eyes. Tolir let her assimilate this information. She finally said:
"Deep down, I knew it wasn't goblins who killed them... They were far too powerful to defeat them... I think subconsciously, I suspected Maurias had something to do with it... Unless it was his natural bad looks..."
"The second one seems just as plausible," Tolir laughed.
"Indeed..."
There was a pause in the conversation, neither of them knowing how to redirect the conversation. Finally, Tolir asked:
"What are you going to do now?"
"To tell you the truth, I don't really know what I want anymore... I don't think the village will forgive me for the death of the others... I don't really belong there... Why don't I move back to the forest, without the Cult, I won't risk anything?"
"I see... Instead of going back to the forest alone, why not come with me? Now that I have overthrown the Cult in this world, I must act quickly and head to the next world to continue my mission... If you wish, you can join me. I think your help will be invaluable and then... Having a companion will make it all a lot less monotonous."
Alyn stared at him with big, reddened eyes. Then she answered with a smile:
"Of course! That way I can retaliate against the Cult!"
Tolir was about to contradict her, but then refrained. It was neither the time nor his role.
"In that case, prepare your things and say goodbye to the village, we're leaving today."
She approved his instruction by wiping her eyes and then jumped out of the tree to run towards the village. Tolir watched her walk away before heaving a deep sigh. He had offered to follow him in a fit of kindness, refusing to leave her recluse in his forest. Even if deep down, he felt a sincere joy at the idea of being with the girl for a while longer.
He returned to the aetheric core after gathering the few goblins around to prepare for departure. With nostalgia, he stuffed his meager possessions into the bag that the village chief, Dravel, had given him a few days earlier, which now seemed like an eternity. Then noting the impossibility of taking the ethereal core with him, he decided to leave it here, but not without thanking him for his help and having recovered all the aether it contained.
Followed by his troop of nine goblin fighters and sixteen archers, he headed back to the village to greet the chief and explain the situation in which the villagers were. He spotted Dravel supervising the excavation of graves. Interrupting him in his sinister task, the latter asked him:
"Now that you've overthrown the Cult here, what do you plan to do to us? At least I assume it's not to loot or slaughter us or it would have happened already..."
"I'm sorry I fooled you, Dravel, but I have a mission to accomplish that goes beyond this village. Now, don't worry, I'll leave you, I'm going to the next world."
"You are a strange bird, you... You invade us to finally leave us to fend for ourselves... What will we do now?"
"I will make sure that the Cult does not launch any reprisals against you, as for the rest, I am convinced that you will manage it alone! By the way, your niece Alyn wants to follow me, you don't have a problem with that..."
"As if I had any say in the matter... This kid, as soon as she gets an idea in her head, it's impossible to get it out... Well, so much better if you take her with you, she is not made for the peaceful life here, she is an adventurer like her father. On the other hand, take care of her, if I learn that anything has happened to her, you'll see what I'm made of!"
On this last exchange, Tolir excused himself and then took the road towards the portal. At the end of half an hour's walk, as dusk fell, he arrived in front of gigantic stone construction. Two colossal carved columns stood more than twenty meters high, supporting an arch several meters wide. If he wished, all of his goblins could pass through the portal frontally.
In the middle, he could see a forest landscape quite different from the plain that surrounds him. Sitting next to it, waiting, was Alyn, with her bow in her hand and a huge bag on her back, who jumped to her feet as soon as she saw him. Her smiling face had chased away the sadness. This suits her much better, Tolir thought before exclaiming:
"Onward to the world of Taril!"
"Yeah! For the first time, I'm leaving this world!" Alyn added as she followed him.
The crossing... was nothing special to their great disappointment. While they were expecting a special feeling, nothing of the sort happened. No sooner had they passed through the portal than they arrived at their destination. Trying to forget about his frustration, Tolir stared at the world he had to conquer and the new challenge it presented.