32 — I’m Bad at This

Simon’s health bar dipped slightly, and a small bead of blood appeared at the corner of his mouth.

“Simon!” Ashley stepped closer, her hand twitching instinctively on his shoulder. “What the heck are you doing?”

“What am I doing?” Simon forced his lips to stretch wide, but the muscles around his mouth remained rigid and dead. His teeth were slick with pink saliva. It was the desperate mimicry of a smile, held together by nothing but raw, stubborn strain.

“That’s the same question I’ve been asking myself,” he said, his voice barely making it past his throat to carry over the relentless thrum of the dynamos. “You know, Celestine… I don’t even know anymore. I thought I was helping people.”

A sharp, dry click escaped his throat. A laugh that carried no warmth, sounding more like snapping kindling.

“But what have I actually done? I saved a village from a volcano and ended up making an entire country sick. I devoted my life to a faith nobody believes in anymore.”

The admission dug into Ashley, a sudden tightness settling behind her collarbone. She hadn’t expected those specific words to cut so deeply.

“I became a cleric to save Agata,” Simon continued, his chin dropping, eyes falling to the grid-lined floor plates. “And the only thing I managed to do was put her life at risk.”

The confession lingered in the humid air, battered by the rhythmic shuddering of the spinning machinery. Ashley kept her mouth shut, the urge to offer an immediate reply dying on her tongue.

She wanted to give him the easy answers. No, not answers. Platitudes.

Tell him it wasn’t his fault, that he couldn’t have seen the fallout coming, that everything would work out the moment they butchered whatever gargantuan, fire-breathing nightmare was nesting down in the magma.

Those were reliable scripts. Clean, orderly lines. Exactly the sort of dialogue a party member was supposed to trigger when a companion hit the tragic turning point of their personal quest line.

Simon didn’t look like a man waiting for a comforting script. His spine curved forward, his posture collapsing under the weight of an invisible burden.

Ashley pressed her lips together. The sweltering heat continued to buffet her face, pulsing in perfect sync, suffocating with the steady grinding of the giant mechanisms.

“Tell me, Simon. How many people were in that village?” she finally asked, her tone stripping away the artificial comfort.

Simon’s head jerked up slightly, his eyes unblinking. “What?”

“The village you saved,” she repeated, stepping directly into his line of sight. “How many people?”

His forehead creased hard, the sudden shift in focus catching him completely off guard. “I don’t know. A few hundred, maybe a thousand. Surely less now with this bloody fever.”

“Simon, focus.” Ashley gripped the rough fabric of his sleeve, anchoring him against the vibrations of the workshop. “And they were going to die?”

Simon’s eyes remained pinned to the metal floor plates. “Yes, but…”

“All of them?”

Simon jerked his chin away, staring blindly into the swirling haze of steam. “Most of them. Maybe all. The eruption had already started by the time we managed to make the potion. The mountain was coming apart. There was ash everywhere. People were screaming. Houses were burning. We had minutes, Celestine. Maybe less.”

Ashley gave a slow, firm nod. “So you saved them.”

Simon’s jaw locked, the muscle bunching tight beneath his pale skin.

“And made others sick,” she said.

“I know that!” he yelled, his head snapping back to face her, his chest heaving.

Ashley met his frantic glare without flinching. “I’m not saying one cancels the other.”

The priest’s expression twisted into a bitter grimace. “Celestine, are you trying to make me feel worse than I am right now?”

“No.”

Simon’s gaze fixed on her, sharp and wounded. “Is this some kind of joke to you?”

Ashley let out a slow exhale. She wanted to tell him that none of this was his fault, that in desperate moments any action was better than paralysis, but the words would have shattered against the noise, sounding completely hollow.

“No,” she said again, her voice dropping beneath the steady mechanical roar. “I don’t think this is supposed to feel better. Not yet.”

A small, bitter twist pulled at the corner of Simon’s mouth. “Please, Celestine. Just go,” he said through gritted teeth. “I’ll be fine.”

Ashley’s shoulders went tight for a beat, and the breath she had been about to take caught in her throat.

“I’m bad at this, Simon. I know,” she said, quieter now, but she did not move away.

“Really? I hadn’t noticed.”

That almost sounded like him. Almost.

“Fine,” she said. “Then I’ll stop trying to say the right thing.”

Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

Simon flinched, a sharp, exhausted look crossing his face. “What does that even mean?”

“It means I’m not going to feed you a pretty lie just because it would hurt less, dumbass.”

His mouth tightened into a thin line.

“You saved that village, right?” she said.

Simon’s eyelids pressed shut. “Celestine…”

“No. Listen to me now.” Her voice sharpened, slicing through the mechanical thunder between them. “Those people were going to die, and they lived because of you. That happened. It matters.”

“And now many more will die because of me.”

“Maybe. But not yet.”

His eyes snapped open, wide and bloodshot, burning with frantic, wounded fury.

“We still have time to do something about it,” Ashley said. “At least for most of them.”

Simon’s jaw worked, his breath coming hard through his nose. He looked ready to hate her for saying it.

Maybe he did.

Ashley kept her gaze pinned to his, refusing to look away.

“This is where you still get a choice,” she said. “You can stand here and let the worst part of what happened become the only part that matters, or you can move and help us fix what can still be fixed.”

Simon stood perfectly still while the dense mechanical hum filled the gap between them. Then his shoulders sagged downward, his posture yielding entirely.

“I don’t know. Even if we can sort things out, I still did something horrible.”

Ashley shook her head, then stopped herself.