Chương 194: 18. Take the Lead

As heartening as it is to see Maggie actually holding a conversation without cursing out the other party, fleeing, or otherwise withdrawing, we haven't actually finished the debriefing and morning has already dawned by the time they finally give way to my increasingly insistent reminders.

"I really don't see the point," Maggie whines.

"We fought a monster, we won, Nipper's eating good today. The end."

"No, Vi's right," Talla chides her.

"It's important to discuss how things went and how we can improve. We did manage to win with only minimal injuries, but it could have gone a lot worse." I nod in appreciation.

"Do you want to begin, then?"

"Actually, why don't you take the lead on this?" she suggests.

"I've never been good at it."

"You're the senior officer," I frown.

"This is your expedition, so we should be following your lead.""'Senior officer'?" Maggie scoffs.

"Are you hearing yourself?"

"While it's true that I have more field experience as a ranger," Talla admits, "I'm not really leadership material." I blink.

"You're literally the heiress to one of the ruling noble families in Stebaari."

"Yes," she replies sardonically.

"And while most of my cousins would find the notion scandalous, that does not, in fact, automatically make me suitable for leadership." Of course it doesn't. I feel a bit stupid for even saying it, now.

"Still better than me," I muse.

"Allie, maybe, but I'm no leader."

"This is your thing," Allison herself interjects at the mention of her name.

"You've got this! We're here to support you."

"I didn't realize you were awake," I mutter.

"For a little while now," she says.

"I just didn't want to interrupt." I furrow my brows, taking a moment to fetch some of the leftover mini-mammoth to prepare for breakfast—mostly just as an excuse to give me time to think. How did Draga do this again? Have everybody assess their own performance? Or did he start with compliments? Wait, what am I doing? I can just [Remember the Lessons]. Right, it was self-assessments first, and he began by taking responsibility for his own faults.

"Uh, right. So." I cough awkwardly, feeling the weight of Talla's attention on me.

"Relying on Dreamwalking to keep watch was a mistake. It slowed down our reaction times when an attack came. If Reverie had woken us just a moment later, we would have been stunned by the screech and killed in the opening attack." Talla smiles patiently at me, but I can already tell I'm messing this up. She's obviously waiting for me to continue, though, so I just keep fumbling through.

"It also meant we didn't have time to arm ourselves before escaping the tent. And we should have anticipated that the monster would come after us." Wait, it was Talla who had the theory that monsters would be attracted to our abundance of magic, but she never told us that. Plus, I already said earlier that I consider her to be the leader. This just sounds like I'm blaming everything on her—not taking responsibility for my own errors.

"It's my own fault," I add lamely. This was so much easier when I wasn't the one in charge and nobody else could hear my self-assessment. I gesture for Talla to go next, and she takes a second to stroke her chin thoughtfully.

"You make a good point about preparations," she muses.

"And that dreamwalking isn't quite as reliable as a proper watch. I think I should have expressed my concerns about your aura attracting monsters sooner, but I was worried that it would be an invasion of privacy. That said, I think you're being too harsh on yourself—without your quick thinking, I may have been knocked out of the fight before it started." My first instinct is to demur, but rather than interrupt her I just nod in thanks.

"I think I made the right call focusing on distracting the monster," she continues.

"But I had no guarantee that you would be able to fight, and without the ability to communicate I fell back on our standard strategy without much thought. Knowing that we were facing a sound-based monster, I should have come up with contingencies for silent communication." A fair assessment, I think. When it's clear she's finished, I wait for Maggie to join in, then clear my throat when she doesn't.

"Maggie?" I prompt.

"Huh? What?"

"Your self assessment?" I nudge her.

"Uuuugh," she groans.

"Fine. I should have grabbed the spear before leaving the tent. Or our glasses."...

"That's it?" I ask. Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"What the fuck do you want from me?" she scoffs.

"Shall I write a five page essay on all my failures and flagellate myself in penance? We didn't die and nobody on our side had to get exploded in the process. I'm marking this one as an absolute win."

"The point of this isn't to assign blame or ruminate over failures," I insist.

"It's just as important to establish what we did well so that we can repeat those successes as it is to identify our failures to prevent them from happening again."

"Then why did you only describe all the ways we fucked up?" Because I'm bad at this! I huff irritably and tap my foot—I hate it when she's right.

"Okay, okay, let me think," I sigh.

"I did a decent job of improvising without our spear, but closing distance with the monster was a big risk, and trying to use the dagger was a waste of time. It might not have worked out so well if I hadn't been so oddly in sync with Maggie."

"Yeah, that was pretty dumb," Maggie agrees.

"As for me, I'm perfect in every way and completely carried your sorry asses." I pinch the bridge of my nose and suppress a frustrated sigh. She already admitted to mistakes, I remind myself. She's just needling me.

"Could you be more specific?"

"Did you miss the part where I exploded the monster? Or when I got us out of the tent? That was basically all me." Convenient that she would forget that she was panicking the entire time, but I suppose it's just bluster.

"Fine," I sigh.

"What about group assessments?" No, wait I already did that with my first observation didn't I? But I already said it, and I can't back out now. What do I do?

"Relax, Vi," Allie whispers, her voice like a reassuring hand on my shoulder.

"You're doing fine." I take a deep breath and hold it. Nobody speaks up, waiting for me to take the lead again. Alright, I can do this.

"Overall I think we did well," I declare.

"We had a few errors in planning, but they are simple enough to fix. Without a reliable means of communication, falling back on practiced patterns is the right call, but coming up with more contingencies is a good idea." Talla smiles and pats me on the shoulder.

"Agreed! That went well for how badly we were caught off guard. I think you might need to unlearn the instinct to go in with the knife. This isn't the convergence point, and you're not alone anymore." We were never really alone in the first place, but I take her point. I'm still used to assuming that escape is not an option and the knife was all we had for a long time.

"Speaking of the convergence point, we need to decide how to proceed from here. It's clearly been breached if a monster like that is roaming the mountainside." Talla sighs.

"We may have to cancel our plans and return for help. At worst, this might require assistance from the mainland."

"No, we should seal it," Allie interrupts, to my surprise.

"Wait, really?" I ask.

"I thought you'd be the first to argue against it." She doesn't reply right away, the fire crackling quietly as the trees around us drip away the leftover moisture from last night's rains.

"I don't relish the idea of more fighting," she admits.

"But you really are good at this. And we might not get a better chance." I blink.

"What do you mean?"

"The tribe kept the seal maintained until this year," Allie reminds me.

"They were late sending their priestesses, but there haven't been any monster sightings, or Remi would have warned us."

"In other words, the break is recent," Talla concludes.

"You're probably right about that. The spread should be limited and there won't be many escaped anomalies yet. If we're quick about it, we could close the breach in time for the local ecology to recover without even needing to sweep the mountain."

"More importantly, the tribe can't ask the empire for help when the de facto leader of the Rangers is already holding them over the fire," Allie adds.

"If we don't stop this convergence break here and now, then their only options will be to cave in to Shaa's demands, or brave winter storms on a mass exodus." Both of which would be disastrous. The tribe might survive, but it would break them either way. Allison is right—we have to do this now or it will be too late later.

"Just to be clear," I say." Can we seal it? I don't actually know what that entails." Talla hums thoughtfully.

"I know the rites, and I can survey the extent of the break. Normally I'd still want to get the church involved, but if the break is as small as we think, it should be possible."

"What do we need to do?"

"First, we'll check the entrance and inspect the guardian," she explains.

"Then I can use my magical sight spell to map out the extent of the damage. We'll need to clear any monsters nesting outside of the boundaries, then I'll pray to the guardian." I raise an eyebrow quizzically.

"Pray?" She nods.

"Guardians are connected to the seals around convergence points. They can repair damage with the right prayers." I blink.

"Why?"

"They are the protectors of convergence points," she explains.

"They may look like statues, but they are actually living agents of the [World Engine]."

"No, I mean why do they need prayers?" I ask.

"Why don't they just do that on their own? Why does it require manual intervention at all?" Talla shrugs.

"Guardians are alive, but they have no autonomy. The only thing they do on their own is kill anomalies that come through the entrance." Wait, what? That statue we camped under after escaping the caves could have killed us? Well that's terrifying, but not the most pressing issue right now.

"But why?" I repeat.

"I've seen angels. I know that the agents of the mechanism can have autonomy. If they were made by the Goddess to protect people from convergence points, then why require people to regularly visit them?" Talla frowns.

"I don't actually know," she admits.

"It's not something that came up in my theological research." That's an odd gap, but maybe I am just biased. Most people go their entire lives without ever having to think about convergence points, whereas they seem to haunt our every step.

"What are the dangers?"

"It's unlikely that we'll see another giant bat," she says.

"They are solitary apex predators. And if the break is recent, the other denizens shouldn't have had time to bloom in its absence. So my estimate would be a small number of low to middle tier monsters poking around at the limits of the broken seal."

"And you're confident in our ability to handle it?" She nods.

"If it's recent enough, yes. If the extent of the damage is too great, then I'll recommend we retreat." Good enough for me.

"Let's do it, then."

"Yess!" Maggie cackles.

"Dungeon raid!"