"This man is done for, it would be a miracle if he only could wring out comprehensible phrases after what just happened to him"
Her gloved hands twitched, her index finger tapped against the air, but she only said this.
"Your efforts.."
She raised a finger up and pointed at dangling lamps, then she pointed at the spray can as she spoke.
"Will be in vain, if you don't do the whole reason I gave you that in the first place"
Am craned his head up.
Knees buckled, and-
Thwack!
He leapt like a tightly pressed spring, his arms waved against the searing breeze and in just a few seconds.
Tuk!
His left arm latched onto the closest lamp, he shook the can a few times before sprinkling it on the lamp.
Iye looked at the branches, pebbles and all kinds of small objects alike.
".....?"
They...shook.
Rumble!
A dragging, increasing quaking sensation enveloped them all, a certain hum hauntingly persisted throughout the process.
In the distance, the gaping hole in the Ohrn tree begun to close slowly.
However, there was also one more thing that caught the eye in the distance.
"Oh..."
Up high in the Ohrn tree opposite to them, a creature perked and stared at them...despite its eyes being closed with a solid liquid coating them shut.
At its paws, a strange malformed bird had its wings torn apart from it, its pained screams did not faze it, nor did it care.
For the first time in a while, Iye could feel her hairs standing on end, a shocking chill had run through her in spite of the burning air singing in her throat.
The hole, eventually, after a creeping silence and staring, closed up neatly. The insides of the tree were dark, however, the lights dangling from above gave some spotlight through the clinging dark.
Am, finished, fell lightly to the floor. Iye didn't waste any time and remarked his actions.
"Well? what now, sudden wannabe hero?"
Am's nose scrunched at the remark.
"I never was a wannabe"
"Ah, I see...so what you mean is..."
Iye openly sneered her frustrations outwards.
"Despite being some 'hero'...you were quite quick to abandon your so called brother"
The Oksi who had been defeated prior, clenched his jaw and his face contorted with his features rifled with bulging veins.
"You say that as if you know anything about us!!!"
Iye, looked back at the Oksi, now paces away from her.
'Guess he ran away when I wasn't looking'
This wasn't good for Iye, if they were to fight now, it would be difficult to recover afterwards.
Am let his mouth part ways and speak, Iye however cut him off and continued.
"You are right, I do not know anything about you. But"
Her head tilted to the side, as if asking for a kind man to explain to her something she just could not understand on her own.
"If I am understanding this correctly...you have some kind of heroic ideal or something close to that right"
Am, nodded his head, the movement hesitant.
"So what gives?"
She spread out her arms and fingers apart, letting her cloth speak what she felt before the mouth.
"Why did you try to kill me?"
'If you were that much of a hero, why not hesitate about killing them and instead help them like the person you just saved?'
"Your brother might hav-no, he would still very much be alive, here with us"
It was a hypocrite's heroic thinking to save one person and kill the other for no reason.
"If only you tried to communicate peacefully to me, with no ulterior thoughts, our little rustle and bustle from before would have been nonexistent"
Then, in a dramatic motion, clasped both of her gloves together behind her back and spoke again.
"I guess what I'm really getting at is"
Her head craned forward as if offering a neck for a question to be asked in exchange.
"Why in the world were you so hell bent in screwing me over and killing me?"
She placed the nail in the coffin, awaiting for a satiable smack from the hammer to resound to her question, and it did just that.
"It is quite...unbelievable for me to explain this"
Am sighed, letting his eyes fall on his dead comrade.
"But the moment you came in this tree"
He raised his eyes, finally giving them permission to take in the noble figure of the translucent woman.
"You held no other thoughts except for one"
The Oksi's face close at the side of Am contorted in a tight furrow, while Am, only coldly stated what he knew.
"Killing us"
The instant her appearance made its debut, the three of them realized one thing.
'There is no negotiating with this freak'
Am may have had many misunderstandings of Iye, but this was the one thing he was one-hundred and ten percent sure of.
She did not care, or rather she could not care less about them. From the very beginning, Iye never thought of them as anything more than dangerous animals. Animals with no hope of properly communicating peacefully.
If they had shown sympathy to such a person...It would be catastrophic for Am and the tribe.
In other words.
"You are an enemy, an enemy that does not care of the process, whether pride plays a part or not, someone who would achieve their goals no matter how many backs she stabs from behind"
Am pointed a finger at Iye, his voice came out with a certain tone of duty.
"Would you...trust your back to someone like that?"
"...."
Far away from watchful eyes, she let lips etch into a grin.
'They are a bit more, perceptive than expected'
While the Oksi were supposed to be very smart, they weren't capable of surviving for long unless they were a noble like Am, which made it hard for them to mold a high perception against deception.
Which would make it easier for Iye to overall manipulate them, not that it was actually the plan all along.
'Now that I think about it'
She pursed her lips together, the charred smell growing more intense for her.
'Is that Oksi...also a noble?'
Her mouth opened, but as if a breeze of karma passed by. Am coincidently cut her off.
"What is it going to be?"
"...."
"Don't drag this, tell us if you are still going to be an enemy or not"
Translucent brows knitted tightly together, face twisted into a frown.
"Hey, you talk as if"
".....?"
Am raised an eyebrow, but let her continue nonetheless.
"An escape route had already been established"
It felt like they were asking whether or not Iye wanted to join a party without them actually telling her and performing many mental gymnastics to get an answer from her.
"Because...we do?"
The Oksi at the side answered as if it were the most obvious thing.
"How do you think we came here without any injuries?"
"Ah"
Suddenly, all of it clicked.
'While I may know a lot of the paths....'
She couldn't possibly know the paths the creatures of the Sabe used to get around. Natura had personally not allowed them to document it, saying something along the lines of 'It wouldn't be fun to just reveal the shortcuts! Find them yourself!!!'
"Just for clarification, does the path have any name?"
Most paths in the Sabe did have a name, but she asked just in case one of them overlapped with what she knew.
"Huh? Well, we are the only ones who use it so..."
The Oksi at the side timidly spoke, afraid of being rushed at over disrespect or acquiring the ire of Iye, like a dog that was all bark.
"We call it the 'Tierre Path'"
Iye crossed her arms together.
"Ah, that path"
Which she knew nothing about.