Fire had been the last thing he'd seen before the walls had begun to cave in around them, and Alifax had to scramble back madly to avoid being crushed, probably stepping on more than a few toes as he went. But did it matter?
Alifax was in one piece, and that was the most important, right? He glanced around at the trolls gathered on this side of the divide: Through some miracle he could definitely say there were faces on trolls that at least looked like they were still in one piece, and that he also recognized, from one conscription event or Bloodfest or another. Actually: looking over their forces, the military as a whole seemed far more lowblooded than it had when they'd been walking through the caves to find the rebellion's base in the first place. Well, who cared? These were the people with a survival instinct, after all.
There were a couple people he had to talk to, here: Kursha, maybe, a little, and then maybe he owed the clown person a little more thanks. But there was someone he didn't immediately see that he'd certainly expected to see.
Tiny, battle-happy Frossa, and her eternally noticeable lusus, who easily filled the width of these caverns. He sucked in a breath. Where was she? Maybe...maybe she'd gone looking for the Eternity Emporium or something. Maybe she'd fallen behind when she couldn't jump over that gorge with the fish. Maybe she'd run into the fire thinking it'd been him, without view of the front lines to be really sure what was going on.
Okay, no. Frossa wasn't that dumb. She had to at least know him: she'd always complained incessantly about his caution, after all. Maybe she'd listened to her lusus, for once, and stayed to the rear of the forces. He watched the commotion as people began to tend to their wounds and winced. Sure, he was hurt, too, but it wasn't anything major, he thought. Seeing to Frossa was far more important. With Hazzan getting harder and harder to contact...
Well, sometimes Alifax didn't know what to think. He hadn't seen her at one of these military-mandated events in a while.
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