Because it won't work on anything else.
Though the sun was nearing its zenith, its light could not diffuse through the dreary gray clouds that blanketed the sky, and the kindred fog was still settled over the reclusive pocket meadow. There was an oppressive stillness, almost anxiety, as if Gaia were holding her breath to keep herself from crying. Liwah looked to the clouds and tasted the air. Deciding it was not going to rain - at least not anytime soon - she relaxed a bit. Rain meant nothing to her but wet leather and rusted metal. She wasn’t in the mood to put up with that, and, for that matter, neither was anyone else.
Phael was still clinging to the dregs of sleep and Gouniel was lying dormant on his sleeping-mat despite the surfacing of his consciousness. Ashael was engaged in his usual mid-morning meditations, but his expression was uncannily somber. The energies were not flowing well.
Fmek had distanced himself from the group, his back to them and his gaze fixed on the mountain that filled the horizon. Contrast to the grogginess that characterized his companions, the paladin’s sharp green eyes held a smoldering intensity. His fingers turned restlessly on the hilt of his sword, drilling the blade deeper into the soil. Though his body had healed, Fmek had not yet moved past the battle in the flower clearing. Their response had been to double their efforts to push through the forest, but he was tired of running. The duel had given him a reawakened taste for combat and left him with the bitterness of a score unsettled. It hadn’t been a fair fight.
As much as Liwah detested it, she found her attention drawn almost exclusively to the warrior. She had gone through a strange passage of emotion since she had delivered her begrudged ally from his adversary - the horror that preceded her fury at seeing him bleeding out his life; the anxiety and guilt that had loomed over her during his healing process - and now she was trying to decipher why, when she was certain that she should only have ever felt gratified for Fmek being put in his place and perhaps a little remorseful that she had not gotten there a few moments later.
Part of it she could justify. Had the paladin died then, her revenge would be stolen; her life-debt would be unpaid and she might have lost her chance to rejoin Jun in the afterlife. Her purpose for living would have been thwarted. Her friends would have been upset, and perhaps even suspicious of her. And, had she truly gotten there any later, the enemy might have murdered them in their sleep.
So, yes; she had reason to be discontent with his potential demise at the hands of someone other than herself. But guilt? Why should she ever feel guilty about what transpired? She had paid her life-debt to him and he had never done anything to deserve her sympathies. Maybe she had misread her feelings, then. Sympathy... but there it was, that weight in her chest that became prominent whenever her eyes fell upon him.
Even with his peripheral vision blocked by the curtain of his hair, Fmek knew the blacksmith was watching him. It wasn’t that he could sense her, specifically; it was just that, based on his earlier observations, she was the only one who was not being completely introspective. That and the fact that he had caught her watching him a number of times over the past few days. He did possess an idle curiosity in regards to the nature of her thoughts, but it wasn’t compelling enough for him to confront her about it. The paladin had grown remarkably adverse to addressing her...after a while one gets sick of hearing about a defeat that really had nothing to do with one’s skill. Then again, it’s not like he had anything better to do.
“Enjoying the view, Smithwench?”
“There’s nothing to enjoy, Bible-Thumper,” the smith retaliated.
“Oh, well then you must be awfully masochistic.”
Liwah could only scowl. She wasn’t sure what ‘masochistic’ meant, but she knew that it wouldn’t be anything flattering.
“I’ll take your silence as affirmation,” Fmek concluded with a false smugness. In reality, though, the small victory seemed rather empty and pointless. “But if it isn’t that, then what, pray tell, is on your mind?”
For Robert, though. <3 :D