Term of Phrase

“Ow!”

“Oh, don’t be such a baby…” The elf smiled in delight. “Hurt means good. Hurt means it is the area the doctor must treat.”

Tollia winced as her cold fingers pressed deep into his thigh. “But must you be this rough?”

“I assure you that this is part of the procedure.”

“Right, right—yeow!”

“Now stop squirming,” she said flatly, not looking up as she probed just beside the joint.

He clenched his teeth. “Do all your patients get this level of care, or am I just special?”

“You? Special?” She finally glanced at him, unimpressed. “If you consider broken cartilage and misplaced bone alignment special, then yes. You are a rare treasure.”

He grunted, partly from pain, partly from her being just so pleasant.

“Why single me out?” he muttered after a beat. “I look as plain as the others.”

“Beyond the fact there was an obvious injury somewhere on your person?” she asked, her voice almost mocking. “Don’t play coy. Goblins aren’t new to me. There are so many of you scrambling about the place, it’s like trying to walk through a kitchen with the lights off.”

“Charming.”

“But you,” she continued, fingers still probing expertly, “are different. Even a blind man would notice. You walk differently. Speak differently. Your eyes hold things goblins shouldn’t carry.”

He tensed.

She leaned in slightly, voice lowering. “Even more impossible not to notice a goblin who, and I quote, ‘is a miracle of the Batch and a credit to its kind.’”

Tollia scoffed. “How flattering…”

“Isn’t it just?”

“You seem to have your priorities about you,” he said. “You could’ve left me well alone.”

She straightened, raised a brow. “Don’t mistake this visit to be anything less than transactional. A favour for a favour, as the humans say. Now get up and move.”

He rose, slowly. His leg still throbbed, but less than before—whatever mix of herbs and brute-force repositioning she used was working.

“Any restriction of movement? Pain points? I can imbibe you with a scroll for the time being—”

“I’ve felt worse. Really. This is a marked improvement. Thanks, doc.”

“Marked improvement. What kind of goblin says things in that manner?”

“Me,” Tollia said, shrugging. “Apparently. Me who does not represent all goblinkind. Me who is as distinct as another goblin, who’s as distinct as another.”

“By and large, you are the exception to the rule. For example, being able to carry about this conversation demonstrates—”

“Because you aren’t giving the rest an environment to do so.”

“And what environment were you given,” she said coolly, “that gifted you an ability of a skilled tongue yet not the wisdom to know when to use it?”

Unfortunately, Shinji knew better than to gamble on the truth. Claims of another life—one filled with concrete towers, machines in every pocket, and professors who bled irony—would not sit well with someone so steeped in the ways of the Old Order. Especially not an elf of her posture.

So instead, he settled for something lame.

“I’m not sure, really.”

That, at least, was true.

She looked at him for a long time. Searching. Weighing.

Shinji beat her to the punch first.

“Surely you were given an environment that allowed you to thrive?”

Silence, then: “I have, yes. Once upon a time.”

“What happened?” His instincts screamed not to ask—not to offer a cold-hearted bitch like her the dignity of sympathy—but the question slipped out anyway. Some part of him wanted to know what drove someone to participate in an ongoing atrocity. Some part of him wanted to know if they had some semblance of a heart.

He could tell, she was finding it within herself to part with such a story to one that was lower—lower than her, or her concerns. Yet, she defied his expectations anyway. “I was disgraced from a Great House.”

“Oh,” he replied lamely. “And what did you do that they sent you to a place so clearly beneath you?”

She turned to him slowly, eyebrow arched. “Careful with your flattery, boy. ‘Beneath me’ is understating it. Why should I care to entertain your requests?”

Her fingers clicked against a vial. Then, after a beat: “I disagreed with someone who shouldn’t be disagreed with. Loudly. And with evidence. That was on top of the conspiracies coming to a head for a while.”

A pause. Longer than it should’ve been. Measured.

“Their response was… efficient. Be that as it may, a loss in position does not equate to a loss in knowledge. I would have been sent to the frontlines of the Heretic Conflict had it not been for me being specially selected for this place. At the whims of a Messenger. Figures.”

Tollia hesitated. “But what did you do? Did it involve… us? The Stewards? Why here?”

Silence.

Not denial. Just silence.

She turned back to her satchel without a word, fingers suddenly precise and impersonal. Tools clinked, glass rattled. The moment was gone.

“Now,” she began. “You’ll walk with a limp for a day or two, and you’ll need to keep weight off that leg until then. No sparring. No showing off. I’ll arrange for special consideration with the acting Officer. Do not waste this.”

Tollia nodded slowly. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me. I didn’t do it for you.”

Marcus was incredulous. “Then what for?”

She didn’t answer immediately. Her eyes flicked to the small vial still clutched between her fingers, then back to him.

“I have a theory,” she said at last. “A working one. About your condition. About your… contradictions.”

Her tone had shifted—no longer cold, but analytical. The kind of voice someone used when they thought they were on the verge of something profound.

“It’s genetic,” she continued. “A fault line in your blood. I call it the ‘Steward Gene’—a mutation that shouldn’t exist, not in your kind, not after all this time. Not in this place.”

She took a step closer, as if proximity might help her puzzle him out.

“I’ve waited years. Wondered if it was myth, or propaganda from a more optimistic age. But then there you were. Walking upright, speaking flawless Common straight out the gate. Observant. Articulate. Judging with the nuance of a full citizen rather than a chattel-born grunt.”

Her eyes narrowed, voice dipping to a whisper.

“By and large… you’re it.”

Tollia shifted under her gaze, suddenly feeling like a specimen under glass.

“But why you,” she murmured, more to herself than to him. “Why you, of all the whelps?”

She made to leave then, the moment snapping shut like a lid. But Marcus—his voice still roughened by pain—spoke before she could disappear.

“Either way… thank you.”

A scoff. Amused. But she lingered in the doorway, fingers brushing the edge of the frame.

And that, too, was true.

“Stewards. What a prescient term of phrase.”