And with the spell broken, the locals start to walk back farther in land, slowly, in singles and duos and trios, back to the areas of the village that were spared.

Emil walks over and sits, silently, next to Azym.

Azym rubs his eyes with the back of his forearm. "Hey."

"If you need to talk about... your loss... I've been there. I have an idea how it feels. I can make the understanding noises."

He snorts. "I dunno. Maybe. Don't know what to talk about."

"Nor I, to be honest. I mean – people say that, 'if you need to talk', but when it comes down to it there usually isn't much to say. Maybe it's different when there's... less of it."

"Also it's just weird, right. Maybe my Zanarkand isn't even real, what would I do with that, what am I even grieving?"

"...everything you ever knew? Just because it was never there doesn't mean you can't lose it."

Shrug. "Yeah, I guess. Still weird. Or something. I don't know, I'm just making light of it because I want to pretend I haven't just been crying."

"...yeah."

Emil sits quiet for a bit. Then: "D'you want to... I don't know, find out what they've got for liquor around here?"

"...you know, why not. Having your country destroyed by a giant monster seems like a good reason to not be sober."

And they can stop being sober.

(Emil can still do this, technically. His resistance to chaos will allow him to poison himself, as long as he concentrates on it. When it snaps back into place, he'll be maybe a tenth as drunk as he should be. But he can concentrate for a while.)