"...if you say so."

Lann shows Ember how to hold a knife, and how to separate a fish into usable components.

For someone with missing fingers, she's shockingly competent at the work.

Lucy focuses on the nets and not on the dead bodies being dismembered. It is perfectly reasonable to. In local context. She is going to focus on stopping the murder qua murder first.

And okay sure she’ll take a nap at some point. A brief one, though.

Ember will too, eventually. She seems very refreshed by some combination of the nap and the meditative labor.

"Thank you for the lesson," she says to Lann.

Lucy ignores the scent of death as she goes over to where the others are to sleep. It would be so easy to tell herself that animals are definitely not the same as pokemon, and their deaths mean much much less. 

She does not, in fact, know this. 

But if people get sick from not eating other feeling beings, she can't just ask them to stop without a solution. Maybe Berries will solve the problem, that would be nice. She should ask Anevia, later, if the druid-fruit-things she was talking about solve the problem.

And a few hours later, it's morning, or what passes for it in a cavern that never sees the sky. Anevia's paid one of the locals for a couple of healing spells, and looks much improved.

Right, it's a spell when a humanoid does it, not a move. She's probably going to slip up on that at least once but she can at least try to remember the correct word. 

Do they need to do anything in particular to prepare before they head out?

The other local chiefs have gathered: Veredin, a tall and regal woman with wings in place of arms; Efi, an aquatic humanoid with a two-pronged spear; and Gura, an enormous furry man with horns.

Sull calls her over. "Before you go – please, show them the šword. They will štill doubt me, otherwise."

Sword!

(She has no idea how much "let's not do murder" is communicated by the sword's glow, but she hopes it's, like, some.)

(It does what it can.)

After that, they're ready to go.

"We're going to the Shieldmaze," Lann says. "It's the best route I know to reach the surface."

"Great!"

"I, uh, probably ought to have asked this earlier," Lucy says quietly to Anevia as they're on their way, "but are there any rules of engagement I ought to respect?"

"You won't get any from the enemies we're likely to face," Anevia says frankly. "Demons don't do rules, ever, and their cultists are the same way. I suppose if we run into bandits, or something, we can fight to subdue. But if the enemy wants to kill you, I can't recommend anything but killing them back, and faster. Anything that our allies would think was beyond the pale, I really can't imagine you doing. Unless one of your little beasties eats souls, or something, then you'd have to ask a theologian if it's worth it."

“Eats souls? No. I, uh, was more thinking of…caps on numbers of combatants, or something.”

"I'm getting such a fascinating idea of what your home is like. No, absolutely not, please feel free to throw as many beasties at the enemy as will help."

“They’re not trained to fight all as a group, yet…but none of them know any really big moves so that’s probably not too much of a problem. Uh, the other thing you should know is, Pokémon don’t kill.”

"...right."

Anevia shuts her eyes for a second.

"Do your Pokémon have any way to ensure that our enemies don't wake up, heal each other, and come after us to stab us in the backs later? Real question, not rhetorical."

“Do any Pokémon? Yes. Do mine, right now? No. But what I meant isn’t that they refuse to countenance killing. I mean it doesn’t matter how hard a Pokémon move hits someone, it isn’t going to kill them. It will knock them out, but if—if you want, them dead, someone else will have to finish them off. That seems. Tactically relevant.”

"Okay. It's good to know, you're right. And I can handle finishing them off – you're not the only member of our little party who might have trouble. Sorry to... put pressure on you didn't need."

“I mean you’re really not wrong that I don’t want to kill anyone. It’s just that I am also aware that I’m outvoted.”

Anevia shakes her head. "I think I'd give almost anything to believe in peace the way you and Ember do. I just... can't die for it."

"Well, I'm new here, but Ember isn't dead."

Shrug. "I would be, if I lived like her. And, to look at her, she might be too if she weren't so special."

"Well, you know, special people show up when there are horrible catastrophes."

"Pretty reliably."