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“Ah... perhaps I am not the best person to consult,” said Emiliana. “I have never met any other aberrations.”

“But you know of them,” said Hector.

“Yes... I know they are supposed to be vicious creatures without humanity. And I have hardly spent any time with him, so I cannot claim to know him very well. But Lord Ibai--he had an opportunity to kill several reapers and consume their souls, yet he chose to spare them. He even had assurances that no one would ever find out. His own men were encouraging him to eat them so that he would grow more powerful. But he did not do it.”

‘It’s true,’ Chergoa confirmed. ‘If I hadn’t seen it myself, I probably wouldn’t believe it.’

Hector’s brow lowered. “Could it have been a trick?”

Emiliana bobbed her head to the side. “I suppose so... but to my mind, that was a genuine display of mercy. And if aberrations are truly all inhuman monsters, then I cannot imagine one of them doing what Lord Ibai did.”

‘He had the opportunity to kill me as well,’ said Chergoa.

‘What?!’ said Garovel.

‘I had nowhere to run or hide. I was completely at his mercy. But he didn’t hurt me. And when his father asked him to, he let me go.’

For a time, no one said anything further, perhaps needing a moment to digest that information.

Hector didn’t know what to think. He’d been told that all aberrations were violent and dangerous, but maybe that was wrong. He’d only met one other aberration before, so how could he presume to know what the rest of them were like?

But it wasn’t that simple, either. As much as Hector tried to separate his own feelings from the subject at hand, his memories wouldn’t be ignored. Memories of Geoffrey Rofal. So much had happened since Hector killed that son of a bitch, but not much actual time had passed. Only a few months. Those old wounds, they hadn’t healed. They’d barely begun to feel like scars in his mind.

Still, it wasn’t up to Hector to decide what to do with Ibai, and for that, he was glad; but he also wondered how the Rainlords would handle the situation. When it came to aberrations, he doubted he was the only one who’d had bad experiences.