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They’d decided to divide their efforts into two broad teams. One team’s job was to rescue and shield the captives, and the other team’s job was to neutralize enemy combatants.

Zeff had been quite tempted to choose the latter team. He certainly had enough pent up frustration to make the task a cathartic one. But in the end, he and Axiolis decided to take more of an intermediary role between the two teams. An overseer role, of sorts. Being a materialization user, his power lent itself well to both endeavors. He could easily shield others at range while simultaneously distracting opponents.

Not to mention, this middle ground was a way of keeping himself in check. If he were to fully let loose and go entirely on the offensive, it would endanger the reapers. While he might have been confident that he could control his ability with great precision, even he had to acknowledge that he was not in the most emotionally stable of mindsets, at the moment. And fighting emotionally was not what this mission called for.

Even with all his years of meditative training, all the time spent honing his mental discipline, reigning in his emotions was a struggle. The trick, Axiolis kept telling him, was to not think about himself. To think only of the others around him, of what they needed.

‘You are a ghost on the battlefield. You do not exist. You do not matter. What matters is everything else. Everyone else. Our kin. Listen and see them. React and think only for them.’

Easier said than done, to say the least.

But Zeff Elroy, the Water Dragon of Sair, did his best.

Pan-forma helped immensely. Being able to rely on Axiolis’ reaper senses to keep track of everyone made the chaos feel much less so. Plus, his awareness of the relative strength levels at work here helped him to prioritize which areas he should pay the most attention to. He didn’t, for example, have to worry about anyone in close proximity to Darktide. That man would take care of everyone around him.

The same could most likely be said for Evangelina and Dimas. Salvador and Diego were perhaps the most worrisome, but Leo and the Linebreaker were obviously the biggest wildcards here. While they were both potentially Melchor’s equals or even stronger, without knowing them personally, Zeff could not bring himself to consider them reliable.