The image of Annan supporting a man covered in festering sores was blotchy and faded, frozen on the Magic Newspaper.
“Remember, this is Star-Moon Bay. Apart from the Laws, you have nothing to fear—” Evelyn had included Annan's words from that day.
"You even printed that?"
Annan sat soaking in a bucket of water laced with medicine, holding the Magic Newspaper as he spoke to Ingrid.
"It helps bring the residents together and attracts more people. Do you dislike it?"
"Not really. I just didn't notice the reporter standing beside me."
Once he had soaked long enough, Annan climbed out of the bucket, took the towel Abby handed him, and dried his black hair. A Cleaning Spell dried his Mage Robe.
"You shouldn't have touched them directly," Ingrid said.
Annan had contracted the Plague shortly after coming into contact with the new residents. They had brought in a mage who knew the Healing Spell to purge the disease, and he had to soak in a medicinal bath on schedule every day.
"Was there anything else?"
Annan asked Ingrid, who had yet to leave.
"A personal question." Ingrid hesitated before asking, "Why did you take in these poor people when they can't do anything?"
Annan fell silent, remembering the horrors he had seen in Louis City: dying people left to bake under the scorching sun; gulls tearing at the belly of a pregnant woman in a damp alley; dozens of rats dragging a child toward the sewer; a vagrant nearly sucked dry by the bloodsucking insects covering him; a deaf boy sold to cultists for a sacrifice...
"I couldn't accept their deaths..."
Even if death was all too ordinary in this world.
Annan could accept that such things happened, but he could not see them and do nothing.
As for why