Chapter 398: Elmo Rescued
Elin was surprised to see the orc come out of the crystal and head off towards where the other orcs were. She had doubted that Jonas would be able to get it to work with them, but had at least hoped he would.
Yes, as the orc made its way towards the other orcs without Jonas coming out, she couldn't help but wonder if Jonas had succeeded or not. As the exit for him should still be available, though he was taking longer than Elin would have expected him to.
When Jonas came out a minute after the orc had left, she looked at him, waiting for him to say something. Anything. Instead, he merely looked around, saw the orc, nodded at Elin, and started walking after it. He kept a distance, but that hardly explained anything to Elin. Which just confused her even more.
It didn't help how she'd already been feeling down, so she couldn't help but feel like she really didn't matter in this endeavor at this point, so she walked over to the pendant and took it off the branch. They could get the firebirds out of it later when Elysia and Etaina were present. Or even maybe have them pull their parents out of it. As Elin was confident that their parents would trust their daughters to know that they could leave the crystal.
Elin started to walk after Jonas, but didn't try to keep up. She was confident that she'd only get in the way somehow if she did. That it might even be better for her to return to the camp, though she worried that she might say something to get Jonas in trouble with the others with heading off to try and rescue Elmo by himself.
She wasn't sure if that would be true, but with the way things had been going for her, she wouldn't be surprised if that would happen. It certainly would be a common occurrence for anything she was involved in.
So, she watched as first the orc entered a cave, though she idly wondered if it didn't like the sunlight for other reasons. Such as how it kept it's eyes covered until it reached some shade as it have moved only to cover them again when it re-entered the sunlight.
Doing that certainly slowed the orc down, but as she thought about it, it would make sense that orcs would attack at night because of that.
Or maybe it was a different kind of orc than the ones that had captured Elmo. All Elin knew was that she didn't have enough information. Just like they hadn't with the earlier time they'd encountered orcs in the middle of the day only to learn that the armor they wore was enchanted to magically control and enslave them.