If Ber had to pick which witch he wanted to see walk through the door, Shannon was, admittedly, not his first choice. He had always known that the women of Nevermere walked around with a potentially dangerous magic at their fingertips, but the ball had thrown into stark perspective just how vulnerable he was to the whims of one who could not be trusted. And though she hadn’t done anything to him, Shannon, with her own admittance of cursing a kid in training and Abbott at that training session, could not be trusted.

But who could, really? Prior to the ball, Ber would have implicitly included all of the witches who frequented the military wing, trusting - naively - that their training and loyalty to Nevermere would have kept them from attacking their allies. However, if Shannon cursing Abbott had been a hint that such trust was misplaced, Brekker had been the nail in the coffin. Brekker, who had just been promoted to Field Sergeant, who had undoubtedly worked with Wulfbrand as a lieutenant. Were these two witches outliers or the quiet norm?

Did it matter?

Everyone had been blind to Brekker, but unlike him, the upper echelons of Nevermere’s military hadn’t started seeing any clearer: they had promoted, of all the witches, Winters to an officer position. Even if they had, what could they really do to ensure that it never happened again short of removing all witches from the military? Ber could fight a summoning, refuse to take a potion, and perhaps even manage to dodge the blast of an incantation, but he could do nothing to stop a curse once it had been uttered. No one could.

Shannon was drenched and initially seemed somewhat taken aback by his presence, though she recovered quickly enough. He offered her an awkward, brief smile of his own. “Uh, yeah,” Ber said with a shrug. “Thanks.” Belatedly, he realized that this was the first time he’d seen her since the ball, which wasn’t necessarily surprising. Everyone had been rearranged into new groups as per the captain commander’s orders, and he figured her instructors were keeping her as busy as they kept everyone else. It wasn’t like Ber had been training with everyone anyway. To that end, commenting on the changes in the military wing seemed to be the easiest topic of conversation given that he really didn’t know her that well. “So, uh, how’s the new schedule treating you?”

“Oh.” Ber blinked at Shannon, caught entirely by surprise. Holding his ground, he had watched as she approached him before she turned to study the jar of something on the shelf, but now he glanced at her to gauge her reaction. She appeared to have mostly accepted it, though she didn’t seem particularly happy about the decision. Not that Ber could blame her; he certainly wouldn’t have been happy either, especially if he’d been kicked out over an unsubstantiated claim. For a moment, he debated asking if she had cursed him again - Ber wouldn’t have blamed her for that either, even if he still thought it unwise - but then he decided he was better off not knowing. Granted, the likelihood of someone directly asking him about Shannon was slim, but plausible deniability was safer all the same.

Instead, he said, “Well, Abbott’s an asshole. At least you don’t have to deal with him anymore.” With his own employment status on thin ice, Ber was hardly in any position to offer any attempts at comfort other than commiseration. The lieutenant would probably never forgive Shannon for cursing him, though Ber, having now been on the receiving end of a witch’s magic, couldn’t entirely blame him for that either. To be rendered so utterly powerless was disconcerting, and to have had that happen in a humiliating manner in front of a group of subordinates - well, Ber was not without his own pride, and if Abbott had one thing, it was the typical officer’s ego that needed stroking.

Shannon returned the question, and Ber nodded. “It is,” He said, not intending to elaborate on how or why his free time was now far more limited than the average soldier’s. “They’ve been working everyone real hard since the ball. Switched up the groups and commanding officers and everything. It’s like a completely different place now.”

“Depends on your definition of better, I guess,” Ber said with a shrug. Whether the officers were seeing the results they wanted with the new schedule, he wasn’t sure. With the threat of their jobs more explicitly on the line, the soldiers who walked though the military wing certainly seemed to take everything more seriously, and they all still stood in the shadow of the ball. Whispers of werewolves, both the male and female variety, and speculation as to why Brekker had turned on her own continued to circulate through the halls as the questions built up but, true to form, no one offered any concrete answers.

“Everyone’s more tired.” More stressed. And for those like him, who had only the military as their way off the streets, less proud to be there and more just trying to survive. It wasn’t better for him, but maybe it was better for those in charge. Another shrug. “They’ve started running these assessments regularly, where the worst five soldiers out of every one hundred are getting kicked out, so if you’re looking for people to train with…” He gestured vaguely with one hand, turning to examine the contents of a vial on the shelf in front of him. Despite the time spent with Temperance, he was not great at identifying potions by sight, and he didn’t quite care enough to try to read the handwritten label. “There’s a whole lot of other people with more free time on their hands, too.”

Casting a glance to the side, he said, “I dunno if you’d be learning anything new, but it would be practice, if that’s what you’re after.”

Ber lifted a shoulder in a shrug. “Maybe they figure, after the ball, morale can’t get any lower if everyone’s asleep,” He said dryly before letting out a breath. “I don’t pretend to know what they’re thinking. Doesn’t make sense to kick out so many people right after going through the effort of recruiting them, but you know how it is.” The people up top issued orders. The people down low listened.

Ber might have been in trouble for befriending Zevran, but he was also beginning to suspect he was one of the few people who actually took the threat of the Eldouir seriously. If Valana and Van Zant were heading to Coheed next season, and there was likely another contingent heading to Cambria, and they were already kicking out a significant number of troops, who would be left to fight in Dresmond? Even without their forces split, the battle was going to be a difficult one. Divided attention was a death sentence.

Even he knew that.

“The ones who didn’t make it.” Suddenly out of a job and adrift, that unfortunate subset would presumably have all the time in the world on their hands. Another shrug. “But maybe some people on staff duty have more time, too.” Though if the others on staff duty were anything like him, they’d have even less free time than normal, but busy with his own life, Ber hadn’t really paid them much mind. It was very possible that some of them simply didn’t care.

Shannon’s observation about the mixed up ingredients had him glancing over before peering into the jar. “Huh.” While he didn’t recognize potions on sight, he was slightly more familiar with the ingredients and knew enough to recognize that the contents of that jar were not - a quick check of the label, if her hand didn’t cover it - dandelions. “That’s pretty bad. You here looking for potion ingredients then?”

“All of that is above my pay grade,” Ber said in response to both her thoughts about the numbers necessary for war and her speculations about the state of Skia with the sudden influx of idle hands. Especially ones belonging to trained men and women who potentially harbored some resentment about their sudden eviction. Once upon a time, he might have thought that the leadership would have considered such factors before setting all of them on this course, but, well, this leadership had promoted Bex Brekker and then Winters. “But my guess is more than they would like.”

As she returned the question, he glanced across at Shannon. “Just getting out of the rain.” A shrug accompanied the answer before he turned his attention back to the shelves in front of him. More herbs than he particularly cared to identify sat in their jars in front of him, and he idly wondered if there were any other erroneously labeled ingredients. “So you’re making a potion for your job?” He guessed, assuming she had found something with which to occupy her time now that she was no longer a soldier. “What kind?”

Tilting his head slightly, Ber initially gave her a quizzical look at her answer to his question and waited for her to explain. Eyebrows raised slightly as she explained that she was making an invisibility potion, and he very nearly asked why she would want one of those before once again considering that perhaps plausible deniability was his friend here. Face to face, Shannon seemed friendly enough, but she had a penchant for breaking the rules in a way that, one way or another, resulted in her getting caught. Given that he had no real intention of trying to stop her from doing whatever she planned to do with that potion, ignorance was probably safer for him.

Lord Morrigan, though - that was interesting. Like any other Nevermerean, he recognized the last name and, for some reason, some vague inkling of the docks came to mind, but the specifics of Morrigan’s business ventures escaped him. He wasn’t even sure what the man’s first name was, now that he thought about it. Brow furrowed slightly, Ber asked, “What kind of work does he do?”