Maine Chooses Trial Over Revenge

While the party descended into New Goblin City, Maine sat in a different kind of trap.

Prison had its own sounds. One of them was Timbre nearby, terrified enough that the cell walls felt thinner than they should. Then Nora Rabe von Queef came to visit and turned Maine's silence into argument.

Maine wanted a trial.

Not because the situation was clean, and not because the people involved were harmless. Maine argued that killing Enemy could be justified during wartime if it was proven properly. The point was not softness. The point was lawful process, proof, accountability, and the idea that power should not get to skip the shape of justice just because the target was frightening.

Nora pushed back.

She compared Maine's reasoning to the unresolved Albert problem, forcing the conversation into old wounds about what law can do when the thing in front of it is dangerous, useful, guilty, wounded, or made. Maine asked Nora to check on the prisoner, and Nora left with the question still alive between them.

Maine did not win freedom in that cell.

Maine chose the battlefield where the next fight would happen: law.