Here I go thinking again…
I already put this in the page comments, but I'll restate it here: What if Emil never gets over his panicky fear of grosslings, but, when confronted by one, goes into a psycho-zombie-like kill-kill-kill-kill mode, utterly slaughters the grossling, and lapses into near catatonia afterwards, like on the train?
(This has the added benefit of maybe having Lalli as the only one who can bring Emil out of the kill-kill-kill mode.)