Rhen awoke warm in his bed. He moved, but stopped immediately when he noticed the arm tucked around his waist. Jakira mumbled something in her sleep and tightened her grip on him.

Rhen tried to inhale through his nose, but it was stuffed, and his head was throbbing. He sighed. Had he really cried himself to sleep in her arms? How unbecoming of the man Rhen senior had wanted him to be…

But still, he was grateful for her. If Rhen had left his room in that state, he didn’t know what he could’ve done. One off comment from Welsh would’ve likely put him over the edge, and while Rhen wanted nothing more than to give that aristocrasshole a beating, he didn’t want the consequences that came after. He had enough to worry about already.

“You awake?” Jakira asked sleepily.

“Yeah,” he croaked, voice nasally.

She hugged him a little tighter, then sat up. “How are you?”

“My face hurts.”

She giggled. “Guessing you’ve never cried much in your life.”

“Not like that, not for a long, long time.”

She put her hand on his shoulder and whispered, “Can you tell me about it?”

Rhen rolled onto his back so he could look up at her. Her hair was a mess, the braid crown falling apart, and she looked so serious. He missed the joy in her eyes. If he talked about his past, he wouldn’t see any joy there for a while.

But she’d been here for him. She hadn’t asked questions, didn’t pry, didn’t try to sneak it out of him or—to his knowledge—get it from Aki. She wanted to know now not because it would make her happy, but because it would help her understand what he was just sobbing about.

“He was sick. Something growing inside him that the doctors, medicine men, and even strongest magical practitioners could not stop. He’d die every few months to set back the clock and get more time. But he was tired of it. It was no life, he’d said. She wanted him to keep doing that for as long as he could, and he wanted to live for what he had left. He asked her to delve with him, something he’d always had a passion for… but she wouldn’t.”

“He came to the school looking for someone to share his adventures with, and decided to sponsor me. I was only nine, with twenty thousand marks of debt.”

“How?” Jakira balked at the amount.

Rhen chuckled. “I’d been a bit of a hell raiser. I tried to escape nearly every week. The cost of retrieving me just kept getting added to my debt. Housing, food, training, on and on they added it up.

“After a few weeks of delving together, we got to know one another. I started to like him… he was like me. He loved to delve. The excitement of what might be around a corner. The power of a new core. Spells that can undo stone, make one faster than the eye can see, or breath fire. He amazed me. I wanted to be just like him.

“After another few months of delving together, he disappeared for a while. I waited at the school every day, hoping, praying to the gods that he would come take me. It was after another year I realized that he’d killed himself again to set back the clock. He did that a hundred more times for Tansi, until he just couldn’t anymore.”

Rhen’s throat was tight and hot. Tears threatened to overwhelm him again, but he breathed through it. Jakira waited, stroking his shoulder silently.

“He’d asked her to buy my debt. She didn’t have the money on her own—not yet at least—but her family was well off, a good dungeon cluster to their names. That was how Rhen had met her, delving her father’s dungeon. She was different then, he’d said… what changed, I’ll never know.

“Tansi refused to buy me out, to “encourage the habit that would kill him,” he’d said. He’d stopped resetting after that, and every day I noticed him grow weaker, and thinner. On our last dive, I’d asked him to reset. I didn’t want to lose him, either. But he was tired…”

Rhen took a deep breath. “I told him I didn’t want his life. That I would buy my own way out of debt and stand up on my own two feet just as he had done for himself. He showed me just how impossible it would be with my debt compounding with interest, the rising prices in Shin’Bara, the shift in the Imperial Kingdoms.

“And then he hit me with tremor blast and knocked me unconscious. He dragged me to the resurrection node, cut out his id syntial, then cut out mine.”

Jakira’s hand tightened on his shoulder. “He took away your choice.”

“He did me a favor that I was too weak to accept.”

She winced, but remained quiet.

“I woke up when he’d finished stitching his skin onto me. He bandaged me up and had me sew my skin into him… not that it mattered. Without my core, his body wasn’t identified as Maddox, and without his, he couldn’t be identified at all.”

“Without his?”

Rhen nodded. “He said it wouldn’t be finished unless I absorbed his core, so it could connect to the syntial and link them. Anima has a unique property to it, that’s how anima profile saves work at resurrection nodes. When you die, and your anima is absorbed into a dungeon, or the earth, or wherever you happen do disintegrate, you flow back into—what I now understand—the Tree of Being. It finds where you last saved your signature, what your body looked like, what syntials you had, everything from that moment, and sends your essence back there.

“So, he made you… pull out his core?”

Rhen nodded, his jaw tight. “And absorb it… then save my anima profile and kill myself. I couldn’t. I was too scared. I went to Tansi, still covered in his blood. She couldn’t even speak at first, she just screamed. Finally, she told me to go. So, I ran.”

“And then?”

“I let the id syntial heal up while I found a smaller, out of the way dungeon with a resurrection node. I hid in the dungeon for a few weeks, collecting crystals I could find, and fighting weaker monsters until I could afford the resurrection. The dungeon owner was there when I came out. She wasn’t too happy about the situation, but she had the grace to let me work off my exploitation of her dungeon for another few weeks. I think she knew what I was. I don’t know why she helped me.”

Jakira was scowling, looking off at the wall.

“What?”

“I don’t mean to, um… detract from this, but if you absorbed his core, and he’s gone forever now, that can happen to anyone?”

Rhen nodded. “Core absorption can only happen at dungeon nodes—Desedra has crafted a few artificial ones that work too I hear, but still. The League of Dungeon Guilds—Owner’s, Delvers, Schools, and the likes—have access to all that information flowing from the nodes. They review it frequently and cross-reference based on dungeon reports to make sure there haven’t been any illicit killings.”

Her scowl deepened. “Then why haven’t you been picked up for murder?”

“I’m guessing because Tansi never reported Rhen missing. For all intents and purposes, I am him. I show up as him in the dungeon nodes, on the paperwork, in the promises I make, or unmake…”

“But that evidence of you absorbing his core, ending his life forever, is out there somewhere?”

“I’m not sure how long the information persists for, or what it even looks like, but potentially, yes.”

Jakira’s hand slowly released from the death-grip, and she rubbed his shoulder. “Thank you for telling me.”

“Thank you for listening. I think it goes without saying but please don’t tell anyone.”

She smiled sadly and brushed some hair from Rhen’s forehead.

Rhen captured her hand and kissed her fingers. “What is it now?”

“I’m so afraid of losing you.”

He chuckled. “A smelly delver like me?”

She wrinkled her nose, sniffing back tears. “There are baths now, you don’t have to be smelly.”

“Oh, you don’t like my eau de monstre goots?”

He pulled her closer and she laughed, fighting to get away. “No! So smelly! Aaahhh!”

They laughed together for a moment, then fell quiet again.

He sat up and held her hands in his. “I promise that I’ll do everything in my power to stay, but know that if, and or when, my time is up—be it forever death or imprisonment for my crimes—I don’t regret a minute of my life here with you.”

The tears she’d been holding back spilled down her sparkling cheeks. “Same.”

He brushed away her tears and pulled her in, kissing her lips tenderly.

“Mr. Zephitz?” Arannet knocked timidly.

Rhen pulled back. Of course Arannet needed him right that minute. He planted one more peck on her lips, then hopped out of bed. He tucked in his shirt and made himself not a completed mess, then opened the door a few inches. “What’s up?”

Arannet’s brown eyes were wide, and her forehead wrinkled. “Mr. Welsh is demanding to survey the nexus node.”

Rhen laughed. “Tell him he’s free to.”

Her worried scowl deepened. “But the water…”

“Not my problem if he can’t swim,” Rhen said with a smug grin.

“And so, uhm, I should tell him that… what should I tell him?” She winced.

Rhen turned back and picked up his leather jerkin from the floor.

“Oh! I’m so sorry!” Arannet gasped and whirled around at the sight of Jakira.

Jakira’s cheeks burned bright gold. “It’s nothing. We were talking.”

Arannet kept her back to the door. “Right, yeah. Right, uh, sorry.”

Rhen chuckled. He couldn’t help but find the whole thing amusing. Making Arannet uncomfortable was still one of his favorite pastimes, as it was so easy to do. Rhen wasn’t embarrassed about his affection for Jakira, nor being caught in the same room alone with her, but some perceived impropriety of it made Arannet squirm, Jakira too. It was hilarious.

Wyland’s recording device on the windowsill caught Rhen’s gaze. Welsh was here in his dungeon, and that was one more opportunity to provoke some information out of him. He snatched the device and tucked it into the interior pocket of his jerkin. It was a little bulky, but not noticeable.

Jakira scooted past Rhen as he laced up his gear. “I’ve probably got some food to make or something. See you later for dinner.”

Arannet excused herself again as Jakira passed, trying to apologize. They exchanged, “Sorries” and “No problems” at least twice before Jakira finally escaped.

When Rhen looked presentable, he joined Arannet in the hall. She led the way down the stairs to where Welsh and his goons sat in the dining room—peeking at the paperwork. Welsh straightened up and backed away at the sight of them.

“Took you long enough. Hope we didn’t interrupt anything with that sexy little demon I saw slinking down the stairs,” Welsh said in a slimy tone that made Rhen’s skin crawl. The goons laughed.

Nope. That was enough.

Rhen activated swift twitch and launched himself across the room. Arannet screamed, surprised by his quick movement that caught the goons off guard, too. Rhen backed Welsh into the corner, crescent moon blade hovering just short of his throat. The goons jumped up, ready for a fight, but Welsh held up a hand to stop them.

“That was very stupid of you,” Welsh said with a smile.

Rhen leaned in close and whispered. “I could cut your core right out of your chest and hold it in one of Wyland’s stasis chambers. It would never return to the anima source, and you could never respawn. Your death would never show up in the reports, and none of your delvers would report you missing, because all of them would love to see you rot.”

The smile melted from the bulky man’s face. “You wouldn’t dare.”

“Don’t tempt me again, or you’ll find out.”

Rhen holstered his weapon and fell back. “Now, the nexus node. I hope you can hold your breath a very long time, because it’s about two miles down in the crushing black depths of the aquatic chamber.”

Welsh’s cheeks burned red-hot, but he said nothing as he fixed his orange hair and vest.

Rhen snapped his fingers, a fun idea occurring to him. “You know what? I think we have just enough anima at the mastery node to give you and your friends Amphibian Lung! You can go swim around with the dreadshrimp and the prismageysers all you like.”

Welsh straightened and cleared his throat. “There is no suitable way to get to the nexus, and I will log this in my assessment of the dungeon. You will alert me when it is accessible, and we will return.”

Arannet scoffed. “Because a free syntial and getting your hands dirty is completely out of the question? It is how I’ll be making my assessment of the dungeon, so it’ll be perfectly suitable for you as well.”

Rhen gave her an incredulous glance. She shimmied her shoulders a little as if to say, “I’m not afraid of him.”

It was true. Welsh didn’t have any leverage against her, nor a vendetta, though he might now. Arannet seemed to be risking far too much for just an assignment… maybe that comment about Jakira left her a little raw, too. Rhen knew they were becoming fast friends.

“Swimming to the bottom of a pit full of monsters is not suitable access. If I were in your shoes, I would’ve had this dungeon operation miles ahead by now.”

Arannet stepped up beside Rhen. “But you’re not in Mr. Zephitz shoes, nor have you experienced his trials, like his inn mysteriously burning down. We have an active investigation going for that, I hope you know.”

Welsh’s cheeks bled dry, and a thin layer of perspiration appeared on his forehead. Rhen could see eyeballs peeking around corners from the inn windows. Time to show them he was strong enough to lead.

“If you’re quite done with your assessment for today, I’ll show you out.” Rhen reached toward Welsh, who pulled away with a snarl.

“We can manage.”

“It is my dungeon. I insist.”

Rhen walked side by side with Welsh, the goons fighting to keep abreast with them. The twins and Eli—now apparently an inseparable threesome of new hell—followed not far behind, spinning daggers, and casting eager glances at the goons.

Rhen had forgotten completely about the device, but perhaps it was better to not have captured his threat… He activated it now, and reminded himself to keep things civil on the surface, but provocative.

Welsh turned to Rhen when they reached the exit. “I will relish the moment of your downfall.”

Rhen only smiled. “Give my regards to the Faust family, if you happen to see them before Aki.”

Welsh’s eyes narrowed in confusion.

“Don’t tell me you didn’t even learn the names of my entourage? The Prelusk… the one who can read minds.”

Welsh crossed his arms smugly. “They will have nothing to say on the matter, nothing to think of it, either.”

“Because you killed them after they burned down my inn? I bet if asked, they would tell Aki you had promised them a deal they couldn’t pass up but wouldn’t tell them what until after an anima save. Am I getting warmer?”

Welsh’s nose wrinkled in a snarl. “You can threaten all you like, but without proof, real evidence of my involvement—which you will never get”—He leered menacingly—“you can do absolutely fluff-all.”

Rhen smirked. “So, you were involved, I just won’t ever find the evidence?”

“I wish I’d been there to see it burn. Wish I could’ve set the fire myself. Did you cry like the child you are?”

Rhen grinned even wider. “You can go now.”

Welsh frowned, disgruntled his jab seemed to have the opposite effect he’d intended. He turned away, snapping at his goons. “We’ll be back to claim my dungeon.”

Idiot goon number one smirked. “The squid-freak isn’t here, huh?”

He sniffed hard, getting ready to hock up a massive loogie.

Rhen focused the anima in the palm of his hand. When the goon spit, he lunged for it and cast tremor blast. The waves of pressure shot the boogery spit back into the goons face, and knocked him on his ass.

“He’s a cuttlefish.” Rhen waved goodbye to the stunned idiot and retreated into his sanctuary.