Zeke heaved the tacky, web-covered corpse onto the pile in the center of the canyon. He hated the webs as much for their stickiness as for what they represented; after all, most of the people who’d been cocooned had been alive to some degree when they’d been wrapped in the hateful webs. Zeke could only hope that most had suffocated before the drachnids had drained them because the alternative just wasn’t something he wanted to contemplate.

With a huff, Abby threw another corpse onto the growing pile. Wiping the sweat from her brow, she said, “You know, we don’t have to do this.”

“I kind of think we do,” was Zeke’s response, a sentiment he’d clung to since they’d begun to gather the desiccated corpses into what would soon become a funeral pyre. It had taken days to gather enough wood from the forest that abutted one side of the canyon, a process that had Zeke free-climbing the walls, cutting down the trees with an axe he’d looted from one of Julio’s band, then dragging them to the edge before rolling them into the ravine. Even with his ridiculous strength and endurance, it was an awkward, time-consuming process that had taken him far longer than he’d anticipated. He had persevered, though. Something inside of him wouldn’t – or couldn’t – just leave those people to rot. They deserved better.

After completing the arduous process of building an adequate base for the funeral pyre, Zeke and Abby had set about gathering the corpses. For the first trip, Zeke had merely put the web-wrapped bodies in his spatial storage, but it soon became apparent that they left a smell and residue behind. His entire cottage still smelled like corpse, and it had been airing out for almost a week. So, he’d resolved to simply carry the corpses to the pyre the old-fashioned way. The only solace could be found in the fact that he’d positioned the pyre’s base at the mouth of the cave that had the most corpses, reducing the amount of time spent walking back and forth.

“This is going to take weeks if we keep going like this,” Abby said. Though she obviously didn’t agree with his decision to cremate the corpses – according to her, their time was better spent elsewhere – she hadn’t complained much. Nor had she withheld her help, going at it with stoic – or perhaps fatalistic – determination. “We should make a litter or something so we can get more than a few at a time. Otherwise, we’re going to be walking back and forth between those other caves for a month.”

Zeke stretched his back, saying, “Yeah. You’re probably right. I’m just not looking forward to climbing that wall again. And going all the way around the way we came in would take two or three days.”

Abby shrugged, saying, “This was your idea.”

“I know.”

Zeke didn’t say anything else. Instead, he began trudging back into the cave to get the final few corpses. Already, the pile had grown out of control. There had been hundreds of victims in this cave alone, evidence that their massacre of the drachnids had been entirely justified.

In the past few days since they’d climbed out of that pit, they had only run into a smattering of the monsters. And those had been entirely crazed, almost as if they’d gone rabid. According to Abby, the three drachnids she’d fought right after the queen had died had been the same way, lending credence to the idea that they’d shared some sort of necessary mental connection with the queen. Once, Abby had even come across a pair of drachnids that had been fighting one another.

Pushing those thoughts aside, Zeke turned his mind to the problem at hand. Even as he grabbed a pair of corpses, slinging one over either shoulder, he considered his next moves. Abby was right. If they kept going at it like this, it would be a month or two before they made their way back to Beacon. And after so long living in the wilderness, Zeke was more than ready to get back to some semblance of civilization. The cottage was great. It had made his life immeasurably easier. But it had very little to speak for it in regards to comfort. So far, it had been easy to ignore, but with the prospect of something better looming over him, Zeke found it more and more difficult to delay their trek to the city.

Of course, it wasn’t just about comfort. Zeke had plans. According to Abby, he was now quite wealthy, and he was more than eager to put that wealth to good use. He had the carapaces he’d looted from the queen and her champion, as well as various other odds and ends he thought might be useful to a skilled artisan. He already had his greaves, and he wanted a set of armor to match. Abby’s constant teasing about his penchant for getting torn to shreds, as well as the fact that he’d very nearly died fighting both the champion and the queen, had awakened a need to augment his survivability. And there was no way better to do that than with good equipment.

But the biggest reason Zeke wanted to get back to Beacon as soon as possible was probably the most human of them all. He’d had Abby as a comrade for a couple of months, and though neither of them were terribly personable, the simple human companionship was comfortable in a way Zeke hadn’t expected. He wasn’t a particularly social person. He’d had friends throughout his life, but none of them were close. So, he was a little surprised just how much his solitude within the troll caves had affected him. When he was alone, he thought about little other than basic survival. But the addition of Abby and Pudge in his life had broadened those horizons, making him think about his future. Without them, he would’ve become little more than an animal scraping by to live another day.

Over the course of the rest of the day, Zeke and Abby finished emptying the cave. Pudge followed them around, pouncing on any of the ubiquitous spiders for which the Nightweb Ravine had been named. The bear cub had grown more powerful, reaching level eight, so the spiders posed little threat to him. Their fangs couldn’t even pierce his tough hide.

By the time they’d finished off the cave, the sun was beginning to set, so they made their way back to the cottage, which Zeke had left summoned a half-mile away from the pyre. Once there, the pair took turns gathering water from the pump so they could achieve some semblance of cleanliness. It was a poor substitute for a shower, but it was still better than most people could expect in such a wild place.

“I don’t think I’ve ever felt so dirty in all my life,” Abby said, coming out of the cottage. She shook her head as she sat on a stump Zeke had cut into some semblance of a stool. It was little more than a circular block of wood, but it was better than sitting on the ground. Beside her, Zeke was turning a makeshift spit – one of Abby’s contributions – upon which was a huge chunk of snake meat.

“You should’ve seen me after I first got out of the troll caves,” Zeke said. “There were a lot of streams and springs in the caves, but by that point, I hadn’t washed the gunk off of me in a few weeks. And I’d just cut through, like, a couple hundred trolls. So, I was pretty bad. Then, I had to make my through a swamp. So, I guess I was pretty ripe.”

“Ugh,” Abby said, wrinkling her nose. “I bet the monsters even avoided you.”

“Not as much as you’d think,” he said, shaking his head with a wry grin. “There was this crocodile that almost got me, too. I bet it was thirty feet long. I thought it was a dinosaur, honestly.”

“You know when you say ‘honestly’ or ‘to tell the truth’ or any other variant, it makes you sound dishonest,” Abby said. Then, as if she had only just realized what she’d said, she clapped her hand over her mouth and muttered, “Shit. Sorry. That was kind of rude.”

Zeke shrugged. “A little,” he said. “But we’re partners now, right? We can afford to be a little rude with each other.”

Abby relaxed. “Yeah,” she said. “Still, though…I’m sorry. It’s just that it’s kind of a pet peeve of mine. My husband used to say stuff like that all the time, and he was probably the most dishonest person I’ve ever known.”

Zeke didn’t really know what to say to that. At the end of the day, he didn’t have much life experience from which to draw. Less than most people his age, really. His entire life had been about baseball, so he was less worldly than his age might suggest. So, instead of saying something and putting his foot in his mouth, he just turned the spit, watching the snake steak’s juices drip into the fire.

“So,” Abby said, breaking the silence. “You’re going back up there to gather materials for a litter tomorrow, huh?”

“That’s the plan,” Zeke said. “If we can move twenty or so bodies at a time, we’ll be finished in a day or two at most.”

Pudge, who’d been inside the cottage, padded out the front door and planted himself at Zeke’s feet. The cub looked back at his companion and chuffed, his annoyance clear. Zeke reached down and scratched behind the bear’s ears, eliciting a wave of satisfaction emanating from Pudge’s thoughts.

“Is he getting bigger?” asked Abby.

“Yeah,” Zeke said. “I think his growth is tied to his levels instead of his actual age. In his head, he’s still a cub, though. I don’t really know much about how quickly bears are supposed to grow, and even if I did know how it worked on earth, there’s no guarantee it’d be the same here. I’m not even sure what kind of bear he’s supposed to be.”

“Dire bear,” Abby provided. “They’re as big as grizzlies when they’re full grown, but they’re built a little differently. More heavily muscled.”

“How do you know that?” Zeke asked, wishing for the thousandth time that he’d remembered to inspect Pudge’s mother. He’d had other things on his mind, though. Like killing a murderous harpy queen.

“There’s this priest in Beacon, he’s pledged to the Church of Purity,” she said. “I don’t remember his name, but he’s one of the few people in the church who doesn’t specialize in healing. Instead, he’s a researcher. From what I understand, he got started down that path so he could categorize the different venoms and poisons. That way, the church’s healers would be better equipped to cure them. Anyway, he unlocked some sort of artisan path that let him identify monsters, and he established The Menagerie.”

“Like a zoo?”

“No,” Abby explained, shaking her head. “All the monsters are stuffed. He’s got hundreds of them on display. There’s also a book, but most people don’t bother with it because dealing with monsters usually boils down to hitting them harder than they hit you. And the book’s expensive, too.”

Zeke said, “And you saw a bear like Pudge at this Menagerie?”

Abby nodded. “Yeah,” she said. “A full-grown one. The thing was huge, too. Like, twelve feet tall and scary as hell. If I remember it right, they lean toward strength and endurance, with hide that’s hard to pierce. Once he gets bigger, Pudge is going to be a pain to deal with, especially with that leech skill of yours.”

Zeke scratched his companion’s ears, saying, “Unkillable monster bear, huh? That suits us just fine, doesn’t it buddy?”

The pair continued their small talk until the snake was done, and after eating, they both turned in for the night. As exhausted from the day’s work as they both were, sleep came quickly, and neither woke until the next morning. Not for the first time, Zeke was grateful for the cottage, which allowed them to rest in relative safety. Without it, he wasn’t certain he could’ve slept at all.

After a quick breakfast of leftover snake, Zeke de-summoned the cottage, and they began their trek to the next crypt. Once there, Zeke recalled the cottage and began his climb. The next couple of days passed in relative monotony, broken only by the odd monster attack. By this point, both Abby and Zeke were more than capable of dealing with anything in the area, so they were in little danger as they continued their work.

Finally, two days after constructing the litter, they’d finished that cave, and they moved to the next. With experience on their side, they quickly finished that cave off and moved on to another. Then another. When it was all finished, they had a pile of almost a thousand corpses, and over a week had passed. It had been grueling work, but seeing that massive mound of bodies only cemented that it was all worth it.

“Should we say something?” Abby asked, standing beside him. Both she and Zeke had torches they’d made from discarded wood and the surprisingly flammable webbing, which they’d wrapped around one end and set alight. “I feel like we should say something.”

Zeke ground his teeth together, frustration furrowing his brows. Over the course of his efforts gathering the bodies, Zeke had come to nurture a simmering anger. More than a thousand people had died, and whoever was in charge of Beacon had only seen fit to send a single group? From the very first attack, there should’ve been an army descending upon the drachnids. Instead, they’d waited, and people had died.

That wasn’t how government was supposed to work. Sure, most governing bodies were corrupt, and many had lost their way. But in exchange for power, they were supposed to provide safety and security. Beacon – and whoever ran it – had given neither. Not for the people who’d been killed by the drachnids, at least.

There was so much power in this new world, and from his short experience, it seemed that everyone used it for selfish reasons. Zeke had no doubt that, should they have really wanted to, Beacon’s leaders could’ve dealt with the drachnids shortly after the first attack. But they’d chosen not to. That choice, though it wasn’t his own, was like a burr in Zeke’s mind.

“These people should never have died,” Zeke said, tossing his torch onto the pyre. It quickly caught, and in seconds, the flames were spreading. “I’m sorry that we couldn’t have done more.”

Abby threw her torch onto the opposite side of the pile, and after only a few seconds, the stench of burning corpses filled the air. Neither Zeke nor Abby looked away. Even Pudge, who only vaguely understood what was going on, sat at Zeke’s hip, the cub’s own mind dwelling on the death of his mother.

For hours, the trio stood beside the pyre, watching it burn the remains until, finally, Zeke looked away with a sigh. “I guess it’s time to move on,” he said.

Then, an achievement flashed across his field of vision:

Rest the Dead – You have avenged and put your fellow humans to rest. +15 Wisdom, +5% Wisdom

With a flick of his mind, Zeke pushed the notification away. Achievements were all well and good, but they did nothing to quiet the roars of anger and frustration in his heart. A gasp from nearby told him that Abby had received one as well, but like him, she had little interest in wallowing in her rewards. Instead, they began their long journey out of the ravine, leaving the burning pyre behind them.