They had royally screwed up.

For the past few days, it had been all that John could think about.

Whenever there was a silence, a break between words, whenever he had a moment to think, it would be there, floating at the top of his mind like a shark drifting in circles, like on one of those deep-sea diving shows his dad always watched.

John regretted the comparison as soon as he thought it, a stab of emotional pain forcing him to wince at the memory of the family he would never see again.

“Stupid show anyway,” He muttered.

“Beg your pardon?” Robert questioned from behind.

“Nothing. Just thinking out loud,” John shot back with a bit more bite than he had intended, but he was in no mood to talk at the moment.

The man who had spoken had thankfully backed down, and John and the rest of the group walked on in silence, their steps steady but slow, their passing sending the sound of a dull march echoing throughout the otherwise silent tunnels.

Their mood was sombre in the depressing atmosphere that had descended upon them, the cause of it being the death of Stanley Hays, a quiet kid that tended to hang at the back of the group, a position that should have been the safest as it was well beyond the front-line that he and the other meat-shields would form when encountering any danger, a position that should have been safe, but the empty tunnels behind them had been dug into from a parallel tunnel and Poor Stanley had been right next to the breach.

To be torn apart by a fucking mole of all things. John shook his head as he considered the thought.

It had technically been Mole-‘RAT’, though John did not really understand the difference between the two. Nor did he really care.

Since they came to this world, he and the rest of the group had had few truly dangerous encounters, certainly, nothing like what they had experienced down in the underground maze they had willingly ventured into, the increasing power of the native lifeforms in conjunction with their ever-present, ever murderous rage that would have them fully commit themselves to suicide attacks had nearly overwhelmed in their last encounter them and neither John nor those that followed him were eager to repeat that experience.

They may have been young, but that did not mean that they were stupid, they knew that letting their egos lead the way would have resulted in someone getting hurt sooner or later, so they had got together, formed plans, strategized, and trained. They trained hard, every day, sometimes all day so they would never have to have experienced the loss that they had just been dealt.

They did not come in here blind; they had learned all the information they could about the Burrows, something they did that with every action that the group took as a whole as to avoid anything that was beyond their abilities. In fact, they had preferred to only take risks that were far below their abilities just to ensure their continued safety.

And that was something that they had agreed that the Burrows was, a hole filled with freaky, dangerous animals, yes, but creatures that they could have dealt with, even if they were to venture in alone, at least, the ones near the outer areas. They knew the boss like creatures that inhabited the deeper tunnels would pose a real threat, but they had no intention of encountering them, a notion that they were confident about due to their possession of both a map and a scout.

But still, Stanley was dead.

He had died.

Murdered, no, butchered by that creature, and they could have done nothing to stop it. And they could do nothing to undo it.

There had been much arguing after they had cleared the area of the monsters, mostly with everyone screaming at each other to work through their freak-outs, but after that had come the serious discussion of what to do.

Specifically, what to do with the body.

Stanley was just…everywhere. The largest part of him left was the thigh of his left leg, closely followed by the boy’s head, his face frozen with a look that expressed all the terror and agony that he had experienced before whatever kept the lights on behind his eyes had flickered out, a sight that had more than a few of them vomiting from the sheer horror of it all.

They could not have just left Stanley down here, leaving his body to rot in this monster-infested shit-hole, but none of them could even think of approaching the shredded remains without becoming sick again.

All, except Goodie, that is.

John was ashamed to admit it, but at the time he had begun thinking of excuses to avoid dealing with the remains and if it were not for Goodie dealing with the matter, he would have convinced the others to leave with the intention of retrieving the body on the way back. If it was still there, that is.

But Goodie had just walked over to it with no hesitation, no sign of being disturbed by the sight or that god-awful smell like the other. John remembered the boy raising stopping just before Stanley’s remains, and for a moment, he thought the boy had been about to say a prayer or something. But a moment later, some type of blackish substance began flowing over Goodie’s body, forming a thick coating that covered the boy’s arms, legs, and front torso in something that looked similar to what he had once seen a sewage worker wear. It was not armour, at least he did not think so, the stuff looking like something more akin to rubber.

Then, without any hesitation, the guy just knelt down, grabbed Stanley’s head and placed it in a sack as if he was picking up a melon from a fruit vendor on the street. The boy then repeated the action with the rest of Stanley’s remains, hopping from piece to piece like some small bird pecking at bread crumbs.

The memory of seeing Goodie do that had been keeping him up at nights, and he was sure it would continue to haunt him for years to come.

Afterwards, they had continued onward towards their goal, the recurring corpse and its magical treasures.

They had no choice. Yes, they could have, and probably should have, returned to the surface, but they could not, not now that they had lost one of their own. Going back after losing one of their own and having nothing to show for it would have ended them.

John did not really understand why he had felt like that, however. Sure, empathy and all that would have explained some of it, but he and the others had only been together for a few months and while they had gone through some stuff in that time, it was still far from long enough for them to have formed any real attachment to each other, in fact, if they had still been on Earth, he would have had nothing to do with the boy at all, their social circles being dimensions apart. But now, here, there were too many emotions for him to deal with, so many that he could barely distinguish them from each other as they all melded together into a freezing-hot ball of stress in the centre of his being that just would not disappear.

He was not certain, but he thought that the others may have felt similar to what he had been experiencing as none of them voiced any objection to his plan to continue onward, not even Goodie, though John was sure that in that guy’s case it was more about not wanting to piss-off everyone else rather than for any attachment to the group.

Not that he blamed the guy for it, god knows that Goodie had plenty of reasons not to be after what they had done to him.

John winced as he remembered that he would still have to deal with that problem, anyway, the group had continued on.

And, even without Goodie’s snake to scout the way, they had been close enough that they were able to find the body that they had been looking for, a wretched collection of weathered bones and tattered clothing that you would expect of a long-forgotten corpse, but far more sightly than poor old Stanley had been.

They had come down here in search of a body, specifically a body laden with treasure, the corpse that they had been looking for being one of a few such remains that kept reappearing because the Burrows had somehow remembered them. John still was not quite sure how that worked, but if he could have gotten treasure from it, he really did not care at all.

If he could have gotten treasure, John remembered bitterly.

Even with the loss of their scout, they had been close enough to their destination that they had managed to find the body that they had been searching for, but the stupid thing had been depressingly vacant of anything shiny, magic or otherwise. A fact that had delivered the final blow to the group’s morale. Knowing that the corpse might have been looted before they found it, they had originally planned to visit the other locations marked on the map, but not now, not anymore. Even if they had the will to go on, the journey would have been far too dangerous without Goodie’s ability to scout ahead.

Even more dangerous now that they were now a man down.

Stanley was not exactly a powerhouse amongst the group, but his absence would be felt all the same, and if any more of them should have fallen along the way…NO, John did not want to even think about that.

Shaking his head, he focused on the tunnel ahead of him, hoping the dull echo of his footsteps would drown out his thoughts.

They did not.

And that was how they journeyed, he and the group of sad adventurers trudged along back to the surface, defeated, bitter, and angry. They had lost, failed, and now had to carry this bitter defeat with them for the rest of their lives.

John sighed.

But…they were alive, the rest of them at least, and ultimately that was the only thing that mattered.

At least, that was what he tried to tell himself, but his mind would not stop reminding him that every step that he took, every step forward, was a step closer to having to deal with the consequences of his actions, the group’s actions.

They did not have to worry too much about dealing with the waggon-train as the only thing that the group had to do was inform someone in charge about when they were leaving, which they had, and any other obligations, if there were any, would have been of a personal nature and up to the individual group members to deal with.

They had voted on the matter long before leaving the city, the agreement being that as long as it did not affect everyone else, each member could do as they pleased. A Small bit of liberty within this medieval world, or so they had thought at the time. Problem was, Bret liked to make promises to certain types of women, promises that sometimes came back to bite him in the ass, something that would sometimes drag the rest of them into it. Nothing serious had happened so far, sometimes it had even been funny when Bret got put in his place, a welcome bit of relief and entertainment for the rest of them and something to chat about on long, boring nights by the campfire. But with everyone’s current state of mind, John feared that any problem, even a minor one could send them over the edge and that was the last thing any of them needed right now.

But that was just a minor thing.

No, the biggest problem, the one his mind had purposefully been avoiding, was what to do with Goodie.

They would have to figure something out with him, some way to pay him back…no, they had nothing to give him, especially not now that he had lost the snake that had probably been his closest companion.

John breathed in sharply in frustration, a tightness forming around his eyes as he forced back his emotions.

Some way to at least buy Goodie’s silence, then.

But how?

They could not kill him; they were not psychopaths! And the way this world used truth stones meant that if they did, even if there were no witnesses, their actions would eventually be discovered, and they would be on the run for the rest of their lives, if they were not outright executed on the spot.

And besides, when you got past all the bullshit stories and the silly front he kept putting up, the kid was a good guy.

They had all heard about how he had stopped and rescued survivors from a horde of undead after the dust storm had hit, as well as a few other stories about him that put him a good light. He just did not deserve what had happened to him.

What they had caused to happen to him, John reminded himself.