Hero feels light, woozy. He knew this feeling just earlier today when bleeding out from that undead’s sword. So much has happened since then, it all feels like a flash in the pan. With a deep breath, he focuses his vision. He knows he’s moving at just above a walking pace, but he’s not exactly sure what’s going on.

He sees that he’s being carried, not by Kell, but by his entity-like cloak.

“Did we- shit!” Hero jolts on his movement, realizing that the Dragon Scythe’s blade is still plunged into his backside.

“No time for that. I’ve got to get you to an inn,” Kell says.

Hero scoffs. “And what will an inn do?”

“Automatic recovery bonuses. They’re based on percent, too, so you’ll be back on your feet in no time,” Kell says, his cloak wrapping around Hero’s wound to staunch the flow of blood. “Consider yourself lucky we were able to fend them off.”

“Couldn’t you kill them and get this over with?”

“They gave us the scythe, one way or another. By the time they’re able to regroup we’ll be at Exeranoth.”

“Wait, really?”

Kell nods as they pass back through the room with the annoying puzzle, now flooded in darkness. “Yes, really. You must understand that in the game’s timeline we’re basically at the last five percent of the thing.”

“…Something feels wrong,” Hero says, “they’re still onto us.”

“Pi?” Bright-Solemn beeps as it turns around to check behind Kell’s backside. It saw something.

Kell stops short as his assistant does, and turns about to look back down the hall. “Save your breath.”

There’s a quiet moment as Kell and Bright-Solemn look down the hall, which is otherwise silent if not for the water dripping from the ceiling.

“Pipipi.”

Kell hums. “Are you quite certain?” Kell says to the playing-card-sized assistant. “They must have integrated out somehow, maybe a teleport ability?”

“Pipi, pipipipipi!”

The two stand fast a moment more. “I really don’t see anyone. It must be your imagination. They wouldn’t bound back that quickly.”

“…Piiii…” Bright-Solemn squeaks in replies with no small amount of sass, the eye on the length of its body squinting as if irritated.

As Kell floats forward, Hero coughs up an extra gulp of blood. As certain as Kell may be, Hero is not. With his still-climbing count of 1405 INT, he knows something is behind them, and its close.

“They’re near… give me the scythe,” Hero says.

“It’s lodged in your back, young man. That would be difficult,” Kell says laxly as he continues on.

“…I’ll do it myself.” At that, Hero struggles with crimsoned arms to wrest the scythe from his backside.

“You really should reconsider that,” Kell says, “You should know well enough that the bleeding system works realistically, or would you know that? Frankly I’m not quite sure… hey, I’m not kidding,” Kell reiterates as Hero struggles with everything he has to arm himself with the weapon plunged inside him.

“He’s right behind us. Look,” Hero says with a desperate tone before another cough.

Kell turns around to peek back down the hall, joining Bright-Solemn, who’s been floating backwards since its initial suspicion.

There’s another pause as Kell looks over the quiet hall, spoiled over with old pottery and ancient baubles.

“Clearly, you two must be seeing something that I’m-”

Punctuating his breath, Kell feels a sharp gust of wind pass him by. No sooner does he look back forward does he see the looming, hooded figure of Clark, high in mid air, deploying his flash grenade with one hand and reaching for Hero with the other.

Within a critical, explosive moment, Clark’s grenades go off, flooding the hall with gold-red light that distracts all… all but a certain someone with so much INT, he cannot possibly be deterred from his goal. In a blind, reflexive, movement, cuts upward with the Dragon Scythe. He had removed it so quietly that no sound was made, and as such his opponent would expect a weakened target. With such godly poise Hero delivered his cut, that and onlooker could have expected him a warrior of many hundreds of years, if not more.