Clark flies back, the scythe having taken off his right hand along with gashing clean through his leg on the same side. His blood paints the wall sloppily as [heavy bleed]’s enormous attribution text jumps over the boy’s head. As the flash dies down, Hero is visible standing on his own two feet, having leapt from Kell’s grasp at the ready in but a second. With his HP in shambles, his 1338 STA holds strong, giving him endurance even now, when he’s lost far more than a gallon of blood.

The assassin uses smokebomb once more, ensuring at least five seconds of guaranteed stealth free from Hero’s powerful INT score, and rushes out, the splatterings of his blood shown only seconds later as they leave his body and lose their stealth status.

“Know this, cur,” Hero speaks with a pained breath as he shouts down the hall, “Exeranoth will fall, and no one can stop us!”

Kell nods as he looks down to Clark’s right hand, lying on the floor, and still oozing unnatural amounts of blood. “Well, I’m sure that made an impression on them… Sorry I wasn’t of much help there — no clue how I didn’t see through his stealth.”

Hero looks behind him to flash a smile to Kell. “It’s okay, maybe you don’t know everything about this ‘game’ just yet.”

Kell nods again as his cloak takes up Clark’s hand and tucks it away within its many folds. “I most certainly do not. The

A.I. Director seems to be a bit more capable than I thought… this is nothing like the prototype project.”

“The what?” Hero says, his entire body shaking.

Kell breaks from his seconds-long distraction as he takes back up Hero. “Right, so your wound got… way larger, good job,” he says in a tone of sarcastic admonishment.

Hero coughs. “I’m okay, really.”

“Maybe you should get some healing skills, because I can’t do a thing for you.”

Hero laughs, a long stream of blood from his mouth. “I’d expect you’d have some healing spells tucked away in that head of yours.”

“Yes, but they’re not really spells and they wouldn’t work on you, now let’s get to Eizerith. Once we get some time out at the inn, we’ll be ready to fight Exeranoth and I’ll take us right to him.”

“Am I ready?” Hero asks, Dragon Scythe wrapped securely between his affixed arms.

“You’re way past ready,” Kell says, “All we need is to kill him, and that should complete the standard narrative.”

“What will that cause?”

“It’ll remove you and your father’s curses,” Kell says as they hover out from those deadly catacombs and into the fresh air of the woods.

“…I understand that, but you’re from another world, right?”

“Yes.”

“You didn’t need to come here, did you?”

“I did.”

Hero scoffs. “Okay, so why?”

“I don’t think you’d quite get it. It’s only of those ‘you’ll understand in time’ situations.”

Hero smirks. “Try me.”

Kell looks on to the long-ivied walls of gold-white Eizerith. “I am compelled through fear alone, I would say. I’ve come to this forsaken place to foil the forces connecting the worlds. I’m going to crush this boundary, and enter their own spaces. I have so much hate in my heart, and I recognize that, but I feel as though I am helpless to stop myself. The only reason I let that scribe go was because you and the scythe are my main priority, otherwise I would have destroyed him with total impunity. Frankly, I’m embarrassed to think of the person I was from before, and comparing that to what I am now. It’s like I’ve devolved, as if no amount of age and wisdom could really teach me to be like the others. Perhaps I’ll never see it like they do.”

Hero stares on awkwardly. “Y-yeah, I guess I don’t get it yet… but thanks for the help.”

“…No problem... excuse me, that was a bit of a dump,” Kell says, the ancient ruins folding into the trees behind them as they press on to the capitol city.

“No… no that’s fine,” Hero averts his gaze.

“Pipi Piiii,” Bright-Solemn notes with a smug squint.

“And you can politely shut the hell up,” Kell says to his tiny floating companion, “That’s entirely my business.”

“Pi. Pipi pi pi.”

“You pathetic little…” Kell shakes his head. “Sorry, can we just enjoy the silence on our way to the city, please?”

“Pipi,” Bright-Solemn says with a venomously passive-aggressive tone.

Kell sighs as Hero just looks away. He’s met some weird people in his life, but these two are way off the scale for him.