Yelena

She tried to bring the room into focus.

The sludge of the dead plant's innards coated her feet, and she trudged through it, slowly, limping, feeling the poison of the demon's thorns seep into her flesh:

HP: 3/30

Then something new tore itself into her brain with the power of a lambent sun:

DOMINION LORD SLAIN: RAAVA OF DUSKWOOD

EXP: +75 (Shared combat victory - Party kill)

LOOT: Acquired by party member

Party kill?

Loot?

Acquired by - who?

She slumped down, ready for her face to hit the dirt of this cursed place, and suddenly felt an arm wrap itself round her waist.

"By Amarata!" A voice said. "You're heavier than you look, gal."

Before the dark world faded away, she looked up and him and grunted.

"Thief."

Through the nothingness encroaching on her eyes, somehow she still saw him smile.

"Marius," he said. "Remember: Rule #2."

____________

When she regained some dim semblance of consciousness, she was better able to gain the measure of her status:

HP: 30/30

GLANCE: 5/15

That sickening word again - GLANCE - the thing she hated affixed to an inexorable part of herself. The power that now ran in her veins.

Every time she felt those golden threads wrap themselves around her, she suppressed the urge to vomit.

But her power had been drained long before she hit the ground. She'd collapsed under the weight of still bleeding wounds from the abominable, living plant. She couldn't have healed herself.

Then how?

The answer found her before she truly sought it out:

"Rise and shine, buttercup."

Now her eyes flew open at once. She jerked up her head, unclapsed her hands that lay on her waist, and looked around for the source of the voice.

And then the nausea truly overtook her.

"Wouldn't try moving too much there," the voice said. "Last time I ate a handful of those weeds, I damn near puked my guts out."

"Di?" she said in confusion, as she felt her stomach growl like a wounded animal. Her wounds, she noticed through the pain, were almost entirely gone. Nothing but slight scar tissue remained on her waist and hands. Her armor was intact.

"'Fraid not," the voice said, and this time she was able to recognise its tone, pitch, and direction. She shuffled onto her side and saw the thief crouched on a rock beside her, casually picking at his teeth.

"Lucky guy, this Dimedrious," the thief said. "His name's been the only thing on your lips since you've been sat here."

She groaned and rolled back over, staring up at the stalactite-filled sky weeping moist tears from their tips.

"How long was I out?"

"Long enough for me to gather up the goods and give you some healing treatment. On the house."

"You are a healer and a thief, both?"

"Me? Nah. But I know a thing or two about shoving things into holes."

She turned to him, face flushed red with fury - and only now noticed something else - something her mind on its blurred return to reality hadn't caught up with:

Her sword was gone.

"Relax," the thief - Marius - said. "I just gave you some healing herbs. There's a few that grow around these parts. In fact, might not be a bad idea to stock up on 'em once we have time."

She responded carefully, taking in the measure of him. He looked harmless - of course he did. That's how they all presented themselves. Those like him out there, skulking around darkened alleys, looking for the next coin purse to pilfer, the next pantry to raid.

"Trust me," he said suddenly. "Whatever shit you're imagining I've done to get put down here, I can guarantee you I've done something worse."

She sighed and reclined back. For some reason she just didn't feel like fighting him. She didn't feel like anything at all.

But the will within her felt something else. It raged. It beat against the cage of her bosom, urging her to tear this man apart. Like it had been urging her since she'd thrown herself down here - its beating heart growing ever stronger - stronger with each descent she made further down into the earth.

"You have my thanks," she said, and at his raised eyebrows he saw that these words surprised him.

"For helping me."

He sucked in his teeth, continued to stare off into the distance. She saw what he was looking at. She saw what he'd probably been looking at since she'd been out cold: the dead body of his 'benefactor' - the giant, Voidspawn-posessed plant.

"Let's get one thing straight," he said, still staring at the bubbling, oozing remains of the fauna's carcass. "I helped you because I owed you one. You saved me from the Big Guy - I ain't disputing that. But I also ain't disputing that you're a crazy bitch."

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Again, there it was: rage bubbling beneath the surface of her being. But she well remembered the vow she took before she fell into this great pit: from now on, she'd be in control. It was part of her - she would not be its puppet.

Never again.

So she laughed aloud, and the hoarse sensation of the sound that conveyed no joy at all was alien to her. She couldn't remember the last time she'd laughed so freely.

"You're probably right," she said. "But I can't be any crazier than a man who counts giant mushrooms among his friends."

She turned back to him.

"Or is that another one of your Everloft rules I've broken?"

He looked back at her and she could see that his eyes were tired. She could discern, without asking, without the need for this ludicrous 'Appraisal', that he'd been here and seen enough to know insanity was the norm in this place.

And if insanity was the norm, could one really be called insane?

He shrugged his shoulders at her and returned his gaze to the sight of the body.

"You know, when I first got down here I was alone. Then I met folk. Then I either tricked them, led them to their deaths, or led their killers to them. I'm no murderer, yeah? But it seems like every where I go I'm watching people die. My life story, really."

He paused for a moment, watching the thin drips of ice-water from above fill a little pool in the middle of the black glade drop by tiny drop.

"Ends up being a lonely life, y'know?"

She followed his gaze. Every drop of water held a face she recognized - Cynthia, Azran, Agathae, and Di - and though it was probably nothing more than a hallucination borne of the dark, she couldn't help but sigh in regret.

"People come and go in your life," she said. "And yet you're always there by yourself. Because when all's said and done, you're the only one you can count on."

He frowned at her and twitched as though he'd just been flicked by a teasing finger of lightning.

"I'm surprised an Argent is capable of understanding any of that. Ain't you bros and sisters up there all singing praise Amarata round a campfire, eating monster guts and dancing round totem poles adorned with bleedin' werewolf heads?"

"Most of us may be hybrids, but we're just as human as anyone."

"Even you, eh?" he asked her. "A Firvak girl?"

She bowed her head, then groaned as she got her joints moving and rose into a kneel. Her sapphire eyes met his dark pupils framed by hazel, and she knew that this man had probably never asked an unloaded question in his life.

"More than you know, Marius."

He nodded with a little chuckle, looking her up and down with new eyes, now. Brighter eyes.

"Not many of you around anymore," he said. "But I get why you'd be welcomed up in that ghastly monastery. They can't exactly turn folk away, huh?"

She said nothing. She let his question, and implied accusation, hang in the air.

"You know, if I were a more superstitious man, I would've let you die, too,' he said with a bizarre smile plastered on his gaunt face. "Could've just let the plant have you. Firvaks are bad luck, at best. At worse, they're cursed. Kids know that before they even start suckling on mama's titties down South."

"But you didn't leave me to that creature," she began, slowly. "Because you don't believe any of those stories."

He shrugged. "I guess not," he said.

"But you still don't trust me."

He looked at her sidelong as he drew her sword and twirled it in his hands, checking the tip of the blade with his index finger and holding the blade steady by its hilt with his other hand. She watched him with growing fear - a knowing trepidation. She focussed on the blade and the thought - not violence, but a need to protect what was hers. To get it back. Without her weapon, she was nothing. It was like he'd removed a limb from her body:

Sleight of Hand:

REF: 6 vs Target REF: 10

Attempt?

Bad enough odds to be considered functionally futile. His score was superior. She wasn't getting that sword from him unless he gave it up.

"I'm not used to handling something this big," he said with a cheeky grin. "But I can tell this thing means business. In your hands? It's proably cut through more little demons than I've ever even seen or heard of. And I'm sure, up there, you cut them apart secure in the knowledge that you were vanquishing evil."

She fought to keep her expression neutral, but her frustration at his smirk only grow.

"I'm sure their blood's coated that polished armor you're wearing countless times. Must've been good to have that on your side, along with all your training, coming down here."

He smiled again. Hyena-like.

"Even if you being down here means you somehow fucked up just as bad as I did."

"I volunteered for this Dive!" she burst. She could endure this moralizing no longer.

"Then you're even crazier than you look."

The content of his words did not strike her in this moment, but the tone with which he delivered them. Looking at him now, he seemed to wear the same face, but there was something different about it. A contortion of the muscles round the corners of his still smiling mouth, a darkening of the wrinkles under his eyes. A flaring of the nostrils.

It was like a different person was talking altogether.

But then, almost as quickly as it had come, the moment past. And he stood up to give her sword a few dumb swings, almost falling from his rock pedestal in the process.

"Are you going to give up my sword?"

He glanced down at her, surprised. "Don't you wanna just kill me and take it?"

"No."

It was the truth, and for whatever reason, this seemed to draw more childish laughter from him.

"Look," he said when he'd had enough of swinging. "What I'm trying to get at here is this: I had nothing when I came down here. I had to make do with whatever slime and shit and sludge I could get my hands on. I reckon I've probably been in this cave for three days now, wandering around, trying not do die, almost failing a few times. Then I meet you. You save my life, sure, but you then proceeded to assault my employer, so minus ten cool points for you. Oh, and as if that wasn't bad enough, you then forced me to make a moral choice - help out the girl who saved me, or help my employer and reap the rewards she so generously promised."

He pointed the tip of her own sword at her, flourishing it like a bad dancer.

"Yelena," he said. "You owe me."

She scoffed at his play-acting.

"I owe you? That beast would've killed me and then taken your head. You might think you're crafty, and poetic, and a real charmer, Marius, but you don't manipulate a Voidspawn. They always hold all the cards."

He smirked. "How sure are you of that, Yelena? You saw that she was backing off. You felt her grip loosen on you. Yet you still killed her without so much-"

"It was a Voidspawn!" she roared. "It deserved nothing but death."

He groaned and stepped back, wiping the sweat that had gathered on his face and slumping back down next to his rock.

"I don't know what you've heard about this place," he said. "But would you listen to me if I told you that's exactly the type of attitude that'll get you killed quickly down here?"

She looked away, again, flushed with restrained fury. But she didn't fly at him, or rebuke him. Nor did she give so much as the slightest inclination that she was listening. She sat there, quietly, watching him out the corner of her eye.

"There's a time for action and there's a time for listening," he said. "Running into a fight like that, sword raised and vengeful, sure it looks cool. As a storyteller, let me say that it makes for good puff-piece material. But that's how every young boy with hopes that he can be something ends up dying young, that's how a quiet, buff guy ends up going mad, and its how an old man ends up missing the child that was lost to him ages ago."

She stared back at him blankly.

"What are you talking about?"

"Hm? Oh, just musing on experiences. Bearing my soul to a girl. Trying to teach some lessons, that's all. Nothing major. Nothing epic. But if I could tell you one thing? Don't try and conquer this place alone. And don't try and do it by assuming you know anything about how this place works or what's out there waiting for us. Because, trust me girl, we're all walking in the dark here."

She scoffed again, and allowed a further bout of incredulous laughter to escape from her parched throat.

"You're right," she said. "But don't lecture me when you've just taken the spoils of the monster's defeat - the same 'employer' you seem to care so much about. I was careless. I admit that. I didn't know the strength of the creature and I made my move without a proper assessment of my opponent. But, let me tell you something: I've hesitated before, Marius. I've seen what happens when you let creatures born of this place cause you to cower in fear. Are you really telling me you aren't ever afraid? You say you have never killed in this place. I say you have killed plenty - you've just been smarter about it. But that doesn't make you any less a murderer than me. That, I'll admit."

She looked away. She knew that he'd turned this time to fix her with his glare, their faces mere inches apart from oneanothers' now.

"No one," she said, even as her voice trembled to say the words. "No one else will die because of me. I'll give my life to cleanse this place, if need be. To cleanse..."

She stopped herself, biting her lip and holding her tongue. If he noticed her pained expression, once again, he let it slide.

"Honorable," Marius chuckled. "And, if you'll learn from an old thief's life experiences, also beautifully suicidal."

"I have nothing to learn from you," she spat, and rose to her full height, ready at this point to take the sword from him by force.

"You know, I really wish you hadn't said that."

"Why?"

He smiled again.

"Because it'll make those guys that've been watching us this whole time that much harder to fight."