Arik sat on the concrete floor of a ramshackle building, the warm glow of the campfire irradiating his battered face and dirty clothes. He peered into the dancing flames, his eyes heavy and muscles taxed beyond belief. Rupert the bear sat at the fire as well, motionless and unblinking as ever.

It was quickly growing dark in the Woodstock Forest. After hours of intensive and frustrating combat and death echo training, they decided to call it quits. Cyanide wanted to set down camp right there in the valley they trained in, but Arik had a better idea. He told Cyanide of the old logging town that was overgrown and forgotten in the heart of the forest; the very place Arik used to train his flight echo when alone.

The trip to the ruins was relatively short, but his exhaustion made sure every step felt like a thousand. Once there, they set up camp in a mostly intact one story building. The plan was to hold out there until morning, when Cyanide would escort Arik to some low profile spot to begin his travel to this old man he always spoke of.

Arik had asked plenty of questions throughout the day regarding other deathless, including the old man and this fearsome Bellanode lady. But Cyanide would stubbornly shrug off the questions and insisted on focusing on the training. It was truly aggravating.

A twig snapping behind a wall of the building snapped Arik out of his fiery trance. The startled jump made every one of his muscles scream with fatigue. Cyanide revealed himself from behind the wall and sat down at the fire beside his large bag of what Arik now assumed was only weaponry. He opened the zipper and pulled out a customized assault rifle that he made way with cleaning with a small cloth soon after.

"Why do you bother with guns when you have super power?" Arik choked out weakly.

Cyanide's attention to the gun didn't budge. "Guns still kill better than most things. Not many deathless are fast enough to dodge a bullet."

"Can Bellanode?"

He stopped cleaning his gun and looked into the flames as if searching for an answer. "I've seen her do it. Now whether or not she got lucky is beyond me. I've seen her take a lot more than she has dodged, that's for sure." He went back to work on his rifle.

There was a pause, a loud silence filled by only the crackling of a fire pit. Arik filtered through his collection of questions, landing on one that would hopefully scare him the least.

"How do I go about getting an undercroft?"

"You can't. Nobody can under any normal circumstances. Not unless you can nab one from a chairmen. They are the only ones with an undercroft worth having."

"Why and what is a chairman?"

"Well the chairmen are the three lead figureheads of The Ministry, you see. They are among the most powerful deathless on the planet. Each one has an undercroft that contains the echoes of all those known. And they don't just hand those out because that leads to nothing but treachery and mutiny. Power begets those things already, the undercroft would only amplify that."

Arik nodded through obvious confusion.

"And before you ask, The Ministry is simply the organized headquarters and safe haven of deathless who have pledged loyalty to their way."

"What way is that?"

He stopped cleaning his gun for a second before continuing with a heavy sigh.

"I really don't feel like talking about them right now, Arik. Ask me something else."

"Is Bellanode going to kill me tomorrow?" Arik followed up despondently.

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"That's not the plan. I aim to get you to the old man in one piece, but recognize that her among others could get in the way. That's why we spent the day training you up the best I can."

Cyanide looked up to see Arik's face sadder than ever. He recognized it well; the face of a man headed to uncertain war, their fate up in the air. He put his cleaned rifle back into his bag.

"Hey," he called out. "You're going to be fine, as are your friends. I'm not going to let her petrify you, I promise. But you have to understand that you are in this, whether you like it or not. There is no going back, so you just have to move forward and not let a damned soul get in your way."

Arik nodded solemnly and laid his head down on Rupert's soft rubber lap, his eyes getting heavier by the minute.

"Tell me about Bellanode," Arik demanded softly.

"Well, where to start. She is powerful, dominant, sharp, aggressive, and scary. She has probably killed over 3,000 people in this insatiable quest for strength she never wavers from. And any deathless with two brain cells knows to keep a far distance from her."

"And yet you accompany her?"

Cyanide shot a piercing squint. "My echoes and experience happen to be a great counter to her own. Plus, I'm on my own quest. Besides, if you can survive being near her for any real amount of time, you begin to see the human side of her, the girl that hides under the mask of a devil feared by even immortals. And that Bellanode isn't so bad. Just as I'm not."

Cyanide's eyes got lost in the pyro before him as his thoughts flooded forth in momentum.

"In the end she just cares about gaining power above all else. With me there, I can keep her more sadistic self at bay, ensuring the deathless she gets her clutches on don't petrify, because they don't need to. I can also throttle her activity and direct it, protecting her from those that seek her destruction. Without me, her reckless nature leaves too big a footprint."

"But if you didn't help her, those that seek her destruction would destroy her or something, right? Then she couldn't wreak anymore havoc and the other deathless would be safe."

"Well, that's partially true. There are a lot of—"

"You love her, don't you?" Arik interrupted slyly.

The eyes of an enraged predator stared back at him, at any second ready to pounce. Cyanide's brows furrowed as if the words made no sense and simply caused frustrated confusion.

"Is that a blush or the glow of the fire?" Arik pressed further.

"No. How about we go to sleep already. We have a long day ahead of us and we need to get up early." He leaned back into the wall and crossed his arms, still staring daggers at Arik.

"Yeah, yeah. Whatever," Arik replied while rolling over further into Rupert's mass.

Rolling over was agonizing. Sure, his muscles were sore and shredded from the intensive day they had, but he was also brutally beaten and shot up by Cyanide. Ribs felt broken, eyes felt bloodshot, and hands felt shattered. The only moment in his life that was comparable was the beating he had taken from the same man just a day ago that ended his life. Or one of his lives at least. The only difference being, this time he wasn't as bloody and far more tired.

He still couldn't believe it. Any of it. He was waiting for it all to end with him waking up in his bed in a pool of sweat and the idea to write a book. But that moment never came. All that did was death and magic. Both things that humans just do not have in the real world. And yet he had just died yesterday.

Who's to say how many more times he will suffer a hellish death at the hands of another.

All he knew was he never wanted to die again. Even with the knowledge of immortality on his side, death was still just as painful and scary as ever. Arik wasn't someone who was a go-getter. He didn't spend his days climbing mountains, skydiving or fighting in cages. He was a loser who was scared of his own image half of the time. The very man that refused to hike his favorite forest during certain times of the year.

He had complained about his downtrodden body to Cyanide earlier, but the response was anything but what he wanted to hear. The soldier's solution was death. If Arik let himself die, then his body would rejuvenate seconds later and he would be just fine again. And he would have a shiny new echo to boot. It was a win win really. Right?

Wrong.

Arik wasn't going to have it. If Bellanode and Cyanide had their own quests, then Arik's would now be to stay alive at all costs. To retain his humanity and his mind's sanctity no matter what. Some may think it weak, and with less echoes, they wouldn't be wrong. But Arik didn't care. It was all in principle.

Thankfully, Cyanide understood that mindset and left Arik to his bodily pain. Though he did explain how Arik's suboptimal condition would throw a wrench in the efficiency of his plan. But later explained that if worse came to worse, Rupert would defend him to the best of his abilities. Arik scrounged for comfort in those words and pressed on.

Rupert's deceiving body was extremely shock absorbent and made out of some nonexistent rubberized material. After today, Arik was well attuned to the creature's movements and body, and the fear he once exuded was now quelled. So instead of stressing over the beast's presence, he decided to make use of it as a pillow. It was surprisingly comfortable and cradling, like that of memory foam.

Within a minute, Arik was lights out and sawing logs.