The brilliant morning light shone through the gas station windows as Anton set down his book.

[Storming Absolution]

[Spell Comprehension: 76%]

He had spent the whole night reading. Something he had never done before, unless watching porn counted as reading, which it didn’t. At first, splitting his attention between the dense scripture of the tome and surveillance of the outside world had given him a splitting headache. He was tempted to take one of the elixir’s to increase his Insight. That a liquid form of Skein sat only a few feet away from him was temptation bordering on biblical, but a line in the book had warned him far more effectively than any threat of physiological mutation.

“... it is in grasping for power that we reveal our claws, and woe be to the fool who thinks they only scratch the outside world, and double woe and woe again, three times calamity to they who believe a scratch shall heal and never grow infected. I have seen skin slough and reveal rotten bones. I have seen souls leaking from the eyes, ears, mouth, and anus of those who believe a momentary advancement would never return to haunt them…”

With the words came fragments of images -- of memories -- of the practice of the spell. Even as he set the book aside, he could still hear the thunder, and feel the cleansing rain upon his skin. The spell was forming inside his mind. A ritual that stitched the natural world with that of religious purification. He couldn’t wait to fully understand the book. Magic! He was learning magic!

What a world the apocalypse had wrought.

But he was stuck at 76% and had been for the last couple of hours, even though he finished the book. It seemed some additional understanding was needed beyond physical reading.

Though as the morning -- a spiral of pink burning through a sea of sapphire -- no sun rising, merely shadows evaporating from the crystal-covered land -- wore on he set aside his scholarly ambitions.

He had been putting this off long enough, it was time to tell Zoe the truth.

###

Blessedly, Zoe had no dreams. Merely a slumber in darkness like burying her face in her mother’s hair. She lay, half asleep as morning light crawled under the doorway, remembering that there had been good times before her world was turned upside down.

Before the forest, before the dogs…

And not everything was horrible afterward. That is the way of things. No absolutes truly exist, and this morning, despite everything, she felt lighter than she had in years.

Though of course…

[The Burden Of Being Interesting]

[Objective: Claim ownership of a Settlement Polyp]

[Time to Complete: 5 days, 12 hours]

[Reward: Conditional]

[Failure: Failing any aspect of this quest will cause the death of your party. Will you let down others as you have so often been let down yourself?]

[Magnifying Glass Reappearance: 18 hours, 47 minutes]

And her patients lay in the other room. She needed to go check on them, though she could tell through [Our Hearts Toll as One] that the fragile-faced young man still lived. She hoped the other hadn’t died. To think she punched into him to remove the core. Even with the advancements of Vitality, that was a horrific injury to inflict upon someone. Her hand brushed across her face as she recalled the pain and punishment of regrowing her eye in purgatory.

Beside her, Bella snored, her arm sprawled out over her bare chest, oblivious to the world. She gripped her sword, even in sleep, and the runes were dark even in the shadows of the manager’s office. Each cryptic shape was a deep hole black as a staring pupil.

Did the sword remember her like she remembered it’s barbed tendrils itching along her bones?

`She sighed. The early, sleepy morning vibe was gone. She should get up. Five more minutes…

Someone knocked at the door.

“Zoe?” Anton whispered.

She murmured some affirmation.

“I need to speak with you. Nothing urgent,” he added, “But it’s serious.”

“I’m coming.”

“Yeah you are,” Bella murmured in her sleep.

There were too many plastic alcohol bottles lying around her. Had she raided the entire shop?

Zoe dressed, exited, and followed Anton outside.

“Are the patients alright?”

“I have an eye on them. They’re sleeping, same as Oriz.”

Zoe folded her arms and waited for him to explain why they were out there. She didn't feel the cold due to her Vitality and the surprising insulation of Gool’s fish skin clothes. Which reminded her of his gift, she would have to open it when they were back inside.

Anton leaned against a poster of a bright green slushie spread out across the concrete side of the building. Arms folded. A silver eye rose overhead like a drone to survey the world. Rather than his usual poker face, a certain shiftiness pulled at his features. He refused to meet her gaze.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

He coughed, pulled out a pack of cigarettes, and offered her one. She took it, let him light it, took a drag, and repeated her question.

“I have to tell you the truth of why I was on the plane.”

“From your shirt, I thought you were just a dumb tourist.”

“Well, I was dumb.”

He sighed as he plucked at the new hoodie he had taken from the gas station. It read “You Know What They Say About Guys With Big Trucks?”

Something moved in the distant trees. Zoe turned.

“Yeah,” Anton said as she pointed. “It’s a mantis. They’ve been creeping closer ever since the demon died. Some have ventured beyond the treeline.”

She nodded, smoked, and pointed at him.

“I’ve saved your life. You’ve saved my life… We’re friends, right?”

He bit his lip -- maybe the most emotion Zoe’d ever seen on his face -- and nodded.

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

“I want to be friends, but friends don’t keep secrets right?”

Zoe’s scarred lips twitched into an awkward smile, an uncomfortable grimace, and she looked away. Why did the truth have to hurt?

Because lies weren’t armor, they were skin. Peel away the lies and you will get blood.

“You’re right,” she said as she flicked her cigarette out into the snow. Sparks pinwheeled in the light. “I shouldn’t have kept my quest secret from you. The way I behaved in the dungeon… it was wrong. It was abhorrent. I want to -- no -- I am better now. Even with this curse, I’ll --”

“No, Zoe,” he waved at her to stop her talking. “No. It’s not you. It’s my secret. I’m… Do you remember the Gambler threatening to reveal my last name?”

Zoe nodded, a pit in her stomach like she stood on the edge of a cliff. Emotions, feelings, friendship, these were problems she couldn’t punch her way out of.

And it scared her.

“Well,” Anton said. “My last name is Biggs…” he trailed off, steeled himself, and looked her in the eye. “I’m Anton Biggs, and I was on the plane because my dad sent me to kill you when you skipped town with our money.”

Zoe blinked. Stepped back. She knew what she heard, Insight wouldn’t let her pretend otherwise, but still she reeled.

“You were sent to kill me?”

“You left town with our payment!” He nodded, wildly animated as he spoke, as though the pressure of keeping this in had finally ruptured something in his stony facade. “Hundreds of thousands of dollars! What were we supposed to do? Let you go? My dad sent me after you, he finally trusted me with something, and so I followed you onto the plane. I was going to find you and Ben and make it look like an accident and --”

Zoe’s chain wrapped around her fist. Anton shut up. Her hunger fought her sense. She didn’t know him, but she knew him. Fight beside someone, hang out with someone in the quiet hours between, and you know how they respond even if you don’t know their history.

But still, her huger fought at her mind with the logic of the hound. The logic that there were only friends and foes, and foes were merely meat.

“Why didn’t you tell me before?”

“When would have been a good time?”

“The moment you met me on the plane. The moment you decided that you weren’t going to kill me. That is what you decided right?”

“Of course it is! How could you doubt that?”

The question fell into the cold morning air. Zoe took a deep breath.

[Our Hearts Toll as One]

Her technique bloomed a sphere of Skein that swept over the gas station. The patient with the delicate features, Bella, Oriz, and Anton. She cradled their hearts in her grip.

“You trust me,” she said.

He nodded.

“I should have told you earlier.”

“Yes.”

The silence stretched out.

“Do you want another cigarette?” he asked.

“Sure.”

He lit her one and passed it over. She took it, and her chain slid from her fist as she puffed.

“I wasn’t running with the money. Ben took the money, and I was going after him.”

“Oh. Well… you should have told my dad.”

“I was angry.”

He smiled awkwardly.

“I know how that goes. I’m… I’m sorry I was ever thinking about killing you. Once all this happened,” he swept a hand out as though to encompass the entire apocalypse. “Things fell into perspective. I was never smart, you understand? Never could figure anything out. But then when my Insight was doubled, tripled, quadrupled! I never even knew that word before… I’m not the man I was,” he got down onto his knees, his eyes wide as he gripped his hands before him. “I want you to forgive me, I’m begging, but if you don’t… this highway is a crossroads. I don’t have to go in the same direction as you.”

He looked up at her, the cigarette burning down toward his fingers. The smell of smoke prominent in the cold and sterile air. Pink light pinwheeled across the sky and lit the snow-covered trucks in burning peach. What did she think about all this? About him?

His heart beat inside her mind, inside her grasp, and she released a deep breath full of smoke.

“Get up, you idiot.”

“Are we good?” he said as he stood.

“Sure… yeah. We’re good, so long as that’s the only thing I need to worry about?”

“It is.”

“Good. I suppose debts are all cleared now that the world has been burned to the ground. But tell me one thing…”

“What?”

“If your dad wanted my money, why would he kill me? I’d never missed a payment. He wouldn’t get money from killing me.”

Anton frowned deeply.

“Um, I think I just misunderstood my instructions. Yeah… Now I think about it, he just wanted me to bring you to see him. The whole murder thing…”

“That was all you, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“Good to know.”

They smoked, and the silence warmed.

“So we’re good?”

“Don’t ask that again. It’s a lot to take in, but, yeah…” Zoe considered her technique. “We’re good.”

He let out a sigh of relief.

“Good.”

“Yeah.”

Bella walked out of the gas station with a can of energy drink in her hand.

“Hey, check out this hoodie I found, it’s hilarious…” She stopped and stared at Anton. “One of us has to change.”

“I found it first,” Anton said as his poker face smoothed out his features.

“But it looks better on me!”

Zoe took one last drag deep into her lungs as though the heat, the smoke, might scald away the moment, and crushed the cigarette under her foot.

“I’m going to check on the patients. We should talk about our plans.”

The others nodded and Zoe headed inside.

###

The patients were still asleep. Their recovery was slow, but they would survive. Oriz also slept peacefully.

Zoe hoped she woke before they had to go back to the Gambler’s show.

The three humans piled the weapons of the demon’s goons onto a table and sorted through them. Zoe took the club fashioned from Trinch’s thighbone for herself, and nobody argued. They split the pistols between them. Each had a full clip minus the bullet each gun had fired at Zoe. She still felt a little thrill every time she realized she could make herself bulletproof.

Anton and Zoe each took an axe.

“You sure you don’t want to feed them to your sword?” Zoe asked.

“It’s a picky eater,” Bella replied.

“So, what’s our plan, boss?” Anton said.

Zoe ran a hand through her hair and fought the urge to slice it all off. Once she hit the town, she wanted a haircut. Hopefully, there was a decent stylist there.

“I think the town should remain our goal. It’s the only place I can think of a settlement polyp being. The problem is if we can make it there before the Gambler whisks us away?”

“We might as well try,” Bella said. “Even if we just get closer, the Gambler will send us back there when the game is over right?”

Unspoken, the fear that they might never return from the Gambler’s game show.

“There’s one more thing,” Zoe said as she tapped the thighbone. “Trinch’s corpse is out there somewhere in the trees. I want to find it.”

“And give him a burial?” Bella joked.

“I want that bastard’s corpse for myself. If his bones contain this much power, imagine what other parts of his body might do. This is a new world, with new resources, and I want those resources for myself. Especially since…”

“Since what?” Anton asked.

“I want to build a weapon. The time loops, [Fools Rush In], it burns away the world. What if we can harness that? I think [Mind’s Eye Incision] could be used to harvest them. We have the blueprints for the Mirrorbell. If we can get some more blueprints from more dungeons, we might be able to create our own weapon. It might not be possible to match Rue in terms of levels and mountains, but with the right weapon we might not need to.”

After a long moment of silence, Anton spoke.

“You’re insane.”