Immobilized by his decision tree, Hirrus could only stare blankly at the corpse. The corpse that had, until seconds ago, been his wife.

He wondered which urge would be the stronger when he recovered: the desire to avenge Julissa’s death, or the desire to join her in the hereafter.

Not that either urge mattered. His decision tree would govern his actions. Or, more likely, the giant monster standing over her.

The scaled beast didn’t step over her to finish him off, though. It turned and stomped away into the kitchen.

Hirrus wondered what that meant, that it disregarded him. Was it truly a mindless beast, losing interest in him once he was no longer struggling? Or was there something more sinister at work? That mysterious debuff ticked away, and Hirrus was struck by the concern that it might mean he was already dead. He had a little more than a minute remaining on it as his stun wore off.

He’d learn the answer shortly.

As soon as he could move, his decision tree determined that combat was over. It gently urged him to get back to work on the dishes. Hirrus felt his hands start to go for the shattered plates within his reach, but he forced them to stop. He forced his body away from his decision tree’s orders. Every muscle tensed to try and stand and head back to the kitchen, but he pushed his will against them.

Instead he forced one hand to move towards Julissa.

And then the other.

And then his knees.

Fighting against his decision tree, he crawled across the floor to Julissa’s side. The life was already gone from her. Was before she hit the floor. There would be no saving her. No tearful last words.

But he could still say goodbye.

The sword strike had shattered her ribcage and almost bisected her. Her tunic was stained red over almost her entire torso, and while her face was turning pale already from the blood still leaving her, it was still clean and unbloodied. For a moment, he might have believed she was just ill.

That illusion ended when he put a hand to her cheek. His fingers were trembling with mingled grief and rage as the blood on his hands smeared over her skin. He quickly moved to close her eyes. The dull glassiness death had given them was too much for him to bear. He desperately needed her smile, but her lips were still now, and would remain so.

As he cradled her body, Hirrus' decision tree updated. He had to bury her. Putting her to rest was his new priority. He wanted to pick up his axe and charge to the back of the house to seek out the monster and give it a real fight, but the damage was done. It had killed Julissa. The creature would either find him while he was executing this new final duty and finish the job, or it was gone out the back door already, off to terrorize someone else.

And Julissa deserved a proper burial.

His would be a good death, if it was in service to her.

As if to punctuate that thought, he heard a shriek come through the wall.

Dahlia. The monster had gone next door.

His decision tree told him to make arrangements for Julissa’s burial. The scream had happened outside of his line of sight, even if he had been on duty as a guard. He had to ignore it. According to his decision tree, it hadn’t happened at all. His awareness of it was an aberration: a product of senses that were more sensitive than the system wanted.

Hirrus froze. He’d been following the commands of his decision tree since he’d been spawned, only pushing back against them in the most extreme of circumstances. He didn’t always agree with every decision it forced upon him, but it had defined his life for so long. It was literally his brain. What could he do? It wasn’t in his power to ignore it.

But he couldn’t. Dahlia was his friend. He and his wife had taken every step they could to help her. Hirrus helped her with groceries, while Julissa had taken time to help her with housework since Dahlia was no longer mobile enough to handle herself. Their decision trees had told them to engage in those tasks, but Hirrus truly believed in them. Helping her had been the right thing to do. Ignoring her scream felt like betraying her.

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Abandoning her.

And not just Dahlia, but Julissa as well. They supported her together, and now he was just going to listen to their shared good deed be eviscerated.

No.

He told himself - against all logic - that if his decision tree had told him not to pick up extra groceries for Dahlia today, that he would have done it anyway. And now that it was telling him to ignore her mortal peril, he refused to do so. It wasn’t right.

Hirrus carefully laid Julissa’s body back on the floor. His decision tree told him to pick her back up - her burial still needed to be attended to - but he didn’t. He couldn’t. There was a more pressing matter to attend to. He wouldn’t just let his wife’s killer run around unchecked because it was outside of his line of sight. No. He wouldn’t casually forget that that monster had burst into his home and destroyed his life with an absent-minded comment about it having been just the wind.

And he wouldn’t abandon Dahlia to her fate.

His decision tree was wrong. And he made his own decision to ignore its orders.

Hirrus took up his axe and rushed to the back of his home, following the path of destruction the monster had left in its wake only a few seconds earlier.

The trail was easy to follow. It hadn’t trashed the entire kitchen, but it hadn’t left through the back door. It had smashed its way out of the side wall, and then smashed through the side wall of Dahlia’s house, into her kitchen. Even from here, he could see claw marks through the wall next to the stove, where Dahlia must have been standing when it burst in on her.

Another scream came, and Hirrus' decision tree told him it was outside of his aggro range and therefore beyond his concern. He ignored the instruction to go back to Julissa’s corpse and dashed across the small gap between the two homes, rushing to the front room of Dahlia’s place.

As expected, the monster was there, slightly bloodied by the previous fight, but unfazed as it lumbered through the room. Dahlia was struggling to waddle away from the beast’s approach. Pregnant as she was, she had only a few seconds before the monster was on top of her. Hirrus wondered how she had stayed out of its reach for as long as she had.

He let out a wordless bellow of challenge and charged, hacking his axe into the beast’s back. The blow landed for one thousand two hundred and fourteen damage, drawing its attention.

“Hirrus?” Dahlia exclaimed, as shocked at his appearance as the monster was.

“Get out of here!” he barked at her. “Hide!”

The scaled beast whirled on him. It snapped at him with its giant maw, and while he was able to lean back and avoid that attack, the follow-up from the monster’s short sword ripped across his chest for one thousand eight hundred and thirty-two damage.

Dahlia started to waddle away, fleeing as fast as she could while heavy with child. It took her a moment to reach the stairs, and while the monster’s back was turned, she opened the crawl space beneath and climbed inside. For a moment, doubted that it would be enough to hide her, but then he remembered that it had walked away from him when he was in the middle of the room. All he had to do was keep it busy long enough that it would forget about her.

To that end, he hacked at the monster’s face with his axe. Its armored scales cracked and split under the strike, dealing twelve hundred and twenty-nine damage. The monster lashed out at him with blade and claws, striking him for eighteen hundred and twenty-three damage with the first, and twelve hundred and thirty-two with the second.

Hirrus' hit points were melting away. Despite the righteous anger that filled him as he faced down the beast that killed his wife, he knew this was a useless fight.

There would be no revenge.

All he was going to accomplish was saving Dahlia, and giving his own life to do it. That would have to be enough for him. No amount of anger would compensate for how utterly outmatched he was.

But he’d chosen his own fate. Despite his decision tree’s orders, he was here, protecting Dahlia, ready to die and follow Julissa to whatever came after death.

So, yes. He was going to die.

But it was a death of his own choosing.

The fight didn’t last long, in spite of Hirrus’ best attempts. It was a beast of brutal efficiency, and it outmatched Hirrus to a frankly embarrassing degree. Claws and sword whittled away at his health, and while he tried to give as good as he got, the monster was barely bloodied.

He managed to avoid being bitten again, but trading blows was a doomed venture.

Even as his hit points bled away - links of his chain armor scattering across the floor, along with drop after drop of his blood - he realized his revenge wasn’t to be had here even if he could overcome the monster. Despite the weapon and the brigandine, his wasn’t a thinking foe. It was a vicious beast.

Someone had unleashed it here, in a small town with a guard force entirely insufficient to deal with the threat it posed.

That was who deserved his ire: not the beast before him, but to whoever had unleashed it here.

The blade came around again, and Hirrus didn’t have anything left. Hard fighting for so long had worn him down. And as the final strike cut across his neck for seventeen hundred and ninety-eight damage, he was finally spent.

He had nothing left.

The monster was already stomping away - out the front door rather than towards Dahlia’s hiding spot - as he hit the ground. He felt the flood of his own blood - still hot - spreading out beneath him as he landed face-first in it. There was a crashing sound of Dahlia’s front door being bashed down, and then the smell of smoke.

But it was beyond his ability to respond. He was already gone.

Hirrus remembered the red smear his hand left across Julissa’s face.

He hoped wherever he was going, that she would be there waiting for him.