The funeral was a short and painless and also very fast task. Tsuke had been alienated a lot from his elder brother, so he didn’t seem to be too sad. On the other hand, Tsuke was one of those guys who solved everything with themselves in isolation, so maybe he was internally crying even more than Emelie. Why she was crying was just not understandable for Willbur, except if you somehow counted >young people are stupid< as a reason. The dead guy had tried to rob her or at least played a part in her robbing and probably had wanted to kill and rape her too. And now she was crying for him. Willbur wondered how long she could hold up that good persona act of hers. Would she be killed by Cores fate before she finally got some reality sense or would she have an borderline traumatizing event that broke her and then finally be able to not give a damn about people who wanted to kill her? Willbur estimated a 50:50 probability based on his experience so far.

When the brother of Tsuke had been buried and all mourning and crying had been done, they prepared for traveling the next day. This time Emelie had a quest. Apparently while they had talked to the priest who had accompanied the small funeral, she had found out that the business she had in Lumia city couldn’t be resolved here. She needed someone higher ranked from the church for that. Core on the other hand had most of his errands done when Willbur had given him his Hellfire sword. Apparently his main reason to go to Lumia city had been just to see a big city, and get some decent equipment, of which the later one had been resolved, while Core didn’t feel like doing the first one anymore.

Willbur had got himself a two-handed sword, so he could fight properly if he needed to. The chase above the roofs had been fun, but it still felt like he would at several points of this journey need a little more of his skills to nudge the whole thing in the right direction he needed.

Tsuke was just eager to leave the city where his valued but not really loved brother had died.

After everything was said and done, it was just at noon the next day when they left Lumia city again.

As always Willbur kept mostly to himself during the travel and just watched how the dynamic between the three developed. As always, Core was just the good-hearted but strong-willed boy with good but totally unrealistic morals. Emelie seemed like she was shy and angsty, but on several occasions spoke up against Core, especially when he said something really stupid. When he accidently flirted with her she blushed and hit him or called him names. It was adorable enough Willbur wanted to puke.

Tsuke was obviously on some broken revenge quest against someone and used almost every occasion to foreshadow something dark from his past or tell Core in irony drenched phrases how much of an idiot he was. Not that Core got any of it. If he had been in Willburs team, Willbur would have just put him on the spot, killed the guy or whoever it was that Tsuke wanted to kill and then tell him to get his shit together and start doing something useful to society. Normally guys like Tsuke would be totals dumfolded that someone just had really listened to them, not been horrified by their epic revenge quest and just did whatever had to be done. You could use these guys real good, they normally survived a long time before some ricochet arrow finally killed them fast and unexpected. Some of them had even put two and two together and splitted early enough all by themselves and surrived, so WIllbur was pretty sure he liked Tsuke the most of the three teens.

However, Cores approach to Tsukes obvious struggle was just to be an idiot. That naturally would lead to some epic showdown between the two of them. That without a doubt would strengthen both of them enormously, but the price paid was the lives of a dozen innocent bystanders that Core wouldn’t even realize where there when he toppled over buildings in his fight for the soul of Tsuke.

In fact, Willbur had a feeling he should do something about this development. These kinds of conflicts normally took priority to epic teacher-student fights and he would hate to have to watch Tsuke go on a rampage just to resolve this whole issue.

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“Hey Tsuke!” he yelled from the back and the three of them turned around.

“You’re brooding the whole time now and told us you want to kill some guy. If that’s so important for you, why haven’t you just done it already?” Willbur confronted him. Tsuke seemed embarrassed and annoyed by the sudden interruption of their love-triangle dynamics, but he answered anyway.

“I was too weak.” He solemnly replied. Good answer. That happened to be almost always the reason why people you wanted to kill were still alive.

“Yeah no doubt. But what makes you think you can do it now?” Willbur taunted. He needed Tsuke to expose a little more of which guy exactly he wanted to kill, so Willbur could steer their adventure in that direction and do a little background detective work to force a fast showdown.

“I’m not… but… I will be soon.” Tsuke replied and touched his right eye, the one that was covered by dark hair. Willbur stopped walking abruptly.

“Tsuke, show me your right eye.” He demanded sternly.

“What… why would I…” Tsuke started to argue but Willbur would just not have any of it.

“Show me your right eye. Right. Now. Or I swear to god I will…” Willbur hesitated. He needed an appropriate threat for this situation. Killing and maming didn’t fit his image of a grumpy teacher with a heart of gold. God this was going to be lame.

“I will never ever trust you again in my life.” He explained. He wanted to disappear in the ground at that moment and only a lot of training and countless dramatic moments prevented him getting as red as a tomatoe. But as expected Core came to his rescue.

“Tsuke, Willbur is a really experienced adventurer. If something is wrong with your eye, he certainly has an idea how to fix it.” He reassured him. Tsuke still seemed hesitant, but in the end he put his hair back and showed the three of them his eye. It had a sickly yellowish shine and no iris and no pupil. It was just this. A yellow shine that seemed not all too bright. But Willbur stilled cursed internally.

That idiot had implanted a goddamn shard of despair in his goddamn eye. And he had used it not too long ago too.

----------------------------------------

“Okay we need to remove your eye.” Willbur declared, while he put his stuff down on the ground searching for some knifes he could use as a surgical tool.

“What?!” Tsuke exclaimed in unison with Core.

“That seems a little extreme to me?” Emelie also objected. Willbur sighted. This really wasn’t the right moment to hesitate, but he still needed to at least convince Core that this was for the best of everyone, especially Tsuke.

“Look what you implanted in your eye for whatever godforsaken reason will indeed make you strong Tsuke. But it will also drive you mad. Murder-hobo mad. And you can’t just undo what you did, at least not anymore. When you had implanted it first you could have put it out with a little help from a specialist. But the yellow shine means you used it. When exactly was that?” Willbur explained while he started a little fire to disinfect the knife he had deemed usable.

“W… when I fought against Core yesterday.” Tsuke admitted.

“So that means we got till this evening to cut your eye out. You will have only one eye left, but if we wait any longer, the shard will bond with you. And it can only go downward from there on, trust me.” And Willbur absolutely could not have that. He chided himself for not earlier getting a look at the obviously hidden eye of Tsuke. But he had been too busy to set the whole fourth companion thing up. The problem was that a shard of despair really was a nasty little fucker. The moment someone tried to destroy it by killing the host, the shard would skip over to the next stronger host in proximity, and that meant normally the strongest member of the opposing team. However in this special case it would mean that it would always be him who would be the next host regardless if he was the one to finish Tszuke off or not.

The name of this thing was not some overdramatic naming sense. When he first had encountered it, it had taken out teams after teams of heroes. Always bouncing to the stronger one. He had to sacrifice a good friend at the time to get rid of that thing. Unfortunately that wasn’t an option anymore. He had no friends left to begin with and also non that fit the criteria of being slightly stronger than him, but not unbeatable with a bit of effort and guilt of said friend.

All three teenager stared at Willbur while he had prepared the knife and a disinfect solution as well as some clean bandages with methodical routine of a well known butcher. Or phsysician. Whatever.

“So are we gonna cut out your eye or what?” Willbur asked impatiently.