“The man we planted in Sanum has stopped releasing Irradiation.”

“Stopped releasing it? How? That shouldn’t be possible.”

“Is it? Do you not remember what Cariatel told us after we freed him? That Verilo can supposedly absorb Irradiation and purify it afterward.”

Three men sat around a poorly kept, small, wooden round table. The chairs they sat on creaked each time one of them so much as shifted their feet on the ground. The room they were in wasn’t much better than the table. It was made of stone and the smell of moldy water came from one of the two entrances to the small room.

A single candle-lit fire barely illuminated the room. It was just enough light for each of the three robed figures to see the outline of the other two.

“So? What should we do? Infect another with Cariatel?”

“Why don’t we just send Cariatel himself in?”

“Are you crazy? He hates us just as much as he hates Verilo.”

The three had been in charge of an operation. Their plan had been going smoothly until their unwitting operative stopped working. To have all of their hard work snuffed out in a second like that was irritating to each one. They wanted to get things back on track but were unsure of the best way to do that.

“I don’t know… I think dangling Verilo on a stick for him might work.”

“Re-Really?”

“Yea. What if we tell him that Verilo can be blamed for everything that happens when he is in the city?”

“Hmmm…”

“Let’s try it.”

“Alright then, who wants to tell him?”

While they had come to a conclusion on what to do, they now had another task that silenced the table. Each member looked at the other two expectantly. Not a single one wanted to go near the man. He was still regularly releasing Irradiation out of his body, and getting near to him would ultimately lead to getting Irradiation Sickness themselves.

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The soft sound of rushing water was the only thing that cut through the silence for minutes on end. The air was tense. The slightest movement could set the other two off.

One of the three shifted their foot ever so slightly.

A chair creaked.

“So, Carl, you’re the one that came up with the plan, I think you should do it.”

“Yea, Carl, you should do it.”

“Hey, no fair. If that’s what we're going by, Daniel, you should do it since you were the one that suggested we use Cariatel in the first place!”

And with that, an argument broke out between the three. Their voices raised and echoed throughout the corridors leading to the room. Down the one without water, sitting at the end behind an enclosure of bars, was Jack Cariatel.

A far cry from the man he once was. His face was disheveled. His clothes barely tatters. He had grown gaunt from a lack of meaningful food. Cheeks sunken and ribs visible beneath his skin. His extremities had become sticks. They were so thin, one might think that they would break from the slightest touch.

A web stretched across his skin. It was pure black. The telltale sign of Irradiation Sickness. But for Jack, it was something else. It was a sign that he was emitting Irradiation with no consequence to himself.

No one else could see the miasma rolling off of him. But Jack did. He saw it, he felt it, and he controlled it.

“Kill… Verilo…? Heh. Hah. Hah hah. HahahahahaHAHAHAHAHA!”

With a force mismatching his current body, Jack stood up. He felt the Miasma around him, which he had previously let roll freely, and collected it into a single point in his hand. When he closed his hand around it, a longsword made of the miasma appeared.

It was far lighter than an actual greatsword, useable in a single hand.

Two strikes. One high and one low.

Every bar in front of Jack fell to the ground.

“Huh? What was that?”

One of the voices down the hallway spoke up when they heard the sound of the bars clattering against the ground.

The sword slithered back into Jack’s body. The black veins disappeared.

Footsteps flew down the hallway as three robbed figures appeared. Jack was waiting patiently for them.

“I’ll do what you want. But first, I need to regain some muscle and weight. I’ll need to be in the best shape I can be to kill that little punk…”

The three robed figures gulped as they looked between each other.