Luc was fed up with Matthias’ sleep talking. After he had sent Cloud back into the pendant, the horses had slowed their pace to a trot. It was a preferred pace, as the rocking and shaking combined with the inherent discomfort of Luc’s stomach had been close to driving him to vomit. Just as he was beginning to feel a little bit better, Matthias began whispering things about that person named Erie. Erie this, Erie that – after a few minutes of the chatter, Luc was already fed up with the name.

“Erie…” whispered Matthias. “You can’t follow - ”

The wheels of the wagon hit a large rut in the road, jolting the entire wagon up and down. After the wagon balanced itself out, Luc realized that Matthias’ sleep talking had finally stopped. Sighing with relief, Luc leaned back against the bars of the cage.

A hand popped out from behind the bars of the cage and pressed a sharp stone to his throat.

“I should’ve known you wouldn’t die in that pit.”

Matthias.

“Is this how you treat the person who saved you?” said Luc, trying to move away from the rock.

“Saved me?” said Matthias, laughing. “Someone like you doesn’t have the guts to save anyone.”

“Then what am I doing right now, peasant?” spat Luc.

“I don’t know,” said Matthias. “Why don’t you tell me?”

Luc remained silent. I knew this was going to happen! This is what I get for following other people’s orders.

“Well?” said Matthias, driving the sharp edge of the rock deeper into Luc’s skin. “You going to talk or not?”

“Right after I managed to survive getting stabbed in the back,” said Luc, shooting daggers with his voice. “Jad and his goons smashed me over the head. They dragged me back to the inn and tried to cut my hand off. Luckily for you and me, Val saved me and - ”

“Who?” said Matthias, voice suddenly quiet. The rock jerked upwards, coming dangerously close to penetrating Luc’s flesh.

“Holy mother of all gods!” shouted Luc, trying to pull free. Unfortunately, Matthias’ other hand gripped him by his hair, keeping his head still. “Val, the innkeeper!”

There was a moment of silence.

“Turn the wagon back,” said Matthias, voice intense and slightly wavering.

“What?” said Luc. “Are you out of your mind? After all I did to - ”

“Turn it back now,” said Matthias. “You know I’d kill you in a heartbeat if I wanted to.”

“Okay, okay!” said Luc, holding up his hands. “I’ll turn it around! I just can’t do that when you’ve got a rock shoved into the side of my neck!”

Matthias thought for a second. Then he relaxed his grip.

As soon as Luc felt the rock easing away from his throat, he tore away from Matthias, hurtling off the side of the wagon. He tumbled onto the dirt path, landing in a heap on the ground. Groaning, he untangled his limbs and glanced up. The horses had stopped, and Matthias stared out from between the bars of the cage, face livid.

“Ha!” said Luc. “You think you can force me to do anything you say? In your dreams, peasant! Have fun rotting to death in that cage!”

With that, Luc turned away from the wagon and began walking down the path away from Olfar as quickly as possible. He had been stuck here for far too long. I need to get back home and let my father know I’m okay.

“Are you okay if he dies too?” said Matthias, stopping Luc in his tracks.

Luc looked over his shoulder and found Matthias holding the sharp rock to Dante’s throat. Amidst the commotion Dante had woken, and his face was expressionless as he surveyed the scene.

“Kill him!” said Luc. “I don’t give a lick about what happens to either of you!”

Don’t do it don’t do it don’t do it…

“Gladly,” said Matthias, driving the rock towards Dante’s throat.

Before the rock made contact with him, Dante caught Matthias’ arm with a hand. With a simple twist of his wrist, Dante bent Matthias’ arm behind his back, forcing him into a situation where if he continued to move, his shoulder would leave its socket.

“Serves you right!” shouted Luc. “That’s what you get for - ”

“Boy,” said Dante, voice firm. “Turn the wagon back.”

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There was a moment of silence.

“What?” said Luc, incredulous. “Have you lost your mind as well?”

“From what I understand, Matthias has made a promise,” said Dante, looking Luc in the eye. “And the Way says that once a promise is made, it must be kept.”

“You’re making no sense,” said Luc. “No offense here, but if we go back now, we’re all going to - ”

““Do not be afraid,” said Dante, smiling. “I will not let you die. I promise.”

The exact same words he had spoken in the pit. Luc lowered his head and stared at his feet. As a coward, it was his duty to get out of these types of situations. There had to be a way out!

“I have the key to the cage,” said Luc, looking up. “If Matthias wants to go back, why doesn’t he go back himself?”

“Sounds good to me!” said Matthias. “I’d be happy to be rid of you buggers!”

“Matthias is in no condition to walk,” said Dante. “And neither am I. We are stuck in the middle of nowhere with no food and no water. If we split up, it is likely that those without the wagon may perish.”

Luc looked away to avoid Dante’s eyes.

“You have the key, boy,” said Dante, releasing Matthias. With a huff, Matthias staggered backwards and sat on the opposite side of the wagon. “At the end of the day, it is always the Lord who makes the final decision.”

Luc winced. Under Dante’s words, he could hear clearly hear the hidden question: Can you be the Lord I thought you were? If it had been anyone else, Luc would’ve turned away without hesitation. But hearing it from Dante – the man who could lead a group of strangers through an unknown tomb, the man who could fight off a warg almost single-handedly, the man that Luc, deep down, was beginning to respect almost as much as his own father – didn’t give him much of a choice.

“I’ll turn the wagon back,” said Luc. “As long as you tell me what type of promise you have to keep.”

There was a pause. Dante turned to Matthias, who was slumped against the bars, eyes half shut. After a few moments, Matthias raised his head to look at the sky. When he spoke, his voice didn’t have the edge it usually did. Instead, it was calm and quiet, not much louder than a whisper.

“I’m going to take my little sister Valerie home.”

Val. Erie. At last it made sense. Luc didn’t know what their story was, but he didn’t care. He knew the feeling of not being able to find who he was looking for all too well. Taking a deep breath, Luc headed to the wagon once more.

“Let’s go back.”

-

Luc, Dante, and Matthias snuck behind the remaining buildings of the small town, looping around to where the Happy Farmer Inn was supposed to be. Jad’s rage had been more fearsome than Luc had expected. Half of the buildings in town had been burned down to their foundations. Fire blazed wherever there was wood, and smoke clouded the evening sky. Screams of men, women, and children could be heard from every direction, and panicked people fled from the town.

Glancing over his shoulder, Luc watched Dante and Matthias. After seeing the burning mess that Olfar had been reduced to, they had decided that it would be safer to move without the wagon. Unfortunately, what Dante had said was true – his and Matthias’ injuries forced them to move at a pace Luc likened to an elderly man on the brink of death.

I don’t know how Dante can keep his promise to keep me alive if he can only move like this, thought Luc. He had been tempted to stay behind with the wagon, but he reckoned that staying near Dante was the safest place for him to be. The only problem was that Dante insisted on helping Matthias ‘keep his promise’. Thus, the three of them journeyed together towards the inn.

“It’s just around the corner,” Luc whispered to Dante and Matthias.

They were crouched behind the remains of a wall belonging to the shop next to the inn. Thankfully, Jad’s rage had spared much of the wooden wall, giving them a place to hide. Slowly, Luc peered around the corner of the wall.

The Happy Farmer Inn was gone.

Where the inn used to be was black, charred ground. Luc could make out remnants of wooden chairs and tables scattered about. Ashes and smoke clouded the air, and small fires burned where the wooden walls used to be. The smell of smoke was strongest in this area, making Luc pinch his nose shut. Blinking to clear the irritation tears that were forming in his eyes, he could make out several figures within the smoke.

There was a flash of purple light and a figure flew out of the cloud of smoke, crashing into the ground about twenty feet away from where Luc was hidden.

Sheel?

Sheel choked out blood, rolling onto his hands and knees. Despite his Bloodline [Body of Stone], Sheel’s skin was cracked and bloody. That meant that whatever was fighting him was strong enough to break through stone.

“Is that it?” said a voice, smooth and lilting.

Out of the smoke walked a tall, slender man. He wore a hoodless white cloak that despite the debris around him, seemed untouched by dirt. His head seemed odd, looking as if it were split in two. The left side of his face was covered in a white mask, and the hair on that side was short and gray. The right side of his face was the normal face of a man with purple hair falling to his shoulders. A sword was strapped on his back, but it remained sheathed.

“You said the skin of your man is as hard as rock?” asked the stranger, glancing down to the side. Following his gaze, Luc’s eyes widened as he saw Jad hunched down near the remnants of the bar. The old man stood in front of Val, whose face was twisted with pain from a wooden beam pinning her leg against the ground.

Jad did not reply to the stranger, simply returning a glare.

The stranger shrugged and walked towards Sheel. A wide smile spread across the right side of his face. “I heard this was your mission to get promoted to one of the Emperor’s royal guards!”

Sheel staggered to his feet, raising his hands in front of his face.

“I just have on question for you,” said the man, raising a finger.

Luc blinked once and the man was gone. The next instant, the stranger materialized behind Sheel, grabbing the back of his head with a gloved hand. Before Sheel could move a muscle, what looked like purple lightning erupted from the stranger’s hand, engulfing Sheel’s head. There was a loud crackle and then an explosion of gore, blood and brains splattering the ground. When it was over, there was only empty space where Sheel’s head used to be.

“Did you really think it was that easy?” said the stranger, smile still plastered on his face. Reaching up, he combed his purple hair back from his face. As he did so, Luc noticed something about his white gloves, mask, and cloak.

There was still not a speck of blood or dirt on his body.

As Luc stared on, he realized that he could not move an inch. His legs trembled underneath him and his chest rose and fell with rapid breaths, but he could not even lift a finger. Watching the purple haired man, who smiled so gleefully in the ruins of the Happy Farmer Inn, Luc realized that the huge spider, the cave goblins, the warg – they were nothing. Even the spirit vessels, who had claimed Maho’s life - they were nothing.

This man was the real monster.