“Are you… alright, Allen?” Christopher asked from a seated position on his mat. “You were muttering in your sleep… you don’t look so good.”

Allen huffed and wiped the sleep from his eyes before turning back to the three who were awake. “Yeah, it was just a bad dream,” he replied. “I haven’t really slept in a few years because of high endurance, so I’m a little rusty.”

The elf snorted and shook his head. Christopher just grunted and fell back onto his mat as well.

Amelia narrowed her eyes at the Assassin. This was the second time she had seen him like this. “Is this really something I should get myself involved in?” she asked herself, watching Allen wipe his eyes and grimace to himself. “Normally I’d avoid someone like him at all costs. I still remember our little conversation in that cave… but waiting for him to crack will just cause more problems later.” She sucked in a silent breath and opened her mouth to speak, but Allen stood up before she could say anything.

“Well, I’m not going back to sleep, just join me in the pit when you’re all ready,” he said before pulling a bread roll out of his inventory and taking a bite. He walked off in the direction of the colosseum after getting a grunt of acknowledgment from Christopher and the elf.

Amelia let out a sigh and watched Allen walk away, bread and drink in hand. Her eyes followed him for a moment until she caught the elf giving her a look from his mat. She glanced over and cocked an eyebrow.

“What?” she asked in a neutral tone. The elf scared her in a wild-animal sort of way. He was much more like what she expected an infamous assassin to look like. She had heard the name “Dark Star” before in hushed conversation amongst various nobles, but never expected to just end up sitting across from him.

“You seem concerned,” the ruthless assassin said, his northern elvish accent well hidden.

Amelia snorted softly and considered what to say. The innocent girl persona had already gone out the window a few days ago. Though in retrospect, there hadn’t really been a point in putting on an act to begin with, she had just acted on instinct around strangers. After a few moments Amelia decided to simply just say what she wanted to say and hold nothing back.

“The five of us have something to do,” she began, returning the elf’s look. “It’s the only reason we’re banded together like this. I’m only concerned that Allen will fall through and damn the rest of us. I can deal with him being a psychopath well enough, but an unstable on top of that is an unnecessary risk.”

Christopher huffed to himself and rolled back around to face the two. “I suppose that’s a fair point, on its own. Though I fail to see how a simple nightmare makes him so unstable, as you put it.”

Amelia didn’t miss the slight venom in the old man’s voice. She chose not to answer.

“Well, you’re a prickly one,” he replied with a grunt of muted laughter. That laughter quickly died out before he turned back to Amelia with that piercing glare of his. “Regardless, I can say with certainty that I have known Jerr, or Allen, for longer than you have. He is my senior within the Spades by two years, yet I still do not know the full extent of what he has experienced at the hands of Terminus, or before then. He may be unstable by conventional standards, but in our line of work a certain level of insanity is to be expected and is hardly a sign of unreliability.”

“’So I should be happy with what I’ve got,’ is what you’re saying?” Amelia said with a smirk.

The elf hissed, “I am saying that you should at least make a token effort to be understanding. I am certain that Allen will not fail you in whatever quest you are on, nor is he evil. Indeed, in some places he is known as a villain, but in many others he is a hero.”

“And what is he to you, Shoam?” Amelia asked, frowning and silently hoping she had gotten the pronunciation of the elf’s name right.

The elf sighed and turned away, signaling the end to their conversation. “A friend,” he said.

Amelia laid back down on her mat and looked up at the unchanging sky. “The only way to make people’s lives better is by removing those who make their lives worse.” Allen’s words echoed in her thoughts, leaving her with a bitter taste in her mouth. She wondered what could have possibly made Allen the way he was. Those words he had spoken went directly against her teachings at the Order. She couldn’t understand, or maybe she didn’t want to know.

“Fear is the root of all evil; fear of the unknown, fear of the self, fear of failure, fear of the future, and fear of pain. I must not fear pain, I must deliver my patients from that fear. I am a healer, I carry no blade, yet I can still kill the pain.”

The Order’s scriptures floated through her mind, and with a sigh Amelia shuffled to her feet. The others, if they were awake, weren’t paying her any attention. Without making a sound, she walked off in the direction of the colosseum. It wasn’t far, not that there was any way for her to get lost in the strange dungeon.

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It didn’t take her long to find him. Allen was just sitting with his back against the large gate that lead into the pit, munching on some jerky. It was obvious that he had noticed her approaching but he didn’t look up until she had stopped a few paces away.

“Sulking,” Amelia thought. “What’s the matter with you?” she asked after a moment.

Allen snorted. “You mean, like, in general or…?”

“Maybe that wasn’t the best approach.” Amelia hummed a non-committal tone and dropped herself onto the ground on the opposite end of the gate from Allen. “Sure, we can start there if you like,” she said, lips curling into a slight grin.

Allen chugged the remainder of whatever he was drinking. It didn’t smell alcoholic, but even her vitality-enhanced senses only went so far. The assassin let out a sigh and appeared to consider his words for a moment. “You’re still worried I’m going to fuck us all over somehow and you won’t get your chance to go home,” he said, phrasing the line as a statement rather than a question.

Amelia took a deep breath rather than react to his passive aggression, if that’s what it was. “Of course I am. I’ve only known you for a few days, but your first impressions don’t inspire confidence. You scare me Allen. I don’t know if you even want to get out of this world or if you’re content to live the rest of your life here. As I said before, I wont play along with your stupid games, none of this is funny.”

Allen grunted.

“I don’t know what your problem is,” Amelia continued, gesturing at Allen, “but it better not become my problem too.”

Allen was silent for a few beats. Amelia considered the fact that he hadn’t immediately responded with a sarcastic quip to be a good sign. Though at the back of her mind, she wondered if she was being to harsh. Maybe Allen really had some sort of trauma, but at the same time, he had been the one who said he didn’t want to talk about it.

“You don’t need to worry about that,” Allen began quietly. “I might have thrown away most of my morals and convictions over the years, and I’m rarely an honest person, but I’ve never once abandoned a mission. If our mission is to get through whatever bullshit Andy has in store for us, then I won’t let you down. I can promise that much, at least.”

Amelia folded her arms and glanced over at Allen. He wasn’t smiling like a moron or grinning like a psychopath, he was just sitting there, snacking in silence. It could always be a façade, and maybe she would never know, but something seemed to convince her that the Allen sitting with her then was the real Allen.

“For the record,” Allen began again, “the nightmares are nothing new. I’ve just been on vacation for too long, I guess,” he said, taking another bite of jerky. He was quiet for another few seconds or so, before he finished his snack and sighed. “I don’t really think any of this is funny, Amelia. I only laugh so I can hold on to whatever’s left of my sanity. This world has been anything but what I was promised in novels and tv shows. It’s truly a purgatory worse than hell, but with evil and depravity as the rule, tragedy becomes comedy. Yet, I know you can’t say that you don’t have anything here. For me, it’s the spades, I know you must have made something in a decade.”

“I had almost given up on ever seeing my family again,” Amelia said, “If I can say goodbye to everything I knew from my real life, then I know I can say goodbye to everything from this one as well.”

“Point taken,” Allen said.

Amelia hummed, she felt satisfied that Allen could at least be trusted for the time being. She could even tolerate his less serious personality if it helped him relieve stress.

The two sat in silence for a few minutes. Amelia had chosen to have breakfast herself at some point and took a bowl of still-steaming porridge out of her inventory. It wasn’t the best thing she had gotten from Hillford, but that was saved for special occasions.

After a while, she decided she was actually more interested in Allen’s background. Maybe she wanted to know how he had turned out so cynical, or maybe she just wanted to break the awkward silence. Either way, Amelia took a deep breath and made an effort to think of something to say.

“You mentioned Terminus before,” Amelia said, “Are they related to… this?” she asked, gesturing vaguely at Allen.

The assassin let a breath escape him as he put down his drink. “Terminus is a demon worshipping apocalypse cult and it’s leaders are monsters, in both a literal and figurative sense. They are, without a doubt, the greatest evil this world has to offer. The only other group that comes close is Ve’akrall, meaning ‘into flesh’ in some bygone language. They are a healing order that farms human infants, raises them to the age of three, then slaughters them like cattle to make a serum that grants immortality. That is, true immortality, where dying is physically impossible so long as you’re regularly taking doses of the serum.”

Amelia sat still, not sure what she was hearing, or if she wanted to hear any more.

“Terminus is easily twice as bad as Ve’akrall. They’ve been trying to summon the ninth circle demon of reaping, Gurthalotep, so it can destroy and remake the world with them as its immortal vassals. Last I’ve checked, they’ve been experimenting with cloning to see if they can produce enough sacrifices to summon just a fifth circle demon. We can only hope they’re still trying. I know all of this because I was captured and held prisoner there for nearly a year. After surviving their treatments, they were impressed enough to grant me the rank of acolyte. All I thought about while committing atrocities to keep myself alive was how I would escape. A part of me died with Terminus, even when I was eventually freed by the Spades.” Allen seemed to force himself to stop talking and took another sip from his bottle.

Amelia swallowed a mouthful of porridge. “I see,” she thought to herself, unable to come up with anything to say. “I should have asked first. Even locked up in Lord Eustace’s mansion, I was never tortured.”

Allen sighed. “So, to answer your question, yes, almost everything has to do with Terminus.”

“Right, nothing new,” Amelia replied, almost as a whisper.

Allen chuckled dryly. “Same as it ever was,” he said and paused. “So do I get to interrogate you too now?” he asked.

Amelia rolled her eyes and looked over at Allen, waiting for him to say something stupid. “Whatever, fine.”

Allen cleared his throat and smiled innocently, “I was just wondering if your tits got any bigger when you were older.”