“You already understand it,” said Sadie, pushing her sweaty hair out of her face. “I don’t think there are any other layers to it.”

Elijah shook his head, then jabbed the fire with a stick. Sadie was not the person he would have normally chosen for esoteric discussions on the relationship between life and death, but she’d been the first to complete her cultivation, progressing to the Stone Body stage. As the others were still otherwise engaged, she was the only person available for conversation.

“I mean, I know that death is part of life and vice versa,” he said. “But I feel like there has to be a deeper meaning there.”

“Why?”

Elijah shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Were you expecting to get some sort of reward if you thought about it hard enough? Like, a skill or some extra attributes?” she asked.

“No,” Elijah lied. In truth, he had expected just that. He’d gotten so accustomed to the system quantifying every step forward that he’d begun to expect it from every situation. And the fact that his experiences in the crypt hadn’t been rewarded by the system was more than a little disconcerting. Still, even if it never came, he felt that the subject deserved contemplation.

“Sure,” she said, looking at her glistening hand. “Ugh. I’m so gross.”

“I could use Healing Rain so you can take a shower,” Elijah suggested. She narrowed her eyes, and he held up his hands, “Not like that. The area of effect is pretty big now. I can summon it here, and you can go over there or something. And when the spell ends, the water disappears. It’s how I shower when I don’t have any other options.”

“I don’t have any soap.”

Elijah held up a finger, then dug into his Ghoul-Hide Satchel. When he withdrew his hand, he was clutching a square of his homemade soap. “Here,” he said, tossing it to Sadie. She caught it. “That’s the best soap you’ll ever use. Homemade and naturally sourced.”

She gave it a sniff, and her expression changed. Quietly, she said, “It smells like you.”

“Huh?”

“Nothing,” was her quick reply. She stood and scurried away, disappearing behind a large boulder. A minute or so later, she asked him to use his spell, and Elijah complied.

Sighing, he turned his attention away from that whole situation. Ignoring some of the interesting things he felt via One with Nature, he pulled a crystalline leaf from his satchel. The skeletal hand had rotted away the day before, crumbling to dust and drifting away on the breeze.

For a moment, Elijah studied the guide. So far, he’d resisted looking inside, lest he become distracted from his meditation on life and death. However, now that he’d exhausted that train of thought, he had no more excuses for delay. So, he extended a thread of ethera into the guide.

Lament of the Fallen

I fear my time is short. Soon, the tyrant will find my sanctuary and discover my betrayal. When he does, he will surely exterminate me alongside my entire family and anyone foolish enough to call me a friend.

I knew it was coming. I saw it, just as I saw the ruin Yloa will bring to Ka’arath. He has already enslaved the ta’alaki for the impurity of their bloodline. Those who managed to escape his grasp have fled to the ends of the world. Iko, the archmage, remains entrenched within his tower. The necromancer Lordan has her army of undead to protect her. The Druids have already fallen, and the Engineer is limited by his insanity. I am the only one left with the power to prevent what is coming.

To that end, I have forged a Bane weapon specifically created to counter Yloa’s abilities. Without it, his invincibility will remain unquestioned. He is the Lightning Emperor, a genius unequaled. He will transcend soon, at which point even the Bane weapon will lose its efficacy. I pray to the Nine that our heroes will use it before he progresses out of our reach.

For security, the weapon has been broken into three pieces. If this…

That was where it ended.

“Are you okay?” asked Sadie, stepping out from behind the boulder with a towel around her head. Otherwise, she wore a thick sweatshirt emblazoned with the Harvard logo on the chest and a pair of worn blue jeans. The whole ensemble looked entirely out of place, considering that Elijah could count on one hand the number of times he’d seen the woman without her armor.

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And he couldn’t deny that he liked what he saw. She wasn’t as statuesque as someone like Delilah. In fact, she looked almost petite, especially in the oversized sweatshirt swallowing most of her torso. But he’d have had to be blind not to recognize her beauty.

He swallowed and looked away. Then, he said, “Uh…yeah. I’m fine.”

She sat across from him, then held her hands close to the fire. “That spell is very useful, but I wish the water was warmer,” she said.

“I’ll see what I can do on the next evolution,” he said, regaining some of his composure.

“So, do you want to talk about whatever put that expression on your face? You looked like you were about to throw that guide into the fire,” she remarked.

Elijah sighed. Then, he told her what he’d read, even letting her take a look herself. She saw exactly the same thing, and when she revealed as much, Elijah asked, “You don’t think it’s important?”

“No – there’s a lot of good information there,” she answered. “I’d be willing to bet that we’ll have to deal with this archmage and necromancer in future challenges. That might’ve been the reason the system put that crypt there in the first place. We were lucky that you’re the one who found it. If it would have been Dat, he never would have survived.”

“Really? He’s pretty strong.”

“Of course, he also wouldn’t have kept going, either. You really need to learn some lessons in self-preservation. You can’t just bull through every obstacle,” she went on.

“You sound like you’re worried about my well-being,” he said with a slight smile.

“I’m only concerned with keeping you alive long enough to hold up your end of our agreement,” Sadie said. “We need you in Hong Kong.”

“Is that the only reason you want me to survive?”

She shrugged. “It’s the most important one.”

Elijah sighed, then leaned back. As he did, he shoved the guide back into his satchel and said, “I don’t get you, Sadie. I mean, I know you hated me the second you saw me. But since then, I’ve done nothing but help you. And what have I gotten for my trouble? Just more distrust, and that’s labeling it generously.”

“Is that the only reason you help people? For adoration? So they will like you?”

“I help people because it’s the right thing to do.”

“Then what does my opinion of you matter?” she asked.

Elijah started to answer, but then thought better of it. “You wouldn’t understand,” he said. Then, he pulled another item from his satchel. The skeletal hand had turned to dust, but it had been wearing the ring Elijah now held between his thumb and forefinger. The ring itself was made of some unidentifiable metal. He would have labeled it as silver, but for the red streaks marring its surface. There was a single ruby – barely bigger than a pencil eraser – set into the ring. Most importantly, Elijah could feel that it was a high-grade piece of equipment.

“You’re not really thinking of putting that on, are you?”

Elijah shook his head. He’d already endured a lecture from Atticus about using unidentified equipment, and he knew the dangers well enough to avoid it. Still, he couldn’t help but wonder what it did. With as much ethera he felt wafting off of it, there was every chance that it was even more valuable than the guide he’d taken.

“I know better than that.”

“But you have to admit that you have a habit of being a little reckless,” she pointed out.

“Not this time.”

With that, the short conversation lapsed into an uncomfortable silence that didn’t end until Elijah got up and started to walk away. Being around Sadie always left him feeling like he was somehow not good enough, as if her every glance was judging him. And he was tired of it.

“Wait.”

Elijah turned to face her. “What?”

“I’m…I’m sorry, okay?” she said. “I don’t mean to be like this, you know. I don’t want to be. I’m trying to do better, but this…this ability just won’t stop. And that demon…he just made it all worse.”

“The ability is an excuse, Sadie. You said it yourself that you were judgemental before any of this even happened. Maybe not to the same extent, but still, you can’t just hide behind some ability you can’t control.”

“You don’t know what it’s like. I –”

“I know more than you think. Besides, if the problem is that you can’t control that ability, then maybe you should be working on that. You’re the one in charge, not the spell, so stop hiding behind it.”

With that, Elijah left the campsite, and as soon as he’d dipped out of line of sight, he embraced Shape of Venom. Once the transformation completed, he used Guise of the Unseen and returned to the area where he’d found the tomb. However, even though he knew he was in the right place – with his Jade Mind, that was never in question – there was no tomb to be found.

Elijah continued to circle until, finally, he gave up on the quest. Clearly, there was some system interference at play. Given that, continuing the search would be pointless. So, for a while, he just wandered aimlessly through the forest. There were plenty of beasts about, but even if he hadn’t been cloaked in Guise of the Unseen, they would have left him alone. Such was the power of being a Druid.

Eventually, the sun began to dip below the horizon, and he decided it was time to return to the campsite. When he arrived, he found that Sadie hadn’t moved. Instead, she simply stared at the fire, which had burned down to embers. Elijah decided to see to that, gathering some fallen branches before joining her.

As he squatted by the fire and fed the branches to the flames, Sadie finally spoke up. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“It’s fine. I shouldn’t have snapped at you like that.”

“No. It’s not fine. I keep saying that I’m going to get a handle on Sense of Sin, but every day, I make an excuse for why I can’t. I’m too busy. I have other things that need to be done. I’ll do it when the Trial is over. But I think the reality is that I find comfort in the fact that it tells me what I want to hear,” she explained. Then, she turned to look at Elijah. “I’ve never thought much of people, you know.”

“I can sympathize. People can suck. Yours truly excluded, of course. I’m demonstrably awesome. Everyone says so.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“What?”

“Undercut every serious conversation with an attempt at humor. There’s something to be said for earnestness.”

“So I’ve been told. I’ve also been told that categorizing my comments as humor is…generous.”

She smiled. “I wasn’t going to say that,” she said, looking away.

“But you were thinking it. It’s okay. I’ve always been a bit odd. I think I convinced myself that I was the cool kind of weird. All that time alone disabused me of that notion,” he said. “I’m awkward and cheesy, but I’m not the monster you want to think I am.”

“I know. And I will work on Sense of Sin. I promise I’ll get better.”

Elijah gave her a tight smile. “That’s all any of us can do, right?”

In truth, he’d seen no evidence that Sadie was capable of adjusting her mindset. She was one of the most rigid people he’d ever met, which meant that the only chance of her getting past Sense of Sin was probably if she somehow managed to evolve the ability. And he knew just how rare those chances were.

But he hoped, for her sake, she managed to make good on her promise.