Lenny the honey badger scrapes his claws against each other, generating an unpleasant noise. Durand, not to be put down easily, grinds his knife against his whetstone. Cenvin sits on the side, wearing snowy glowing earmuffs on his head. A small tail wiggles from its top. He sighs and walks out of the penthouse for an escape from the ear-raping noise.

“In a party with two Sisyphuses,” Cenvin complains. Nyri gently jumps into her feline form onto the floor, landing gracefully like a feather. She slightly nods her head in ample understanding. “We’ve been sitting here for three unbelievably boring days. Diem tried to make it fun by giving us stupid fetch quests, but who likes fetch quests? They’re repetitive and boring.”

That’s the point! It’s used as a filler as my team tries to figure out the next scenario that your party will be undertaking. It’s your first mission as a complete team, so, you know, it needs to be memorable!

“Why are you revealing this? Sounds like you’ve finished preparing,” Cenvin asks suspiciously, his emotionless eyes staring at the ceiling like an idiot. “Ok, I thought you were at the ceiling. Where should I look when talking to you?”

I’m omnipresent!

Cenvin shrugs as he calls a Hyperslate to his floor. Unexpectedly, his sending stone given by Lucius begins vibrating violently in his pocket. He quickly pulls it out and with a curious Nyri jumping on his shoulder, reads the message inside his head.

“Assassinate…Kwirley, She. A…fighter? Has S.E.(some kind of disease)? Join, Currently… upper main. What is this?”

Durand bursts out of the penthouse with Lenny close behind, both finally eager for action. Durand waves his triangle-carved sending stone.

“Target! Tuiaton is trained and betrayed to S.V. In South Street. Did you get the same thing?”

Cenvin shakes his head and repeats his message to Durand. Lenny piques up.

“Perhaps you combine the two messages?

Durand snaps his fingers in enlightenment.

“Assassinate target: Kwirley Tuiaton. She is a trained fighter and has betrayed S.E. to join S.V.. Currently in upper South Main Street.”

“Let’s go already then!”

Cenvin pulls out his two shortswords. Durand’s gaze briefly lingers on it before rushing onto the Hyperslate that just came up, carrying a human street performer. His hands are stuck mid-yawn, and he stares at Nyri and then Lenny. Durand hurries into the Hyperslate with the rest of the party close behind. Cenvin clicks his teeth and the human steps onto the edge of the Hyperslate, confused and petrified.

At the bottom floor, Cenvin came out first with his hands being covered in ketchup. He wipes some of the red ketchup off his shortswords. Durand rolls his eyes. Lenny is shuddering with ecstasy and Nyri has turned into pure, glowing crimson.

“Add that to the kill count, Diem!” Cenvin proclaims loudly.

492 deaths so far into the campaign.

“There’s no way we get a happy ending. We’re the villains here,” Durand mutters in a crazed fervor. “Then who’s the protagonist? Who gets plot armor?”

A nearby brick falling from the ceiling above narrowly misses Lenny, who does not notice.

Pushing through the pedestrians at the upper portion of South Street, Lenny reports a brief description of Kwirley has been transmitted to him via his sending stone.

“Out of the way!” Cenvin says as he irritably shoves another average-looking citizen away. “Where is she?’

“There!”

Durand points at a nervous-looking figure. She looks like a wreck. Cenvin and Lenny charge towards her, easily drawing her notice. She yelps and dashes into an alleyway, behind her the party is in hot pursuit.

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

“We just want to talk!” Durand shouts behind her. She doesn’t stop.

“We don’t like Shadow’s Edge anyway, can we defect with you?”

“Yeah! The pay is nonexistent!”

She gives no notice and begins climbing up a concealed ladder, which will lead her to an entrance to a Skytower, where there will probably be the Skywatch waiting.

Nyri floats to the top ahead of her and attempts to knock her down by landing on her face, but Kwirley dodges it and throws a glass bottle at Nyri. It breaks on top of her and she flashes red once again, reeling from the mysterious liquid contained inside. Durand catches Nyri before she hits the bottom.

Using his claws, Lenny climbs up the wall. He grunts as he makes one last hurdle, but he is too late. Kwirley had run into the Skytower.

“Follow!” Cenvin yells furiously. Durand, however, seems a bit more hesitant.

“Stop! We don’t want any trouble with the Skywatch!”

Lenny halts and looks at the quarreling duo, “We’re going to lose her!”

Cenvin shoves Durand aside and dashes into the Skytower. Lenny follows. Durand runs around the spire instead, hoping to catch Kwirley exiting the building. Cenvin peers from a window and finds Durand.

“It’s no use! This Skytower’s connected to other towers via bridges. Come up! We sure need an extra hand, don’t you think?”

Durand nods. Solidifying air and using it as steps, he runs up to Cenvin’s level.

“She went up a Hyperslate, but it had a lot of people on it, so it’s rising slowly. We might be able to catch up if we use the stairs. Lenny had already started climbing,” Cenvin debriefs.

“That might work. Let’s go.”

“Oh, you’re going. I can just teleport,” Cenvin chuckles, then vanishes into a purple portal he opened up at his feet.

Huffing and groaning, Durand makes his way up the stairs as fast as possible. After a couple of minutes, he sees Lenny on top of him, waving to him.

“Brody! Cenvin caught him!”

“Name’s Durand,” Durand huffs. “And the target is a ‘her’.”

“Whatever, Come on!”

Cenvin has Kwirley on the floor. He had apparently knocked her to the ground with his shortsword hilt. They are on a bridge interconnecting two Skytowers, towering over the streets below. Cenvin leans against the short handrail and studies the walking people below.

“I think we should throw her off,” Lenny suggests. Durand stares at him in disbelief. “This is an assassination mission, after all. I believe this is the quickest and the most painless death. This is a mercy.”

“Yeah, but…” Durand looks at the terrified Kwirley. She shakes her head as if to beg for him to let her go. She shrieks as Cenvin plunges a shortsword into her leg.

“Does the manner in which we complete the mission matter to you, Durand, my friend?” Lenny states. “But taking someone’s life in a painful process has a certain charm to it. It fills me with dopamine.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Cenvin also says.

“Really, Durand? Feeling bad for an NPC?” Cenvin continues as Durand stands still at the head of the bridge. The wind blows their cloaks to their sides like waving flags. Durand looks at his longsword uncertainly and moves his eyes back to the now wheezing Kwirley.

“Just end her suffering, I guess,” Durand turns his back to them and mutters.

With Lenny’s help, Cenvin pushes Kwirley over the edge. She screams as she falls, finally cutting off abruptly after a few seconds. Durand is already walking down the staircase. Cenvin and Lenny follow, their hands now crimson with blood. Nyri, who had been observing quietly, shrinks again as she sends another small orb from her body out into the distance, flying towards that old man who’s been just out of sight. She then jumps off the bridge and floats down like a breeze. Below her, people form a circle around the smashed body of Kwirley. Her death is eventually concluded as a suicide. One of the Orions looks up.

Cenvin opens the door to their penthouse and goes to the washroom to clean his hands. Lenny, who has licked the blood off his claws, grabs Nyri’s cushion and takes a nap. Nyri, who is quite unimpressed, hops onto the couch with Durand.

Coming back, Cenvin is in a very bad mood.

“Remember how I said the pay is nonexistent? I’m not kidding. We should have negotiated a salary with Lucius. To be honest, we get paid nowhere enough for these kinds of quests.”

“Yeah, well, what are you going to do?” Durand mutters as he leans his head back and closes his eyes. “Right now, we take a short rest, get some stamina back, get food. We still have our starting money, and we can rely on that for now. We will talk to Lucius later.”

A single knock rings on the door. Durand opens his eyes.

“God, what now?”

Happy cliffhanger! This was where the real-life Dungeons and Dragons session ended, so I thought I might honor that. Forgive me! Haha! 493 deaths!