Lumbering through the trees, the large shape of the monster circles around Durand and Cenvin. Nyri, who is clinging on Durand’s shoulders, doesn’t seem remotely fazed. The adventurers can just barely make out the monster’s silhouette under the moonlit sky and the density of the trees. Durand is crossing his fingers, silently whispering, plot armor plot armor plot armor plot armor plot armor plot armor plot armor…

“ENOUGH!”

Cenvin loads his crossbow and shoots it at the monster. The bolt flies true and finds its mark. Cenvin cheers as the shape dissipates into a harmless mist like a mirage. Trodding ahead of him, Durand and Nyri curiously investigate the creature’s remains, a fistful of solid mist. It feels like water but yet solid, despite that it isn’t cold like ice. Gathering the mist into a small pouch, Durand sits down on a boulder with a sigh. He waves the pouch casually at Cenvin.

“Free money. We’ll sell it at the next town we see, or in Italica City.”

“Mhm,” Cenvin replies as he gathers some sticks in the dirt and creates a small campfire. Soon, fire erupts from the bunch, its introverted cackling magnified ten times by the quiet forest.

“You know, now that we have the time to talk about it for once,” Durand prompts, “I just want to clarify it. It was wholly my fault for Brett. I shouldn’t have let him stay outside.”

“Told ya,” Cenvin replies, “but you know?” He places his hand on Durand’s shoulder. “There was nothing you could've done about it. We were fighting freaky-ass amalgamations, getting into stuff we probably shouldn’t have gotten into, but who cares? We gon’ go to Italica City, heal Brett, everything’s gonna be rosy. ‘K?”

Nyri places her glowing paw on Durand's leg and purrs gently. Suddenly, her ears pike up. She dissolves into a veil of luminescent mist and charges into the deep forest. Durand and Cenvin look at her subsiding trail, and Durand pulls out a whetstone and his dagger. Cenvin watches as he works on his knife tirelessly.

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“Surely you have a knife that isn’t dull enough for you to have to whet, this early into the campaign?”

“Oh, no, this isn’t a weapon of mine. It’s a trinket, a part of my backstory,” Durand replies. “Canonically, Durand-”

“Yeah yeah, we don’t need to hear your backstory again.”

Aw, but I was genuinely kind of invested!

“Diem, no one asked you to chip in.”

Out of boredom, Cenvin draws a portal and looks into his pocket dimension, searching for Brett, frozen in time, his ginger hair more fiery-red than ever. Cenvin furrows his eyebrows in thought. In the distant woods, beams of light occasionally shoot up into the sky as if a light show is taking place. Eventually, it stops and re-appears at another wildly different location, repeating the same performance.

“I’m going to be real with you and Diem,” Cenvin pipes up, erasing the portal. “I don’t think I can make it to Italica City.”

“Why is that?”

Why is that?

“Almost every session, I’ve gotten into a coma once. I swear it’s getting worse. If I wasn’t in a coma back at Silvergate, maybe I could have gotten to Brett in time and saved him. Damn! It’s my fault!”

“Well, you can’t control when you fall into a coma, can you? Blame destiny. Blame the higher power.”

Hey!

“Damn!” Cenvin repeats.

“But anyways, Brett’s your responsibility right now,” Durand shrugs. He blinks right in front of Cenvin, holding his special dagger to his throat.

“And you better be goddamn responsible for your responsibility.”

Nyri peeks out from behind a bush, flashes red to the murderous smell in the air, and flies into the forest.

Durand lets go of the terrified Cenvin and begins spreading his blanket. Cenvin mechanically copies him, nerves still shocked.

A breeze carries a glimmering haze back to the makeshift camp. They form together into Nyri, who buries an inflated corpse of a newly killed bunny. She cautiously steals a peek at the adventurers, fast asleep. Amongst the forest, more freshly hunted corpses lay dormant, never able to move again. Some of them are amalgamations, wraiths, and spectrals. All moving life within a one-mile radius of the adventurers is wiped out.

Nyri purrs contently and settles in for a beauty nap.