I can’t believe he was okay. Well even better than okay. I know he said that Quartz would be fine some how, but I didn’t believe him. And even if I did see him again, I wasn’t expecting to see him with both of his limbs intact.

Aside from having his limbs back, he gained a decent number of muscles. Back when we were in Azmar we had sparred quite a few times. Most of the time it was just a weak show of force on his part, he didn’t really have skills that would do more than give him a chance to run away from something.

Lyra was more interested in training him then I was, she always mentioned that there was a point while fighting where it seemed like he was enjoying himself. That something just clicked, and he had better fighting instincts and was actually grinning while they fought.

I did notice the grinning one time. It wasn’t when they were sparring though, it was the first time we had been in a dungeon together and we got split up in a cave. It was just me and him and after being ambushed I didn’t have time to look after him like I was supposed to.

I glanced over mid fight though and saw him managing on his own, and a grin on his face. Even if I thought it was weird at the time I couldn’t think about it, we were in a dungeon. I never saw it again though. It was different than his smile, which I saw eventually because…. It was just different, there was something a little bit cruel about it.

Lyra didn’t describe it like that though, and she mentioned it to me multiple times. Lyra lost her little brother when they were younger, and I guess Quartz filled that gap. I won’t know if she was blinded by that, but I knew that if she had been able to see him now. she would’ve been so happy. Her eyes would have lit up, a big toothy grin and probably would’ve been boasting about him at the pub. Talking about how great he ended up.

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I couldn’t get the sight of her on Ryker’s sword out of my head. Her body just sitting on it, and then when he pushed her off…. She was dead before we even started teleported, and unlike Lukon, I lost her entirely to the dungeon.

I didn’t get what Chase got.

I couldn’t bury her.

I couldn’t even say goodbye properly.

Climbing the tower kept me distracted and even if it took me a while to make it up here, I wasn’t able to get that image out of my mind. Kayden got me in a couple days after the whole thing and then met me on the twenty-frist floor and didn’t let me start working right away.

He took me up to the guild floor and told me to take time to deal with it. It still hurts, but now I don’t see her like that when I close my eyes. I’ve come to terms with it at this point. It’s been around half a year… since I lost her.

Half a year since I saw them all, but I don’t know how long Quartz has known.

Knowing that he hasn’t even opened the bag, it must have just been recently. The extent I cared about him wasn’t the same as it was with Lyra. I mean how can you really compare your partner to a party member I only knew for a few years.

I knew where I stood with Lyra though, I understood how she felt about me and how I felt about this whole situation. Quartz didn’t know. It was painfully obvious that he didn’t know how Lukon saw him let alone how he felt about Lukon.

He was confused about so many things all the time. It was funny when he finally realized me, and Lyra were together. Lukon was fine waiting, planning on slowly explaining it all to him.

But now…

If… well when he realizes how he felt its going to hurt him even more than he’s feeling now.

I didn’t want to climb further than where I was, so I don’t know who’s going to explain it to him. I just hope he won’t be alone when it happens.