“Juna,” the girl replied.

“Nice to meet you, Juna,” Ren said. Her tone was so warm and friendly that Ed hardly believed it was her.

The sobbing man looked up at Juna, eyes pleading.

“What do you propose we do with him?” Ren asked.

Juna stared at the man for a moment. Ed couldn’t make out her emotions, and her face was blank. Understandably so, considering the events of the past few minutes.

“Kill him,” Juna said after letting the moment marinate.

Ed surmised that was always going to be her answer.

“Are you sure?” Ed asked. “He could – “

“Yes,” she said, cutting Ed off sharply. “Do you want him to go smuggle more women into slavery?”

Ed couldn’t argue, so he didn’t.

Ren looked at Ed expectantly.

“What?” Ed said.

“Do it.”

“Why don’t you do it?”

“If we’re a team, prove that you can handle this,” Ren said. She dismissed her scythe, adding emphasis to her expectation.

Ed wanted to throw up. He was angry, scared, sad. He knew the man was looking at him, begging for his life. Ed couldn’t meet his eyes. He had flashbacks to Lila’s crazed eyes haunting him. He tried to tune out the noise. He didn’t want any of this.

But he wasn’t going to find Lila without violence. Ed felt nauseous and ashamed at the thought, but this man’s life was forfeited the moment he chose to dictate the fate of another. Maybe he didn’t deserve to die, but it was hard to argue otherwise.

“Ed,” Ren said firmly. “Do it.”

Ed closed his eyes and commanded his thralls to snap the man’s neck. Given the circumstances, it was the most humane way he could think of doing it. Ed turned his back to the man as a sickening snap reverberated through the darkness. A thump followed as the man’s body crumpled to the ground.

[You have defeated an enemy!]

[Name: Drifter Rex Dustwallow

Experienced gained: 2

Loot: Small wooden club]

They were related… brothers, maybe?

Ed felt a dirty, sickening feeling wash over him. It wasn’t unlike the feeling of having his sanity drained, just multitudes more intense.

Get ahold of yourself, Ed. This is the first, but it won’t be the last.

Ren was silent, allowing Ed time to collect himself.

When Ed turned around to face the scene, he saw Juna rummaging through the dead men’s pockets. She pulled out a small chain that she slipped back onto her wrist.

“Stupid bastard told me this would shine in the moonlight and give away our location. He was just stealing it,” she said, face wrinkled in disgust. She spit on one of the corpses before walking away.

Ed stared down at the brothers. One was pale and bloodied, and the other’s neck snapped at the wrong angle. His thralls looked back at him expectantly, with no awareness of what they had just done.

“Good job, boys,” Ed told them with exasperation. They were just extensions of himself. Their bony hands were his own, conducting his will.

Ed stared at his own hands. They hadn’t physically taken a life, but the result was the same.

“Alright, that’s done with,” Ren said. “You good Ed?”

Ed kept staring at his hands as his thralls walked back to his side.

“Ed!” Ren yelled at him, snapping him out of his trance.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m good,” Ed said, stumbling over his words.

Ren eyed him suspiciously, obviously picking up on his struggle, but she didn’t comment.

She turned back to the young girl. “So, Juna. You can come with us for now or head out alone. Either way, we return to your fire and camp for the night. That good with you?”

“Whatever,” Juna replied.

Ed expected Ren to snap back at the girl, demanding respect or appreciation for saving her. But she didn’t.

The group made camp at the fire, settling in for the night. There was a chill in the air, but it was nothing Ed wasn’t used to. Ren couldn’t hide her shivers, which Ed found amusing.

Juna seemed fine. If she was cold, she didn’t show it.

She probably grew up like I did, Ed thought.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Ren insisted she kept watch. She said Ed needed rest after what he’d just done, and she wanted to keep an eye on Juna.

The lumie cradled itself near Ed as he lay to sleep, comforting him. Ed wondered if the lumie was needy or if it could sense his emotions. There was so much he didn’t know about the creatures. He watched as it kept one eye open, shooting an uneasy glance at Juna.

Ed was worried he’d struggle to sleep but dozed off almost immediately. He was spared sleeplessly imagining what the man looked like as his neck was snapped. The way his eyes bulged as the skeletons coldly ended his life in an instant.

But not long after, he was prodded awake by Ren. Ed rose slowly, wiping his eyes.

“Shh,” Ren shushed him, finger over her lips.

It was still dark out. Juna was snoring, fast asleep nearby.

“What?” Ed said, groggy and agitated.

“The Deathwhisper,” Ren said in a hushed voice.

Sudden realization spread across Ed’s face, jolting him awake.

He got up slowly, brushing dirt from his clothes. Ren waved him on, back towards the spot where they had killed the men.

Ed’s stomach churned, both at the thought of speaking with the dead and seeing the corpses.

“Do you think these guys will have any useful information?” Ed said quietly, now out of earshot of the sleeping Juna.

“Probably not, but what difference does that make?” Ren asked.

Ed sighed. “I guess none.”

“Dead bodies are dead bodies, Ed. Why is it making you so uncomfortable?”

Ed didn’t respond, avoiding Ren’s gaze.

“You’ve never killed anyone before?”

“No,” Ed said.

Ren didn’t say anything else. Ed wasn’t sure if she was surprised or thought less of him. She was the bodyguard for a king, so it made sense that she’d seen violence.

It didn’t make Ed feel any better about the situation.

They approached the dead men, faces still locked in an eternal state of shock and fear. The air felt much colder on Ed’s skin suddenly. He pulled the small stone from his pocket. It somehow felt heavier than when Mortem had handed it to him.

Ed held it up, focusing on it like he had with the summoning rune. The inscriptions twisted, and the System flickered in his mind’s eye.

[New spell acquired!]

[Name: Deathwhisper

Description: Wield the power of the god of death to converse with the dead. Departed souls will truthfully answer three questions.

Cost: None]

Was the stone an entire spell on its own? At least there’s no sanity cost.

The inscriptions in the stone warmed, shining bright in the dark. Ed relished the comforting heat as it entered his body. It subsided as soon as it came, leaving him cold again.

Ren waited patiently, watching him.

Ed approached the bodies and conjured the image of the new spell in his mind, just as he did when summoning his thralls.

The bodies on the ground started glowing with an ethereal light, not unlike the lumie. Ed watched, stunned, as two transparent figures rose from the bodies and faced Ed.

They stared at him expectantly, just like his thralls. One was missing half his arm, and the other’s neck was twisted at a gruesome angle.

Ren gasped, betraying her stony exterior.

Ed felt a whirlwind of emotions as he glared into the eyes of the men they killed. Men who were alive a short time ago but not lay mangled and maimed on the ground. They hadn’t even buried them.

“Go on, ask them something,” Ren urged.

Ed considered what to ask. His first thought was to ask about Silt, Somnia, Mortem, Lila, and the disturbances they mentioned… but these men were drifters. And the wrong kind, kidnapping young women and selling them into slavery.

No one shared information with men like them. If they had anything valuable, they’d have offered to sell it to him immediately. They weren’t the answer to what to do next. Ed knew that much.

“What was your business with Juna?” Ed’s voice was steady, betraying none of his inner turmoil.

The first soul, the one Ren had killed, spoke first.

“Exactly what we told you. We were selling her off to the Enclave. Young girls like that fetch a good price, and we’ve gambling debts to pay off.”

“Her father cooked up the whole idea,” the other said. “Craziest thing I ever seen. Said he couldn’t handle the bitch no more and paid us to take her off his hands.”

Ren’s eye twitched, but she remained silent.

“Is anyone going to look for you or seek revenge for your deaths?” Ed asked. This was the practical question and probably the most helpful information they had for Ed and Ren.

There was a moment of silence before a sad answer.

“No.”

Ed considered his last question. In his gut, he knew what to ask. Ren would probably be frustrated with him, but he needed this.

“Why did you choose this path in life?” Ed asked quietly.

With its crooked neck, the second soul responded, voice bitter and resentful.

“We never had a choice, boy. People like us never get a choice. Poor as dirt, Dad died when we were real young. She didn’t fancy raising two boys alone, so she kicked us to the streets before we had hair on our balls.”

The other soul nodded its head, sharing the sentiment. “It was our life or someone else’s. Not gonna’ roll over and die, so here we are. Can’t say I am surprised the reaper came for us, but we had a good run.”

The brothers laughed, oblivious to the suffering they inflicted on others. Their celestial forms faded away, flickering into tiny strands of light before dissipating entirely.

The darkness felt thicker than before. It reminded Ed of his time in the Nether.

“The reaper, huh?” Ren said, approaching Ed.

“We paint a grisly picture, I guess,” Ed replied.

“At least we know no one is coming for them, which means no one is coming for us.”

“Right,” Ed said. He braced himself, expecting her to chastise him for not asking the right questions.

But it didn’t come. She just turned around and headed back to camp.

Ed followed with his head down, staring at his feet.

Back at the fire, Ren laid down to get some sleep. She argued at first, but Ed assured her he wouldn’t be able to sleep regardless.

Within moments, Ren was flat on her back asleep, snoring louder than Juna.

Ed sat on the same stone Juna was on when he had ambushed her. He planted his staff on the ground and leaned into it, resting his shoulder on the scarred wood.

He realized his skeletons were gone. He was so groggy and distracted when Ren woke him up he hadn’t noticed. He tapped into the System to check their status.

[No thralls are currently summoned.]

What happened to my two skeletons?

[A thrall’s lifespan rapidly depletes when its master is unconscious. Sanity also regenerates at a slower pace when thralls are summoned, so it’s advised to dismiss them before sleep.]

You could have told me that before.

Ed checked his status screen, seeing that his sanity had recovered since he last checked. That was reassuring. He felt bad enough already and wasn’t in the mood to feel a thirty-point sanity drain, so he didn’t resummon them.

The lumie woke up with a tiny yawn, untangling itself from Ren’s arms and settling in Ed’s lap. He patted it on the head, appreciating its company.

The sun peaked over the eastern horizon before long, bathing the land in a beautiful deep red. For Ed, it reflected the blood he had spilled—a new dawn for him, at the cost of two others.