Babysitting the Rich

This was just going to be awful.

Aeron watched as the ship got closer and closer to the shore, annoyance and aggravation building up at a steady incline within her bones. She truly hated people. She hated being around them, having to interact with them, having to put up with their constant nonsense, but more than anything she loathed the idea of having to be responsible for them. It was hard enough being an ace with the guild, making her someone that the members looked up to as an example and went to for advice or guidance. But now, she was being put in charge of an entire gaggle of people out of Fiore, the very country where the Magic Council was based, and having work beside their Rune Knight dogs that were probably otherwise actively hunting Elysium members down.

The most she could do was hope that they would stick to the temporary amnesty that had been agreed upon when she’d been elected to take on the job. She wouldn’t know until things got started, though if she had to venture a guess she imagined she would be safe until the job was over and it was time for them to leave. The Rune Knights would need her at least until then.

It didn’t take much longer for the ship to reach port and for the people to disembark. Aeron stood there a ways back from the ratty, run down dock, hands shoved in her pockets and not bothering to hide the misery on her face. The people ambled down the gangplank, chatting eagerly with each other, pointing this way and that at the port that had once been a small seaside town before it had been destroyed long, long ago by the monsters released into the country. One of them broke away from the rest of the group to get ahead of them, making his way toward her. He wasn’t wearing any kind of uniform, but Aeron could only assume that he was the Rune Knight that had come along with the group to work with her.

Thankfully, she wouldn’t have to wait long for that assumption to be affirmed. He stopped in front of her and introduced himself as Mythal Ragnos before inquiring as to if she was the one sent for them from Elysium. “Can’t imagine anyone else would be stupid enough to be hanging around here,” she told him grumpily. It seemed to be less of an attack of his question and more a criticism of the guild’s chosen location for a home. Then her cerulean eyes went wide and snapped over to the rich folk gathered about, realizing that such a comment could have easily been misconstrued as an insult toward them. Granted, while such an insult would have been more than fair and deserved, it probably wasn’t a good idea to get on the bad side of these people immediately upon meeting with them, particularly since she was supposed to be spending the better part of a week trapped with them all.

She felt her face get hot with panic as a slight blush rose to her lips and quickly decided to barrel past the statement, hoping no one read into it too much. “I’m uh… I’m Aeron. Ain’t got no last name. I’m one of the Aces of Destruction with Elysium.” Well, it probably hadn’t been a great idea to admit the fullness of her title, but Aeron was clearly anxious about all this. Just about anyone could look at her and know that. She was doing her best to cover it up with talking, a skill she wasn’t great at even when she wasn’t fully on edge.

Opening her mouth to once again try to move past her awkwardness, she was interrupted by one of the tourists that had been listening. “Oh, an Ace of Destruction, you say? I’ve always wondered how dark guild hierarchies were laid out. What did you have to do to earn that position?”

Aeron blinked, clearly shocked by the boldness of the question and the man’s shameless interest in asking a question that he was surely expecting a graphic answer for. “Uhh..” the stammered dumbly, taken aback and not entirely sure what to say.

“Oh, oh!” another tourist piped up, this one a woman looking very much like an eager child in a candy shop. “Will we get to visit the Elysium guild hall while we’re in town? I’ve never been to a dark guild before.”

“I don’t think that’s--”

“Can we get a chance to meet your guild master? It would be such an exciting opportunity to meet a famed and illusive Warlord.”

“She doesn’t exactly--”

“Oh, if you’re an Ace of Destruction, you must have some powerful magic right? Could you destroy something for us?”

“Hey, I’m not some fucking clown here for your amusement,” Aeron snapped, finally finding her voice and some semblance of confidence as she glared at the small crowd. “I was hired to protect you here, not perform tricks.” Either they were in the midst of rethinking their strategy of annoying the known dark mage in their midst or they were busy being utterly flabbergasted at the audacity of this woman to talk back to them. Either way, Aeron had at least bought herself a moment of silence.

Deciding not to waste the opportunity, she turned her gaze back over to Mythal. “Hey, you’re a Rune Knight, right? Can we talk for a second, like… over there.” She nodded to a spot a couple dozen meters off, still plenty in the open where they could be seen and where the people were still well within few, but with enough space between them and the tourists that they could speak privately.

Presuming he agreed, she led the way over, more than happy to get some distance from the others. Once they were in relative privacy, Aeron looked up at him with an expression that was half annoyance, half pleading. “Okay so… we’re both in agreement that this whole thing is fucking stupid, right? I can’t be the only one looking at this and recognizing what a giant clusterfuck this is going to be.”

With a nervous gaze flicked back to the crowd momentarily, she sighed and rubbed her temples like she was getting a headache. “I just.. I need some kind of reassurance here. I’m not good with people, and I try to spend as little time around them as possible. I get that I live here and all, and that that makes me one of the most qualified people to navigate this place safely, but there isn’t any place in Sin that’s more or less safe than anywhere else in the country. We’re not even safe standing out here at the coast.”

“I know I’m a dark mage and shit, and that means you probably wanna… I dunno, arrest me or kill me or who knows what. I can’t imagine you trust me, and I ain’t asking you to. I was assigned to this job and I’m going to do everything I can to keep these people safe ‘cause gods know that the last thing I want is the Rune Knights and the Magic Council and whoever else these people are rich enough to hire hunting me down for getting someone killed. But even I don’t know what all kind of monsters roam this place, and there’s only so much I’m gonna be able to do to protect people that clearly don’t care about their own well being, and with no offense to you or anyone else, I ain’t gonna risk my own life trying to protect someone from their own stupidity.”

It was honestly the most that Aeron had said to anyone, ever. Not that Mythal would know that, of course. But there was no mistaking that this job scared her a bit, mostly because she was only one woman and she was clearly terrified -- and rightly so -- that one of these idiots was going to get themselves killed in the middle of some ill advised stunt performed in the name of thrill seeking. Aeron wasn’t happy about being here, but she was still here and being honestly enough about what she was, as well as to her intentions on performing this job to the best of her ability and not shirking her duty on keeping people safe.

But it wasn’t fair to her, or really even to Mythal, for these people to risk both of their lives just because they want to experience very real danger and treat it like some kind of daredevil experience. There was a very real chance that someone could die on this trip, including herself, and while she was willing to put her neck on the line to do her part, she didn’t want to get herself killed because some idiot decided to go searching for a near death experience. In the same vein, she didn’t want anyone trying to blame her for things she had no control over. Aeron wasn’t an idiot. She was the dark mage here, and thus the obvious scapegoat should anything go wrong, and she was terrified that something was going to happen and she was going to be blamed for it.

“I just wanna get through this week and get these people out of here alive and in one piece so I can go back home and not have to worry about being held responsible for things beyond my control.”

She was more than a little surprised when Mythal spoke up to support her resistance to the tourists demanding information and displays of power from her. Aeron had honestly expected the scruffy looking man to chastise her for yelling at everyone, but instead he made his opinion sternly clear that she was in the right to deny their ridiculous requests. Frankly, Aeron had spent more than enough of her life being treated like a spectacle for amusement, and she wasn’t about to return to that life any time soon, not even if she was actually getting paid instead of being a slave.

He seemed a bit surprised that she asked to talk to him alone, and that made sense. Hell, even Aeron would never have thought herself capable of ever requesting a one on one chat with someone like him. But, he did acquiesce to the request and followed her the few feet over after making it clear the group was to stay exactly where they were. Thankfully, he seemed to have a bit more of a commanding presence than she did so hopefully that meant he would be more of a help in keeping everyone in line, presuming that he wasn’t more focused on harassing her than watching the upper class.

It was a concern that she wouldn’t need to worry about, as it turned out. Mythal wasted no time in agreeing with her sentiments with a small sigh, admitting that he was about as pleased by all this as she was. To his credit, he listened to her entire spiel in getting her anxiety off her chest without interrupting her once, simply listening in attentive silence even as she admitted that she was, essentially, a criminal. Sure he had no proof that she had ever done anything evil, but there was no hiding that she was a leader within a community that the Rune Knights had their eyes on. Surely that alone would have been enough for him to dismiss her or at least treat her with some kind of disdain or holier than thou attitude.

But, he didn’t. In fact, he told her rather solemnly that he understood where she was coming from. He certainly wasn’t going to pretend to be her friend here, and gave his thoughts on where her guild as a whole stood with him, but he wasn’t here to make her life harder than it was already going to be. In every other respect the two of them were enemies, but here on this job, they were on the same page. Mythal admitted that all of these idiots were practically committing suicide by planning this trip and following through with it, but he’d had about as much control as she did in stopping it. They had the money to convince the right people, and unfortunately money was the single most powerful lubricant in the world. As long as Aeron was true to her claim of wanting to do her part earnestly and honestly -- which she was -- then he wasn’t going to hold her responsible for anything that these people seemed likely to bring on themselves.

Truthfully, she was a bit astonished at how frank and crass he was, even going so far as to insult their intelligence with a bit of coarse language. She had expected a Rune Knight to be a bit more… well, dignified? Uppity? Weirdly enough, that wasn’t the impression she was getting from him. He seemed more down to earth like she was, and even gave his word that he would work with her and not let her be held accountable for anything that truly wasn’t her fault. Not that anyone’s word necessarily meant much to her, let alone that of an enemy, but despite everything Aeron felt herself relax a bit from his reassurance. Though she was still clearly displeased and nervous about this entire thing, she was visibly calmer in knowing that there would be someone there to back her up in all of this.

“Thanks,” she told him a bit awkwardly, feeling about as humbled by his attitude toward her as he was feeling for the reverse. Aeron wasn’t exactly well versed in showing appreciation, but even she could recognize that it was appropriate here. He nodded to her to silently confirm their agreement, causing her to flush and look away in another small wave of embarrassment, before he turned to speak with everyone once again. Mythal laid down the law, so to speak, telling everyone in no uncertain terms that they were to obey Aeron’s directions around here and that any failure to do so would result in them answering to him directly.

Aeron didn’t too much like the idea of being the one in charge, but she had known since being given the assignment that it was going to be the case. She scratched the back of her head a bit awkwardly. “Yeah, so.. uh... “ She started to address everyone only to realize from a few of their squinted looks and craned ears that she was speaking entirely too softly for them all to really hear her. Clearing her throat and cursing her existence and lack of exposure to public speaking, Aeron tried again with her voice a little better raised. “The route we’re going to take is gonna stay mostly coastal. I ain’t gonna keep us on the beaches, cause I know you guys want to get into the mainland and actually see all the monsters and shi-- stuff.”

She quickly corrected her language, not entirely sure if she needed to watch her words around these people. Though at the end of the day, they’d probably just find it exciting to be around someone ‘rough and tumble’ like she was. “But the farther inland we go, the more likely we are to come across things that even I can’t defend against, and I’d rather keep us within a reasonable distance of the ocean so we can have it to protect our backs if we need to make a speedy retreat to the coast.”

“Per the agreement you made and the funds you paid, Elysium has provided all the basic supplies you’re gonna need for the next few days. However, you’re gonna need to carry them yourselves and you’ll be responsible for your own supplies. It shouldn’t be hard; everything has been magicked to be compact and lightweight when not actively in use. If any of you are mages or use weapons, I’m not gonna restrict your use of such things. Getting through here in one piece is gonna be a group effort, and I know most of you are itching to fight some of the monsters here anyway. Just don’t do anything to draw attention to us unnecessarily, and if I tell you not to pick a fight with something, then leave it alone.”

Her voice was already getting tired. Aeron wasn’t sure she’d ever spoken this much in her entire life. Still, this was her chance to get some words out and make some things clear, and out of an interest of self preservation and covering her own ass, she was going to force herself to speak up. “Listen, I know you guys are all excited about working with a dark mage or whatever. It ain’t like Elysium is tight lipped about who we are and what we want, so I am willing to answer some questions if you’re really fixated on hearing more about us. But I ain’t about to spill guild secrets, or do or say anything that puts my members’ wellbeings on the line, so if I say I ain’t gonna answer a question, then I ain’t gonna answer it and that’s the end of that.”

Not wanting to give them an opening to rail her with questions again right away, she motioned with her head. “Alright, we’re gonna get going. The supplies are tucked up on the other side of one of the buildings here. I’m gonna get those passed out and then we’ll be on our way.” With one last, somewhat dismayed, glance toward Mythal, she trudged along the unkempt road and led the way around the side of the building she’d been waiting near before they arrived. There sat a small trunk of packs, each of which contained basic camping and survival needs, including waterskins that had been magicked to always be full with fresh drinking water and charms that would help everyone find one another if anyone got lost or separated, and also provided some moderate level of physical and magical protection. Aeron made it clear that these charms were to be worn at all times, with she herself even wearing one.

There was some grumbling at first as people realized that their expedition was going to be spent walking rather than riding anything, but Aeron staunchly explained that no sane, safe mount would follow any direction to walk these lands, and anyone who was unhappy with walking could go back to the ship at port and wait there for the rest of the trip until everyone else came back.

Once she put her foot down on that and everyone at least stopped griping about it, they were off. As they started on their way, Aeron gave Mythal a crude but adequate map of the route she planned on taking, something he could use to keep the party moving forward should something happen to her, or to use to regroup with her on the off chance that the party got separated into two groups.

They hadn’t even been travelling more than an hour or two inland before they came across the first monster sighting. Aeron stopped everyone and motioned for them to be quiet so she could figure out what it was. Thankfully, it was one of the more common beasts of Sin. “Duskbroods,” she muttered, though not speaking so quietly that Mythal and the others wouldn’t hear her. It was a pack of the creatures, that appeared very reptilian like in appearance but with a long spinal fin of sorts along their backs and postures that more closely resembled that of jungle cats than lizards. They were a little ways off, but sniffed the air heavily. Clearly they already had the humans’ scent, they were just trying to pinpoint them.

“Well, if you guys are gonna cut your monster hunting teeth on anything, Duskbroods are about as good a start as you’re gonna get. Their biggest strengths are their numbers and their speed. Their noses and hearing are good, but eyesight is poor for the daylight. They ain’t got any magic to speak of. Just watch their teeth and claws.”

If Aeron thought she hated this job before, it was nothing in comparison to what she was going to be feeling by the time the first monster encounter came around. Duskbroods were pesky, annoying creatures that were a bit horrifying in appearance but at the end of the day weren’t all too much of a threat for the average mage. She had fought plenty of them during her solo stint out in the wildernesses, when Janet had sent her out to survive for almost a week by herself. Or well, mostly by herself. Thana had been there for part of it but she’d disappeared after the first night and the rest of the trip had been a blur that she honestly didn’t remember much of.

She’d hated that trip, but even she had to admit it had ultimately done wonders for her self confidence. Fighting for survival was the story of her life, and not her favorite activity in the world, but she was good at it. The Duskbroods had intimidated her once upon a time, but now they were little more than a bother. In fact, she’d be happy to just deal with those creatures for the rest of the trip, though the chances of that were astronomically slim. Aeron explained a bit about them and their strengths and weaknesses, so the group would know what to expect and how to move forward with their desired foray into monster hunting.

But apparently, her understanding of what this group was here to do was completely wrong.

Her and Mythal both waited for the tourists to get going, except that they never did. The Rune Knight was the first to speak up, giving them the more straightforward permission to get going that they were clearly waiting for. Except, that wasn’t what they had been waiting for at all. A woman spoke up in surprise at the insinuation that she would possibly be expected to do her own fighting, stating that part of what they had paid for was for the Elysium and Rune Knight representatives to take care of that for them. In fact, all they wanted was footage from the many cameras they had out so that they could crop themselves in later to make it look like they’d fought when they hadn’t.

“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” Aeron muttered in the same breath that Mythal incredulously asked them to confirm the sincerity of the claim. Oh, and she did, stating rather proudly that it had been part of the “all inclusive” expense that they’d paid, which Aeron highly doubted. Not once had anyone at Elysium informed her that she would be expected to do all the fighting, else she would have put up more of a fight in telling them to shove the job listing right up their ass. In fact, she was getting ready to make a similar request to the crowd about their cameras when Mythal spoke up with a sigh, telling her that he would take care of the beasts himself, asking Aeron to stay with the group just in case.

“Yeah, alright…” she grumbled, casting an annoyed look at the rest of the group. At this point the monsters seemed like less of a headache. Then again, this poor dude had already been stuck with them for at least a day or two during the trip to Sin and would have to stick with them a bit longer even as her portion of the job ended. She supposed he probably could use the temporary relief in taking some aggression out on some monsters. Aeron wasn’t typically much for empathy, but despite her nature she couldn’t help but feel it for him just now. Besides, it would be good to watch and get an idea for how he worked and fought.

With Darius there to alert her to anything else coming up on the group, Aeron followed the fight along with the clients. Mythal started with a large sword that looked far too heavy to wield efficiently, but he managed to do so rather easily indicating that he was either much stronger than he looked or the sword itself wasn’t as heavy as it appeared to be. She figured the former was the more likely option, particularly after he brought out some rather subtle magic that encased his hand in something akin to a black gauntlet. Aeron had flinched at first upon one of the Duskbroods clamping its jaws around his limb, thinking she was about to have to jump in to help him, but she quickly realized he’d allowed it to bite him on purpose.

She couldn’t help but be a bit fascinated as she watched him go, somehow clamping onto the monster from inside its own mouth and whipping it around like a club, beating members of its own herd to death with it. Ultimately, the beast was sent quite literally flying through the air and far out of sight where there was no mistaking the fall would kill it instantly. With his sword back in his hand, he somehow got it to hover near him outside of his immediate grip where it acted of its own accord to attack the remaining monsters with him. She was further shook when the weapon extended into a fully realized scythe that he continued to wield with expert ease. It was a complex and versatile weapon, one that made the plain gun on her hip look boring and limited by comparison.

All in all, the battle lasted hardly longer than a minute or so. Aeron had been able to keep up with watching most of it and had truthfully been paying very little attention to the tourists themselves, so she almost missed the annoyed looks on their faces as they checked their cameras and confirmed the man had moved far too fast for their devices to efficiently capture. He even spoke up in a dry, sarcastic tone about hoping they had gotten what they wanted when he very well knew that they didn’t. Aeron didn’t even realize she was grinning  with open amusement at the comment, quickly covering her mouth the moment it dawned upon her. Another embarrassed flush took over her face momentarily. When was the last time she’d smiled? Even she didn’t know. The expression felt weird, and she hastily squashed it.

“Alright, well, uh… guess we’ll move along then. There’s a cave I wanna make it to by nightfall.” Back to leading the charge, Aeron moved them along again. Over the course of the next several hours they ran into quite a number of strange and gruesome looking beasts that all seemed quite content on tracking the group down. Between her and Mythal, the vast majority of them were taken down rather quickly, but it was only going to be a matter of time before they ran into something a little harder to deal with. They were much further inland now, and the encounters were happening more frequently as time went on. For the most part, Aeron kept to using her gun rather than any obvious magic, looking to preserve her strength for more wearisome fights that were sure to come up.

It was Darius who alerted her to the danger ahead. Waving for everyone to be quiet and stay where they were, Aeron quickly sprinted ahead a bit and eased her way up a rock formation, crawling along it on her belly to peek over the edge into the small ravine beyond. There, loitering just outside the cave that Aeron had been planning on setting up camp at, was a Tusked Umara. It was a creature covered head to toe in dirty white fur that almost resembled a cross between an ape and a wild boar, and it stood over twice as tall as any of the present humans. “Well, that’s just great,” she muttered to herself.

Slipping back down from her perch, she quietly made her way back to the group. Talking in a soft tone, she informed everyone, “Well, the good news is we made it to tonight’s camp. Bad news is there’s a Tusked Umara making itself comfortable down there. They’re pretty nasty. Hides are super thick, and they only got a couple of weak spots. I should be able to handle it but, uh… it ain’t gonna be a pretty fight.” Glancing to Mythal, she said, “They can watch from the ledge where I was if they keep low and quiet. I’ll let you know when it’s safe to make your way down.”

Presuming that was agreeable, Aeron allowed herself a resigned groan before hurrying off to the right, down the path that would eventually lead everyone down into the ravine. Before she could rush out of view, her body disappeared as she turned invisible, the only clue that she was still moving forward being the continued appearance of her bookmarks in the dirt until she turned a corner past a rock and her tracks were obscured out of sight. Aeron slowed her gait  when she got within range of the beast’s exceptional hearing. It was hunkered over a kill of its own, having stripped nearly all the meat off its dinner and leaving an array of bones scattered about the place.

Tapping into a bit of her magic, it began to rain in the ravine, despite the fact that there were no rain clouds in the air. Mythal and the rich idiots would be too far up to feel the liquid themselves, but they would easily be able to see it with the naked eye, as well as the little tendrils of smoke that started to rise up from everything it touched. The muscles on the creature began to twitch irritably until it eventually started fidgeting and spinning around in pain and confusion. It may have had skin thick enough to make piercing it with a weapon difficult, but it could still feel the burning agony of acid when it was being rained upon its body.

It growled and threw itself around frantically, trying to find a place to get out of the rain, and that’s when Aeron made a more direct attack. She had used its own noise making to cover up the sound of her approach and seemed to materialize out of nowhere right underneath it. Her arms had changed completely, no longer appearing human but rather looking more like a monstrosity herself, sullen and gangly with dull grey flesh that hung loosely over more bone than muscle. Her fingers were grotesquely long with sharp nails more akin to claws. Before the beast could recover from her sudden appearance, still too preoccupied with the acid rain to notice her, she put several deep gashes along the Umara’s soft and unprotected underbelly.

It went appropriately ape shit.

Screeching in pain, it made a mad swipe at her with one of its thick arms, looking to backhand her across the ravine. Aeron quickly shrunk the size of her body down to that of a pixie, causing the creature to miss her by a wide margin. She reversed the size change almost instantly as soon as its arm was swung, latching on the limb with her own arms and, with a loud grunt of effort, hucking the hulking beast across the ravine floor and into one of the walls of the cliff. It hit with such force that several rocks shook loose from the wall above it and pelted its head, which really only made it angrier.

It surged to its feet in a rage, snatching onto one of the small boulders that had dropped from the wall. Aeron knew immediately where this was going. “Oh shit,” she said, eyes wide as the beast reared back and hurled the rock at her. It was too big for her to avoid by shrinking again. Morphing her arms back to normal, she braced herself with her arms out and caught the rock with her bare hands, her boots scraping against the rocky floor as she was pushed back by the impact. With a growl she deposited the boulder in front of her only to turn and see the Umara leaping down at her from over the top of it.

Aeron threw herself to the side just in time to avoid being crushed under its body, scrambling quickly, if not gracefully, back onto her feet. The beast was just as quick to recover, coming at her with arms raised and ready to pummel her under fists about as large as her own body. Thankfully, Aeron was much stronger than her thin frame suggested. She reached up her hands and caught the Umara’s fists much in the same manner that she had the boulder, the two wrestling for dominance.

Finally, Aeron managed to get enough leverage and the right angle to pull herself up over the things arms. With the sudden loss in resistance, its fists slammed into the hard ground leaving a couple small caters. She quickly scrambled up one of his arms and onto its back where one of her arms elongated itself enough to stretch out and around the beast’s neck until she had the thing in a full chokehold. It raged and tried to pull her arms away from its neck to no avail, even as she poured spell after spell into boosting her strength until the hold got tighter and tighter against its windpipe. When pulling at her limbs didn’t work, it resorted to trying to slam her up against the ravine walls pinning her between the coarse rock and its back and dragging her along it. The pain sucked but she’d certainly had worse and somehow managed to hold on.

After close to a minute, the Umara finally started losing the battle for oxygen and slumped to the ground, fighting the impending unconsciousness the whole way down until it was fully prone and no longer fighting. Aeron groaned and rolled off the thing, landing on the ground with an unceremonious thump. It wasn’t dead yet, but it was at least not thrashing at her anymore. Dragging herself to her feet with all the gusto of someone that looked more annoyed than physically impared, she took her gun out of its holster. “It will be a good opportunity for you, Aeron,” she muttered, either forgetting or not caring that the acoustics of the ravine allowed her voice to carry quite easily up to the listening ears above. “Show them our hospitality, they said. Show them how we want to make the world a better place, they said. Build up your social skills. Build up your confidence.”

Clearly, she was grumbling about all the various ways that she’d been talked into taking the job. Several more sarcastic quotes escaped her lips even as she pulled one of the Umara’s arms away from its head. Pressing the barrel of her gun right up against the hole that served as the creature’s ear, she unloaded several rounds of ammo into the small space where it immediately broke through the thinner flesh and fragile bone to pierce the brain directly. Once she was sure it was no longer breathing, Aeron finally turned to look up. “Alright, it’s dead.”

Presuming everyone made their way down, she pointed out the rather large cave where people could set up their tents, by which all they really had to do was toss the equipment on the ground and the tents would set themselves up instantly. Figuring since her current outfit was already fucked up, she decided to get to work making dinner. Which, coincidentally, happened to be the Umara. Anyone that expressed uncertainty in eating the monster was met with a shrug as Aeron explained that it was perfectly safe to eat, and tasted more like wild boar than anything else. She also reminded them that part of her job as their guide was to show them what in the wilds of Sin was and wasn’t edible.

Thankfully, they didn’t argue with her too much. Most of them seemed quite interested in trying an “exotic” meal, especially since she said they could keep pieces of the thing’s pelt and teeth as souvenirs if they wanted to. Getting a knife out of her pack, she turned the thing on its back while the tourists set up their sleeping arrangements and made themselves comfortable after a long day of walking-but-not-fighting, and used the soft belly of the Umara as a starting point to skin the thing.

It wasn’t long before an ample amount of meat had been cut out and cooked over a number of small personal fires that were enchanted not to have any smoke. Part of the tourist’s packs had been supplied with a number of spices so they could flavor the meat however they wanted. For her part, Aeron made no attempt to sit with any of them, wanting as much distance between herself and the rich folk as possible. She had set up her tent closer to the entrance of the cave against one of the walls, with a small fire where she sat in relative isolation from the rest of the group. Eating her food without any added spices, Aeron made no attempts to socialize with anyone, her gaze only panning over to the group from time to time as they laughed loudly or otherwise did something to draw her attention. Otherwise, she simply sat in silence as the daylight waned, looking about as miserable as she had at the start of all this.

If Aeron thought he seemed to be acting differently toward her after the fight was over, it didn’t show on her face. Given that one only needed to spend about five minutes with her to know that masking her emotions wasn’t exactly a strong suit, Mythal could reasonably conclude that he was doing well in keeping his insecurities and revelations to himself. She continued to grumble after he offhandedly remarked to her that the fight could have gone worse, though the mutterings were quieter than before. He was right, after all. Tusked Umaras were a right pain in the ass but she’d certainly faced nastier and far more terrifying beasts in Sin. So, she set about doing her skinning and getting dinner prepared, hoping that the tourists would more or less leave her alone as long as she was keeping herself busy with getting their meals ready.

She’d been right, thank the gods. Outside of their interest in getting pieces of the thing’s pelt and holding onto some of its bones as trophies -- presumably to act as evidence later of their “kills” -- they more or less left her alone. Even once all the meat was cut up and cooked and dished out they allowed her to retreat into her corner, all too happy to finally get some time to gab with each other over the fights that day without having to keep their voices down. It left her plenty of time and space to brood as she usually did, wallowing in a near palpable misery and self pity over her lot in life.

Of course, it was only a matter of time before someone would decide it was time to come pester her, though honestly the last person she’d expected it to be was Mythal. He seemed as interested in keeping to himself as she was, yet after things had settled down and she was digging unceremoniously into her bland meal, he quietly made his way over to her. The brunette blinked up at him when he told her in a rather quiet voice that they needed to talk. At first she thought it was something related to the group or the job, but if that were the case why was her hair suddenly standing on end? Why did she suddenly feel like she was backed into a corner by a predator?

She became visibly anxious as she took in his posture, her blue-green eyes darting to the hand on his sword several times. He launched in saying that he wasn’t going to put up with any lies from her, which shouldn’t have surprised her. He viewed her as a criminal which meant that he didn’t trust her as far as he could throw her, though admittedly he could probably throw her pretty damn far. But considering how oddly well the two of them had managed to at least get along for the sake of the work ahead so far, it was a little unexpected. He claimed she’d been playing some kind of game since the beginning with him and started acting like they’d met before, that he hadn’t put it together until enough of her clues had been dealt.

Aeron was looking more and more confused with each word he spoke, like he’d accused her of kicking a puppy in front of him. And supposedly they had fought? Supposedly he was supposed to have killed her? What the hell was this guy on about? What was his problem? Aeron was about to ask all these questions and more when he spoke a single trigger word that unraveled the entire mystery for her.

“Trinity. Because of fucking course you fought her,” she practically growled, all the confusion and nervousness practically washing from her face. In its place was a visible anger and deep seeded frustration that could only have been born of a very real loathing. “Let me guess: Black hair? Eyes like fire? An obnoxious sense of flair and an ego bigger than any planet? Gives you stranger-danger chills on the level of old priests in musty robes that get a little too close to the altar boys?”

Suddenly having lost her appetite, at least for the moment, Aeron sighed in resignation and tossed what was left of her meat onto her plate so she could rub her face in exasperation. Gee, Darius, thanks for the fucking heads up.

Don’t blame me. I would have told you sooner if I thought you wouldn’t lose your cool over it and give yourself away.

Yeah you better start working up your excuses, cause we’re having a long talk later. Just a heads up: Nothing you say is going to make this alright.

He had no retort for that, which was just as well because she had a much more pressing conversation to attend to. She had to get Mythal off her back before he tried to kill her right in front of all these people. “Her name ain’t Trinity. It’s Thana. Trinity is just what she calls herself cause she’s… I dunno, dramatic or something. And not that you have any reason to believe me, but me I ain’t her.”

The truth of the matter was, of course, quite the opposite. She and Thana were the same person, but the personality of Aeron was not aware of that. She believed themselves to be two completely different people, and thus her claim was as true to her as a person stating that the sky was blue or that Ishgar was a continent. As such, she was not attempting to deceive him. “Please, just… leave your sword alone and give me a moment to explain? I’ve watched you work enough today to know that you could kick my teeth out through my asshole with or without the weapon, and you’re making me nervous.”

Whether or not he complied, she set herself up for a conversation she really did not wish to have. Unfortunately, if she wanted to get back to Elysium alive in a couple days Aeron needed to appease this threat. “Look, I get where your confusion is coming from. She and I share the same magic. We transform into monsters and perform spells that seem to… break the laws of reality or whatever. I hate that bloodthirsty maniac as much as most other people that get locked in her sights. She’s a killer, a sociopath, a rapist, a cannibal… you name it and she’s probably done it multiple times over, and slept like a gods damned baby the same night.”

The ire and fury was building up in her eyes the more she talked about the woman, leaving no room for confusion on just how much Aeron loathed Thana’s very existence. Then she sighed, as though all that anger was lost in the face of… helplessness? Resignation? “Unfortunately, I can’t seem to get rid of her. She’s been with me my whole damn life, dragging me into her reckless schemes and putting my own life in danger on a near daily basis. Everywhere we go, everything is always about her, and she ain’t having any fun unless she’s torturing or manipulating some poor son of a bitch. I can’t tell you how much of a load off my back it would be for someone to just put her out of all our miseries once and for all. Given how little regard she has for even her own safety, I truly don’t know how she hasn’t been killed yet.”

“But I ain’t like her.” There was a softness, perhaps a vulnerability to her tone, that Aeron wasn’t accustomed to. She was so nervous about this confrontation that she couldn’t even look him in the eye, ashamed to even admit that she knew the woman. “She quite literally gets off on killing people and bringing their worst nightmares to life. Me? I just… I just like keeping to myself. If I ain’t bothering people, then they ain’t bothering me. If I stay away from them, then they can’t hur--” She swallowed the word down, though not all the way before it was too late. A deep blush of embarrassment and anger rose to her cheeks. “If I stay away from them, they ain’t a headache. I told you: I don’t like people. I’m not good with them. I’m not comfortable around them. I ain’t gonna say I haven’t hurt anyone before. We all do what we have to to survive. But I try to keep trouble as far from me as possible.”

Aeron finally looked up at him, still a bit nervous. “I promise, I ain’t here to hurt anyone. I haven’t lied to you. And whatever you wanna know about Thana that will help convince you not to punish me for her crimes, I’ll tell you as much as I can. I still ain’t about to give away any guild secrets or sell out my members, but hell knows that I ain’t a fan of that woman and she ain’t done me many favors over the last like…. I dunno, twenty years. She saved my life and got me a freedom I never thought I’d have, but that’s little in comparison to the rest of the shit she’s done, both before and after…”

If he had questions or wanted to know more about the woman he actually wanted dead, now was the time. Aeron was willing to give him answers, at least as much as she could without getting in trouble with Elysium… but it was probably still more than he was going to get anywhere else.

Once again, Mythal listened to her without interruption aside from a quick apology, and when she finished dragging her way through an explanation he assured her that he believed her. According to him, he had the ability to tell whether someone was being truthful to him or not. A handy trick, and one that Aeron was more than a little jealous of. Then again, she supposed Darius could perform that same feat for her if she asked him to. But what would happen if she ever lost him? No, it was a skill she’d feel more comfortable having for herself, with or without the disembodied wizard.

Mythal thanked her for telling him more than she really needed to, and expressed his empathy and condolences over having to deal with Thana. Apparently, he’d experienced a similar interaction with someone in his own life. He explained that he thought he had killed Thana back where they’d fought in Era, that he had launched her into the air high enough that the fall alone should have killed her. It was going to take a lot more than that to put the woman down, of course, and Aeron was about to voice as much, but Mythal continued with a few inquiries. Or rather, statements regarding things that didn’t quite make sense to him.

He said that he had learned Thana was alive due to her recent feature in the Fioran magazine where she had also claimed to be an ace of Elysium. He found it odd that they both wound up as aces together at the same dark guild. But, more than that, he said that apparently the two of them had the same scent. It was something he was able to confirm through the use of the slayer powers he apparently had that heightened his senses. Aeron frowned at that slightly, perplexed by the idea that the two of them smelled the same and racking her brain to try and come up with an explanation for it.

The Rune Knight apologized for coming in hot at her, explaining that he had only done it because it was the only proper thing to do when coming face to face with Thana herself. Aeron nodded her agreement when he implied that she likely understood exactly what he meant. He wasn’t exactly great with people either, and had similar tendencies to keep them at arm’s length. Over time he’d gotten a little better about that, it seemed, but he was more than well aware of the kind of horrific shit people could do to other people, and he sympathized with her on a level of understanding that could only come from personal experience.

Honestly, it was the nicest thing anyone had ever said to her. “It’s, uh… it’s alright,” Aeron told him, doing her best not to be flustered by the weirdness of feeling like she was actually getting along with someone for a change, let alone a fucking Rune Knight. “She’s a monster. I get it. I’d have done the same in your shoes. Well, actually, I probably would’ve done worse. I don’t think I would have kept my cool as well as you were.” Even Aeron knew she was terrible at keeping her face in check. Her emotions were typically written all over it, with no room for misinterpretation. “Besides, that’s more along the lines of how I’d already been expecting you to treat me at the beach, so I was somewhat prepared for it.”

She scratched her short hair awkwardly. “Honestly, the Ace thing ain’t so difficult to piece together. Like I said, Thana and I have been together practically our whole lives. She and I were both slaves in Bellum. We were sold real young.” Aeron didn’t say as much, but anyone who knew anything about child slaves in Bellum knew that it was typically parents trying to dump magickless children to protect their reputations. She was blushing heavily as she said it, but continued on anyway. “If it weren’t for her, I’d still be there. And as much as I hate her, I’ve always been safer with her than without her. I can’t get rid of her because she won’t go the fuck away, but I also can’t get rid of her cause… as fucked up as it sounds, she’s the only source of normalcy and security I’ve ever had.”

“We wandered for almost a year through Ishgar trying to get away from Bellum and find somewhere else to settle, and we’ve been hunted ever since we left. Our handler would love nothing more than to get his hands on us again. But nothin’ ever felt right until Thana found Janet. That’s our guildmaster. She was getting ready to start Elysium, and invited us to help her. We joined together, and once Janet got to know us a little better she offered us both Ace spots. Thana performs with a little more gusto than I do but… Elysium is a home for me, now. A place I feel protected and accepted, where I don’t have to worry so much.”

Aeron had never had that before. Elysium was a guild advertised as a home for the outcasts, for people that had been shunned and kicked around by society. Yes, they were a dark guild that did a lot of evil things, and there was no denying that -- but that didn’t mean that it wasn’t also what they advertised themselves to be: a place of refuge and security for people just like Aeron, who had been failed and abused by literally every system and had nowhere else to go. “As far as the smell thing… Sorry, I don’t got an answer for you on that one. You’re the first person who’s ever mentioned it. Maybe it’s cause we’ve been together so long? Can people’s smells like… merge with one another or something? That’s the only thing I can think of.”

She did her best, but for someone that was wholly unaware of the truth of her predicament, Aeron was at a complete loss for an explanation there. Her eyes flicked around the cave, too embarrassed after talking so much about herself to meet his own. The tourists seemed to have gotten comfortable enough that they felt no need to interact with their guides for the rest of the night, which Aeron was grateful for. They seemed to have been satisfied enough with the Umara meat, as most of what had been cut out was gone.

“You really should eat something, you know,” she told him gently after her gaze caught that he hadn’t touched any of his food. “I know monster meat ain’t the most appealing sounding thing, but it don’t taste so bad. Food is food. The further inland we go, the worse things are gonna get. You’ll wanna keep up as much of your strength as possible. I got some extra here if you want it.” She nodded to the stakes jabbed into the ground around the fire, each with a slab of cooked meat on them. “I sure ain’t gonna forgive you if you wind up dead and leave me alone with these morons.”

The joke slipped from her lips before she really had time to realize what she was saying. Even Aeron looked a little surprised at herself. Humor wasn’t something she ever really took part in, either in the receiving or the giving, and the sheepish look on her face betrayed it.

Mythal seemed to find her blunt honesty about herself a little amusing. He chuckled a little as she admitted that she probably wouldn’t have been able to stop herself from exploding if she’d been in his shoes. When she admitted that she’d basically been waiting all day for him to approach her with such aggression, he told her that not all Knights would be outright aggressive to her just for being a member of a dark guild. They needed evidence first of wrong doing, and needed to keep their minds as clear of biases as possible, because making assumptions is where they were bound to fuck up. Aeron supposed that made sense. If they upheld the law, they needed to subject themselves to it as well, right? The problem was that Aeron didn’t have a whole lot of faith in law enforcement actually holding themselves accountable.

The brunette talked a lot more than she’d ever meant to about her history and how she’d wound up with Thana. Aeron had never told anyone about anything in her life before, always intent on keeping her secrets and her story to herself. Her pain and trauma and struggles was no one’s business but hers, and anyone who tried to pry could sincerely fuck off. Yet here she was, opening up without true prompting. It wasn’t like he was asking her, but there was something about Mythal that made her feel weirdly… comfortable. Like she could talk about the darker pieces of her life without being judged, like he would understand it, despite him being a Rune Knight and an enemy.

Still feeling more than a little awkward about speaking out so much, Aeron was a little surprised when he reciprocated with some honesty of his own. Cerulean eyes flicked up to watch him as he explained that he had been a member of the independent guild Fairy Tail before becoming a Knight, and the only reason he’d joined in the first place was because he’d been desperate and drunk. Mythal described himself as being a broken toy that just wanted more money to feed his addiction to alcohol, and that he’d not been interested at all in making any friends or getting comfortable in the guild. Fate had intervened, it seemed. Despite his best intentions, he wound up making friends anyway and finding people that genuinely cared about his well being, which he hadn’t known for most of his life.

Aeron gulped slightly, a bit thrown off by how similar his experiences were to her own. Aside from the drinking part, at least. She’d always been afraid of alcohol, having seen how easily it impaired people. Mythal assured her he understood. He did not like Elysium or agree with their methods, but he did respect their desire to help those who had nowhere else to turn to. It was just how that was all fueled into a negative light with so many abused and traumatized people fighting so violently for what they believed would be a better future for all. And if that was what she needed to have a safe and fulfilling life, then who was he to say she couldn’t have that? It was just his job to make sure that other people weren’t hurt in the process. Of course, Aeron couldn’t guarantee that. She had certainly hurt a fair number of people in her life, and not all of it was necessarily out of self defense. She’d been paid to do some bad things before, and while she hadn’t necessarily taken pleasure out of it like Thana usually did, she had still done it and not lost any sleep over it.

She voiced her lack of an explanation on the fact that she and Thana smelled the same, offering the only thing she could come up with being that they had been together their entire lives. Mythal commented that such a thing would only make sense if the two women were having sex together every day and swapping bodily fluids. Aeron couldn’t stop the stomach acid from immediately surging to her mouth, quickly covering the orifice and doing everything in her power to force herself not to throw up the dinner she’d just finished eating. It wasn’t enough to stop her from involuntarily gagging a couple times, though. She was so disgusted by the very idea that she couldn’t even say anything, the pale grin tinge to her face and her twitching diaphragm doing all the talking for her.

Swallowing down the bile, she collected herself as best as possible and quickly changed the subject, suggesting that he get some food in his belly. The last thing she needed was him getting wiped out from an empty stomach and leaving her to wrangle a group of snot nosed Fiorens by herself. The unexpected slip of humor drew a snort and a smirk from him before he told her that he wasn’t that easy to kill. He was beyond stubborn, and wouldn’t wish the responsibility for this group on even his worst enemy. Still, he seemed to have taken her suggestion to heart, reaching down and plucking a skewer out of the ground to eat, in the same breath mentioning that he had needed to wait before consuming anything to make sure she wasn’t going to stab him in the back first.

Aeron blinked at him, trying to wrap her mind around the joke that also clearly was not a joke. It was funny, in a morbid way, she just was so unused to having a sense of humor that it was like her body didn’t know what to do. Nothing really came of it until he turned the topic back to the task at hand, commenting on how they needed to make sure everyone survived this trip despite knowing that someone was probably gonna get eaten trying to get a picture up close with a monster. It was him poignantly and aggressively gnawing off a bite of the meat as if recreating the imagery for her that drew an almost sputtered laugh from her, which she quickly covered with her hand, yet another blush rising to her cheeks at the unfamiliar expression.

This time, unlike before, the smirk remained on her face even after she put her hand down, though it still looked like she was fighting it. And clearly losing. It was like something new had been awakened within her, perhaps not in any kind of full force but it was perhaps the beginning of being able to appreciate moments of lightheartedness. “If any of them tried that, I think I would be too dumbfounded to stop them from trying. Besides, I don’t have any knives to stab you in the back with. Poisoning you with monster meat none of you have built up an immunity to isn’t as messy.”

It was her first conscious attempt at a joke, and frankly Aeron thought it wasn’t half bad. If he was willing to make light of them being enemies, then she was free to do the same, right? It wasn’t like he would think she was serious, not when he could tell if she was trying to deceive him. “Oh, I forgot to tell you something. The charms I handed out? They’re linked to the ward I’m gonna set up across the front of the cave before we call it a night. If anything tries to go through the warding, you’re gonna get a real loud alarm going off like… in your head. And that’s for anything coming in or going out, so if any of them try to sneak off while we’re asleep we’ll know immediately. And so will the rest of their buddies, who I can’t imagine will appreciate the rude awakening.”

If anything, she seemed quite excited over the idea that one of them might try and wind up getting all their friends angry at them for interrupting their beauty sleep. And from the somewhat wicked glint in her eyes, Aeron didn’t exactly plan on warning anyone else about the effect.

Truth be told, her face was starting to feel a little sore. The muscles around her mouth weren’t exactly used to smiling, and the result was a weird tingling sensation that made her cheeks feel like jello. Mythal took her joke about poisoned meat in stride, glancing down at the meal warily for only a moment before shrugging it off and commenting that there were worse ways to die. “Ain’t that the fucking truth,” Aeron muttered, shaking her head a little though still smiling. He shot her a smirk and for whatever reason her awkward blush intensified at the look. She quickly covered it by reaching down and picking her own meal back up so she could finish eating it, telling herself it was just to make sure he had plenty of nourishment and was not to cover of the fact that she was acting like a prepubescent teenager around this strange and attractive man.

Aeron filled him in on some of the precautions she had for securing their safety at night. The two of them, in particular, were going to need all the rest they could get since the rich pricks insisted that she and Mythal be the ones doing all the fighting. Since it was literally just the two of them acting as guides and protectors, it wouldn’t be feasible at all for them to take shifts watching over everyone as they slept to make sure nothing crept up on them. Luckily, Elysium had come up with more than a few tricks to keep people safe at night, and Aeron was secure enough in the precautions that she felt that she and Mythal could sleep through the night without worrying about anything coming upon them. He seemed to appreciate the trick about the alarm as well, complimenting its craft and admitting his hope that someone tried to sneak off, even if it cost him a bit of rest.

The two of them finished eating in relatively comfortable silence before Mythal spoke up again. He admitted he’d never been to Sin before, despite how much traveling he had done through Ishgar. Sin had just never really been on the list of places he wanted to go to before because there really wasn’t anything here except death and monsters. According to him, that either made Elysium geniuses or lunatics for picking it as their stomping grounds. She chuckled lightly, a short noise that her vocal chords weren’t altogether familiar with how to make. “It wasn’t my first choice, I can tell you that much. I ain’t exactly thrilled about being a boat ride away from Bellum, and I fought and argued with Thana the whole way here when I realized what she’d signed us up for. I was terrified for the first few months that something was gonna overrun the guild hall and eat me alive.”

“But, we adapted pretty fast. There are definitely ways to survive out here. You just gotta be diligent. And Janet… she’s done a good job taking care of everyone out here. She really cares about us. A bit too much like a mother figure for my tastes, but she’s the only person I’ve ever met that I don’t feel like she’s ever condescending, or like she’s just using me for something. Only beef I ever had with her was one time where she made me to spend almost a whole week by myself out here with nothin’ but the clothes on my back. I was pretty livid but… weirdly, it was Thana that helped me see that Janet only sent me to do it because she knew I had no confidence. I guess it’s still a little fucked up when I say it out loud, but… can’t say it didn’t help me believe in myself a bit more than I used to.”

“Anyway, it’s… definitely awful out here, and nowhere near an ideal place to live, even for a dark guild. But it’s effective, and we’ve been able to make it work, so I guess I can’t complain too much.” They spent the rest of the evening chatting idly with one another, content to keep themselves isolated from the rest of the group as they waited for the tourists to wind down and wander off to their tents for the night. Aeron took the time to coorden off the entrance of the cave with the wards she’d brought, taking the time to show them to Mythal and make sure he knew how they worked in case he needed to deal with it himself at any point. Then, once everyone else was in bed, she bid him goodnight and retreated into her own tent to bed down for the night.

They were only woken once in the middle of the night for the alarm, and it was for someone trying to sneak out to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. There was quite a bit of grumbling from the party about the ordeal, and while Aeron wasn’t pleased at having her sleep disturbed either, she did take great joy in their own annoyance as she made it clear that kind of rude awakening was what they could expect if any of them tried to run off in the middle of the night thinking they could go out on their own when she or Mythal weren’t looking. The entire ordeal lasted maybe ten minutes before everyone finally went back to sleep, with Aeron looking more than a little pleased with herself.

The next couple of days went much the same as the first, though the monsters they encountered were more frequent and more difficult to beat. They started running into things that Aeron had never even encountered before, and more often than not both she and Mythal were fighting at the same time rather than taking turns, if only because there were a great number of monsters that kept trying to get to the group while the other was fighting. At one point, she actually managed to find a nice vantage point for them to watch from a safe distance as two monsters viciously fought one another, ripping each other apart until one proved the victor and got to eating its kill. It was a grotesque scene to witness, but Aeron had seen worse and frankly it was a nice change to have a fight happen that neither of them had to get involved in.

There were certainly a couple close calls, at least insofar as people getting hurt. The Elysium mage and Rune Knight together managed to keep everyone relatively safe from being killed, but there had been a number of times where the protective charms that Aeron had given everyone had come in handy for preventing the loss of a limb. There had been some mild panic during those moments from the group, as was only natural, but it was quickly replaced with laughter and amusement after when everything was fine and they continued to believe themselves invisible. Still, Aeron couldn’t help but be grateful. They had gotten through most of the week without anyone doing anything too stupid, and with any luck that trend would continue.

It was the morning of the last full day of the trip when that streak of good luck finally ran out. Aeron woke up early and did her routine check of the area outside to make sure it was safe before coming back and starting to rouse everyone. They got through breakfast and had started packing up their things before Aeron realized something was off. She stood off to the size looking around their current camp with a confused look, like she was searching for something she’d lost. The first thing she did every morning was check the charm around her neck to verify that everyone was accounted for in their tents, and the correct number of dots were present on the back of it. However, as she looked around with a still somewhat groggy focus, there were less bodies in view than there should have been. Two people, a married couple that had come together, hadn’t come out for breakfast. Were they still sleeping?

Rolling her eyes and hating playing babysitter, she shuffled over to their tent and shook it. “Hey! Let’s go. This ain’t the kind of vacation where you can just sleep in as late as you want,” she told them loudly. No response came. Aeron frowned in annoyance and shook the tent harder. “Did you hear me? I ain’t gonna tell you nicely again!”

Aeron, they’re not in there. Darius sounded a bit shocked when he spoke up, as though somehow even he hadn’t noticed it until now.

“What?!” she asked him, so stricken by his words that she didn’t even realize she’d replied to him out loud. Scrambling to get inside, the pulled the zipper on the flap of the tent and yanked it open to reveal that it was, in fact, empty. “MYTHAL!” Aeron called out, her tone ripe with urgency as she practically dove into the tent. How was this possible? How were they gone? They couldn’t have…

She came out a second later, her face writ with complete and utter panic as she locked eye with the Rune Knight and lifted up the two charms that belonged to the couple. They had taken them off and left them behind in order to bypass the ward without tripping the alarm, and now they were missing.

This was bad. This was legitimately the worst case scenario for Aeron, the exact kind of thing she had been afraid would happen all week. The charms were meant to help her locate anyone if they went missing, but somehow this idiot couple had put together that they were also tied to the wards that Aeron put up at night to keep everyone safe. And yet they had stupidly taken them off in order to break the rules without alerting anyone. And worst of all, they had clearly had the wherewithal to keep it to themselves. These people were all gossips, so if their two guides hadn’t managed to catch wind of the plot it could only mean that none of the rest of the group had been aware of it.

Mythal snatched the medallions from her with a growled curse, lifting them to his nose and giving them a deep sniff. In less pressing circumstances, Aeron might have been baffled by the weird behavior since she didn’t really know the ins and outs of slayer magic. At the moment, however, she was too preoccupied by the situation to give much thought to the fact that he was basically acting like a scent hound. He sniffed the air heavily until he picked up their scent, confirming that the couple hadn’t left too long ago and thus had probably not gotten too far. That was a relief, certainly, but still meant little when it came to Sin. Death lurked around every corner, and panic was swiftly rising inside the Elysium mage, who didn’t know what to do. They couldn’t very well leave the rest of these people here to fend for themselves to go search for their idiot friends, and she simply didn’t have the experience or training to make a sound decision on the most appropriate way to handle the situation.

Thankfully, Mythal did. The director demanded that everyone hustle to leave, his demeanor so sternly commanding that even Aeron felt the need to get her act together, despite the fact that she hadn’t done anything wrong. But if he was willing to step up and take charge in the moment of danger and chaos then she was more than happy to follow the lead of his greater experience. She quickly collapsed the couple’s tent with their belongings inside, the entire setup condensing into something lightweight and easy to carry. Then, she practically threw herself to her own tent to do the same before harrowing the rest of the group to hurry their own asses up. The group was very annoyed at their missing companions, and seemed intent on doing more grumbling than packing.

Once everyone was ready to go, they marched out with Mythal at the lead, following the scent. The trail didn’t lead them too far away, though it was certainly removed enough from the camp to be of concern, and when they finally found the couple Aeron’s already boiling anger and anxiety spiked. “Really?!” she practically roared at them, keeping her voice low without sacrificing the intensity of her ire while the couple scrambled to put their clothes on after Mythal chastised them. True to her word, she was not as adept as Mythal was at keeping her emotions in check, practically red in the face with fury. “You put all of our lives in danger just to sneak out for a quick fuck? Unbelievable! Tell me: were the two of you born this stupid, or did you just decide at some point that all that money meant you no longer had to use your fucking brains?”

She’d had just about enough of these people after this week. This entire trip had already been ill conceived enough without anyone running off like teenagers at the behest of their genitals rather than their heads. Aeron had never had sex before, but she couldn’t imagine it was so good as to risk her life over, so this entire situation was just beyond baffling to her. It didn’t get more idiotic than this, and paying clients or no she had no qualms with insulting their obvious lack of intelligence. Given that Mythal didn’t seem inclined to stop her or calm her down, he clearly felt the same way.

Just when she thought the situation was handled, however, everything took a turn for the worst. The ground rolled beneath her feet, causing everyone to stumble and try to keep their balance. “What the hell?” she asked, barely finding her footing and looking up to watch as what had appeared to be a large, weird rock formation was actually a monster with eight massive legs. Dread washed over her and her jaw dropped as the behemoth lurched to its feet, causing Aeron to take an involuntary step back at the sight of how terrifying and massive the creature was. It had three heads filled with razor sharp teeth, it’s body covered in thick bone like plates, and it stood several stories taller than anything she’d ever come across in Sin in the past. Her knees were openly shaking as she stared at the thing in complete and utter horror, so struck with terror that she couldn’t even find the strength to scream.

Somehow, some way, Mythal calling her name managed to shake her from her paralysis. Every instinct in her body told her to run and leave these idiots to defend themselves, and perhaps in another life she might have done so. As far as she was concerned, this fell under the grounds of not putting her life on the line to protect these people from their own death wish. However, she knew that Mythal was going to fight and do his duty, and weirdly enough… the thought of leaving him to fight for his own life alone left a bitter taste in her mouth. The rest of these people she didn’t care about, but this Rune Knight had shown himself to be a decent person over the course of the week and had treated her far better than… well, most people ever had. She couldn’t bring herself to just abandon him, no matter how deeply ingrained she was with survival and self interest.

Letting out a sound that was half a growl, half a whimper, Aeron put motion to her feet and raced forward. “I’ll distract it! Make sure these idiots can’t get in the way!” Whatever this thing was, it was most certainly going to need both of them to take it down, and truthfully Aeron wasn’t even sure the two of them could beat it. However, she did know that if they were going to stand a chance, they had to ensure that they could focus on fighting it without also having to worry about the tourists. So, she would let Mythal figure that out while she dealt with the monstrosity, knowing at the very least that she could fend the thing off long enough for him to deal with their charges and return to help her.

As she ran, her body began to grow exponentially until she was just as tall as the behemoth herself, her boots shaking the landscape as she charged the creature. A monster of its size surely had a difficult time pinpointing creatures far smaller than it was, but another life form similar to it in size was rather difficult to miss. They launched themselves at one another, an ear shattering screech roaring from the monster’s three mouths. Without putting much thought into the stupidity and boldness of what she was doing, Aeron reached out and grabbed hold of the jaw of the central face, gripping it tightly by the protrusions in its mandible that weren’t lined with teeth and using her strength to wrestle with the thing. Luckily the way its body was designed, the other two heads did not have the flexibility to try and take bites out of her. They continued to shriek their fury as she strong armed the creature into a temporary stalemate.

Unfortunately, eight legs were better than two, and it was slowly, if surely, pushing her back little by little. Its head thrashed wildly in her hands as it tried to shake her off and whip her around enough to land a bite on her. Aeron did her best to keep her stance, but its extra legs gave it a much wider and stable base than she currently had. Refusing to be overpowered, she tapped into her magic and slipped into the takeover form of the dryder. Before their eyes, her entire enlarged body morphed into a form that Mythal would instantly recognize, as Thana had used it during their own battle months before. Her lower body swelled to take on the thick, bulbous shape of a black spider with eight thin but powerful legs. Her upper torso maintained the physique of a woman, but her skin turned a dark ashen grey and her hair became black as night.

The extra legs gave her a more solid foundation and made it easier for her to keep herself from being knocked over. Aeron grit her teeth and growled from the effort it took to keep the thing from turning her into a chew toy. She wouldn’t be able to maintain this position for long. It was keeping it at bay at best, but there was nothing that would be won from this position. All she could do was hope to buy Mythal enough time to get the idiots settled and safe so he could start making use of the advantage she was giving him and dealing some damage.