They took everything that remained of Rodrick. Body and personal effects. All of it had to be destroyed to prevent the toxic miasma from polluting anything else.

The two of them held each other on the floor for hours, crying as bodies bustled around them. Hector would have left long before to grieve in private, but he could not leave Zelda and she would not leave the last place their friend had drawn breath.

Healers once thought to displace them, but the Titan who guided Hector there now served as a silent sentinel. Not many cared to anger a Titan. Their people may not have been one of the big three, but they were physically imposing in the extreme.

"We were going home, Hector."

"I know, Zelda."

"No, Hector. Together. We were going home together."

He'd suspected as much. Now he found himself bereft of words. What was the right thing to say to make someone hurt less? He'd always been terrible at that sort of thing.

"I could have done something," she said. "Purification. Restoration. Combine the sigils? Interwoven chant? That's not right." She balled her fist and punched her leg. "Balance destructive and creative elements in a duality swirl. Ring of class two runes to steer. But that would be unbalanced."

Zelda moved to hit herself again and Hector caught her by the wrist. She pulled free.

"Hey, don't hit yourself."

"I need to know what I could have done different, Hector. I need to know."

He put a firm hand on her shoulder. "I know where the mistake was made, Zelda. When we couldn't hurt the porcupines, we didn't run like we should have. I should know better. The fault was mine, not yours."

Zelda swatted his hand away. "Don't… just… I need to know."

So he stayed beside her for longer as she muttered to herself incomprehensible things that Hector assumed were highly technical and not insane. The surge ended before he could sway Zelda to leave. They slept on the train in their exhaustion but managed to wake up before their stop.

Hector rode the elevator up with Zelda but resisted the urge to get off on her floor. That would get him removed from the hotel for trespass. Instead, he extracted a promise that she would meet him in the cafeteria the next day.

Then he went to the rooftop to cultivate. Hector watched the sunset as he began the task of restoring his cosmic energy. As he did so, he talked to his deceased friend. "I'm sorry, Rod. I should have put my foot down when you wanted to do the surge without Conrad. You wouldn't have liked that, I know."

He litigated the case against himself, questioning every decision. Entering the dungeon during the surge. Letting their group be shuttled to an entrance they'd never used to 'even out traffic'. Not running away from the porcupines. Not immediately pulling out when he saw Rodrick covered in the blood of the beast. Not noticing his friend was struggling to breathe before he collapsed. All those decisions had belonged to the group as a whole, but the fact remained that if Hector had done something different, all three of them could have come home.

A voice of reason whispered of things he wasn't ready to hear. It said that entering the dungeon was inherently unsafe. They'd known the risks when they stayed on this world. Nobody expected to become the statistic, but someone ultimately would. Optimize the choices of the players as much as you wanted, in the end it would still be a dangerous game. They'd each gambled with their lives every time they stepped foot in there.

Better to dream up ways he could have saved Rodrick. It twisted that knife of guilt ever deeper, but Hector found comfort living in the hypothetical where Rod was still alive, just waiting for him to figure out the right solution. That wouldn't be, Hector knew. The truth reasserted itself time and again, no matter how hard he hid from it in rabbit holes of maybe.

He dragged himself to bed when he could no longer bear to face the darkness of the night sky. It reminded him too much of the eternal night of the dungeon. He kept the curtain open within his capsule so that the faint glow of the dim hall lights anchored his reality to the hotel.

The next day he met an obsessive Zelda in the cafeteria. She brought paper and pen and wrote elaborate ritual descriptions, complete with visual representations. Her words were sharp, clipped, and heated. She didn't permit any interruptions. When he tried to reach out for physical contact, she smacked his hands away. When he questioned if figuring out a ritual was really healthy, she almost left on the spot.

Hector managed to eat that single meal. Otherwise, he simply cultivated. It was a refuge for him. Aura, mind, and externality in rotation. He didn't know what else to do with himself. Didn't know what else he could do at the moment.

When he realized night had fallen already, Hector sent a payment of five hundred credits to Riley. He'd missed two days in a row now and didn't want her to think him dead in the dungeon. Or worse, that he'd suddenly abandoned her.

He waited an entire day in the cafeteria for Zelda to reappear. She never did.

Then on the third day since the dungeon, he found Zelda already present when he came down for the day. She looked utterly drained. There were no papers full of obscure diagrams for her to use as visual cues during frantic rants. Hector found himself relieved just to know she still lived.

"Hey."

She took a moment to respond. When she did so, her words were chosen with deliberate care. "It would have been possible before he collapsed."

"Zelda… we can't change what is done."

"I'm going home."

"I understand."

"To stay."

"That's fair," he said.

Zelda began to sob quietly. "I got my insight."

He didn't know how to respond to that. Had she discovered what she sought in the focus of her madness? "Fire?"

She shook her head. "Symbology."

"I know it's not what you wanted, but… it's a great achievement. Congratulations."

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"My father wanted another ritualist in the family business. Now he has one."

"I'm sorry, Zelda. I know you weren't ready to give up on your dream."

Zelda grimaced. "I've always heard that one never realizes they are questing until they receive an insight. I spent years with Conflagration, listening to every obsessive lecture he'd give on the topic of fire and pondering on the truth of burning. I was certain all the work I'd put in proved I was in the midst of my insight quest. When I was questing in truth… I don't think I was capable of rational thought. My obsession warped the paths of my mind entirely."

She took a deep breath to steel herself for what came next

. "I… I'm going to leave today, Hector. I know that's not fair to you. You're grieving too. But I can't stay here."

"I understand."

She held his hand. "You don't have to be so reasonable all the time, you know?"

"I know your pain is worse. How long were you together?"

"Six weeks." Zelda hung her head. "He wasn't ever in my eyes until recently. Rod lived in the background. Loyal guy, liked a laugh. Just a sweet soul. And by the holy ones, Hector, he snagged me fast when I finally gave him a chance."

Hector remembered becoming a 'sworn brother' to Rodrick in dramatic fashion on television. It had been a silly act put on for a gullible audience. Yet in this case life imitated art. Rod stayed behind to run dungeons with him. They protected each other. In the end, Hector risked everything to get his friend to help, even if it turned out to be too late.

"Are you going to be okay here on your own?"

He shrugged. "I won't be alone."

"Conrad finds you useful, Hector. He's not a real friend."

"That's the same way we started, isn't it?"

Zelda forced a grim smile. "You grew on us."

"I'm like a fungus that way."

"Don't take too many risks. I don't know what happened with the anteater, but I know you well enough to know it wasn't safe."

"I will try my best to minimize risks."

Zelda bent down and retrieved a bag he noticed for the first time. Realizing that she planned to leave immediately, Hector had to scrub water from his cheeks. He stood and wrapped her in a fierce hug. "I'm going to miss you."

"Stay alive, Hector. I want to see you again some day."

Then he was alone. Grief rose up violently within him, squeezing his organs so hard he could barely breathe. It was almost enough to send him back to Earth. Though she had meant to warn him against being overly trusting, Zelda's words about Conrad had pulled the rug out from under him. He had no friends on this world.

Only that was not entirely accurate.

Hector found his way to the brothel on autopilot. When he sat at the bar, he didn't even touch his drink. He just sat there, feeling miserable, waiting for Riley.

His wait wasn't long. Only it wasn't Riley.

Hector found himself faced with a group of beautiful young women who had previously ignored his existence. They crowded him, rubbing his shoulders and offering compliments on his appearance. He wasn't sure what to make of their sudden interest in him. Had Riley told them that he was rich?

Then one of them performed an Arahant salute, fist to heart, and his brain made a connection.

"Did you hear about me in the dungeon somehow?"

She smirked as she leaned close to run her finger along his jawline. "We are so honored to host the Stalwart Xian at our humble establishment."

From the other side, a curvy Jinn leaned in to whisper in his ear, her full bosom pressing into his arm. "We all really liked the picture of you on the television. Such a shame they blurred out your waist region. I am so very very curious about what wasn't shown."

Hector studied the women. He wasn't in the best head space at the moment, so he didn't want to start yelling. They didn't look as blatantly manipulative as he'd worried. More interested than anything. He'd become a celebrity again. Actually, worse than that. He was a propaganda prop. The common people of Union Central swallowed anything their government fed them. Come to think of it, plenty of that happened back home as well.

"I'm waiting for Riley."

Lashes fluttered at him. "The Stalwart Xian has other options."

Hector drew himself up. "He doesn't wish to exercise those options."

"That's fine, muscles. We just wanted to say hello." The ladies marched past him one at a time to flaunt the goods available. Hector politely smiled as they departed.

Their absence left space for Riley to approach. She moved hesitantly, glancing at the women he'd just turned down as if fearful of their reprisals. "You're back."

"Sorry I missed a few days. I hope you didn't worry."

"I saw you on television." She looked him over closely. "You are so low on energy. I thought a new Xian came here before I saw you."

"It will take me a few weeks of work to get back what I used. Ready to go up?"

Riley hooked elbows with him in what she insisted on calling 'the Xian way' and guided him to an open room where Hector slumped onto the bed. "One of my friends died."

"Oh no, Hector. Was it in the dungeon?"

"Yeah."

"Who were they?"

He never spoke much about the dungeon with Riley. It seemed best in the past to keep his life compartmentalized. "Rod. He was an Arahant swordsman. My best friend." In halting sentences, Hector explained how miasma claimed a life. He revealed that his second best friend had fled from Union Central in grief over her lost love. Riley pet his head like he was a dog in need of comfort.

"Is your third best friend safe?"

Hector's laugh tasted bitter. "Safe, yes. But she's enslaved by a brothel."

"I'm your third best friend?"

"And my favorite student."

She bent forward to look up at his face. "I'm your only student."

"I want to give you a lot of credits, Riley. Don't refuse them." He brought up the System and transferred two hundred thousand credits. That brought his balance to under twenty thousand, the lowest it had been since he arrived on this world and the Sage of Persuasion bestowed her award. "How much debt do you have left now?"

"Forty-six thousand, two hundred and twelve." Riley stood, assumed a rigid stance, and then performed a truly awful rendition of a bow. She was always trying out elements of her adopted culture around him like this.

"When I have the funds, I'll transfer another hundred thousand to you so that you have a positive balance. You will be able to go out to the cafeterias with the other girls and be more selective about which clients you take."

"Hector?"

"Yes, Riley?"

"Are Xian actually safe in the dungeon?"

He thought back to the aftermath of blowing up the anteater. About how a gallon of spilled blood killed Rodrick by degrading into miasma even though they'd rinsed him with water immediately. Hector had been submerged in enough ichor to drown. He'd felt the miasma infect him. Then he'd overcome it somehow.

"No one is safe in the dungeon, Riley. It's not like you see in the movies."

"Then maybe you shouldn't delve anymore, Hector. You are the hero of this surge. You can retire now, right?"

"I can't quit, Riley. This is what I do while I'm on Union Central."

She resumed petting his head. "Don't die, Hector. You're my best friend, too."

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