…

  “Here, there appears to be an underground ke,” Momon said as they continued to move forward.

  The group of three had walked left from the entrance. The walk itself hadn’t been long. Yet, it was silent as moved on. The source of this silence was Evil Eye. The helmet under her arm drew some looks from the other two, yet they didn’t ask about it.

  The underground ke was rge, and stretched beyond a normal person’s sight. Even the eyesight of the three inhuman adventurers wasn’t good enough to see to the end of the ke. In fact, it might have even been a river with how long it was.

  “So, what is this? How do we proceed?” Momon asked no one in particur.

  His voice carried over the water, and the other two fell into silence once more as they thought. The glow bugs attached to the top of the cave didn’t live over this water, which was strange to the three of them.

  After a good amount of time studying the underground river, for that was what it was, Tatania noticed something. It was a peer, a peer made of weathered stone on their right.

  “Look you two, there’s a stone peer out there. The path to it seems to have crumbled, unfortunately,” she said.

  It was the truth. The stone peer that had a path made of stone as well seemed inaccessible, at least until one realized that they had someone that could fly, and two someone’s that could jump great distances.

  The path to the peer seemed to be crumbled. The weather material showing signs of great use and wear. Footsteps, worn into the very rock itself showed upon the surface. Who had been walking here? It would go unanswered.

  “Evil Eye, do you think that you could fly over there and see if there is anything of notes outside of our line of sight?” Momon asked, and Evil Edye nodded her head.

  She cast, “Fly,” upon herself up and flew into the air. Moving herself over to the peer. It was dark, that much Tatania could tell. Though, the light levels didn’t really do anything to her sight, it was simply that the area that the peer was attached to was out of sight.

  She heard some rustling, and some mild cursing. Then, after about a minute of nothing, Evil Eye came out of the blind spot, dragging a life support boat. Or, that was what it looked like. From where Tatania stood, it appeared to be a boat that could maybe hold ten people, maybe more.

  “I found this boat. It looks old, but it doesn’t have any holes in it, so it should be fine,” she said, and the other two nodded their heads.

  …

  “I’ve been meaning to ask, why are you caring that helmet?” Tatania asked.

  It was a rather simple question. Yet it hadn’t been asked yet. The tension that Evil Eye had about herself had stopped either of her traveling companions from asking her about it. After several hours, she had had enough.

  “It belonged to a good friend of mine. He had left my adventuring party and had gone out to sy the dragons lords that were a threat to humanity,” she said solemnly, “I don’t think anyone told him that Deep Darkness Dragon lord doesn’t really care about humanity. I think he came here and got himself killed,” she expined, and Tatania simply looked at the other girl.

  She could tell that tears were coming from the other girl’s face underneath her mask. She simply didn’t mention it and continued forward. The boat worked fine. Oars were in the bottom. The water was deep enough so it could actually be rowed.

  Momon was in the front. Evil Eye and Tatania sat in front of him as he rowed. His back to the direction they moved. The three of them had been silent for the longest time now.

  “Evil Eye,” Momon spoke, and the vampire in question looked at him with a slight blurry gaze, not that he could tell, “how are you feeling? I know what it is like to lose friends. I know what it is like to be abandoned, to feel left out. if you need to vent, speak and we shan’t stop you.”

  About half of that was a lie. True, he did know what it was like to feel abandoned, yet it wasn’t the same. He had simply been left in the treasury. She had lost a dear friend. The two acts couldn’t be more apart.

  Though, Tatania didn’t know about such things, she felt as though it would have hurt. While she didn’t ever really think of the loyalty of others, only really her own. She did know what it felt like to be betrayed. That was somewhat like what Evil Eye was feeling, at least a little.

  Tatania did want to talk about it. Yet, her story as a ten-year-old orphan wouldn’t really match. She settled for a comforting hand on the other girl’s shoulder.

  Evil Eye turned her, her gaze lingering on the other girl for maybe a second too long. She looked away with a sigh. Tatania simply removed her hand and looked out across the darkness.

  She herself didn’t really know how to deal with this. She never actually lost any troops in her battalion. While that was hard to imagine, it was true. She worked hard to make sure that none of her men died, and the simple fact that they were in a war wasn’t an excuse to lose any.

  “He would have liked you guys,” Evil Eye said after a while, “he would have liked Viridael, and Nabe.”

  It was then that Tatania pced her hand atop Evil eye’s head. While the vampire girl would normally try and move the soft hand off of her head, she was feeling unusually vulnerable today.

  “Are you feeling any better?” the young girl asked.

  “Pet me more,” the vampire responded with.

  This got a light chuckle from the rower, Momon. The two girls looked at him as he did his job, rowing the boat. He silenced himself as they bored holes into him with their eyesight.

  To get rid of the strange tension that was building, Momon decided to speak up. His creator, Ainz Ooal Gown, had built a rather complex back story for Momon. The tale mimicked his creator’s own rise to power and his own story as well.

  At least, that was what he had been told by Aeskell. There was no way, other than asking Lord Ainz, if she was telling the truth at all. If she was, his creator would have his uttermost sympathies.

  “I remember when they left, my comrades. There was forty-one of us, at our peak,” he started, “first there was my hero, a padin in shiny white armor. Second, there was the tank, a woman whose voice could change on a dime. Third was her brother, a master archer and connoisseur of fine art. He was the second’s brother,” Momon added in a chuckle.

  “I loved them all. There were many more, of course. Yet, I didn’t matter in the end. For they all left me alone. Only Viridael, and our resident assassin’s daughter stayed behind,” he stopped rowing for a minute.

  He pced the oars across his p. He leaned down, and stared into the mask of Evil Eye. The girl, on the receiving side of a deep and emotional talk from the man that she had fallen for, couldn’t tear her gaze away.

  “Celebrate their lives, not their deaths,” was all he said, he went to rowing.

  …