Atabek slowly twisted his body around, causing his lower back to release a series of cracks like the sound of a falling tree. Surreptitiously, he cast a glance Safiya's way, admiring her many scars as she spun a dagger around by a ring at the base of its hilt. He tore his eyes away, his gaze sweeping over the forest as he checked for anything sneaking up on them. Predictably, he saw nothing. No other creatures were willing to come so close to the mysterious dark cloud. It wasn't so bad out here, although it was hard to truly relax with a massive orb of swirling dark mist a stone's throw away. Granted, he could throw a stone quite far, but that was beside the point.

  "Do you think he's okay in there?" he asked, breaking the comfortable silence of the camp. They'd known each other since childhood and felt no need to fill every second with idle chatter. By now, their bonds forged by battle were so strong that they didn't need to use words to communicate during the well-trod process of setting up and maintaining a camp. That was something he admired about the healer; most foreigners loved to fill the air with their strange noise, but this one didn't. In fact, he seemed to be lost in his own mind half the time. Atabek understood.

  "The fog seems the biggest threat, but it did not harm him," Aslan said. "I doubt any monsters would make it through the wall."

  "More dangerous out than in. Still hear nothing?" Atabek guessed, once more looking around him.

  "There was something, but I'm not sure what," Safiya answered with her velvety smooth voice. "Like a rock falling from the top of the plateau, only heard from a great distance."

  "Hmm, I hope it was nothing bad," he rumbled. "He's so... squishy. Like a little berry. I do not wish for him to be squished into a smoothie."

  "Brother, I think you might be hungry," Aslan laughed. While they were related, it was much more distant than siblings. Something to do with a direct ancestor's cousin, he thought.

  "We bought some fresh ingredients, right? Maybe it's time we stop for brunch..." Safiya suggested.

  Atabek smiled. He had just the right thing.

  Symon wiped the sweat from his brow, finding it to be uncomfortably gritty. It also left a dark streak across his hand, and probably his forehead, but he couldn't check. The dust — finding out what it actually was before he spent much longer in it was his next priority — turned his sweat into a gross, paste-like consistency.

  "Well, that wasn't so bad," he said, looking down at the body of the former groundskeeper. "I don't really notice myself growing stronger day by day, but I would've been ripped in half by the gharzoth if I'd come here a week ago. Even just the Swords passive makes me feel way more confident about taking care of myself."

  Symon took the time to wipe some of the collected dust off himself, but he mostly just smeared it around. Keelgrave didn't reply.

  "Yes, yes, I know it's only low level yadda yadda I'm still a bug to be crushed blah blah. It's still good progress, though, and even you have to admit it," he proclaimed, proudly planting his hands on his hips.

  Keelgrave was silent.

  Symon frowned, looking down at his chest even though he didn't need his eyes to sense his vessel and vitality. The dirty — for lack of a better term — vitality still sat solidly inside his vessel, making him feel bloated in a way that a full vessel normally didn't. He wasn't worried, though. Even now, he could sense the substance slowly being broken down and purified into normal vitality.

  What he couldn't sense, though, was Keelgrave. Normally, he was a little ball of vitality, noticeably distinct from Symon's but still stuck in his vessel all the same. The spirit tended to sit at the bottom of the vessel, like water in a cup, but he wasn't there. The foreign vitality had instead sunk to the bottom, slowly bubbling like tar as small amounts were purified and rose up to join the swirling mass of normal vitality above it. Keelgrave must have been up there, and yet Symon couldn't see him.

  "Hello?" he tried, projecting his thoughts down the bond as he usually did. It didn't feel any different from usual, but Essence Bond didn't provide much indication that it was working in general. There was no reply.

  "Shit, that's not good... where the hell are you?" he spoke aloud. He tried to talk himself through what had happened and see if he had missed anything. "I'm pretty sure I would have noticed him leaving my vessel, even with the revenant distracting me. Plus, if he figured out a way to escape the vessel, he would have already done so." Pacing back and forth, he did his best to ignore the body of the manor's groundskeeper. "If he didn't leave, that must mean he's still in there, I just can't see him. So...." he trailed off.

  He remembered Keelgrave complaining about the foreign vitality, but he would have guessed it was the culprit anyway due to the timing.

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  "Hmm, are you buried under all the revenant's vitality? Shout if you can hear me," Symon said. Nothing happened, but he wasn't expecting it to.

  With a shrug, he realised he didn't have to do anything to solve the issue. He was pretty sure Keelgrave was just trapped under the tar, which was a problem that was already solving itself as his vessel slowly cleansed it, converting the impure vitality into a normal version. It wasn't like the spirit would suffocate down there.

  Although... was Keelgrave being trapped really a problem? The spirit had been quite helpful with training, and might have been slightly less insulting than when they'd first met, but Symon hadn't forgotten that he'd tried to kill him in that meeting. He still hadn't received a proper apology for that, not that a few words would be enough to make up for attempted murder.

  The problem there was that Keelgrave didn't even seem remorseful in the first place. Symon knew enough about him from the memory dreams as well as more mundane conversation that he wouldn't call him needlessly evil, but he was certainly self-prioritising to the extreme. He valued his life so much more than the life of a stranger. The opposite of Symon, who would risk his to save another.

  It all boiled down to one question: did Symon trust him?

  Simply put, the answer was no. More precisely, he could trust Keelgrave to look out for Keelgrave, which, considering their bond, meant he had a vested interest in helping Symon. But if a genie showed up and offered to swap Symon and Keelgrave's position... he was pretty sure the spirit would accept. Sure, he might even feel a little bad about it after having gotten to know Symon, but he still only cared about himself, his ship, and his crew. In that order.

  So no, he wasn't in any rush to clear up the strange vitality and free Keelgrave. It was nice to know that there was a way to suppress the spirit if he ever decided he'd had enough of him.

  Sparing a final glance at the body, he moved on. Part of him roiled at the idea of killing a thinking being that had even been able to talk, but that part was quickly squashed. The lizardman was undead, for one, and clearly not in its right mind. It had been taking care of the roses alone for decades, preventing it from being able to pass on peacefully. Symon had ensured it could, and didn't feel bad about that. He even felt good knowing that he'd helped someone, even if the process had been messy.

  Next, his plan was to scope out the manor itself and hopefully find a way to turn off the surrounding tornado of black dust. It was clearly related to the black roses, but he wasn't sure of much beyond that.

  Actually, let's try and figure that out first. Just in case it's secretly killing me.

  His thread had long since detached from the truly dead gharzoth and continued its flower killing spree, so he walked over to the nearest cluster of roses. Really, the manor grounds were so thick with them that there weren't noticeable clusters, so he simply stepped off the clear path that led between the sheds and onto the dirt.

  He knelt and plucked one from the ground, roots and all. It took a bit of tugging; the roots were so closely entwined with those of its neighbours that it was like they were trying to hold onto their friend, but he wasn't going to be defeated by a plant. He kept the thread firmly planted into one of the nearby roses, ensuring his uprooted specimen would remain alive while he studied it.

  Interestingly, he felt a now familiar sensation as his awareness focused on the flower. It was his Anatomy passive. It made sense that it would work on plants, too; he just hadn't focused on one hard enough for the effect to work until now.

  The entire plant was the same shade of black — petals, stem, roots, and thorns. The passive even supplied the name for other parts of the flower, like the sepal, that he wouldn't have known without the ledger.

  Hmm, is it helping me remember something I once knew but just forgot, or did the Ledger download new knowledge into my brain? I'm not sure how I feel about that...

  Sliding the stem across his sword, he revealed that even the internals of the stem were the same black colour. Looks cool, but not sure that helps. Checking the depression in the dirt he'd just pulled the plant out from, he found... dirt.

  It was completely normal brown dirt without any of the black dust mixed through it. There was a layer of it on top of the dirt, but they hadn't been combined.

  "Okay, so it doesn't come from the ground," he said to himself. Next, he peeled back the delicate petals. He couldn't see much, considering it was still the same solid black colour, but he thought he might be seeing something...

  As a child, before he'd gotten sick, he'd always stop and pick dandelions when the seeds were ready to fly away. He'd help them along, blowing them off the plant and sending the little white tufts of fluff floating through the air. His mother always told him they were a weed and he shouldn't help them spread, but he hadn't cared.

  With a smile on his face, he held the rose up to his lips before blowing air out as hard as he could. Immediately, a fine cloud of the black dust flew out of the flower, lazily floating through the air on a gentle, unseen breeze.

  "I'm a genius," he chuckled, taking advantage of the lack of Keelgrave to try and humble him. They weren't seeds, though. His thread refused to attach, even for just the briefest moment, so it wasn't alive. That was good, because even through the cloth face mask, he'd probably breathed in quite a bit. Even the 'clear' area within the walls of the mist was still hazy with the substance.

  The sudden tickling in the back of his throat made it clear what the black dust truly was.

  "Oh God, magical hayfever," Symon complained, the pollen of the black rose building up to a crescendo as he sneezed it all out, just managing to move his facecloth away in time.

  Nasty, he thought as he kicked a bit of dirt over the black substance on the ground. The pollen was certainly annoying, but he still hadn't noticed any serious negative effects. If they existed, they would have already happened.

  He supposed it was possible there were more groundskeepers that would attack him, but it was a similar situation to the pollen. None had shown up during his fight, including when one of the sheds had collapsed. It had been quite loud, but he'd only barely registered it, focused as he was on the fight.

  Regardless, he kept his sword drawn as he approached one of the sheds, sticking to the cleared paths. It wasn't nearly wide enough to keep the roses out of his range, but he wanted to keep the rest of the field healthy for a proper harvesting later.

  A lot could be done with what had to be be hundreds of units of vitality.

  one week break from posting to focus on that. I don't plan on making any changes to the plot, just polish the prose, so don't worry about needing to re-read anything. Oh, and the three chapters a week schedule will continue as normal once I'm back.