After leaving Lawrence and Fanari in the capable hands of Pause and Taste, both the captain and Chase followed Boomer to where Cloud was, when they got there it was a sight to behold, at the edge of the town Cloud was pouring Donors blood down the throat of a dead-looking Rusty who was sitting against the wall underneath an impact crater on the wall, covered in blood, but, Rusty’s situation wasn’t nearly as bad as the man a short distance away from him. A short distance from Rusty was a dead man with so many crimson spikes through him that the only thing Chase could tell about him was his facial features.

Knowing that Rusty was either already dead or going to be fine, Chase decided to look at the other man’s corpse. The man was young, couldn’t have been more than thirty, he was wearing what used to be a dark blue cloak that was now covered in holes with crimson spikes curving in and out of both his clothes and his body. To the man’s lower left side there was a sword scabbard with no sword in it, assuming the man was holding it when he died, Chase looked underneath his hands in the snow, but didn’t find any sword, “That’s odd,” Chase thought to himself as he walked over to the others.

The others were helping Rusty up off the ground, who seemed to be alive. As Cloud helped Rusty up he told him not to use his ability anytime soon or he would overexert his magic and, as Rusty opened his mouth to reply but blood poured out instead, to which Rusty closed his mouth and gave a subtle nod instead. If it weren’t for Donor’s blood he’d have certainly been dead, but he also wouldn’t be bleeding from everywhere like a waterfall as blood gushed out of his chest in multiple spots, it was amazing that he could stand at all, even with Cloud’s help. After taking a few steps to make sure that Rusty was able to, Cloud gave Rusty to Boomer and walked up to Chase.

“That man was the one who most likely killed the people in all the villages we went to, did you inspect his body?” Cloud asked Chase.

“Yeah, he’s pretty young, had an interesting looking sword scabbard, but I couldn’t find his sword,” Chase replied.

“It was probably the sword of the manticore.”

“What’s that?”

“It was a sword used by the leader of the town for generations, its one of the few magical items that didn’t become useless after most of the magic disappeared because the enchantment was made using a human soul instead of some monsters. I personally never got to see it in action because its always been a rather peaceful town, but if you ever went to the main temple then the sword would be impaled in the big rock at the center. It was said that the sword could form a large spear-like tail that the holder could control, it was supposed to be like a scorpions, hence why it was called the sword of the manticore.”

“That sounds pretty damn valuable.”

Cloud started walking towards the impaled corpse of the man, “It is, let's search the area for it.”  Cloud said which prompted Chase to join Cloud in his search, not having anything better to do anyway.

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After taking a few steps in the direction of the center of the town the blood that was pour out of Rusty like a river stopped and on the next step Rusty once again felt weak and opened his mouth to tell Boomer and said, as blood dripped from his mouth, “I think I need more of Donors blood,” to which Boomer obliged by putting a flask to Rusty’s mouth which he took a swig from, and blood began to once again pour like a river from his now mostly healed wounds. As Rusty physically felt his wounds healing at an unbelievable rate, he pondered the concept of how the healing was happening. Rusty’s life had been saved by some lady that he’s never even met before, he made a mental note to thank Donor when he met her, a mental note that he was likely to forget.

Thanks to his injuries it took Rusty and Boomer several minutes to get back to the town's temple. When they stepped inside through the opening where the left door used to be Rusty saw Lawrence sitting on a bench to the left of the opening talking with Pause, he wanted to thank Lawrence for helping when he was about to die, but just before he opened his mouth to do so, he felt a decent amount of a mix of blood and saliva mixed together in his mouth, that he decided he needed to spit out first, and he instead decided to thank him later. Boomer took Rusty to a bench on the right side of the hallway, opposite of the others.

“Just rest for a bit,“ Boomer said to Rusty in a calm voice as he helped him sit down, “We'll be going to be back to West-Rixon most likely tomorrow, we’ve as we've accomplished our mission. When the captain gets back she’ll probably ask each person that stayed behind what happened while we were gone...but if you wouldn’t mind, I’d also like to know,” he said as he sat down next to Rusty.

Rusty put his pointer finger up in between the two of them, signaling for Boomer to wait for a second, and then Rusty turned around and spit out the mix of blood and saliva that was still in his mouth before saying, “I’ll tell you.”

“Alright cool, how long is the story gonna be? When does it start? What were you-”

“If you wanna hear it, then be quiet.”

“Okay!” Boomer replied, fixing his posture for some reason.

“If you interrupt me at any point, then I’m stopping and you’ll have to wait for when the captain asks if you want to hear it, got it?” Rusty said, to which Boomer nodded. And so Rusty recounted the events of what happened after the away team left for the nearby villages. After Rusty finished his story, which granted didn’t take to long to recount, Rusty told Boomer that he was finished and that Boomer could speak again and to his surprise, he was asked a question, although it wasn’t from Boomer. Standing in front of the bench was Cloud who Rusty didn’t notice until the end of the story, behind him speaking to Lawrence where Webs and the captain who were also now at the temple.

“What happened to the man’s sword?” Cloud asked.

After taking a second to register the question, Rusty responded with, “Well, he had it when I blacked out so I guess it's probably still there in his hand or the snow underneath him if he dropped it when he died.”

“No, it wasn’t in either of those places, Webs and I checked the area pretty thoroughly, I even double-checked his area’s to make sure he wasn’t just slacking and missed it, but in the end, it wasn’t there,” Cloud replied sounding somewhat worried.

Before Rusty could ask Cloud about it the captain came up beside to the right of Cloud and moved forward, pushed Boomer off of the bench, grabbed Rust’s shoulders and said to him while looking him directly in the eyes, “Tell. Me. Everything.” to which Rusty then spent the next half hour doing, with questions from those gathered around him every few seconds, significantly lengthening the story.

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After retelling the story Rusty decided he was done with questions and told the other he was tired and instinctively tried to get up on his own and after being fully upright on his feet was surprised to find that he could stand without help after only being on the brink of death no more than an hour or two ago.

After asking if he could rest for a bit the captain told him that he could, but also that he should be ready to leave tomorrow morning, as they would have to wait until tomorrow as the sun would be setting in an hour or so. The captain went and gathered up those who could help get ready to leave for tomorrow and gave them tasks, to which Webs pretended to be sleeping in an unsuccessful attempt to avoid work.

Unsure of where to rest Rusty eventually just started wandering about, in which he eventually found himself in the large middle room in the temple where he found the book that Lawrence had been reading earlier that day. As Rusty climbed onto the rock he found slight difficulty in getting up while trying to strain himself too much but did indeed eventually get up on it. Out of curiosity, Rusty grabbed the book that Lawrence had left on the rock. It was written by some guy named Kaiden Flint, it appeared to be some sort of adventure novel based off of the guy's life as a kid as he traveled around with his companions, although the adventure was probably exaggerated and its summary seemed pretty boring something caught Rusty eye about the book. Supposedly the events of the book took place before the great altering, meaning the book most likely contained information on magic and magical creatures that were now impossible to obtain through self-discovery as they used to be.

Just before Rusty was about to start reading the book it was snatched out of his hands from behind where he turned to find Lawrence holding the book and a deck of cards, as well as the child that he heard the other call Fanari that the away team brought back. Although Lawrence was smiling, the child was not and seemed rather down.

“Let’s play some cards,” Lawrence said as he sat down on the rock and put his book next to himself.

After being handed a card that he took, Rusty asked Lawrence what they were playing to which he replied that it was go fish, as it was the only game that the child knew how to play involving cards.

After playing for a bit, Lawrence said, “I’m surprised that either of us lived through that, although after waking up to not find you there, I’m even more surprised that you’re still alive. You got a seven?”

“I’m only alive thanks to you punching that guy, and go fish” Rusty replied.

“Wait, that punch did something?” Lawrence said as he went to pick up a card from the deck but found that there weren’t any more left.

“You made that guy lose focus enough for me to…” Rusty glanced at Fanari, “Well, I assume that you know what happened to that guy. Fanari do you have any three’s?”

As Lawrence smirked proudly knowing that he was the reason for their strong attacker's downfall, Fanari told Rusty to go fish. Fanari ended up winning most of their games of go fish in a landslide as it seemed that although it was her only card game, she was good at it, or it was more likely that she was simply trying not to remember what had happened to her village and focused on the game as a way to forget about it for a brief period of time.

Once Lawrence declared their last game to be finished, he left the rock with his cards, his book, and Fanari as he headed for what Rusty could only assume to be a bed. After sitting in thought and also silence on top of the rock for a while, Rusty hopped off of the rock and followed Lawrence's and began searching for a place to sleep.