“Terravex bless us.” Aurelius muttered under his breath habitually.

  The three pirates stood behind Aurelius, shuffling their feet and growing increasingly pale at the severity of their situation.

  “Terravex… The Church of Dragons. Is He your god?” Pultris asked casually, his singular eye surveying the tavern like an oppressive overseer.

  “…Yes.” Aurelius replied. Of course, he was omitting the rather important fact that he was also a blessed of the Lost God, Quetzalcoatl.

  “That is… surprising…” Pultris mused, falling into thought at Aurelius’s reply.

  “I assure you, out of the three faiths, He is likely to despise me the most.” He said, nodding thoughtfully at his comment.

  Aurelius didn’t question it. After all, in an idea world, nobody would ever like this ridiculous body stealing angel.

  “A-Am I free to go?” Old Coot asked, walking back with a hopeful smile on his face.

  “Sure, but remember to clean that up.” Pultris commanded, using one of his fingers to point towards the corpse of the barkeep like it was just garbage to be thrown out.

  Old Coot nodded vigorously, walking the 4 (technically 5) guests out of the tavern with the most politeness that he could muster.

  As they walked through the doorways of the establishment, Pultris clicked his tongue one last time, completely dispelling the seal that was active within the tavern, and dispelling their shadows with a silent blink…

  ???

  Old Coot continued to bow towards Pultris, and would keep bowing for a minute after the man had left.

  Finally, when he felt that he was safe, he stood straight and sighed deeply, reflecting on the things that he had to now take care of.

  As long as the Knights didn’t run a thorough investigation, Old Coot had contacts who could get rid of the corpse without much problem.

  He had taken the liberty of planting a few anti-divination charms around the tavern for his own privacy, and it would interfere with the basic investigations of the barkeep’s disappearance in routine investigations.

  However, he knew that the body disposal costs would be costly. A heads up was required for delicate matters like this, after all.

  Rubbing his bloodless wound where his arm used to be, Old Coot rubbed on his beard absent-mindedly, as he mused upon an important and pressing question.

  Why did that creature not kill him?

  ???

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  “How long more will you be using my hand?” Aurelius asked, feeling increasingly unnerved by the lack of mobility that he had of his own arm.

  He didn’t expect an answer, and he was putting on a brave front against this monstrous Djinn, in the hope that he could lower his guard enough to allow himself a chance to alert the commission.

  However, much to Aurelius’s surprise, Pultris considered the problem deeply.

  “Hmm… This appearance is certainly quite noticeable. I suppose this form needs me to actively hide myself from the pedestrians.” Pultris mused to himself.

  With this simple reply, the slit that was his mouth faded into obscurity, joining and melding the two ends of the flesh together. His ‘eye’ also exited Aurelius’s hand, lifting itself magically into the air.

  Without a sound, golden threads immediately emerged from Quinn’s empty eye socket, and draped itself around the eye in the air.

  “Ah!” Quinn cried out sharply in fear and pain, feeling a sudden ache in the depths of his skull as the eye accelerated towards him dangerously.

  And before he could react, the eyeball attached itself back into the eye socket, and entered the crevice firmly, and rolled around creepily, as if adjusting to its new home.

  “W-What did you do!” Quinn blurted out, temporarily forgetting his fear of Pultris.

  Quinn could not see out of the eye in his socket, but felt an immense pressure, as if a constant stream of information was entering through an open wound on his skull.

  It was not particularly painful, but was akin to having the constant low buzzing of bees in his eye.

  “Do I have to answer that?” Pultris asked in amusement, brushing aside Quinn’s question with the vague threat.

  Quinn immediately shrank back on his spot, his face freezing and relaxing into a sublime feature of subservience and flattery. He smiled towards where Pultris’s mouth had been, and bowed clumsily, as if to emulate Old Coot and his acts of absolute shamelessness…

  As for Pultris, Aurelius found that his voice no longer came from the slit on his palms, but from inside Aurelius’s skull once more, as if nothing had changed since yesterday.

  However, a key difference lay in the fact that the three pirates could hear him too…

  “I will return some of your mobility now, contractor.” Pultris declared greasily, sending a wave of confusion to Aurelius.

  He felt his body respond to his internal commands once more, and his arm felt… sluggish, as if it were forcing itself against a large tub of syrup. However, it seemed that he was still somewhat in control of his limb…

  “…What?” Aurelius asked in confusion.

  Why would Pultris voluntarily give up control over his arm and body?! This was akin to a businessman building a business up to a respectable level of revenue and then promptly proceeding to donate it all to a church! Madness!

  “Do I have to answer that?” Pultris asked once more enigmatically, teasing Aurelius with his greasy and mischievous tone.

  Aurelius’s mind started to run wild with theories, and after a small hesitant look, he immediately tried to yell out a single word. His trigger word for suicide, Fatum.

  “Fatu-” Unsurprisingly, he was immediately cut off.

  “By the eternal faiths, are you that dense? I am the one who excercises the authority of your suicide. Of course I will be aware of it when you attempt to trigger it.” Pultris scoffed.

  Aurelius’s face fell, and turned ashen. Whose bright idea was it to tie his dragon damned suicide to this bundle of ridiculous trouble?!

  “...I can't believe you killed a guy.” Aurelius said glumly, trying to change the topic of conversation.

  At this point in his life, he had learned to go with the flow of things. From the berating and nonsensical whimsy of Mr. Tona to the glaring oppression of Sage Yeltz, and the horrors ranging from Lich Varian to the Fae Queen, and of course, his client, Quetzalcoatl, he had dealt with far too much for his young age.

  And in saying that, he had learnt that the best thing to do in situations where agency was stripped ENTIRELY from his hands, he genuinely had no other option left other than to go with the flow of things.

  “Killed a guy? No, I asked a man to kill another man.” Pultris declared with a chuckle, as if he found the idea amusing to even consider.

  “Like you said, tomato tomato.” Aureliis replied.

  Aurelius then started to chuckle like a madman to himself, as if he found his own joke very funny.

  The three pirates stared at Aurelius with fearful and questioning looks, unsure as to what was going on with him exactly.

  One pirate even made the hesitant effort to laugh with Aurelius, but stopped when the other two turned to stare at him.

  Aurelius himself was… also not quite sure as to the reason for his laughter, and he was in fact, wary of Pultris and his reaction as well.

  However, he felt all of his emotions bubble, his fear and anger and nihilism, and felt it slip out from his nose and mouth with each pulse of laughter.

  It was all just so… funny