V.

Cave Opening, From Sefgh's Eyes

It was another two days of travel before we reached our first target, Zsuius. He hadn't moved much since we started our trip, leading us off into the middle of nowhere and finally to a cave hidden away in one of the rare wooded areas scattered throughout the region. We couldn't drive our vehicle through it without crashing through a bunch of trees, so it took us something around an hour to finally reach the cave (I think I was the one most enthusiastic about avoiding the deforestation, so I'll take the blame there). We were camped outside the entrance, discussing our plans before entering, hiding among the trees.

"So what, are we gonna just get in there 'n'... y'know... pow?" Matt asked, clearly not confident in his ability to pow. We had gotten geared up a bit for this mission, wearing camo gear and such, really just to make ourselves feel more qualified than we were. It wasn't working. His medium-length blonde hair looked disheveled from the stress and lack of baths since we left, and while he wore a nice poker face and seemed relatively cool, if you focused you could see sweat collecting on his forehead. The gun looked out of place in his hand. He'd played around with them a bit before all this started, but this was the first time he'd actually have to use one in combat.

"No. We'll sneak in there, point our guns, and interrogate him," Maine responded. "If we just kill him on sight, we'll lose a good opportunity to find out what's going on. Personally, I'd like to hear what he has to say." He was the calmest out of all of us right now, the only one who didn't look like an amateur with a weapon. The patches of black fur under his eyes (like eyebags) and black stripes on his cheeks already looked rather militaristic with the camo gear, and he had a characteristically intense stare.

"And then we kill him?" M-Bot asked. It was harder to get an emotional read on it from the outside, being as it was in that slightly shabby, unemotive robotic body, patched together from gray and light purple parts. I'd spent enough time with it, though, that I could tell it was still a little disconnected from the events.

"Sure, maybe." Maine said.

"Maybe? But didn't that man say that... you know, we had to kill everyone in that book?" I asked. I was the most nervous out of all of them, visibly so. I still hadn't taken out my gun from its holster.

"Sure. He implied it, at least. Cardo sounds like a pretty bad dude, and we probably will have to kill him and all his 'associates'. I'm just not sure this guy in a cave is actually that dangerous," Maine answered, his voice coldly calm. "Like, maybe he will be, but the situation seems fishy."

"Hah. Fishy. Says the cat person," Matt said, lightly grinning.

Maine grimaced. "Very funny. Now come on, we shouldn't stay out here too long." He gestured for me to bring out my gun, and led the way in.

We walked in one after the other, slowly, guns kept in our hands. It was cold and damp, but torches lining the walls at roughly even intervals gave away that this was in fact a living space. We crept slowly down the dimly lit path further into the cave until, finally, Maine looked around a corner, turned back, and put his finger to his lips. He was there, behind that corner.

The man we were supposed to kill.

Maine held out his hand and stuck his fingers out. Five, four, three, two, one. We burst around the corner and into the room, pointing our guns at the only person we saw, a man seated in a chair. Zsuius?

"Don't move, or we'll shoot!!" Matt said, his voice the tiniest bit shaky. The man turned his head towards us, a strangely neutral expression on his face, like he was totally detached from the situation. He didn't respond at first, and we all froze, pointing our guns and remaining totally still, the man sitting comfortably in his seat. The room was more hospitable than the entranceway, but still pretty austere. A rug on the ground, a lamp, a large chair, a bed with a pillow and blankets but no frame, multiple filled bookshelves, and a television set which was currently turned off. Another path led out of the room, likely to a kitchen. The man had a book in his hands which, after what felt like an eternity, he finally closed and sat down on his lap.

"You're Zsuius, right?" Maine finally spoke.

"I am," Zsuius responded, not calm exactly but certainly not panicked, "and who are you?" He was tall and gaunt, wearing a long-sleeve shirt and pants down to his ankles, all black. His hair was black with a few gray streaks, and he had a gray goatee. He looked middle-aged.

"We've been sent here to kill you." Maine said.

The man looked around at us. "I can see that. Your names. What are your names?"

I looked nervously to Maine, who was staring unblinkingly at Zsuius.

"That's not important," he said, "We've been sent here because of your connection to a man named Cardo. What can you tell us about him?"

Zsuius' calm demeanor broke into amusement, and he let out a laugh. "Oh, god, him? I haven't talked to him in ages. If you're here because of him, you can sit right on down. Use the bed if you want."

We looked at each other, a little confused.

"Oh, please. You're really here to kill me? I can tell none of you are experienced," he said, still grinning, turning to look straight at me he continued, "and frankly I doubt you would actually be able to do it. Put your guns down, and let's talk."

I felt a rush of embarassment as he stared at me, but frankly I was pretty relieved, and set my gun back in its holster and moved to sit on the bed before anyone else had even spoken.

"Wait!" Matt cautioned, holding up his hand to stop me, "How d'we know to trust you?"

Zsuius scoffed. "Well, if you don't want to play nice, it's not like you have me cornered. I was a hitman for decades, you know, I can get out of a bunch of novices pointing their guns at me. I mean really, is this your first time?"

Matt and I's eyes went wide, Maine looked off-balance, and even M-Bot stiffened a bit. "You were a hitman? For decades?" I asked, terrified at what we had just gotten into.

"Yes, and I'm very dangerous, so sit down already for Z's sake!" He responded, clearly getting impatient. "If I wanted you dead, you'd be dead already! I heard you coming down!"

"You did?" Maine narrowed his eyes, coming to follow me onto the bed, clearly irritated at himself.

"You're not nearly as sneaky as you think you are. If you want to learn how to do these things effectively, maybe I can teach you sometime! Whoever did it before me clearly wasn't good at it."

Matt and M-Bot sat down on the bed. The four of us were pressed together on there, almost shoulder-to-shoulder, accentuating the mixed awkward and relieved feelings of a hit so quickly defused.

"So how do you kids know about me, anyways? You knew my name, but not what I did for a living. You knew I knew Cardo, but not that I hate him. What's going on here, and who are you?"

We gave him our names, and told him what was going on. We were a team sent by a divine signal from our god to track a list of people connected to a man we were told was dangerous to the world itself.

"And what was the divine signal?" He asked.

"A man came from the sea and gave us a book of names and coordinates," I answered, "and told us - or, uh, at least implied to us - that it was our duty to find and kill them all. Though, I suppose we're already breaking that a bit, since we can't... er, won't kill you." I showed him the book and its actively updating coordinates.

"Hmm. Divine, I don't believe, but that does seem pretty special," he said, staring at our book, "and any enemy of that man is a friend of mine. I don't know what he's up to, but I don't doubt he could be that dangerous if he wanted to be. What do you need to know?"

"Well, how do you know Cardo? We got sent here to kill you because of it, and I was kind of looking forward to it." M-Bot said.

"I'm sure you'll get to kill someone eventually, my paranoid android friend," Zsuius said, lightly grinning, "and it's quite a long story. How much time do you have? I can give the short version, or the long version."

Short, M-Bot said. Long! The rest of us said. Zsuius' grin widened.

"I'll give you the short version. It's not a story I'm especially keen on retelling in full, unless it's at gunpoint. I have some memories of him you could never get out of me, no matter how hard you tried. Oh, where do I even begin...?"

"First off, where'd you meet him?" Maine suggested, clearly not happy with the control the man had over their situation or impressed with his theatrics. "And who is he? Why do we have to care about him, beyond him trying to 'end the world'? Is that even literal?"

"Oh, it's probably literal, the man's a nutcase," Zsuius responded, "He had a few screws loose when we first met and over the years he frankly became a lunatic. It's been quite a while since then, and I'm sure he's even more deranged now. If he wasn't so powerful, he'd have been thrown in an asylum, and we'd all be better off for it. Last time we talked, he said he'd do anything he could to kill me one day and make off with my corpse. It's why I'm hidden all the way down here! If he ever gets to me, it'll only be because I tried getting to him first," He interrupted himself, putting a hand up, "but I'm getting ahead of myself. Cardo, Cardo, Cardo... who is he, really...?"

Maine rolled his eyes. I looked over at Matt, who seemed to be enjoying the hitman's dramatic qualities much more than the rest of us. He made a lot of physical gestures, and got quite expressive with his voice. It seemed to be like he enjoyed having an audience.

"He's a death fanatic," Zsuius continued, "and a real freak of one at that. He's a magician, the kind with the power to tear through an army singlehandedly if he ever put his mind to it. The things I've seen him do... brrrr! We met working at the same hitman agency, and he was the creepiest guy I ever met there, coworker or target, no competition. Any other creep you can think of, any psycho or murderer or just plain weirdo, they can make you shiver, but they'll never make you question the existence of a higher power like he can. He's the real deal. Everyone else is just a pretender compared to him. We worked together for years, and one day, he... well, he left, I'll say that much."

"What made him leave?" M-Bot asked.

"That's one of the things I'd rather not talk about," Zsuius said, his grin faltering, "that's a bad memory."

"A death fanatic, huh? So you think he really would try and end the world if he could?" Maine asked.

"Oh, I don't have to wonder," Zsuius responded, "I know he would." He shivered, perhaps exaggerating the motion. I wondered how long he had been alone down here.

"Any advice on, well..." Matt trailed off. "...stopping him?"

Zsuius gave a grim smile. "You kids? You're better off giving that book to somebody else and running away. Change your identities, hide out somewhere, and if whoever sent you on this quest comes back, shoot him in the head and hide the body. You're as good as dead if you keep chasing this guy."

I frowned. "It's a divine quest. We can't just run away from it like that, it's an order."

"Well," he got up from his chair, "don't say I didn't warn you."

We were back in the vehicle now, driving off. We had changed out of our camo wear and back into our casual clothes. We weren't following any coordinates - we had a few maps of the region, and I was heading towards a bridge town. The majority of the area was across a sea from us, and we'd have to go the long way around to reach it, across a bridge and through a forest. I was driving, and Matt and Maine were hunched over another map, cross-checking it with the book's coordinates to get a more precise idea of its scope, which seemed to be very large. M-Bot was reading a book it stole from one of the shelves while we were leaving, though it probably would've gotten it anyways had it just asked. Robots and delinquency - a match made in heaven!

"So, what did we learn?" I asked the backseats.

"Violence doesn't solve our problems." M-Bot said in a faux-moral-teacher voice.

"People in caves're desperate for attention." Matt half-joked.

"We're not good enough at this stuff to do this," Maine responded, "if we can't even scare the first guy we run into, and Cardo really is as screwed up as Zsuius was trying to convince us of, maybe we should just give up, honestly."

"Aw c'mon, Maine!" Matt exclaimed. "We don't suck that much! We'll get experience over time!"

"You don't get it," Maine growled, "I have experience, and you don't. You know what happens when you go into life-or-death combat without any experience? You die. You don't get any second chances."

"I thought you only had experience hunting animals," M-Bot said.

"Killing animals. I've gotten in fights before, and some of them got pretty dangerous. You're my friends," his voice got softer, "and I don't want you to die."

We were quiet for a bit, listening to nothing but the rumble of the engine.

"And don't start talking about how it's safe because it's divinely ordained," Maine spoke again.

"I wasn't gonna say anything!" I said defensively.

Maine snorted.

"Look, I'm not backing down from this," I said, "and if I have to do it by myself, I will! I know this is dangerous, I know this is stupid, I know we'll... probably all get hurt and shot, blown up with magic, whatever, and it'll all be horrible, and painful, and I'll be asking myself why I even wanted to do it, but..." I grit my teeth, "there are things more important than our individual lives, Maine! Divine things! Things passed down to us from Almendra Herself! I know you don't believe everything the Relayer says, but you know as well as I do that this is real, and if you want to run, then fine, but I'm not! I will rip that book from your hands and drive this thing to every single person listed in it all by myself if I have to, so if you want me to stay safe, stay with me, because I-I am not backing down! No matter what! No matter how scary it is, no matter how dangerous, no matter how much of a monster this guy is, I will carry out my divine mission!"

I paused and added, speaking softly, "And I want you to carry it out with me, too. ...Please."

"Well said, Sef," Matt said.

"Thank you," I exhaled.

Maine was silent for a minute, and, with a sigh, finally spoke.

"Alright, Sef. I'll do it. I'll stay."