Advent of Eternity - Ch 40 (Patreon)

“Fine with me,” Knell said. The two men studied each other for a few seconds.

“We’ll meet again,” Joseph decided. “The stench of death hounds your steps. I think we’ll be good partners.”

“The word partners implies that we both want to work together.”

“Do you not want to work with me?” Joseph asked, tilting his head to the side. “I thought we make quite the team.”

“I know nothing about you. Just because we both don’t serve the Gods does not mean we are allies.”

“That’s quite all right,” Joseph said. “You’ll come around eventually. I don’t have time to convince you of everything now anyway. There are a few too many Scions on my trail. This was just a little side stop on my journey. We’ll meet again, Captain Knell. I look forward to seeing the destruction that you leave in your wake.”

Joseph slipped into the wall, his body turning into motes of black energy that sank and vanished through the rock. Knell’s mouth turned down in distaste. Whoever Joseph really was, the man had to have a significant amount of power. Nobody walked around giving out artifacts with Boons in them for free.

“Where’d the creepy guy go?” Cyll asked.

“Through a wall,” Knell said. “And he had the right idea. There’s nothing left for us here. If the bandits come back for any reason, we could get trapped. We should find a more optimal position to rest.”

“And then what?” Stix asked, falling in behind Knell as he started back the way they had come.

“Find the rest of the bandits and kill them,” Knell said. “It’ll be good experience for all of us.”

“There are better ways, though,” Cyll pointed out. “Humans can give experience, but from what I remember of my days before I became immortal, they don’t give nearly as much as monsters do.”

“There’s more to life than just experience,” Knell replied. He paused for a moment beside a dead goblin and flicked it in the head with the butt of his staff. “We are not only doing this to become powerful.”

“Well, we’re also working on killing the gods,” Cyll said. “That seems like a pretty big extra.”

“It is,” Knell said. “But there’s a reason to that. It’s not just that I don’t like them, you know.”

“What is it?” Stix asked. “I kind of thought it was a power complex thing.”

“Seriously?” Knell asked.

Stix shrugged and gave him an unabashed grin. “I’m just here to get stronger. I’m pretty sure following you will do that for me.”

“And I want to put pointy things inside the gods’ hearts,” Cyll said. “We’ve covered this.”

Knell sighed. “I suppose this is on me. The reason the gods must fall is because they are not serving their purpose. Gods are supposed to protect and help mortals, but they use us like a game. Innocents get caught up in their fights and killed for pointless reasons.”

“So you’re going after them because you feel bad for the people they screwed over?” Stix asked. “That’s… a lot more noble than I would have expected.”

“I am going after them because I watched the gods string my mother up in a tree and bleed her until there was nothing left,” Knell snarled. “Because I watched them break my father’s resolve and because they sent their Scions to slaughter the children of an entire village simply because he passed through it. The gods are a plague on this land that needs to be purged.”

Stix and Cyll fell silent for several moments after Knell finished his rant.

“Oh,” Stix finally said. “I’m sorry.”

“There is no reason to be sorry. You were not the one that slowly killed everyone I’ve loved,” Knell said, his eyes burning with anger. “I have not spoken of my true hatred of the gods because I feared they could listen in and understand just how deep it goes. Mordrigal still believes that I am willing to work with her.”

“Then you trust Joseph’s anti-scrying necklace?” Cyll asked.

“I believe Jospeh shares a similar goal with us, even if his reasons for it are the same,” Kenll replied with a small shrug. “I will trust him for this, but that is as far as it goes for now.”

“So, you’re killing the gods to protect people from going through what you did?” Stix guessed.

“That does make me sound noble,” Knell said with a dark laugh. “No. I am killing them because I hate them. But I will not stand around and watch while innocents suffer. If I can take action without endangering my ultimate goals, I will. And I expect anyone on my crew to do the same.”

“What’s the point?” Cyll asked as they came to a stop in a large room. He nodded at one of the dead goblins. “Mortals die. They all do. Are you really doing them that much of a favor by prolonging their suffering?”

“Yes. We might die, but we deserve to choose how and, to some degree, when,” Knell said. “You can’t tell me that you’ve never cared about a single mortal life.”

“Beside my own?” Cyll asked, laughing. Knell’s lips twitched. Cyll’s words sounded stiffer than normal.

Knell didn’t push the subject. “If you only care for yourself, that’s fine. As long as you follow my orders, that’s all I need.”

“Good,” Cyll said.

The three of them fell silent for the rest of the trek through the dungeon. They arrived at the top a few minutes later, and Cyll poked his head out the exit before nodding and giving a thumbs up. “Looks pretty barren.”

“Head over to that building,” Knell said, nodding at a small one-story house across from them. “We can plot out our next steps there.”

The fog still hung low in the town streets, but it wasn’t as bad as it had been when the three had originally entered the dungeon. They slipped through it and Cyll broke the lock on the house door.