The Ghost Town

Aegeas barely had any idea what was happening - the conversation was too fast and too winding for him to follow - but he fixated on anything to do with Kartiel. He didn't introduce himself as the god of souls Aegeas knew and loathed, but, for all the otter knew, Kartiel had plenty of other titles.

"You need to stay away from Kartiel," Aegeas hissed, reaching a muddy hand up to prod Lasan in the chest. "The man's pure evil."

Lasan shook his head. "If that's the case, I would've died. He's just an idiot."

The otter tried to slip out from one side, but Lasan leaned in that direction. "He's a giant idiot," Aegeas snapped. "That's what makes him so dangerous."

"You're the one who's dangerous," Lasan said. He pulled his head up, trying to hold back a sneeze. "Running around and waving your swords all over the place." No luck - he sneezed, almost causing him to fall onto Aegeas. "It's not - it's not safe."

Aegeas looked up, eyes widening. "You're looking pale. We need to get you to someplace warm. Now."

"You do realize I can hear you, right-" Kartiel started to say, only to stop when he saw that Lasan was on the verge of falling on the otter. He honestly didn't care if the otter hated him or not. He was used to people calling him evil, and, by this point, he had learned that it was just easier not to argue with them to begin with.

What mattered was Lasan's current state. He hurried over to where Lasan was holding the otter down, pulling him up with a surprising amount of force for someone of his stature. It was only a short walk back to the building, but it seemed obvious that helping him sooner was better.

"I'm going to bring you to the house," he said. "This might feel a little weird, but I promise you'll feel better in just a second."

Then he was gone in a spiral of purple particles, having brought Lasan from the spot in the street to the wood right in front of the fire. His eyes glowed purple as they reappeared there.


"What did he just do?" Dean demanded, taking a step towards Charlotte and Herobrine. Kartiel was apparently going to bring Lasan to a warmer place, but Dean couldn't just ignore what the otter had said about him. He had to play things safe.

His answer came from an unsurprising place - Zalio.

"He teleported," he said, gesturing back behind him. The calm persona he was putting up was more than a little unnerving. He clearly was confused by what was going on, but was doing a surprisingly good job at concealing. This wasn't his first tough experience. He had been through challenging circumstances before, and that was always worrying when he didn't know what those experiences were or why he had gone through them. "He brought him to the place he started a fire in."

Weird was a understatement. Lasan felt like he was being pulled back while moving forward. One second, he'd been out in the drizzle and mud, able to see his breath in front of his face. Now he stood in front of the fire, which roared and crackled cheerily. If he hadn't been so tired, he would've focused on it over the weight that wanted to drag his eyelids down.

He crashed down as soon as Kartiel, who somehow had held Lasan up, let go. Scraping the mud off of his arms and chest, he grabbed the coat Zalio had given him and tugged it off, throwing it on the ground. The overcoat, right next to him, had almost totally dried since Lasan had taken it off. As such, Lasan slipped it on and pushed himself close to the fire. Legs crossed, arms extended, he breathed in and out slowly.

"Thanks," he said to Kartiel, as an afterthought. "I don't know how you did that, or why you lied about your name, but thanks."



"He what?" Aegeas said. The past few seconds - Kartiel grabbing Lasan, then the both of them vanishing - had stunned him too much to even think, much less speak. Now he was furious. How dare that monster separate him from one of his friends. A friend freezing to death, at that.

The otter pulled himself up. Despite his fur, he shivered, covered in mud and stuck in a rainstorm. "Give me back my swords," he said, crossing his arms to keep himself warm. He hoped he looked intimidating enough. "And tell me where they went."

"Well," Kartiel said, plopping down on the ground next to him. "I am supposed to be dead, so there's that. And Levi is my name, too - it's just not my first one. I wanted justice so badly that I was reincarnated. Levi Quinn was the name I was given in my second life."


The otter looked absolutely hilarious, and Dean couldn't help but snicker at the sight before him. This gained him a few curious looks and what would likely be a glare from the otter, but he couldn't help it. He needed something to laugh about with everything going on.

Herobrine quickly grabbed the two swords and handed one to Charlotte. Zalio, meanwhile, stood exactly where he was with a confused expression on his face, and Cornyx continued to look decidedly not human. All in all, this was a catastrophe in the making. It would take a miracle - something that made him snicker again, because he was really stressed - to prevent a full blown fight from breaking out.

Seeing that miracles were on short supply right now, it looked like he'd have to be the next best thing. "He teleported," Dean said. "Went poof. My brother always uses an spell to do something like that, but Kartiel isn't my brother."

Keeping a firm grip on his bat in case he had to use it, he took another step towards the otter. "There's a building a short walk from here. We were setting a fire up for Lasan before we ran into you. You said you needed to get him someplace warm. Kartiel just beat you to it."

He looked in Charlotte and Herobrine's direction, giving a small nod to show that he approved of them keeping the swords out of the otter's reach. Then he turned his attention back to said otter. "And before you go and try to take those swords back, take a deep breath and stop overreacting. I have no idea what kind of past you have with Kartiel, but killing him isn't going to amount to anything more than a boatload of paperwork."

"Reincarnated?" Lasan said slowly. He smiled faintly as he felt the heat seeping through his toes. "Not sure I understand, but I guess that has something do with your second life. How'd you manage to die the first time?" A year or two ago, he would've scoffed at the very concept of coming back to life. Now, he couldn't help but nod along to Kartiel's remarks.



"What about this is funny to you?" Aegeas shouted at the man with the bat. He pulled some of the mud off of his face and threw it to the ground, then rummaged around where he was fairly sure his belt was. A few seconds later, he had a knife in his hands. A gift from Kellach. He internally winced at the idea of getting it wet and muddy (and possibly bloody, but he didn't want to think about that). At least it was useful, and he'd be sure to clean it up afterwards.

Aegeas took a step towards Charlotte and Herobrine, who held his swords in their hands. "I can't kill him," Aegeas said, scanning the two for an opening. "But he nearly killed me multiple times. His terrible plans nearly killed everyone. And you're just going to let him run off with Lasan?"

Kartiel was silent for a moment. He studied the floorboards at his feet, avoiding looking into Lasan's eyes as he talked. "My advisor stabbed me. Ran a sword right through my chest. Hero's told me that they say he did it because he realized the gods were better people than I was. But he would never think that. I knew him-thought I knew him. They probably paid him good money to do it."


Charlotte was done with this. While she may have once been convinced that he was a horrible person, she had never dragged things out to this extent. And it infuriated her to think that Kartiel was being hated - once again - for something he wasn't responsible for.

"For the love of God-" Cue Dean perking up, for reasons she didn't understand. "would you just stop going on about Kartiel being evil!? He just wanted to bring Lasan somewhere warm because he's a decent human being, but you can't get it out of your thick skull that he's some evil monster. I'm sick and tired of people saying he's evil when he's not. He can be annoying, but he's never even had a chance to be an adult because of idiots like you."

Now that she had finished her piece, she glared at him. Herobrine nodded from beside her.

Dean gave an impressed whistle from nearby. "I really hope you pick Heaven."

"What?"

"Oh, nothing."

Zalio awkwardly cleared his throat. "Something tells me your Kartiel isn't this Kartiel," he added, pointing at Herobrine. "I know another Herobrine who looks like an older him, even though there should only be one of them. I don't know how to explain it, but I think you have the wrong guy."

"Oh," said Lasan. He pushed himself back a foot, now that he was starting to feel warm. He didn't want to heat up too quickly. "Wow. I dunno if it helps, but, I've been betrayed the people I thought I could trust. E-even my dad. He kicked me out of my home, and I didn't even realize he did it to get rid of me until a while later." Lasan shook his head, blinking a couple tears back. "It sucks."



He hadn't considered that. Why hadn't he considered that? Still keeping his grip on the knife tight, Aegeas turned to Zalio. "That might be right," he said, "But they both have titles, both have some kind of strange powers, and they're both crafty. How do you know this isn't the Kartiel I'm familiar with, pretending to be some innocent teenager?"

Kartiel looked up and over at Lasan, his gaze softening as he heard those words. He had been lucky enough to have a loving father, though he had been killed before Kartiel even became an adult. Kartiel gave a small smile. "At least you haven't been literally stabbed in the back, right?" he joked, pointing at the place where he had been stabbed all those years ago. "It definitely was hard, that's for sure. I had some pretty bad trust issues for awhile."


Zalio fell silent. He apparently didn't have an answer for that. Neither did Dean, but it wasn't like he had come up with one in the first place.

But Charlotte and Herobrine had one. They, after all, knew this Kartiel best.

"Kartiel does what works best in a situation," Herobrine said, making his sword of darkness disappear. After a moment of hesitation, Charlotte did the same. "He avoids conflict if necessary by playing the part that people believe him to fit."

Charlotte nodded in agreement. "When we first met him, he was convinced Herobrine was with the guys who killed him. He pretended to be the evil person everyone thought he was, just so he could get something he needed without wasting time by trying to gain our trust." She sighed. "It's obviously not the best way to deal with a situation, but it's what he does."

Herobrine extended the hand holding Aegeas' sword out to give it back to its owner. Charlotte did the same. Dean watched the exchange with interest; it seemed like a safe move now that he had calmed down, but Dean still worried Aegeas would act irrationally again and try attacking someone with it.

"Kartiel's current goal is to get back to his home," Herobrine said. "The easiest way to do that is by avoiding any conflict here. If he truly knew you and how you saw him, he would have been pretending the moment he laid his eyes on you."

"Eh," said Lasan with a shrug, "I've been in lots of fights before, so I've probably been stabbed there before. I can relate to trust issues, though. Sometimes the people you think you know inside and out manage to surprise you."



It looked more and more like he had the wrong man. Charlotte and Herobrine, who appeared to be Kartiel's friends, described a slightly more benevolent and manipulative person than he'd been expecting. Then there was the fact that, if this really was the god of souls, he'd already be trying to control Aegeas at this point. Which wasn't the case.

That meant he'd been attacking an innocent person. That meant he'd been threatening several other innocent people.

He froze, opening and closing his mouth a few times. Then he turned and ran for the woods. He knew that, with his short legs, he could be outpaced by any of the others, but guilt had a grip around his heart and wouldn't let go. Besides, maybe he'd vanish in the rain and the night.

Cornyx's eyes flash and then return to their normal black as Aegeas leaves, the sense of danger going with him.

Dean groaned in frustration as the otter darted off into the woods. They still had no idea what had brought them here, and separating now of all times was a horrible ideas. Hadn't this guy ever seen a horror movie? "You guys should head back to the building," he said, letting out a particularly loud sigh. "I'll go get the otter guy-"

"Aegeas," Herobrine interrupted. "He told me his name was Aegeas earlier."

"-Aegeas, then," he corrected, raising an eyebrow in disbelief. Was knowing his name really all that necessary, especially to interrupt him about it?

Herobrine nodded, grabbed onto Charlotte's wrist and started to head down the street. Dean hoped Cornyx would follow, though he was just a bit uneasy after seeing that bizarre transformation earlier.

Dean easily bridged the distance between himself and the otter in a matter of minutes - he was the one with the longer legs. He reached out a hand and grabbed onto the otter's shoulder.

Aegeas whirled around, fist raised. He hesitated when he realized he was staring up at the man with the bat. Lowering the fist and brushing the man's hand off his shoulder, Aegeas said, "What do you want?" As much as the otter tried to sound angry, his voice breaking told a much different story. He wanted to attribute that to the cold and the layer of mud that he was still caked in, but he knew better than that.

He was ashamed of himself.

Stumbling back to the nearest tree, Aegeas tripped over a root and fell on the ground. Grabbing mud from his arms and legs, he threw it at his feet. "Go away," he said, staring down at his arms and wiping off whatever mud still stuck to them with his claws. "You don't want me around."

"Yes, I do," he argued. "It's safer with all of us together-"

There was a rustling noise in the woods behind the tree Aegeas was up against. It was something he would have likely failed to pick up on if it wasn't for the adrenaline rushing through his body already. In most scenarios, that rustling would have just been an animal moving about. But he wasn't concerned with most scenarios - he was concerned with some scenarios, and he wouldn't be surprised if this was one of them.

He readied his bat and took a step towards the otter. "Aegeas," he quietly said, eyes scanning the area before him, "whatever you do, don't move."

The otter heard the rustling as well. His sight was bad, but his hearing and sense of touch more than made up for it. Unfortunately, in the wave of turmoil and shame that drowned out his thoughts and almost wiped out his senses by using his heartbeat, he grew convinced that he could recognize the source of the sound. Something smaller, something more towards the distance. Maybe a friend?

"Kellach?" Aegeas whispered, feeling like a great weight had been pushed off his chest. He threw the mud that had been on his chest onto the ground and stood up, picking Kellach's dagger up from where he'd dropped it. "I'm coming!" He tripped his way over the roots, regained his balance, and ran in the direction of the noise.

Dean let out a steady stream of swears and darted after the otter. He could start to make out the shape of a woman emerging from the brush, their form flickering as they made their way over to the two. Even before he glimpsed at their soul, he knew exactly what he was dealing with.

"Fu-" he started to say, only to be cut off by a loud, angry cry erupting from the woman. There were red marks around her neck - she had been strangled. This was not going well. Grabbing onto Aegeas' arm, he jerked him back as he stepped forward.

"Just my luck!" he shouted, swinging his bat at the ghost was currently trying to latch onto his throat. She had surprisingly good reflexes and was able to dodge the first attack, but what she wasn't prepared for was a solid kick into the stomach. One of the pluses of being able to touch spirits. "A partial who died a violent death. Wonderful!"

He swung the bat through her as she got up.

She gave a scream, stumbled back and faded into the night.

He turned back to Aegeas.

This time around, he didn't sit around and try small talk. He grabbed onto Aegeas' wrist and started to pull him towards the building that the others were in.