“And where,” Sartok murmured, “is it I need to go exactly.”

Aubrey smiled as he stood, tossing a few coins on the wooden table, “Show him the poster and he’ll tell you.”

Somewhere in his mind Sartok thought quietly, This is all working out too quickly...too easily...Do you want me to find you, Surrian?...Rostov?

Standing, he nodded in thanks and departed towards the coastline. He wasn’t sure whether Aubrey knew he had seen that smile on his face or not.

It didn’t matter.

Slaves walked by him slowly in chains as he scanned the seas for this mysterious fellow.

“Nurokashujnn...hm. It would have been nice to know exactly what I was looking for...”

“That’d be me,” a half hung-over voice said hoarsely, plucking the poster from his pocket as easily as if it had been right in front of his face.

Sartok turned slowly on the cobblestones that blazed with heat and stared at the man studying the poster with blood-shot eyes, “You’re Nurokashujnn, I take it?”

“Only on weekends,” the other man coughed, squinting at the lines blurring before his eyes, “ to find this, you’ll need a ship up to Sehn.”

Sehn, the isle of buried Kings and grave tenders...

He frowned as the man jumped over the side of a questionable ship, “You comin’ or not?”

“What’s the cost.”

Nurokashujnn turned his dark blue eyes, still as the slight breeze shuffled his short, disheveled blue hair about slowly, “Nothing. I pity you if your going after her, so why bother to charge?”

The background noise of chariots hurrying along the cobbled roads to the temples faded away as Sartok stood for a moment longer.

“Pity me...” he stepped aboard, checking the transparent waters of feeders before looking back to Nurokashujnn, “I pity myself as well.”

Sails rose slowly, groaning with age against the wind as they pushed away. The large lotus blossoms of the animal habitat eastern side traced a trail for them as they silently headed towards Hell.

The journey had been peaceful, quiet.

But the quiet was not maddening like it was here.

Nurokashujnn had seen him off. Really, the trip had been so short Sartok had had no time to ponder upon his emotions.

All he had thought of was her.

She glared down at him, more out of curiosity than annoyance. This made him able to breathe again.

“What are you doing.”

Sartok gazed up at her, sad and unsure, “Following you.”

Rostov folded her arms, scythe falling along her shoulder. “Why.”

“I don’t know.” Truly, he didn’t.

She huffed and kept walking, but there was no insinuation that she was going to strike him he kept following.

After ten minutes had passed they had entered the forest. Several times she had looked down at him after hearing loud rumbling from his tiny ribs.

Finally, Fayina couldn’t stand it anymore. “Are you dying?”

Sartok looked up curiously, feeling woozy. “I don’t believe so.”

“Why is there rumbling?”

He looked, “I’m...hungry.”

Again, she had huffed. Then she had pulled out a shiny metal object he had never seen in his life before and had pointed it to sky. An explosion came, making him jump several feet back as a bird fell from the sky and landed at her feet.

With the same grumpy look, she sent him for sticks and already had a fire going as he returned.

Setting the meat before him she had retreated with her back to a nearby tree, only opening her eyes at the loud gnawing in shock.

“Is better now?”

Through a mouth full of meat, he nodded.

Sartok had to shut his eyes briefly in the lonely quiet of the vast graveyard of fallen Shadow kings.

Taking a deep breath he let his footsteps lead him through the forest area, seeing only dark shadows through the thick foliage that even the sun couldn’t penetrate.

On the horizon he could already make out the enormous asylum looming over the tiny village of grave tenders.

Eons ago, these people had dedicated their love to the Shadow kings of all generations, so much so that they lived only to tend the graves of these historical beings for all eternity.

The village people ignored him, and he ignored them. He preferred it that way.

Inside, it was colder than anything he had ever felt on his sun kissed skin. The building was nothing but stone composed of blood and pain; no happiness could exist here.

No one in sight, but he saw a light flickering down a narrow hallway to his left. Scanning the room once more, he sighed and quickly stepped down it.

A feeling swept over him, one he couldn’t place soon enough because almost instantly he was knee deep in blood. Sartok bent and felt it, frowning at the thick chunks of tissue that had formed in the coagulating mess.

“...Surrian...?”

Thwack

It repeated, that eerie noise. Several times, a pause, then it continued.

Holding up his fist, Sartok lit the room in a controlled flame and nearly had to turn away. “Oh, Surrian...”

She threw the ball against the wall once more, head bent into her badly scraped knees, then caught it and crushed it, letting fragments drip into the blood.

Wading through the blood he put a hand on the dark red bars and studied her, amazed at the compassion he still felt for this...this...

This killer...