Chapter 347: Three Lives

I even pat his head, holding my hand there a beat longer for the sheer audacity of it.

Peanut goes still under my hand, but his eyes keep measuring me without bothering to hide it.

Behind me, boots shift on the wooden floor. The big man I ignored takes a step. Other members start peeling off from their tables, and out of the corner of my eye I catch Freya changing the position of her feet. Zhang Xi is already alert, and Rhayne moves a hand toward her Battle Ribbon.

"Wait, wait. Relax."

I say it to the three of them before somebody turns a bad conversation into a worse fight.

I take my hand off Peanut’s head and stand.

He’s still staring at me.

"How did you know?" he repeats, no stutter this time.

The question carries another one underneath it: Who talked?

The real leadership of the Death Evaders isn’t information you hand to visitors. The big man in front of me fits the picture of a boss far better than any stranger would expect. Peanut looks like a kid somebody parked there to sort paperwork. And he’s still Rank B, blessed by the system, awakened in Thirstfall at a rank it took me years to reach.

I know the truth because I’ve already seen that face older. When everything came apart, his identity stopped being a secret.

By then he had a full beard and very little innocence left in him.

"You owe me three lives."

The hall gets even quieter.

Peanut frowns.

"I’ve never seen you before."

"I said you owe me three lives. I didn’t say we’d met."

The answer leaves him more uncomfortable than any explanation would have.

For a few seconds, the hall drops out of my attention.

I’m remembering another dungeon in this same region, years ahead of this moment.

We arrived as three. Me and two Divers from my old guild. Edgar and Fabian.

The dungeon needed six people for a safe run, and the Death Evaders had been hired to fill out the group. We were a small guild. The deal was simple: we’d go in first because the access window was already open and our Soul Tickets were expiring, and the other three would follow with extra gear and Tickets with more time left on them.

We paid up front.

We waited inside.

Minutes turned into half an hour.

Then an hour.

Nobody came.

At first we assumed it was a delay. The dungeon had narrow corridors and relatively stable zones near the entrance, so we pushed only as far as we had to in order to hold the internal window. When a Soul Ticket expires, staying inside those condensed regions of OXI stops being survivable. By the time we understood there were no reinforcements coming, going back had stopped being simple.

Thirstfall is reactive. What we call a dungeon is a place that guards something, or a place that always pays out at the end. The monsters are there to protect it, not to make it harder.

The creatures started respawning behind us, until the only plausible route left was forward. Finishing meant a way out.

And we were three people doing the work of six.

Edgar died before we reached the second chamber. Fabian lasted a few more hours with me, until a creature broke his leg and left me choosing between carrying him and coming up with a plan before another wave buried us both in there.

I carried him. He died in the boss room anyway. Seconds before I landed the last strike, the light went out of his eyes.

When I finally got out, I couldn’t remember half the way back. I was covered in my own blood and in theirs, my OXI almost at zero, one hand no longer able to close properly.

The Death Evaders showed up afterward.

Much later. But they showed up.

Peanut had sent a rescue team the moment he understood how deep the shit had gotten.

Days later, when I finally sat across from him and found out what had actually happened, the answer managed to make me angrier than if he’d simply stolen our money.

A Deepwarden team had collapsed inside another dungeon.

He said there were a lot of them.

A lot more than three.

Peanut had one group available and had to choose.

He sent our reinforcements to the Deepwarden.

He chose to save the bigger group, and in the end that group came out without losing a single member.

I still remember the conversation.

Peanut didn’t try to dodge responsibility. He didn’t pin it on a subordinate, and he didn’t pretend the contract had never existed. He said he made the call with the information he had at the time, and that when he learned the outcome, he sent people after us.

I almost killed him anyway.

I had the opening.

I didn’t take it. I couldn’t tell how much of his decision to help the Deepwarden was his own choice and how much of it was fear.

Before I left, I told him he owed me three lives.

The two friends I lost.

And mine, which he nearly added to the tab.

Now I’m standing in front of a Peanut young enough not to have made that mistake yet, and maybe young enough never to make it in this timeline.

I still need the Soul Tickets.

I set the past down and come back to the room.

"The Death Evaders already sold me logistical support for a dungeon," I say. "We were three. You were supposed to supply another three after the entry. They never arrived."

Peanut watches me carefully.

Nobody else is moving.

"The group got redirected to help the Deepwarden with an emergency. Two Divers died. I almost made it three."

It’s a truth that hasn’t happened yet, and he has no way to disprove it. Neither do I. Support hired through Soul Tickets doesn’t require formal contracts.

His expression barely changes. But it changes.

The middle-aged man behind him glances at Peanut.

That tells me the decision makes sense even to them.

Maybe it’s exactly the kind of call this guild would make, years before the world collapses. And I know it, because that’s who Peanut is.

"That never happened," Peanut says.

"For you, maybe not."

His eyes narrow.

Careful now.

"I wasn’t with you when the order was given. You weren’t with me inside the dungeon. There’s no reason for you to remember my face."

Peanut keeps studying me.

"Then how do you know my name?"

There’s the hard part.

I smile.

"Because I got a little irritated afterward."

"A little?"

"Two dead friends make my mood unstable."

Some of the people in the hall don’t seem to find that funny.

I keep going.

"Some time later, I found a certain statue inside a dungeon. You’ve probably heard the stories. The one that grants a wish to whoever gets it to answer."

This time Peanut’s reaction is immediate.

His eyes widen slightly.

The middle-aged man loses his indifferent expression too.

Even the big man stops looking at me like someone planning to snap my neck and starts paying attention to the conversation.

So the legend reaches this far out.

"You found the statue?" Peanut asks.

"I found it."

He takes a moment before shaping the next question.

"And you got a wish?"

"I was covered in blood, two of my people were dead, and somebody had decided our contract was worth less than a Deepwarden emergency."

I tilt my head a little.

"I asked for the name of the son of a bitch who left me in that condition."

Peanut stares at me.

The lie works precisely because I don’t have to fill in the rest.

I knew the nickname.

I knew he ran the guild.

I knew the Death Evaders had the authority to redirect incursion teams, and that when forced to choose between two groups, Peanut would make that call himself.

The statue explains everything I shouldn’t know.

And it plants a question he desperately wants to ask.

"If that’s true—" he starts.

"It is."

"You don’t know what I was going to ask."

"I know enough."

He runs his tongue over his teeth, annoyed.

"What do you want?"

Finally.

"Five Soul Tickets for the Ferryman’s Toll."

His expression nearly tips into disbelief.

"That’s it?"

"Today."

Peanut looks around, maybe hoping some detail will make the situation less absurd. Each Soul Ticket is an unstable pill of protection, made through alchemy from parts of local monsters. They take time and money.

"You walk into my base, shout my nickname, tell me I killed two people I’ve never met and nearly killed you... and then you ask for five Tickets?"

"When you put it like that, it sounds like I could be charging more."

Freya makes a small sound behind me that might be a strangled laugh.

Peanut doesn’t find it funny.

"And if I say no?"

"I’d be disappointed."

The big man starts forward again.

Peanut raises a hand and he stops. The kid really does run this place.

I open my inventory and pull out the Crest of Monarch, the House Azurea seal catching the light between my fingers.

The shift in the hall is small, but it’s collective.

Garen’s seal doesn’t need an introduction anywhere on this continent.

I hold the Crest between two fingers.

"I’d also be obligated to explain to Garen Azurea why I’m walking out of here without what I came for."

Peanut looks at the symbol.

"Are you threatening me with the king?"

"I’m explaining your situation."

I put the Crest away.

"Right now, his people know I’m in Low-Beach Mangrove Forest. But I haven’t told them why I came to the Death Evaders, or what the problem between us is."

I let that settle before I continue.

"Help me this once and the story dies here. Decide to repeat the mistake, and I’ll make a point of sending Garen the details before I step into that dungeon."

Peanut goes quiet.

The curiosity about the statue is still in there, but it’s sharing space with arithmetic now.

He doesn’t like being pushed. Maybe that weighed on the decision to sacrifice my team in the other life, and getting older didn’t improve the trait.

"A Crest can be stolen," he says.

"Sure. And?"

"A man can use Garen’s name without ever having spoken to him."

"He can."

Peanut stretches, the way someone does when they want the tension out of their shoulders. He still looks less threatening than practically every member of his guild. Rank B or not.

"And a dead man doesn’t explain anything to Garen."

The line changes the air in the room.

Rhayne goes tense again.

The temperature around Freya starts to drop.

Zhang Xi doesn’t move, but I recognize that particular stillness.

I raise a hand to the three of them one more time.

"We’re still talking."

Peanut takes a step toward me.

He doesn’t look like a psychopath.

He looks like someone trying to decide whether I’m a big enough threat to justify a bad choice.

Maybe that’s what he always was.

I pull out my communicator before he gets closer and open Veric’s channel.

"When you reach the station, head for the Death Evaders base. Fast."

I cut the line without waiting for an answer.

Peanut watches me do it.

"Who was that?"

"Additional insurance."

He stops a few steps away.

The big man and several others start closing the space around us. They aren’t attacking, but the possibility is getting a lot less theoretical.

Freya already has thin ice escaping with her breath, and Rhayne keeps her eyes on the man to my left.

Zhang Xi puts a hand on my shoulder, like she’s begging me to back off.

I don’t want a fight, but running looks like it stopped being an option a while ago.

Mostly because, for all the debt I’m collecting on, that kid still hasn’t done anything to me.

Not yet. The intent is there, though.

For him, killing someone who knows the secret behind the leadership, claims a tragedy that isn’t on any record, and carries a Crest that might be stolen could be the simplest way to bury a problem.

He comes closer.

"If I find out you’re lying—"

A voice comes from the entrance.

"Sands!"

Everyone turns.

Veric crosses the main door breathing harder than he’d like to admit, hair slightly out of place, carrying an irritation that probably started the second I hung up on him.

He looks at me.

Then at the armed Death Evaders forming a circle.

Then at Peanut.

"I ran here from the station because you said ’fast.’"

Veric puts a hand on his hip and takes a deep breath.

"Of course it was because you were about to pick a fight with an entire guild. Leona calls you a disaster for obvious reasons."

A few weapons lower, almost by reflex.

Peanut goes still.

Doubting whether a Crest is genuine leaves room for an argument.

Doubting Garen Azurea’s son while he’s standing in your hall is harder.

Veric looks around again.

His irritation turns into curiosity.

"So? Which one of them is the problem?"

I smile at Peanut.

This time, the kid doesn’t seem to like my smile at all.