Time Elapsed: 1:47:02

Loose stone crunched under Severance's feet. Rocks of all sizes, from a tiny pebble to a great boulder as big as a car, piled up on either side. Someone had cleared a path through the rubble recently, though they had made it just wide enough for two people to pass through side by side.

Severance slowed, taking in the aftermath of what had been a horrendous landslide. It had buried the access to Ironback Town beneath 15 feet of rock, so he wasn't surprised to see that some of the debris had been moved out of the way. It was still an active mine, and its tunnels were the only way to pass through to Tomorrow's Edge for those without teleport access.

He gently touched a rock resting about shoulder height beside him. Its dark gray surface felt rough against his fingertips. He grimaced.

"What's wrong?"

He looked up to see Jack frowning at him. The team had quietly arranged itself to fit the narrow path, with Jack and himself in the front, Kiah and Snow behind them, and Valentin taking up the solitary rear. Vast had lumbered on ahead, disappearing amongst the rocky terrain.

Severance could feel the curiosity radiating from his teammates. "Nothing. Just remembering. I was here when the landslide happened."

"Really?" That was Snow. "There was nothing when we came through."

"I didn't see anything either," Kiah said. "This is a lot of rock to move. What happened?"

"Well..." Severance scratched the side of his nose, collecting his thoughts.

They'd just moved past the rubble, and could now see the little mining town in all her glory. Ironback town, named for the surrounding mountain range, was little more than a few shacks clinging to the side of a mountain. A single road passed through, leading to the cavernous entrance of the mine.

Here, obsa was mined by a small crew of ragged, hardy folk. Even now, he could see an Elionan man pushing an empty cart towards the mine, and at the base of a hill formed by discarded chunks of rock, a pair of women sorted through baskets of freshly mined material.

Severance stared at them, his chest growing tight. His gaze moved towards the row of shacks. Obsa mining had a dark side to it, and the last time he was here, he'd seen it first hand in one of those shacks.

"What happened?" Jack repeated the question. A subtle edge had slipped behind those words.

It pulled Severance out of his thoughts. He looked away from the shacks, and refocused on the player beside him. Inwardly, he gave his head a shake. Jack really needed to learn how to chill.

"I'll tell you, but first, what was it like when you guys came through?"

"What do you mean?" Snow asked. "We just talked to the foreman, and he arranged for someone to take us through."

Severance nodded, having suspected something along those lines. "I'm guessing there wasn't a weird guy named Tarface there."

"Tarface?" An incredulous laugh came from the cryomancer. "No, but I wish he had been. What a name!"

They weren't far from the town now, maybe a hundred feet from the first shack. Severance stopped, turned around, and regarded his team soberly.

"I don't think you would have. When I came here, Tarface ran the place. First thing he did was sort us by clan. Those who were from the Chosen and Traders got a free pass through the mining tunnels. Those who weren't had two choices. Pay ten Amaurite crystals to pass through, or finish an impossible quest."

He smiled somewhat lifelessly. Once again, his attention strayed towards the shacks. From here, he could see the X carved into the door on one of them. It was the mark of the Afflicted.

"That sounds unfair," Kiah said.

"Yeah, it was. Especially when we realized we couldn't teleport out. This place messes with the System, as you know. People either had to cough up the crystals or give up on getting to Tomorrow's Edge."

"That must have happened after the majority of players made it through." Snow wasn't smiling any longer. It had sunk in that this wasn't exactly a joking matter. "You'd think a stunt like that would have gotten around, but I've never heard of this before."

Throughout this, Jack kept quiet. He looked over the mining town, keeping his thoughts to himself.

Kiah gently touched Severance's arm. It was done so naturally that he barely even noticed. "Did you have to pay the crystals?"

"No. After I realized I couldn't do the quest Tarface gave me, I tried leaving town. That's when he triggered the landslide." Severance laughed a little, because it sounded incredible even to his own ears, and not in the good way. "I respawned here, and then I had to wait a bit before my clan came to rescue me. They killed Tarface and then took me through the mine."

"Wow." The cryromancer whistled. "That's a lot more intense than our quest. That Tarface must have been bugged or something, because you have to pass through the mine in order to progress."

Bugged is one way to put it, Severance thought grimly. His eyes met Jack's. Both of them knew better.

That was in the past, however, and didn't matter any longer. He shrugged, and turned back around. "Well, that's where the landslide came from, anyway."

They continued on towards the mine. The women sorting rocks saw them, but they made no move to greet them. Nor did they stop working. It was just a glance and an unspoken dismissal once they saw it was a group of Outsiders. They were probably accustomed to seeing players pass through by now.

Severance had every intention of heading straight for the dungeon, but as soon as he neared that shack marked with an X, his feet slowed of their own accord. A troubled look settled over his face, and before he knew it, he'd stopped right before its door.

"Sev?"

He tensed, eyeing that big X painted on the wooden door. It was a warning for all who passed by, telling them to stay away. It wasn't because what lay within was contagious, but it nevertheless still a quarantine of its own. No one wanted to bear witness to the slow, gruesome death suffered by the Afflicted.

Jack loomed behind him, as annoyingly perceptive as ever. "What's in there?"

Severance couldn't tear his eyes away from that X. He didn't want to see it, didn't want to remember what lay inside, but even so, he couldn't bring himself to move. Those women didn't deserve such a cruel fate. It wasn't fair.

"Sorry. I just—I need to check something inside. I'll be quick." He went to the door and placed his hand on the little wooden handle.

Before he could pull it open, Kiah moved closer, as if intending to follow. "Perhaps we should go-"

"No!" The word came out far more forcefully than he intended, so he hastily amended, "I mean, it's fine. You don't need to."

It was better that they didn't see the Afflicted. No one needed to see something that awful.

He tugged on the handle, testing if it was locked. It wasn't. Not that it had been last time either, but it had been a while since he'd been here. Things could have changed. He paused, mentally bracing himself. Then he opened the door.

Warm air rushed to envelope him in a suffocating embrace of putrid rot. It was the scent of death, and it was exactly what he'd inhaled in the hole where he'd found the Valkyrie.

Everything in him recoiled, the physical urge to vomit so strong that he had to clench his teeth against the rising bile. He turned his head to the side and breathed shallowly between his teeth. It took a moment to gather the resolve he needed to step over the threshold.

An armored arm reached past his head and held the door from closing. Severance looked over a shoulder, brow furrowing when he saw who it was.

"You should stay outside."

Golden eyes met his. Not a word was spoken, but Severance understood immediately that there was no possible way that Jack was going to do that. The tank's lips had thinned into a grim line. It was the look of a man who knew exactly what sort of things produced such a foul stench.

With that, the two of them ventured into the house. Jack let the door swing shut behind them, which effectively cut out all daylight and left them standing in darkness. A weak glow came from ahead, originating from the same room that Severance had visited a while back.

Severance waited, letting his eyes adjust. His heart beat heavily in his chest, which had grown uncomfortably tight. It felt like he wasn't getting enough air, and maybe he wasn't because he was trying to take in as little of the horrid air as he could.

"Hello?" He called out, and when no answer came, he forced himself to move forwards. Wooden floorboards groaned and shifted beneath his weight. Jack followed, making the flooring moan even more as it bore his heavier steps.

Severance went towards the light. The smell grew stronger as he drew closer, to the point where he could taste the greasy rot on his tongue. Had it been this horrible the first time?

He couldn't remember.

There were three beds in the room, and he saw right away that two of them were occupied. Between them, a hunched figure sat in a chair.

Severance heard a sharp intake of breath from behind, but ignored it. He went to the figure in the chair and knelt, looking up into a face that should not be possible.

Her skin had grown gray and inflexible, its texture hard like the surface of a rock. Deep fissures formed around the eyes and mouth, allowing a small measure of movement where the hardened skin was broken. From these cracks oozed yellow pus. It ran from the eyes like tears, and caked around the corners of the mouth.

She wore a dress that hadn't been changed in so long that it was threadbare and beyond filthy. It did little to hide the fact that her entire body was in the same wretched condition as her face.

Severance gazed at eyes that had gone white and cloudy a long time ago.

"Can you hear me?" he asked softly.

The Afflicted's lips opened a fraction. Fresh pus and pink-colored fluid seeped from the cracks at the corner of her mouth and slid down her chin, to where it fell onto her dress. The place they landed was already crusted over in dried fluids, showing she'd been in this position for quite a while.

She gave a ragged moan, garbled words carried out on the exhale. "Whooze 'ere?"

"I'm an Outsider," Severance told her. "I was here before, when Tarface was around. I tried to heal you."

"Aah," she let out a breathy groan. "Yes. I 'member ye."

Severance smiled sadly. She couldn't even see him, not with those eyes. "I was passing through, and—" his voice abruptly wavered, and he stopped. "I'm sorry. I wish I could help you."

"Heh." More fluids dripped from her face and fell—pat pat—to her dress. "I know. Ye were... da one who... tried."

Lowering his head, Severance briefly closed his eyes. He listened to the air scrape in and out of her lungs like a saw. His expression twisted, unseen in the dark, because he realized she was the only one in the room making sound.

He lifted his head then, checking out the beds on either side. The Afflicted on the left lay on her back, arranged in a position of peace, her hands laid to rest at her sides. Her flesh had long since hardened into gray stone, and the deep crevasses splintering her skin at the joints no longer oozed. On the bed on the right, the Afflicted curled on her side. She stared at them with empty eyes. Like the first, she had already passed on.

Severance briefly closed his eyes. It was strange, but he felt a distinct sense of loss. "I'm sorry."

The Afflicted's fingers twitched against her leg. She'd placed her hands in her lap at some point, but it was apparent that moving them was only possible with supreme effort on her part. "Don' be. Won' be long... 'fore I join 'em."

Her voice grew weaker with every syllable, until the last ones were little more than faint wisps of air. He had to lean forward to catch them, bringing himself closer to the inhuman foulness that had become her afflicted flesh.

She was dying. It was a slow death, one full of suffering. Yet she bore it silence in this dark little shack. The X on the door ensured she'd do so alone, with only the corpses of her fellow Afflicted to keep her company.

It was unimaginable.

Severance bit his lip, a single tremor running through him as another thought slid quietly into his mind. It settled down, taking root and unfurling into a dark bloom of resolve.

Carefully, he placed a hand over the woman's, unflinching as he felt the strange texture of hardened skin, of crusted infection. Heat radiated from her hand, far too high to be considered anywhere normal for a human.

"If you want me to," he said, and his voice was so calm that it sounded alien to his own ears, "I will ease your way."

To that, her head jerked. For the first time, her sightless eyes moved in their sockets. They wept rivulets of watery fluid down hardened cheeks. A long sigh brought her answer.

"Please."

Severance placed his other hand gently on her shoulder. "Okay."

Behind him, the floor groaned as Jack Coyote shifted his weight, but Severance didn't even hear it. Instead, he bowed his head, silently calling forth the power of the skies. In an instant, brilliant blue light chased away the dark. Writhing currents of pure energy danced all over Severance's form, rippling over his arms and torso in ghostly silence.

The woman's lips cracked into a bloody gash of a smile. A quiet sigh issued forth. "Thank ye."

"You're welcome," Severance whispered. Then he filled the shack with the power of lightning.

A few minutes later, the door marked with an X opened. Both Jack Coyote and Severance stepped out.

"What happened?" Snow immediately rounded on Jack, who happened to be the first person out. "Why were you trying to blow up the place?"

Mutely, Severance shook his head. He had no doubt that everyone in the area would have heard the thunderous boom of the skill he'd used, and maybe they even saw the brilliant flash of light.

Kiah ignored them. She came up to Severance instead, and when she looked up at him, surprise widened her eyes. "You're crying," she murmured. "What-?"

"It's nothing." Severance immediately turned away. When he touched his face, he found his cheeks were wet. Kiah hadn't been lying. He hastily wiped his face on a sleeve. When he turned, he found his entire team staring at him.

"We can discuss it later," Jack Coyote firmly stated. His gaze seemed frostier than normal. "Right now, we've wasted enough time. Let's get to the dungeon."

Severance shot a grateful look at the tank. He knew he owed some explanation to everyone, but not right now. He needed some time to deal with it, or he'd become a blubbering mess.

Thankfully, Jack's word was law. No one said anything further on the matter. Not even the people working the mine. They acted as if the shack marked with an X didn't even exist.

Only Severance gave it one last, lingering glance.