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There was a certain degree of reluctance in Garovel's voice, and Hector couldn't exactly blame him. It was hard to cut Abolish any sort of slack. Maybe this was more than Grigozo deserved.

"Well, you can relax a little," said Hector. "We accept your surrender."

Garovel hovered up behind Hector's shoulder. 'Hello there, Grigozo. My name is Garovel, reaper to Lord Darksteel here.'

Hector could feel Garovel trying to find an opening in his armor, presumably to invoke the regeneration and numbing vigor, but the reaper was apparently having difficulty. Which was a bit strange. But after a couple moments, Hector just dematerialized his right pauldron.

Oh god, that felt better. And he could see clearly again, too. With his actual eyeballs. He'd almost forgotten that was even possible.

And to his mild surprise, Grigozo's blurry, blobby form didn't become much crisper like everything else in sight did. Perhaps it was the after effects of pan-rozum. Or maybe from releasing Banda's soul? Hector had never seen a reaper do that before, now that he was thinking about it.

In his foremost thought process, however, Hector had to confirm something with Garovel. 'Banda's soul isn't there anymore, right?'

'Yeah, it's gone. Ugh.'

Banda's leftover husk was now much clearer as well, and Hector could understand the reaper's disgust. The smoking, distorted corpse was even more grotesque than he expected it to be. The skin was already an ashen gray and beginning to flake off.

'Y-you...' Grigozo's form shuddered visibly, though Hector wasn't sure why. 'You were not even using pan-rozum during that fight?'

Oh.

Uh.

Hmm.

Garovel chose to skip past that question, which was probably the right thing to do. 'You're not looking so good. I think we'll let you get some rest before we continue with the questioning. Unless, of course, there is something particularly pressing that you feel we should know right away. Such as another imminent attack, perhaps? Being forthright with that information would go a long way with us.'

'I... ah...' Apparently, Grigozo needed a few more moments to answer. 'I... could be mistaken, of course, as Bloodeye's mind is at times even a mystery to Bloodeye himself, I think. But with that being said, I believe that Bloodeye will not risk another attack on you any time soon. Truthfully, he should not have even bothered with this first attempt in sending Banda. When we do not report back, he will likely realize that this continued pursuit is not worth the resource expenditure.'