Page 3703

The reaper wasn’t done, though. ‘He might be too nice to say it, but I’m not. It seems to me that you could both do with a dose of humility here. You should take Hector’s advice seriously before you get yourselves killed for some completely avoidable reason. And make me sad. You don’t want to make me sad, do you? I hate being sad.’

At this point, Abbas knew that many reapers would take Garovel’s words as a challenge, of sorts, and begin arguing relentlessly with him.

But Worwal was not one such reaper. A fact for which Abbas was eternally grateful.

Instead, Worwal merely looked over at Abbas and returned a nod of his reptilian head, informing him that it was his turn to say what they were both thinking.

“Amusing,” said Abbas, “but I am still a bit confused about what ‘advice’ we are meant to be taking here. I am unsure how I am supposed to ‘be stupider,’ precisely. If I am to take that more seriously, then perhaps you should propose it more seriously, hmm?”

Hector and Garovel exchanged looks of their own, probably consulting each other privately.

Then Hector spoke up again. “Okay. So. I might not be the best at explaining things... but, uh... it’s like this: when you come up against the Void again, your mental state is key. You need to be rock solid. Unmovable. You said it yourself: you experienced a ‘euphoric epiphany,’ right? That’s what’s dangerous. When your emotions try to take over, when they fill you with a sense of power and... ambition, I guess... that’s when things are most likely to go horribly wrong. That’s when the Void will lure you into infinity and make it so you never wake up again. Both of you.”

‘Which is what almost happened, by the way,’ added Garovel. ‘Thankfully, you weren’t yet so far gone that Hector couldn’t dive in and retrieve you. With the aid of your Living Core, it must be said. I’m not trying to argue that you didn’t create something incredible, because you most certainly did.’

Hmm. Interesting.

Rather than responding right away, Abbas took his time mulling that information over.

Worwal had a question for them, though. ‘How long were we unconscious?’

‘Tough to say for sure,’ said Garovel. ‘We didn’t know you were in trouble for a while, because your family thought you were merely being... shall we say, ‘eccentric’ by barricading yourselves inside the tree.’

“Barricading?” said Abbas.