Page 3993 -- CCCXX.

Chapter Three Hundred Twenty: ‘Thy piercing gaze...’
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Loren Lighteyes was trying his best to simply follow the group in silence, but this hyper-talkative Roman fellow was making that task quite difficult. The man kept asking questions, doubtless wanting to build a rapport or some such thing. Gather intel, maybe.

Perfectly reasonable, given the circumstances.

But Loren just wanted to observe. That was always what he preferred to do whenever circumstances became too difficult to wrap his head around.

How the hell had he ended up on a mission to Intar? Maybe the worst place in the world for members of Abolish to go.

And with people he barely knew, to boot? What the fuck was even happening, anymore? He’d thought that throwing his lot in with Caster Egmond would make for quite the dramatic shift in his life’s trajectory--hopefully for the better--but this was even more dramatic than he’d anticipated.

Which was to say nothing of the revelation that Caster was actually some sort of... ancient entity. Or possessed by one, maybe. Loren still didn’t quite understand that development, and Caster and Kalikos hadn’t been terribly forthcoming with explanations, either.

Maybe he just needed to be more direct, though. Ask straight up about who “Zirat” really was. Rezolo’s attempts to glean new information had probably been too subtle or indirect. Easily answered with vague nonsense--which seemed to be Kalikos’ specialty.

That was easy to say, though. Just be direct. Sure. Just ask one of the most terrifying people he’d ever met to explain all his deepest, darkest secrets to him. No sweat.

Agh.

This new guy, though. Darksteel. Loren had to acknowledge that there was definitely something crazy going on with him, too. He didn’t seem scared of Caster in the slightest--in fact, sometimes, it almost seemed like the other way around.

Which Loren found truly baffling.

From everything he’d seen so far, this Hector guy seemed surprisingly... nice. Welcoming. Protective, even.

But he also couldn’t quite shake that lingering first impression he’d gotten back in Boland. The feeling of quiet danger.

Such a strange mixture. And growing stranger by the minute, Loren felt.

Madder still, he couldn’t get Darksteel’s words out of his mind. The guy had basically said, right to Caster’s face, that he intended to poach Loren from him.

Was that real? A joke? Loren had no idea. And it was bothering the hell out of him.