I walked over and sat down in the chair Kesstel had left for me. The intoxicating smell of the chocolate bundt cake was thick around me and it looked so heavenly, but I didn’t touch it. Instead, I watched Kesstel, waiting for him to explain.

Kesstel pursed his lips and tapped on the wooden table as if thinking about how to word his thoughts. The pale light from the string of bulbs hanging on the gazebo cast a sort of glow on his bleach blond hair.

“On my world,” Kesstel started, “we didn’t know what they were called. I only found out their name after Kathar fell. We called them Blood Mists.”

His heavy words landed like a sledgehammer and my eyes widened.

“They weren’t quite human and not quite ghosts, but something in between. Magic could affect them, but plain physical attacks went right through them. They looked like someone had taken them and stretched them out, each standing over seven feet, their features distorted and elongated. Glowing white eyes and ghostly clothes flowing around them. Each step sent out a wave of fog. As soon as the fog started to roll out of the trees, smothering everything in its wake, everyone knew it was time to run. Anyone who didn’t leave would die, turning that everlasting fog red and soaking the ground. Those monsters didn’t even eat, they just slaughtered everything that moved.” He paused and pressed his hand against the table, blindly staring down at his long fingers.

His eyes narrowed and started to faintly glow blue. “I personally watched six Blood Mists take out an entire legion of magic warriors. My own father was leading the people. Those ghosts faded into the fog that flooded over the army, thick as ink. Then the screaming started. My mother and brother held me down, crying and pleading, to keep me from rushing down there. When the fog moved away, there was nothing but a bloody soup of bodies where brave men and women had been. We were never able to find all of my father’s body.” Kesstel’s fingers pressed on the wooden surface, turning his fingertips pale. The wood began to crack and splinter under the pressure.

My heart bled for him. I’ve seen a lot as a Hunter and have been desensitized to human death, but I would never be able to handle watching my father die in front of me. I reached out and gently tapped a finger on the back of Kesstel’s hand. The table wouldn’t hurt him, but still he shouldn’t destroy public property. And it wouldn’t do anyone any good if he slipped back into a mindless rage again, himself most of all.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “That must have been hard.”

Kesstel blinked and looked up at me, the glow fading from his eyes. He turned his hand over and gently pinched my finger with his. The glassy look in his eyes vanished, replaced with an almost smile. “It was. Every time one of my family died, it was hard.” He played with my finger in silence for a minute, but he obviously wasn’t done talking. “After my world was devoured and I regained my consciousness, I found out those monsters were called Warriors of Mist. Their world was the one that fell right before mine, and the Blood Mists were what was left of the population after they were injected with energy crystals. After that, I set out to kill every one of the remaining Blood Mists.”

I shook my head. “How did you know where they were?”

Kesstel frowned. “When I first threw off the parasitic planet’s control, I was still connected enough to know about the monsters under its control. It’s like a queen ant, a single brain that does all the thinking for every monster in its massive army. The parasitic planet has a consciousness, you understand? It wouldn’t be able to do all this without one, and it’s quite smart. The planet remembered enough about the Warriors of Mist that I was able to piece together this much information about them before I completely broke out of its control. And when I came out of my Portal, they were in the world the parasitic planet was preying on. So I hunted the ghosts down and killed every single one of them. The current intelligent species praised me for helping them, but I was doing it for me. I couldn’t feel any emotion in the act, but I knew they had to die.”

“I see,” I said softly. Honestly, I had been hoping he would have more information about them than that. Or maybe just different information. Like more about where they were from. “Since you killed all the Blood Mist monsters that killed your people, why did you want to kill me?”

His lips pressed together. “If you got sick after eating something for the first time, would you want to eat it again? If the first time you saw a rose was when your sister died holding one, would you ever want to see one again? Visual cues are just as effective to induce trauma as smell is.”

So, every time he looks at me, he thinks of his dead family? Oh my god. My heart squeezed tight, so painful it was hard to breathe. When I tried to pull my finger back, he tightened his fingers around mine, holding it captive. It wasn’t painful, but just strong enough that his opinion was obvious. In the end, I stopped pulling away. “I’m sor —”

He cut me off. “That was then. My first instinct was to kill you. But I was also curious because the first two times I saw you, you weren’t a Warrior of Mist. My curiosity and logic won over the predator instinct. So you lived.” He shrugged. “Simple as that. I didn’t want to tell you, because I thought you’d be scared of me.”

“You were right,” I muttered under my breath.

“But since we’re companions, I decided to tell you everything,” he concluded.

I was quiet for a minute. I wasn’t being fair with him. He’d told me so much about himself. As for me, other than my simple day-to-day things and about my family, I hadn’t told him anything about the System or the Warrior of Mist thing.

“I don’t know how the Warrior of Mists were in their world. But I have a feeling that I’m nothing like them,” I started slowly. “I —” My voice was suddenly cut off. I couldn’t move my lips, couldn’t make any sound.

[Warning. Warning. Information is not authorized to share.] The System flashed a warning in front of my eyes.

I sighed. I thought at this point, I’d be able to tell him. But that was wishful thinking. Outside of what he already knew, I couldn’t add more. “I’m sorry,” I finally concluded.

Kesstel watched my actions, his eyes serious. He had noticed when I paused, as if someone had pushed a button. His eyes narrowed. “Something or someone is preventing you from talking about it?”

I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t anyway.

He nodded slowly, taking my silence as a confirmation. “I see.”

I bit my lips. “I actually need your help,” I said slowly.

He focused on me. After all the time we’d been together, this was the first time I’d ever asked for help. All the other times, it was him acting on his own, guessing what I needed. And he was usually right. But this was different.

I pursed my lips. How much was I allowed to say? “For reasons,” I said slowly. “I need to find the remnant of the world the Warriors of Mist came from. It still exists, but not for much longer I think.” So I was allowed to talk about that much. It was a start.

Kesstel shook his head. “I don’t know what it looks like. I only know what happened to the people after that world collapsed.”

I tapped my finger on his finger tips, bouncing from one to the other while I thought. “I’ve been there once.” I had to assume that the world on the other side of the Portal Burst in Glenn Holt was that world. It’s the only other world I’d been to and where I made my ‘contract’ with the System. “It’s a Mediterranean type place, inhabited by Red Orcs.”

Actually, now that I thought about it, if all the people from that world became ghost-like Blood Mists, where did the Orcs come from?

Kesstle leaned back a little as if thinking, but kept his hand in the same place for me. “I don’t recall seeing a world with Red Orcs attached to Eden,” he said slowly.

“You mean, when you were checking out the Portals around Gate Vale?” I asked hopefully. “Is it possible the Portals changed while you were gone?”

He shook his head. “No, I meant while I was coming back here today. In the void between the worlds, most of the remnant worlds look like glass balls with pieces of land or ocean inside. So I could see what the world looks like as I passed by, and I got a good look at all the worlds attached to Eden, since I wanted to find one that was connected to both Eden and the parasitic planet.”

I leaned back against my chair. The warm touch disappeared from my fingers, but instead of reaching back for it, I closed my hand to keep from following my instinct. I looked up at the string of lights above, thinking. “I need to find that Portal. It’s … vital,” I whispered. “Where do I even start?”

Kesstel was silent for a minute. “I could go back into the void and look, but I don’t know how long I’ll be gone because of the time differences. Earth could be gone by the time I’m back,” he said. “I’m very reluctant to go that route.”

I nodded. “Yeah.”

“How important is it that you find this Portal? Does it have to be before we try and attack the parasitic planet?”

I blinked in surprise and looked at Kesstel. “I don’t actually know.” What would happen to all the remnant worlds that were caught in the parasitic planet’s void after it was dead? Would they simply vanish? If so, the Warrior of Mists’ world would vanish … along with the System. What would happen to me after that? Was it possible to save it before that happened? Is that what it meant by ‘save me’?

“I think, first,” I said, “I need to find that Portal before we attack the parasitic planet. If we don’t, I don’t know that … I’ll be strong enough to help you.” If something happened to the System, I’d be back to what I was the first time I met Kesstel. Weak and useless.

Hell, maybe I’d end up like that after the parasitic planet disappeared anyway, if we managed to destroy it. Since the magic that created Hunters was tied to it, maybe everyone would revert back to being human. As long as the monsters died at the same time, that actually wouldn’t be a horrible thing. It just meant the human race would be what it was twenty years ago. Except they’d have to learn how to live without energy crystals. I could live with that as long as I was on the same level of playing field, which I should be.

“So finding that remnant world is very important,” Kesstel concluded. “It's not going to be easy, but we’ll come up with something.” He frowned and looked in the direction of the Gate, blotting out the stars from the darkening sky. “Apparently I have a lot of paperwork to do. Keep your phone on you.”

I leaned closer to him. “Why?”

He shook his head. “Since you want to use the legal method to leave Eden, as time costly as it is, it’s going to require a lot of paperwork. I don’t know what the forms might require. Keep your phone on you so I can fill them out as needed.”

“Hang on.” I grabbed his hand. “You’re talking about filling out paperwork for both me and you? You’re going to do my paperwork too?”

He nodded and looked at me like it was obvious. “I grew up handling mountains of paperwork and handling people the right way to get what I want. How hard would it be to do one more form?”

“Oh,” I muttered. Honestly, a bit of me was happy that I didn’t have to worry about that stuff. Just dealing with the paperwork involved for the condo I was buying was terrifying enough, and that was with the nice agent explaining everything to me every step of the way.

“Let’s get approved to leave Eden legally,” Kesstel said. His thumb rubbed across the back of my hand, but he was looking over my shoulder into the dark garden. Did he even know his thumb was moving? “Once that’s done, we can move on to the next step and figure out how to find that Portal.”

I nodded. “Yes. Let’s start with that.”

*****