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[indent][indent][indent][color=gray][sub][right][color=dc143c][b]Location:[/b][/color] City Sewers -- The City-State of Thorinn, Aetheria[/right][/sub][/color]
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[color=dc143c]"It ain't about bein' bored, Kals."[/color] Graves responded to Kalie, lying through his teeth. It'd been weeks since he'd fought anything tougher than a training dummy, and these dire rats were lesser than even that. He'd barely drawn his sword throughout their sewer crawl- not that it was easy to swing that massive hunk of steel in these tight, stinking corridors. There was little satisfaction to be found in bodies so brittle and bites so shallow. It was nothing like the rush of that dungeon. Nothing was.

In his quiet moments he often found himself back there, despite the horror of it all. Back in the center of that gnoll horde, or on Arkaanus's back, or...

A flash of shame.

[i][color=dc143c]'The hell's wrong with you?'[/color][/i]

He shook his head, returning his attention to Kalie after an awkward beat of silence. Best not to dwell on it.

[color=dc143c]"People are dyin' out there. How many outlyin' villages have gone up in smoke since that dungeon popped up? Two, three? N' here we are runnin' around, knee deep in muck, lookin' for god damned rats. We oughtta be out in the wild protectin' folks, at least. Don't just mean the eight of us, either."[/color] The frustration welled in his throat, though he'd learned to wrangle it. Kalie wouldn't take well to being yelled at, and it wasn't her fault. 

Not all of it, anyway. She'd voted against him, but...[i]everybody[/i] was scared to get back out there. She wasn't the only one with them that'd been against it, and Graves was perceptive enough to know they felt guilty about it. Nobody asked for this burden. They were just a bunch'a kids that'd gotten roped into this crazy shit. Was it fair to judge them? Was it fair to expect them to be the heroes the denizens thought them to be?

Some terrible little voice in the back of Graves mind whispered an answer, but he hated himself for thinking it.
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