â€œOh dear.â€ Mordoe said dully, as his eyes swept upward from his feet to stare across the room. Of course he had killed people before. Plenty of times, really. Far more than he would have been okay with had he not seen them as worthless lives or necessary deaths. Well, advantageous deaths, at least. But never had he killed a friend that didn't need killing. And never had he killed someone where he couldn't reason his way out of blame. Somehow, Mordoe felt like the excuse, â€œWhat? You think I'm magic, then?â€ would do him little good here. â€œI might be in deep shit this time.â€<br/><br/>Still, it wasn't<span style="font-style: italic">entirely</span>his fault. The fireball Mordoe had thrown had been aimed at Malcolm's waist. He'd aimed for center mass in order to throw the other boy back. That had not happened. Malcolm hadn't been thrown back; neither had his shield burst on impact. As Mordoe stared at his friend's body on the floor, it was plain to see there wasn't a single burnt mark around the late wizard's waist or stomach. There instead was a gaping hole in his chest where his sternum should have been. Said sternum was now probably hidden a little deeper, and in quite a few more places. But Mordoe dared not try to find it. That hole was the least unsettling of all the horrors in the room. It was on the list right below the shoulders that now seemed far too broad without anything rising above them. What should have been above them, and what now lay at Mordoe's feet, topped that list.<br/><br/>Looking down towards his feet once more, Mordoe stared into his friend's unmoving eyes. Blood splattered across his face. Blood splattered everywhere in the room. When the pendant around Malcolm's neck exploded, moments after the fireball's dispersion, the chain which was part of it had exploded just as violently. It had torn Malcolm's head clear of his body and launched it forward and upward to ricochet off the ceiling and fall at Mordoe's feet, leaving a bloody mess all throughout the room.<br/><br/>How was Mordoe supposed to predict the pendant's explosion? What kind of shielding charm exploded on its user?<span style="font-style: italic">Who's idea was it to make something like that, anyways?</span>he demanded in the silence of his mind as he crouched down and closed Malcolm's eyes. He also gathered the threads of Life rising out of that severed head and wove them into his bracelet. The threads rising from Malcolm's body a few yards away, Mordoe would leave to float away. This one time he would waste that resource.<br/><br/>And yet, it struck him that his mind<span style="font-style: italic">was</span>silent.<span style="font-style: italic">Shouldn't I be upset? Or worried?</span>he questioned his thoughts as he stood again.<span style="font-style: italic">No, I'm beyond that now.</span>The answer came straight away.<span style="font-style: italic">When I dedicated my life to learning all this world's secrets , I gave up my human needs. I will persevere towards that goal be damned the consequences.</span>