<div class="floatright">(http://s3.amazonaws.com/cdn.roosterteeth.com/uploads/images/54063e01-6933-4e38-b195-d0fc28595a06/md/2181220-1448930942333-Warrior_Karsten_Face.jpg)</div>The urge to make up something more for the girls to do welled up like bile in a princess forced to tongue kiss the pus-bloated rat queen, as he saw their hopeful faces looking at him as if they were a pair of school girls hoping to be let out of the murky depths of the dusty studies they’d been locked in since last winter. For a few long moments his eyes passed between them, a dead pan look on his stark face as if he didn’t know how to break the horrible news to the pair that they weren’t done yet.<br/><br/>But finally he relented and shook his head.<br/><br/>“For now at least.”<br/><br/>Another small gust of wind carried the smell of rotting carcass and fetid shit upon its wings to his waiting nostrils, leaving them hunkering down in reproachful horror.<br/><br/>“Let’s get out of here before the stench clings to us tighter than a noble to his pride.”<br/><br/>He grunted as his discolored sword caught his gaze and pulled it away from the waiting ladies. Gore clung to the seething blade like flies to a long dead carcass, and not for the first time he wished he’d gotten the Searing Fire enchantment for it instead of the Dead-Winter Frost one. With every drop of blood and shit, every chuck of innards or lung, kidney or spleen, freezing to the blade like the tongue of an inquisitive child to a metal gate, it could be hellishly difficult to get clean enough to put back in its scabbard. Somehow it always came away sparky and gleaming from there. But he had to get it in there first.<br/><br/>“Fucking death-gunk getting everywhere. Gonna need to be scrubbed down to my bones and a keg of beer just to forget about it.”<br/><br/>A look of irritation fluttered over his face and made his eyebrows rustle. He hadn’t actually planned drawing the blade at all. Technically there hadn’t truly been a need for it beyond showing off and of course now he paid the price for that moment of insensible display of…he couldn’t honestly call it heroism since there had been nothing heroic and nothing dangerous at all about the situation, but the idiot urge to showboat to the two women made him want to smack his face with the stained glove in sheer spite of his own failings. Or if not that, then at least to chase away that feeling of satisfaction gnawing along his spine as he saw them being successful in their endeavor despite their struggle up to this point.<br/><br/>Worse than that was the gust of pride that threatened to make the barely smoldering log of his interest in helping others catch fire again. He could feel the tiniest flame flicker up the side of it and as he walked by one of the dead trees he swung his sword broadside against the trunk with perhaps a bit more force than was strictly required. It landed with a sharp crack and dead rat shrapnel flew in every direction, some pelting against his chest and cheeks, other filling the air around him like buzzing insects fleeing the coming rain.<br/><br/>At least the sword slid happily into its sheathe again and it settled there with a satisfied hiss and a small wave of mist. Looking briefly over his shoulder as he set off back towards the village the girls skulked once more into his mind like a pair of night goblins about to steal chickens from a farm.<br/><br/>Thinking back over the fight he had to admit they hadn’t been absolutely terrible. True, they hadn’t listen to more than about a tenth, okay maybe a fifth, of what he had said, and they had promptly started to improvise in ways that made his ass tighten up until he would need a crowbar to be able to take a shit….but they had survived. If somewhat worse for wear.<br/><br/>“You did….”<br/><br/>Belatedly he realized he hadn’t actually given anyone any praise since he mistakenly thought a mage had conjured food for everyone, only to find out he’d used the wrong spell, and now he didn’t really know how to finish the sentence. Good? It hadn’t been impressive exactly. Other than their determination. That, they had enough to bend a troupe of imperial knights over their own horses and spank them with their own swords. Okay? They had done their quest, sort of. Though stumbling their way through it like a blind moose drunk on fermented apples through a monastery’s garden, they had completed it.<br/><br/>“…Adequate…”<br/><br/>He finished with a thoughtful grunt after a moment, his brow furrowing as he sought for anything good to say about their performance, and feeling a growing thread of irritation at how difficult he found it. They had done better than he thought after all. Though they had had him to instruct them.<br/><br/>As he considered how to continue they crested up the hill and the horrid stench vanished like trolls at the sight of soap. It wasn’t as if the mother of wind had decided to fart sunshine and roses in their direction, but by comparison the smell of sun bleached grass and baked dirt was heavenly.<br/><br/>“You got some guts, and more than the rat ones that are splattered all over your clothes by now.”<br/><br/>He continued with a dry snort as he started down the pathway that would eventually take them back to the village, and what there was of civilization out here.<br/><br/>“You even managed to cast some spells you really shouldn’t have.”<br/><br/>Tossing them a look over his shoulder he took in their gore- and mud-stained clothes, their hair either frazzled or caked to them by viscera or sweat, and the new loot they…he wanted to say proudly carried back, but that might have been taking their enthusiasm a tad too far if his reading of their disposition was anywhere close to correct. Not that he’d even been good at reading women.<br/><br/>“How did you even do that? I’m not an expert on magic, thankfully, but it shouldn’t be possible. Breaking the ascension of skill like that. But it did kill the rats so I guess you got the work done.”<br/><br/>It was as close as he got to any real compliments before his brow furrowed as another thought struck him.<br/><br/>“If barely. It definitely led to some problems for you since you don’t have the reserves to keep that kind of attacks up. You should have listened to me when I told you to keep track of your mana. Not to mention how you ran down to the beasts dark hair, I mean….”<br/><br/>Bit by bit Cerias went over the combat as the plains turned to farms and fields and the path turned into a road which soon ran into the cultivated forest that held the small village. He went over their tactics in placement and movement, how they could have drawn the rats back further and further, conserving their powers and wearing them out. That adventuring without a tank could be mitigated somewhat by crafty adventurers. They already had a healer, or should have one rather, and so they really ought to have been able to defeat the Queen of Pus and Pestilence on their own, had they only listened to him and channeled what skills they had suitably.<br/><br/>“Though there really is no substitute for a true and experienced tank.”<br/><br/>He finished as they rounded the road and broke through the cover of the heavy oaks to see the little town just a few hundred feet away. He might detest the quiet little newbie hole, but after the day he’d had it was good to see the tempting and alluring sight of the tavern down the path. A quiet relived sigh passed his lips and he turned around to look with a raised eyebrow at the girls for just about the first time since he started his lecture. Though he was sure he’d felt their eyes on him more than once during the journey.<br/><br/>“Well, were back. You’re welcome.”<br/>