He and Gary went out into the desert. They found a flat space of red, rocky earth, far from the prying eyes of the camp and Jason took out the casket containing Farrah’s body. He had been keeping it in his own storage space since she was brought out through the aperture. She was in a magical casket that would preserve her until she was returned to her family. Jason once had the sombre task of placing another adventurer in an identical casket, and now understood why friends and family were not the ones sent to recover a fallen adventurer.

Jason started laying out a ritual circle with salt, with Farrah’s casket at the centre. Using the powdered cores of lesser monsters, he tested the circle, correcting it again and again.

“I keep messing it up,” he said, voice catching.

“Take your time,” Gary told him.

It went unspoken that Jason could have extracted the items from Farrah’s storage space by looting her body like a monster. They both knew it could be done, but neither man suggested such a defilement.

Still trying to get the circle right, Jason had to stop. His vision was swimming with tears as he remembered Farrah instructing him on his very first magic circle.

“I was just thinking about when we summoned my familiar,” he said. “Remember how we snuck off to the other side of the manor so Anisa wouldn’t find us?”

Gary laughed, reminiscent mirth weighed down with sadness. After days of sombre reflection, the sound was strange and alien.

“You wouldn’t tell us what it was, but we knew she wouldn’t like it, coming from an apocalypse stone.”

“Farrah walked me through the ritual circle. It was a complex one for my first time.”

“You passed out again. You were constantly falling unconscious, back then.”

“Getting hit in the head with a shovel will do that. I sometimes wonder if I don’t have some lingering damage from all that cranial trauma.”

“We’ve wondered that too,” Gary said, and they shared a sad smile.

Jason finished the circle and performed the ritual by reciting an incantation. Items from Farrah's dimensional space started appearing around her casket. By the time it was done, there was a small hill of crates, boxes, bookshelves, cupboards, wardrobes, furniture and various loose items.

“I don’t have room for all this in my inventory,” Jason said. “Some of it won’t fit at all. She had a banquet table in there?”

“How big an item can you fit?” Gary asked.

“About the size of a regular dining table. Maybe half the size of that great long thing. Who needs a banquet table on hand?”

“You’d be surprised,” Gary said. “It doesn’t matter if you can’t fit everything. There are dimensional bags in here somewhere. The banquet table should fit into a bronze-rank one.”