The figure didn’t seem to notice Lucas and his party at first, so Lucas thought he’d introduce himself. He knew that he probably should just do as Nick suggested and blast the man away with Chain Lightning while he was distracted with the statues, but Lucas just couldn’t. He had felt Kegan’s pain as he read through the bereaved husband’s story, and he needed closure. That need for closure pushed him to connect with the grieving husband, to understand what was going through his head as he trained so feverishly.

“Hey!” Lucas called out loudly enough to be heard across the room.

“You sure you should be giving up the element of surprise?” Bonnie asked in a hushed tone that was even softer than Nick’s. “This guy . . . He doesn’t look right. He looks tough. Some of those body parts are were-people. And Alfars, Dwarves, Humans . . . I don’t think any player has killed him yet.”

“Yeah, keep it down, and let’s just toast him from a distance,” Nick urged, trying to stop Lucas from talking to Kegan.

“I mean, we can die, but I kinda don’t want to,” Bonnie whispered.

You two can die. If I die during this fight, it’s over for me. I’ll be useless to Xun Guan and the game and will have to scrap this whole project. Lucas took the head back from Nick and held it up so that it could be seen even from a distance. “Hey, over here!” he called out, waving it back and forth as he spoke.

The man seemed to have heard Lucas this time. He slowly tilted his head to the side and then turned his head just slightly so that he could peer at Lucas through the corner of his eye. His arms went limp, and he let the axe fall to the floor with a loud thud that echoed throughout the hall. The heavy axehead dug through the blood-stained carpet and then into the floor several inches, but he maintained his grip on the handle.

“You disturbed me during my training,” he said gruffly. His voice was slow, deep, and gravelly. It sounded much like a heavy sled dragged across a concrete floor. Kegan turned and faced his unexpected visitors. He looked incredibly different from the image memorialized in the painting, but it was clearly still the same man. The average-looking, unnoticeable man had become as chiseled as the statues he was cutting. His hair had grown wild like a beast’s, matted and sticking up in all directions. His beard had tiny pieces of flesh in it and was coated in fine stone dust. It hid half of his face. “You interrupt my preparations and bring a filthy, lying fox into my home? You better have a good excuse, soldier.”

“This,” Lucas said, bobbing Jason’s head up and down. “I came to give you this. I knew you wanted it.”