The Last Primal

After a couple of minutes, as the last of the skinks crossed through the portal, only Aiden and his group remained in the nasty-smelling underground sewage system.

Being the guide, Roas was actually the first to cross through, followed by his newest little brother, Thuk.

When the last of the little lizardfolk vanished through the gate, Aiden flicked his right hand, causing the magic to end and the portal to close. 

As the surrounding space returned to its tranquil, normal state, Drake, as if just being reminded of a crucial fact, exclaimed with a shocked expression on his face.

"Aiden! They have all left! We have nothing to prove the completion of the quest to the guild!"

Aiden however, looked at him with a questioning gaze.

"What do you mean? Couldn't they just check if the threat has been removed? If they find no skinks, shouldn't that be enough proof of the deed? Besides…"

He looked around them, his eyes wandering through the more than a dozen of corpses they have slain before the unexpected conclusion.

"Couldn't we just take the required trophies from these laying around? I can't harm the rest, I have already promised them safety." He expressed with an innocuous look in his eyes.

Raising his right index finger, Drake wanted to refute his claim saying that the number of trophies wouldn't match the reports, but before he could do so, a lithe, delicate hand grabbed his wrist, tugging it, pulling it down.

Scarlet pulled on his brother, looking at him with a gentle, warm smile, shaking her head.

"Don't, brother. It should be enough. You also know that what he did, whatever it was, was ultimately the right thing to do. Although they did not belong here and they caused quite a stir with their ambushes and raids, ultimately, they didn't deserve extinction."

She whispered into his ears gently, leaning against his shoulders. 

Resting her head on his shoulder, Scarlet glances at this enigmatic friend of theirs, with a difficult, complex look. The boy held so many secrets to unravel that she didn't even know where to start. Still, despite the shroud of mysteries that Aiden hid under, she couldn't help but feel a rising, bubbling interest. She felt this strange, inexplicable force, pulling her closer and closer to him.

She wasn't sure if this was a good thing or not as Aiden already had an ever-growing group of enamored women around him. Still, no matter how hard she struggled, it seemed that fate kept pulling them closer and closer…

As there was no response, Aiden walked over to the nearest body and crouched down. However as he leaned over the creature, he wasn't sure how to follow up, as he was fairly certain none of these had a core in them, and there was no unique visual characteristic to take as an identifier.

With a confused, unsure look on his face, Aiden turned over to the still frowning Drake and asked.

"What should we take off from them so the guild will recognize it towards the quest?"

His words brought Drake back from his thoughts. He looked over the body Aiden was leaning crouching next to and walked over.

Arriving, he walked over the head, and grabbing the fin-like leather crescent atop the dead skink's head, he reached for the dagger in his sleeves and sliced the leather appendage off before throwing it in front of Aiden on the stone floor.

"Take these. Their shape and size are unique, and whilst most lizardfolk have something similar, they are always unique and related to them. These… fins are unique to skinks, and unless we stumble upon a mutated variant like that Thuk you talked to, each of them will be the same as this." He explained with a nonchalant, almost insipid, uncaring tone.

His speech finished, he stood up and walked over to the next corpse sprawled on the ground just a couple steps from them and repeated the process, slicing off another trophy. 

Aiden silently watched as his friend repeated the maneuver in a robotic, emotionless fashion, sighing with a bittersweet smile donning on his face.

Still, a moment later, as if reminded by another goal of his, he asked him again.

"Do we need the bodies for anything? If not, I will use them." 

The strange question threw a wrench at Drake's actions. As he sliced off the third trophy, he halted his steps, and with a stern gaze and a slightly accusatory-sounding tone he inquired.

"Why? How will you use them? What for?" He fired a multitude of questions in rapid fashion. Feeling the emotional, slightly offensive undertone, Lily and Galina looked at the silver-haired youth with a colder look.

However, before they could have jumped towards the adventurous prince, Aiden raised his left palm, quickly putting a stop to their action, while focusing his attention on his friend, matching Drake's cold gaze with his usual calm-looking one.

"I will store them in my storage space. Leaving them lying here would just invite some other type of creature, causing the problem to just shift instead of turning resolved." He gave a light lie, a half-truth. Although he already made the decision to place his trust in his friend, Aiden still wasn't ready to reveal his Primal origin.

Drake stared silently at his friend for a while, his gaze looking stern as if trying to see through the veil, Aiden was cowering behind.

In the end, after several seconds of tense silence, he finally spoke up, looking deep into Aiden's eyes.

"Just what are you exactly, Aiden?"

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<AN.: Couldn't add Thuk's details to the Author's Comment section last time, so I'll just add it to the end of this chapter. (Actually, I could but it looked god awful, I couldn't stand it.)>

(A little extra info about it: Thuk is the typical agility-based archetype character. Very fast, very agile, with some added physical strength. Actually, most of the Skink's are known for this very same trait. )

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