Abyssia looks tense. Elizabeth looks like she's carefully not commenting. Theodore crumples in on himself some.

Ame waits. Gives him a moment.

"I don't actually want to be dead. It just seems like - the only downhill path."

Ame nods.

"I kinda figured. Why don't we put that on the backburner* for now. Those old books you mentioned, that had the ritual you tried. How'd you find them? And where are they now?"

* "Hide that in a chest."

Oh, that's what's going on, he gets it now. Party of hot girls; Act nice and friendly so he'll start volunteering information to them. Well, whatever. Aside from being a little insulted, how stupid do they think he is, he doesn't really care? So why not tell it all.

"Found them in the ruins. I was exploring and digging for lack of anything better to do after everyone I knew was dead. They taught me necromancy and other stuff. Buried them again afterwards. Mostly. I think."

"Dude did you or did you not flinch in displeasure when I touched you just n-" Ame cuts herself off. That is not what he needs while he's in this state and she should not take it personally. It was just so obvious what he was thinking, ugh.

"Sorry." Ame waves away her distraction. Back on topic: "Did you bury the books in the same place you found them? I want to know about the ruins, if you can tell me. Lily said something about you saying something about a Demon Lord."

"The Witch of Spacetime. Did portals and monster summoning." Complete explanations are hard and he feels terrible.

"Interesting." More like disappointing.

Ame was hoping it would be what's-his-name the corrosive guy. Ha...ruto... Tachi...vana...? bana? The guy who's quest she's on. There haven't been that many Demon Lords, have there?

Still probably worth a look, though. Portals and monster summoning, huh?

But not an urgent look.

"We can talk about it in the morning, after you've had more time to recover from the dhar crash. Are you going to run off again if we untie you?"

"I don't know. And I don't care if you do or not."

"Alright. Speak up if that changes."

Ame stands, ushers the other two a perfunctory out-of-earshot distance, and spreads her arms in a little 'hit me' gesture.

"I still don't trust him. It sucks, but lots of things suck, and you can't- A bandit with a sob story is still a bandit."

"He deserves a second chance, if he wants it."

"A chance to have another Good Idea go crazy and tear a hole into the aether that burns with eternal fire, like one of the college's particularly reckless archmages?"

"Ame's Skill is overpowered. If anyone can uncorrupt him enough, it's her. And, you know, he was trying to resurrect people, which is about the best possible reason to get into dark magic, and he seems reasonably capable if he set up that big ritual circle."

"He has dark magic manipulation Skills now. He always will. They'll be within reach forever, just waiting for a good enough reason- And then we end up in the same place again. Unless we put a slave collar on him or something."

"We are not going to do that."

"What, then?"

...

Bys bites her thumb and looks away.

Where would they even get a slave collar.

"He was trying to resurrect people. That's not just an excuse. Not just a sob story. It matters," Ame says, agreeing with Bys, "but... Liz makes a good point about his Skills. I hadn't thought of that. I can heal whatever the dhar was doing to his brain, but that doesn't make him entirely stable."

"I think he'll get better over time, with something like normalcy and purpose especially. If he - relapses - we can kill him."

"You're assuming he wants to come with us at all," Elizabeth comments. "He might not. Who knows."

"-True. I guess we'd have to decide if we want to make him our problem. If he wants to go build a farm somewhere and then snaps one day, that's different than if he follows along with us or something."

"Given that the current extent of his plans and ambitions seem to be about feeding himself to the first monster he can find, I don't think it'd be hard to convince him to join us instead. If that's what we want. Him voluntarily letting us look after him is a nice, palatable middle ground between 'he's not our problem' and 'slave collar'."

"Yeah, seems like a reasonable course of action. Even if it reminds me of some stupid porn I read once, party of three women hauling along a guy..."

"Pffffha, no danger of that playing out."

Ame gives Elizabeth a smirk. "You say that now, but. Which of us is heterosexual, again?"

"Well, anyway. We'll bring him along with us for now, I guess, is the conclusion here. Even if it does kind of complicate things."