A loud crack echoed throughout the night sky, and the cold, blue flicker of lightning flashed across Huxley's face. He sat atop his steed. Silent. Looking up. The unmerciful rain slamming onto his face. And there it was. The body. Swinging in the wind. Tilmon.

Huxley did not blink, even against the blinding rain. He just sat there and stared. It was true. Tilmon was no more. He removed his attention from the battered corpse, and looked across the soaked, massive walls of Stonegate.

Nothing ever changes.

He wondered what the purpose of this death was. Money? Power? Or just because?

The knight looked back up at the swinging corpse. He looked at Tilmon's twisted and marred face. And as he stared at it, he made no effort at taking it down. He had no desire to. What was the point in removing the corpse? Out of respect? Respect for a man who had been missing for who knows how long, but still only looks like he was recently killed?

Than what he was waiting for, happened. He felt it. He thought it...

Huxley did not care.

People die everyday. Some stay dead. And others, through some means or another, come back. It wasn't the way of life, but of existance.

He had learned that long ago during his youth. Back when he cared.

Tilmon had become another victim of existance.

He thought back as to why he decided to follow the leadership of the Baron. It had nothing to do with honor, for he had used up all he had a long time ago. It had nothing to do to making a name for himself, for he would prefer
it if people did not know his name.

He did it for money.

For lots of money.

Gold, silver, and jewels beyond his wildest dreams. For gemstones that even the wealthiest man would beg for. For objects so rare and so fine that even the strongest mages would gasp in awe, and the mightiest of gods would
fall to their knees to.

After all, wealth was all this knight had left. It was all he had wanted. He had lost everything else.

At that moment, a ring slipped off the Baron's dead finger, and fell to the muddy ground.

Huxley dismounted from his horse, picked it up, and examined it....Gold. Pure gold. All sorts of emeralds in the band. Very valuable he was sure. Whoever killed Tilmon did not do it for money. He showed the ring to the raven sitting on his shoulder. The raven looked at it indifferently, and simply cawwed at Tilmon's corpse. Huxley shrugged, put the ring on his finger, and took ahold of his horse.

As he walked through the entrance to Stonegate, he thought of the "right" and "wrong" thing to do. It would be "right" to return the ring to Tilmon's body.

Huxley looked at the ring on his finger. And he would have given it back to the dead Baron...

...if he cared.