"You can't stay," Sal says brusquely, over breakfast and a crudely scrawled map, plotting her next move. "The gods interfere in everything here, and they love telling stories and fucking with people. Stay here, and the next thing you know I'll be hip-deep in shit because I let a monster go, and you'll be hip-deep in shit as the monster that bested the Wanderer. So we'll head down towards Karannos—"
"Or," Deacon says, in a little voice that sounds unused to standing up for itself, "if you insist we can't split up, you're stuck here. Since I'm not going."
It doesn't look like any other possibility had even occurred to Sal. She blinks a lot, seeming to process the existence of another opinion very slowly.
"What?" she says eventually.
"I'm not leaving the temple," Deacon says, a little more firmly.
"But I need—"
"You can need whatever you need," Deacon says. "I never agreed to hunt seven times seven monstrosities."
"But if we split up—" Sal begins, as if she just needs to explain again, slowly.
"I heard you the first time."
There's a long silence over the bread and fruit and spring water.
"But," Sal says, as if her ability to reason with people has atrophied to plaintive helplessness.
"Why do you think I'm still wearing this," Deacon says. "Neither of us arrived yesterday. Does a fursuit strike you as comfortable? Does it strike you as practical?"
Sal eyes it, opens her mouth, hesitates. Wariness gathers on her face.
"They love fucking with people," Deacon says bitterly. "And they love tee-hee-gotcha idiot-level irony."
"What," Sal says quietly, "happens if you take it off?"
"Temple of the Mother of Beasts," Deacon says. "You think that's an accident? You think me, in a fursuit — an external, literalised animal on the inside, is a fluke?"
"What happens if you take it off," Sal says, still quiet.
"I don't remember," Deacon says, and holds Sal's eyes, puts her hand next to some gashes in the table's wood, as if something with larger, sharper-tipped hands than theirs had gouged it.
Sal's gaze flicks sideways to where her machete lies, and flicks back to where Deacon's eyes on her haven't moved, watching it.
She swallows the wetness pooling in her mouth, raises her hands a little. "You're not a monster," she says, sounding — defensive, maybe. Guilt-tinged.
"Sure," Deacon says, eyes hard, like they don't believe Sal would — will — say the same with the machete in her hand.