Author Archives: David Wharton

CHAPTER TWO: HONORING THE DEAL

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Cast of Characters:

  • Kyffin Chiselfist, a male dwarven paladin of Fortubo
  • Dook, a male ogre barbarian who thinks he’s a paladin
  • Anthe Ettonice, a female elven monk
  • Thora Kaeda, a female air genasi druid
  • Zenryl Shadowbow, a female elven rogue

After a long rest, the group resumes delving deeper into the Sunless Citadel. Having found the remains and signet ring of the ranger Karakas, their quest to retrieve the rest of his adventuring group isn’t off to a promising start, but so it goes.

Venturing back to the south, the group finds a side passage that leads back into the portion of the ruins occupied by a tribe of goblins. Right away, the group walks into a goblin ambush, complete with concealed archers and a floor full of caltrops. They battle through several more groups of goblin defenders before finding one of their goals: a ransacked trophy room which contains Calcryx, the white dragon wyrmling the goblins had stolen from the local kobold tribe during a raid.

Unfortunately, Calcryx is in no mood to come along peacefully, and the presence of his former handler, the kobold Mep, doesn’t seem to help the situation. (DM note: having agreed to tag along as a “guide,” Mep is riding out this adventure—and many yet to come—strapped to the back of Dook, C-3PO-style). The group tries to tame the beast, but it’s clear Calcryx is in no mood. A tussle ensues and the group manages to finally render the wyrmling unconscious, bind it securely, and drag it back to the kobold chieftain, Yusdrayl.

As agreed, she gives the group a choice of items from her small treasure horde. The group chooses the mysterious key gripped in the mouth of Yusdrayl’s dragon throne, a key she tells the group opens a “dragon door” back near the entrance to the Citadel. With a bit of further negotiation, the group also barters for some other magic items from her stash, including several spell scrolls, some healing potions, and a Quaal’s feather token, which can magically spawn the growth of a huge tree.

Yusdrayl also says the group is free to keep Mep. The group is fine with this, and Mep is eager for more adventure than he’s found in the Citadel, so they agree to continue traveling together.

Heading back to the beginning of the complex, the group finds a hidden door they’d missed before and get a handful of skeletons and a couple of magic arrows for their trouble. Continuing down a path they had not yet explored, they find the aforementioned “dragon door”: a magically locked portal in the form of a fierce, silvery dragon. Yusdrayl’s key works and the group passes through into a strange new room.

As the module itself describes it, “Three alcoves are on the north wall, and one is on the south wall. Each alcove contains a dust-covered stone pedestal with a fist-sized crystalline globe resting on it. The globes in the northern alcoves are cracked and dark, but the globe in the southern alcove glows with a soft blue light. Faint tinkling notes issue from it.”

Investigating the globes, several of the party find themselves enchanted by the music and forced to run back to the beginning of the dungeon. Those not affected solve the problem by beating the hell out of the globes until the magic stops. Crude but effective.

Continuing onward, the group negotiates several more layers of traps and an encounter with a pesky quasit before reaching the end of this branch of the Citadel: a strange mausoleum, lit by torches burning with greenish continual flame spells.

From the module:

“Violet marble tiles cover the floor and walls, though all are cracked or broken, revealing rough-hewn stone beneath. Sconces are attached to the walls at each corner. One holds a torch that burns with greenish fire. A marble sarcophagus, easily nine feet long, lies in the room’s center. The coffin is carved with dragon imagery, and the head of the sarcophagus resembles a dragon’s head. Rusting iron clasps firmly lock down the lid.”

Carved on the wall nearby, a message in Draconic: “A dragonpriest entombed alive for transgressions of the Law still retains the honor of his position.”

Curiosity getting the better of him, Dook rips the lid off the sarcophagus and finds a troll: “…dressed in rotted finery, but its jewelry and rings adorned with tiny silver dragons still sparkle. The creature’s body is shrunken and elongated, and its flesh is a rubbery, putrid green. Its black hair is long, thick, and ropy. Its beady black eyes flash open, and it snarls.”

A fierce battle follows, with the creature putting up a worthy fight but soon falling beneath the group’s blades, spells, and Dook’s signature weapon: the uprooted trunk of a small tree. With Kyffin pleased to have helped strike down such an evil creature, the group is nevertheless perplexed at the creature’s backstory. The carvings suggest it was once one of the elven dragonpriests who used the Citadel to honor an ancient high dragon named Thesmothete in centuries past. How, then, did it become a troll, and why was it “entombed alive?” The answers, if they are to be found, must wait for another day.

Searching the chamber, they find a selection of gold, more spell scrolls, and a torch of continual flame that Dook physically rips out of the wall.

Retracing their steps back through the kobold tribe’s territory and into the goblin section, the group eventually finds a makeshift prison containing several kobold prisoners destined for either slavery or the cookpot, as well as one more memorable figure: a gnome cleric of Fharlangn named Erky Timbers. With this, the group checks another item off their to-do list for the dungeon; Kyffin’s friend Dem Nackle, a female gnome priest of Pelor, had asked for Kyffin’s help in locating Erky after he went missing inside the temple. Erky proves endlessly chatty, grateful for the rescue, and eager to tag along with the group as they continue into the dungeon in search of the other missing adventurers.

The addition of Erky proves to be fortuitous timing, as the group soon reaches the heart of the kobold colony and their very first “boss fight.” From the module:

“A circular shaft pierces the floor of this forty-foot-diameter domed chamber. Dim violet light shines out of the shaft, revealing sickly white and gray vines that coat the walls of the shaft. The light is supplemented by four lit wall torches set equidistant around the periphery of the chamber. A crudely fashioned stone throne sits against the curve of the northwestern wall. A large iron chest serves as the throne’s footstool. A sapling grows in a wide stone pot next to the throne.”

Waiting for them inside are:

  • Durnn, the hobgoblin chief of the local goblin tribe
  • Grenl, the tribe’s shaman
  • Several hobgoblin guards
  • A twig blight—the first the group has seen, a twisted plant creature spawned by the experiments of the rogue druid Belak the Outcast in the lower levels of the dungeon.

Dook initially tries an unexpected approach: simply walking into the room and asking if any of them need any of the “elf pudding” they’d found in a storeroom elsewhere in the dungeon. Durnn and the others are thrown for a loop at the sheer illogic of an ogre selling elf pudding door-to-door, but the distraction doesn’t last long, and battle soon commences.

For most of the group, it’s a rousing encounter, with spells, blades, and arrows flying. For Durnn, however, a natural 1 and a failed DEX save lead to an ignominious end as he trips and tumbles to his death down the shaft in the middle of the room. It’s best that the fall does him in; he never would have survived the embarrassment.

Once the dust settles, the goblin tribe’s leadership is routed, the group allows the “civilians” to leave in peace, and they manage to account for another of the missing adventurers: Durnn’s body was wearing splint armor and a signet ring belonging to Talgen Hucrele. With him presumed dead, only his sister Sharwyn and the paladin Sir Braford remain to be found. And it’s not looking good…

The group sets up camp to rest, with nowhere to go but down.

CHAPTER ONE: THE ROAD TO THE SUNLESS CITADEL

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It all started on the road to Oakhurst…

We joined several members of the group in a carriage traveling to the small village that’s nestled north of the Fals river along the road between Veluna and Bissel. While their reasons for taking the voyage were divergent, their paths would soon align, owing to chance or fate. In the carriage we met:

  • Anthe Etonnice, an elven monk
  • Thora Kaeda, a young druid of mixed genasi and gnomish parentage
  • Zenryl Shadowbow, an elven rogue

Thora and Zenryl were traveling companions, having left behind the small Velunese village where they had met. Thora was on a mission for her druidic mentors, investigating a lost ruin known as the Sunless Citadel, and the rumors of a fallen druid named Belak the Outcast who has been allegedly operating within the citadel, spinning dark magics. Zenryl is along for the ride, because the thought of remaining behind while Thora sought adventure seemed utterly unpalatable.

As for Anthe, she doesn’t say much but carries a sense that many secrets hide behind her quiet smile.

BANG!

The group’s small talk is interrupted when something huge slams into the carriage, actually rocking it over onto its side. Outside, they see an incredible sight: a seven-foot ogre tussling with a band of bandits. Rattled, they scramble out of the carriage and prepare for battle—and quite a fight, between the ogre, the bandits, and the hobgoblin lobbing arrows from the treeline.

Before long, however, a new wrinkle presents itself: a heavily armored dwarf, cresting a nearby hill and sprinting toward the battle. He’s yelling something, but what?

“DON’T…HIT…THE OGRE!”

Strange as it may seem, the ogre does indeed show no interest in murdering our band of heroes—just the bad guys.

The battle is joined, the bandits are defeated, and we meet the rest of our heroes:

  • Kyffin Chiselfist, a dwarven paladin of Fortubo hailing from the Barrier Peaks.
  • Dook, an ogre barbarian who thinks he’s a paladin because he killed a paladin and that’s how he thinks it works.

They’re a strange company, to be sure, but it is clear that Dook does indeed mean well and seems to be (mostly) on the path of righteousness, at least under the guidance of Kyffin and excepting an unfortunate habit of collecting his fallen enemies’ ears…

Kyffin and Dook are also traveling to Oakhurst, responding to the summons of Kyffin’s friend, Dem Nackle, a gnome priest of Pelor. The group agrees to travel the rest of the way together as protection from the dangers of the road.

They soon arrive in Oakhurst, where they receive a less-than-warm welcome from Oakhurst’s constable, Felosial, a half-elf veteran. She commands a force of sixteen guards and four scouts who keep the village safe. It takes some convincing that the party means no harm—mainly due to the ogre—but Dem soon arrives and vouches for them. Under Felosial’s watchful eye, the group travels to Dem’s shrine to catch up.

Dem had written to Kyffin asking for help recovering her friend Erky Timbers, a cleric of Fharlanghn who recently ventured into the Sunless Citadel and has not returned. Since it’s a good cause and their paths align, the group agrees to team up and venture into the dungeon together. They learn that the ruin is an ancient Baklunish temple, sunken into a deep chasm during some past cataclysm. Its origins and history are surrounded with more questions than answers, however.

Before they can set out, they are approached by Kerowyn Hucrele, a human noble who runs the local general store and who is one of the larger fish in this particular small pond. Two of her children, it seems, have also been foolish enough to venture into the Sunless Citadel—part of a group of adventurers who are now several weeks overdue. Kerowyn fears the worst, but she offers a reward if the group can find and return with the two lost members of her family—or at least return the gold signet rings worn by her missing son and daughter.

Setting out from Oakhurst, the group travels seven miles up along an old road into the foothills that become the Yatil Mountains. They find a ravine, narrow but running for miles in both directions. After a bit of searching, they discover the barest hints that the Citadel used to be above ground—crumbling pillars covered in dwarven writing. A few similar pillars were visible on the opposite side of the ravine, and a sturdy, knotted rope hangs from one of the leaning pillars and down into the depths of the ravine. The writing is soon identified as the warnings of a goblin tribe that has apparently taken up residence.

Undeterred, the group descends the rope.

At the bottom, they find a set of stone stairs carved into the side of the ravine wall, leading even further down. After a few encounters with rodents of unusual size, they reach the bottom…and the Sunless Citadel itself.

After more rat fights and a couple of unfortunate run-ins with traps (Perception rolls are not this party’s strong suit), the group soon encounters a broken cage and a sobbing kobold named Mep. They learn that tribes of both kobolds and goblin have taken up residence within the Citadel’s crumbling halls, and they have little love for each other.

The cage, Mep tells them, once held the kobold tribe’s prized possession: a young white dragon wyrmling named Calcryx. Mep, the tribe’s “Keeper of Dragons,” tells the group that the goblins had recently staged a raid and stolen the dragon, leaving Mep as the butt of the other kobolds’ displeasure.

Mep agrees to escort the party to meet the kobold leader. A short distance into the citadel, they reach the “Hall of Dragons” and meet Yusdrayl, the kobold chieftain, upon her dragon throne.

Wary but willing to bargain, Yusdrayl tells the group that her tribe had lived in the Citadel for some time, drawn to its history with an unnamed dragon cult and a long-vanished high dragon named Thesmothete. Yusdrayl also confirms two things: that the Hucreles’ adventuring party had passed through some time ago, and that Belak the Outcast does indeed reside in the depths of the Citadel’s lower level.

Yusdrayl offers to let Mep guide the party, as well as their choice of reward if they bring Calcryx back to the tribe. With their eyes on both the mysterious key clutched in the mouth of Yusdrayl’s dragon throne and the array of small treasures behind it, the party agrees.

Following the kobolds’ directions to a “back door” into the goblin-occupied section of the complex, Dook straps Mep to his back and the party soon battles against goblins, rats, and skeletons before encountering more clues that suggest the Sunless Citadel’s dragon cult once included elves among its number. After defeating several undead former residents, the group acquires several goodies including a magic whistle named “Night Caller,” which allows the user to cast “animate dead.” (Dook takes a liking to the whistle—he always wanted his own pet skeleton.)

Pressing onward past traps and monsters, the group eventually battles a bloated, grotesque mother rat guarding a filthy nest containing, among other things, the remains of one of the Hucrele party: Karakas the ranger is no more.

Tired and wounded, the group barricades the door and settles in for a long rest.

Machine of Death: “Suicide”

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The clerk set the gun on the counter.

“There’s a seven-day waiting period.”

Tommy peeled off an extra hundred and slid it across the counter. The clerk hesitated, then pocketed the bill and loaded the weapon into a brown paper bag.

“Some weeks are shorter than others.”

He added a box of bullets to the bag, then rang up the total. “You need any extra ammo?”

“No,” replied Tommy. “One box will be plenty.”

* * * * *

It was pissing rain on the walk back to his apartment, the first time it had rained in the city for months. The water cut greasy rivers down his cheeks, tasting faintly of gasoline and ash. At least the city’s consistent, he thought, even the rain’s corrupt. He ducked into a familiar coffee shop to douse the chill. He ordered what he always ordered and dug in his pockets for exact change.

“Can you believe those freaks?”

Tommy followed the kid’s gaze out the front window, across the street. A pack of No-Faters gathered on the corner, their placards bleeding ink as they fought to keep a fire alive in a trash bin. One of them, a chubby white kid with unconvincing dreadlocks, pulled out a white card, the size of the index cards Tommy’s students used to cram notes onto before exams, and tossed it into the fire. He stepped back, arms out, relishing the cheers of approval the protesters poured out at him.

“Yeah, you’re home free now, asshole,” said the kid behind the counter. He finished with Tommy’s order and passed the steaming cardboard cup to him. “What’s that shit supposed to accomplish?”

Tommy shrugged. “It’s a symbol. Rage against the dying of the light, that sort of thing. Just human nature.”

“More like rage against getting a job, the stupid hippies.” The kid flipped a rag off his apron string and wiped down the counter where Tommy’s cup had spilled a few drops. “You wanna know what my card says? Burned to death. Bad news, right? Not exactly the finest hand in the deck, right? But I still smoke. ‘cause what’s the point? Way I see it, the way we’re gonna die is the way we’re gonna die. That’s the way it’s always been, motherfucking death machine or no motherfucking death machine.”

Tommy didn’t say anything, just slugged back half the cup of coffee, letting it burn his throat, not caring. Outside, the rain had stopped as the No-Faters tossed another card onto the altar of inevitability.

* * * * *

He dropped the envelope into the mailbox. He’d written it all out, the whole thing, the night before in his motel room. As he watched Mel’s address—her new address—swallowed by the box’s maw, he marveled at how much life could change with the simple rearrangement of a few letters and numbers. She should get it by the end of the week, but she’d already know by then. She would have heard about it on the news, or someone would have told her. He’d be the name on a thousand pundits’ lips before rush hour. Lots of people asking why, but she’d be the only one with the answer. It felt right that way.

As he waited for the crosswalk light to change, he noticed the bar across the street. There was always a bar within walking distance of these places, without fail, or a liquor store. They were like remoras, feeding from the belly of the Death Machine wherever it sprang up. He could see a few of them in there now, heads down, that uniquely blank look on their faces. Some of them had their death cards laid out on the bar, staring as if waiting for the ink to shift, for the universe to hiccup, for destiny to laugh and admit, “Just kidding.” Others laughed and caroused, to all appearances celebrating a promotion at work rather than a glimpse at their own end.

Tommy waited in line, smiled at the girl behind the glass partition, and forked over $11.50 for his ticket. The Death Machines were everywhere now—doctor’s offices, mall kiosks. They were both wholly remarkable and thoroughly mundane. Not this one, though. This one was the first. The first Death Machine ever, entombed in a glass-and-chrome building that was half museum and half theme park. If, thought Tommy, you turned Auschwitz into a theme park.

Tommy ignored the huge plasma screens somberly reciting the history of this holy temple, the narrator’s voice smooth and comforting as the screens displayed the most famous photograph in the world. The first Death Machine, its creators lined up behind it, grinning with the pride of those who know they’ve changed the world. He’d heard the rumors, of course, that the whole thing had been an accident, that they’d been trying to create something else and only stumbled ass-over-teacups backwards into their discovery. Either way, they were all rich as sin now, at least the ones that were still alive. Not so the older man with a smile like Norman Rockwell’s grandpa, who had eaten a shotgun barrel six months after that photo was taken. Tommy wondered if he’d bothered to look at his death card first. Was it the knowing that drove him to that end, or the not knowing? Did it even really matter?

Tommy joined the queue that snaked its way up to the Machine. It was a weekday, so the crowds were light. It only took a minute or so until he reached the front of the line. The Machine’s words greeted him, the same as they always greeted everyone. “Please insert your finger.” It was a sentence that had become the punchline to a thousand jokes and monologues and headlines over the past few years, but Tommy didn’t think any of them were funny. The least they could have done was polish up the death sentence a little. Maybe hire some New York Times bestseller to do a pass, come up with something really snappy, something to bring a smile to your face on the bus ride home.

He winced as the needle pierced his fingertip, sucked at the tiny pearl of blood that peered out. The Machine buzzed, flashed “Thank you,” and spit out the card. He took it and moved aside to let the redheaded woman behind him have her turn. She was young, maybe nineteen, and from the way she was shaking, she’d never done this before. He wasn’t sure whether to envy her that.

He read the card, just one word. Seven letters, no substitutions. So final, and yet, in a way, so freeing. Tommy had never worried about car accidents or plane crashes or cancer. The same word that doomed him had also rendered him, in a way, untouchable. Was he only here because of the word? Would he have had the courage to do what needed to be done if the word was different? He smeared blood across the card, tossed the card into a nearby trash can along with his doubts. He reached in his pocket, felt the shape of the gun, solid and comforting.

The red-haired woman stepped over, her eyes glued to the card, welling up. She was pale as her legs gave out and she lowered herself to the floor. He crouched next to her.

“First time?”

She looked at him, but didn’t seem to see him at first. Then her eyes focused, and she brushed at the tears with the back of her hand.

“Yeah. I guess I wasn’t really ready for it.”

Her other hand white-knuckled the card. Tommy could read part of her word, “Explo–”, the rest eclipsed by her fingers.

“I haven’t met anybody yet who is.” He pulled a tissue out of the pocket without the gun and offered it to her.

“It could be wrong.”

Tommy smiled. “It could be. They say it’s infallible, but it only has to be wrong once, right?”

She smiled back at him, weakly, then looked sick to her stomach. She shook her head. “My mom told me not to get checked. She said it was better not to know. Now there’s no taking it back, you know? It’s like…now nothing else I do matters.”

He stood up, one hand sliding back to his pocket, wrapping around the gun. He offered her his other hand, and she took it, her knees barely finding the strength to stand. For a moment, the curve of her face reminded him of Mel, and he felt his commitment wavering.  Did he have the right?  But then his eyes turned to the screen above, to the photograph, to the smiling faces. Did he have the right? Did they? They’d killed the whole world. She would die to—just maybe—restore it to life.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Alice.”

His thumb caressed the back of her hand. “Alice, I want you to close your eyes.”

On any other day, she might have been suspicious, but today he was human contact, he was comfort, and that was enough. She closed her eyes.

Tommy pulled the gun from his pocket, locked the hammer back. He thought of his word, and her word, and billions of tiny little soulless goddamn cards around the world, each with their own word.

It only had to be wrong once, he told himself. Just once.

He lifted the gun, aiming at the center of her forehead.

Except…

His stomach wrenched as a terrible realization hit him. He envisioned the hammer falling, the spark, the bullet driven forward by the explosion. By the explosion. The Machine, the damned Machine, would still win by technicality.

He staggered back away from her, and she opened her eyes, confused. She gasped as she saw the gun in his hand. He spun, back toward the front of the line, toward the sound of the Machine vomiting up a new proclamation of doom. It wasn’t too late. He could still beat it. He leveled the gun at the man at the front of the line, trenchcoat and wild hair.

“You!”

He heard screams from the crowd, the squawk of walkie-talkies and the clatter of security guards’ booted feet. He only had seconds. He closed the distance, jammed the gun barrel against the man’s head.

“What does your card say?”

The man’s card lay in the machine’s tray, face down, future unwritten. The man was calm—why was he so calm?

Tommy screamed: “Pick it up and tell me what it says!”

The man smiled at him.

Furious, frantic, Tommy grabbed the card, flipped it over, reeled from déjà vu. The card read: “Suicide.”

The man shrugged. His trenchcoat hit the floor. Tommy saw the wires circling the man’s chest, through the gray claylike bricks, leading up to what looked like a TV remote in the man’s hand. Tommy thought it was odd; it looked just like it always did in the movies.

“No fate,” said the man, an edge of madness in his eyes.

Tommy wanted to laugh. The Machine never said it was his suicide.

The Machine only had to be wrong once.

But not today.

The man pressed the button.

 

The Start of Something

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In high school, Nate’s interest in writing and amateur sleuth tendencies had combined with Fisher’s short-lived aspirations to become a filmmaker, resulting in a series of unfinished shorts notable primarily for the number of times they yelled at Cal for not staying in character or flubbing his lines. Their aimless creativity had eventually found its perfect muse in the form of Jacob Twilley.

Jacob Twilley was a friend of Fisher’s older brother, Remy. That might be overstating it. He’d gone to high school with Remy, and by the time they met him, Remy occasionally bought weed from him. During one of these visits, Remy had allowed Nate and Fisher tag along, first promising to break their arms if they broke the “circle of trust” and told anyone about it, most especially if that anyone was Fisher’s parents. He needn’t have bothered. An illicit visit to a see a mysterious drug dealer? Nate had been born for this.

Jacob lived in ramshackle trailer park on what was then the outskirts of Arlington, on the edge of suburban sprawl and more or less dead in between the larger cities of Dallas and Fort Worth. The trailer park was off a country road sprouting new housing developments like crabgrass, across the street from a walled convent that had been there long before the first realtor sign appeared. Jacob lived with an older woman who was either his aunt, sister, or girlfriend, depending on who you asked, and nobody ever asked him.

Jacob had answered the door in pajama pants and a Speed Racer t-shirt streaked with blood. Nate assumed the blood was his, owing to the crimson-soaked tissue jammed into one nostril. After opening the door, his gaze went from Remy to Fisher to Nate, and then back to Remy. He then cocked his head toward the two younger boys and asked Remy, “The fuck, man?”

Remy had just shrugged, and apparently that had been explanation enough, because Remy stepped aside to let them in.

Inside, Jacob accepted a handful of cash from Remy and then sat down on a filthy couch before a filthy table to measure out Remy’s product. He talked loud and fast and changed topics before you could get a word in edgewise about the topic three topics back. Nate had sat agape, soaking in every crystalline detail of the beautiful degenerate white trash freak show in front of him, until Jacob had mentioned the time he’d taken a potshot at a Bigfoot in East Texas in 1992.

The details of that story had been sketchy, inconsistent, and ultimately unimportant, but it sparked the conversation that brought up the topic of his crytptozoology ‘zine. Nate was almost certainly the only kid in his high school at the time who knew what the hell either cryptozoology or a ‘zine was, but to encounter the two together, in the wild, on the lips of a bleeding drug dealer who’d once tried to kill Bigfoot…well, it was the beginning of something special. Or at least the beginning of Nate’s first paying job.

For the bulk of their junior and senior years, Nate and Fisher spent their weekend free time road-tripping back and forth across their home state in Fisher’s “molester mobile,” a windowless panel van that was perpetually on its last legs but never quite gave out entirely. They crisscrossed Texas and parts of Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Arkansas, hunting legends and reporting their adventures back to Jacob, who published the accounts in new issues of Bump in the Night Magazine whenever he’d accumulated enough spare drug money and actually remembered to take the pages to the printer.

They hunted the Goatman of White Rock Lake (unsuccessfully). They spent a cold winter night waiting for the Marfa lights to appear (they were headlights). They were almost mugged by a knife-wielding crackhead inside the long-abandoned Jefferson Davis Hospital outside of Houston (they ran).

It had stopped after the summer of 1995 — the summer of Miss Lechebnik. He still wasn’t sure why. It had just felt…finished.