A small white puff of smoke blew across the cave, lazily floating along for a 
moment before dissapating into nothing. 

"Fuck..." 

Tristan sat on a flat rock outcropping, hunched over with his elbows on his knees 
and his face looking across the cave in front of him. A lit cigarette was in his 
mouth, complementing the small pile of finished ones on the ground below him. 

"Fuck..." 

Sitting back a bit, Tristan pulled the cigarette from his mouth and looked at it. 
He wasn't sure why he was smoking; he didn't especially feel the need for it. It 
was sort of just... filling the gap, maybe. His blank face frowned slightly at 
the lit, paper-wrapped tobacco in his hand, but he put it back into his mouth and 
puffed again. 

He hadn't been able to quite think out the situation he was in, and that 
disturbed him. "Keep yer mind two fuckin' steps ahead of everyone else, you hear 
me boy?" were his father's immortal last words before he left. Tristan had done 
so throughout his life, and had survived death too many times because of it. His 
body had taken enough non-fatal injuries in his lifetime to kill a full-grown 
elephant, and had the scars to prove it. But those scars didn't seem to matter to 
him at the moment. 

Tristan looked down into the corner of the cave next to him. A grey and rotting 
skeleton lay there, it's mouth open in a mock laugh as it clutched a decaying and 
heavily rusted metal shield in one of its crumbling hands. The remnants of some 
sort of armor covered most of the body, but it too had withered to the point of 
desolation as well. The skeleton had one free hand, which wasn't connected to the 
rest of it's arm, but laying a few feet away. He had taken the old sword from it, 
yes. Tristan was sure it wouldn't be needing the weapon now. Owen most likely 
wouldn't be thrilled if he found out where his sword originated, but Tristan 
didn't care in the slightest. If he wants to learn, he'll learn to deal with it. 

Letting out a small sigh, Tristan stood and started walking, leaving the cave as 
he entered back into the tunnel network. He still didn't know exactly why he had 
agreed to Owen's deal. In most cases, he most likely would've just broken both 
Owen and Blake's legs and taken his gun back. But he had neither the resources 
nor backing to effectively do that in this place. Too many people in one spot. 
Taking another puff from the cig, Tristan rounded a turn in a tunnel and stopped 
suddenly. The continuing tunnel branched off from a very non-descript cavern off 
to his left, but that didn't seem to be the cause of his halt. Taking the cig 
from his mouth again, he let out one final puff of smoke before flicking the 
short white stick behind him and continuing down the tunnel with a slight smile. 

"Guess I'll just have to improvise..."