Oak whistled a tune as he descended the steps from the gatehouse to the prison's yard, Geezer in tow. The hellhound still had the severed leg in his mouth, and as he jogged down the stairs, the severed end kept touching the wall, leaving behind a grisly line of gore.

Geezer's chew toys were a collection of nightmare fuel on his best days, but this time the mutt had outdone himself. Oak hoped Sadia wouldn't find the hellhound's corpse mutilation habits too frightening. The pair got along so well these days they were almost inseparable, and he would hate to see their relationship damaged by something as inconsequential as ripping off a leg. Or two.

It's not like the slavers needed them any longer, anyway. Legs on a dead man are about as useful as nipples on a living one.

Yuusuf, the guard Yakubu had dumped from the wall, lay broken and bleeding in the dirt, shivering from both blood loss and shock.

The slaver's hazy gaze cleared when Oak's boots entered his field of view. "Please," Yuusuf begged. "Please have mercy!"

Oak stopped and considered the waste of flesh quivering in the dust. What a sorry sight. When it's my time to exit the stage, I hope I do it without all this bleating.

"Getting involved in the fleshtrade was a stupid mistake, my friend," he said. "That is the sorry truth, but don't beat yourself up about it." Oak mimed punching himself in the face with his right hand. The same hand Yakubu had sliced off the slaver's wrist. "We are all walking bundles of mistakes. Wrong choices. Missed opportunities. It's hard to tell ahead of time which mistake will be the final one."

"Huh?"

"So long, Yuusuf," Oak replied and stepped back, keeping the mouth of the keep in his peripheral vision.

"What? Wait!"

"I think what my colossal friend meant is self-evident." Yakubu prowled forth from the gatehouse steps like a spectre of vengeance, his shadow looming large in the waning light of the lanterns high on the wall.

Yuusuf cringed and tried to crawl away, but his pace left much to be desired. A snail might have vanquished him in a footrace. Yakubu caught up and unceremoniously stomped on one of Yuusuf's broken legs. "You are fucked, slaver," he whispered as the man under his boot screamed in pain.

The rest of Oak's companions descended from the wall and joined them in the yard. Everyone else used the stairs, but Ur-Namma just hopped down from the top of the wall and rolled to redirect his downward momentum. He made it look as easy as breathing, which was just plain unfair.

Elf should be a synonym for flagrant bullshit. If Oak had tried that trick, he would have two broken ankles.

Ur-Namma hurried over and stopped next to Oak and Geezer, gazing intently at Yuusuf's broken form. The elf licked his lips, and he saw a flash of sharp teeth. It looked unnervingly similar to the way Geezer licked his chops at the sight of a fresh kill, and Oak remembered Ur-Namma's promise.

"I will partake in the Sin of Enten and Ziusudra, like a headhunter of old. Blade flaying, teeth sinking, tongue lapping. I will sate my thirst with blood and fill my belly with manflesh."

Surrounded by friends and allies under the cloudy night sky, Yakubu pointed his sword at Yuusuf's crotch. "H–hey! You don't need to do this!" Yuusuf shouted. Snot bubbled from his wide nose, and tears ran down his face, following the ugly scar crossing his left cheek. The slaver waved his stump in the air, looking around for anyone who might offer him mercy. "Not like this! Anything but that!"

Yakubu said nothing. With a quick thrust, he sank his blade into Yuusuf's nuts and ripped it out with a flourish. Yuusuf's eyes bulged, and he wheezed, desperately gulping for air. Twitching in the sand and bleeding out through his crotch, the slaver reminded Oak of a carl he had once seen drowning in shallow water.

The same horrified, disbelieving gaze. The same ineffectual scrambling. The same rattle of death.

Dust to dust, ashes to ashes. Be you filled with wormwood and sated with bitterness, Yuusuf of the Tafari.

Yakubu took a deep breath and let it out slowly, his expression stiff like the face of a statue. Oak knew that look well. He wore it himself while caging the wrath inside his rotten heart, clenching his teeth and binding down the all-consuming bloodlust coursing through his veins.

All men had to learn to climb this mountain, but for those like Oak, this particular peak loomed high above the clouds.

"Come, my esteemed friends," Yakubu said and marched past Oak towards the open doorway of the former prison's keep. "Whatever horrors dwell in the bowels of this place, I care not. We have children to save and slavers to kill."

It was a good thing Yakubu approached the keep's doorway with his shield raised. A crossbow bolt flew out of the darkness and bounced off ‌his shield's round boss with a mighty clang.

Oak grabbed Yakubu by the shoulder and pulled the man back. "How about you let me go through the door first?" He asked the Koromite. "Unlike you, I can block a bolt with my face."

"Good point, pale man," Yakubu replied and hid behind Oak's wide back. "Go forth, my living shield."

A balding man scrambled out of the keep, reaching for the open door's handle to pull it closed. The Sakyi siblings were quick on the draw. They peppered him with arrows, and the mercenary slumped to the ground, croaking like a frog.

Sadia made a face and squeezed the handle of her new long-knife. Oak felt a momentary touch of confusion before a rare spark of sanity put him to rights. Just because he felt pounding, all-consuming excitement at the sight of fresh gore, did not mean others didn't find a man drowning in his own blood unnerving.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

"Right. Follow me." Oak sheathed his falchion, pulled out his shorter blades and made his way to the door. He stopped at the side of the entrance and cleared his throat. "Anyone in there?"

After a short back and forth of furious whispers, two replies followed.

"Sadly, yes."

"Ay! Got crossbows aimed at the doorway, so if I were you, I would fuck off!"

"Okay. Well, don't take this personally, lads, but I'm going to come in now, and kill the two of you," Oak said. He glanced at his friends, nodded at Yakubu, and sprang through the doorway, holding his left forearm over his eyes to make sure a bolt didn't take out his vision.

Twang. Twang.

Bolts struck his chest and right thigh, but they barely penetrated Oak's unnaturally enduring skin. They didn't slow him down either. He cleared the cramped entrance hall with a running leap, flying over a group of chairs, and buried his cleaver in a slaver's head, splitting the young man's ill-fitting helm in two.

The poor bastard's brother in arms came at Oak with an axe, screaming in fear and looking like he badly needed to take a leak. Oak took the principled approach and attacked the axe-wielder's main weakness. Exposed fingers. He took on the incoming blow by slashing at the fingers gripping the axe-handle, and sent an index finger, a middle finger, and the axe itself flying over the man's head.

"Fu–!" the slaver shrieked, before Oak's cleaver found his throat and lopped off his head. It fell on the stone floor and rolled under a chair, stopping against the chair leg. Leaning there, almost upright, the severed head looked quite strange. Or at least stranger than most severed heads Oak had seen. If you ignored the blood trail, it was as if a man's noggin had just grown out of the stone floor.

Oak's infernal engine let out a familiar chime.

+ 2 Souls

+ 2 Fuel

This just keeps getting better. So many souls for me to reap! He listened closely, but could hear no approaching footsteps beyond the door leading further into the prison. Oak walked back to the entrance and popped his head out.

"Come on in and watch your step!" he shouted. "It's dark in here, and I made a mess."

***

The good thing about stonewalls and other hard surfaces that proliferated the former prison was the echo. Every noise felt amplified twofold. Oak was certain that even sneaking on his tiptoes without shoes would've caused a racket, which meant he heard the enemy coming long before he saw them.

They had just left the prison's cramped entrance hall behind and advanced down a roomy hallway together, towards a set of stairs to the upper floors, when Oak heard footsteps on their right. He tapped Ur-Namma on the shoulder and pointed at the nearest door ahead.

"Two approaching," Oak whispered.

"Let me do the honors," Ur-Namma whispered back and posted right outside the door's arc, his longsword held loosely by his side.

With an earsplitting bang, the door slammed open, bouncing from the wall, and two foul-smelling mercenaries dressed in filthy clothing charged into the hallway, swords in hand. For all their many hygiene-related faults, the buggers were not cowards. They charged straight at the elf, screaming like a pair of banshees, trying to skewer him with their rusty blades.

Oak wasn't sure how he did it, but Ur-Namma swiped both thrusts aside with a single measured swing of his blade, sank a dagger into one man's sternum and ripped out the other's throat with his needle-like teeth.

A couple of steps behind him, Sadia let out a disbelieving squeak. Thanks to the Ears of Amdusias, Oak noticed how she stepped closer to Geezer and grabbed hold of the black dog's fur. I wonder how she would have reacted when we met if I had told her she would soon look for comfort from a hellhound. Maybe laughed in my face?

Licking his bloody lips like a pleased cat, the elf stepped over the twitching meatbags and strolled down the hallway like he owned the place. Oak just shook his head in wonder and followed along, after he had broken the slaver's skulls under his heel and snatched their souls for his infernal engine.

+ 2 Souls

+ 2 Fuel

It was a rare wound that killed instantly, thank the Corpse-God, and Oak was not above dining on someone else's leftovers. Thankfully, his engine only cared about the killing blow. Effort did not enter the equation.

Yakubu returned to the main hallway from a side passage with the Sakyi siblings in tow, shaking his head. Oak could hear the whispers and cries of the slaves housed on this floor trailing in his wake. Two passages lined with cells on both sides took up most of the space inside the building on their left, and they had already checked the first rows of cells. If Itoro was in this prison, he was not on the first floor.

Once they had gotten inside the keep, Yakubu had tried to take point, but Oak and Ur-Namma had talked him out of it. Fighting in close quarters in the dark like this was always dangerous and unpredictable. They were here to save Yakubu's son, but even if they succeeded, no one would be happy if they lost Yakubu in the process because of bad luck. It was better to let those with keener senses take the lead for now.

Despite his crumbling, the Koromite saw sense and put aside his pride. It was one of the many things Oak valued in his new friend. Yakubu could put his ego on a leash if the situation called for it, which could not be said of most men he had met.

With nothing less than a loved one's life on the line, ‌he makes the hard call to step back so others can apply their greater talents. Oak felt inspired and a little foolish. I thought myself divorced from pride, but I am not ashamed to admit I would fail this test. There's always something to work on, it seems.

No one else tried to ambush Oak and his troupe of murderous ducklings, as he liked to call them in his head, before they reached a set of stairs leading to the second floor. Oak was about to step onto the stairs when Ur-Namma grabbed hold of his arm.

"Can you feel that? A tremor in the Waking Dream," Ur-Namma whispered. "They have a theurgist!"

Now that Ur-Namma had drawn his attention to it, Oak could feel the faint ripples on the surface of the Unreal Sea. I have felt this. Seven years ago, in the Hills of Craig, a spook of middling skill almost scattered Oak's mind into the shallows. Someone scoured the Dream for intruders, leaving no stone unturned to find them. Whoever they were, they made a lot of unnecessary noise in the process. A panicked and inexperienced theurgist, but a threat all the same.

"I feel it. We need to dive now."

"Baako. Onyeka. Secure the stairs. Yakubu, shadow them." Ur-Namma hissed and sat down against the wall. "Sadia. Geezer. Watch our backs." The elf closed his eyes, trusting that they would follow his commands to the letter.

Oak followed suit and dove after Ur-Namma, into the freezing waters of the Unreal Sea. Time was of the essence. He and the elf had strong enough wards to handle an attack, but all his other companions were not so lucky.

They had to find and kill the Tafari spook before the spook found a soft target.

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