I ran, trying not to trip over the dress, pushing the long hair out of my face, some part of me feeling like I was racing against the clock even though, logically, I knew that we’d already won. We’d be in the prison in a second, we’d get the girls, and then we’d leave. I knew that leaving was easier said than done, even with Lot as a disguise - why the hell would a Kalamuzi be taking a prisoner out? - but we’d manage. We’d have to regroup and figure things out from there - how we would find Cadoc was the first question, naturally - but we’d be a team again. Maybe we could even relax somewhat, strategize, take a fucking breather - even though the nap in the cursed spring was so recent, it felt more like a waking dream, like I hadn’t had a real chance to rest in months.

There was still the debt, but I pushed those thoughts aside. The longer I stayed in that world, the more my old life felt like the fantasy. The debt didn’t feel real. We’d figure out how to pay it later, as a team.

Don’t worry about it, a familiar voice said, the same voice that had me ordering philly cheesesteaks all that time back. It’ll work itself out.

The hall was dark, a tunnel of detritus embedded in flesh. Again I had to ignore the throbbing of the walls around me, which I was almost certain was a trick of my exhausted mind. Lot was just behind me as I ran, and soon we were throwing open another barred door made of bone. I thought absently about how inconvenient a material that was - even if Amaia had her mana, she could only bend metal, not bone.

“Amaia!” I yelled again. “Naomi!” Again there was no answer.

The room had no lights, and even holding the root it was hard to make out the vague shadows of the interior. There were clearly people in there, and they shrunk away from my voice as we came in. I couldn’t tell how many there were, but not a lot.

“It’s me,” I said, running frantically towards the nearest shadow, avoiding unidentified bits of debris that littered the floor. The shadow fled, but there was nowhere to go - soon I had cornered it.

“It’s me,” I said again, and I came close enough for the root in my hand to peel back the veil of darkness, revealing - someone else. Someone I didn’t know. A thin, frail looking woman, young and shivering, dressed in scraps of rags that hid nothing of her wasting frame. She looked up at me with fear in her eyes, confused.

“Who are you?” I asked, almost angry that it wasn’t Amaia or Naomi, despite the ridiculousness of being mad at that poor prisoner.

“Are-” she started. “Are you human?”

I grabbed her, half-afraid she would run from me again, and it felt like if I tightened my grip, she would break. “I’m looking for two women,” I said. “They both had to have come here recently. One of them is tall, quiet, mannish, the other one is short and tanned. Have you seen them?”

The woman only looked at me. Then she started to cry.

She was worthless. I threw her aside. A bad feeling was starting to grow in my mind. I ran to the next shadow, finding it to be another half-skeleton covered in filth.

“Did you see them?” I asked, grabbing that woman as well, shaking her. “Did you see them?”

This one seemed more composed, luckily. “I- yes. I saw them. They haven’t been here long.” She looked up at me. “Are you going to get us out of here?”

“Where are they? They’re here, right? Are they OK? They’re alive, right? Uninjured?”

The woman opened her mouth again to speak, but before the words got out, her lips twisted into a blood-curdling scream. She pointed, and I followed the direction, looking behind me and expecting that some rat had noticed the dead guards already and come to investigate. Instead, I only saw Lot, standing some distance behind me, his hands up in a universal gesture of meaning no harm.

“Don’t worry about him,” I said, turning back to the woman. “I know how he looks, but he’s a friend.”

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The woman stopped screaming, but her eyes were still wide, and she shook like she was having some sort of attack.

“Listen!” I said. “I’m looking for my friends. You saw them, right? Where are they?”

A third voice came from the darkness - I couldn’t see its owner. “They’re gone,” it said. “You’ve only just missed them.”

“What?” I pushed the frightened woman aside, turned to the new voice. She didn’t try to flee. I scrambled to her, finding her looking half-dead, but still much more alive that the rest of them, despite probably being the oldest of the bunch. Middle-aged, by the look of it. “What do you mean, gone?”

The woman looked at me sideways. “Are you in a dress?” she asked. “You’re definitely a man. Did you…”

“Don’t worry about that!” I said. “Where are my friends? You have to tell me.”

“Did you kill the guards? How do you expect to get out? Do you have magic?”

“Can you fucking listen to me?” I yelled. “Where are they?”

“They’re dead,” the woman said, the same intonation I’d imagine someone using to say that the weather was bad today. “Or close to. I’m sorry.”

The words were just noises. They didn’t mean anything. I got in her face. “Just tell me where they are, or you’re going to wish that I hadn’t killed the guards, you understand?” I didn’t know why I was resorting to threats, but I didn’t owe that woman anything. In fact, she had a chance to get out now, because of me. She owed me.

“They took them,” she said. “It happens sometimes. I couldn’t tell you what they do with them, only that they don’t come back.”

I turned back to Lot. “Do you know what she’s talking about?”

Lot stepped forward, and I could hear the woman inhale quickly as he came into view. But she didn’t scream, at least. Lot clearly wasn’t about to attack anyone.

“Sacrifice,” he said. “I’m sorry, Miles.”

“Sacrifice to what? They haven’t been killed yet, right? Let’s go get them.”

“Sacrificed to Olsgolon,” he said. “They take the best of their spoils to be sacrificed in a sign of homage. That includes the slaves. I apologize for being so blunt, Miles, but were your friends particularly attractive?”

The question took me by surprise. “One was,” I said. “But not the other.”

“The tall one?” the woman interjected. “I think they just wanted to get rid of her because she made too much trouble. There wasn’t a waking hour that she wasn’t trying to get out.”

“How long ago did they leave?” I asked.

The woman shrugged. “A few hours, probably.”

I turned to Lot again. The question didn’t even need to be asked.

“Probably,” Lot said. “There’s a whole disgusting ritual, I don’t know how long it takes exactly but it isn’t brief. It is possible they are alive.”

“Perfect,” I said, reinvigorated. “Then we keep pushing. What are we up against? But let’s get moving, first. Walk and talk. No time to lose.”

“But Miles, I-” Lot didn’t finish his thought, tried again. “What about these women?”

The middle-aged woman cleared her throat.

“They, I-” I didn’t know what to say. I knew what I couldn’t say. I couldn’t say that I didn’t fucking care what happened to those women, that even in the space of ten seconds I could tell that they were sparkless NPCs, that their lives were meaningless to me, meaningless to the world at large, in fact, that every second we spent talking about them was precious time we could spend saving some people who actually mattered. I couldn’t say any of that.

“What do you propose?” is what I finally said.

“We take them,” he said. “And we leave. We simply leave, Miles. I’m deeply sorry about your friends, but there’s nothing we can do for them, now. We ought to save what few lives we can.”

“You know I won’t do that.”

Lot sighed. “I do. But I had to suggest it all the same. In that case, I propose that we make our way to the core, and then split up. There’s a fork there, just before the inner chamber. I can take the women to safety, and you can-“

“Did you say the core?” I asked. “Why are we going there? I thought we were going to destroy it after we saved everyone. We need to get to Olsgolon. Is Olsgolon by the core?”

Lot looked at me sideways. “Miles, Olsgolon is the core.”

How did you not figure that out already, Miles? Tom would have figured it out. No. Shut up. I’ve got more important things to do than argue with you. Leave me alone. Besides, I had guessed it, I just hadn’t… I’m not justifying myself to you. Fuck off.

“Miles?” Lot asked, staring. I blinked the voices away.

“Right,” I said. “Duh. That’s perfect. We can kill two birds with one stone. If anything, it’s good news, I guess.”

“Two birds with one stone?” Lot repeated. “Is that a saying on the surface?”

“No, it’s uh… it’s a saying where I come from. I can tell you later.”

Lot muttered under his breath, “Sounds almost like a saying the Kalamuzi would come up with. Violent.”

“Well,” I said, raising my voice. “You heard the man! Let’s get going. We’re busting you all out of here. Hurry the hell up before we change our minds.”

While the women - there were only three after all - began their hurried scramble towards us, Lot turned to me again. They stayed a ways away from him, of course.

“Do you have a plan for getting there?” Lot asked.

“I don’t even know where ‘there’ is,” I said. “But I’m starting to realize something, Lot. You can get pretty damn far in life if you can just keep your momentum going. So, like I said, walk and talk.”

The women fell in behind us, and I was thankful that there wasn’t any pushback from them. I wouldn’t have had the patience for it. Maybe they had been broken, like a horse, and they were used to being ordered around. Or maybe they were desperate enough to take any possible help they could. It really didn’t matter to me, so I stopped thinking about it. For the rest of the trip to the core, I’d sometimes forgot they were there at all.

I didn’t give myself time to think, only time for action. That was on purpose.

“You know the way, right?” I asked as we retraced our path through the hallway.

“Naturally,” Lot said. “But I don’t believe your crossdressing disguise is going to work this time, Miles. We need another way.”

“Why?” I asked. “We just pretend that you’re taking us all to be sacrificed. Simple.”

Lot shook his head. “Maybe those other women, but you…” He laughed. “I do not mean to be rude, but you make for a very ugly woman. No one would believe I was sacrificing you.”

I wanted to protest and say that Amaia wasn’t super attractive, either, but I thought better of it. Was I really going to argue that I made for a more attractive woman that Amaia?

For one thing, it just wasn’t true. Amaia was a bit plain, but she wasn’t ugly. There was a big difference between being mannish and being a man.

“We just need another disguise, then,” I said. “Easy-peasy.”

Lot scoffed. “You have a Kalamuzi costume underneath that dress?”

“No,” I said. “But I think I know where to get one. Come one, I just had an idea.”