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As it turns out, goats are surprisingly fast and Dave had almost no time to set up. The best flat space they could find was further along the shelf they were already on. There was a cliff, a four paces drop, seven paces of relatively even ground and then another cliff. Basically, they were in the middle of three giant, uneven stairs.
“Goats will climb the cabin from above and collapse the roof,” said Dave gravely indicating the first cliff. “I guess I’ll slope the roof and hope they slip off to the bottom step.”
“You are trying to intimidate a goat with climbing?” said Sam with a laugh.
“Uhh, good point,” said Dave sheepishly. “I’ll put a golem up top where it can reach over and shove them off the roof?”
“That works!” said Sam, whose confidence was gaining with every step in the plan since Dave had pointed out that she had an area of effect attack. “But won’t the goats just attack the golem?”
“They can but it can safely retreat onto the roof and knock them down it, like on a slide, so I really hope they do that. No, the real problem is that,” said Dave, indicating a paragraph in Bestiary Of Frankish Byzasian Empire which, Tome highlighted for easy reading.
“So they’ll come for us first?” asked Sam.
“Well, that’s what the book says. I sure hope it’s wrong! Please goats, attack the massive, mobile golem that I can summon instead of me!” joked Dave and Sam smiled a little. She had already summoned her skeletons and they were helping to clear a few rocks and more sturdy shrubs from the area the cabin was going in.
“Also,” continued Dave, “they have a particular herd behaviour. Show her, Professor.”
Tome flicked over a page and showed the next page from Bestiary Of Frankish Byzasian Empire with a particular section in bold.
“Yes! So, our plan doesn’t even need to kill them all!” said Sam with relief.
“Which is great,” said Dave, going through the plan one last time. “Golem up top, it’ll pop down for healing when needed, we are in the cabin defending the door with your skeletons.”
“Once a skeleton is at half health I pull them back and let another one step forward,” completed Sam.
“And I’m going to wish I had a more powerful wand to spend mana on,” said Dave.
In some reviews Dave had found, Mage Bolt was considered a poor damage spell that was only redeemed because the magic bolt that it shot converted into every kind of damage upon hitting and so it was almost impossible to resist most of the damage. It was considered by most to be a good backup wand for elemental specialists.
“Wait,” said Sam. “How come Life Blossom hurts skeletons but Life Recirculation heals them?”
“Oh, Tome looked that up but I forgot to tell you. It probably has something to do with Life Recirculation funnelling magic into the creature’s soul, or soul-like centre, as that being’s own fundamental concept of health as per their soul-imprint rather than a direct injection of life energy, which is what Life Blossom is. I think. That’s why Life Blossom is so mana efficient,” said Dave.
Sam tilted her head and nodded, following the logic.
The skeletons finished their task and presented themselves to Sam who beamed at them and Dave summoned the cabin. As per the spell it could summon a cabin by, Sam read over Dave’s shoulder, ‘...using compressed paper and local materials to make a single-room cabin that can fit up to 9 people lying down on the floor with a three-stride-high ceiling.’
“A place to sleep, a place to keep, these tired bones, some rest I seek.”
Incantation complete, Dave stood back to watch. It flew together in a ground up manner, like a real construction in a time lapse. Rocks, leaves, dust and branches all came together with panels of paper to make the, admittedly, cosy-looking cabin.
About a hundred metres away, they heard some psychotic bleating and a thump as the golem shooed off the more bold goats who were rushing in before the horde.
“Inside and I’ll make us armour,” said Dave. “But I warn you, it’s going to itch.”
Dave sat down and looked at a series of sketches he’d made in the past, concentrated on how they would connect together and cast his last spell for the day.
“Paper mill production.”
Printing out of corners orthogonal to reality came seven gambesons woven of paper thread, fourteen shields of thick cardboard, fourteen kettle helmets of thick cardboard and seven knee-length lamellar coats with short sleeves. Also on the floor was about half a tonne of spare paper for the golem to consume.
“Put them on quickly. We’re running out of time,” said Dave, looking out the window, watching the golem kick a psychotic goat in the head while retreating towards the cabin.
Dave took five assorted weapons for the skeletons and put them on the floor. He was quietly proud of the new golem design. He’d removed the seating possibilities in favour of a stable geometric shape. It was now a kind of hexagonal prism made of two, stumpy hexagonal pyramids stuck together by the bases. Dave thought it looked a bit like a ten-sided dice that had gotten properly squashed. The body was a solid mass, except for a vertical slot at the front slot for consuming extra paper, and the legs were bigger and heavier than ever. What’s more, given that golems didn’t need eyes and had no inner ear, it was shockingly omnidirectional. It could even move simply by extending its legs and just rolling on them like flexible spokes. It was kind of terrifying. Like a giant insect cartwheeling at you.
Although the terror aspect wouldn’t help here, psychotic goats only felt fear if affected by a fear causing spell, its manoeuvrability and bulkiness would be the best assets. The origami golem was, more or less, a massive pile of hitpoints and damage and perfect for defeating any monster that attempted to go toe-to-toe with it. It would struggle with more complex enemies but psychotic goats were not known for their subtlety.
The bleating was easier to hear now. Somehow, it sounded bloodthirsty. Everyone clambered into their armour of itchy threads. A surprisingly difficult thing for the skeletons who kept getting their bones stuck in the sleeves however, Dave mused that at least they weren’t affected by the itch. It felt like wearing a hessian sack. That wouldn’t matter soon but in the anxiousness of the approaching herd of psychotic goats, it was somehow amplified and all he could really think about.
The skeletons, finally jangling themselves into their armour, picked up their helmets and shields then delivered the same to Dave and Sam.
“Thanks Sam,” he said, nodding at the skeleton.
The skeletons positioned themselves with shields across the door, Dave aimed over their shoulders and started shooting his wand. Fortunately, at about thirty paces out the lead goat fell dead from mage bolts and Sam immediately corpse exploded it as it was run over by its living fellows. It was a herd about ten paces across, Dave didn’t know how many goats that was, but the explosion seemed to seriously affect half the herd. Either killing or seriously injuring them.
“Good shot, Sam!” encouraged Dave.
“We can do now with swords,” she replied, looking strained.
The large herd hit and, unfortunately, none of them were ready. Unsurprisingly, male goats are natural, very good chargers and human skeletons don’t have a lot of mass. The skeleton shieldwall cracked and Dave was completely unprepared to sink his sword into the one enterprising psychotic goat that high-jumped the shields. Three more broke in before the skeletons righted themselves, pushed back to the doorway and held the psychotic tide.
On the other hand, Sam handled the situation brilliantly. Seeming to act on automatic when a goat crawled frantically under the legs of a skeleton, Sam stepped forward at an angle, pivoted and severed its spine with her sickle and presented her shield to the other of the two remaining goats.
Dave was still squaring off with his high jumping goat which had already delivered a headbutt to his torso with a thunk that made Dave extremely glad for the armour. He shot it once with Mage Bolt and it started wildly jinking from side to side. Dave dropped the shield, and backed into a corner while drawing his sword. He kept the psychotic goat at swordpoint while shooting it to death with Mage Bolt.
Sam had made a similar use of a corner and after killing her goat, looked at the door. The skeletons were holding the small mass back but they had taken damage. Dave selected them all quickly and saw health bars indicating an accumulation of minor injuries but there were two dead goats at their feet.
“Stay!” ordered Sam, holding a flat hand up to Dave.
Dave stayed. The skeletons abandoned the door, ran to the corners and then, as the goats followed, one of the corpses in the door exploded violently. For the first time Dave saw the spell up close. Some of the remnant energy left over in a body that a soul could no longer hold onto was released via tendrils of death and distributed evenly about. Most of the remaining goats died in the explosion and everyone allied to Sam healed a good amount. Sam then put a life blossom on Dave and joined her skeletons in finishing off the wounded goats. Dave, a little shell shocked, took a moment to remember to join in.
“Well, my plan sucked,” said Dave flatly when Sam’s small army finished off the goats.
“It was fine!” laughed Sam. “Just needs fixing! Maybe shields a bit lower and swords a bit higher?”
Dave noticed that the occasional beetle was running into an open wound on her hand and filling in the missing skin and that, if you looked at it, her health regeneration was very notable. The combination of her troll bone amulet and her beetle swarm familiar was truly potent.
“How did you know what to do so quickly?” asked Dave.
Sam laughed again.
“No time for think. Just do!”
“Huh.”
This had been a problem for Dave in many aspects of life. While his plans were usually good, sometimes he obsessed and made them overly detailed when he should have just left room for improvisation and just let people adapt in the moment.
“What do you think we should do, Sam?” asked Dave.
“More aggressive, I think,” she said thoughtfully, “You are right, we need to be ready for a long battle but an explosion just before the charge will make them fall over and charge us less hard. Also, we both must accept the charge. Skeletons are too light.”
Dave’s mouth dropped open. Of course! It was so simple. The strategy had been to prioritise mana efficiency and only corpse explode when the most goats would be hit but now, Dave understood that the most important thing was to take momentum from the charge. If they break through, Sam must spend even more mana on healing but a good bit of mana spent on an ‘inefficient’ explosion that disrupted a charge would likely be more mana efficient in the end! Because, yes. The skeletons were really, really light. Surprisingly light. Sam and Dave would have to be in the shield wall.
They prepared for the next herd by tactical corpse placement a few metres in front of the door that ultimately proved unnecessary. Dave got a sense of danger from his paper golem guarding the way above well before combat started and rushed everyone inside.
The enraged bleating was the first thing they heard from above which the golem answered with silence. As golems without mouths tend to do. As Dave got inside he could already hear the golem’s heavy legs crushing goats but some were getting past and nimbly hopping down onto the ledge the cabin was on and fixing Sam’s army with a baleful glare before attacking.
Dave and Sam stood low in the doorway with shields up and weapons pointed forward. Dave tried to ignore the sparkly glinting coming from the lootable goat corpses. He pushed back against the line of goats with Sam that were trickling past the golem. Shields, Dave was finding, required quite the art to use effectively. Thankfully, he’d always been a quick learner.
A big part of the trick of this situation, it seemed, was that you didn’t need to kill everything yourself. In the moment with the sweat, the adrenaline, good-knows-whose blood and the hateful bleating of your enemies trying to kill you, it was easy to lose sight of teamwork, planning and a general sense of clearheadedness. Dave strained against the goats with his shield. That’s all you had to do in the moment. Just hold it back. There were other people to do the killing! Except those people were skeletons.
A goat’s horn bashed into Dave’s eyebrow but he didn’t care. This was so unlike combat sports. There was a complete lack of personal game plan and yet it was so important to stick to the bigger plan by any means necessary. Dave laughed at himself as he fought and felt his muscles burn.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
He was momentarily aghast when he saw a large herd of goats in the distance running to join the small one already in front of him but when Sam laughed, he remembered. She used Corpse Explosion on the strategic goat. He’d rather forgotten about that in the frantic stabbing he’d been doing over his shield. Sam blew up another two more corpses in quick succession, dropping about half the large herd and making for a preponderance of useful corpses in the right area.
The whole structure shook as the paper golem backed up onto it from the cliff above and, as planned, started pulling psychotic goats down the slope of the cabin and letting them drop off the cliff. Inside they could hear the surprised bleats of goats slipping down an incline to their death.
With Corpse Explosion creating the occasional reprieve from the press of bodies, a better idea of how to use a shield and increasing faith in what a healing spell can really do, Dave stabbed at the boats more aggressively than before. A small ramp of dead goats was made at the doorway, which made everyone’s footing uncertain but definitely made the charging at the doorway difficult. With that threat lessenced, his muscles tired and burning, Dave stepped back and allowed a skeleton to take over his position.
The creation of the armour was turning out to have been the best idea. Dave’s fingers and right hand had been continuously cut, bruised and then healed and the only reason he didn’t have any organ damage to heal was because of the stiff cardboard breastplate, he was sure. And, If his gambeson looked anything like Sam’s and the skeletons’ then bits of his gambeson also looked inspired by ‘80’s style teased hair due to the amount of hard knocks ripping threads loose, making them stick out.
Another corpse explosion later and the herd of psychotic goats broke up into groups and circled. They had run out of bloodlust and were no longer using the pure press of their numbers to attempt to overwhelm Sam’s army. They began spreading out into smaller herds and trying to find other ways in. Perhaps they were de-herding?
Dave was ambushed five minutes later by an enterprising goat while standing in the doorway firing his wand outside. A goat had climbed above the door and dropped down to savagely headbutt him. Dave fell backwards with a great expulsion of air from his lungs but the skeletons killed the goat as it tried to follow up.
This ambush was followed by a small herd who experimented with the idea that this distraction was the chance they needed. It was not. Sam and her army raised their shields while Sam herself blew up an appropriately placed corpse. With the breaks in combat she was regenerating her mana quite easily.
“Should we hunt them?” asked Sam as Dave fired out the doorway again. This time by leaning against the door frame for maximum cover.
“Us? Maybe. The golem almost certainly. Professor Tome? Can you scout the roof and the immediate ledge above?” inquired Dave.
They walked outside with shields up. There were a few psychotic goats in the distance who bleated with menace but Dave knew to check his corners and found the three who were hiding between the wall and the cliff. The skeletons killed them swiftly.
“Golem, come down here to collect some snacks,” ordered Dave. “Can I have a hand, Sam? Tome, please be so kind as to get some height and drop back down if you notice anything coming.”
Tome awkwardly flapped on the winds to about ten metres in the air and the golem came down. Dave and Sam’s skeletons lay down weapons for a moment and brought armfuls of paper bricks outside. They all assisted in feeding them into the mouth-like aperture in the hexagonal prism, which the golem absorbed and used to heal its missing pieces. The golem was in good health but definitely needed the paper top up it was getting right now.
“Okay, had enough to eat? Good golem. Okay, any corpses that are above, distribute them down the path from us,” said Dave, indicating the easiest approach path. “After that, go hunting goats. Prioritise your own health above causing damage. If you are at any real risk, retreat to the cabin,” ordered Dave. The golem cartwheeled around and up to the upper cliff like a terrifying theme park ride.
The next hour was cautious and systematic. Sam and Dave would look around carefully and aggravate small herds into attacking them, retreat to the cabin and use the preponderance of corpses along the ledge to blow up most of the incoming herd. They would occasionally see the mad, cartwheeling golem as it too, aggravated the psychotic goats and generally disrupted them from forming a large herd again. One time, it wheeled back to the cabin with a herd in tow but Sam used a well placed corpse to scatter the herd, pushing half of it off the cliff-step they were on, killing most of them. The golem simply turned around and, with the rest of Sam’s army, killed off the remaining of the herd.
Dave was willing to believe that it was likely over and in a phase of mopping up when Tome swooped down. He called his team to fall back and ran over to read Tome.
“Elaborate,” ordered Dave.
“What are you doing down there?” called a voice before Dave really had a chance to stop reading. Dave immediately felt dumb. He’d forgotten that Tome could barely see beyond about thirty metres and nothing beyond about a hundred. The people were already here, walking across the middle step of the cliffs towards the cabin.
“What’s with all these psychotic goat corpses? Poaches are you? Well, I’ve got you now. Don’t try to run.” The voice came from a young man who could only be described as solid but pudgy. The kind of build where even if they lost weight, they’d still be built like the frontliner in a rugby team. The voice also had that distinctive mixture of self confidence and lack of self-determination that was the signature of every student Dave had ever tutored at university who came from money. The man was picking his way along the path of the shelf, the same way Sam, Dave and most of the goats got here.
“Nothing to say now that you’ve been caught? Ha! Poachers. We’ll see about that. You can come quietly as part of the servant train and my family will deal with you when we get back,” said the young aristocrat.
“Sam,” said Dave quickly in an undertone. “Get our stuff together, get some rope and prepare to run if this doesn't go well.”
Dave straightened up and went outside to talk to the incoming noble.
“Apologies, Sir,” said Dave with a bow and gestured at the cabin. “My friend and I were trying to rest in this cabin and were attacked by psychotic goats -”
“ENOUGH!” shouted the man. “You wouldn’t be here unless you were poaching my monsters.”
He was dressed in adventuring clothes and took off his heavy coat while he talked, showing large arms in his long, cotton undershirt. Dave had already mentally called Tome to his side and the golem to quietly go to the upper cliff. Sam was behind him inside the cabin with her skeletons changing her armour and shield. She’d already packed up their belongings. They didn’t have much.
Dave gestured to Tome.
“Show me the local laws about poaching monsters, Professor,” asked Dave and then used Stop And Think while reading the entries. Most beyond the first four paragraphs were just laws pertaining to disputes with the Adventure Society but those first four quite clearly stated the definition of poaching required ownership of the land and the game therein. Dave quickly looked up a definition of ‘game’ and used Epistemology on his map screen and queried ‘ownership’: This land is nominally owned by the government of the Byzasian Empire however, no individual within the empire claims this land.
The young man was giving Dave a strange look as, from his perspective, Dave spoke to the book twice and turned back to him. Dave selected the man, ‘Byzasian Aristocrat’, and saw that he was iron rank. Dave clicked through a few of the posse that was fanning out behind the leader and saw that four of them were iron rank as well. Dave bowed again.
“Forgive me sir but monster poaching requires ownership of the land and the monsters within it and this land is unclaimed by any authority but the national government,” said Dave neutrally.
The aristocraft walked calmly up to Dave and backhanded him across the face hard enough to knock Dave down.
“It’s claimed if I say it is,” said the aristocrat coldly. “Now, kiss my shoes and thank me for not killing you, poacher. Don’t talk back to your betters.”
He stood with one riding boot extended forward and a malicious grin on his wide face. His cronies, the iron rankers, leered and chuckled. Dave took a deep breath, looked around at all the sparking corpses, kneeled in front of the man, took a deep breath… and used his loot-all ability.
Rainbow smoke rose up all around the area in front of the cabin. Immediately choking everyone in it except Dave and, Dave hoped, Sam. She’d seen him kneel enough to have a good chance of knowing what would happen when he did. Dave mentally ordered the golem to jump down into the rainbow smoke and attack every enemy it could find in that area.
“Lord Ross!? Lord Ross!” came some concerned voices from the baggage train further back on the cliff ledge.
Dave, himself, had tripped the aristocrat over, Lord Ross apparently, as he turned to run out of the smoke towards the baggage train with the flunkies. There was a strangled scream that was cut short to Dave’s right as the golem landed on one of them and started rearing up to smash its legs into the prone man over and over.
Dave ran into the confused baggage train. A couple of people who appeared to be confused bodyguards or weapons-bearers. Dave could see they were also essence users but not iron rank. Dave took another deep breath and knelt to loot all again. The concentration of psychotic goat bodies was lesser over here away from the cabin but still substantial and the coughing, hacking and swearing was repeated as Dave looted. He ran back the way he had come knowing that the smoke over there would be clearing.
Dave ran back to Lord Ross who was covered in his own vomit but still holding his own against Sam and all of her skeletons. There was a tall flunkie smeared on the ground, clearly dead by the sparkles coming from his body which Dave looted and the golem rushed towards the smoke covered baggage train, which Dave didn’t stop. Dave just drew his wand and arming sword, circling Ross while firing mage bolts. He also kept looting every corpse behind him that his initial loot radius had missed to keep a steady stream of smoke that those recovering near the baggage train wouldn’t want to walk through.
Contrary to expectations, Ross was defeating the skeletons. Despite his bulk, he was clearly fit and used his weight well to push into the skeletons, repositioning and preventing himself from being properly surrounded. He also seemed to have a wind-based power that blew attackers away before they hit him. Sam’s familiar beetles were already scattered about and she was recalling them to herself. Sam went sprawling as Dave watched after she made a cut aimed at Ross’s heel. Ross shot Dave a dirty look as the mage bolts, which were not affected by this wind, sizzled into his flesh.
After acquiring a bit of room to move with a forward somersault, Ross rolled to his feet with his right hand sparking with electricity and delivered a straight punch to a skeleton that blasted it apart and followed up with a devastating hook that a skeleton took on a shield but it burnt through the shield and damaged the skeleton anyway.
“Tackle him off the cliff!” shouted Dave to Sam who looked at him in understanding and willed it into her skeletons.
Ross, hearing this, turned, shot a bolt of lightning to behind the baggage train and then teleported to where the lightning struck.
“KILL THEM ALL!” roared Ross. He chugged a health potion and summoned a great bolt of lightning from the sky which hit the beleaguered golem. The golem had not fared particularly well with the flunkies. Although flunkies, they were experienced adventurers and the golem had already lost a leg to the summoned sword of one and had holes from claw marks from another. The lightning bolt devastated the golem. It staggered and the flunky with the magic sword stepped forward to finish it off.
“Off the cliff,” ordered Dave and the golem rushed the swordsman who confidently buried his sword into the middle of the golem, taking the last of its life, but none of its momentum. The galloping hexapod tumbled off the cliff in its death taking the swordsman with it, and they hit with a crunch.
“Dori!?”
“Oh gods, they’ve killed Rich!”
“Then kill them!” screamed Ross.
“Climb down, cut the rope,” said Dave quickly as he ran to Sam. He looted a few more goats in the area to bring some rainbow smoke drifting up once more. Even Ross hesitated after what the last dose did to him.
Sam understood and scrambled down the cliff, assisted by the rope they’d put there earlier for Sam’s last hunting expedition. The skeletons covered their retreat, engaging the hunting party and briefly one of the essence users. One of the skeletons, its leg shattered, dragged a man-at-arms essence user off the cliff as it died. The man splattered on the ground next to Sam.
As Dave jumped the last two metres to the ground, Sam leaned over Dave to take an arrow on her shield meant for him. Dave looked up and saw the last skeleton turn around and slash the rope with a machete right before Ross shattered its head with his fist. He stared down at Dave and Sam with hate and raised a fist to the sky. Seeing that this was the start of some lightning magic, Dave kneeled and looted every goat at the bottom of this cliff and, incidentally, the dead man-at-arms.
Rainbow smoke rose up, obscuring the pair as Dave led a sputtering Sam out of the smoke and away from the noble hunting party.
“I will find you and I will kill you and your necromancer woman, you scum!” screamed Ross into the night as Dave and Sam disappeared from his view.
“I bet the bastard’s going to steal my cabin too,” said Dave.
----------------------------------------
“And that, members of the board, is the conclusion. Proof that the drug is safe, effective, and ready to save lives.”
The board ignored Dave, directing their congratulations to Klaus Heller, Vice President of Clinical R&D. Dave began silently packing up and unplugging his laptop while the CEO spoke.
“Great, great. Great work, Klaus,” he said, leaning back in his chair, tapping his hands together. His voice had the easy confidence of a man who alway gets his way.
“Price point?” asked one of the board members, flipping through a stack of notes. Probably marketing.
“High,” said the CEO immediately. “As high as we can justify. This isn’t about volume; it’s about positioning. If it’s cheap, it looks cheap.”
“But if it’s too high, adoption will be slow,” someone else countered. Market analysis, Dave figured.
“Not if we can get insurance to take it,” the CEO shot back, smirking. “Make it so high so that no one can afford it out of pocket. Then, we market it as the last resort treatment. The insurers won’t have a choice—they’ll pay to save their patients. What’re the numbers on that?”
“It’s a strong strategy but it’s a bit all or nothing being contingent on the insurance approval,” said someone from the legal department.
There were speculative murmurs of agreement and approval, the kind of detached appreciation Dave might have given the highlights of a football match. He carefully slipped his laptop into his bag, glancing at the table stacked with catered pastries and coffee cups.
“What about regions without robust insurance systems?” asked the CFO with the mere curiosity of one looking to see what the traffic was like.
“We can spin those as PR opportunities,” the CEO said, like it was obvious. “We trickle in enough doses to those areas to get a tax write off and get our brand recognised. Philanthropy headlines increase the share price.”
There was another round of nods. Dave moved towards the exit feeling… trying not to feel. Trying not to remember the anonymous patient details. Patient 13 on Baxter et al. 20 years old. College student. Hospitalised after collapsing while training track and field. Patient 3 of Zhang et al. 7 years old. Almost excluded from the study because–he found out in an email from the lab tech–her parents had trouble making the three-hour trip to the hospital. Hopefully neither of them would get a remission. He hoped. Dave made a mental note to not look up the percentages on that.
“Ten-year patent window,” the CEO continued, tapping his pen against the table. “That’s the clock. We squeeze the core markets, then maybe we throw something to low-margin regions. Don’t worry about them for now.”
Dave fought to keep his body language neutral as he walked toward the door. He’d known the scientists who’d worked on this drug. He’d seen them smile as they spoke about breakthroughs, shared their clinical findings at conferences, and talked with genuine excitement about the lives they could save. But here, in this boardroom, their efforts were as dust in the winds of the cruel sums on a profit-and-loss sheet.
The voices followed him out of the room—talking about restricting the drug to drive up prices, about profits measured in lives withheld.
He’d never considered himself a moral paragon, but the complete lack of conscience that pooled in the boardroom left him feeling hollow. And cold.
He hated that he worked for these people.