The stench was nearly palpable as Bob entered the barracks. It was a distressingly familiar combination of stale sweat and body odor, weighted with the heavy scent of despair.

Humans experiencing strong emotions produce pheromones and chemicals in their perspiration that other humans can detect. The most well-documented was fear, but rage and lust had supporting studies. Despair wasn't as well documented, but Bob knew that smell. He'd grown up in it. It wasn't until he'd been on Thayland for a few weeks that he'd realized how relieving it was to not constantly battle that subtle, malicious odor.

He scrunched his nose and furrowed his brow in disgust, reaching up a hand to pat Monroe, who had let out a low growl as they entered the building.

There were other smells as well. The coppery tang of blood was one that Bob had a great deal of experience with over the past two years. He'd waded through oceans of it. There was a sour, almost sickly sweet stench that he couldn't quite identify.

One of the cameramen lost it and rushed back out the door, where Bob could hear him vomiting.

Looking around, he knew that this was what he'd been afraid they'd find. The barracks had two rows of bunks, one running down each side. The bunks were stacked three high, and he counted fifty stacks on each side, totaling three hundred bunks. There were more people than there were bunks. The floor beneath each stack of bunks was occupied, and there were still people sitting against the wall between the stacks.

Some of the people on the bunks were clearly injured. He could see a man with a pair of infected cuts across his face, crossing over an empty eye socket. The edges of the cuts were jagged, red, and inflamed, oozing a yellowish puss. The bunk beside him had a woman whose stomach had been shredded so badly that it looked like a pot full of rancid roadkill cooked in rotten tomato sauce.

"What. The. Fuck." Bob growled through a snarl of disgust.

Yorrick wasn't smiling. "This is what happens when you have no talent, no drive, and are unwilling to agree to a path for your development," he grimaced.

"I couldn't give a fuck about their talent and drive," Bob said through clenched teeth. "These are human fucking beings, and they're being left to rot in this dark, fetid hole."

The barracks were poorly lit enough to make that comment true.

"Every indenture contract has a provision for the care of the indentured," Yorrick explained, although his face showed disgust as well. "With the exclusion of accidental death during Delving, which is always a risk, the indentures will emerge whole." He shook his head. "These people are being given an opportunity to recuperate naturally. If they aren't able to do so, they will receive a regeneration ritual, with the cost being added to the total debt they have to repay."

"So, in the meantime, they're expected to just lie here, in agonizing pain?" Bob demanded.

"I don't disagree with you," Yorrick replied, glaring at the House Colvern representative, "I've proposed that we amend the contracts, but I haven't been able to gather enough support to do so."

"Fuck that," Bob said loudly. "And fuck this. You shouldn't need a fucking contract to right a wrong that's staring you in the face."

A wave of blue-black light exploded out from Bob.

Regeneration was a bitch to level up. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, Anima Blast was the better choice, and you didn't earn experience from the spell if there wasn't anything for the spell to do. Austan had once confided to Bob that his regenerate spell was level eleven, which was considered remarkably high.

Bob, however, had spent days casting regeneration rituals as the Old Guard had fled Earth for a better life. His regeneration spell was level thirty-six.

With an effective spell casting score of just over six thousand, not even the brutal penalties for casting an area of affect score were enough to dilute the effect.

He flooded the barracks with his magic, following the spell with another, this time creating a wave of water. This spell he maintained for three seconds as the water swirled rapidly around all of the indentures before flowing out the door, accidentally drenching the cameraman who was returning after losing his lunch.

Bob finished with a burst of create and then control air, causing everyone's ears to pop as the air pressure suddenly increased, then fell back down as clean air carried the remaining stench outside.

"How dare you interfere with the affairs of House Colvern!" The representative was practically frothing at the mouth. He stalked up to Bob and looked down at him with a sneer, and, without another word, thrust his fist straight through Bob's chest.

Bob let out a grunt as he lost all feeling from his neck down. His head slumped down, and he could see that the man's arm was in his chest up to the bicep.

There were screams from the camera crew, and Bob felt a terrible tugging feeling in his neck as the man pulled his arm out of his chest.

He fell like a puppet with its strings cut, crumpling to the ground. He couldn't breathe, and as his vision became spotted, he watched in horror as Monroe landed on the man's face, scratching and biting furiously.

The man reached up and snapped Monroe's neck like a twig, then threw the huge cat down on top of Bob.

Bob's last coherent thought was, 'I'm so sorry, buddy.'

~-----------~

Ellen had leaped at the opportunity to join a camera crew that would be filming Bob and Monroe, along with the High Warlock, Yorrick. She'd always been a bit of a gamer geek, although more video games than pen and paper, and the offer had been fantastic. An Affinity Crystal and a thousand mana crystals. Enough to push to level five and live for a year.

Everything had been going fine until they'd reached the Noble House of Colvern.

She'd gagged when they entered the barracks and then practically cheered when Bob had acted. Now she was trembling as Bob, an honest-to-goodness hero, from everything she'd seen and heard, had just been casually killed.

Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

She was still recording, having watched the sudden, unprovoked attack through the lens of the camera, and she saw a dark green shimmer sink into Bob's fallen form when everything stopped.

Ellen knew that bodies didn't just stop bleeding, not when that much blood was gushing from the ruin of a man's chest. Zooming in, she saw that there was a spurt of blood hanging in mid-air as if it had been paused in the process of spurting from Bob's chest.

She turned the camera back up.

"Torlin," Yorrick's voice was heavy in a way she hadn't yet heard. It seemed laced with conflicting emotions. "You've made a terrible mistake."

Torlin spat on Bob's corpse. "That man and his beast interfered with the internal affairs of House Colvern," he sneered, then paused as he realized that his wad of spit was hovering an inch away from the body. His face tightened in rage. "And you are as well," he growled, a savage smile blooming on his face. He held up his fist, still coated past the elbow in Bob's blood, and opened it, allowing something to fall to the floor in front of him. With dawning horror, Ellen realized it was a piece of Bob's spine.

He reached up with his other hand and wiped the blood off his index finger, and pressed his thumb to the center of a ring. "Tavarius will be pleased," he hissed.

A tall man wearing slacks and an embroidered button-down shirt appeared beside him. He was easily nine feet tall and was perfectly proportioned, making Ellen feel a bit like a child.

"I'm rarely pleased when circumstances arrange a meeting between myself and Mr. Aldridge," he said, his voice booming as he leveled a look of contempt toward Yorrick.

"It's been Wrathsbane for centuries, Tavarius," Yorrick replied urbanely. "Perhaps you should visit the Black Cathedral. Someone in your position can hardly afford to suffer from a decline in mental faculties."

"You know how it is," Tavarius' smile didn't reach his eyes. "To me, you'll always be that mewling whelp that the Guild swept up out of pity." He glanced down at the bloody pile that was Bob and Monroe. "What is this mess in my barracks, Torlin?"

"The Warlocks Guild sent him to inspect the indentures, and he brought a tier five peasant, his beast, and a group of children with him. The peasant cast several spells on our indentures, so I killed him, and then his beast when it attacked me," Torlin sounded gleeful. "He has also interfered with our affairs by casting what I believe to be a stasis spell on the peasant."

Tavarious' smile reached his eyes this time. "Well, well. Yorrick, you've been a naughty boy, haven't you?" He shook his head mockingly. "If you surrender, I'll only demand you be forcefully reincarnated and cast as a laborer before being exiled."

Yorrick hadn't stopped smiling, although it seemed to grow cold. Scratch that, it was growing cold. Goosebumps rose on her arms as she watched through the camera lens, still recording.

A luminescent green mist rose from the ground, swirling up around Yorrick. His robes shifted, forming into green-tinted black plates, covering him in a suit of armor. The helm had only two slits for his eyes, which were also glowing green. The transformation completed as the mist spilled down his back, forming a long cloak.

Ellen trembled as the surface of the cloak shifted, the relief of a screaming face forming as if it were being pressed up from beneath the fabric. Others followed, and the entire cloak became a writhing sea of silently screaming faces.

Tavarious' eyes widened. "You dare," he breathed. "It is you who have broken the law here, and you dare to challenge me?" He was screaming now, and a sickly yellow let flashed around him, leaving him in the same style of light leather armor that Bob had favored.

Ellen was pretty sure she was about to die. These two were stupidly powerful, and if they fought, which seemed likely, everyone around them was going to end up as collateral damage.

It was then that Yorrick moved. She didn't know where the axe came from, but Yorrick held it in both hands as it swung for Tavrious' throat.

The head of House Colvern had acted at the same time, sending a blast of that same sickly yellow light at Yorrick's chest, but the Warlock tanked the blow, seeming indifferent judging from his body language.

Yorrick's axe crashed through a magical shield of some sort, the yellow light flaring to life then shattering, the axe not slowing. It crashed through another that must have been layered on Taverius' skin before cleaving the Noble's head from his shoulders.

Before the body could fall, Yorrick released one hand from the axe, and thrust the other through the man's chest. Unlike what Tolrin had done to Bob, Yorrick's arm sunk into Tavarius' chest like a stick into water. He pulled it back, leaving the body undamaged, but grasping a spectral image of Tavarius, who flailed, trying to peel Yorrick's hand from his neck.

Torlin stumbled backward, falling on his ass as he scrambled away, a look of horror on his formerly arrogant features.

Yorrick turned to face the camera crew, and Ellen felt the cold deepen, freezing her in place.

Yorricks helmet had somehow shifted in form, and now that she had a straight-on view, the only word she could find to describe it was demonic. The cheeks and jaw were too long, the ears too thin and pointed, the mouth a maw of clenched fangs.

"Let it be known that the Tavarius, Head of House Colvern, has forsaken his oaths." The voice was Yorrick's but not. There was something else overlaying it. It was almost like Yorrick was echoing it. "He has acted to support a member of his house against a diplomatically protected envoy and against the High Seat of the Warlocks Guild."

The shade of Tavarius was silently screaming as it struggled.

"His soul is forfeit, by ancient rite and compact. Let those neutral parties present bear witness," Yorrick echoed that terrible voice, and if Ellen could have opened her mouth or taken a breath, she would have screamed as something flowed up from the ground. It looked like another specter until it was completely out of the ground, where it suddenly solidified.

Five legs, two tails, eleven arms, and one head. It was raw flesh, like muscle with the skin stripped off, with strips and plates of chitin attached to the underlying muscle. A closer look that she wished she hadn't taken revealed that the chitin was an assortment of terrible insect-like creatures that had burrowed their legs and mouths into the exposed, weeping flesh.

H.R. Geiger would have wept in joy.

It stood more than fifteen feet tall, which was the height of the barracks, and it was hunched over. She would be forever grateful that she couldn't see its face as it gestured toward Tavarius, and the voice that overlayed Yorrick's came from it.

"The ancient compact is honored, the pact fulfilled. The faithless traitor belongs to us." Ellen couldn't understand the language, but the intent was somehow crystal clear.

Yorrick stretched out his arm, and the creature thrust four of its own arms through the specter of Tavarius, whose face twisted in a picture of pain as the monster's solid limbs thrust through his ethereal flesh.

The creature drew Tavarius close and then sank into the ground, flowing into mist as it departed.

A moment later, the unnatural cold dissipated, and Yorrick's armor and cloak flowed back into mist as well, leaving him in his robes. He shook his head, blinking rapidly, then sighed. He made a curious pinching gesture with his right hand, then smiled toward the camera crew.

"Congratulations," he chuckled, "this recording is going to end up in the Archives, which means you'll be able to negotiate one hell of a bonus." He shook his head.

Ellen jerked to the side as a new figure strode into view, somehow having passed through the entire camera crew without drawing their attention, which, in Ellen's opinion, she should have. The woman had wavy hair so black it was almost blue, flawless porcelain skin, dazzling emerald eyes, and somehow managed to show off perfect curves despite wearing voluminous robes. Until this moment, Ellen had been certain she was completely straight but damn.

"Yorrick, what are you doing in House Colvern?" The woman asked, her voice light and melodic, with an almost teasing tone.

Yorrick stepped to the side and gestured toward the decapitated body of Tavarius.

"Oh," the woman said, turning and taking in the entire scene. She frowned when her eyes landed on Bob and Monroe. "Tavarius was always a bit of an idiot," she murmured, shaking her head.

"If you could heal them, Elisa?" Yorrick asked. "I'm bottomed out and burning, I can't hold that stasis much longer."

Ellen focused on Yorrick's face. There was a tension there that she hadn't noticed before. Also, a light sheen of sweat.

"Of course," Elisa took a step forward and knelt down, laying one hand above Bob and the other above Monroe. "Release the spell."

Yorrick let out a sigh, and the spurt of blood frozen above Bob's chest continued its upwards trajectory as both he and Monroe were enveloped in a layer of liquid darkness that seemed to sink into them.

Ellen gasped as the darkness sank completely down into the bodies, revealing only solid, healed flesh in its wake.

The effect was somewhat spoiled as the spurt of blood fell back down and splattered on Bob's now whole chest.