Jerome tried to do a shallow cut so she wouldn’t die, but a part of him knew that it would only prolong the inevitable.

She would die.

He would kill her.

Throughout the entire process her screams would echo in his ears.

Truth be told, they would echo for long after that.

Still, he went for superficial cuts. Ones that wouldn’t kill her, despite the massive amounts of pain she would experience. Pulling the band-aid off slowly instead of ripping it off all at once.

Was it cowardice? Was that why he couldn’t do it?

Then he heard the first ‘thunk’ on the roof.

A guard cursed. “Not again.”

“We carry on,” Rikan said with forced calm. “We’ve built to withstand this.”

“Yes, but during an experiment?”

A glare from Rikan shut it up.

Jerome didn’t trust his shaking hands to not destroy the girl’s guts while cutting on her stomach, so he decided to move to another part of her body. But where could he go? Where could he cut that would cause the least pain?

As he thought on this conundrum something else hit the roof, this time making less of a thud and more of a splash.

“The ockdine been getting more accurate,” said the guard fearfully. “Zeroing in on this building.”

“I heard they recently used an acid payload,” said the other.

“Vicious rumors,” Rikan hissed.

Jerome pulled back his scalpel, glad of any excuse. He pretended to study the girl and hoped that the arguing gnolls wouldn’t notice his work had stopped.

No such luck.

“There is nothing to be afraid of, Nakat.” Rikan spoke with the practiced coldness of a government official. “Please continue. You don’t want to waste a subject just because of bad timing.”

Jerome placed his scalpel on her leg. She tried to squirm away but the straps were too tight. Nothing she could do to stop this.

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Nothing he could do to stop this.

She moaned in agony, but during the breaks in her cries he could hear yelling from outside.

“I’m going to go check,” said a guard. “I want to know what—”

Rikan slapped it. “You will stay right here. You know as well as I do that, aside from the palace, this is the most secure building in town.”

“Acid,” said the guard. “It can eat through stone. It doesn’t matter if the stone was pulled from the earth with magic. It’s still stone. Still vulnerable.”

“Well then, I guess you better stay right here to defend us.”

There was another thump, and yelling. Mixed in with the harsh cries of the gnolls were the soft bubbling sounds of ockdine speech and what seemed like a subtle fizzing, both of the latter coming from the roof.

Acid?

The guard clearly wanted to go outside and figure out what was going on. One even moved to exit, despite Rikan’s protests, but he paused in mid-stride, unable to progress.

“You will stay here and guard us. If you must stay in that one spot, then you stay in one spot. You can swing your club at any ockdine that approaches you and hope for the best. But you will obey.”

Jerome had looked up from his dissection, his “experiment”, his reluctant murder to watch the drama and avoid the inevitable, but Rikan pushed his attention back down. “You have to find the soul, Nakat. You can’t let this excitement distract you. If you find it, the humans will be saved. Together our races will be elevated to the status of a Great Civilization. We will have a golden age of peace and harmony.”

There were more thunks, more yells from outside. The sounds of battle.

“They’re serious this time,” said a guard. “This is more hits than I’ve ever heard before.”

Rikan turned his attention from Jerome to the guard. “One ockdine will defeat one gnoll, that is known… but they are on our territory. If we die here, we respawn knowing that our predecessor died in glory. If they die here, their souls are in our hands, and we can do what we like with their respawns. You know this. You’ve seen the dried husks in the basement, forever floating between life and death. It is a hell that they have willingly stepped into by attacking us on land, at our home base.”

He stopped cutting again and Rikan noticed.

“You have to keep experimenting, Nakat. They want to stop these experiments, no matter what. You can fight them by continuing. By continuing this you can save—”

Fuck all of this.

Fuck waiting.

Fuck strategizing.

Fuck compromising.

Jerome had a Quest to accomplish, and he was going to rescue some goddamn humans.

He put one hand on the right side of Rikan’s head and another on the left side of Rikan’s neck.

“Nakat, what are you doing?” it asked.

Jerome activated Recoil Burst and the animal’s neck snapped.