"I don't care what it is or how it's done! Bring me more Ogres or I'm making you the next victim of this brutish slaughterhouse!"

Her crass voice echoed throughout the bloodied streets as she spoke to me. The Red Queen was displeased, pacing around the dimly lit sidewalk with several of her guards in dark armor standing at attention faultlessly to the side. Her brilliant flowing red dress slid along the concrete with nothing but the tapping of her heels being heard under the night sky. She looked desperate, the royal features on her face cracking from the stress yet no one dared utter even a single word. 

It was uncommon for the queen to come to the slaughterhouses personally. Her sudden order for more Ogres makes all the more sense when considering this country's current war and stalemate with the neighboring country of Arcanion. Still, it was bothersome to suddenly increase my workload by several magnitudes.

"More Ogres.... More Dragons... More Trolls..." She says with concentrated fervor as she turns her heel and walks away from the building. Her faultless patrol follows soon after with silent clattering steps as she turns a corner and disappears from sight.

Despite my grievances with the situation, I have a duty to my queen. I turned around, allowing my blood-stained brownish cloak around me to flow behind me as I entered the slaughterhouse. It was dark as usual but I could see clearly, that is how my body has adapted to this place after all.

I passed the blood-soaked hallways made of twisted metal spikes and when I turned my next corner, I saw a hulking bloated beast with dull grey skin and a brutish complexion. It was the size of two men and it lumbered across the spiked hallways with a clueless slump in its form of conjoined skin. Its large arms could barely be considered such, more like large fleshy clubs roughly bound to the body of the beast... Such are the signs of rough craftsmanship. 

I walk past the Ogre and enter through a rusted steel door marked Pen House. Once inside, I emerge into a different door-filled hallway where I am greeted by soft pained moans and loud sleeping snores echoing from within each room. Above each door is a sign made of rough steel reading Dragons or Trolls along with other poorly named monstrosities that I pay no mind to. My soft steps alert a few of the wakening beasts within these rooms and they bang on the door with their monstrous strength. I pay it no heed confident that the door will hold as it always had against their rampage and I continue my stride without worry until I reach for the door with a sign saying The Collective and I open the door before quickly heading inside.

I close the door behind me as I'm greeted by a long upward staircase which I ascend. When I reach the top, I head forward as the space opens to a platform above a vast room filled with a landscape of flesh. Even from my elevated point of view, I couldn't see the end of the room as moving flesh covered it in a morbid horizon. Conjoined within themselves as one fleshy mass, various corpses that weren't fully consumed can be seen strewn about albeit sparsely. A barely perceptible red mist covers the room and the smell of iron is palpable enough to disrupt anyone who hasn't adapted to its conditions. I look down at the shuffling mass of flesh knowing the pain I'll have to endure to create more of these Ogres. 

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I jump down landing with a soft wet splat on the ground. My boots become wet from the putrid skin as I pull out a large butcher knife from within my cloak. I hold the knife above me and plunge it into the ground. The steel easily pierces through the flesh and the entire room writhes in pain as I cut several hand-sized chunks out of it and put them into my cloak pockets. Blood sprays onto my leather gloves and weathered face as I ruthlessly cut through its supple flesh. Not wanting to stay there for longer than I have to, I make a great leap back onto the platform above me and I sheathe my now bloodied knife. 

As I make my way to walk back down the staircase, I hear the sound of a church bell from deeper within the room and I take a brief look back with a curious expression. I see nothing is out of place within the fleshy mounds of the collective and I continue down the staircase since I have more important things to do than get wrapped up in my own head. 

Walking back, I head to the pen house and stop in front of a door labeled Ogres. I enter the room and inside the dim place are various hulking figures shambling around aimlessly almost mindlessly. I walk down the large room, mostly ignored by the Ogres besides the occasional glance from their puffy eyes and I stop in front of a loose metal desk at the end of the room. I pull out several fleshy chunks from my cloak and lay them evenly on the blood-stained desk as I ready myself for the upcoming ordeal.

My hand hovers over the chunks with my palm facing downwards as the skin on the spheres begins to shift. A sharp pain surges through my hand as if my flesh is being contorted in turn but I push through as the chunks meld together like melted metal and enlarge. More and more my hand anguishes as the creature form is constructed making me harshly bite my lip to hold back a scream of pain. Flesh Craft had always had an element of pain to its magic, no matter the tolerance, if one could feel pain then it'd be misery each time it was used. The melded shape of the chunks forms into a hulking figure and to my relief, the Ogre was made.

It was like all the rest, conjoined flesh stretched into each other and joined in macabre fashion with an awful stench to boot. I'm just glad I have a brief reprieve from that hell... The newly formed monstrosity animates from its sitting position above the table and it moves its bloated feet to wander the room with its brethren. 

"One down... Plenty more to go." I say with a gruff sigh. Despite the swiftness of this painful process, the suffering always made me dread creation. 

I shamble out of the room to repeat the process. My queen desires more than one of a brood and I am not one to disappoint.