“Welcome to my humble abode, wayward souls,” Ticasuk said.

The revenant’s voice was the sound of rock breaking. The ruination of the bones of the earth rang in his words. Oak could hear stone groaning and shifting on the ceiling from nothing else but the strength hidden in the undead dwarf’s inflection of the common tongue.

Oak shared a look with Ur-Namma, while Geezer hid behind his legs. If Ticasuk has time to cast a single spell, we are dead. No ifs, no buts. We will be a smear on the ground. His every sense was firing on overdrive, and the beat of his own heart sounded like a smith hammering an anvil next to his ear.

“I would ask for the reason for your arrival, but alas, it matters not. You have come and you will never leave,” Ticasuk said. “Rest easy. Your demise will serve a glorious purpose. It will feed my greatest work yet.”

Geezer growled. There wasn’t a single corner or a hard, straight surface in the circular ritual chamber, but despite that, the low rumbling echoed in the room. A faint smell of sulfur suffused the air, and the hairs on the back of Oak’s neck stood on end. That was not normal. Something was definitely going on with the hellhound, but he could not afford to take his eyes off Ticasuk.

Whatever abilities Geezer was developing, they could wait. As casually as Oak could, he brought his falchion up to rest on his left shoulder, and slipped his right hand in his pocket. He palmed a rock and waited for the right moment.

Ur-Namma looked around the chamber before he locked eyes with Ticasuk. “We are walking on top of her, aren’t we? She is growing all along the floor, the walls and the ceiling. All of this flesh is Nisaba’s. She fills the entire floor and more besides,” the elf said with a detached voice that sent a shiver coursing down Oak’s spine.

People used that tone to talk about the weather, not horrific rituals.

Nudge in his stance, a shuffle of his feet. Slowly, Oak settled into a better position. What did Ur-Namma say? There is not much a mage can do if you cut their head off before they can cast a spell. He imagined the throw in his mind. How it would have to hit for the three of them to continue drawing breath.

“Yes. Don’t you see? Our growing girl is so hungry. Always growing. We must feed her, we do,” Ticasuk said and stroked Nisaba’s twitching face with a single skeletal finger. “We already gave the meat off our bones. Now you must give yours.”

The cursed flesh covering the floor parted and four revenants rose to the chamber. Among them was a cobbled-together monstrosity of bone. It looked like the result of a child with no knowledge of anatomy piecing multiple dwarven skeletons together.

The monster was the height of two dwarves combined, and he had four arms ending in sharp claws sticking out of a thick torso. A tail swished back and forth behind the monster's back, and six eye sockets filled with blue flame stared at Oak from three separate heads. The hatred in the monster’s gaze was palpable.

The monstrosity was not the only revenant to draw Oak’s eye. One of the others looked familiar. He was missing half of his teeth and two ribs from the right side of his ribcage.

“The four armed fellow is called Yutu. I believe you already met our dear Qimmig,” Ticasuk said, and pointed at the revenant who had tried to sink his skeletal fingers into Oak’s throat. “He got a little overeager and acted without permission, didn’t you, Qimmiq?”

The revenant in question looked away without a word. Ticasuk shook his head like a disappointed grandfather. “I had to discipline him. The young generations, am I right? No respect for their elders. I always say–”

Oak pulled the rock from his pocket and threw it as hard as he could. He put every pound of weight in his body, and all the strength he could muster, behind that throw. The rock tore through the air like an arrow fired from a warbow, and struck Ticasuk in the middle of his forehead.

The dwarven revenant’s skull exploded in a shower of bone fragments and the mage toppled backwards, not unlike a puppet whose strings had just been cut.

+ 1 Soul

+ 3 Fuel

Technically, Ticasuk’s head was still attached to the rest of his body, but Oak considered that a job well done. The other revenants stared at Ticasuk’s unmoving corpse, utterly flabbergasted by the turn of events. He palmed another rock, and all hell broke loose.

The Custodian of the Imperial Library screamed in rage, and the entire ritual chamber trembled. Barbed tentacles and long spikes erupted from every surface seemingly at random and tried to strike anything they could reach.

Oak threw the rock in his hand at Qimmig and pulverized the revenant's right shoulder. A trio of tentacles tried to wrap around his ankle, but by the skin of his teeth, Oak dodged the barbed appendages. Then Yutu was on him, and Oak was too busy trying to stay alive to throw stones.

***

Ur-Namma of the Tribe of Shara danced on the edge of death.

An undead dwarf holding an arming sword was doing their very best to cut him to pieces. He directed another blow aside and stepped just so, to dodge the follow up swing. The overworked muscles in his arms and back screamed with effort.

Every moment of suffering is a step towards retribution, Ur-Namma thought, repeating the mantra in the back of his mind.

It was infuriating to be on the back foot against an opponent of such low caliber. Ur-Namma could see what he should do and how he should do it. He could envision the destruction of his enemy and the steps needed to get there. It amounted to very little because his body could not execute the actions his mind required of it.

The revenant lunged forward, trying to skewer Ur-Namma through the stomach just as a tentacle whipped towards him from the side. This will be tricky. I’m too slow to block both strikes. He stepped back and then to the left, moving his tired feet as fast as he could. A sweep of his longsword pushed the revenant’s thrust away from his person and, at the same time, he leaned as far to the left as he could.

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The tip of the tentacle brushed his cheek and drew a line of red on his face. Blood flowed from the shallow wound.

Ur-Namma’s riposte was clumsy, but he landed a strike on the revenant’s skull. Sadly, there was no strength behind the blow and his sword bounced off the bone. He chastised himself for even trying such a move.

Trust Oak and Geezer and keep yourself alive, fool. This battle will not be decided by your hands.

A roar echoed through the chamber. Ur-Namma saw Oak cut one of the regular revenants in two with his falchion before Yutu tackled him. The monstrosity was missing one of its four arms. Somehow, the northerner ended up on top after a moment of frenzied wrestling, and started slamming the pommel of his sword through the skull of one of Yutu’s three heads.

They seem to get along like a house on fire, Ur-Namma thought, and let a small smile grace his face. The savage’s conduct in battle always pleased him.

The undead dwarf fingered the groove Ur-Namma’s sword had made into his skull and let out a noise. Then the revenant walked forward with complete confidence. Belatedly, Ur-Namma realized the undead was chuckling. The revenant now knew Ur-Namma could not harm him.

Curses flew from Ur-Namma’s lips as the revenant pushed him backwards with no regard for defense or safety. Landing a strike had been a fatal mistake. Uncaring in the face of Ur-Namma’s blade, the undead dwarf walked through his strikes until finally the skeleton caught Ur-Namma’s blade and twisted it from his grip.

Ur-Namma wiped the sweat from his eyes and waited for death. He was spent. The revenant lifted his blade and was just about to strike him down, when Geezer bounced on the undead’s back, and bit down on his skull. With a crack that resembled the sound of a stone tablet shattering to pieces, the skeleton’s skull crumbled under the hellhound's teeth.

Geezer threw a look at Ur-Namma, and charged back into the fray.

Good boy, Ur-Namma thought, and collapsed. He sat on the floor, breath shuddering through overtaxed lungs. From the corner of his eye, he could see Geezer ragdolling Qimmiq around. The hellhound had his teeth locked around the revenant’s spine and he was shaking the undead dwarf apart.

A very good boy, Ur-Namma thought, just as a tentacle slammed into his side with bruising force and darkness took him.

***

Oak was having the time of his life. He lifted what remained of Yutu on his shoulder and made sure his grip was secure. Then he smashed the undead to the floor with bone crushing force. Yutu twitched and tried to weakly claw at Oak’s arm’s with his remaining hand, but it amounted to nothing. Oak gave the jigsaw puzzle of bones some good old elbows to the face.

It was hard to miss, since Yutu had three heads.

The fingers of one hand closed tight on the monster’s neck, the fingers of the other held onto a leg. Oak placed his right foot on top of Yutu’s chest, leaned back until his arms were straight, and pulled the struggling revenant apart with all of his might.

Arms and back straining with effort, Oak pulled until a snap heralded his success and he was left holding a skeletal leg and a short stretch of spine ending in three skulls. Yutu’s torso laid on the floor under his boot. He had already smashed two of the heads into pieces, so he finished the job by dropping the heads on the floor and stomping on the third.

All in a good day's work. Oak wiped his hands on his trousers. He felt like whistling.

A pained yelp woke Oak up from his bout of euphoria, and he snapped his gaze towards the sound. Tentacles had wrapped themselves around Geezer and they were dragging the struggling hellhound down inside the cursed flesh. Frantically, Oak searched for Ur-Namma, but the elf was nowhere to be seen.

“Fuck! Hang in there Geezer, I will put a stop to this!” Oak shouted and picked up his falchion. Without hesitation, he charged the tower of turgid flesh standing in the center of the chamber. The Custodian had to die, and she had to die quickly.

A forest of tentacles rose to meet Oak’s charge, but he would not be deterred. He cut his way through with wide swings of his falchion, slicing the tentacles like a farmer reaping the year's harvest. A spike of bone flashed past the tentacles to stab at his eyes, but Oak moved his head out of the way at the last moment, and rushed around it.

The former Custodian of the Imperial Library was still screaming when Oak reached the base of the tower of meat. He cast the hottest burst of flame he could muster at the tower and watched as flesh blackened and cracked, melting in the heat of the fire.

Nisaba’s screaming intensified tenfold. The Custodian writhed in pain at the top of the tower, and so did every tentacle in the ritual chamber. The waves of sound painted a clear picture of the chamber to Oak’s mind, and he could see Geezer breaking free from the grasp of the tentacles, just as he sank his falchion to the base of the tower of flesh.

The task at hand reminded Oak in many ways of felling a tree, except a tree had never tried to kill him while he was cutting it down. A tentacle emerged from the side of the tower and tried to wrap itself around Oak’s neck, while a long spike of bone that resembled a spine shot out of the ceiling towards his face.

Oak grabbed the tentacle with his left hand and slapped the spike aside with his falchion. The spike retracted back inside the flesh covering the ceiling. Undeterred by Nisaba’s attempts to take his life, he tore the tentacle free of the cursed flesh in a shower of blood. It writhed in his hand like a skewered snake, and he chucked it away as fast as he could.

Come on, I know you want to. He feinted a strike towards the base of the tower.

The long spike of bone shot towards Oak from the ceiling once more, but this time he did not let it retract. He moved his head to the side to dodge the initial thrust, and as the spike passed his right ear, Oak snatched hold of it and ripped it off the ceiling. Returning it back to its rightful owner seemed like fair play, so he thrust it through the tower of flesh and left it there.

“Keep hold of that for me,” Oak said and rolled his shoulders. It was time to finish this bullshit.

It took ten savage chops to topple Nisaba. Every tentacle and spike of bone in the chamber seized their movement and lay still when the tower and the female elf at the top of it tumbled to the floor of the chamber.

Oak walked to Nisaba’s side. She screamed and trashed mindlessly on the floor of the chamber, unseeing eyes staring into nothingness. The water-drawn line between scary and pathetic was ever moving with the tides, and the custodian has passed on the side of the pathetic. She looked and sounded like a fish on dry land, if fish could scream.

“I reckon you did nothing to deserve any of this, but I have only one cure to offer,” Oak said, and beheaded the elf. “Be at peace.”

+ 3 Souls

+ 5 Fuel

Geezer had not been idle while Oak was battling Nisaba.

The hellhound was digging a hole into the cursed meat close to the chamber’s wall, and Oak rushed to help him. The worry for Ur-Namma was making him feel sick. He pulled out his short sword and started cutting into the flesh. The elf had to be alive.

What will you do if he is not? He did not have an answer.

It required some delicate work, since Oak did not want to accidentally stab Ur-Namma, but eventually one of the elf’s arms came into view. Even in death, the flesh seemed reluctant to let its prize go. Oak yanked Ur-Namma free from the cursed meat’s grasp and slapped the unconscious elf awake.

Ur-Namma gasped for breath and coughed out a mouthful of blood onto the front of his own robe. It wasn’t the end of the world. After all, the elf was absolutely drenched in blood already.

“How’s it hanging?” Oak asked. It seemed like a reasonable question.

In response, Ur-Namma tried to knee him in the nuts. Twice. Immense relief washed away Oak’s worries.

He is going to be alright.