Oak came to, up to his knees in dissolving guts and rotting, milky white flesh. He missed a step, almost fell down the stairs, and leaned against the wet stone wall to steady his shaky legs. Meat on hooks. Cadavers under the knife. Revolting, titillating visions of an unholy, unending charnel pit danced across his sight, corpses twitching lifelessly like puppets on strings.

His infernal engine chimed and sent out a notification detailing his gains for killing the worm.

+ 1 Soul

+ 4 Fuel

The blood stains and baptizes in equal measure. I feel hallowed, but I might be hollow indeed.

"Hey, heretic?" Jehona coughed right by his ear and Oak, startled, realizing he had the woman draped over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. "Are you…are you back?"

"Better than ever, Jehona." Oak groaned and shook his head, trying to chase away the vestiges of unholy slaughter from his mind. "The fuck is this? And where are we?" he asked, gesturing at the sludge filling the staircase.

"Well, after you killed the worm, you picked me up despite my protests and carried me down the stairs. We just passed the second level of the keep's dungeons." Jehona hesitated. "The worm–it sort of broke down. You are walking in it. What remains of its body, anyway."

Oak tried not to gag. He really did, but it was no use. Holding onto his nose, he added his sick to the sludge covering the stairs. He would need new boots. New boots, new socks, and new trousers. Bending down to throw up brought with it a novel stab of pain, digging into his stomach, but Oak couldn't stop his aching abs from convulsing in time with his gags.

When he had spewed his supper back the way it had come, Oak looked down and felt around his stomach with his free hand. His fingers tugged on something hard and jagged, sending a fresh wave of suffering through his tortured flesh.

"Oh, shit," Oak cursed and peeled away the remains of his jacket from the wound. "I have a piece of spine embedded in my stomach."

"Tell me about it," Jehona wheezed. "I have a length of wood in my lung." The priestess coughed, shuddering on Oak's shoulder. She felt smaller and weaker than the armed woman who had welcomed Oak and his companions into her church, but the same tenacious energy remained. "There is a landing close by, just around the corner. Get us there."

Later on, when Oak tried to reason out how exactly he climbed down those sludge covered stairs without falling over, the answers eluded him. He stumbled and teetered down the steps like a drunk after a weeklong bender, but stumble down he did.

The third level landing was blessedly free of worm guts and rotting remains. Oak lowered Jehona on the comparatively clean floor, careful not to disturb the lengthy and thick splinter sticking out from between her ribs. The priestess looked as pale as one with such dark skin could look and her breathing was shallow.

She was not long for this world.

Luckily, they were close now. Oak could feel the corruption in the air thickening. A presence waited in the bowels of the earth, spreading its poison with every passing heartbeat. Belphegor's spawn. A Demon of Rot and Decay.

He straightened his tall frame and steadied himself. This is going to suck. Oak took hold of the jagged piece of spine piercing his stomach, and yanked it out with a drawn-out groan, biting his lip till his teeth drew blood. The finger-length of cracked bone dropped from his unsteady fingers and clattered onto the stone floor at his feet.

"Oof. That does look nasty," Jehona said, empty eye sockets staring at the bleeding hole in his abdomen.

"Add it to the pile."

Another lovely hotbed of infection waiting to take root. The Boon of Demonic Constitution would keep Oak on his feet for a while yet, but the fever was going to knock him out tomorrow, of that there was little doubt.

"Want me to yank yours out?"

Jehona shook her head. "As much as it hurts to admit it, that splinter acts as a stopper. You pull it out and I will be dead twice as fast from the bleeding." She guffawed, seized, and coughed bloody phlegm over her robes. "Pain is temporary. I will be home soon enough."

"Suit yourself."

Oak took a deep breath, feeling out how the movement pulled at the wound on his abdomen. Not great, not terrible. He checked his weapons and tightened down every strap on his person. The familiar ritual steadied his frayed nerves and sent the tremors racing along his fingers packing. Ashmedai, grant me strength. And courage to do what is necessary. Belphegor's spawn waited below and Ur-Namma's warning haunted Oak's mind.

"The Demon is not stupid. They never are. There will be a hitch, a problem we have not foreseen, and you will have to make a choice. Whatever happens, remember the stakes. You must burn the Rot out, root and stem, or none of us will leave Al-Badra alive."

"Alright, up you get, priestess. Journey's end draws near," Oak said and lifted Jehona on her feet. "Lean on me. I will not let you fall."

"Hah. In that I trust, heretic. If a giant like you can't keep me on my feet, there is no one in Creation who can."

They went down slowly and carefully, one inconvenient step at a time. Jehona huffed and wheezed in time with their descent, but true to her words, she breathed through the pain without complaint. Oak felt an unfamiliar awe. Over and over, this waifish creature impressed him with her sheer resilience. He had seen injuries like hers make kittens out of hard men, but the priestess just soldiered on.

Faith can take you halfway, but the rest is up to you. Good thing this little mouse has the heart of a lion beating in her chest.

As they hobbled down the uneven stairs, surrounded by moldy gray stone, a sense of wrongness covered Oak like a moist, putrid blanket. It had always been there, hanging over them in the background, but now he could feel the soft brushes of infernal Rot caressing his skin. Little fondling feelers tickling the house of his soul. Oak's wounds itched, pulsating with irritation and discomfort.

"Don't you want this? You are so tired. So pliable and responsive. Like clay in my expert hands. Everything will be alright. You can let go," something whispered lazily from the darkness, their words dripping with cloying, prickling agony. In response, his infernal engine roared to life, chasing away the Demon's touch with hellish flame.

Oak swiped sweat from his forehead and took a deep breath, trying to calm down his beating heart. "You feel that?" he whispered, disturbed by the Demon's lingering touch. An image of the tall, shambling blighted hunched over their bloated stomachs filled Oak's mind, and he shuddered involuntarily.

Jehona just nodded, saving her precious breath for walking.

Wise woman.

The stairs ended. They had reached the fourth level. The lowest floor. Oak helped Jehona down to the cramped landing, eyes and ears peeled for danger. Whispers at the edge of hearing hounded him from all sides, mocking, cajoling, promising. Murmuring sweet lies. The entrance to the dungeon proper loomed a mere few steps ahead like a gateway unto death, shrouded with dripping tendrils of rot.

A thick cloud of miasma covered every grimy inch of the floor, so heavy with corruption that it had no choice but to hug the wet stone tiles.

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"You ready?" Oak asked.

"As ready…as I'll…ever be." Jehona wheezed and pulled out her long-knife and hatchet, her hands shaking from the effort.

A low, warbling groan, and something that sounded disturbingly like the cry of a baby, sounded from the dungeon. The echoes mixed into a jumbled mess of noise, conjuring ever more horrifying possibilities from the depths of Oak's tired mind.

"Right." Oak rolled his shoulders and cracked his neck. "Let's do this." He pulled out his short sword and cleaver, cut away the tendrils of rot shrouding the doorway with a savage slash, and walked through the dungeon entrance into the belly of the beast.

It looked like Creation had missed a step and forgotten what stone should look like. Or be like.

The ceiling of the dungeon moved like soft tissue, shuddering, expanding, contracting. Reality was thin here, hanging on by a thread. Stone flowed like melted wax, dripping down the arching walls and mixing with the pus and ichor pressing through the mortar. Cells lined those same ruined walls, but the bars meant to hold prisoners inside had rusted to nothing a long while ago. Only marks of reddish-brown remained where steel had once held firm.

And at the very back of the long, vaguely rectangular dungeon, past a row of buttresses holding up the ceiling, was a hole.

The oubliette. The locus of this calamity.

A haze, like a mirage on the horizon conjured by the summer sun, shimmered over the hole. Twisting, pumping, rippling. The Demon spread its poison with every passing heartbeat, tearing the fabric of Creation asunder.

Oak breathed out, tightening his grip on his blades. He knew, with cold-blooded certainty, that whatever now lay inside that pit of torture the good folk of Al-Badra had seen fit to throw the swampwoman and her baby into would stay with him for a long while.

Nothing for it. Hesitation is death.

Casting caution to the wind, Oak marched forward, Jehona stumbling at his heels. It was hard to breathe. Like inhaling liquid. Sweat poured down Oak's broad back in little rivers and droplets launched themselves from his brow, trying to land on his eyes. He swiped his forehead with his sleeve, anxiety giving way to discomfort and anger.

Infernal engine roaring with blinding radiance, Oak stomped past the buttresses and the empty cells, until he stood close to the edge of the oubliette. Jehona shuffled to his side, wheezing with every step. Blood dripped down the woman's chin, smearing the chest of her priestly garb. She was a walking corpse, standing at the gates of death.

"Do it." The Priestess mouthed, too tired to speak.

"Gladly," Oak replied. Itching to flood the oubliette with the biggest, hottest stream of flame he could conjure, he peeked over the edge into the narrow hole and beheld the Demon who had destroyed Al-Badra.

The infernal miracle died at his fingertips.

"The baby, Jehona," Oak said, shock and horror transforming his voice into something he could not recognize. "The baby is still alive."

Jehona said nothing. She took a shallow, shuddering breath and glanced over the edge with her empty eye sockets, letting her guardian angel fill her in. Her shoulders sagged, but she did not retreat. For a sworn servant of the Erelim, the choice was obvious.

A naked baby boy, maybe only a few months old at best, lay untouched and unharmed in the arms of his rotting mother, on top of the bubbling, simmering filth filling the oubliette. The swampwoman's mutilated, pustule covered corpse opened her eyes, and the Demon spoke with a lazy cadence, dripping with condescension: "Greetings, mortals. How fare thee?"

"Been worse." Oak shrugged. "Out with it, fucker." He was in no mood for extended wordplay.

"Hmm. How rude. A pact, I offer. Do me no further harm, and I will give you the child, unspoiled. Deny me, and he will suffer the consequences." Black tendrils of pure Rot rose from the putrid mess, coiling around the infant and lifting him towards Oak and Jehona, presenting him like a sacrifice fit for slaughter.

"Choose fast, little morsels."

Oak could not look at the baby's chubby cheeks and round face. Staring at his cute little toes wasn't any better, so he looked into the possessed swampwoman's rotten eyes. There was something he could hate. He knew Demons were not made equal, but this possibility had not entered even his darkest thoughts. Time felt frozen, the moment stretching into infinity and beyond. Blood thundered in Oak's ears and he teetered between horror and wrath, knowing what he must do, but too sick to his stomach to do it.

"There will be a hitch, a problem we have not foreseen, and you will have to make a choice." Ur-Namma might as well have been a seer, so accurate was his warning.

Why, oh why, couldn't the baby just be dead?

There was an ocean of blood on Oak's hands, but to his knowledge, he had never killed an infant before. He didn't want to do it. Not now, not ever. A baby could not be an enemy. They had made no choices to stand in his way, held no responsibility or martial renown. There was something sick about killing a choiceless before they even had the chance to convert to Ashmedai's ways, or anyone else's ways, for that matter.

What would my old man say if he stood beside me? Oak let his thoughts wander back to happier days, when his father was still alive. When the sun shone brighter and the weight on his shoulders was as light as a feather.

Of course.

There come moments in life, boy, where things don't go your way, through no fault of your own. Creation is a bitch. You can make no mistakes and still soil your breeches. Thinking of 'what ifs' and 'could have beens' is useless. Deal with the world as it is, and live with the consequences.

Another old piece of fatherly wisdom bubbled up from Oak's mind as he stared at the Demon of Rot and Decay.

If the knives are about to come out, it's better to act first. Stab a fucker.

The baby cried out weakly, struggling in the grip of the Demon's tendrils. He was probably hungry, the poor thing. "I am sorry," Oak whispered with tears in his eyes, and flooded the oubliette with radiant flames. His engine burned hot, hotter than ever before since that first time Ashmedai had infused it with his essence, and the fires he conjured blazed blinding white in the darkness.

A wave of sound slapped Oak in the face, and then he heard nothing at all. The Demon had screamed so loudly his eardrums had taken a vacation. Grasping tendrils of Rot abandoned the baby and surged towards Oak, but his flames beat them back, melting them into sludge.

Upping the intensity of his casting past any notion of sense or safety, Oak poured every drop of rage circling in his mind and boiling amidst his blood into the furnace inside his soul, stoking the fire until the edges burned blue.

When Oak finally stopped casting, he felt like his teeth were about to chatter out of his mouth. He stumbled back from the entrance of the oubliette, vision swimming, legs as heavy as two pillars of lead. Shivering from the icy, almost glacial lack of warmth left in his body, Oak stared at his fingertips with numb fascination. They were blue.

A few moments more and he would have killed himself.

Poisonous black fumes rose from the oubliette and formed a swirling cloud on the ceiling. It looked strangely pretty, like a splash of oil mucking up the surface of a pond. Oak's ears popped and after a moment of humming, sound returned to the world. He staggered back from the hole in the floor, fighting to stay conscious. He fell next to Jehona, who knelt there in the muck, hands clasped in prayer, her hair matted with sweat and who knew what else.

Oak's engine chimed.

+ The Seal of Rot and Decay

+ 1 Soul

It made sense he hadn't gotten a soul from the Demon, since he had not killed it. Only sent it back to the Hells. Getting anything at all was a surprise, but he could dwell on it later. Oak nudged the notification away. The priestess needed him.

"It is done, Jehona. It is done."

"Let me…let me see," Jehona wheezed, her entire body trembling as she forced out the words.

Oak took a few deep breaths and shook his numb limbs to get the blood flowing. Then he got on his knees, and together the pair of them shuffled to the hole. Jehona leaned over the edge, right into the cloud of toxic fumes, to let the Erelim confirm the banishment. A moment passed. The priestesses' narrow shoulders relaxed, and a shudder traveled through her from head to toe. She leaned away from the oubliette and crashed on her back.

"Thank you, heretic. I can rest now," Jehona whispered. She smiled, overcome with relief. "Please, Valiant ones. Call me home."

A flutter of wings filled the dungeon and a great, almost avian presence pushed aside the corruption still lingering in the air. Oak felt a feather ruffle his hair. His infernal engine sparked with fury, likely more out of a sense of obligation than any real need. Jehona sighed and lay still.

Peace, at last.

In a matter of moments, the demonic Rot the Erelim had held at bay devoured the priestess's corpse. It spread from her empty eye sockets and raced across her body in writhing lines, bursting through muscle, sinew, and bone. By the time Oak got up to his feet, only a withered mess remained.

He stared at the corpse and frowned. Rest easy, Jehona of Al-Badra. You had heart, little mouse.

"Listen to me, Crows." Oak hacked a cough. He could feel the beginnings of fever marching through his diseased flesh. "You take good care of her, or I am climbing up there and we will have words. That is a promise."

Only silence answered him. Oak felt a little silly. He wasn't sure why he had said that. Maybe to show he cared? He didn't know the first thing about how one might climb to Heaven, anyway, so the threat of him doing so to kick some angel's ass was quite moot.

Nah, fuck self-doubt. That winged celestial is trembling in fear.

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