"My son, Oak. They took my son."

Oak and Ur-Namma rushed after Yakubu. A few twists and turns later, they burst free from the maze of shipping crates and found themselves in front of some kind of office, extending inside the warehouse from the inner wall.

Yakubu was already at the door, sword in hand.

This close, the lurid sounds coming from the office felt unbearably loud. Oak unsheathed his cleaver and hurried to the Koromites' side, eager to barge in and lay down the hurt. His heart clenched. If this was what he thought it was, they would paint the walls with the rapist's blood.

Ur-Namma squeezed Yakubu's shoulder to let the man know they were ready, and the Koromite exploded into motion. He kicked the door open and the three of them charged inside, one after another. The sight that awaited them in the dimly lit office, shrouded in shadows cast by a single oil lamp hanging from the ceiling, filled Oak with both relief and intense embarrassment.

A slim, clean-shaven and long-haired Koromite lay bent over on top of a heavy desk covered in shipping manifests while a fat and hairy local fellow with a magnificent beard enthusiastically buggered him from behind.

For a frozen, awkward moment, time stood still.

Beyond feeling deeply embarrassed, Oak wasn't really bothered about the two men engaging in sexual activity. He knew some lads enjoyed each other's company, and as far as he was concerned, if two adults wanted to fuck, it really wasn't his business. What bothered him was the fat man's attire.

When a woman wore a shirt and nothing else, she looked cute and alluring. When a grown man did the same thing, even a true connoisseur of the male form would have to admit the result was a crime against all with eyes to witness the horror inflicted upon them. Seeing a man's flaccid sausage flopping about below the hem of his shirt was not okay.

Time unfroze, and a lot of things happened very quickly.

Yakubu tried to stop his charge, slipped on the hardwood floor and crashed right into the desk, pushing it and the pair of screaming lovers backwards. The fat local with a magnificent beard stumbled, lost his balance and fell, cracking the back of his head on the corner of a tall shelf full of papers, binders and writing supplies. He flopped bonelessly onto the floor and lay still.

Oak slid on the floorboards, barely stopping himself from smashing Yakubu in the face with his knee, and almost took off the slim Koromite's fingers with an accidental chop of his cleaver. The long-haired black man reared back from Oak's shadowy form, screaming in fear.

Creation had nothing but misfortune in mind for the poor soul. The slim Koromite took a quick step back, trying to get away from the armed strangers who so rudely interrupted him and his lover, and his foot caught in the fat man's shirt. He fell over with a surprised yelp and smashed his head against the floor, knocking himself unconscious.

Ur-Namma burst out laughing. The elf leaned against the doorframe, bent over double, the tip of his longsword scraping against the floor. He tried to gather himself, took one look at the expression on Yakubu's face, and cackled like an old witch.

Yakubu scrambled back to his feet, blushing as much as someone with such dark skin could. "Can we forget this ever happened?" he asked, looking so mortified Oak felt a twinge of sympathy.

Ur-Namma just shook his head, too winded to speak.

"Whatever." Yakubu sighed. "Let's get the fuck out of here."

***

Somehow, they made it back outside and through the fence without getting caught. Truth be told, Oak felt like they got off easy.

When you cock up a mission this badly and the only thing smarting at the end of it is your pride, you got lucky.

Yakubu did not share Oak's positive outlook. He was in low spirits as they made their way through the silent streets of Mashkan-shapir to the next location on their list; a shady distillery on the bank of the Nin-gublaga, owned by the Budur Consortium. Sadly, Yakubu was right to worry as the night moved from disaster to disappointment.

The distillery was a complete bust.

Security around the building was light, and it didn't take long to figure out there were vanishingly few good places on the premises for holding anyone captive, let alone eleven or more children. Since the foundations were right by the shore, even a secret basement was off the table.

Ur-Namma, Oak, and Yakubu did a quick sweep of the site and left empty-handed. Hells, the two old men guarding the place only had batons, and one of the pair had fallen asleep on his chair. Frankly, Oak felt a little insulted by their lack of preparedness.

"I mean, really? What if we had come here with bad intentions?" Oak shook his head. He jumped, grabbed hold of the top of the brick wall surrounding the distillery, and pulled himself up. "Downright disrespectful, in my opinion. I have half a mind to go in there and slap them silly, just to make sure they pay attention in the future."

He helped Ur-Namma and a despondent Yakubu over the wall and jumped down after them onto the grimy street. The neighbourhood left much to be desired. Potholes, bird shit, and a couple of passed out drunks lying in their own piss ruled the scenery, surrounded by derelict houses, barely clinging to the glories of yesteryear.

"Might I suggest they hire some help instead?" Ur-Namma asked and donned his hood. "They looked ancient even compared to me, and I'm thousands of years old."

"Point taken."

Yakubu sighed and walked past them, a grim expression stuck on his face. It was like an engraving chiseled into a rock. Oak lengthened his stride and caught up with his gloomy friend. "Cheer up, Yakubu. We still have two locations left on our list, and we looked through these two first for a reason, remember?" he said and clapped the man on the shoulder.

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"Yes, I remember," Yakubu muttered. "These were the easy places. No high walls or a garrison worth of guards. The next one won't be a leisurely stroll, which means we are shit out of luck."

"Not so, my friend, not so. I have a good feeling about the next spot." Oak shrugged. "My gut is usually correct."

Ur-Namma joined the two of them, and they walked down the road, side by side. "For once, I agree with the savage. The night is still young, and we are far from spent. There is no need to despair." The elf snorted and licked his lips. "If it makes you feel any better, Yakubu, Karoukian knows we might slice him up like a side of beef if we don't find your boy. He is not bullshitting us."

"Well, I guess that is something," Yakubu said.

***

Oak crawled to the edge of the rooftop, right next to Ur-Namma and gazed down at the headquarters of the Tafari mercenary company. A former prison made of heavy brick, surrounded by high walls and manned by a garrison's worth of cutthroats armed to the teeth.

The fucks even had a proper guard rotation manning those thick walls and a strong set of wards enveloped the entire compound, making any scouting through the Waking Dream a useless endeavour.

Despite the obvious difficulty of assaulting such a well-fortified location, Oak felt hopeful. The longer he stared at the prison, and the men guarding it, the more strangeness he noticed. There was a rack full of shackles right by the gatehouse, which seemed odd. Why would a mercenary company need so many irons? A savvy man with a mind for business might have sold them to an actual prison and made a nice bit of profit.

It's not like good-quality chains grew on trees.

Even stranger, many of the dark-skinned mercenaries carried a whip or a lash on their belt, and he couldn't see any signs of animals on the premises. What did the old man always say? When in doubt, trust your nose. Oak sniffed the air. He could not smell a whiff of dung.

"This is the place," he whispered to Ur-Namma. "I'm sure of it."

"I concur." Ur-Namma replied. The elf swept the walls with his gaze and grimaced. "This might get tricky. I know Karoukian told us the compound used to be a prison, but I didn't expect this level of fortification. Any ideas?"

A small door on the side of the prison's keep swung open and a man who looked like a mix between a Muttalite and a Koromite stepped out, carrying a naked boy on his shoulder. Because of the angle, Oak couldn't make out the boy's face, but his dark skin gave away that he might be a Koromite. Somewhere between the ages of nine and twelve.

"Shit. Hold that thought," Oak whispered to Ur-Namma and pointed at the boy's corpse and the bastard lugging it around like a sack of potatoes.

If his memory worked correctly, Yakubu's son, Itoro, was ten years old and about the same size. The boy hung limp like a corpse, and Oak could see a large patch of dried blood on the back of his small head.

Not like a corpse. It is a corpse.

The mercenary strolled across the yard without a care in the world, towards an open pit dug into the ground by the gatehouse, waving cheerfully at the guards up on the walls. As if he were discarding a piece of trash and not a corpse, he flung the boy into the pit and out of Oak's sight. Then he swiped his hands on his trousers and returned inside the keep, whistling a jolly little tune.

A shiver passed through Oak. Another Pit creaked open inside his mind, and the liquid whispers of the Butcher seeped in. The corpse of a child. Oh, what a trifle. Just one will not do, oh no, no, no. We could do so much better. We could fill that pit, make it overflow with meat and bone.

"Dust to dust, ashes to ashes. We travel dark roads, my friend." Ur-Namma shook his head. "Are you going to mention any of this to Yakubu?"

"Fuck no."

"Good." Ur-Namma nodded to himself. Between one moment and the next, all emotion bled from the elf's wrinkled face, leaving behind a porcelain mask. "I will resurrect the ancient ways, just this once."

"Ancient ways?" Oak cocked his head at the elf, feeling a touch of uncertainty swirling in his belly. "What are we talking about here, Ur-Namma?"

"I will partake in the Sin of Enten and Ziusudra, like a headhunter of old." Ur-Namma hissed, showing his needle-like teeth. "Blade flaying, teeth sinking, tongue lapping. I will sate my thirst with blood and fill my belly with manflesh."

It was easy to forget Ur-Namma had stalked the plains and forests of Pairi-Daeza before the first city had been raised. Oak could see it now. The primal monster inside the brittle shell of manners, rules, and civilization, steeped in tradition he could never comprehend.

"Blood and offal, northlander. Tonight, they will be our sacrament."

"So be it." Oak took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Any idea how we are going to get over those walls without getting killed?"

"None whatsoever."

"Me neither. Let's hope one of the others figures something out."

They climbed down from the roof together, hopping from one flat-roofed building to the next. The entire row of buildings lining their side of the alley was like a line of successively taller blocks, and since they started their descent from the tallest one, getting back to ground level was a fairly simple task. Getting up, on the other hand, had been a bitch and a half.

Oak dropped to the narrow alley, close to the entrance, and Ur-Namma soon followed suit with utterly unfair, cat-like grace. How in the Hells does he do that? The bastard still looks like nothing but skin and bones. Fucking elves. Yakubu, Sadia, Geezer, the Sakyi siblings, and Karoukian and his group of thieves waited close by, so Oak hurried across the street with Ur-Namma on his tail, towards another narrow alley so he could share the good news.

They had found the slavers at last.

A short man dressed in rags, who had not been there when Oak and Ur-Namma had passed here prior, swayed drunkenly on his feet next to the mouth of the alleyway. He had his pants around his ankles and a steady stream of urine assaulted the wall in front of him, flowing down the brickwork and spilling into the cracks on the cobblestones.

The sound of Oak's stomping feet seemed to have alerted the man, since he turned around much too swiftly, almost losing his balance as he blinked at Oak, mouth open and dick in hand.

"Hello to you, good sirs! Please…please forgive my sorry state of undress, but I could never deny the call of nature for long," the man slurred and patted his flat, sweaty forehead with a disgusting yellow handkerchief. Piss still dribbled from the man's cock right onto his own bare feet, but the drunk paid the sudden wetness between his toes no mind. "You wouldn't happen to know where an upstanding fellow such as myself could find a drink around here?"

Now it was Oak's turn to blink in surprise. The short, disheveled, and stupid-looking man with an enormous nose and unkempt stubble on his jaw was none other than Okoro Acheampong; a werewolf in the flesh. The very same werewolf whose trial and subsequent liberation Oak had witnessed just a scant day ago.

"Hey, Ur-Namma," Oak whispered, keeping his eyes on the blind drunk killing machine. "I think I have found our diversion."

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