Thick, yellow clouds of miasma hugged the base of the Demon's lair. In the darkness of the moonless night, the gray stone keep rose above Al-Badra like a nail stuck in the heart of a dying beast, oozing with maliciousness and corruption.

Alien otherworldly apathy wafted from the structure in waves, but the flames of Oak's infernal engine kept the Demon's influence at arm's length. He stood by the entrance, a few steps ahead of his companions, examining the bite marks one of the blighted had left on his arm. There were no two ways about it. Infection had its hooks in the wound and the next few days would absolutely suck.

Oak would survive, thanks to the Boon of Demonic Constitution, but he didn't look forward to bouncing around on the wagon bed in the grips of high fever. Nothing for it. He sighed. This is what you get for doing a good thing.

"Blasted Demon! I'm distraught to say this, but I feel unwell." Ur-Namma grimaced and threw a glance at Jehona and her empty eye sockets. "As diminished as I currently am, I don't think I can go further without…permanent consequences."

Sadia snatched her bronze medallion out from inside her robes and paled. "Shit! My enchantments are deteriorating. There are black spots all over the medallion."

"Same here," Yakubu said, medallion in hand. Oak could see lines of rot creeping across the bronze surface.

Of course. When it rains, it pours. Why can't anything ever be easy?

Jehona took a deep breath and faced the keep, biting at her lip. In her wounded state, blades dripping with the blood of her enemies, she looked paradoxical; both vulnerable and dangerous at the same time. "The closer we get to the Demon, the stronger the corruption it spreads grows. Vexing, but not surprising," she said. "I will go on. The Erelim will shield me from infernal Rot and Decay until our task is done."

"Then we will go together, priestess. The Demon's blight cannot touch me." Oak cleared his throat and sought Geezer's gaze. The hellhound was immune to the Demon's corruption and as much as Oak would have liked to take the dog with him, doing so might have disastrous consequences for everyone else. "Can you take the others back with you and keep them safe? If Sadia's enchanted medallions are losing potency, the protection circle we left Tochukwu and his chosen warriors in might have already collapsed. A single blighted could kill half the caravan."

Geezer licked his chops and tried to hide his relief. The coward did not want to enter the keep, Oak could tell. It was half the reason he had made the request. "I WILL TAKE THEM BACK. PROTECT."

"It is settled then. Here, we part ways. Temporarily, I hope," Ur-Namma said, his voice grave. The ancient elf narrowed his eyes at Oak, his long fingers clutching at the hilt of his longsword. "Be careful, Northerner. 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."

"I will remember, Ur-Namma. No half measures. You can count on that."

For the first time since the elf realized he could not see this fight through till the end, Ur-Namma smiled. "Exactly right. No half measures."

Yakubu stepped to Jehona's side and laid a hand on the woman's shoulder. "Goodbye, Jehona. I am glad we fought side by side," he said, and a warm, fleeting grin graced his handsome features. "You deserve every accolade the Crows could heap upon you."

"A good death is its own reward, Yakubu of Korarim."

***

It took a few hefty kicks, but the end result was never in doubt. Oak was a big boy. Rotten wood and rusty iron could not hold him for long.

The hinges snapped, and the door fell inside the keep's hall with a deafening bang, sending clouds of dust and miasma swirling. Oak bent down under the doorframe and stepped inside, cleaver and short sword at the ready. Trying to swing the two handed falchion in the tight corridors of the keep did not appeal to him.

Silence and the wretched stink of rotting flesh greeted him.

Jehona followed in Oak's footsteps, stepping inside the stonewalls of the Demon's lair without a hint of fear. She held her long-knife and hatchet by her sides in a relaxed grip and her empty eye sockets swept the entrance hall, searching for hidden threats.

Darkness was no obstacle for either of them, but the shadows of the entrance hall held no hidden secrets. Just the marks of slow, festering decay. What furniture remained had collapsed into disorderly piles of rotten wood. Dark ichor and greenish pus clung from the high ceiling and dripped down the stark walls, as if the stone itself was about to falter in the face of the Demon's blight.

Nice place. Let's hope the service is better than the ambiance.

"We need to cross the main hall and go through the kitchens. If my memory serves, there should be a door leading to the dungeons at the back," Jehona said and adjusted her headscarf, tugging it to the side. "By the will of the Erelim, it will still be usable."

"What about the upper floors?"

"If we kill the Demon, the rest will sort itself out."

"Right."

Jehona tapped her blades together. The muted clink echoed in the silence. "Just you and me against the tide, Warlock. The faster we end this, the better."

How did she know? Oak froze and then relaxed in the same breath. Of course. The Erelim.

The priestess read the unspoken question from his gaze. "The Erelim whispered it to me, though I suspected as much already. Do not worry, servant of dark powers. The angel will not act. You are doing us a great service and should not be punished for it."

"Right. Um, thank you, I guess? Very practical of you." Oak scratched the back of his head, unsure how to proceed. He waved at the corridor leading in the bowels of the keep with his sword. "After you, priestess?"

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"My, how polite you are," Jehona tutted and walked past him in her priestly garb, her silent steps preceding Oak's own stomping gait.

Somewhere under their feet, the Demon waited. Oak could feel the infernal being's malice seeping through rock and stone. He cracked his neck and rolled his shoulders. The burns on his right shoulder smarted something fierce and pulled the skin taut.

When it rains, it pours.

The main hall of the keep stood in deep contradiction to the stark entrance hall. Before the Demonic incursion, it had clearly been a festive place. Now all the decorations that had once showcased the Ensi's wealth lay in ruins.

Rusted through chandeliers dripped with ichor, hanging from their chains by a thread. Once beautiful tapestries eaten by mold and vermin lay in crumbled heaps at the base of the walls and the long tables had snapped in places, splintered by corruption and decay.

And right at the head of the crumbled main table, in the middle of the hall, sat a tall, severe looking man in his own filth. The corpses of men, women, and children spread behind him in a semicircle, like an open fan made of cadavers, their clutching fingers still reaching towards him and grasping at the frayed edges of his cloak.

"The Ensi!" Jehona gasped and rushed towards the man. Oak followed, growing anxiety pulsing at the back of his mind. This place gave him the creeps.

As they got closer, Oak could discern the Ensi's cruel fate. Gangrene had ravaged his muscular limbs, leaving him unable to stand up from the pool of his own feces. His once fine clothes had rotted away from his pustule covered body, leaving him shivering in the grips of fever on the cold stone floor. Trails of tears traveled down the man's dark cheeks and globs of bile hung from his gray beard like lines of drool.

Crusty discharge caked the Ensi's shut eyelids, but when Jehona knelt by his side, careful to keep the hem of her robes from the filth, he opened them and looked at the priestess in surprise.

To Oak's horror, the Ensi's gaze was clear and his thoughts unmarred by the Demon's influence. Madness would have been a kinder fate. This has the look of a punishment to it. Did the swampwoman ask for this? Or did the Demon do this by his own accord?

"Heavens, Agron," Jehona whispered. She squeezed the handles of her blades in a white-knuckled grip, shoulders shaking with emotion Oak could only guess at. He sympathized. Few people truly deserved such a fate, no matter the scope of their mistakes.

"Forgive me, Jehona. Can you forgive me?" Agron asked. The words spilled tiredly from his chapped lips and the harsh lines of his face furrowed in pain. "Your eyes…what happened to your beautiful eyes?"

"Shh, Agron. My end, just like yours, is nigh. The ailments of the flesh do not matter." Jehona glanced at Oak, begging silently for his help. "I forgive you. From the bottom of my heart, I forgive you."

Agron sagged, gasping with relief. Oak put away his shorter blades, reeling in confusion. Why is she letting me kill him? She knows I am a Warlock. Well, want not, waste not. He pulled out his falchion, eyeing the distance as he stepped to the side. He would need the reach for this. Giving the man a quick death was all well and good, but Oak didn't want to soil his boots to do it.

As ready as he would ever be, Oak nodded at Jehona.

"Close your eyes, Agron. Remember the last summer solstice? When we sat in the shade by the cloister with brother Egzon and drank too much wine?" Jehona asked. Her narrow nose scrunched in an expression of nausea and her delicate hands shook, but no sign of the emotional turmoil leaked into her gentle voice.

"I…I can see it. Feel the wind on my cheek and the touch of soft grass," Agron said in a broken voice. "What a lovely d–"

Oak swung and his sword cleaved through the Ensi's neck with only the slightest hint of resistance. Agron's head dropped from his shoulders and rolled a few times before laying still, smiling face turned towards the ceiling.

In death, the Ensi had found peace, at last.

+ 1 Souls

+ 2 Fuel

"Thank you, heretic." Jehona stood and turned away, hiding her face. "This is a foul place. We should not linger here."

"Why did you let me do it?" Oak burned away the blood staining his falchion and returned it to its sheath, all the while staring at the back of Jehona's head from the corner of his eye. "Why would you feed my engine with his soul?"

"A reward for services rendered," Jehona whispered, and her voice caught in her throat. "Please, Oak. Do not make me speak of this vileness any further."

***

The door leading to the keep's dungeons lay wide open, inviting them to its depths. Oak did not like it one bit, but he was used to doing things smarter folk shied away from. After all, he had been a soldier. If soldiers knew one thing, it was doing jobs their betters would not touch with a ten-foot pole.

This was practically nostalgic.

They would descend and kill the Demon or die trying. The day offered no choices. Oak asked for none. Creation favored the bold, and Ashmedai liked it when his followers helped themselves. He would slay the Demon with the scorching flames roiling inside his soul and scatter the ashes to the four winds.

Wrath. Wrath and struggle eternal, Patron of mine.

Oak took the lead and stomped down the narrow stairs, cleaver and short-sword in hand. Jehona followed with dainty steps, clutching at her own blades for comfort. Moist stone walls surrounded the pair of them in their cold embrace and droplets of water dripped from the low ceiling, hitting the top of Oak's head with unerring accuracy.

The hairs on the back of Oak's neck stood on end. If the smell of rotting flesh had been bad in the keep's main hall, here in the cramped passage, it made his eyes water. A wretched, putrid stench of soiled meat and sulphur wafted from down below, wrestling his sense of smell into submission.

You could have waved a handful of dung under Oak's nose and he would not have noticed.

After a few sets of uncomfortably spaced stairs, Oak came upon a landing and an open doorway. Ominously, the door itself lay on the floor inside the dungeon. Something or someone had cracked the reinforced piece of wood down the middle with contemptuous strength. A tremor traveled down Oak's spine. Not good. Not good at all. He hoped that contemptuous strength wouldn't turn him and Jehona to paste.

Another set of cramped stairs on their side of the doorway lead further down into the bowels of the earth. "Who in the Hells builds this deep next to a fucking swamp?" Oak whispered, his gaze lingering on the stairs descending to the keep's hidden depths. "Makes no sense to me."

"This place is old. Built by the elves," Jehona replied. The priestess walked past him and peeked inside the dungeon.

"Ah." Of course. Who else would do this, but the knife-eared lunatics?

Oak was just about to recommend clearing the first floor of the dungeon before they moved further down, when a heavy dragging noise reached his ears, accompanied by a soft, wet squelching. Like tenderized muscle being pulled off a bone. The sounds came from down below, from the stairs. The Ears of Amdusias painted a hazy picture to his mind, but he couldn't make heads or tails of it.

Ridges. Spines. Thick, bulbous protrusions and coiling flesh.

From around the corner at the bottom of the stairs leading down to the bowels of the keep, a milky white horror emerged into view. The massive worm had to be half as thick as Oak was tall. It barely fit into the stone passage, ridges and spines dragging against the low ceiling. Cockroaches and centipedes crawled all over the worm's rotting bulk.

Oak shuddered and let out an involuntary gasp. Fuck me, that is a big bastard.

The monster opened a circular mouth filled with needle-like teeth which reminded Oak of Ur-Namma's chewing equipment, and surged up the stairs towards the two of them, hissing up a storm.

Not seeing a better option, Oak tackled Jehona through the doorway into the dungeon beyond.

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