CHAPTER EIGHTEEN - THE BUTCHER

Alister's condition kept worsening. Still, Eyes' intervention had brought the child some relief. It had led Krazoc to decide the threat wouldn't come from within, and had opened a window for him to sleep at length. He could feel his strength beginning to return.

When the grating screech of the heavy iron door cut through the cell's damp darkness like a knife, Krazoc was already awake.

The torchlight leaking in lit the masked faces of three Summit Wardens, hooked staves on their shoulders and rusted swords at their belts. The largest of them rapped his hooked staff against the stone floor and stepped toward Krazoc.

"Get up, freak," the guard snarled. "Time to pay for that moldy soup you've been lying around drinking for days. The Leaders say we need the muscle."

Krazoc didn't move. His eyes were on Alister, asleep on the floor. He didn't want to leave the child here alone.

One of the guards, angered by this silent refusal, swung his hooked staff at the giant's shoulder. The hook tore across Krazoc's flesh, but not the faintest flicker of pain showed on the giant's face.

He only fixed his eyes on the guard and slowly drew the thick chains on his arms taut. The deep, animal growl that echoed through the cell made the guards step back for an instant. This man might be in chains, but the bottomless darkness in his eyes promised a death not even chains could hold back.

The guards' leader quickly realized he wouldn't budge this giant by brute force. His eyes slid to the child lying in front of Krazoc. With a filthy grin he drew his sword from its sheath and leveled the point straight at Alister.

"Don't make this difficult," the guard said, his voice cold and mocking. "If you don't walk out that door on your own two feet, I'll start carving the boy."

Krazoc's breath knotted in his throat. The pure rage boiling across the blank white expanse within him was violent enough to tear his own muscles apart. He could crush the guard's skull in seconds.

But the child was asleep, unprotected. And he didn't know how many armed men were outside. He couldn't take the risk.

Swallowing the rage inside him like poison, Krazoc slowly rose to his feet.

The guard unlocked the chains binding Krazoc to the wall. The clatter of the iron rings falling to the stone floor rang strangely loud in the silence of the cell.

Krazoc worked his wrists for a moment. He felt the strange lightness of a weight he had carried for years suddenly lifted. It wasn't quite lightness. It was only the absence of a weight that wasn't his own.

But his feet didn't carry him straight to the door. For a moment—just a moment—he turned his head back. He looked at the small silhouette of the child sleeping in the dark.

Leaving him here felt like loading onto his back a chain he had never carried before.

Then he walked with heavy steps toward the cell door. With every step, the sound of the small breaths of the child he was leaving behind grew louder in his mind.

The heavy iron door slammed shut with a great clamor, burying the sleeping child inside and the Attivs who watched them leave in silence from the darkness.

The Summit Wardens took Krazoc down into the mines they had carved into the depths of the mountain, where even breathing seared the lungs.

The inside of the mine was like a depiction of hell. Hundreds of Attivs, under the crack of whips, hauled enormous rocks and struggled to dig Putridglass out of the earth. The heavy chains around their necks had cut into their flesh.

Under the lash, Krazoc was chained to the very front of an enormous rock wagon. His muscles, trying to recover, ached. Gritting his teeth, he began to haul the wagon with his superhuman strength.

As he worked, his eyes were on the Attivs around him. Their skin was thin. The hands and arms that did the work trembled. They were being exploited to the marrow.

Toward midday, in the tunnel right beside them, an old Attiv carrying stones—its skin gone almost entirely grey—collapsed where it stood. Its body shook violently, and a whistling sound came from its lungs. The creature was in its final moments.

The guard over them, with an indifferent air, whistled toward the mouth of the tunnel and called someone over. "Hey! Herbalist! Get over here, one of 'em's going to waste!"

When the Herbalist reached the Attiv's side, there was no pity or urgency on his face. To him this was no different from any dull, routine moment of his shift in the mine.

He had already made his decision the moment he saw the Attiv lying on the ground. Saving it would cost too much.

From inside his robe he drew out several empty _Putridglass_—thick-walled, covered in runes. He crouched beside it. He spoke no healing spell. With his bare hand, he touched the neck of the creature dying on the ground.

That single touch, all that was needed to begin the spell, was enough.

Krazoc's eyes went wide as saucers. The Attiv's last struggle to cling to life began to flow like energy through the Herbalist's fingertips, straight into the crystal in his hand.

There was no remorse on the Herbalist's face. He exerted no effort at all. It was as ordinary, mechanical, and soulless as wringing the last juice from a fruit already going dry.

The Essence of Being had been drawn out so fast that the Attiv's body reacted within seconds. Its already-weak muscles withered, its skin cracked. The creature collapsed onto the stone floor, reduced to a lifeless, grey husk.

Not its soul. Its very existence had been, in the truest sense, drained away.

"Throw the husk to the hounds," the Herbalist muttered, tucking the now-full crystals into the pouch at his belt.

Just as he was about to turn and leave, his eye caught on an Attiv trembling in the corner of the mine. A young, delicately built girl who, unlike the others, hadn't yet lost her physical form.

A cold, calculating glint appeared in the healer's eyes. He turned to the guard beside him and pointed at the young girl.

"Pull that girl off the work. Have her washed and taken to the Leader's workshop. He's waiting to start a new piece."

The guard grinned. Jangling the keys at his belt, he walked toward the girl.

Hauling the heavy wagon, Krazoc faltered and strained to listen. Behind him, the Herbalist was speaking in an easy tone, as though discussing a work of art:

"The order the bones break in matters. He shouldn't get carried away and start with the hip like last time. Fingers first. It takes hours, but it comes out clean."

The guard shrugged. "What makes you think Morrow's going to let me tell him anything?"

"You have to tell him," the Herbalist said. "I'm not even counting the cost of the Essence he burns through on the procedure. The last time he got too eager, instead of selling the resulting product to a Noble as a mistress, we had to sell it to a back-alley pimp for half price. We're talking about coin out of your pocket too, here."

The guard took the young Attiv girl by the arm. The girl didn't resist. As someone who had been here for years, she had learned alongside her own kind—resisting only made it last longer. As she was led away, Krazoc studied his surroundings, looking at the other Attivs working in the mine. Not one of them raised its head. Her absence was merely one less creature to pull a wagon, one fewer hand to gather Putridglass.

Krazoc squeezed the chains in his massive hands so hard that the iron links crumpled and lost their shape. He ground his teeth.

The desire to make everyone inside this mountain suffer—to crush the skull of that pervert they called "the Leader" with his bare hands—blazed up within him and swelled into a vast inferno.

This diseased species called humanity had rotted inside the very magic it had created. The world's monsters were not in the forests—they were inside these robes and this armor.

The ones in the cages, the ones laboring in the mine, the young girl being led away. He could take the place of every one of them. He could protect them all.

Then, in another corner of his mind, the sound of a small breath made itself heard. Waiting for him, in the cell, in the dark.

Krazoc buried this idea of rescue deep inside himself, somewhere far from the child's breath. For now. Just for now.

After hours of grueling torment, sweat, and stone dust, Krazoc was brought back, exhausted and full of fury, to the lower level where the dungeons were.

As he walked toward his cell, a heavy lump sat in his stomach. After what he had seen in the mine, he was scared to death that these scavengers had done something to Alister.

If so much as a single hair on that child's head had been harmed, he would bring this mountain down on their heads, no matter what happened to his own body.

The lock of the heavy iron door rattled open. When the guards shoved him inside, Krazoc stopped where he stood.

The inside of the cell was pitch black. As his eyes slowly adjusted to the gloom, he held his breath and looked at the cold corner where the child always lay.

And the sight before him nailed him to the spot.

Alister was not alone on that cold stone.

That frail, grey-skinned Eyes had curled up right across from the child. Alister's face was turned toward Eyes' face. The child's small, feverish body had nestled against the Attiv's grey, cool form.

Two broken souls, taking refuge in each other in defiance of all the darkness of this merciless world, slept in peace. Eyes' thin, long arm was draped over the child like a protective shield.

Careful not to let his chains make a sound, Krazoc slowly leaned his back against the wall and sank down where he was. Once the guards had made sure the chains were secure, they locked them and left.

In the very heart of the most savage, most corrupt hole in the world. In a world of mages, murderers, and deviants.

Once again, in this silent and perfect tableau, Krazoc saw in whom humanity had truly remained.