When we got to the bottom of the spiral staircase, Koyl took one look at the carnage in the worship hall and vomited, nearly dropping his bag of valuables. I also felt nauseous and threw up some blood in my mouth, though my reaction was to the glass in my esophagus that was being aggravated by carrying the high priest. Vaozey, covered in blood, gore, and ash, looked over at us and then beckoned with her free hand. The body beneath her twitched, drawing her attention, and she smashed it in the head with her mace.

“You two have weak stomachs,” she laughed. “We need to go, that fire in the lobby is going to be out any second.”

“Have you checked for guards?” I asked.

“What’s in the bags?” Vaozey asked back.

“High priest,” I said, jostling my loot. Koyl, who still looked queasy, rattled the contents of his own bag but said nothing.

“Bit small,” Vaozey remarked.

“He’s alive, but I’ve removed some useless parts from him,” I replied. “We’ll need to interrogate him somewhere. I assume you have an appropriate location where we can do so?” Even though I couldn’t see her mouth, I knew Vaozey was grinning by the tension in her upper cheeks.

“Oh definitely,” she cackled. “Let’s get down into the tunnels first, we can talk later.”

After wading through the mess of corpses in the worship hall and nearly slipping on blood numerous times, we entered the right-side hallway back to the lobby, which itself had a few bodies in it. Unlike the ones in the worship hall, the burns on the bodies in the hallway were more severe, with one human’s head having been cooked so thoroughly that it was nothing but a skull. Koyl groaned quietly at the sight, but Vaozey didn’t seem to notice or care.

The lobby was already black to start with, but it lacked almost all of its clean shine when we entered. While the exit doors were somehow still intact, held shut by the crossbow that had been fused to its handles by the heat, nearly everything else was destroyed. Around fifteen charred human corpses sat around, with two having died attempting to pull on the door to open it. Vaozey unceremoniously pried the bodies near the door away from it then slammed the crossbow with her boot until it snapped into pieces, unbarring our exit.

This is wrong, I thought as we moved out of the temple. The streets had been sparsely populated when we arrived, but as we made out way to the edge of the temple’s lot I didn’t see a single human walking any of the visible footpaths. My instincts told me that we were about to be ambushed, but every window was also closed and as we reached the entrance to the sewers, nobody came to stop us. What is going on? I wondered, There is absolutely no way this happened unintentionally. Vaozey went down first, then Koyl followed, snapping his legs on impact. I closed the grate behind us and dropped down last.

“Follow me,” Vaozey ordered, and I lit up the way with magic so we could see. I began walking behind her, then noticed that a set of footsteps was missing. Koyl hadn’t budged since his legs healed, and was staring off into the darkness in the opposite direction that we were moving in.

“Koyl,” I called out. A shudder ran through his whole body, then he turned around and looked at me, wild-eyed.

“Yuwniht?” he asked. He’s having some kind of dissociative episode again, I sighed.

“Follow us to Vaozey’s hideout,” I told him.

“R-right,” Koyl stuttered, pulling the bag of valuables tighter over his shoulder and jogging to catch up. I turned back around and Vaozey made eye contact with me, her face telling me exactly what she wanted to say even though half of it was obscured.

“Where did your mask go?” Vaozey asked.

“Huh?” Koyl grunted. “Oh, uh, I was having trouble breathing in it. Nobody saw me, it’s fine.” Koyl reached into his pocket and pulled out the mask, showing it to Vaozey.

“Keep it,” Vaozey sighed. “It’s your ass either way. I hope you’re right.”

“How far are we going?” I asked.

“How long do you want to talk to that npoyt ngaazmayjh before I bash his skull in?” Vaozey asked back. It might take a day or two to get anything useful, I thought, I’ll have to get a bit creative with this. We might not have the time to do a proper interrogation. At a minimum, I’ll see if I can get him to forge identification for Koyl.

“Long enough,” I replied. “Ideally we should have somewhere to store him indefinitely.”

“Probably half an hour of walking then,” Vaozey replied. “I have a place you can keep him.”

Forty minutes later we reached our destination, and my unease had reached a peak. There wasn’t any street noise at all until we got to the slums, I thought, no commotion, no anything. It’s like they just pulled everyone off the streets including the guards. Why? Vaozey punched a nearby wall, knocking some bricks inward and revealing a hidden chamber. I made sure the high priest was still unconscious, then put my bag down and started to help her. Before long, we revealed a hidden door and pulled it open.

In the purple glow of my magic, the torture room behind the wall looked almost clinical. A small table with chains for holding a prisoner, a wall-mounted tray with metal tools, an unlit lantern on the ceiling, and smooth clay walls gave the impression of a medical office, though it likely wasn’t intentional. Vaozey brushed past me, pulling out her sparker and lighting the lantern, while Koyl was frozen in place behind me.

“Koyl,” I said sternly, “you should start counting the value of what you took from the temple.” Koyl blinked a few times, then nodded in acknowledgment and sat down some distance from the torture room’s door, unwrapping his ill-gotten gains. Going to have to keep an eye on him, I thought as I walked inside and let my magic die out.

“What the seyt is his issue?” Vaozey muttered.

“Slow-healing mental trauma,” I replied quietly. “He was tortured and partially cannibalized recently, and an overdose of znahdeyvtih seems to have worsened his functioning.” I didn’t hide my frustration with Koyl’s behavior and limitations, but Vaozey’s expression softened, much to my surprise.

“A Rehvite did that to him?” she asked.

“I’m not sure,” I replied. “The one who did was taking money from them, but I don’t know if he was a member or not.” I hoisted the bag up to the table and unwrapped it, leaving the unconscious form of the high priest laying flat on the wood. Vaozey wasted no time in chaining the high priest down by his forehead, chest, and belly to the table, securing him from any form of escape. Another wave of nausea passed over me, and I spat up blood and glass onto the ground. I’m going to need to figure out a way to fix this, I thought, food first though, I’m starving.

“You alright?” Vaozey asked.

“The glass shards that warrior used are still stuck inside me,” I replied. “I might need to take some time to get them out.”

“You’ve got time before he wakes up,” Vaozey suggested, gesturing to the high priest. “How hard did you hit him?”

“I punched him full force, then threw him at a wall headfirst to make sure he was unconscious,” I replied, drawing a grim chuckle from her.

“He’ll probably be out for a few hours then,” Vaozey said. “If you need some food, you should take a left out of this room and leave through the first grate. That’ll put you near that eatery we met at.” I had figured we were nearby, but having Vaozey’s confirmation helped me to visualize exactly where I was with respect to the upper streets. A loud clanging drew both of our attention back to Koyl, who was on his feet and had apparently thrown a piece of his loot in anger.

“What’s going on?” I asked, walking out to meet him.

“Seytoydh worthless,” Koyl hissed, before ripping out another item from his bag. The statue’s gold color was visible even in the low ambient light, which only further confused me.

“Why would you throw that away?” I asked, catching his arm before he could complete the throw. Koyl turned and glared at me, then pulled his arm free.

“See this?” he seethed, pointing to a section on the statue. I made a small orb of light, then fiddled with it until the emission spectrum was closer to white. The statue was scuffed, and under the scuff mark the metal was a dull gray. “It’s wawjhjhaayjh lead,” Koyl swore. “These are just plated with gold, like coins. Not even worth trying to sell.” Electroplated, I thought, then some pieces snapped together in my mind. That’s how they were able to make the fake coins, I realized, they were using electric magic and a gold solution to plate them. Actually, if this is lead, they’d need a few intermediate steps as well. Very sophisticated.

“Where did you think you were going to sell those anyway?” Vaozey asked, standing just behind me. I put my light out because I was unsure of how much power it would use over a long time, and looked back at her. “Nobody in the slums would take the risk, and the fences have long since been thrown out of the city or killed. Were you planning to melt them down?”

“Gods be damned,” Koyl muttered. His shoulders slumped, and he let the bag of goods crumple to the ground. “I got… I don’t know, some coins.”

“How much?” I asked.

“Maybe another two hundred ngoywngeyt,” Koyl murmured. “Not enough to leave. We’re stuck here, just like before. All that... for nothing.” Koyl’s legs gave out from under him and he fell to his knees. Then, after taking a few breaths, he screamed out in frustration and punched the stone floor, breaking his hand. That scream was almost certainly audible on street level, I thought as it echoed down the tunnel.

“Stop making so much seytoydh noise before something unpleasant happens to you,” Vaozey warned, lifting Koyl up by the shoulders and shoving him into the nearby wall.

“Like what?” Koyl taunted. “You’ll kill me? Were all those people back there not enough for you tonight? Most of them didn't even fight back! Do you think I couldn't tell you enjoyed it, you gods-damned zaeternaaf?” I wasn't entirely sure of the meaning of the word Koyl used, but Vaozey didn’t like it. She punched him in the face, then tore her helmet off and threw it into the torture room.

“Zaeternaaf?” she ranted, barely containing the volume of her voice. “You say that to me? Look at my seytoydh face you shehpyeydhway! Do you see what they did to me? Do you want to see what the rest of me looks like? You think it’ll get your jhoyt hard when you look at the burnt meat I’ve got under this armor? Do you think I like waking up every morning looking like this?” With every verbal jab, Vaozey stomped closer to Koyl.

“You killed at least a hundred people because you’re pissed off that they made you ugly?” Koyl yelled back, getting to his feet and bristling with anger. “You’re gods-damned right you’re a seytoydh zaeternaaf. I've seen people enjoy sex less than you enjoyed killing those people. I saw what I thought was a monster months ago, but you make him look tame by comparison.”

“You don’t even know what a monster is,” Vaozey sneered. “I was killing monsters.”

“You really believe that being burned makes you righteous?” Koyl retorted. Even though I couldn't see her face from where I was standing, I still saw Vaozey snap from the jolt that went through her body.

“I was lucky to just be burned!” Vaozey roared, now having forgotten about noise entirely. “This is what lucky looks like! I got to walk away alive! Those who weren't lucky didn't! You think I was killing people back there? Don’t make me seytoydh laugh. You look at me like I’m the monster for doing something about them, but you haven’t seen what they did to us. The things they do now are nothing compared to what they did when they took over this city years ago! It doesn't even compare!”

“That doesn’t make the mass murder of innocents right!” Koyl yelled.

“IT MAKES IT FAIR!” Vaozey screamed back, so loudly that I heard her vocal cords tear from the volume. “You don’t seytoydh know anything you rich little saaweym. A hundred people? They killed twenty times that amount over the last five years just in Owsahlk. We aren't even close to even, not yet. Where's the outrage for how they treat people like me? You only feel bad for them because your family’s hands are even bloodier than theirs, so you can relate. You think I didn’t ask around about you, Zae’ey’yaob? You aren’t exactly low prof-” Koyl interrupted Vaozey with a slap that was hard enough to stagger her. Did he use force magic by accident? I wondered.

“Shut your seytoydh mouth about my family,” Koyl growled. There was complete silence for a few seconds as the pair stared each other down. “I’m done with this,” Koyl declared angrily, then he stormed past Vaozey and me into the tunnels.

“Where are you going?” I called out after him.

“You’re okay with this?” Koyl snapped, turning back to face me. The expression he wore displayed more anger than I had ever seen from him.

“This is still our best option for leaving Owsahlk,” I replied in an even tone. “The morality of the situation is irrelevant.”

“Of course you don’t get it,” Koyl hissed. “I should have expected that from you. You did the same thing in Vehrehr, though at least those people deserved it, mostly.” I didn't know what to think of that statement.

“Are you leaving the valuables here?” I asked, gesturing to the bag on the ground.

“Sort them yourself,” Koyl replied. “I’m taking a walk.”

“You won’t be able to see anything,” I reminded him. “You should remain here, otherwise you risk falling in. The streets above may have guards as well.”

“I don’t give a shit,” Koyl replied, turning and walking off into the darkness. I considered going after him but opted not to. He’s not rational, I reminded myself, he’s been traumatized by his experiences and is in a state of partial psychosis. If I subdue him, it might make him less cooperative, and I need him or another Luwahriy to use the fake identification. The best course of action is to complete the interrogation, figure out how much money is left in the sack of valuables, and lay low until I know exactly how much heat this raid attracted.

“Let him go,” Vaozey said, breaking the silence and echoing my conclusion. “You did good work tonight.”

“You would have died if I hadn’t fought that warrior for you,” I replied, turning back to her. “He was a technical fighter with a wide variety of magic techniques. Assuming he had any creativity your armor would have been useless. If you plan to do this again in the future, I would advise that you find some non-magical method of disabling similar fighters before combat begins, or avoid them altogether.”

“Oh, is that your professional opinion?” Vaozey asked snarkily.

“It is,” I replied, and my stomach growled. “Keep an eye on the priest, I need to get food. If he wakes up, don’t kill him.”

“Get me some as well,” Vaozey requested.

“You’ll be paying me for whatever it costs,” I told her. “What do you want?”

“Just get me whatever you’re having,” Vaozey replied, in the warmest tone I had ever heard her use. “After the amount of help you gave me tonight, I’ll give you anything you want.”