He gripped the tarpaulin that covered the wagon and ripped it dramatically aside to reveal a wheeled cage with thick metal bars. Borik moaned in horror at what he saw slumped inside. Bulging, rubbery flesh squirmed and twisted. Flesh-fungi pulsated, glowing from within as they blinked mutant eyes and slathered with sprouted tongues. Long, floppy tendrils beat weakly against the bars and coiled around them, trailing rubbery digits that bent and flexed revoltingly and left slime trails in their wake. Somewhere in amongst that bulbous mass of flesh and fungi, Borik saw two human eyes staring at him in deranged misery.

Kasmit. That had been the watchman’s name.

Kasmit.

Borik looked away, breathing hard, hanging tightly to the last shreds of his sanity. He felt nothing but pity for the poor thing that had once been a man, trapped in that cage for the grots’ amusement. Yet in that instant Borik also felt a sliver of hope. He could escape this yet. Silently, he thanked Kasmit and readied himself.

‘So now you know what bein’ unhelpful has earned you, it’s time to make it up to me,’ said Skragrott. He turned to his assembled minions and snarled out a series of words. Borik caught the name Nukkit, and cringed back as he saw the grot alchemist shambling over. Nukkit gave him a horrible leer as he cranked a spigot on the side of his alchemy set and let a reeking purple fluid drizzle into a test-tube that he held up to catch it.

‘Troof water,’ said Skragrott brightly. ‘Makes you tell us whatever we want, don’t it? Could’ve just given you this to start off, but… nah, not much fun, izzit? Already lost control of your body, stunty. Brain and gob go next!’

Borik coughed weakly, dribbling spores onto himself, and tried to gasp out some words. As he did so, he relaxed what remained of his left arm and pulled it slowly back towards him. He felt his rubbery flesh tug and give around the metal manacle that held his wrist down. Bright jolts of pain shot up his arm as fleshy toadstools were dragged under the manacle’s metal edge. He stopped. Any further and they’d snap, and for all he knew spray blood or spores of Grungni-knew-what all over the place. He couldn’t give himself away. Not yet.

‘Too late to start talkin’ now, stunty. Ain’t goin’ to earn you anything,’ spat Skragrott, but all the same he stepped forwards alongside Nukkit. The bloated grot leaned in and gripped Borik’s jaw, squishing the rubbery flesh and opening his mouth like a spout. The sensation was a new kind of revulsion, but Borik steeled himself.

Any second now, he would escape. He had them where he wanted them. He remembered again that feeling as he had sat in the torchlight and laughed with his friends, and he let it give him strength.