“I know what my powers are, Humphrey. Misery and death. Blood turned black with taint, your body dying around you while you're still alive. You think I want to use that on a person? Maybe someone wants to come after me, but they hear about that day in the arena. Maybe even see the recording. They decide against coming after me because the price of failure is too high. Not some clean, quick kill, but a slow, lingering death. Every enemy that fears me too much to come after me is a person I don't have to use those powers on.”

Humphrey shook his head.

“You’re good with words, Jason. Anything I say, you’ll have an answer for.” He stood up. “That’s why I’m done listening. I watched what you did in that arena. I listened to you taunt them. I’ve never heard a sound so cruel, so inhuman as you laughing at the suffering of others.”

“Humphrey, that was just theatrics.”

“Was it?” Humphrey asked. He walked over to the door and opened it.

“I think you need to take a look inside yourself, Jason. To find out where that was coming from.”

75. Progress

75

Progress

“So,” Clive asked, “the original sanguine horror came from the full creation process? The sacrifice chamber, the alchemy pit, the whole thing?”

As he talked, he enthusiastically gesticulated with a fork, a piece of fried sausage skewered onto the end.

“The whole thing,” Farrah said.

The large suite shared by Farrah, Gary and Rufus included a space with a large dining table. The three of them, plus Jason and Clive, were eating the breakfast Jason had brought upstairs from the inn’s kitchen. Gary was excavating the small hill of sausage, egg and fried vegetables on his own huge plate while Jason and Rufus ate quietly. Farrah and Clive were caught up talking, having barely picked at their food.

“I’d love to see that chamber,” Clive said.

“I’m not going to stop you,” Farrah said, “but it’s way out in the desert, so I’m not going to take you there, either.”

“And the awakening stone came from the horror itself?” Clive asked. “Produced by your looting ability, Jason?”

“That’s right,” Jason said. “You keep waving that sausage around and it’s going to end up on the other side of the room.”

“What?” Clive said, then looked at his fork as if surprised to find it there. He bit off the piece of sausage.

“What I find interesting,” Farrah said, “is that a summoned familiar is created through completely different means than the sanguine horror we killed. Yet, that’s what Jason summoned.”

“A good thing they’re different,” Rufus said. “We wouldn’t want a sanguine horror roaming around at full strength.”