“Bonnie, how much stuff do you actually have back there?” Nick asked, peering around her shoulder as he tried to get a good look at her loot satchel.

“Mercenaries are always prepared,” Bonnie replied. She grinned from ear to ear as she closed up her bag, looking rather proud of the junk in her trunk.

“Is that why you needed money so bad when we met?” Nick asked.

“Well . . . maybe . . . umm . . . It’s not exactly that I need money . . . It’s that I wanted to earn it. The right way!” She rested the saw up against Jason’s right thigh. “A real woman doesn’t stay satisfied with what’s given to her when she leaves the nest.” And then she began sawing. Jason had been sobbing, pleading with her to stop, but his furtive appeals instantly turned into screams that were loud enough to drown out anything anyone might have said.

“GOD, NO!!!” he screamed as Bonnie pulled the saw back and forth, ripping and tearing through his flesh. “STOOO— STOOOPP!! I’ll do whatever you say! I’ll never step out of line again, Human! Just stop! Stop . . . Please! I swear! I swear!” His voice choked off then as his throat constricted, no longer able to scream around the pain. Blood poured out of his thigh like a faucet with a broken head, shooting off in all directions and coating everything around him.

“To think, this new monster of yours is only going to cost you a leg, not an arm and a leg,” Nick said. “Although I have to admit that I’m having a little trouble watching this.”

“Yeah,” Lucas agreed, nodding. He steeled his resolve as he thought of the many more gruesome scenarios he’d have to witness as he made his way up in the game as a villain. There was no way he could gain power without facing these types of scenes.

“Oh . . .” Bonnie stood up as she finished her work, the sobbing Dwarf now barely conscious enough to whimper. “I’d like to think he could feel it. After bragging about what he did to that poor woman? I’d like to think that anyone so vile would know exactly what I just did to him.” She tossed Lucas the severed leg that was still slowly draining itself of blood.

“Here you go,” Lucas said, taking the leg Bonnie had handed him and then lobbing it so that it landed right in front of the spider’s mouth. “Consider it a token of our goodwill.”