THE BASEMENT

"MOTHERFUCKER!" she screamed.

At the same time, she lashed out at the bowl with her foot, sending it flying towards the wall and spilling the rest of its contents. It was the last thing on her mind though, as she shoved her fingers down her throat. She had just eaten human soup! The mere thought of it had her shoving deeper to expel everything she had swallowed.

What kind of fucked up piece of shit would do this? the thought crossed her as she reached into her throat.

No matter how deeply she reached, there was no gag, no reaction from her gullet; the consumed food remained in her stomach. Seeing it was no use, she retracted her fingers. Her eyes strained and her vision blurred on the edges, heat emerged from her chest and rose to her throat.

"I'M GONNA KILL THAT BITCH!" she declared.

She stomped over to the door, raised her foot and kicked. The act sent the door clean off its hinges, flying into the common room and knocking over one of the tables. Both sets of wooden furniture hit that floor with repeated thuds that echoed continuously across the room; yet, there was no reaction from the surroundings. In fact, there was not a person in the sight. The common room had been deserted.

Sage gave this fact a fleeting thought before her strained eyes flew to the counter; to the door behind it.

"OLD BITCH!" she shouted.

Her voice rang around the room, but no one responded. Contrary to when she had previously been in here, the place was empty. The table where the four mercenary morons had sat appeared recently deserted. Bread loafs and still steaming soup bowls rested atop half touched; while the chairs had been pushed out without being moved back in, one of which had tilted over. The scene presented before her was of a hasty haphazard departure.

The door behind the counter remained shut. Even after well over half a minute passed, there was not a single sound apart from her and the armour-clad knight shuffling into the room. 

After moments of waiting and not receiving a response, Sage felt the blaze in her chest intensify. Red seeped into the blurred corners of her perception. Like a torrent, it rapidly spread to other parts of her vision. Within seconds, it had engulfed the entirety of her sight; the scenery in front of her was now presented through a crimson curtain.

Expelling air forcefully out her nose, she raised her hand and cast [Telekinesis]. Then, with her mind, she reached out and grasped the counter. Violently flinging her hand to the side, she exerted her influence on it, tearing it cleanly from the floor. The result saw the counter flung to the side, crashing through the inn wall and landing somewhere she could not give a fuck about.

Stomping over to the door once guarded by the counter, she raised her foot and kicked it too. This time, her foot made contact higher than before. Instead of the door flying off its hinges, it simply fell backwards, slamming into the floor of the previously barred room.

The moment the door yielded, a squeak came from the new room. She ignored it and focused on the new setting. A fireplace with a pot hanging over it; another fireplace enclosed by stone, clearly a blast oven; an open brown sack in the corner with flour spilling out; an assortment of pots hanging from the wall; a table on the side; a cleaver and cutting-board on the table. This was a kitchen, a much smaller room than the one she had just left.

The scarlet veil's colour had faded by a fair bit and she was able to view everything almost as clearly as she usually did. Her eyes lingered on the bloodied cleaver on the cutting-board. Next to it lay a cylindrical chunk of meat; clearly a human forearm missing its wrist and everything below. The sight of it had curtain regaining its shade almost instantly.

"Dear Light have mercy!" Isaac's voice came from behind her, sounding horrified.

Whatever he must be feeling at the sight of the scene, she did not give a single fuck. Her eyes flew to the source of the earlier squeak, picking out the half-orc girl cowering in the corner. Seeing the child intensified the tension in Sage's face. Again, she cast [Telekinesis]. This time, she reached for the girl, grabbed her by the neck and dragged her over to where she stood.

"WHERE IS SHE!" she demanded.

The girl did not reply, choosing instead to claw fruitlessly at the invisible force clutching her throat. She gagged and struggled, the colour of her face darkening as blood was cut from her head.

"She can't answer if you're choking her!"

Of course that annoying statement came from the bastard knight. Even more infuriating was the fact that he was right. She needed the little troll if she wanted to find the hag sooner rather than later. So, with immense effort, she reined herself- and subsequently the red- in. Then she pursed her lips and let the child go. 

After being released, the girl crumbled to the floor rather noisily. The impact likely hurt, but Sage usually was not one to give a damn; now, she had even less cause to do so. She struggled to keep the fire contained as she watched the child crouch into a foetal position and burst into whimpering sobs. The sight caused her to grunt as she stomped hard on the floor near the girl, denting the boards in the process.

"Tell me where she's hiding or I'll kill you!" she was not going to mince words, especially with a child.

However, Sir Holier-Than-Thou stepped onto the other side of the couching girl with a confrontative stare.

"You want to kill her?" he began. "She's a child!"

"Oh get off it Isaac!" she was not having his antics. "Look around you; THE LITTLE SHIT CLEARLY KNEW WHAT SHE WAS FEEDING ME!"

"She is a child," he repeated vehemently. "There is no way she willingly did it. Clearly, she was forced by her great-great grandmother."

If the bastard had more to add, she was not interested in hearing it. Before he could open his mouth and say anything else, she held up her hand.

"I fucking swear Isaac; if you say anything more defending this little scamp, I will make you drive your sword into her chest!" 

That made him shut up, allowing her to interrogate the half-orc child. She began by kicking her in the ribs; soft enough to not break them, but hard enough that it hurt. The impact caused a gasp to escape the girl's mouth in a brief respite from her sobs.

"Listen here you little shit! I'm only gonna ask this once. Tell me where your rotten crone of a grandmother is if you don't want to experience far worse pain than that kick," she threatened. "Be quick before I lose my patience!"

Hearing this, the child hurriedly used her shaky arms to push herself into sitting position. Her face was wet with tears while the ground beneath her continuously pooled with another liquid. The girl lifted a trembling hand and pointed to the door near the hanging pots. It was one of three- now two- doors in the kitchen; this one appeared to be smaller than the other two.

"I-i-it's the l-l-larder," the girl managed to croak out among sniffs. "There's a t-trap door. L-l-leads to the b-basement. Gran-ma…" 

The girl attempted to continue, but it was as if the wind had been blown from her sails. No more words came out of her mouth no matter how hard she tried. It didn't matter to Sage though; she had heard what she wanted to.

"Nyx!" she called, watching the growing terror on the girl's face as words continuously failed her. 

Not a moment passed before the cat popped out of her shadow.

"Watch her," she ordered, pointing at the girl. "If she moves from the spot, rip her to shreds!"

"Understood master," the familiar replied, sounding a little too eager.

He adopted the Umbral Felis form and began circling the girl, resulting in the sniffs and whimpers becoming louder.

Sage next turned to Isaac, who appeared to have something he wanted to say even though he kept his mouth shut.

"Follow me," she ordered. "You're gonna help me tear that crone bitch a new one."

Upon hearing her proclamation, the knight made a side glance at the meat chunk on the table before turning back to face her, his expression now one of disgust and hardened determination. The order she had just given did not conflict with his pretentious morals it seemed.

She walked over to the door pointed out by the girl and shoved it open, revealing a tight-fit room with hanging meat. Dismembered arms, legs, torsos and even disembodied heads; all hung from the lines of the food closet. Most were fresh, some reeked an unpleasant odour; a miniscule amount had been cut into strips and hung to dry.

If Sage had a working alimentary canal- which she fervently wished for at the moment- she would have spilled the contents of her stomach; most eagerly so. Unfortunately, no matter how much she scrounged up her face, the only thing that tried to crawl up her throat was the anger she was suppressing.

"Utter barbarism!" she heard Isaac exclaim, the hint of a sneer in his tone. "This horrendous act cannot go unpunished."

Sage did not give a shit about punishment! Looking at the trap door that likely led to the crone, she affirmed her own intentions. First, she would pummel that warty bitch within an inch of her life, then she would use the cleaver in the kitchen to slowly saw off her limbs and feed them to her. After that, she would hang her over a cooking fire in the open or nail her ugly form to a tree for wild beasts to find. It was a shame that beasts were not smart enough to intentionally prolong the suffering of their prey. After being fed human soup, the only payback that would satisfy her was one that caused the crone suffering beyond imagination.

You're not leaving here alive! she swore through gritted teeth.

To add substance to this promise, she channelled [Space Lock] and released it into the surroundings. Any chance the crone had of escaping; she would make sure to cut it off.

Like the previous times, she did not try to open the trapdoor but stomped on it. Unfortunately, this door was more durable than the previous ones and it managed to withstand her boot. She tried a few more times but the door remained sturdy. With a sigh, she stepped to the side and indicated Isaac give it a try. The bastard sent the trapdoor flying down the basement flight on his first attempt.

After realising she was pouting and wiping it from her face, she rushed down the stairs.

The room she entered was larger than the kitchen but slightly smaller than the common room. Torches hung on the wall to aid the eyes in the darkness, something which was of no consequence to her. Light or no light, she could see the cages around the room clearly.

Within these cages were naked bodies of all sorts; young and old, large and small, mutilated and whole. The one thing these bodies all had in common was the numerous irregular wounds across them. Some of the wounds were akin to light scratches, while others ran so deep that they exposed bone. The ground beneath where these bodies hung had adopted crimson as its shade. Another thing the hanging bodies had in common was that they had been bled out; not a one of them appeared to be alive.

Except for four of them. Unlike the others, they hung outside the cages. Sage recognised their naked forms as belonging to the arsehole mercenaries from earlier. They were unconscious and, despite being tied up and left to hang from a hook, relatively unharmed. 

At least it was so for the three males.

The muscular woman had been strung up by her hands until her feet no longer touched the ground. Two deep gashes and several scratches had been carved into her torso, leaking streams of blood that gave the ground a new coat of red. 

Another difference between her and her companions was that she still maintained consciousness, though- from her quiet moans- it did not appear she would remain so for long. Her weak voice quivered dryly, a sign her vocal cords had been overused. The time since Sage entered the inn did not amount to more than a couple hours. In that time, the muscular woman had been likely tortured until she exhausted her voice. Her screams, which should have been audible from several hundred metres, had completely escaped Sage. Likely, the basement had been designed to keep any sound emerging inside from escaping.

Different from the stern façade the mercenary had shown topside, now her face carried despair and anguish. Sage descending the stairs must have been heard by her because, upon reaching the base, the woman turned to face her; revealing one gouged out eye and a missing nose. Tears streamed down her face as she opened her mouth- which was missing most of its teeth- and mouthed a single word, a desperate hope settling into her eyes.

Help.

The person in front of the woman also turned to face Sage with her hideous features. One thing that was different from the previous time, was that one of her hands had grown claws; most definitely the one the crone used to torture her prey. The fresh blood of her current victim dripped from it to the ground, though some of it she licked off as she turned to face Sage.

"Which maestro worked on ye girl?" she asked. Her question was likely about the scars; her tone carried a liveliness it had lacked back in the common room. However, nonchalance fled after swiping a look at Isaac. "I see, the two o' ye aint normal. Me soup was supposed to knock ye out but no wonder it failed. And that useless girl let ye pass into me basement. Doesn' matter anyway. Two o' ye be here now. I'll catch ye and test what ye are. Might compare yer taste to a human's too."

She laughed after finishing the last sentence; the kind of cackle a witch from a bad cartoon would have.

The temperature in Sage's vicinity dropped as she heard the knight's profuse intake and expulsion of breath; he was undeniably incensed by the scene in the basement. She, on the other hand, found herself not as triggered about the scene. Disgusted? Yes. But it was far from the strongest emotion she was experiencing at the moment.

The sight of the crone who had concocted the sick idea of feeding her guests human flesh standing nonchalantly in front of her loosen all restrictions she had imposed on herself. The blaze she had kept down was left to rage. The crimson veil fell back over her eyes in all its majesty. She charged up a spell while shouting at the top of her lungs.

"DIE YOU ROTTEN CUNT!"