This is horrible… they all look so… well… out of it. I prodded one of them in the face several times and he didn’t even flinch.

  Dwynfel: “Umm… isn’t opium illegal?”

  Chloe: “Very much so.”

  Damecus: “As is felling a protected tree.”

  Chloe: “Right, okay. I’m afraid I have to get properly involved now.”

  Dwynfel: “Huh?”

  Chloe started walking around the room, checking the faces of each of the individuals that were strewn about the place.

  Dwynfel: “Chloe, what do you mean?”

  Chloe: “I’ve been following along to help out a friend. Theft of a tree is hardly a priority in the eyes of the law. This however, this is something that I am bound to investigate in my capacity as a knight.”

  Damecus: “Why do you check these people? They will clearly be unresponsive for some time yet.”

  Chloe: “There has been an increase in missing persons lately. I’m seeing if any of these people match the descriptions in the reports.”

  Oh gods… more missing person reports. It better not be more bloody crocodiles.

  Dwynfel: “And?”

  Chloe: “They don’t. A few opium addicts wouldn’t account for all of them, but I was hoping to at least cross a couple off the list, damn it.”

  Dwynfel: “What do we do now?”

  Damecus: “We wait for the scum in charge of this place to return, then we make them to tell us who their boss is.”

  Dwynfel: “What makes you assume they have a boss?”

  Damecus: “They aren’t going out of their way to decorate this shit hole with quality furniture, are they?”

  Dwynfel: “Fair point.”

  Chloe: “Look, Damecus. Non-violent approach first, please. I’m a knight, I can’t be seen to be condoning a punch first and ask questions later attitude. And right now, the priority is to check this house properly. We need to find out if they are stashing the opium here or if they keep it elsewhere and bring it in in dribs and drabs for the addicts.”

  Damecus: “I care not about the opium.”

  Chloe: “The people you wish to interrogate aren’t here at the moment, so make yourself useful.”

  Damecus grunted in disapproval, but conceded. We searched the place for any signs of hiding places, hallow walls, secret passages, shifting bookshelves and other suspicious stereotypes. It wasn’t too long before we found a trapdoor under a rug in the kitchen.

  Chloe: “A secret basement… yeah… that would be a pretty sound place to stash things.”

  We walked down the steps into what was a pretty long corridor with two doors on either side. The first two rooms were just empty. The third door that we checked did indeed contain opium… a genuinely massive quantity of opium.

  Chloe: “Boys, we ain’t dealin’ with some low-level dealers here. Obtaining this much opium for distribution, that costs way more gold than any of us could even dream of. This shit is organised. We need to tred carefully.”

  Damecus: “Or we just kill them all.”

  Chloe: “Damecus, non-violent approach, remember. These aren’t monsters, they are people. We need to put them on trial before we kill them.”

  It wasn’t until we checked the final room that we truly realised what we were dealing with. Inside was a series of large cages, two of which were occupied. Within those cages were women… young women… late teens if I were to guess. They were completely naked, they were battered, bruised, and dirty. They had collars around their necks and they both looked like they had given up on life a long time ago. They didn’t even react when we entered the room.

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  Damecus: “Still think these people are not monsters?”

  Dwynfel: “We need to free them.”

  Damecus & Chloe: “No.”

  Dwynfel: “What? We need to free them before whoever owns this place gets back.”

  Chloe walked over to the cages to get as good a look at the women’s faces as she could,

  Chloe: “We free them and these arseholes know that they have been discovered. They’ll never lead us to their bosses. We’ll save two, but condemn others to the same fate.”

  Dwynfel: “We can’t just leave them. Look at them… they’re traumatised.”

  Chloe: “We won’t. We stay… we watch… we observe the people minding this place. They will report to their bosses eventually. When they do, we take the whole organisation down. That way we save these girls and we stop these fucks from doing this to any other girls.”

  Damecus: “That will take too long. And those at the top will evade your fair trial with their gold.”

  He has a point… the people in charge of these things rarely seem to be the ones who end up punished for them.

  Chloe: “And you have a better idea?”

  Damecus: “We get the names of the higher ups from the people here, we kill them, we kill the higher ups, everyone wins.”

  Chloe: “Non-violence first, Damecus. We gather evidence, we convict, then we can kill them.”

  Dwynfel: “If you just plan to kill them all, Damecus. Then why do you object to me freeing these girls.”

  Damecus: “Easier to kill them if they don’t see it coming.”

  Chloe: “Damecus, you are not killing anybody in this house, understand?”

  Damecus rolled his eyes and gave Chloe a disapproving look.

  Damecus: “Fine, I will not kill anybody in this house. But your way will still take too long. I have a better plan.”

  Chloe: “And that would be?”

  Damecus: “I will explain upstairs. I advise that we are not down here when these people return.”

  We returned upstairs, closed the trap door, and placed the rug back over it. We returned to the living room and Damecus was about to explain his plan when I heard footsteps on the stairs by the front door.

  Dwynfel: “People are coming.”

  Damecus: “Chloe, hide.

  Chloe stepped behind the door at the front of the room.

  Damecus: “Dwynfel, stand there. Look anxious and sexually repressed.”

  Dwynfel: “Excuse me?”

  Chloe: “Just be yourself.”

  Damecus sat down in one of the armchairs, pulled out his pipe, quickly sprinkled something into it and lit it.

  Dwynfel: “What the fuck are you doing?”

  Damecus responded to me in between puffs of his pipe.

  Damecus: “Trust me. I know what I’m doing.”

  Angry Man: “Who broke the fucking door?”

  Timid Man: “Umm… it wasn’t me… it was hanging off when we left.”

  Angry Man: “Fuck’s sake. We leave the place for five bloody minutes and everything falls apart. Why do we have to get food for those bitches anyway? We’re just going to sell them on in a few…”

  The two men walked into the drawing room and nearly shat themselves. Of all the things they were expecting to see in this room, I highly doubt that a confused goblin and a pipe smoking lizard were particularly high on the list.

  Damecus: “Greetings, gents. Sorry about the door.”