From debris of the fallen watchtower, which consisted of splintered wood piled as high as Declan Idrys was tall, there protruded the scaly skin of an old man’s shins and calves (just two calves). From deeper in the mess, rancid sweat vapor rose from the now-unconscious war orangutans and shimmered against the red light of the setting sun. Chichi, by contrast with these brutish orangutans, wore traditional cologne and did not give off that ape smell. One of the war orphans held his hand as they beheld the prophesied scene of the tower’s destruction. Outside the compound, around the bend, horseshoes clopped the stone road, four horses by the sound of it, pulling two carts, approaching the compound gate. A man, still unseen, could be heard shouting with the confidence of institutional authority, “Now men I want us to be careful in our approach!” Just before the carts came into view, the elderly calves protruding from the debris stirred to life, and the full elderly body to which the calves belonged emerged into the light: it was the foreman who had overseen the underground panopticon during the party’s tour of the packing compound, the same foreman they had, in [[team 7's path 4]], accidentally impaled with the protruding nails of a plank, and further, the confirmed counterparty of Kraven Idrys’s whispers in [[team 7's path 5]]. When this old man stood up, the plank was still there attached to his back, its two nails deep in his trapezius. Some of the long hair on the back of his neck, where hair still grew, had been trapped by the plank. ![[foreman_steven.png]] > An illustration of the foreman (Steven) attributed to Squints. But his having been impaled did not stop him from dashing for freedom through the compound gate. Three members of the party tried to prevent the child slaver’s escape, but without any coordination. Squints threw his lasso, and aimed perfectly along the foreman’s sprinting trajectory. Declan chased the foreman and launched into a tackle. But Sansan, who stood by the gate the foreman ran toward, picked up one of the rocks on the ground and threw it at the foreman’s right ankle, her aim precise and tactical due to her [[mentat]] abilities, and hit him in an load-bearing ligament. He fell face first, saving him from Squints’ lasso, which instead lassoed Declan. The lasso slowed Declan’s fall forward just enough that the impact of his large [[higher ape]] body landing atop the old foreman’s frail form did not kill him, only knocked him unconscious and broke a rib or two. Meanwhile, Omeb exercised his new power as a [[wood bender]] to shrink the wooden ruin crushing the war orangutans, and got to work dragging them over the sheltered packing floor for medical attention. “I must thank you,” said the voice they’d heard outside. A man in his twenties now stood in the gate. He had pale, almost blue skin (yet he was undeniably handsome in spite of this and his long sideburns). Behind him, his men waited in the horse-pulled carts. He was addressing Declan, who had just wiggled himself off of the foreman and freed himself of Squints’s lasso. “My name is [[Tom of the Bureau]]. We’ve been planning an ambush of this man for months. His name is Steven, and he belongs to a sect of [[Red Priest]]s that raid rural homes in the west of [[Ilnam]] and distort the vision of their victims. We believe the sect possesses a [[Suitcase of Holding]].” “Officer,” Omeb said, “we believe they’ve been conducting experiments on these poor children.” “Of the children I know nothing. Nor do I so much care.” He lifted Steven and carried him to the front cart. “Of course you are owed your bounty for your efforts capturing him. Come find us at the bottom of the tallest tower.” Omeb handed the Tom of the Bureau a prisoner receipt, and because he had no ink, took some of the orangutan blood smeared on him while dragging the bodies and coated Tom’s thumb in it without giving Tom any chance to react. Then he pressed Tom’s thumb into the paper. “Ah, uh,” Tom said, recomposing himself. “We could certainly use the help of gig investigators such as yourselves in the caves between here and [[Chenowth]], if you ever feel so brave. We employees can’t go ourselves for insurance reasons. Do come by for your bounty.” With that he and his crew turned and clopped away. One of the little war orangutans could not be saved. On impact with the watchtower, he took too much trauma to the head. This did not distract Omeb from tasking one of the orphans to follow Tom of the Bureau. After Tom left, a young boy ran in through the gate, up to Declan, and produced from in his pants two pieces of brass. He held them in his open palms and bent over, offering them. They were the brass knuckles Declan had asked the armory keeper to size up using the same techniques the shop used for trumpets and saxophones. While the inside of the knuckles fit his enlarged hands and distributed impact safely across them, the victim’s side of the knuckles featured little valve buttons like a trumpet, which emitted notes when depressed. ![[trumpet_knuckles.png]] > An illustration of the trumpet knuckles recovered from Squints’s personal notes. At this point, the party split up to handle the aftermath and administrative affairs that naturally develop when defeating the overseers of a whiskey packing facility that enslaves children. ### Omeb Omeb organized a funeral for the deceased little war orangutan. [[65]] was in attendance. Omeb passed on to 65 a handbook of his own personal ethics: [[The Sneaky Boy's Guidebook]]. ![[sneaky_boy_guidebook.png]] > The Sneaky Boy’s Guidebook as illustrated in some of Sansan’s notes. 65, believing he had earned Omeb’s trust and faith, confided in Omeb the orphan’s budding plans to found a militia and visit the distillery’s other locations. He nurtured hopes and visions of a freedom fighter’s life, killing foremen and liberating orphans wherever they went. “I don’t know how capable you guys are,” Omeb cautioned, “You seem real malnutritioned.” “But with enough weapons and sneakiness, our fighter spirit will suffice.” “Let’s do this like a corporation, where I get 10% because I’m God. You can go replace the foreman at other sites, but keep the facilities working, and reinvest the profits in more weapons. You could grow your freedom-fighting contintent-wide.” After further negotiation and input from Declan, the party settled with the orphans on incorporating, and drafted organizing documents appointing the party to the board, which would be known as the [[gboard]], short for “God Board”. ### Declan Declan slapped his chloroformed brother Kraven Idrys until he woke up. “Brother!” Kraven said upon waking, at first delirious. When his eyes focused on Declan he said, “You are actually here.” “I am indeed.” “Every morning, I've awakened and called out, ‘Brother!’. But never have you been here to answer my call of fraternal yearning.” “Listen, younger brother. The foremen are gone. You no longer need to do the [[Red Priest]]’s bidding. It’s time to choose your own path now.” “Oh, brother. You’ve hit me right in the meaning of life. But tell me, you did remember to lock the portal door? Before doing all this?” “What? What portal door?” “Oh dear, oh gods.” Kraven took his knife from his belt and raised it to his own neck. “Stop!” Declan grabbed Kraven’s wrist back, would not let him kill himself. “Let me die!” Kraven said, then began to cry. “You don’t know what Obadiah does to defectors, and failures. Let me die oh please!” Declan, not seeing a way to calm his brother, chloroformed him again. ### Squints Squints went to check on Lucille, who was concerned about her ability to obey a passage in the Book of Death: “Eat a grapeful every day.” It had been impossible all this time to get a grapeful of salt, with it having been so jealously rationed by the foremen. They guarded the weekly shipments through the portal door as if the salt were gold. Lucille confided in Squints that she could not read well, and though she was well-edified, it was in part due to her dancers reading aloud for her. But the Book of Death, she preferred to read herself. Squints reassured her that he could read for the both of them. So they went to the ingredient closet on the packing floor and identified five clear containers of white powder, each of them labeled. “Which of them is the salt?” Lucille said. “You guys actually have a good amount of ingredients here. I see this is one is labeled rice. I guess it's like a rice powder. And I see sugar.” “Sugar?” “Sounds like you've never had sugar, which makes sense, since 65 had never tasted salt. It's going to be way too tasty for you. You wouldn't want to have too much.” Lucille looked down, shy, almost ashamed of her sudden desire to taste this mysterious and pleasurable powder known as sugar. “I don’t see any salt here, but we could taste some sugar.” “I would love to!” From the middle jar, which Squints read was labeled ‘sugar’, he took a five-finger pinch for both himself and Lucille. ![[five_finger_pinch.png]] > A sketch of the five-finger pinch in question, attributed to Sansan. Lucille scrunched her face in discomfort. “Uhm, Mr. Squints sir, how long do I need to hold sugar in my mouth before it feels good?” “I don't know what's going on,” Squints said, also tasting the sharp bitter of what he’d expected to be sugar. Before they could figure it out, the two of them collapsed to the floor and their mouths froze open due to a spasm of their jaws. Though Squints could hear Omeb nearby saying things to the orphans which he objected to on moral grounds, his objections were without consonants and therefore impossible to understand. Shortly after descending into this incapacitated state, Squints’s shoes popped due to the sudden enlargening of his own feet. Then, also due to sudden enlargening, some of the seams of his pants around his shins and thighs broke. Up to his thighs, he had transformed into an orangutan, with strong legs and articulate toes which represented themselves in his brain’s updated homunculus map. Beside him, the same fate had befallen Lucille. ### Sansan Sansan entered the underground panopticon to free the remaining orphans. The air was stale, but not so stale as to suffocate, because modest airflow came in behind her and escaped upward through vents that carried out the hot air around the torches which provided dim lighting. A few orphans remained trapped in their cells, idling on their cots, and one was busy at the bottom digging dirt out of the way to unblock a doorway whose edges glowed a faint yellow light. The digging orphan sang: > Digging, digging, always digging, > my stick, my shovel, it be sticking. Chichi followed behind her. She descended the spiral stairs to speak with the digging orphan. After interrogating the orphan and learning that shipments came through the door every week, and that he had to dig it out again every week due to dirt falling down into the main pit whenever they dug out new cells and tunnels above, Sansan decided she could not trust whatever would come through the door. With her slotted shovel she’d kept from her job sandsweeping gig in [[Outpost A]], Sansan started putting the dirt back in front of the door. This sent the digging orphan into a panic. “If the delivery doesn’t come through… If it can’t come through…” Chichi held the orphan and rocked him back and forth like an infant to keep him distracted while Sansan worked. She did not completely obstruct the door, but obstructed it enough such that when it opened, and a man in a pin-striped suit like [[Obadiah]]’s appeared on the other side, he could not move an inch before the lose dirt tumbled through the opening and buried him. Through the portal door, Sansan saw a torch-lit cobblestone hallway, like those of her old workplace at the stadium.