Time to take care of soul number three. I walk over to the naked fel and remove his gag.

  He holds his breath and stares me right in the eye. I grin.

  "Your affiliation?"

  "Currently unaffiliated."

  "Former then?"

  "Erebos, the third darkness."

  "Position?"

  "A shadow."

  "For a shadow, your etiquette is remarkable."

  He keeps on maintaining eye contact. Shadows are not supposed to interact with us Dreamers and yet he knows the rules:

  1. Never break eye contact unless bidden to.

  2. Remain quiet when not prompted to speak and be concise when you do.

  And, of course, the most important one...

  "Ten seconds, get out of that chair."

  The naked ex-shadow fel puts his all into trying to create some momentum. Not a simple task considering his limbs are tied to the chair and his toes do not even touch the ground.

  Fortunately for him, the wooden chair is not very heavy.

  "Crash!"

  Six seconds, the chair topples over and tumbles down.

  One chair leg breaks in the process, but the chair is otherwise intact. Looks like he won't make it.

  Eight seconds. That left leg of his is surprisingly flexible. How did he get caught in the first pce? Since he used his left foot to push the zip tie keeping his right leg bound tight down and over the chair leg, he now has two legs to use and two seconds left.

  Nine, he got up and started running. Is he trying to escape? That would be stupid for someone who knows about Dreamers.

  Te-

  "Crash!"

  He actually threw himself at a wall, sideways! Wood splinters fly through the air as the chair breaks into pieces.

  Fel must be stronger than he looks, not that he looks weak.

  For all intents and purposes, he did get out of the chair. Now he is back to staring at me and holding his breath.

  "I will count that.

  "And breathe. Do it quietly and I won't mind."

  Whoever taught him likely encountered one of my more noise-sensitive counterparts.

  I see his chest start falling and rising. Good. He knows rule three.

  "What's your retionship with the fels here?"

  I nod at the two corpses.

  "I tried to sell them information and was captured and tortured instead."

  "What kind of information?"

  "Information about Hypnos."

  "Who approached whom?"

  "I approached one of their men."

  "One absent from this room?"

  "Yes. He was recommended to me- ah!"

  "Continue."

  I did not terribly mind him talking more freely. Since few know the rules, I am used to interrupting fels.

  "He was recommended to me by a local crime boss."

  Ex-shadow pauses and his eyes nervously flick down for a split second before widening and returning to mine.

  Am I the first Dreamer he has met? It's kind of entertaining to see him so nervous. It's different from Jumpy's naked fear and Candy-corn's horrified disgust. I am unsure where to pce his reaction.

  I blink. I am getting off track.

  "Are you still loyal to Erebos, to Hypnos?"

  He flinches and opens his mouth only to close it again a moment ter.

  As Hypnos' executive branch, Erebos is even heavier on the brain washing, yet he called himself "unaffiliated" earlier. It's not terribly believable.

  I wait for him to answer, yet despite opening and closing his mouth several more times, he does not voice a peep.

  Pondering my options for a minute, I decide on a light warning.

  I walk over to Jumpy who is still madly throttling Gentleman's corpse while sobbing and pull the knife out of his shoulder. He does not react. I am not sure he even noticed.

  Since I do not want to spend any mental energy patching Shadow up and I need his arms functional, I decide not to stab him for the time being.

  Besides, this has more fir.

  "Open your mouth."

  He complies while trying hard to keep his wide eyes locked on mine.

  I stare right back at him as I get the impractically rge knife in there and use it to pry his upper left second mor out.

  He is already missing two on his lower right, so taking one from the upper left should even things out a little.

  He screams horsely, as well as any man with a knife in his mouth after, presumably, hours of prior torture can.

  I pull the knife and his mor out. There's a bit of gum meat stuck to it. I throw it to the side and the knife quickly follows when I fail to find a pce to wipe it clean.

  Ex-shadow finally broke eye contact. He spends the next three minutes colpsed on the floor, holding himself and moaning in pain. Teeth hurt, I speak from experience, and a knife is not a great way to remove one.

  I ignore Candy-corn who is cowering in a corner, cradling her... father? Instead, I give Jumpy a light sp.

  "Earth to..."

  Jumpy? What was his actual name again? Did he ever tell me?

  It does not matter, he got the message... partially.

  Removing his hands from the corpse's neck, he turns to stare at me with bloodshot eyes and a tear-streaked face. Looks like this might have been his first kill.

  I tear a clean looking part of his shirt and hand it to him.

  "Put some pressure on that until it stops bleeding."

  He stares at me uncomprehendingly, so I point at the stab wound in his shoulder. He numbly moves his hand to press the fabric down on it.

  I hum. He could still bleed out like this. If he does, he is one lucky fel.

  That's all the time I am willing to afford Ex-shadow. I turn back and am happy to see that the man uncurled himself. He is still on the ground but immediately makes eye contact.

  "Answer my question."

  He takes a deep breath and then says,

  "No, I am no longer loyal... to anyone."

  His speech is a bit off, but considering how many teeth he lost, he sounds fine.

  Then he closes his eyes. A generally bad move but I am in a tolerant mood, on account of my being light-headed.

  "Open your eyes and get up."

  He has enough sense left in him to do as he's told.

  "How experienced are you with torture?"

  "Please... have mercy," he whispers.

  Yes, he completely misunderstood me. To be fair, in theory I should be reporting him or something. After all, he is a rogue shadow... or something.

  Fortunately for him, I will be going rogue myself very soon, if they don't consider me rogue already.

  "That's a terrible response, but allow me to crify: are you competent at information extraction, especially from enhanced humans?"

  I see his eyes light up again.

  "Yes and no. I have never tortured an enhanced human before, but I was instructed on how to do it."

  "There's a first time for everything," I tell him cheerily and point at the duke.

  I am surprisingly not that great at torturing others without using my head. Since I am so used to healing them, without it, they mostly end up dying within minutes.

  "Do you know where we can get another chair? Will you even need a chair?"

  After all this running around, I am ready to get to the meat of the matter.