"What is it?" She coughed, and a stream of blood came out of her mouth. "That Lord... he said something about your father being the Ninth Lord... If you gave me some of your blood, then maybe I'll gain some of your regenerative ability." I watched as she slowly struggled to open her scabbard, and once I caught on I pulled the knife out for her. "Are you saying we should do the blood brother ritual?"

"Yes."

First cutting open my own hand and then hers, I pressed my hand against hers for a few minutes, and then lifting her shirt to see if it was working. To my surprise, it did, and I watched her wounds slowly but surely close up, and the color returned to her face. "Hey, are you okay?" Looking down at her now healed stomach, she slowly nodded as we started processing what had just happened. "I can't believe it worked, especially as well as it did." A few minutes later, she asked for my hand and I helped her up, and after that, it escalated to walking, which then was followed by being able to mount my horse again.

Soon, we were riding at full speed again, and we got to the first castle moat, its dark gothic architecture surrounded by molten magma. "This could be it." I looked at the drawbridge with a fire in my eyes. "He could really be in here."

"Silas, I know you're only doing this to avenge your loved ones, but there's things going on her that are more important than that. Yes, your father is evil, and he has to be stopped, but Silas..." I tried to just ignore her, but she wouldn't stop. "You're doing all of this for the wrong reason. I saw you saving me, and I watched you kill the men who were raping me. You weren't just killing to save.

You wanted to kill." I looked down at the ground as I thought over what she said. Did she really have a point? That couldn't be true. "You got just as much enjoyment out of torturing the Lord I beheaded for you, so just shut up!" Walking in a circle around the moat protecting the castle, it looked like the only way to get in was to find a way to get that drawbridge to come down. "Quit staring at me and help think of a way to get in!"

"Maybe the Third has an idea, if the worms still have him alive." I pulled him out of my satchel and then remembered that he couldn't talk, and threw him out of frustration. "He doesn't have a freaking voice box!" I eventually picked him up again and put him back. "Wait." Emma pointed at my satchel. "He's still alive, right?" I pulled him out and slapped his face, and he slowly came to before I put him back in the bag. "Yeah, but he's worthless. He can't even tell us anything. "Yeah, but what if we gave him his voice box back, then he could."

"Do you not realize how far back that is?! That would set us back by days!"

"Not necessarily his voice box." I lifted an eyebrow as I realized what she was implying. "You mean—" "The Lord we killed earlier. It might not work, but I think it's worth a shot to take off his head, and try to attach the Third's to the body. We'll just want to remove the limbs so that he can't go anywhere." Heading back, we found the body, and started by using Emma's knife to grind off the limbs, then retrieving the Third's head and letting the worms do the work.

Slap! His eyes twitched back for a moment, and soon he realized what we had done. "Agh, why?! This isn't even my body!" I pulled up a pistol and shot what was slowly becoming his heart. "Do you hear that, Lord? That's the sound of your now very few worms detecting injuries. And every time you say something I don't like, I shoot you, and less and less worms will be focused on keeping your head alive. I'm sure you can imagine how bad that will be when we take your head off of this body again."

"You think you can threaten me into giving you information?!" I shot his shoulder. "How do we get into a castle?!" He screamed again. "You- you can't! There's a moat!"

"How do we make the drawbridge go down?!"

"I don't know, just please, for the love of God, stop!"

"I'll stop when I know what I need to get to my father!" I fired off the rest of the bullets into his chest and stomach, and watched him try his best to wiggle away from us like a crippled outlaw.

"Agh, no, no! I'll tell you everything I know, just stop!"

Before I let my guns dispel, I threw one at the back of his head, and his bald scalp started bleeding a little too.

"Silas! You're gonna kill him, just stop!"

"Shut up, Emma." I set him up right again by pulling his neck, and punched his face. "Tell me."

"You have to say the secret word for the drawbridge to lower..." His eyes started rolling back. "...Horus... it's Horus." He sat completely still for a moment, then his chest stopped moving, the worms chewing their way out him and sizzling on the hot sand like eggs on a skillet. This time, he truly was dead. "All right, let's head back to the castle. We have what we need."

We stood in front of the castle moat once again, with guns and knives at the ready. "Silas..."

"What?"

"This could easily be a trap. What if he gave us a fake password, and shouting will only make them notice us?"