4

"They trapped us in here," says the strange man, looking at the ground. "Katariki and that bastard longfinger. They kept us tied to these tables while our father Katariki drew out our blood and the longfinger poked inside our muscles and our bones." He lowers his head at that, and begins to quietly sob.

This odd man is connected to Katariki? And then a nagging thought in the back of your mind becomes clear: though stunted and deformed, this man resembles Katariki. A leap of intuition—he is a medical or magical copy of Katariki, some sort of clone. For that matter, so is the corpse on the gurney.

"Katariki made you?" you ask, stunned. "Why? What did he do to you?"

"There were three of us," says the clone. "One of us, the best of us, escaped. After that, Katariki used magic to seal this place. But he tricked the bastard longfinger!" He is ranting now. "The bastard longfinger is sealed in here still, and he whispers to me! He whispers!"

The man is clearly crazed. For a moment, you don't speak. You fear that more questions might excite him further.

But then he grows calm again. "You can free me," he says. "Your wizards outside will soon bring down Katariki's enchanted wall. You could just let me go free. I don't have much food left anyway. Let me wander out into a world that I remember, though I've never seen it. I don't want to die in here, like my brother." He glances at the corpse on the gurney.