Jay held a man captive.

Feeling the blade to his throat, the man stopped moving, but Jay didn’t trust him to stay quiet.

Jay ripped some of the tattered cloth from Lamp’s ragged clothes and fastened them about the man’s head with a wad in his mouth.

With Lamps hand free, it would be free to hunt more humans.

Next, he ripped some of the man’s own clothes and made them into bindings for his hands.

Jay wanted some information, and didn’t expect the man to answer him, but he decided to try anyway.

“Now, how many of you are out here? Hold out your fingers to tell me.”

The man exhaled angrily again in protest.

“Thought so.” Jay whispered, rolling the captive on his face and made the skeletons place him back down.

“Blue, take the other skeletons and find more of these sentries. Bring them back here without alerting anyone. Lamp will find them.” Jay thought-commanded.

The captive didn’t know that Jay could telepathically command his skeletons, and he didn’t even know his captors were the undead since it was so dark, but he suddenly heard them all run off into the night which only made him curious.

All of the skeletons had left except for Handy, who was now level three.

The prisoner was lying face down and was pinned there by Jay, who had his feet resting on his back.

As he lay face-down, the prisoner noticed a faint green glow for a moment, though he couldn’t see anything except the roots he lay on. The next thing he heard was something which sounded like the crunching of an apple.

“Weird time to have a snack.” he would have said, if his mouth wasn’t restricted.

Handy was eating the bones Jay had brought out of his gauntlet for it.

After a few moments, the clicking of bones and patting of feet sounded again. Another prisoner was brought back, covered in the same sort of camouflage and struggling helplessly against the many hands of the skeletons carrying him.

After making another set of bindings for his hands and mouth, Jay realised a problem.

The bindings were simply rags. They were not full-proof or trustworthy, and if a single one got free then the prisoners would be able to call for help quite easily.

“I need a way to restrict their mouth movement…” Jay thought.

After having been around his skeletons for so long, Jay knew that the jaw bone connected very closely to the skull.

Suddenly Jay smiled slyly as if watching an enemy walk into a trap before him, as he remembered the operation he carried out on Stephen – the guy who attacked Jay in the Loslan woods with elemental turrets because Jay wouldn’t join his party.

It was time for another operation; a simple one at that.

Jay held one of the men by the head, making sure his jaw was completely shut. Handy was holding the second captive so that he wouldn’t see what Jay was about to do.

He willed some pebble-sized bones to come out of his gauntlet, and was soon holding some finger bones.

Jay covered his patient’s eyes and held his jaw completely shut as a green glow of necrotic mana appeared at the side of his head.

The pebble-sized bones in jaws hands turned to liquid and seeped into the man’s skin. Oddly, he didn’t scream. Perhaps there was no pain or he had strong willpower, Jay couldn’t be sure.

Jay sensed the liquid bone in the man’s head and guided it between the jaw and the skull – then fused them.

He repeated the operation on the other side of the man’s head.

Now it was as if his jaw was frozen. Jay slowly removed bindings around his eyes and mouth.

Taking the opportunity, the man attempted to scream.

“SHhhh shhhck shck! Frrgh yooo yuh frghhing frck!”

The man’s voice box still worked, but sound could still escape from the gaps in his teeth.

“Damn.” Jay frowned.

“It worked, but I’ll still have to cover his mouth.” he thought, wrapping the bandage back around his lips.

Jay considered the operation a failure since he didn’t achieve what he wanted – though there were some positives.

“At least he can’t bite off his own tongue to kill himself,” he shrugged, “or use his jaw to try and remove the bindings; it does limit his ability to yell or scream but the bindings are still necessary. At least he can’t wiggle them off with his jaw.”

The captive quieted down after a few moments. Every time he tried to move his jaw, it would pull on his skull and cause immense pain, but what he feared mostly was being like this permanently, along with the being who could do this to him.

This was when he realised something wasn’t right; he had not been killed. This was no cannibal, but something else entirely – something much worse.

Jay made the man lie face down again, and began his operation on the other prisoner whom he blindfolded too. The blindfold was there so that they wouldn’t get freaked out during the operation and make Jay’s job harder, and neither of them had seen Jay yet either.

After a few more glows of green light, both of the captives had frozen jaws, welded to their own skulls. Their lips sealed with ripped pieces of their own clothes.

Jay had the newly-improved Handy watch over the captives while he waited for more to come, and repeated the same operation whenever they did.

Throughout the night, some of the prisoners tried to roll over and quietly move, but as soon as they did, Handy would be there, stepping its undead foot on their backs and causing them to freeze in shock before returning them to their face-down prone positions.

None of the prisoners could work out how they were being seen or heard.

They would covertly roll to one side without making a sound, and from there they could curl up before trying to get onto their feet – but every time they rolled to their side, their plans were immediately thwarted.

How were they being heard or seen? It was pitch black, and among the leaf-skin villagers, they were the quietest there were.

Their captors didn’t even make a sound either – other than some strange clicking sounds probably coming from their armour, and neither did they get impatient or angry with their escape attempts.

Their captors simply pushed them back to their face-down positions, and patiently so. Something seemed professional about it, like their captors were cold and calculating experts.

Most of them gave up after a while, realising it was just a waste of energy, though they were all even more fearful as their own jaws had somehow been sealed, and trying to move it at all resulted in a shocking pain.

After two hours Jay had six captives, and soon the skeletons had stopped searching as there were no sentries left in the forest.

Jay had frozen all of their jaws and bound all of their mouths.

They were helpless before him, but moving six men at once would be too hard in the darkness – as would having them guide him back to their village. Jay didn’t even know which way to go yet.

Since it would be too hard to escort all of his prisoners at night, he decided to rest his eyes for a little while longer until the first light of the day approached.

He had the five skeletons with him all guarding him, scouting the perimeter, and guarding the six prisoners too.

“Wake me up at sunrise” he thought-commanded Blue.

Some time later, Jay woke up to a skeleton hand gently nudging his shoulder.

The forest was still dark, but the first light of dawn was enough to see in.

Six men lay face-down before Jay, each bound and unmoving as they had all given up – though one was acting quite differently.

He seemed quite frightened; he wasn’t wriggling around to get free but was shivering in fear and trying to hold himself as still as possible. All his back muscles were tense and tightened.

Jay smiled slyly, “Seems like he saw one of the skeleton’s feet.”

“Well, they would have learnt about them at some point.” he shrugged.

Jay stood up, eating some meat from his inventory and drinking some water as he looked over the captives and wondered what to do with them, and how to use them to reach their village.

He figured fear was the best approach to interrogation, mixed in with some lies as well. Since these were scouts around a cannibal village he guessed they were probably trained to kill themselves if they were captured, so he would have to provide a fate – or a threat – worse than death.

While finishing his morning snack, he soon came up with an idea.

His eyes gazed over them as if he were a predator, “Now… let’s see who will break first…”