Deep underground.
"Mr. C, do you need me to... bring another sacrifice?"
In the cellar, which spanned over two hundred square meters, a cross-shaped object leaned against one wall, covered by a black curtain that concealed its exact appearance.
Beneath the cross, amid the flesh and blood scattered across the floor, crude planks and wooden crates had been used to build a simple altar. Large chunks of dark red, unidentified matter had dripped onto the carpet spread over it. Some even wriggled faintly, as though they possessed lives of their own.
The candle flames around the room swayed without wind, as if they could go out at any moment and take their feeble light from this eerie cellar.
On the altar, about a meter above the ground, a man in a black robe turned around. His face was hidden as he looked at the questioner cowering several meters away. The latter wore leather clothing on this midsummer night, but the two pistols at his waist gave him no courage to face his fear. When the robed man turned, he seemed to grow even more terrified, stumbling backward until his spine touched the wall.
"No need. They're too weak to be of much use. Leave."
The man in leather looked as though he had been granted a reprieve. He nodded frantically, carefully skirted the flesh beside the altar, and left through a small door to one side.
If the flesh on the ground had belonged to the unlucky sacrifice from before, he would not have been so frightened.
Those who delighted in others' suffering, those who believed in folk remedies and bathed in bloodwater, those with unusual sexual proclivities... After working this trade for so long, he had seen all kinds of monsters wearing human skin. What kind of good intentions