Denier woke up in a heavy sweat. He thought a scream had woken him up but then he took it to be a dream. He had been taken underground with his hands and feet tied together on top of a hill. Below him were bubbling mud pits. Nearby, a dark-skinned native woman with a skull painted on her face mixed ingredients in a bowl. She then came up to Denier and threw some of the mulch at him while chanting a spell in her own tongue. Below, he could see something stirring in the steaming hot mud pits.

Denier really began to regret coming.

When Kage had told him about the venture, he was led to believe the black pearl had been abandoned. He didn’t think at the time he would be a part of such a uninitiated attack on an indigenous people. But after the natives had tried to kill them in Kikipas of Tanaroa, he was no longer very sympathetic to the people who lived on the Isle of Dread. Now they had caught him and were preparing him as some kind of sacrifice. Denier had thought a hunt for such a remarkable treasure would be one of the great stories of his life he could look back on, something out of legends. But now began to doubt whether any of those legends had been made without the theft and murder of others.

“Listen to me. My spell book. You have it, but you can’t read it. I could teach you magic with it.”, he told the woman. But she ignored him and kept chanting. Denier tried to chant along with her and then spoke as if casting a spell but nothing worked. The woman then grabbed him from behind and pulled him to the ledge. Below the hill, in the boiling mud pits were Kopru, amphibious creatures who could communicate telepathically with the natives of the temple. Several times before the kopru had accepted tasks for them to do in return for a sacrifice. Now the priestess had called them again, this time to help protect their temple from annihilation by pale colored raiders of an unknown origin. The kopru accepted.