The world was sometimes a terrible place.

Sammy sat there observing just how people sank so low sometimes as he watched how living humans – humans who had their own will – obeyed Briar's order without question. They were doing things they normally wouldn't have done. They all were normal people once, but Briar knew how to control both the living and the dead.

And with the living, she used her convincing words.

Which is why three people were untying the member who failed the initiation. Once a shy healthy-looking woman, now looked so frail and emancipated. If she could see or hear him, he would have kept her company from time to time, but sadly she couldn't and nobody cared much for her. Not when she had no value alive.

It was almost funny to see common everyday people slowly forgo their morals and excitedly drag someone they knew was starved and imprisoned away to wherever Briar wanted that woman to be. They were following her commands, and so Sammy followed them watching as the poor woman kicked her feet weakly and cried.

"Let me leave." She pleaded with a scratchy voice, but nobody paid her any mind as they continued to drag her. The woman looked around at them wondering how she allowed herself to believe that joining their group would be wise. Her wants blinded her, and her eyes watered as she dreaded her fate. "Where am I being taken?"

There still was no response given to her, and that made her cry and flail even more until she was taken into a room with a slab of stone in the middle of it.

It was dark there, and barely anything could be seen in the dim light, and the woman felt the stinging cold touch of the stone table-like slab against her skin. Nobody said anything, and nobody reacted when she sat up as she looked around the place. The three members were looking at a certain corner where their leader sat on an old wooden chair with a book in her lap.

"This is truly horrid." Briar was not addressing anyone with her words, she was merely reacting to what she was reading as she flipped the page, and that relaxed nonchalance made the captive woman furious.

All it would have taken was a single wave of her hand to attack the white-haired woman sitting there. She wanted to cause harm more than escape, she wanted Briar to regret ever locking her in a room making her endure cold nights as she starved. Her wants materialized in the form of a spell in her hand, and she thought of the worst curse she could think of before she lifted her arm to cast it.

Within split seconds, one of the loyal followers reacted and grabbed her hand firmly, canceling her spell in the process. A frustrated sound came out of her throat as she tried to yank her hand away, but the grip did not relent before she heard Briar stand up from her seat.

The woman found her head slammed back on the table so harshly that her vision became filled with dark spots for a few moments due to the impact. At first shocked, the woman stayed still for a moment before the pain was finally processed by her making her sob.

It was Briar who slammed her head so heartlessly like that with a single flick of her finger. "What are you standing here for? Restrain her."

"O-oh." One of the followers awkwardly moved to find the ropes while one of the other two held the woman down. They all were oblivious on what to do, and it was clear that they were surprised that a captive prisoner would be hostile or try to escape. They should have retrained the woman without Briar telling them to, but they were fumbling.

Thankfully for them, Briar decided to forgive that as she approached the table with the woman still groaning in pain.

"The three of you are here because you're the only ones I could trust." She told them after she was sure that the woman was finally secure, making the three turn towards her with hidden pride. They thought they were special, but they never noticed what Sammy had noticed a very long time ago.

Briar never asked for their names.

It was a clear sign that they were just tools to her and nothing more, and she smiled as she brought a sharp cleaver towards one of the three. "I'm sure you all want to do more than just summon spirits. I thought it was time that you all took the next step."

Elated, the members gave each other happy looks before they all nodded their heads. Two men and a woman, and the man who grabbed the cleaver spoke. "Yes, certainly! We'll do anything."

"There are some more advanced rituals that require human parts. Would you be willing to go that far?" Briar asked, tracing her hand around the restrained woman's leg. Her thoughts circled on how it should be cut to allow for more rituals to happen. Body parts and organs required her to kill people, and with more members joining and practicing rituals, more bodies would need to be harvested. They would need to kill more.

And that might attract unwanted attention.

While her three followers nodded eagerly telling her that they were willing to go that far, there was also one other problem that remained.

A problem she didn't know how they'll react to.

"This isn't a requirement, you can opt out of it if you wish." She started and she looked at her followers with a solemn expression. Frankly she was nervous about bringing this up so early to those three, but she really needed to test the rituals in that book Vincent gave her. "Would you be willing to ingest human flesh?"

The reaction was almost instantaneous. "No!"

It was the other man, the one without a cleaver, and both members turned their heads towards him looking bewildered. They never thought of ever voicing out their disagreement to Briar like this, not with the intensity that he showed, but that was because they never actually thought about not going along with whatever she said. They were already on their way to become necromancers, they knew this wasn't going to be the most wholesome branch of magic.

It is forbidden for a reason.

"I didn't mean to yell." The man told her apologetically as he bowed his head down, but he didn't seem too bothered by the tied up dizzy woman beneath him. "However, cannibalism is a line I will not cross."

Not showing her slight disappointment at having one less person to test the rituals on, Briar gave him a small reassuring smile. "I did say you could opt out."

"I'd be willing." The woman, the other follower, told her as they stood up straighter. Briar loved brownnosers, they were so pitiful.

With an amused smile, she gestured at the woman.

"Then start cutting her up." She told them before turning around and holding out her hand for the book that was floating towards her from the chair she previously sat on. The moment she grabbed it, she exited the room and shut the door behind her not wanting to deal with a bloody mess.

The three members found themselves staring down at a groaning woman whose head was spinning. They didn't know what to do, and one of them shoved a piece of cloth in her mouth because they heard it was what people did when they subjected people to torture and large amounts of pain. They didn't know the reason for it, or how to place it properly, and they all looked at each other in loss.

The woman was the first to take the initiative as she held the woman's forearm and looked up at her fellow members before nodding her head. "Do it. Cut it."

And the man did, lowering the knife ever so slowly slightly shaking as he did so. A small intake of breath was heard coming from him when the knife touched the skin, and he decided to gradually apply pressure making the restrained woman let out horrifying muffled screams. The pain snapped her from her dizziness, and the piece of cloth in her mouth was spat out as she lifted her head to see what was being done to her.

All she could see was a cleaver and her arm bleeding because of it.

"What are you doing!? No, no!" She struggled, but the ropes were holding her tightly in her place. She let out another scream as she felt hands pushing her down from her shoulder before one of them had the bright idea to subdue her with a spell. "You will die li-..."

Her last words trailed off as she fell unconscious, but she did try to resist the spell as best as she could. Alas, there was nothing she could do and the whole thing was witnessed by none other than Sammy who was enjoying the stupidity of the cult members.

Sometimes, they never cease to amaze.

"You're cutting her as if you're cutting bread." He told the man after walking to the middle of the table, half of his body was obscured by it and the woman lying on top of it, but it was always fun to see how people react to ghosts going through things. "You do it like a butcher, man. Like this!"

Sammy did a chopping motion with his hand, and the man nodded his head before replicating it with the cleaver.

The first chop was hesitant, clumsy, and while he did use a lot of force, he found the cleaver to be slightly lodged into something. "Do it again." Sammy instructed knowing that he just hit the bone. "Do it as hard as you can."

"Yeah, come on." The woman encouraged and the sound of the bone being cut ricocheted around the room. It wasn't a loud sound, it was more dull and muffled, but it was incredibly disturbing.

They were too focused on doing what Briar had told them, and they were excited to learn more about necromancy. There were so many enticing possibilities. They could already learn all the secrets they wanted from ghosts, so knowing that there's something even more than that made them blind to how ugly their actions were.

Not even when a whole limb fell on the floor, detached, did they stop and think that maybe they should rethink this. That maybe this wasn't right. Instead, they moved on to the other limb as if they were in a trance.

Power was really an addictive drug.

"Briar will kill you all, too." Came the woman's warning making Sammy turn around behind him. She was standing there watching her body getting cut up to pieces, but she looked more relieved to be rid of the pain than distraught at the fact that she's dead now.

She was taking it better than most.

"She might, yeah." Sammy agreed while the other three ignored her. One of them did turn around at her voice, but they only scoffed before a cleaver fell somewhere above her knee. That made Sammy lead the woman to the door even when he knew doors didn't matter anymore. "It's best to leave this place. Some memories will make you want to kill yourself, but you can't if you're already dead."

The woman didn't even spare a glance at her body when she walked out.

Everything was just so ugly.