Another busy night.

Kenneth had successfully extracted two of the twenty-eight teeth from the beast, but still it did not stir. The teeth, of course, were to be sold to nearby faeries in exchange for their fine woven porcelain armour that would, in sufficient quantities, protect the wearer from a hail of stones, sticks or light arrows. This would be necessary in the journeying that was to follow - along a path that offered many threats. He needed a total of five teeth to make up the rest of the amulet, which had been damaged in the last hail of name-calling and abuse, doled out in shouted threats by unseen dwellers of the darkness. The beast stirred a little, causing Ken to flinch back from his work with the pliers. Perhaps he should top up the tranquiliser, he pondered. But the beast was only digesting it's mighty breakfast of seventy horses that Kenneth had filled with drugs to knock the animal out, as became apparent from the sour air emanating from the rear end. Clive, who was on look-out at the foot of the brow, detected the rising stench with some nausea, and during the moments that he was occupied with vomiting, a feathered dog climbed up the hill and came sniffing around Kenneth's work.

Kenneth leapt back, startled by the animal, and it leapt, startled by him; both believing the other to be the beast finally waking. Kenneth was relieved, but still annoyed, when he realised it was just one of the local flying hounds. He called to Clive, asking just what sort of a lookout he was proving to be, and perhaps that they might like to trade places seeing as he had now pulled the majority of the required teeth and Clive had evidently been having a relaxing time of it while old muggins here did all the work, but sadly Clive did not respond as he had now fainted and would require medical assistance along the lines of smelling salts, a stiff brandy and then several mugs of hot, sweet tea. This was a routine prescription for all ills taught to them by the self-styled military unit that they had abandoned weeks ago once safely across the border. In the confusion of his panic, Kenneth wrongly administered hot, salty brandy before being similarly overcome by the combined noxious fumes of decaying horse-meat mixed with tranquiliser gas that would render them both helplessly unconscious for the hours these fumes took to disperse. And as the hours advanced, so did the darkness.

Marvellous Cain - Hitman