Timil resisted the urge to pump his fist in the air and shout "Yesss!" Instead, he hurried after Evirea when she fled the cave. Leaving Herihi and Sarras lagging behind, the former began looking around the cave for anything else interesting. Sarras stared at Barsidious's corpse, or what remained of it, for a moment. Curiously, as if expecting it were a hallucination, she stood and kicked his leg, or what was left of it. Most certainly, Barsidious was dead, but something was floating atop the pool of biological fluids he had left behind. A small slip of paper, slowly being drowned in the liquid. The paper caught the dermorian's eye. She gritted her teeth and reached for it. Her eyes scanned its contents, and she found it legible, if not soaked in blood and bile and whatever else inhabits the human body.
The paper had a simple message on it. It read: "Due to your inability to bring me more of my supply, I am afraid I will soon be discontinuing your services. They are no longer required. If you cannot bring me what I need, I shall simply procure it by another means. You are hereby dismissed from my services." It was completely unsigned.
Sarras blinked her eyes hard from the strain of reading in such darkness. She called to Herihi, "Hey! Come. Read this. Who do you suppose wrote it?"
The Diaboli Herihi gave up her search of the cave and came over to read the note with Sarras. Herihi muttered a few more expletives after reading the note. "Well I hope they are happy about killing him. Now we'll never know who he worked for." She began her painstaking search for a light source first and then after finding something to brighten the cave searched it thoroughly for any other clues.
Sarras swore in frustration, "Dammit!" She folded the note in her hand while glaring at the icky, oozy shell of Barsidious. Silently, she thought over their options.
The table in the corner of the room was covered in alchemical ingredients, bottles, a mortar and pestle. Herihi sifted through these things, musing to herself, muttering something about “Wondering if a friend of hers could use those supplies.” She pocketed them, but the dermorian protested.
"Hold it. We need to collect that as evidence.”
Herihi looked over to her "Oh, evidence?" Herihi thought a moment then nodded "True....evidence of his crimes for sure." She pulled the things out again and put them back where they were. "Well nothing else around here. And since he's dead I guess I'll be heading out."
Aramara lifted herself to her feet, picked up her bow, and took one last long look at the smoldering husk of Barsidious's corpse. Her only hope was that things didn't play out exactly like her vision. Perhaps they'd changed the course of fate enough. She could only pray. She exited the cave, took a deep breath of the air outside, and immediately fell to her knees to vomit. When she was finished, she rose back to her feet and wiped her mouth against the fur of her arm. Begrudgingly she started her climb out of the crater. She only shook her head as she walked past Evirea and Travosh and made her way back to Hydlaa and the peace of the garden.
<><><><><><><><><><><>
Evirea had managed to run out the exit, and made her way laboriously up the hill. She stopped to catch her breath, eyes scanning the vicinity for Travosh, still panicking. "Oh gods, if he's dead, oh gods oh gods..."
But Travosh was sitting outside where he was left, though he was smoking rather heavily. Rather than reacting to such phenomenon, he was simply covering his face with his hands, the powder of the amulet coating his robes. Evirea darted towards the klyros and knelt before him, shaking. She studied him for signs of injury, the smoking clearly bothering her considering what she just saw from Barsidious, and she reached out to try and grip his shoulder with her good arm. "Look at me," she said. "Look at me, Travosh, are you alright?"
Travosh shook his head. He didn't appear to be injured, just smoking for an inconceivable reason. "I'm... fine."
Evirea shifted her hands to try and feel Travosh's brow, to take his temperature. "Damn it," she muttered. "I swear if you maintained that connection and hurt yourself, I will kill you." Her voice was hoarse with tiredness, and worry. His brow was unnaturally hot against her skin. Hot like someone sitting way to close to a fire for awhile, rather than fever-heat. "It needed to be done. Just wish... He hadn't seen so much."
Evirea 's brow furrowed. "It's alright," she said softly. "He's dead. What...what he saw died with him, nobody knows, now." She gripped Travosh's shoulder again, attempting to be reassuring. "You're going to be okay?"
Travosh did nod back to Evirea, putting both his hands down, his eyes closed however.
Evirea sat beside the klyros, her good arm wrapped around his shoulders. She was content to simply wait for him, offering whatever comfort her present can provide, and remained silent. It was, after all, not the first time that they'd sat in silence, pondering a potentially troubled past. She had no idea what the man's past was, nor was she ever likely to, but as a friend, it was enough to know that the prodding of barely healed internal wounds was enough to bother him.
Travosh opened his eyes at last, the briefest of shimmers present before he snapped his fingers and banished it. "You're lucky I'm too tired to throw you off me,” he stated.
Evirea grinned and pulled her arm from Travosh's shoulders, shifting it gladly enough back over to grip her own injury. "There you are," she said, relieved, and leaned back against the wall. "Good. I was worried. You were being far too cuddly."
Travosh chuckled, "You should get that shoulder looked at. What happened in there anyways?"
Evirea shrugged painfully. "He liked the motif of a hook," she replied. "I'm sure you can only imagine why."
Travosh nodded. "I can know exactly why. You did figure that out, didn't you?"
Evirea frowned grimly. "Yes, I did," she replied. She looked towards him. "I'd ask you what he saw, but I'm not stupid enough to think you'd give a straight answer." She looked back out towards the expanse below. "So I won't bother." She hummed to herself, wonderingly. "Now what to do...I'll need another case, you know."
Travosh looked up at Evirea. "You're right, I would simply tell you he saw someone I'd rather wish he hadn't. As for cases...Who knows. There is still that plague."
Evirea smirked. "I tested it successfully...found a good recipient for it too. It's a rather...painful procedure, but it seems to have worked quite well."
The klyros chuckled again. "Well I hope he deserves it. Lets get YOU a doctor for once now."
Evirea groaned. "You know what they say about doctors as patients," she said, clambering to her feet. "They're terrible."
<><><><><><><><><><><>
A corpse sat unassumingly in the deeper part of the cave, its hollowed eyes peering listlessly outwards as the scene played itself to its conclusion. The reek of rotting had long ago left it, and its structure had been reduced nearly to dust, its flesh peeled back from Velnishi-plucked bones. What had caused the stranger's death was uncertain, but sadly its vantage was an obscure one, at least for those who might see it and bring it to a worthy eternal resting place. So for years it had sat, immobile, broken jaw skewed awkwardly open as the eons passed by with nothing new under the cave.
But tonight it was different. Tonight, those hollow eyes burned a sickly emerald green. Tonight, its head gave a seizure-esque jerk. Tonight, it craned its fractured neck and sought the scene with great import, its dusty limbs rustling and sending particles up into the air. The sounds it made were minimal. In the darkness, it was barely visible, hidden there behind a conveniently placed stalagmite. A necrotic spy, it watched the goings on with one might consider fascination, if in fact its face was a face, and still had the capacity to communicate an expression. Bony fingers curled around the stones available as it watched Barsidious die, and it strained hard, trying to make something out of the gibberish that was pouring from his lips.
But it got nothing, save for a single name.
In silence it waited until they slowly left, ebbing like a tide, their valiant deed at an end. When they were finished, it leaned back against the stone again, studying the wall. Its limbs gave a few twitches, and with a frustrated grinding of bone, whatever possessed the thing bid it to stand. The long-unused ligaments splintered, and the fractured bits of cartridge went spraying outwards. It collapsed into a pile of dust.
For a few moments the green flame remained hovering over the remains. It fled like a parasitic thing into the husk that was Barsidious, but with his liquified innards, found him even a less convenient host. The Ylian's eyes glowed emerald as he stared at the ceiling, his hands twitched, but he did not move. The head turned right and left, searching, perhaps, for more information, as though the force was a curious, childish thing, and sought to learn more through different vessels. It found nothing, however, nothing salvageable in the frail and tattered mind, nothing that could be gleaned from the now-fried synapses.
It only had one name, and a few others. Simple names. Nothing to inspire any real concern, but curiosity, ah...yes. There was a curiosity in the thing.
It opened up the once-terrible killer's mouth like an escape hatch and poured out. The sickly fire flickered faintly, as though its very being were being compromised without the ability to feed. It began to die, the crackles and hisses sounding like curses, until the faintest ember hovered suspended in the air. It, too, died, and floated down to the earth as a crumb of useless ash.
End Seeking of the Butcher
Part One
